Lowe’s first instinct was to storm into Staffen’s office, shouting the odds, kicking down doors, and demanding someone start making sense of it all. But somehow—somehow—he managed to restrain himself.

  Lant’s use of that Silence Skill had meant that if anyone had been listening in to their conversation—and Lowe was beginning to suspect they very well might—then they hadn’t been able to hear a damn thing. He didn’t have many advantages right now, but no-one knowing what he knew might be the only one going for him.

  So instead of blowing the only card he had left, he went instead back to his office, shut the door, and slumped into his chair, staring out the grimy window at the Soar beyond.

  But the thing is, what did he actually know?

  Something important had been taken from the Vault. Something which was being kept there that was so important it had dragged the Black Knight—who had been dormant for over a year—back into play.

  Lowe had checked. Almost from the moment of his Classtration, there had been no further crimes linked to the Black Knight. Not another murder. No more kidnappings. Nothing. It was like the laughter in that desolate warehouse had been the final act in a game no one else had really understood.

  But now he was back. And his nemesis had, apparently, made off with something that had the Warden of the Reserve rattled. And not just the standard level of rattled that came with having a Vault full of dead people and a lot of cash vanish, but properly, ball-shakingly rattled. Morholt had basically been sweating blood through his expensive suit. And he’d tried to bribe a member of the Soar Security Services to give Soar Bank the head’s up on the investigation. That was the sort of thing that got people executed with extreme prejudice. And yet he’d been quite open about it.

  And then there was Miss St Clair…

  Thinking of her, Lowe activated Grid View.

  His memories flashed up in crisp detail—every recent meeting, every moment of his day, every interaction clear as day. And when he pulled up his conversation with Morholt, the vision played out exactly as he remembered.

  Morholt sat behind his ridiculously expensive desk, sweating through his collar, talking about those redacted files. Everything was exactly as it should be. Except for one thing. Miss St Clair wasn’t there.

  Or rather—there was a blurred, smudged distortion where she should have been. He rewound the memory and played it again. Nothing. Her voice was there. Her presence was there. But visually? It was as if something had reached into his own memory and smeared vaseline over the lens.

  The only time he’d ever experienced something similar was when he’d had to wade through necrotic slime. The presence of it had corroded Grid View, leaving gaps in his recall that he’d had to rebuild from written notes. But that wasn’t possible now. Mental Fortress negated that sort of effect. And the Shackled Grasp he was wearing should have reinforced that protection. Shouldn’t it?

  Lowe pushed away from his desk, opened his office door.

  “Kenny!” he called out.

  The receptionist, sitting at the centre of the bullpen, continued writing something down, ignoring him.

  “Kenny!”

  The man finally looked up. “Sorry, are you calling for me, sir?”

  “Yes, you. Kenny!”

  “My name’s Osbourne, sir.”

  “Is it? Are you sure?”

  Osbourne looked mildly bewildered. “Pretty sure, sir.”

  Lowe narrowed his eyes. “So, where’s Kenny? Out for lunch?”

  “I don’t know anyone of that name, sir.”

  One of the other Inspectors looked up from his paperwork. “Do you mean Kenniel, sir? Tall guy, wore thick glasses?”

  “Yes,” Lowe said. “Kenny.”

  Osbourne and the other Inspector exchanged a glance. “They’ve not worked here for a while, sir,” the Receptionist said.

  Lowe felt a flush rise to his face. He really needed to start learning some new damn names around here. He coughed, covering his momentary lapse, and waved a hand. “Right. Osbourne. Thank you.”

  Osbourne nodded. “Sir?”

  “Can you bring me everything we have on a Miss St Clair who works over at Sovereign Bank HQ? She might, officially, be the Warden of the Reserves' PA, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s bollocks.”

  Osbourne’s eyes glazed slightly— obviously a Skill activating as he pulled up files from Cuckoo House’s records. His fingers twitched, indexing information, drawing reports from the archives. “Would that be all, sir?” Osbourne asked, tone polite, but distant. “I would also be happy to make you a coffee.”

  Lowe waved him off. “No, just the files, thank you.”

  He sat back down at his desk and ran through the case again while he waited.

  Something important had been stolen. The Black Knight had resurfaced after a year of silence. At least five military personnel—disguised as customers—had died in the Vault. Morholt was sweating bullets over something he wouldn’t name going missing. Miss St Clair had spoken to him, but left almost no trace in his own memory.

  And, most importantly, someone who had been pretending to be the Accountant, Elias Stern - who had actually committed all the murders - mentioned the Black Knight, and then killed himself.

  Lowe closed his eyes, replaying the memory of the Vault massacre in Grid View. Stern - or whoever had said they were Stern - had been traumatised. He had trembled when he’d spoken, his eyes darting like a trapped animal.

  But . . .

  But . . .

  Okay, Lowe thought. Let’s make some investigatory jumps. Say it wasn’t just a massive coincidence that the first five bodies Lant had tried to identify were military personnel. Say that, in reality, everyone in there had been. That, for reasons he didn’t quite understand, everyone who usually worked in the Vault had been . . . replaced by some heavy hitters. That ‘Elias Stern’ had been another one of these sealed record wankers.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  So, whoever Lowe had spoken to—who had named the Black Knight before blowing their own head open—hadn’t been Stern at all.

  Which meant the real Elias Stern - and all the rest of the Vault workers were still out there somewhere - had been swapped out before the robbery. Maybe. Were the military there to protect something? Did someone know the Black Knight was back in play and had tried a little bait and switch to catch him?

  “Fuck,” he said to no one in particular. “This is a shitshow.”

  There was a knock at the door and he turned around in his chair, expecting to see Osbourne with the file he had requested. But no.

  It wasn’t the Receptionist. It was his boss, Pernille Staffen.

  And stood with her was someone Lowe had hoped never to see again.

  It was the Mayor of Soar.

  ***

  The Mayor stepped into Lowe’s office like a man accustomed to owning space, his gait unhurried —not slow, not deliberate, but precisely calibrated to suggest confidence without effort. Control without force. Staffen followed behind him and closed the door, blacking out the windows with a push of mana.

  The years had been kind to him. Or, more likely, he was powerful enough to ensure that they had been. His hair was too dark to be its real colour, and was cut short and slicked down into place. Beneath it, his skin was unnervingly smooth - almost glassy - the effect of whatever expensive tinctures and alchemical concoctions were available to those at the very top of Soar’s food chain. Lowe had always been lairy of the sense of constructed perfection about him, like a painting commissioned by a man with no interest in realism, and that feeling had doubled - tripled - since the events of last year.

  The man was wearing archaic robes which were a deep burgundy trimmed with dark gold embroidery so fine it barely caught the light. Just like the subtle display of wealth Lowe had seen in Morholt’s office, this was deliberate restraint on show. This was power wrapped in the very best of taste. A man with nothing to prove because he had already won at the game of life.

  Yet, despite all that graceful elegance, there was still something in the way he held himself—something at the edges. Something just beneath the surface that Lowe had always disliked: even when the Mayor had been feteing him as ‘the future of Soar’s policing.’ A coiled sharpness, a tension that wasn’t nervous, but hunger. His smile was pleasant, easy, like a man greeting an old acquaintance, but his eyes never quite matched it.

  But that wasn’t the only thing that was strange, Lowe thought. Where were all his hangers-on? Where were the army of suits, the advisers, the assistants, the bodyguards? The men and women who usually formed the soft buffer between him and the rest of Soar? As far as Lowe knew, the Mayor never walked anywhere alone, and certainly never went anywhere unattended. And that was not out of fear - while not a powerhouse at Level 61, it would take quite some grunt to take him out - but rather because men like him were institutions in themselves.

  And institutions had hierarchies to maintain.

  And yet, here he was. In Cuckoo House. The Mayor of Soar in Lowe’s fucking office.

  No guards.

  No witnesses.

  Just him.

  And Lowe had no bloody idea why.

  “Don’t stand there like a fucking hole-and-corner merchant, Lowe. Take a seat,” Staffen said, indicating for the Mayor also to do so and sitting herself once he had.

  “If you don’t mind, boss, “ Lowe said, “I think I’ll remain standing. I’ve found it’s harder for people to fuck me over from this position.”

  “Fuck’s sake, Lowe!” Staffen began, but the Mayor waved her into silence.

  "No, no. Inspector Lowe is quite within his rights to assume nothing good is going to come of this little meeting. It is, after all, how the last time he was in my presence ended."

  In my presence, Lowe thought. Fucking twat.

  The Mayor placed his hands in his lap as if he were a patient teacher indulging a slow student and surveyed the room with the idle curiosity of a man who had never before had to sit in a space he did not own.

  “This is all a little bare, Inspector,” he said, nodding towards Lowe’s desk. “I always pictured one of our brave Inspectors’ offices to be filled with papers, scattered case notes, perhaps an ashtray overflowing with the weight of sleepless nights. But this—this is almost ascetic.”

  “Well, I’m not in the habit of leaving things lying around for just anyone to see,” Lowe replied. “Can’t imagine where such paranoia came from.”

  “Sir!” Staffen said.

  “It’s alright, boss. I don’t need you to call me that here. Just in private, you know.”

  Lowe felt the buffet of a smorgasbord of mental Skills slam into him. Fuck knows what Staffen had just thrown at him for his impertinence, but the amount of Pressure he suddenly possessed was double that he’d had when St Clair had attacked him earlier in the day. For a moment of pure insanity, he considered firing it back at her. Then he remembered some of the stories he’d heard of her, and used it instead to refresh his Mana and Stamina.

  That made him feel better than he had in days.

  He winked at her instead, which he sensed might have made things worse. The Mayor, though, gave every sign of having missed their interaction. “Paranoia?” The Mayor gave a pleasant laugh. “No, I think not. You have always seen patterns, Inspector Lowe, and were very good at recognising threats. A good quality to have in your line of work. Unfortunate, though, that such attributes also makes you very difficult to decide how to deal with.”

  “That wasn’t too much of a problem last time, was it?”

  “Ah, yes,” the Mayor said, as though discussing a minor inconvenience. “Your Classtration. That was all very unfortunate. But entirely necessary. Surely even you see that now? Your outstanding incompetence left the Council with no option. Heads needed to roll. And yours rolled so very well.”

  Staffen frowned at that, but then reset her face into the same neutral expression.

  Lowe, however, didn’t think he needed to be especially politic if the guy was going to be a complete wanker about it. “Get to the fucking point. Sir.”

  “Lowe,” Staffen growled, “for once in your life, can you try to at least pretend you’re not spoiling for a fight.”

  “No, no, no, Penny. That’s exactly why I like him,” the Mayor interjected smoothly. “Inspector Lowe is—or was—an absolute force when pointed in the right direction. It was such a shame, really, that we had to cut that short. Thus, my delight has no bounds now that it appears he’s back to his fighting weight.” The Mayor looked above Lowe’s head, “Level 26? Impressive. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a Classless living more than a month. And then you cleared that nastiness with the High Priestess and took down Grackle Nuroon a peg or two. You really are becoming quite the man to watch.”

  Lowe would have liked it if that last word hadn’t sounded quite so much like ‘murder horribly and scatter the ashes.”

  “But let us not dwell on the past, shall we?” the Mayor continued. “I would like to talk about the present and, in particular, what has been recently stolen.”

  “You mean from the Vault?” Lowe said. “Or do you mean what you took from me?”

  “Clever.” The Mayor smiled. “You are so very clever with your little word games. But no, I am not here to discuss the Council’s decision around your Class. I would like to talk about what had been recently, and bloodily, removed from the Vault.”

  “And why would that concern you, sir?”

  The Mayor chuckled. “Because, Inspector, as I am sure you are starting to become aware, the Vault contained far more than money. More than jewels. It held a number of secrets. And, in Soar, secrets are much more valuable than gold.”

  “And, what, you want me to find out who stole yours?”

  “Oh, no, no, no. I was not so foolish as to entrust anything of mine to the dubious safety of the Vault. I am, though, extremely motivated to get my hands on what has been removed. Knowledge is power, and all that. What I need is for you to retrieve it. Quietly. Before things that should not be known are shared. It may be held that sunlight is the best disinfectant but, and I promise you this, the people of Soar are more than comfortable in their current crepuscular state. None of us need that situation . . . disturbed. At least, not until I have access to that information first.”

  Well, at least this fucker was being honest.

  “And if I say ‘no’?”

  The Mayor’s smile didn’t waver. “Then, with the deepest of regret, I suppose we’ll have to see if there’s anything else of yours that I am able to take away from you.”

  Psyker Marine 3 has just launched on Kindle and KU. Would love it if you were to check that out.