She raised an eyebrow. “Not an hour ago, I had a man’s head literally explode all over me, Captain. I believe I will be fine.”
Reddi said nothing further, leading the way up the steps. She noticed Wayne pocketing a small, decorative cigar box they passed—Citizen Magistrates brand—replacing it with a bruised apple. She’d have to see that he swapped the cigar box back at some point.
The ballroom upstairs was littered with bodies. Marasi and Waxillium stopped in the doorway, looking in at the chaos. The dead men and women wore fine clothes, sleek ball gowns or tight black suits. Hats lay tumbled from heads, the fine tan carpet stained red in wide patches around the fallen. It was as if someone had tossed a basket of eggs into the air and let them fall, their insides seeping out all over the floor.
Claude Aradel, constable-general of the Fourth Octant, picked through the scene. In many ways, he didn’t look like a constable should. His rectangular face had a few days’ worth of red stubble on it; he shaved when the mood struck him. His leathery skin, furrowed with wrinkles, attested to days spent in the field, not behind a desk. He was probably pushing sixty at this point, though he wouldn’t divulge his true age, and even the octant records had a question mark next to his birth date. What was certain was that Aradel didn’t have a drop of noble blood in him.
He’d left the constabulary about ten years ago, giving no official reason for his departure. Rumor was he’d hit the silent ceiling on promotions a man could get without being noble. A lot could change in ten years though, and when Brettin had retired—soon after the execution of Miles Hundredlives almost a year ago—the hunt for a new constable-general had landed on Aradel. He’d come out of retirement to accept the position.
“Ladrian,” he said, looking up from a corpse. “Good. You’re here.” He crossed the room and gave a glance to Marasi, who saluted. He didn’t dismiss her.
“Aw,” Wayne said, peeking in, “the fun is already over.”
Waxillium stepped into the room, taking Aradel’s proffered hand. “That’s Chip Erikell, isn’t it?” Waxillium asked, nodding to the nearest corpse. “Thought to run smuggling in the Third Octant?”
“Yes,” Aradel said.
“And Isabaline Frellia,” Marasi said. “Rusts! We have a file on her as tall as Wayne, but the prosecutors have never been able to charge her.”
“Seven of these bodies belong to people of equivalent notoriety,” Aradel said, pointing to several corpses among the fallen. “Most from crime syndicates, though a few were members of noble houses with … dubious reputations. The rest were high-ranking representatives from other important factions. We have near thirty notable stiffs, along with a handful of guards each.”
“That’s half of the city’s criminal elite,” Waxillium said softly, crouching down beside a body. “At least.”
“All people we’ve never been able to touch,” Aradel said. “Not for lack of trying, mind you.”
“So why is everyone so grim?” Wayne asked. “We should be throwing a bloomin’ party, shouldn’t we? Someone went and did our work for us! We can take the month off.”
Marasi shook her head. “A violent change in power in the underworld can be dangerous, Wayne. This was a hit of huge ambition, someone eliminating rivals wholesale.”
Aradel glanced at her, then nodded in agreement. She felt a surge of satisfaction. The constable-general was the one who had hired her, picking her application out of a dozen others. Every other person in the pile had had years of constable experience. Instead, he’d chosen a recently graduated law student. He saw something promising in her, obviously, and she intended to prove him right.
“I can’t fathom someone doing this,” Waxillium said. “Toppling so many of the city’s underworld powers at once won’t favor the perpetrators; that’s a myth from penny novels. Murders on this scale will just draw attention and unify opposition from every other surviving gang and faction as soon as word gets out.”
“Unless it was done by an outsider,” Marasi said. “An uncertain element from the start, someone who stands to gain if the entire system crumbles.”
Aradel grunted, and Waxillium nodded in agreement.
“But how,” Waxillium whispered. “How did someone achieve this? Surely their security must have rivaled any in the city.” He began moving about, pacing off distances, looking at certain bodies, then at others, whispering to himself as he periodically knelt down.
“Reddi said that the governor’s brother was involved, sir?” Marasi asked Aradel.
“Lord Winsting Innate.”