(And now, the exciting conclusion of 'Rookie'...)
One does not simply walk into a Gorgon’s lair, but that is exactly what the three Greenheads did. As Lowtown continued to degenerate into violence there were no additional officers or auxiliaries to spare, so Petracchio, Aemilia, and Stefano were obliged to make the journey into the Southlander ghetto on their own. As acting Captain Aemilia lead the way-- the rookie followed hard on her heels with broadsword in hand, and Stefano brought up the rear, covering his companion’s advance with his bow.
No sooner did they reach the outer perimeter of Queen Cariebasa’s empire of tenements than the first sentries made their presence known. The laconic sniper wasted no time with these lackeys, dispatching them one after another with nary a word, barely pausing to reload before loosing the next silent but deadly quarrel.
The canals were eerily devoid of boat traffic for the pre-dawn hours, as vendors and other Lowtowners with no stake in this fight knew better than to risk straying into the line of battle. The clean briny scent of the rising tide was muddled with smoke this morning, and although the Greenheads could not yet see the flames they knew that the slums were already ablaze.
Was it Cariebasa’s faction that had started the fire, or Esposito’s? At this point it hardly even mattered anymore. All of Lowtown teetered on the precipice, and as if sensing the rookie and his comrades moved carefully through the gloom, fearing lest an errant footfall send the whole lot of them tumbling into the abyss.
Cariebasa was once not merely a Queen, but the first among her kind, a queen of queens and a living goddess to her subjects. Long before she had arrived here in the City, her devotees had been preparing her temple, as if they’d always known that their sovereign would come to live among them in exile. The tenement that stood at the heart of the Southlander ghetto was uncharacteristically splendid, the towering mud-brick walls festooned with brightly colored friezes that artists had risked life and limb to paint. Each corner of the insula had been painted so that it appeared as if the whole building were being supported by the coils of four giant serpents, and each floor of the tenement depicted successive visions of a primordial earth.
At the edifice’s foundation were the Nameless Ones, whose formless, shapeless masses seemed to ooze from the flickering torchlight provided by myriad sconces along the building’s perimeter. Above these squiggling horrors were strange creatures composed of whorls and flailing tentacles, bearing many-chambered shells or segmented armored plates like vast engines of war. Next were the great saurian beasts of the Palmlands, who once roamed all over the Three Continents when Gorgonkind was young and Man little more than the glimmer of a thought in some Creator god’s imagination. As Petracchio, Aemilia, and Stefano approached they could just barely make out the maw of a giant predator in the torchlight, its teeth looming as large as any man. What was it about to seize in its jaws?
Until now the Queen’s domain had been protected by a mixture of hired muscle and other thuggish types that choked Varo’s canals like so much flotsam, but here at the threshold of her temple Cariebasa was guarded by the faithful—a sea of bald pated, purple-clad acolytes wielding an array of halberds that seemed to have been designed by the same artist who had painted the murals above their heads, long serrated blades that curved with an alien logic, as if the weapons were never meant to be wielded by human hands. The zealots stood at the ready, and as the trio approached Aemilia cursed under her breath.
“Hold your fire, Stefano. We’re not getting through that without a siege engine.”
“Wait a minute,” Petracchio said, pointing at the ranks of Gorgon-worshippers. Impossibly, the crowd seemed to part as soon as they saw the Greenheads, with the result that even as the three came to a halt an empty path had appeared to the entrance of the temple.
Stefano shook his head, as if he did not believe his eyes. “Is it a trap?”
“Why bother?” Aemilia responded. “If they wanted us dead at this point, all they’d need to do is overrun us. Looks like the Queen wants to talk.”
The Captain did not even need to consult her comrades before proceeding. They had not come this far simply to turn back, not with the stakes as high as they were. As the trio were swallowed amid the purple-clad zealots they lowered their weapons, not so much as a sign of deference as an admission of futility. From this moment on they were in the hands of the Queen, and they knew it.
The entrance to the tenement temple was choked with offerings for the Gorgon— a dizzying array of fresh fruit and flowers, colorful embroideries, bushels of corn, red beetles, salt, and cacao, gold and silver ornaments, precious stones of every possible variety and cut, cages containing live birds, lizards, and other creatures deemed sacred among Southlanders that squeaked and chattered and roared as they past, as well as the hides and lacquered bones of unknown beasts.
Was that a human ribcage poking out from one of the piles of tribute? Petracchio tried not to think of what lengths Cariebasa’s faithful would go to so as to curry her favor. As the rookie looked at the faces of the zealots he realized that Southlanders only made up a portion of the faithful, and that men and women of all nations were represented among the Queens honor guard, their bald heads making them almost indistinguishable from one another. If he were not currently terrified beyond his capacity to reason he might have made something of this, but it was all that he could do to keep placing one foot in front of another, fighting that innermost voice within the reptilian portion of his brain that kept shouting at him to run away as fast as he could before it was too late.
Half a dozen of the acolytes broke off from the rest of the guard and conducted them—with three leading the way and the other three bringing up the rear-- into the dark entryway of the tenement and up a flight of mud brick steps so well-trodden that the center of the stairs was a grooved channel. Every square inch of the building’s interior had been covered with mosaic tiles which resolved themselves into various zig-zagging shapes and patterns which made the corridor seem to undulate under the weak torchlight, as if the temple itself were a gargantuan scaly beast.
After ascending three full turns of the stairwell Petracchio could smell something that made his heart pound within his chest even more violently than it had been before. The scent was barely palpable but thoroughly alien, something vaguely feminine but unmistakably other, and although the rookie had never in his brief mortal tenure encountered a such a monster a thousand generations of inborn memory told him the name of his terror.
Gorgon.
The purple-clad acolytes had lead the trio onto a landing which opened into a vast chamber. Once the interior of this tenement had been a honeycomb of mud daub, bamboo, and rice paper, demarcating what tiny living space there was available to each family that dwelled within, but now it was the antechamber of the Queen’s temple, where she chose to receive her visitors. Torches flickering in their sconces revealed the base of broad brick columns that there the building’s structural supports, each of them tiled in a similar manner as the walls of the stairwell, their writhing illusory scales disappearing into the inky void above their heads. Here the scent was stronger, and as the rookie glanced at Aemilia and Stefano he noticed that they were also aware of it, as the both gripped their weapons with knuckles so white that they almost gleamed like bone.
“This is most disappointing,” a voice greeted them from the deeper darkness within- a woman’s voice, accompanied by the faint but unmistakable hissing of serpents. “Pray tell, does your Captain now feel that an audience with my august presence is somehow beneath him?”
“Your majesty.” Although the words themselves were formal, Aemilia responded in a manner that suggested no such obseisance. “Captain Venatore is indisposed.”
“Indisposed?” The Queen took so long to pronounce the word that Petracchio thought that perhaps her tongue was also an asp.
“He was shot… by one of your mercenaries, if I’m not mistaken.”
The rookie’s eyes darted over to Aemilia, who smiled faintly. She of course had no such proof of Cariebasa’s involvement in the shooting, but as the voice in the dark sputtered and muttered something incomprehensible the erstwhile Captain knew that her bluff had been successful.
“This is most unfortunate,” the Queen said, attempting to regain her composure.
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“Careful, ‘Captain’,” Cariebasa’s tongue found its venom once more. “You may have the law on your side, but insolence will only end in sorrow for you and your companions.”
If Aemilia had been moved by this barely-veiled threat, she made no indication of it, nor did Stefano, whereas Petracchio was convinced that he could see the pounding of his own heart in the darkness where the Queen held her audience.
“Nevertheless, the fact remains that an officer of the Varonian shield has been gravely wounded by members of your faction,” Aemilia said. “The Greenheads do not take too kindly to those who would dare murder their officers.”
“Giro,” the medusa’s voice was barely a whisper. “Is he—“
“—his life still hangs in the balance. Only Lord Noh can tell for certain whether he will recover or not. In either case, we have more than the law on our side to haul you out of this temple in irons.”
“So why have you not done so already?” Cariebasa’s tone was equal parts curiosity and calculation.
“Because we are willing to overlook this…” Aemilia paused as she struggled to find the right word. “…accident, if you agree to stand down in this conflict with Damin Esposito.”
“Never!” the Gorgon fumed. “Not until I have utterly destroyed that damned fool. The old man knew better than to meddle in my affairs. Now I will make him pay.”
Aemilia pressed on. “He accuses you of murdering his lieutenant—the Oguntak named Esanga.”
“Of course he does! Do you take me for a fool?”
“So tell me, Your Majesty- did you or did you not kill the Oguntak?”
“What does it matter, Captain?” The Queen’s voice was not much exasperated as resigned. “It was always my fate to play the monster-- I grow weary of pretending otherwise. If it all must come to an end, let it end now. At least I will have the satisfaction of taking Titus Esposito with me.”
“And all of Lowtown with it?” Aemilia asked. “If you do not stop this madness, they will send the Black Legion. Surely you must know this.”
“I do not fear death, Captain. Nor do my followers.”
Aemilia sighed and lowered her head, uncertain as to how to proceed. Petracchio looked at his comrade-- even in the still dark of Cariebasa’s inner sanctum it was as if she could see Lowtown burning all around her and hear the piteous cries of myriad Canalsiders as the drug-addled shock troops of the Black Legion swept from tenement to tenement, killing guilty and innocent alike.
It had been almost twenty years since the Legion was last deployed in the parish of Norollo, but to this day it remained devoid of life, a haunted necropolis at the City’s heart. Unless this stalemate with the Queen was somehow broken, the same disaster would befall the Lowtown slums, scouring away any trace of this foolish conflict and its warring parties. It would be a terrible day of reckoning, Petracchio thought, and suddenly everything made sense.
“Stop!” he shouted, although no one was speaking at the time. Aemilia and Stefano actually jumped a step back, and there was equally-surprised rustling from the impenetrable darkness at the antechamber’s heart. “Don’t you see? This is exactly what they want!”
“Hold your tongue, rookie,” Aemilia hissed. “You’re not helping anything.”
The Queen’s tone was now imperious. “Let the boy speak.”
Petracchio looked at his companions—Stefano nodded as if to encourage him, while Aemilia simply glared. “Who benefits if the Black Legion is deployed?”
“No one benefits,” Aemilia said with an acid tongue. “That’s why we’re here.”
“Wrong,” the rookie responded. “No one in Lowtown benefits.”
Aemilia’s face fell as the meaning of Petracchio’s statement became apparent. She shook her head and whispered. “No. I refuse to believe it.”
“Believe what?” Cariebasa asked from the darkness.
Petracchio at last connected all of the dots. “That someone finds you and Damin Esposito so inconvenient to their plans that they are willing to sacrifice an entire parish to get you out of the way.”
The Gorgon hissed. “Senator Brindisi.”
“Senator Brindisi,” the rookie confirmed. “Who is probably even as we speak calling his fellow Senators out of bed to respond to the crisis here in Lowtown- a crisis that he caused by hiring Francesco Sabatini to kill the Oguntak and frame you for it. Brindisi is more familiar with Lowtown than any other Senator—he would have known that such a provocation would have pushed Old Man Esposito over the edge and started a gang war.
“What he didn’t count on however was Captain Venatore’s special relationship with you, Your Majesty. No sooner had Esanga’s body appeared in the Secundo than the good Captain was having it disappeared by his auxiliaries—gang war averted, right? Only it wasn’t, because before the corpse could be gotten rid of completely the SPQVs showed up on the scene, almost as if they knew exactly where they should be.”
“Sabatini must have tipped them off,” Aemilia said with a bitter expression.
Petracchio nodded gravely. “See, that’s what I thought at first myself. But then Sabatini slipped up and told me where Esanga’s body was supposed to have shown up—right on the Queen’s doorstep, and not drifting with the tides along the Secundo. Not only would Inspector Pomilio and his agents be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but they wouldn’t have had any jurisdiction to investigate just another murder in Lowtown.”
“So what are you saying?” It was Stefano who spoke now, as Aemilia had fallen strangely silent.
“What did Pomilio offer you to be his spy, Aemilia?” The rookie squared to face the erstwhile Captain. “Did he promise you Venatore’s command, once you helped destroy him? Or was it a cushy Inspector’s job with the SPQV’s? Or was it just for the money?”
Stefano was the first to answer the accusations. “Now wait a second, rookie! Aemilia is a straight arrow just like me- aren’t you? Aemilia, tell Petrarch that he’s out of his mind here.”
But Aemilia said nothing. By torchlight her comrades could see that there were now tears streaming down her face. An awkward silence fell over the antechamber, although Petracchio swore that he could almost hear the Queen chuckling from the preternatural darkness.
“Aemilia?” Stefano’s voice seemed distant and hollow. “Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me you haven’t been working for them.”
The erstwhile Captain shook her head slowly. “I had to, Stefano. He’s rotten and you know it. You’ve only been here a few days, rookie—tell me that I’m wrong.”
Petracchio did not answer, but Stefano responded with uncharacteristic emotion. “So when were you going to tell me?”
“Oh, Stefano.” The tears fell more freely now. “I’m so sorry.” Aemilia reached out to her lover, but the laconic Greenhead took a step back in defiance.
“Amusing as this tale of love and betrayal may be,” Queen Cariebasa spoke. “I would like to know how you intend to prevent the good Senator from destroying us all.”
The rookie smiled. “I was hoping that someone would ask that.”
---
The plan was devilishly simple. Captain Arturo Serafinelli may have presided over a decidedly quiet parish, but Caecilia was perfectly situated in the shadow of Hightown, such that when the acting Captain of another precinct issued a warrant for the arrest of Senator Brindisi’s son on suspicion of trafficking El Mirad ol’ Cap’n Seraf was immediately able to snatch the playboy at the base of the Punti di Mille Piedi at the conclusion of his all-night revels and deliver him down to Lowtown by a swift launch. No sooner did the boy arrive than the Senator was already suing for peace and offering to cooperate with the SPQVs in exchange for not having his son shipped off to Egg Rock.
With peace having been secured, Cariebasa brought her soldiers back from the brink and made the rare concession of visiting Nocciola in person to beg for peace. So the trio of Greenheads stood and watched from the colonnade of Old Man Esposito’s confraternity lodge while the damin and the veiled Gorgon Queen exchanged pleasantries that passed for threats, or threats that passed for pleasantries— even after almost a week on the Lowtown beat, it was hard for Petracchio to tell which was which.
In the early morning shadows, Aemilia gave Petracchio a wan smile. “You did it, rookie.”
“’Never burn your bridges,’” Petracchio said. “That’s what the Captain told me on the first day.”
Aemilia looked down at the flagstones of the colonnade. “So. Are you going to tell him what I did?”
“Tell him what?” the rookie asked. He gave Stefano a sidelong glance; the laconic sharpshooter nodded.
Aemilia fought back another round of tears. “Thank you.”
“We Greenheads take care of our own.”
The trio digested this for a moment while they watched the negotiations continue within the courtyard. There was a tinkle of laughter from the Queen—was the old damin actually flirting with her now? And was she actually flirting back?
“So Petrarch,” Srefano said. “When this is over Aemilia and I were thinking about going to check up on Venatore. Care to join us?”
The rookie sighed. “Thanks for the invite, but I have one more report to file.”
---
This time Petracchio did not wait. The steps of the SPQV’s Terminalia headquarters were even more crowded this morning than on his previous two visits, but instead of queuing up with the others the rookie simply strode up to the entrance of the building, ignoring the hostile stares and grumbled sounds of protest of those who had camped out all night in order to secure their audience. A functionary in grey attempted to head him off as his crossed the threshold, but Petracchio waved him away with enough menace that the clerk recoiled from him as if he’d been struck. No one else dared accost him as he navigated through the dark, silent corridors; when he at last found Inspector Pomilio’s corner office, it was almost as if the SPQV agent had been expecting his interruption all along.
“Ser Petracchio!” the Inspector greeted the rookie with a broad smile. “Congratulations on solving your first Lowtown murder. You’re the talk of the City right now, son.”
Petracchio allowed himself to smile at this, but only for a moment. “I have come to make my final report, sir.”
Pomilio frowned. “The case is closed, rookie. There’s no need for you to be here. Sorry if the Greenheads didn’t make that clear on your end.”
“This was Rosario’s doing, wasn’t it?”
“Como?” The Inspector tried to control his surprise, but Petracchio could see the flicker behind his eyes even as he looked down at his sheaf of paperwork.
“You heard me. Rosario hired Sabatini to kill the Oguntak. If you follow the money trail I’ll bet it goes straight to Senator Brindisi, but it was Rosario who gave the order. Everyone in the chain was expendable— even you.”
Pomilio glowered over his files. “If you’re implying that I had something to do with Esanga’s murder, you are way out of line, son.”
“You didn’t have to,” the rookie explained, his palms turned outward. “In fact, it makes more sense if you weren’t involved. As soon as the boy turned up in the Secundo, however, you would be. And that’s exactly what Rosario was counting on.”
The Inspector’s jaw fell open as the realization dawned on him. “Venatore.”
“Someone leaves a mess on Giro Venatore’s doorstep so big that even he can’t make it go away. But of course he’ll try, and in doing so give you all the ammunition you need to destroy him. The perfect set-up. It would have worked perfectly, too, if I hadn’t opened my mouth at the crime scene and got stuck reporting to you instead of Aemilia.
“With the Captain out of the game, there’s absolutely nothing to keep Cariebasa and Old Man Esposito from tearing Lowtown asunder, prompting Senator Brindisi to do the only sensible thing remaining: deploy the Black Legion.”
“I’m such a fool,” Pomilio said, his head buried in his hands. “All this time I thought I was following his footsteps, when he was actually dogging mine.”
Petracchio lowered his voice to a whisper. “Who is this person? How can he have so much power?”
“I don’t know. But I fear that you have made yourself a powerful enemy by upsetting his plans.”
The rookie grimaced. “Not bad for my first week on the job, eh?”
---
Petracchio arrived at the nunnery shortly before dark. Although the violence that threatened to consume Lowtown had now abated, the air was still heavy with the stale rank of smoldering wood. Amazingly, one of the tenements had been wholly consumed by fire, however, and both the Queen and Damin Esposito had lent their footsoldiers to assist the efforts of the local bucket brigades to extinguish what flames continued to defy the steady rain which had settled in shortly after noon. The rookie wondered if the Red Legion was here and if his old boss Arlix weren’t at this moment prowling the insulae for signs of smoke and loose silver; he smiled at the thought.
Stefano and Aemilia were long since gone, and it was late enough in the day that Petracchio had to browbeat the sisters to be permitted to enter the shrine. To his surprise, Giro Venatore was not only awake but sitting up when he entered his cell. The Captain’s skin still had a deathly pallor to it, but his grey eyes were as bright as he’d ever seen them.
“So, rookie. I hear you’re a big damned hero. Congratulations.”
Petracchio shrugged at this and stared at the big man’s wound, thinking of whether he’d be upright and talking right now if that repeater bolt had found its intended target. Almost certainly not, he thought. It was almost as if Captain Venatore were tougher than death itself.
“I suppose you can have your pick of assignments now. So what’ll it be? Hightown? The Old Quarter? Maybe a nice office job in the Varony?”
“With all due respect, sir, I’d like to stay on the Lowtown beat.”
“Oho!” The Captain exclaimed so loudly that he provoked a painful coughing fit. “And why would you ever want to do that?”
“Because this is where I belong, Captain.”
Venatore considered this, then smiled. “We’ll make a halfway decent Greenhead out of you yet!”
Petracchio smiled in return, then cleared his throat. “Sir...”
“Out with it, rookie.” The veteran’s slate eyes were locked on those of his junior officer’s, as if he could read the latter’s mind.
“Before I came here I paid the Queen a visit.”
The rookie produced a small black velvet pouch from within the folds of his uniform. The material was as dark as night itself and tied shut with a golden string.
“When you told me that you’d do anything to change what happened to Terzia, I didn’t think at first that you’d meant it literally,” Petracchio said. “Then I realized why you were so eager to protect Cariebasa’s interests.”
He proffered the bag to the Captain, who at first shrank from it. What a strange sight, to see this great fearless slab of a man frightened of anything. “What is it?”
“It’s your wish.” The rookie pushed the dark velvet into Venatore’s hands. “As far as the Queen is concerned, you no longer owe her anything. Capsice?”
The veteran looked at the tiny parcel in his hands. He drew the black velvet up to his face and breathed deeply, as if he were inhaling a long forgotten scent. Giro Venatore whispered something inaudible, then kissed the bag gently before handing it back to the rookie.
“Sir?”
“Not like this,” The Captain shook his head. “What would I say to her? That I made a deal with a monster in order to bring her back? She deserves better than that—I understand now. Thank you, Petrarch. But you can give my wish back to Queen Cariebasa.”
Petracchio gripped the velvet pouch tightly. “Actually Captain, I think I may have a better idea.”
---
Somewhere in Lowtown a ’21 Magliozzi plied the back canals, black lacquer cutting through black waters. Its pilot, a young woman, was not accustomed to being followed, having long since mastered all of the tricks that a gondolier can learn in order to move about the City unmolested, but there was something familiar about her pursuer that gave her pause. With one hand on the punt and another gripping the stock of her hand crossbow, she hailed the mysterious stranger, who drew closer in his own hired fast boat with both of his hands in the air.
“You’re the cop from the Arena,” Evangelina said, easing her finger off the trigger of her bow but not letting go of the weapon.
Petracchio smiled. “And you’re a difficult person to track down.”
The girl looked at the Greenhead with a searching gaze. “That’s why I’m still alive. If you’re going to try and arrest me, I hope for your sake that you’ve brought backup.”
“We tried that once and it ended poorly. No—I’m here to right a wrong.”
Evangelina took her hand off the crossbow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Do you recognize this?” The rookie held up the black velvet satchel; from her sharp intake of breath Petracchio knew that the girl knew exactly what it was.
“How did you get it?”
“It doesn’t really matter,” the young Greenhead answered. “Do you know what to do with it?”
The girl nodded, dumbfounded.
“Then it’s yours. Catch—“ he said, tossing the pouch across the dark water between them. Evangelina snatched it from the air with expert reflexes; briefly she inspected the bag’s contents, then she looked at Petracchio again with a suspicious gaze.
“Why?”
“Because some good should come from all of this,” Petracchio said.
The girl laughed in a way that was far less mocking than it could have been, but mocking nevertheless. “You must be new around here.”
Petracchio shrugged.
“Hope you don’t live to regret it.” Evangelina said, already shoving off into the night. “Arreviderce, rookie.”
The junior officer watched the ’21 Magliozzi disappear around the corner of the next juncture, then told his oarsman to take him back to the precinct house. He was already late for his shift, and the Lowtown beat waited for no one—not even a big damned hero.
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