Cold Hard Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 2) Read online

  “Howdy,” he croaked as he hobbled over. “Can I help you folks with something?”

  “Nice weapons,” I said. “Is this stuff legal to own?”

  “Sure is,” the geezer said. “Everything you see here is one hundred percent genuine replica arms and armor, not military grade. None of the blades are sharp, and they’re made of regular steel rather than the hardened stuff. They won’t hold an edge no matter how hard you try, so don’t bother. And the impact weapons are hollow. They’ll still leave a mark if you hit someone hard enough, but so will a two-by-four.”

  “Some of the tips look pretty sharp, though,” I said. “I’d bet you could still stab someone with a number of these things.”

  “Yeah, so? You could also stab someone with a screwdriver or a fork, but those haven’t been made illegal—yet.” The old guy’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you asking, anyway? Are you four up to no good? I don’t sell to ruffians, you know.”

  “You’ve made us out all wrong, old man. We’re on the other side of the law.” I flashed my badge.

  “Oh,” said the old guy. “Well, I don’t know why you bothered bringing the goon squad.” He nodded toward Quinto, who was perusing one of the shelves. The big guy looked hurt at the accusation. “Everything here is properly permitted and registered. Even my business license is up-to-date. I’ll have to dig it out of the back if you want to see it. Might take me awhile. Not entirely sure where I stored it. Memory’s not what it used to be.”

  Shay sidled up next to me. “That won’t be necessary. We’re actually here for a different reason, Mr.…?”

  “Feltznoggle. Scooter Feltznoggle.”

  “Seriously?” I said.

  The old guy gave me a sideways glare, but it might’ve been because of his cataracts. “Blame my parents, not me. So what do you want?”

  I rooted around in my coat and produced the two murder weapons: the first, with its silver filigrees and arabesque designs, and the second, with its darkened blade and hefty hilt. I placed them on the glass display case in front of Feltznoggle.

  “What are these?” the old codger asked. “I didn’t sell ‘em. You can’t pin these on me.”

  “Relax,” I said. “Nobody’s accusing you of anything. We’re just here for information.”

  “These weapons were involved in a couple of murders over the past two days,” said Steele. “They don’t have any foundry marks, so we know they must be at least a half-century old. They’re also rather ornate and…unique, for lack of a better word. The police department doesn’t employ an expert on ancient weaponry, so we thought we might see if you knew anything about them.”

  “Ahh, well you came to the right place,” said Feltznoggle. “Back in the good old days, before the city’s edict banning blades, I used to sell the real deal.”

  “Back when you were a spry fifty?” I said.

  Scooter gave me the cataract glare again. “Are you a comedian or a cop? Because you appear to be terrible at both.”

  I frowned, but I should’ve known better than to try and out-snark a geriatric. They’re notoriously cranky. Griggs had taught me that, but several weeks of light, witty banter with my new partner had dulled me to the limited social skills of the elderly.

  Shay pinched me in the arm beneath the edge of the glass, adding in a menacing glance. I think she wanted me to lay off the cheek.

  “Could you take a look at them for us?” she asked.

  “I suppose,” said the old guy. “Let me find my glasses. They’ve got to be around here somewhere.”

  “They’re hanging on a cord around your neck,” I said.

  The codger grumbled as he put them on. Shay gave me another glare. I shrugged. What was I supposed to do, coddle the geezer in regards to his failing senses?

  Feltznoggle picked up the first dagger and peered at it through his spectacles. “Hmm. A stiletto. Hardened steel, expertly engraved. Based on the patina, I’d say it’s about two hundred years old. Maybe more. Heft’s a bit off, but it’s made for stabbing, not slicing. Definitely a collector’s piece. These channels running down the sides are interesting.” He pointed at them. “Bigger blades are often channeled. They need a path for the blood to flow across, otherwise it’ll spill onto your grip hand and make everything slippery—”

  “Lovely,” I said.

  “—but these channels are different. There’s two of ‘em on each side, and they run all the way to the hilt. Wouldn’t help with blood flow. Not that you’d need ‘em on a stabbing weapon, anyway.”

  Grandpa Scooter picked up the other stiletto. “This one’s steel, too, though it’s had some serious bluing done to achieve that nice dark gray finish. Not as old. Maybe a hundred years, tops. Heft’s off, too, especially considering that thick handle. Might be hollow. Not sure why you’d want that in a stabbing weapon. Normally weight’s a good thing in those.”

  Shay gave me one of those ‘well isn’t that interesting’ sorts of glances as Feltznoggle put the weapons back down and slipped off his glasses.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Well, what?”

  “Can you tell us anything useful about these? Who made them, where they came from, or who might’ve owned them?”

  “I suppose,” said the old codger. “Is that what you want to know?”

  I was starting to wonder how the geezer supported himself off his replica enterprise. With a disposition as sunny as his, it was no wonder the dust in the shop hadn’t been disturbed in months.

  I rubbed at my brow in an exasperated manner. “Yes, please.”

  “Well,” he said. “Any number of masters could’ve forged these. Gruzbald, Lord Gentry the Third, Tallhelm the Forbearer. Maybe a half-dozen others. They were probably owned by lords or nobles, given their intricate design. Likely display pieces. But as far as who owned ‘em? Your guess is as good as mine. Heck, better than mine, probably. You should have experience tracking down the owners of lost goods, seeing as you’re cops and all, but then again, I’ve already surmised you’re not particularly good at what you do.”

  The old geezer rested his head on a fist and screwed up his lips as if he were getting ready to spit—where, I had no idea. I was liking him less and less by the minute.

  “Seriously?” I asked. “Is that all you’ve got?”

  He glared at me. “Pretty much. Now are you going to buy something, or not?”

  “You’ve got to know something else,” I said, tucking the knives back into my jacket. “What about weapon enchantments? Swords of flame, daggers of frost, that sort of thing? Know anyone who dabbled in those?”

  Feltznoggle turned to Steele. “You need to get this guy away from the hard liquor and the tabletop dice games, you know that?”

  “It’s not like that,” said Shay as she shook her head. “I know where he’s coming from, it’s just…well, never mind. It’s not important. Thanks for your time, Mr. Feltznoggle. You’ve been very helpful.”

  Less honest words had never been spoken, but the codger accepted them with a nod and a grunt. He shuffled off toward the back of the store as we shifted toward the front, picking up Rodgers and Quinto along the way.

  “Get anything?” asked Rodgers.

  “From that old windbag?” I shook my head. “I’ve had more insightful conversations with barstools.”

  Quinto raised a brow. “You talk to those?”

  I shrugged. “If I’m drunk enough.”

  “Come on, Daggers,” said Steele as she stepped out through the door. “You don’t really think our conversation with Feltznoggle was useless, do you? If so, you’re losing your edge.”

  I put all my mental faculties to use in analyzing the data we’d gathered from the shop owner and confronted Shay with the conclusive results. “Huh?”

  She shook her head. “Let’s head over to that frost mage’s place. I need to run something by her, but I’m fairly sure I’ve figured out at least one of our mysteries.”

  22

  We rickshawed our way across th
e Earl and south toward the outskirts of New Welwic where the meatpacking plant resided. A faint whiff of turpentine socked me in the nose before I realized our proximity to the book bindery, so I promised our driver a few extra coins to take a mild detour through less odorous portions of the city.

  The smell set off a few firecrackers in my head, though. I passed the rest of the ride trying to engage Shay in a conversation over the merits of paperbacks versus hardbacks, but the complete and utter silence she threw back at me made it less of a conversation and more of a monologue. She kept looking back towards the rickshaw Rodgers and Quinto occupied. I think she felt bad for Rodgers for having to share a seat with the big lug, but it was the driver who really deserved her sympathy.

  After a lengthy trip that was sure to draw the ire of the Captain when it came time to balance the books, we finally arrived at the plant, at which point I realized just how much Quinto had undersold the place. It was less of a factory and more of an independent commonwealth populated by animals who were soon to be converted into entrees. Huge warehouses sprawled across multiple city blocks, each housing different facets of the meat industry—a slaughterhouse, a cannery, a cold storage facility, and a bustling transportation hub, to name a few. Behind them stretched hundreds, if not thousands, of pens housing everything from pigs and chickens to bison and guffalopes.

  Suddenly I understood why the facility was located near the outskirts of the city, and it had nothing to do with the smell, which, surprisingly, wasn’t that bad. Whatever scent of death emanated from the slaughterhouse was masked by the earthy, dung-like aroma that erupted from the pens behind the factories. But moving all the animals from the countryside to the stockyards must’ve been a logistical nightmare, and having the facility in the city proper would’ve certainly drawn the ire of the city planners. If horse-drawn carriages had been outlawed in favor of human-powered rickshaws due to excrement concerns, I couldn’t imagine hordes of dung-spewing cattle stampeding through the streets would’ve gone over well with the city’s fat cats.

  I instructed our rickshaw driver to drop us off outside the cold storage warehouse. For a few extra coppers, I even convinced him to stick around for us on the return trip, which was further evidence that the stench of spilt animal intestines couldn’t hold a candle to that of fermenting wood pulp.

  While Quinto haggled with his driver—probably over an illegal weight surcharge the driver was trying to tack onto the tab—Shay and I approached the front entrance to the building. Rodgers extricated himself from Quinto’s shadow and shot us a ‘go ahead, we’ll catch up’ hand gesture.

  A chilly blast washed over us as we entered the warehouse. Rows upon rows of gutted hog carcasses hung upside down from ropes tied around their hind legs, their heads a bare eight inches above the polished concrete floor. Expecting a pungent aroma, I was pleasantly surprised when my nose didn’t detect much of anything at all. Even the farm-fresh odors of the pens had been isolated outside the warehouse. The floors were swept clean as well. I’d feared exposure to a meat-packing facility could’ve ruined me on pork products for as long as the memory remained fresh in my mind—probably on the order of an entire afternoon—but the place seemed to be run with an almost military efficiency. I wondered what it forebode about our encounter with the frost mage.

  Steele shivered and a swarm of goosebumps cropped up along her arms. She might’ve gotten more on her legs, but I couldn’t tell from my current vantage point, and I doubt she would’ve appreciated it if I bent down for a closer look. Most women tended to have a thing about personal space and their reproductive regions.

  Instead, I gave her a look. “I told you shorts were a bad idea.”

  “Don’t sass me,” she said as she crossed her arms tightly.

  I tried to ignore her—really I did—but seeing her standing there, neck tucked in, arms racked by the occasional shiver, evoked a damsel in distress response that pulled at my heartstrings. It’s a fault most of us males suffer from. I assume it’s an evolutionary trait related to reproductive success, since it certainly has nothing to do with self-preservation.

  I sighed. “Do you want my coat?”

  Shay squinted at me as if to make sure I hadn’t been abducted and replaced with an automaton, but her look of shock slowly faded into a demure smile.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing,” said Shay. “You surprise me sometimes.”

  I curled my lip. “So do you want my coat or not?”

  She shook her head. “No. Keep it. My dad always said, ‘if you’re going to be dumb, you’d better be tough.’ So I’m going to tough this out for as long as we’re in here.”

  “Hah. I like that,” I said. “Makes me think I should stop cursing the gods for my middling intellect and thank them for making me tough as nails.”

  “Don’t sell yourself so short, Daggers.” Shay’s smile widened a little more as I tried to understand what she meant.

  Our touching moment was ruined by the crack of the door and Rodgers and Quinto stomping in. At roughly the same time, a parka-clad floor manager realized we weren’t supposed to be there and wandered over.

  “Can I help you guys?” he asked.

  “We’re looking for Tremulous Portent of Rime,” I said. “Know where we can find her?”

  He glanced at Shay, then took a look at the rest of us. “Are you with the health department?”

  “Nope. Police.” I flashed my badge. I felt like I’d been doing a lot of that lately. Hopefully I wouldn’t get carpal tunnel as a result. “We have some questions, and we think Tremulous Portent might be able to answer them for us.”

  “Oh.” Parka guy scratched his head. “Alright. Last I saw her, she was in back organizing a shipment of beef tongues. Follow me.”

  We did just that. For my partner’s sake, I hoped the trek to see the frost mage wouldn’t be as long as the cavernous interior of the storage facility indicated it could be, but to her word, Steele refrained from complaint the entire way, regardless of how chilly her elbows and knees might’ve been.

  We found the icy enchantress barking orders at a dozen or so laborers hauling crates packed with ice and straw and stiff, oblong lumps of cow flesh I assumed were the tongues. She wore a chic, flowing robe of midnight blue that appeared to be equal parts form and function, as its thick folds and raised hood hinted at a nice, toasty interior.

  The heavy cloth suggested an answer to a question that had been rolling around my skull for some time: did frost mages get cold? It seemed a cruel power to have if they didn’t also possess the ability to withstand it, like being able to summon crème-filled pies out of thin air but being prone to obesity.

  “Excuse me, Mistress Rime?” said our parka-clad tour guide.

  The frost mage kept her focus on her work. “Yes?”

  “There are some policemen here—”

  “Detectives,” I said.

  “Um, right,” said our guide. “Detectives, then, here to see you. They want to ask you some questions.”

  Tremulous Portent turned her head toward us, allowing me a good look at her face. It was more or less what I expected—hard, cold, and featuring fierce eyes the color of waves breaking upon a windswept shore. As she studied us with her frigid gaze, I feared perhaps the cows weren’t the only ones who’d lost their tongues.

  “Take them to my office,” she said after a pause. “I’ll see them as soon as I’m able.”

  23

  I sat in one of Rime’s office chairs, idly spinning one of the stilettos from the murder scenes between my fingers. We’d been waiting well over fifteen minutes and still hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the enchantress.

  Steele sat next to me, tapping her feet on the ground impatiently. Rime’s office was about the same temperature as the rest of the storage facility, but luckily for Steele, Quinto was less willing to accept her ‘better be tough if you’re dumb’ philosophy than I was. After ten minutes of asking and pestering and warning her about the dangers of pneumonia,
Shay relented and accepted the big guy’s coat. It draped over her like a circus tent, but it appeared to have done its job. She’d stopped shivering, at least.

  A creaky door opened and the midnight blue-clad sorceress admitted herself. She whisked over to her desk and sat down in a flutter of cloth, her hood pulled down to reveal a golden blond braid bobbing to and fro. Her face had warmed substantially since we’d first met, but the added warmth couldn’t hide the small crow’s feet that creased the corners of her eyes or the wrinkles that radiated out from the edges of her mouth when she smiled.

  “I’m so sorry about that, officers,” she said. “Those beef tongues just arrived, and there was some confusion as to whether they were headed out on a ship to the southern coast or if we were keeping them in storage for a gala event downtown later this week. You’d think this stuff would be straightforward to figure out, but problems never fail to crop up. But that’s neither here nor there. And you—you poor dear!” She finally took note of Steele in the oversized coat. “You must be freezing. I should’ve sent an understudy up here as soon as I as saw you in those shorts. Here, let me warm it up for you a bit.”

  Tremulous Portent of Rime gestured subtly in the air with her fingers, as if she were conducting an invisible orchestra, and the air temperature increased a good ten to fifteen degrees.

  “Nice trick,” I said.

  “Well, it’s more than a trick, I daresay,” said the enchantress. “But it’s useful, that’s for sure, both in practical terms and to my bottom line. You should see me at parties. I can do really cool things with fog.”

  “You do parties?” I asked.

  Tremulous Portent shook her head. “I don’t do parties. I party. There’s a difference, Officer…?”

  One of my brows rose of its own accord, and I had to wrestle it back down to avoid looking foolish. “Oh, uh, Detective Daggers. These are Detectives Steele, Rodgers, and Quinto.” Introductions flew all around. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Mistress Rime—”