Sins of Empire

Chapter 9

Michel waited outside the office of Captain Blasdell – the head of the public side of his investigation – his pocket watch ticking away the minutes, and made a mental note that he needed to call upon a handyman. The cracks in his mother’s roof needed to be patched, as well as the chair fixed. He considered the fact that he’d been given an unlimited budget to find the Iron Roses and wondered if anyone was actually going to check his budget expenditures on the case, or if he could get away with paying the fixer with Blackhat money.

“Jes called me expendable. An investigation shouldn’t need an expendable investigator,” he said to himself quietly as he watched Captain Blasdell’s door.

He answered with a cynical voice. “He did threaten to kill you if you fail.”

“He did not.”

“The man murders people for a morning workout, and those final words were awfully ominous.”

“The Blackhats don’t waste resources, and a Silver Rose like me is a resource. We’re all in this shit together.”

“Maybe you’re expendable because he expects this to be dangerous.” Michel forestalled replying to himself, considering the implications. Investigations could be dangerous. Someone willing to impersonate a Blackhat had to know the risks involved. Once they were found they would be tortured and executed, their friends and family sent to the labor camps. If they were willing to chance that, then they’d be willing to resort to violence.

“Or,” he considered out loud, “expendable means that he could bury my career if this goes wrong for some reason.” He couldn’t foresee a way of this going wrong, but Michel readily admitted that Fidelis Jes was a smarter man than he. One didn’t run the Landfall Secret Police without being able to see many possibilities for the future of every decision.

Michel took a deep breath. No need to waste his energy on worrying. He needed to focus on the task at hand, and to do so he needed to talk with Captain Blasdell.

The thought had barely entered his head when the door to Captain Blasdell’s office opened. Blasdell was a thin woman in her forties, with a thoughtful, narrow face and a pair of armless spectacles balanced on the brim of her nose. A former police captain, she’d been brought into the Blackhats to help impose some sort of organization on their investigations. She was technically a Silver Rose, but everyone treated her like a Gold. She was the type of person Michel had heard referred to as the backbone of the Blackhats: incorruptible, unambitious, and competent.

She would never be promoted, yet never lose her rank. She was, in a few words, not going anywhere.

“You’re Michel Bravis?” she asked, ushering him into her office.

“I am, ma’am. Thanks for seeing me.” Michel had met the captain on several occasions but wasn’t surprised that she didn’t remember him. There were a lot of Blackhats, after all, and he was very good at blending into crowds. He could thank his late father for a face so plain most people forgot it within minutes.

“I didn’t have much choice.” Blasdell took a seat behind her desk and gestured to a few crates stacked on the corner. “Orders came straight from the grand master’s office. I understand you are to have access to any information regarding my case.”

“That’s right, ma’am.”

Blasdell drummed her fingers on the desk, fixing him with a look that said she would not be handing over information willingly. “Why?”

“I think that’s classified, ma’am.” Michel had no idea how much Blasdell had been told, and frankly he didn’t want to have to explain everything to her.

“You think?”

“Pretty sure. All that matters is I need any information you’ve dug up in the last couple of days.”

Blasdell leaned back, putting her boots up on her desk, the put-off look remaining fixed on her face. “The case is a farce,” she said. “I’ve only got a skeleton crew working it, and in a few days we’re going to trot out a scapegoat and put the whole thing to bed. Why do you need our information?”

Blasdell had an odd relationship with the Blackhats. She was one of them, and well regarded within the Millinery, but she never seemed to actually trust the people she worked with. Rumor had it Fidelis Jes found it amusing, but also that it made her difficult to work with. Michel didn’t have time to deal with her mistrust. “Because, ma’am, the grand master is letting you do your job up until the scapegoat comes into play. Knowing your reputation, the skeleton crew has been working around the clock to come up with leads in the hope you’ll solve this before Fidelis Jes makes the whole thing go away. Am I correct?”

She took her boots off the desk, eyes narrowed. “You are.”

“Good. So what have you come up with in eighty hours?”

“The facts are,” Blasdell said, drawing herself up and adopting a professional tone, “nine days ago fifteen messengers delivered fifteen orders to fifteen different printing companies. Each of them ordered ten thousand copies of Sins of Empire and swore the printer to secrecy by presenting an Iron Rose. The printers filled the order, and about eighty hours ago the first copy of the pamphlet hit the street. So far my investigation has cleared the actual printers of any wrongdoing. We’re using descriptions of the messengers to try to round up some suspects, but so far we’ve got nothing promising.”

“How about the Iron Roses?”

Blasdell tilted her head. “We were told not to approach the case from that angle.”

Michel considered Blasdell’s reputation. “But you have, haven’t you?”

“I would never disobey a direct order.”

Michel threw up his hands. “I don’t really give a damn about orders. I need information, and anything you can tell me about those Iron Roses would make my life a hundred times easier.”

“And what do I get out of it?”

Michel rolled his eyes. That mistrust that Blasdell was known for would be twice as annoying if it wasn’t quite so warranted. People did things by the book in the Millinery or life could take a nasty turn. But what could he possibly give her in return? She was a hardworking bureaucrat who went to great lengths to avoid Landfall politics. What did she want?

“I could probably arrange a bonus.”

“Not interested.”

“How about for your men? This skeleton crew you’ve got working around the clock. What if I authorize time and a half for night work?”

“You can do that?” Blasdell seemed skeptical.

Michel considered his unlimited expense account. It was a risk, of course. Giving her some leeway with her men might give her the edge, letting her solve this case before they presented a scapegoat to the public. It wasn’t the worst possible scenario – a solved case was a solved case, and it wouldn’t ruin his career. But it wouldn’t get him his Gold Rose, either. On the other hand, a bunch of grunts doing his work for him could be very useful. “Yes.”

Blasdell considered this a moment. “All right, Agent Bravis. We have a deal. My men have discovered a few things. First of all, we know the Iron Roses weren’t forged. We checked with every jeweler and metalworker in the entire city. No one would touch that kind of work.”

“They could have been forged outside of the city.”

“That’s a possibility.”

One that Michel couldn’t do anything about. He wasn’t going to travel all over Fatrasta on a wild goose chase, so he’d have to make the assumption that no one outside the city forged the Iron Roses, either. Michel tried to think like an investigator. He was a spy but, he supposed, a good spy should make a decent investigator. They always had their eyes open, following rumors, digging up traitors. “Stolen?” he asked.

“We’re following up on that. No Iron Roses are missing within the Landfall city limits. We’ve sent messages to our sister precincts all over the country.”

Nothing he could do about that but wait. “So it’s possible they were originals?”

“Possible,” Blasdell conceded.

“What do you think?” Michel asked.

Blasdell drummed her fingers on the desk. “I think they’re most likely forgeries. They’d know we’d track them to their source, so they would have done the forgeries outside of our influence.”

“The Nine?”

“It’s what I would do, anyway. Puts a lot of distance between us and whoever did the forgeries, and we’ll likely never know who did it. That’s what I told the grand master two days ago, and in light of our investigation so far, I stand by it.”

Something clicked in Michel’s head. Fidelis Jes already suspected that the source of the Roses would never be found. That’s why Michel needed to be disposable. If nothing came up from the investigation before they buried it, Michel might be forced on the goose chase he’d just decided to avoid. He might even have to sail to the Nine.

He was disposable in that the Blackhats could easily go on without him if he had a case that would take him a great deal of time.

The very thought of it made his stomach turn, and a panic seized his chest. He couldn’t spend the next several years chasing ghosts. His career would stall, his mother would be left alone in Landfall, and he would never earn his Gold Rose. He needed to solve this thing, and fast.

“Have your men write up everything you have on the investigation so far and send it to my office. Keep them working. I’ll authorize a fat bonus.”

“Is there something you want them looking for in particular?” Blasdell asked.

Michel glanced at her sharply, but she didn’t look suspicious. She just seemed glad to have something real for her men to work on. “Double-check with the local forgers. Keep digging around, and find out if any Iron Roses have been reported missing or stolen.”

“Have it all sent to your office?”

“Yes, if you would. Thank you for your help, Captain.” Michel left the captain’s office, heading down the hall and toward the other side of the Millinery, where he had his own small, closetlike office. He rested there for a few moments, considering his meeting. He hadn’t intended on taking over Captain Blasdell’s investigation. In fact, he was fairly certain Fidelis Jes would be furious if he found out. Best to keep it quiet then, and hope that Blasdell didn’t have occasion to bring it up before Michel could find the Roses.

Blasdell thought they were foreign forgeries. Michel had no way of testing that theory, so he thought it best to come at it from the opposite direction.

“What if they’re originals?” he asked himself.

“Stolen?”

“Or misplaced?”

A thought occurred to him – one that made his jaw clench. “What if they weren’t stolen? What if they were used by their rightful owners?”

“Are you suggesting fifteen Iron Rose traitors?”

“It’s possible.”

“Not likely.”

He ran his hands through his hair, staring at the blank wall of his office. “I think,” he said, “I’m going to look at a few bank accounts.”