Snowtear Read online

  “My thanks, friend,” Riken said.

  “Mon Ullimar will be right down, Mon,” the man said, no doubt cursing Riken in the recesses of his gentlemanly mind.

  No matter how many times he saw one, and Riken had had occasion to see more than a few, the inside of one of these estates always awed him. The floors were shiny, white marble with hazy streaks of onyx. Two winding, gold staircases on either side of the huge foyer led to a second tier. A multitude of paintings in silver frames lined walls draped in perfumed velvet. Riken thought they smelled of lilacs. Directly in front of him, past a statue of a nude woman bathing, was a hearth that rose to the crest of the forty foot ceiling. The room made him feel smaller than small.

  Someday, a part of him thought. The other part snorted.

  “Quite a place they got here. They make you sleep in the basement?” Riken asked the manservant, who didn’t deign to reply with more than a curt glower.

  The look melted into stark professionalism when a man wearing amber robes laced with silver appeared at the pinnacle of the left staircase. Mon Ullimar, Riken presumed. If not, he looked the part to perfection. Besides the extravagant robes, the head of the house wore a silver, bejeweled coif, rings on every finger, and sandals that looked soft enough to bite through. The manservant poised stiff behind Riken couldn’t have saved enough coin in a cycle to buy one of his master’s rings.

  “Mon Snowtear,” Ullimar said, descending the staircase, “thank the Fire you’ve arrived.

  Thank the Wind, Water, Earth, and fuzzy bunnies while you’re at it, Riken thought. As long as the man paid his fee, he could thank whatever he liked.

  “Mon Ullimar,” Riken said.

  “Please, call me Gregor. I heard about the little task you handled for Kane Sargwether a couple cycles back. Kane’s a dear friend of the family, so you come highly recommended.”

  Little task, Riken thought. I recovered well over a hundred myn worth of heirlooms for that winded old simp, and he had the nerve to name it a little task. He wouldn’t have thought it so little if I’d let that crew of thieves depart on Crystalline with his grandpapa’s prized antiquities. Fucking rich people.

  Before Ullimar could speak another word, a lady who could only be Min Ullimar came bounding down the steps after her husband.

  So this is what all that coin buys you, Riken thought, helpless to take his eyes off the breathtaking beauty. Sophci went through three phases each cent of their lives: New, Prime, and Old, as they were commonly referred. Min Ullimar was most defiantly in her Prime. Midnight black hair hung in shimmering curls to the small of her back. Her ruby red bodice was trimmed with gold flowers and, while lovely, didn’t really provided much support for her ample breasts, which were jiggling quite splendidly as she hurried down the stairs. Later, Riken would have chance to inspect her tanned, sharply-featured face. For the moment, his eyes were preoccupied just a hair south.

  “Oh, Mon Snowtear, thank the Fire,” she called, breathless. “We’ve been so worried. Thank the Fire, you’re here.”

  When he managed to get his vocal cords working properly, Riken said, “Min Ullimar. I only hope I can be of assistance.”

  “Oh, you just have to be. Sage is my whole world, Mon Snowtear, my whole world. I just don’t know what to do. When we found her missing…I just…”

  “Marr, darling, everything’s going to be fine,” Ullimar said, taking her hands in his.

  “Are you thirsty, Mon Snowtear?” she asked. “Can I get you something?”

  “I…”

  “Beatrix,” the lady almost shouted, snapping her fingers.

  A squat, old woman in a black, cotton dress appeared at the grooved archway next to Riken.

  How quaint, Riken mused, like trained dogs.

  “Min?” the old woman asked.

  “Beatrix, get some wine for Mon Snowtear, please.”

  Obediently, the old woman disappeared.

  While Marr Ullimar fidgeted, her hands never seeming to find a comfortable place, her husband suggested they speak in the den. Riken followed the couple under another archway, through a long hallway packed with more paintings and statues, and into the largest single room he’d ever seen in his life.

  The temperature in the room was brumal despite a capacious double-sided fireplace in the center. Red velvet draped the walls and ceiling. Riken could fit every piece of furniture he’d ever owned within these walls and still have room to include a scale model of his childhood home in the corner, but the Ullimars had decorated the vast space with only a pair of couches, a couple plush chairs, and a short table facing one side of the fireplace.

  By the time Ullimar finished reciting everything he could remember about the night his daughter went missing, the maid arrived with Riken’s wine. He sipped slowly from the silver goblet, thinking it would be in bad taste to drain the sweet liquid in a single gulp.

  “And Min Dumay was the first to notice her missing?” he asked.

  “Aye,” Ullimar said. He sat perched on the edge of one of the couches, occasionally casting a concerned glance at his wife.

  “She’s the girl’s nanny?”

  “She is.”

  “Have you any enemies, Mon Ullimar?” Riken asked.

  “One can hardly reach the level I have without acquiring a few, I suppose. Though, I’d find it hard to believe anyone would stoop so low as to steal my only daughter.”

  Gullible or stupid or both, Riken thought, but he merely nodded.

  “Is there any chance she would’ve gone off on her own?”

  “Of course not,” Marr said, rubbing her slender hands together. For warmth or comfort, Riken couldn’t be sure. “Why would she? My daughter is in the late stages of her Second New. She knows the dangers that can lurk in this city for one so prone.”

  “Of course,” Riken said, trying to look her in the eyes.

  After a half hour of conversation, he figured he’d gotten as much as possible from Sage’s parents. As he’d assumed, the two wealthy socialites spent very little time with their daughter, so were hardly the ones he’d get real information from. Most likely, the girl spent more time with Min Dumay and the rest of the house staff. That’s who he needed to speak with.

  Riken didn’t completely condemn the Ullimars as neglectful parents, though he doubted their technique would win them any awards. Sophci culture was entirely different from humans. At most, a Sophci could hope to live around ten cents, double that of a human. In those thousand cycles, they went through their phases five times. For their first one hundred cycles, their existence was comparable to the humans of old, who had been lucky to reach such a ripe old age. All resemblance ended there, for then a Sophci started what Riken could only describe as de-aging. In their next hundred cycles, they traversed the aging process backward, growing younger back to infancy. This meant young Sage in her Second New phase, though outwardly appearing to be a normal eight-cycle-old girl, was actually closer to a hundred and ninety-two. Two cents worth of life and experiences wrapped in the package of a young child. Riken could only imagine the vicissitude that entailed. Gregor Ullimar might be rich and powerful beyond the imaginings of the majority of Winter Moon’s citizens, but Riken had one up on him at least. When he reached two hundred cycles, he’d still be able to fuck. An image of Mon and Min Ullimar in their Third News popped unexpectedly in his head. How would their married life work then?

  Riken fought to suppress a laugh.

  “I’ll need to speak to your house staff, as well,” he said. “Everyone except Min Dumay. I’ve already had that pleasure.

  “Of course,” Ullimar said. “Any time you wish.”

  “Now would be fine.”

  “I’ll have Sefen gather them then. Would the servants’ chambers work?”

  No servants allowed in the den, huh? “Whatever you wish, Mon Ullimar.”

  “Gregor.”

  “Right,” Riken said as the man snapped his fingers for the manservant.

  Riken’s old friend Sefen did
n’t look pleased to be taken away from his duties in the least. He was even less cordial after twenty minutes of grilling about his whereabouts the night before and his relationship with the missing girl. Riken had found out all he cared to know in the first five minutes of the interview, but couldn’t pass up the free entertainment of observing the haughty man’s varied reactions to questions he deemed personal affronts, like “How often do you bathe?” and “How long have your employers known about you penchant for adolescent girls?”

  Excepting Sefen, the rest of the Ullimar house staff seemed elated at the brief reprieve from their normal work obligations, and eager to please.

  The servants’ chamber was a bulky, wooden division in the rear of the Ullimar estate. Since the building couldn’t be seen from the street, slightly less enthusiasm had gone into its construction than the main house. The wood on the front of the two-story building was cracked and splintering. Only a couple windows had glass, and the reserve of logs for the hearth in the great room was scant. Furnishings were equally sparse, consisting of a half-dozen rickety tables with benches instead of chairs, a few oil lamps on the walls, and a large painting of The Fire over a mantle at the back of the room.

  If any of the servants noticed the lack of basic comforts, they didn’t confide in him, so Riken abstained from remarking.

  He sat at one of the benches, speaking with each member of the twenty-person staff individually. He’d told them they were free to do as they pleased while awaiting their turn, but Sefen had insisted on the formation of a neat line alongside the table, so they could get this business over with as soon as possible. Quite the tight ship you run here, friend. Time their trips to the bathhouse too? Riken wondered if the rod up Sefen’s ass had a rod up its ass.

  Halfway through the line, the old woman who’d brought Riken his wine sat down across the table from him and promptly stated her name per Sefen’s instruction.

  “Well met, Beatrix,” Riken said.

  She nodded.

  Her hair, in a tight bun on top of her perfectly round head, was the color of fresh ash. From the look of the plump rolls in her heavy dress, she didn’t miss many meals in House Ullimar. Her face, like the rest, looked tired, but her wide, cobalt eyes looked worse than most.

  “When was the last time you had chance to see Sage, Min?” Riken asked.

  “The day before she disappeared.”

  “What was she doing?”

  “Reading in the library. She likes to read. Always with a book, that one.”

  “Any notion of why she might’ve run off?”

  “Run off?” the woman repeated with a puzzled look. “You don’t think she was taken?”

  “Do you?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “Would you know of anyone that might have cause to snatch the girl? Perhaps one of Mon Ullimar’s business associates?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know much of Mon’s dealings. I clean the house. My knowledge ends with the scrubbing of the floors.”

  “How long have you been employed by the Ullimars?”

  “A long time,” Beatrix said.

  “How long?”

  “Fifty-seven cycles next winter.”

  “Fifty-seven. Good memory. Can you think of anything else I might need to know? About anything?

  Beatrix shook her head.

  “My thanks for your time, Min,” Riken said.

  “Good day, mon,” the woman said, then rose from the bench.

  As Sefen’s amenable line diminished, Riken’s attention began to waver. He heard the same handful of facts many times over. No one had any inkling as to what had happened to Sage. Not a cross word was said in regard to her parents. All said she was a kind, shy girl, who would never have considered venturing out on her own. Sage had come back to live with her parents two cycles back. Nothing strange about that. Sophci tradition called for a person coming to the end of a New phase to travel back to their homeland to be cared for by their kin, until they passed again into Prime. For all Riken was able to gather, she might very well have dissipated into a puff of air and been carried away on a strong breeze.

  “That all?” Riken asked Sefen after interviewing a buxom cook in a revealing sundress.

  “Aye,” the manservant said, tapping his boot. “Will you require anything further?”

  “I suppose not, for now at least. Unless you care to sit and chat a spell longer.”

  Sefen graced him with a now-familiar leer.

  “Just trying to be social,” Riken said.

  He didn’t have much more to go on than when he’d arrived, but he saw little else he could accomplish here. He’d continue the job for now, perhaps ask around the neighborhood. Wouldn’t that be a treat? He couldn’t imagine why all those uppity socialites wouldn’t welcome someone like him on their doorstep with open arms. Whatever had happened to Sage Ullimar, the five lyn Riken had been paid upfront guaranteed the Ullimars a week’s worth of hard-nosed digging. After that, if he hadn’t found any trace of her, it would be their choice whether to continue or not.

  “Then if you do not mind, I have pressing matters to attend to,” Sefen said.

  “Course not, friend. Give that doorknob a sound polishing for me too, won’t you?”

  Sefen spun with a snort and turned his nose up so high Riken thought the man might tip backward onto his puckered ass. The manservant slammed the door on his way out.

  As he prepared to leave, Riken heard a soft shuffling behind him. He turned and saw a gangly, young woman with fire red hair at his side. Anastasia, he recalled. When she didn’t speak for a few moments, he gave her an inquisitive look. She remained silent, biting at her bottom lip.

  “Can I help you, Min?” Riken asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you know?”

  After another long pause, she said, “I know Sefen lied to you.”

  “About what?”

  “Everybody wasn’t here today,” she said, looking as if she’d rather be anywhere in the world but in this room with him.

  “Go on.”

  “One of the cleaning girls, Jatta…uh…Marllig. She didn’t come in today.”

  “So?”

  “Didn’t come in yesterday either,” Anastasia said, staring at her sandals.

  “And where would I find Min Marllig?”

  “She lives on Saura Row, I believe.”

  Sorrow. Just my luck, Riken thought.

  “Why tell me this, Min?”

  “I…I’ve got to get back.”

  “Just a moment, Min,” Riken said, but the woman fled out the door. By the time he reached it himself, she was already pounding the light covering of snow halfway back to the main house.

  “Seven layers. Sorrow,” Riken muttered as he left the servants’ chamber.

  He needed a drink. Maybe four.

  Chapter Three

  Riken called himself a Handler. Not the most sophisticated title, for certain, but until a more prolific descriptor came to him, it illustrated exactly what he did best: he handled things. What things mattered not, as long as the coin was good. And Riken was damned good at his job. Far superior to that overgrown pig’s snout Hammer Ulrick, even if he was the only one who thought so.

  However reluctantly, he attributed no small amount of his successes to a healthy batch of informants he’d nourished over his forty some-odd cycles at the job. Whenever he needed word of seedy goings-on in Winter Moon, enlightenment was but a few meetings and a handful of coins away.

  Riken spent the better part of the afternoon trudging about the city, placing feelers with his underground crew for word on an absent rich girl. Five kyn to Dedrick Hosmaste, a butcher in Sackfield Row; five to Teron Blackweather, the palace horse master; another five to a seamstress in Crafters Row named Abigial Thorn; three to a surly little runt called Sod, whose residence Riken had never been able to ascertain; and an additional twenty kyn to five others spread about all points of the city.

  Tired, his
pockets lighter, and in grave need of refreshment, Riken could no longer put off visiting one of his least favorite places.

  The residents of Saura Row called their dark slice of the city Sorrow, and, like Saffrom Row, the name suited. Where the scenery of Saffrom seemed as if it had bloomed from the blessed paintbrush of some great artist, Sorrow looked like the bottom of the same guy’s old paint bucket. In place of lush, green lawns, there was dirt. Instead of finely laid cobblestone roads, more dirt. Both districts had snow this time of cycle, but Sorrow’s exhibited more of a brownish tint.

  Riken loathed coming down here. It wasn’t that this row was poor. There was a plethora of poor districts in Winter Moon, most of which he was only too happy to frequent when low on coin. When down to your last five kyn, a toothless whore and watered down ale could be pretty appetizing. Nay, it was the feel of the place, bleak and contemptuous, like everyone still breathing within its borders had long ago given allegiance to misery. Even for Riken, who labored with his own bouts of deep depression from time to time, Sorrow’s despondency was transcendent.

  In Sorrow’s premiere tavern, Last Chance, Riken sat down on a termite-infested stool and ordered two mugs of ale. He had to purchase the pair; each one cost only a half a kyn, and the powers-that-be had yet to issue a coin of such trifling value.

  “Don’t spill any on the floor,” a decrepit barmaid with a raspy voice said.

  Riken looked down. Aye, wouldn’t want to ruin the concoction of blood, piss, and sawdust you got going here. He lifted his new boots to the first rung of the stool.

  “I’m looking for a woman named Jatta Marllig,” he said. “Any idea where I might find her?”

  “Who wants to know?” the old barmaid asked, considering him with her one good eye.

  “Me.”

  “Who’s you?”

  “Riken Snowtear.”

  The moment he’d said it aloud, he wished he hadn’t. The sound of a chair screeching on the floor told him why.

  “Son of a whore,” he breathed as heavy footsteps approached.