The Madness of Kings by Gene Doucette

Author:Gene Doucette [Doucette, Gene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eugene Doucette

It had been a remarkably odd four weeks for Makk Stidgeon, starting with the arrest of Calcut Linus. Cuffing Linus and sending him downtown for booking was—all by itself—a pretty remarkable degree of weird, because one just didn’t do that kind of thing every day.

When Captain Llotho brought Calcut downtown he was greeted by a phalanx of attorneys for Linus and Pillick Quibb for the county, all of whom agreed that Linus was a fine, upstanding citizen who of course could be released immediately with every expectation that when it came time for him to appear in court, he would. The bail—a judge had been among the parade of attorneys—was set at whatever Calcut had in his pocket at the time, and off he went. Thus, any high Makk might have gotten from the experience of charging someone that significant with murder lasted only until the end of the day.

But then there was the key he found.

Composed of a material Makk couldn’t positively identify, the key was long, thin, flat, and vaguely blueish. It was the thing the House considered more important than a man’s life. It was what Orno Linus spirited from deep in the House vaults. It was one-of-a-kind, the most significant thing imaginable, the thing that absolutely, positively nobody outside of the House’s innermost sanctum should even know existed, else the world might end. It was valuable beyond measure.

It was profoundly disappointing. It didn’t glow, or gift the holder with the power of flight. It didn’t unlock anything Makk had direct access to—it didn’t look like it was designed to open a regular door—or channel the gods, or any of that. It was hard, warmer than metal, smoother than wood, and less fragile than glass. And it didn’t do anything.

There were other details surrounding the key that elevated its importance far higher than the actual object appeared to earn. Viselle Daska evidently coordinated with Orno Linus to get it out of the House vaults only nobody knew why, and Makk had run out of people to ask. Orno wasn’t answering questions, and no one had been able to locate Viselle since she flew her aero-car out of Zonic National Forest. Like her father, she had access to enough credits to go anywhere in the world.

Maybe she’s on Lys too, he thought.

He had nobody else to ask, because the people who might know the answer were the same people Makk didn’t want knowing that he had the key.

In all the craziness surrounding Orno’s death, one thing that was clear was that the House assumed the key followed a chain of custody from Orno to Viselle and from Viselle to somewhere else. They ruled Makk out as a possible owner of the artifact long ago. And if they knew he had the other thing Orno took from the vault—a pre-Collapse text that was also priceless—they didn’t care.

It all meant Makk was standing at the edge of a huge mystery he hadn’t the first clue how to resolve. The fact

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