TIME Later the same night, into the following days LOCATION The Ship Inn, then Branson’s apartment, Chuza
BACKGROUND:
Six repeating-crossbow bolts should have killed Zhakarov outright.
Instead he stood up, straightened his coat, and asked the Agents to run down the shooter who’d fled upstairs while he dealt with Mikey personally.
Skinny didn’t survive the attempt on the gang boss’s life; Mikey did, unconscious and considerably worse for wear.
WHAT HAPPENED
They hauled Mikey out of the Ship Inn between them. Raven wasn’t alone in her suspicion that some illusion had been at work on Zhakarov – she was certain the bolts had hit square in his chest, which made him standing up afterward considerably harder to explain honestly. The likelier answer, turning it over afterward: the man in the booth hadn’t been Zhakarov at all. Nikolai’s murmured instruction as they left – to see his own brother’s body given its due honour – suggested exactly who’d been sitting there as bait, dressed and marked to pass for the boss. The bodyguard who’d dragged him clear of the table, and who changed under some disguising charm the moment they were out of sight before calmly walking the Agents out afterward: that had been the real Zhakarov the whole time. Disguising magic carries a mandatory prison term in Chuza – for whatever that was worth to a man who’d just watched a body double take six bolts meant for him. Zhakarov himself declined Hawke’s offer of a chat down at the Section House. They booked the still-unconscious Mikey into a holding cell instead, and Bowlohr handed over something more useful – a partially completed change of address form with Branson’s new apartment on it. Reports filed, a stop at the infirmary for Hawke, and they went to find him.
The new place was in the slums. The door was unlocked. Crowe lit the room with a sunrod and found Branson face down on the bed in a pool of his own blood, a kemercannon bolt buried in the back of his skull. Rolling him over turned up bite marks and lacerations across his face and neck – small enough that Hawke briefly checked them against Raven’s own teeth before ruling it out.
Footsteps on the stairs cut the examination short – three North Side Crew members, shouting for Branson to open up. Hawke invited them in instead. Raven did the rest, intimidating the three into emptying their pockets and their makeshift clubs onto the table without a fight, then scooping up the cash herself while they beat a shaken retreat under a running commentary of her own choosing.
The apartment gave up a little more once the North Side boys were gone: a small pouch of Twitch, which Raven pocketed rather than logged; a KemerLexi cannon magazine tucked under the pillow; and, right at the edge of the bed, a small bare footprint stamped in blood. Neither the door nor the windows had been forced. Hawke took Branson’s key, and they left the scene for the desk sergeant to have properly investigated in the morning.
Brin’s reaction to the news of the hit on Zhakarov, once it reached him, wasn’t quite relief. “Well,” he said, not quite meeting anyone’s eye, “I suppose it did solve the issue of you having to watch your backs.” He didn’t explain further, and nobody pushed him to.
The reports took a while to get through. Brin was audibly unhappy at the idea of a child carrying a kemercannon anywhere in the city, but agreed to actually read the report before deciding anything. The Agents clocked off for three days’ leave – Hawke went looking for a new set of studded leather, Raven sold off her rather offensive Hextor armour through the Section House – and came back rested and healed.
Brin had questions waiting for them: was it definitely a squid emblem on the dog-beast’s cloak? Agitated, he suggested bringing Asquith in to consult, and got as far as starting to explain why before Sam burst in – furious. The dog-beast’s body, and Brad’s, had been taken from the morgue. By the DranathEss.
Brin swore he’d had no knowledge of any release order, and a message arrived at almost the same moment that made the timing worse. He read it, and his expression didn’t recover. A hostage situation, out on the water.
Brin called an emergency meeting at the wharf – Samm with her telescope, Rhabbatt, Volok. The Agents were walked to an observation post on the second floor of a warehouse overlooking the water, where Volok arrived with Dawson in tow and Samm set the telescope up. Brin was blunt about the priority: whatever happened, the Vessentaag couldn’t be allowed to become martyrs out of this. Volok was visibly rattled – his daughter was believed to be among the passengers, booked to leave for Tol Kerria.
Options got tossed around fast: recon by familiar, if the Dranathess had anything suitably avian for a dockside job; teleportation, dismissed as too dangerous; underwater approach, which Rhabbatt thought possible; a closer look from Volok’s own fishing boat; and a passenger manifest, which Volok had already arranged and expected within the hour.
EXTRAS.
OPEN THREADS
- Who put a kemercannon bolt in Branson, and why leave a child’s bloody footprint at the scene?
- How does Zhakarov walk away from six crossbow bolts to the chest?
- The squid emblem on the dog-beast’s cloak – Brin recognises it, and doesn’t like what it means.
- Volok’s daughter is believed to be aboard the hostage vessel.
TWITCH
Found again, this time in Branson’s own apartment – the same cheap, aggression-cut stimulant Branson himself was suspected of using back on Session 12’s riot detail. Whatever happened to him, it doesn’t look like he’d shaken the habit.