A Bad Penny by Jim Webster

Author:Jim Webster
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, mystery, adventure, romance, Land of the Three Seas, Benor, Port Naain, murder, conspiracy, poetry, liberal arts
ISBN: 9781785385995
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2016
Published: 2016-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

After a fruitless day walking the streets of Port Naain, Benor called in to see how work was progressing on Asan Joyen’s property.

He found Joyen himself supervising, watching workmen empty wheel-barrows full of broken tile into a cart.

“So how are you managing?” Benor asked him.

Joyen stepped back away from the workmen. “Not well. Radsel Oeltang has discovered that the roof has collapsed and has sent an inspector round. He was the one I hoped to bribe, but couldn’t.”

“That’s unfortunate. Did you get the only honest bureaucrat in Naain?”

Joyen spat on the floor. “Pah; honest? He knows that not only is his boss watching him, but also that he’ll get a better cut out of the sale of this site than I could ever offer as a bribe.”

Benor looked through the door. The workmen were sweeping the floor inside the building; timbers were stacked to one side, decent tiles to the other. “So what happens next?”

Joyen shook his head despondently. “He will submit his report. It will state that my management was at fault and that I’m not fit to manage the building. They will then have one of Oeltang’s cronies take on the demolition and the bill will be so large that the site will be sold to pay for it. If I’m lucky the sale is honest and I do actually get some money.”

“Can you not fight it?”

“You mean give my money to lawyers rather than to Oeltang? And if I lose, pay both?”

Benor glanced up; the walls looked precarious, so much of the decent brick had been robbed already. Demolition was the only option.

Then Joyen walked across to an alcove left when the wall had been robbed. “We found this, and I remembered your story.”

He reached up and pulled out a crossbow bolt that he handed to Benor; “A souvenir of your evening perhaps? We found it embedded in the roof beam. It had smashed a tile and stuck in the timber.”

Benor took it and looked at it. “Thanks. It’s the only clue I’ve had so far to the person who fired it.” He turned it in his hands, two spans long, the metal head bent slightly. “It’s something else to look at.”

“If you find them, give me their name, I might be able to get a few alars off them for damaging my roof.”

* * *

Benor showed the crossbow bolt to Tallis and Shena as they ate supper that night. Shena held it in her hand as if weighing it. “Doesn’t tell me a lot, metal head, wooden shaft, feathers to act as flights...”

“You need somebody who knows about these things,” Tallis commented, happy to observe the object from afar. “Who do you know with a martial background?”

“What about Lord Cartin?” Shena asked. “You’ve done work for him.”

“He’s got an Urlan sergeant, Taldor Vectkin,” Benor remembered. “It might be worth talking to him.

Next morning Benor took the trolley-way out to Dilbrook and then walked to the Cartin house. He knocked at the servants’ entrance. The door was thrown open and an elderly woman with a mop cap glared at him.

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