It took quite a bit of ti to get Kalasyp out of the tomb he’d been placed in. It had proved too risky to take him through the tunnel we’d dug, so we needed to remove the planks. I’d gone under, skinned my leg, and hit my broken one hard enough I think sothing had broken again.
After ten minutes of lying on the ground focusing on not crying, I made it over to the planks.
It had been such a simple explosive I’d been tempted to start yelling at Malstein for sending down here to disarm it but decided against it. A rope that if yanked would pull a trigger, with the old flint-lock firing chanism igniting the bundle of powder.
I’d broken it with contemptuous ease, then waited along with Kalasyp for the wood to be broken and then for the two of us to be dragged up. Kalasyp wasn’t happy, probably because he’d seen my Black Fla tattoo and my face and put two and two together, and I wasn’t happy because my leg was throbbing and I’d ruined another set of clothes by wading through ankle-deep blood.
At least the papers stored with Kalasyp had been on a table, well above that blood. I hadn’t looked since I was hardly in charge here.
Eventually, we got up there and while they looked over Kalasyp and fed him and made sure he was okay, I brewed a pot of tea, enough for everyone and of course three cups reserved for myself. Just enough to keep sated.
After a while, things were arranged to start asking questions of the rescued prisoner.
I passed Kalasyp a cup of hot tea and after a mont of hesitation, he accepted it, sipping at the drink.
We were arranged in a semi-circle around him, Malstein, Dawes, Tagashin, myself, and a few of the more senior Watch mbers that had been dragged along. The hydrologist was there, grumpily having so tea herself after having to clear all the blood out of Kalasyp’s tomb.
“Who are you?” Kalasyp asked, eyes glancing between and Tagashin’s Voltar disguise.
He knew both of us. You could see it in his eyes, he just hoped he was wrong on both counts.
Malstein cleared his throat. “I am Captain Malstein of the City Watch, Mr. Kalasyp. If you could please tell us-”
“Who are they?” Kalasyp demanded, thrusting his cup of tea at us and sending half of it to the ground.
I’m quite sure my eyebrow twitched. Stop wasting my tea! Twice he’d done that now!
Malstein sighed, turning to look at the two of us. I gave Kalasyp a polite smile.
“Malvia Harrow,” I said politely, then sipped my own cup of tea. Properly, not spilling half of it on the floor.
“Voltar, empire’s greatest detective and all that,” Tagashin said casually.
One of these days I needed to asure how much glamour she was using daily. To keep people thinking that was Voltar, it must be quite a lot.
Kalasyp shivered. “The City Watch, Voltar, and a Black Fla lieutenant. Feels like the start of a bad joke.”
“Forr mber,” I said. “I do not work with Versalicci.”
Kalasyp stared at , unconvinced. “I am certain you don’t. Where am I?”
“You are in a hideout of a human supremacy gang known as the Pure Bloods Mr. Kalasyp,”
Malstein said. “And we are all very interested in what you are doing down here.”
Kalasyp shivered. “How do you know my na?”
“I know who you are,” I answered. “We’ve t a few tis.”
Another deeper shiver. “I don’t rember any of those tis,” he said hoarsely, looking like he wanted to escape this conversation.
Dawes and Malstein both sent warning glances. Fine, I would ease up on the alchemist, I didn’t bear him any ill will.
“Any kind of magic user picks up a notice in the quarter Mr. Kalasyp,” I said. “If it’s any consolation, the Black Fla has no particular interest in you.”
Yet. Depending on how much Kalasyp was involved in this entire ss, Gi-Versalicci might want his head on a pike.
“It’s not,” Kalasyp said. “I was here because I was kidnapped on my way ho and dragged down here.”
Oh? That might be the truth, that might be covering for what I suspected the truth was. Which is that he’d been offered a job by the Changers, taken it while giving his work to , and ended up way over his head.
Still, I wouldn’t spoil that.
“The Purebloods kidnapped you?” Malstein asked. “From where and when?”
Kalasyp steadied a little, voice growing firr. “I was on my way ho from eting a colleague about sharing so work. I’d taken on a few too many clients-”
“Clients for what precisely?” Tagashin interjected.
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That threw him off for a second. Did she know about him providing alchemicals for the Black Fla? Oh, now his worry about being Fla made sense, he was worried Giovanni had sent soone after him for the lack of goods over the last few weeks.
“Alchemicals,” he said carefully. “I have a license at my ho if it needs to be inspected.”
A forged license, but one that would be overlooked if the owner hadn’t done anything egregious.
Malstein cleared his throat. “Voltar, that is less important than the imdiate matter at hand. Mr. Kalasyp, were you abducted by the Pure Bloods or soone else?”
“A pair of n, although I only saw one. Human, well-spoken, top hat, a cane he used to club . His clothes were very fine. I thought I must have wandered into the wrong district before they attacked in an alleyway.”
“Any witnesses to this assault Mr. Kalasyp?” Tagashin said.
“None,” Kalasyp hurriedly said while I rolled my eyes.
It was the Infernal Quarter. The chances of no one being around to notice a cri occurring in broad daylight were next to zero. The chance of them caring enough to intervene was an entirely different question.
“Mr. Voltar, please,” Malstein said, glaring at Tagashin. “You can question him later to your heart's content, please stop interrupting the two of us!”
Kalasyp seed to already be dreading that possibility, while Tagashin gave Malstein a far too wide grin.
“Of course Captain, my apologies.”
“They dragged underground,” Kalasyp continued. “I don’t know how far, only that we walked for what felt like hours. At one point they put a blindfold on , and there was this thing there. I could hear it straining against chains when they dragged past it, its breath reeked of decaying at.”
The basilisk. They had a thod of controlling it then if it was chained up. I doubted the Delver Guilds would have lost so many to a stationary one.
“They took my past it, into a room. It wasn’t large, maybe slightly bigger than a closet. I slept there, lived there. They gave food and water, enough to keep going, but I was locked in each night. I could hear the creature roaring the first few nights then it stopped. I could still hear it, but only occasionally. That’s when they dragged to the lab, and they showed the ingredients. They wanted to make Angel’s Sorrow.”
Interesting. They clearly had the poison before then, so why had they needed another alchemist?
“Were you the first alchemist they brought in to work on it?” I said, drawing everyone’s eyes.
“No,” Kalasyp said. “I didn’t even know how the make the poison, they had work off of his, or I guess maybe her, notes to make it. I never saw where they got the parts, but they were….fresh. Still bleeding. Very dangerous to handle.”
I nodded. Celestial body parts, even separated from the celestial creature would be painful to touch for us.
“They said the other alchemist had died, and I would be paid well,” Kalasyp said. “It beca clear very quickly I would not. You don’t just have soone make Angel’s Sorrow and let them go away, let alone with a fat sack of coin. I tried to escape…I did not make it far. Eventually, I finished the doses they asked for, and they took away. I thought they were going to feed to that thing, but instead, they gave to the Pure-Bloods. It was implied I was so kind of reward for them? In that killing was supposed to make up for sothing?”
I raised an eyebrow at that. That was a strange way of phrasing it.
“They stripped , looking for sothing,” Kalasyp muttered, looking at his tea. “I think they were looking for a Black Fla tattoo, and they started using tools to make sure they could see every inch of my skin.”
I winced. That must have been painful. And did answer why Kalasyp would be a reward. If he’d been given to the Pure-Bloods as a supposed Black Fla mber after Gio had killed several of their numbers, expecting them to tear Kalasyp apart….well it wasn’t the best thod of disposing of him but if they needed to assuage their catspaws, better an alchemist they no longer needed.
“After that, they muttered I was lucky and that maybe I’d get a chance to testify their innocence in this entire ss soon,” Kalasyp continued. “Then they sealed in there with so food and water and left there. I slowly faded, only waking up when they all started screaming and the blood started pouring in.”
“Around how long ago?” Malstein asked. “Before you heard us breaking in?”
Good question. Not much blood had poured in by the ti we’d entered.
“A few hours, maybe longer?” Kalasyp said uncertainly. “It’s hard to tell, I had no way to tell the ti and I’d given up on any hope of living past that.”
Well, that was telling to an extent. I glanced over at Malstein, who considered Kalasyp’s answers before turning to one of his subordinates.
“See that Mr. Kalasyp is well taken care of Rory. Mr. Kalasyp, I’d like to hold you in Watch custody for a while. For your own protection.”
From the look on Kalasyp’s face, he did not want to accept. However, after a few seconds of probably considering his chance of surviving on the streets without a visit from his past employers, he slowly nodded and let himself be taken away.
“The foulhorn was lying,” one of the Watch officers noted, ignoring my gaze as I looked at him.
“Definitely,” Tagashin said. “What about is the main point, but he definitely didn’t speak the truth entirely through that.”
“Miss Harrow?” Malstein asked . “You were the one who saw him last before his ‘abduction’?”
I sighed. Well, he’d tried, and I hadn’t said anything till asked. The most I could do for him.
“He ntioned needing to handle his clients because he had fallen into a rather good deal,” I said. “If I had to guess, it was this, although I doubt he had any idea what he’d signed up for till he made it down here. Escape attempts are probably true, once he realized what they wanted he would have tried to make a runner. I find the timing even more important. Looks like there’s a leak among your chain of command, Captain.”
Malstein grimaced. “I don’t think anyone below . Above perhaps, which makes the idea of holding him in the Coffin troubling. Especially because if anyone knows where the Changer's Lab is, it’s him.”
"We could head right there," Tagashin said. "Assuming he is willing to talk."
"He might not rember now," I said. "Traumatic events, plus his condition. Add the fact he's terrified of both and you and the Watch just a little less. The Delvers might have a better idea."
"Or we could give him ti to rember," Malstein said. "You heard him about the creature being led away. He could still hear it, but who is to say if it is close to their lab anymore? And the Coffin is too dangerous to keep him in if soone inford the Changers."
“I have an idea,” I said. “We do have another place. Perhaps not as secure but…” I gave the surrounding Watch mbers a glance. And got a series of angry or insulted expressions in return.
Well, I hadn’t been the one who’d leaked. “Doctor Dawes, how well could we fit Kalasyp into one of your and Mr. Voltar’s houses?”
He’d left his chair. I rembered him getting up, but hadn’t noted him not sitting down again.
Dawes had gone over to the stack of papers from Kalasyp’s tomb, going through them with an increasingly pale face as he read them.
“Doctor?” I asked again, coming closer.
He whirled about, turning to face , but I caught a glimpse of what lay on those pages. A seal depicting an armored figure clad all in white. Scales held high in one hand, a flaming sword in the other. Seal and depiction of the god Halspus, symbol of his church.
I looked at the paper and then quietly held out my hand. Others were crowding closer, but no one intervened as Dawes handed it over. I read through it briefly, instructions and orders to follow the bearer, that it was the beginning of a new crusade to rid the city of it's Infernal nace.
I read it thrice, then looked at the seal, then laughed.
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