The Sorcerous Crimes Division: The Stone Atlas (Sorcerous Crimes Division - Shorts Book 2) by Scott Warren

Author:Scott Warren [Warren, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
Published: 2014-12-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

Deep in the heart of the city, beneath the cobbles, and the sewers, and the dwarven tunnels lay the Blackbow Headquarters. Its stone halls were accessible by no less than twelve secret entrances, through false fronts and sewer side passages. The old guard called it ‘hell’ for its six subterranean levels. Unregistered adepts and those captured by Blackbows held different reasons for the name.

Vulfort stalked those soot-stained black stone walls of the third level for ten years before he became Sergeant Detector. The interrogation chambers were the detector’s home ground. Some still bore remnants of a darker stain of the division’s past, clips in the floor where manacles had been driven and confessions taken at the end of a hot iron. Those times were over before he had donned the blacks, thankfully. He could kill, when killing was needed. He’d witnessed executions and corpses born of sorcery, and his own sword was no virgin steel. But torture turned his stomach. A man beneath the knife would admit to anything, little of it of use. A most barbaric practice.

Fauxlyle leaned outside his favored chamber looking very self-satisfied. A pair of raiders stood opposite, great brutes wearing armor, studded truncheons, and wide grins. The smiles disappeared as he approached, and both found reason to excuse themselves. The unspoken words were clear. The Sergeant Detector. Those of noble birth found few friends in the Division, and Vulfort had never sought to surround himself with such. Fauxlyle’s easy smile would take him far within the detectors, but not as far as Vulfort’s ambition.

He cast a glance at the retreating figures. Despite the armor they were whisper-quiet, cloth wrapped the joints in their kit to muffle unwanted rattles.

“Raiders, corporal? For the master artificer?”

The taller man shrugged. “All those strange alchemies and gizmos in his workshop? Not to mention that folk are about can runecraft now. Not him, a’course. He tried it, scrawled a rune at us but it didn’t take. You never know. ‘Sides, they volunteered, and he seems pretty shook up now. Should be nice and loose for you, sarge.”

A gesture from Vulfort had the corporal sliding the iron door across its rail to the reveal the wide back of Shaln, the master artificer. It was always chilly underground, but the room was rank with the man’s sweat. This was not a room where people felt at home, and several hooks embedded in the ceiling left no doubt as to what kinds of screams once echoed through this level of hell. A steel table stood before Shaln, and upon it Vulfort dropped a sketch he had made of the rune inlaid on the vault of Osvik’s hightower. The artificer tried to stare straight ahead but his eyes drifted down to the scrap of vellum.

Vulfort leaned in, “You recognize this, don’t you?” he asked.

The artificer shook his head. “No, and you have no right to detain me here. I am no sorceror, and I demand representation. The Sorcerous Crimes Division has no jurisdiction over me,” he protested.

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