Strange Cargo: An Epic Fantasy Mystery (Mennik Thorn Book 3) by Patrick Samphire

Author:Patrick Samphire [Samphire, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Five Fathoms Press
Published: 2022-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

I had read about Jaunt’s Ghosts during my brief time as a student at Agatos University. I had often retreated to the university library to avoid the other students. It had been that or vaporise the smug, arrogant bastards. To say I hadn’t belonged with the scions of the privileged classes was like saying broken glass didn’t belong in a bowl of stew. Not that any of them would have deigned to eat anything as common as stew.

It had been many years since I’d been a student. I had been expelled, but if I hadn’t, I would have quit. I’d only been back once since, and it hadn’t turned out well.

I hadn’t been particularly interested in Jaunt’s Ghosts when I’d come across them. They had been a passing curiosity in a book I flicked through. At the time, I’d been more interested in the history and secrets of the city. But if I was going to find out more, the university would be the best place to start. And at least it would take my mind off my coming showdown with the smugglers.

The university was a couple of miles north of the Grey City, following the river up through Agatos. It occupied a large campus on the eastern side of the valley, on the ill-judged bank of the Erastes river. Here, where the valley was relatively flat, the river flooded a couple of times a year, engulfing the ground floors of the closest buildings. You might have thought that a bunch of scholars would have noticed the potential for this when commissioning their buildings, particularly the second and third rounds of them, but only if you had never met any of the scholars. After a couple of hundred years sploshing around in cold water, they finally managed to overcome their stubbornness and made the radical decision to shift the colleges to higher ground, leaving only the youngest students to be regularly flooded out, on the dubious basis that they themselves had been flooded as students and it had never done them any harm.

The current library had been built further from the river and on higher ground, where it had sat unchanged and possibly undusted since. It was a grand building, somewhere between a palace and a temple, but with a very small door. The idea, I had once been told, was to symbolise the opening up of knowledge as you stepped through, but it just meant I banged my head half of the time. That probably symbolised something, too.

I set off early for the university, after only a couple of hours’ sleep, to dodge both the heat and the scholars, who weren’t known for starting early. I armed myself with my black cloak and reached the library before the last of the morning shadows had been chased from the steep-sided valley.

The tired scholar guarding the front desk of the library didn’t look pleased to see me, but I raised a cheerful hand and headed past her for the stacks.

“Hold on,” she called.

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