When Mei reached the tenement roof, she re-entered the world of tiled roofs, steeples, and cables she’d abandoned since the Harvest Ball. As the view around her glistened from rain and frost, the sky above her showed patches of blue sky visible, the early signs of the drier winter that was coming. The tenement roof itself was full of Sourans drifting from fire to fire to talk about bad bosses, about what they planned to buy, about home. As they commented, laughed, groaned, and sighed, their exhaustion from another season of work fell away. It seemed nice to be done with it all, instead of only now starting on the real work.
Read more: Chapter Two: Fo’Hassila’Po, Empassion SpiritA clank heralded Charlie’s arrival and as soon as his black coat and silver badge was visible, the air on the roof shifted from congenial to cautious.
The scrytive held his hands up. “We only want to ask a few questions and then we’ll be gone.”
The “we” brought night shift attention to Mei, who they’d noticed but ignored.
“You’re back.” A short middle-aged woman pulled a shabby sienna brown coat tighter around herself. “I thought you’d gone up to that fancy house.”
Mei bowed. “I did. I’m looking for Huan.”
“Oh, him.” Brown Coat spat into a nearby brazier, making the coals sizzle. “I ain’t seen him.”
“I have.” A younger taller man wearing faded yellow gloves kept his eyes on the sky as he talked. “I was coming in late-”
“Is there any other time?” asked Brown Coat.
“And he was just standing there on the street just looking at the place,” finished Yellow Gloves.
Charlie pulled out a notebook. “When was this?”
Yellow Gloves frowned. “I’m not sure. All I know was it was late.”
“It can’t have been in the past week.” Brown Coat shivered. “They let you go before that.”
“Oh, right.” Yellow Glove winced. “End of season, they said.”
Brown Coat scoffed. “Cheapskates, I say.”
As Charlie wrote that down, Mei asked, “What was he wearing?”
“A uniform?“ Yellow Gloves frowned again. “No, that ain’t right. A suit, something fancy.”
“Like that ridiculous red thing he wore that one time?” Brown Coat laughed. “He looked like a giant berry.”
Yellow Gloves smiled. “No, I would have recalled. It weren’t fancy, but the shoes were wrong.”
Charlie’s note-taking paused. “What do you mean-”
“Were they thin and made of cloth?” Mei asked, heedless of Charlie’s question.
“Yes, yes, that’s right.” Yellow Gloves finally looked her in the face. “They were like a lady’s inside shoes.”
Brown Coat smirked. “You ain’t ever seen no lady’s inside shoes.”
“I have too. They’re pretty little things. I’d like to own a pair one day.”
“Oh,” Brown Coat waggled her eyebrows, “have a particular lady in mind?”
“I don’t suppose,” Charlie cut in, “you saw him go?”
Yellow Gloves shook his head. “Nope. I just passed him on my way in.”
“He didn’t come in though,” stated Brown Coat.
Mei rounded on her. “How do you know?”
Brown Coat flinched at the sudden attention. “You know how it is after work: you walk in, you grab a bowl of stew, you go to bed. But sometimes I likes to wait till the end; that’s how you get the best bits.”
Yellow Gloves giggled. “You just hate waiting in line.”
“Yes, but I ain’t wrong.” Brown Coat huffed. “The tubers and bones always sink to the bottom. That’s where the real eating is.”
As Yellow Gloves made a face, Charlie asked, “That’s why you know he never came in?”
“Not through the door anyway.” Brown Coat leaned in. “He’s one of them roofrunners, I just know it.”
“He is not,” said Yellow Gloves. “None of them can afford fancy red suits.”
Mei knew Huan was actually something worse than a roofrunner, but they didn’t need to know that.
Brown Coat shrugged. “All I know is I seen him come downstairs when he never went upstairs. He also spends time lurking around Brads at night. Never doing anything worthwhile, just getting in everyone’s way.”
“Getting in the way of darkies and heathens is almost worth the trouble,” muttered Yellow Gloves.
Mei gave Charlie a look. Brads probably meant Bradsbridge, which meant the river.
She bowed. “Thank you.”
Both laborers stared.
“I keep forgetting you’re foreign,” said Brown Coat.
Without comment, Mei turned on her heel and went back down the ladder.
Charlie caught up to her just as she reached the stairs. “It could just be coincidence. You have to go by Bradsbridge to get to Sanford.”
“It was night. He wasn’t going to Sanford.” They reached the first floor and passed by Mrs. Schofeld cleaning up after dinner. “He hated work.”
“Right, but everyone ends up going by the bridge.”
But no one hung out there. “We’re going.”
They exited the tenement and stepped into the street against the tide of returning day laborers on their way to beds, which slowed them down enough for Charlie to save enough breath to ask a question.
“How will you make your brother tell us about his accomplices?”
Mei leapt over a muddy puddle. “His what?”
“The people helping him.” Charlie stepped over the same puddle. “The cenobite and the mage.”
From some reason, everyone insisted on calling Sen Jerome’s soldier-monks “cenobites,” a word that put Mei in mind of some sort of crab. “I’ll just ask.”
“Mei,” Charlie waved off a child selling cards, “you know he’s a liar. Cups, you know he lied to you for weeks!”
“He’ll tell me if I ask him.” Mei hid her discomfort by developing a sudden interest in a passing cart. “I won’t stop until I hear the truth.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
Mei didn’t answer, only kept her eyes on the cart as she bit the inside of her cheek.
Charlie sighed. “We may have to take drastic measures.”
Mei glanced at him. “Like what?”
“Torture.”
“Won’t work.” Mei crossed the street.
Charlie kept pace with her. “I know the idea of hurting him is-”
“It won’t work.” Mei turned south towards the bridge. “He will lie and waste our time because what comes next is scarier than what you’re doing to him.”
“There are worse things than death.”
“Only the living can escape.”
Torture wouldn’t work, but maybe Mei could offer something else in exchange for the truth, something that both the beast and her brother desperately wanted.
Charlie stopped. “We’re here.”
Spanning the Brad River and more than wide enough for a dozen carts to cross wheel to wheel, Bradsbridge was currently only occupied by a few people, mainly Vanurians from the Plague District heading home before dark.
“What are we looking for?” Charlie asked.
“Tell me about this.” Mei stepped around the bridge’s parapet and dropped down onto the muddy riverbank. “When was it built?”
“Uh, okay…” Wary of getting dirty, Charlie stayed up on the street and watched her inspect where the bridge’s supports had been sunk into the riverbank. “It was built right after the Golden Age.”
That made sense. Where most stone bridges Mei had seen were made of many stones placed together, Bradsbridge had only been clad with them. Underneath them were a few large, or maybe just one huge, shaped blocks of stone, a similar design to the Southern Line, which had the look of having been carved from a few mountains.
Stepping through long yellowing grasses that grew on the riverbank, Mei went under the bridge.
“Cups, you’re going right under there,” said Charlie.
“How was it built?” Mei called back. Underneath the bridge was a lot of old metal scaffolding.
Behind her, Charlie dropped down into the mud. “Oh, cups, that’s going to be a pain to launder. It was built with magic.”
“Why magic?” Mei patted the bridge’s solid stone core. “Bridges can be made by hand.”
“Not quickly.” Charlie’s foot squelched. “Urgh. A freak storm had washed out the old bridge, and with the harvest coming in, the queen at the time didn’t want any delay so she let the Magisterium have its way.”
“Okay.” The light was fading fast, so Mei was forced to run her hands along the underside of the bridge. She felt something near the center of the bridge.
“Do you have a lantern?” she asked.
Charlie shook his head. “I don’t go where the light doesn’t shine.”
“Hmm.” Mei rummaged in her pockets but only found a pencil and a piece of paper. It wasn’t enough.
“Why do you need a light?”
“Here.” Mei took Charlie’s hand and placed it on the wall.
“Oh, that must be the mage’s license mark.”
“Like the stamps the windsong have?”
“The very same. This bridge is why the license system exists. If that’s all you want, we have all we need. Please hand me your paper and pencil.”
“Okay.”
Once Mei handed them over, Charlie took the piece of paper, laid it on top of the indentation and started to run the tip of the pencil over it over and over again.
Mei’s eyes widened. “Wow.”
“When I was a young lad, I used to find all these shells and bones in the rocks around my village, but no one would believe me unless I brought back proof. There.” Charlie handed over the paper and the pencil. “Now can we please get out of here? I prefer not to smell like your brother’s socks.”
Mei smiled and put the paper away. “They never smell good.”
They made their way back up to the street, Charlie grumbling the whole way, and once back on solid ground, Mei turned to thank the scrytive for his help but then a flash of blue disappeared behind a building.
“Huan?” She sprinted forward.
“Mei? Mei!”
Mei slipped through the Exchange’s arriving, and much reduced, night shift, reaching the corner in an instant, but when she got there, there was nothing. She searched the crowd, but there was no blue among the browns and grays the Wesen wore or the golds and reds the Sourans wore.
Charlie caught up to her, red-faced from the sudden effort. “Why’d you run off?”
“I thought I saw him.”
The scrytive’s mouth fell open. “Mei, we shouldn’t let what we want cloud our vision. Besides,” he gave her a lop-sided grin, “you know it won’t be that easy.”
She did, but it annoyed her that he hadn’t even tried. She turned north. “We’re done here.”
“Ah, well, safe travels. Make sure you tell your employer what we found and stay safe.”
Mei sighed. She was being rude. While Charlie didn’t believe her now, he had followed her here and helped.
She turned to him. “Thank you.”
Charlie grinned. “As gross as it was, I’m glad we’re making progress.”
They exchanged farewells and Mei resumed heading north. In truth, it would be strange for her brother to allow himself to be seen by her, but it was hard not to feel like he was always somewhere close or not to hope he was waiting for her to figure out how to free him even though he’d declared he didn’t want her help.
As she stepped out of Boscage and into the Parvenue Quarter, Mei pulled out the piece of paper and opened it under the just lit street lamps. On it was the stamp of the mage who’d made Bradsbridge: an eagle perched atop a boulder with its wings spread wide.
“Huh.”
Admaeus Speaks 