River of Lies
“Who would like this book: If worldbuilding is something you particularly like, then this story makes me think of Andrea K Höst’s Pyramids of London and Kate Elliot’s Spiritwalker trilogy.” –Rachel Neumeier, author of The Floating Islands
Something is wrong in the city of La Bene.
It’s January, and the midsummer market is in full swing, with a music competition on one side and an exhibit of new magical machines on the other. The atmosphere sours when rumors of the return of the malarial mosquito fairies inflame angry crowds and suspicion of foreigners.
Detectives Rocío Díaz Rossi and Hala Haddad Sosa are on the spot when a conflict between an angry crowd and a boat full of despised river folk boils up. Rocio is known for her people skills and Hala has a talent for putting unlikely clues together. But nothing is what it seems in this case. Is their city at risk? Or are the stakes much more personal?
Chapter 1
Rocío folded her arms and surveyed the Plaza de la ciudad, or at least what she could see of it. The week-long midsummer market currently blanketed the enormous acreage of the plaza, and they stood three stalls deep into the housewares section. “I need to get a present for my parents’ contract renewal party,” she told Hala, her friend, fellow detective at the Miraflores Community Justice Center and her partner. As they had off this Saturday at the end of January, only the first label was important today.
“Here?” Hala asked, raising an eyebrow at their surroundings. An ice cream slick, three wailing children and two overwhelmed parents had diverted them from the more direct route to the magic exhibit and the tacata contest. On their left, stacks of metal colanders, serving bowls and salt shakers winked in the sun, while a mustachioed man on the right shook out cotton hand towels printed with bright yellow flowers for a prospective customer. The air smelled of popcorn, barbecuing meat and the dusky-sharp scent of roasting poblanos.
Hala touched one careful finger to a metal nutmeg grinder stamped with flowers. “While you could easily find something for my parents here, your mother would kill you if you bought her anything so plebeian and then I’d have to resign so I didn’t have to arrest her.”
Rocío was briefly distracted by wondering if Hala would resign if she faced that moral dilemma. She didn’t think so. It was more likely that Hala would happily arrest Rocío’s mother, not just for that hypothetical filicide but for a litany of very real offenses against Rocío over the years. “I was thinking about a comal.” She pointed with her elbow at a very nice display of griddles, cooking pans and pots.
“Do they even know what a comal is for? Surely the cook makes the tortillas, not your parents. Have they ever even been in their kitchen?” Hala patted sweat from her forehead with a folded handkerchief and pushed her fingers through her short dark hair, making it stand up even more. The press of bodies made the hot day even hotter. She edged between two women with bulging red and white canvas bags. Against Hala’s forest green vest and unbleached linen shorts, the bags made a very festive picture.
Rocío stubbornly refused to follow and stepped closer to the comal. The vendor advanced on her.
“They’ve renewed their marriage contract almost every five years for decades. I’ve run out of gift ideas. I’m getting desperate.”
“Remind me if I’m wrong—”
Rocío rolled her eyes. Hala was never wrong when she admitted she might be.
“—but isn’t this a special renewal year?”
“Fifty years, if you don’t count those five years when my mother married that politician and failed to produce any offspring. Or thirty-eight if you only count the years without simultaneous marriage contracts to anyone else. And twenty if you count the contracts that stipulated monogamy. Imagine, twenty years of monogamy.” Rocío frowned at a salt and pepper shaker set in the shape of two round bodies hugging each other.
“Señorx, let me—” the vendor began persuasively.
“Not that. She’s not buying.” Hala hooked her arm through Rocío’s and steered her through a gap in the crowd. “At least look in the textiles section. I heard they have some cross-woven Jeen silk.”
Rocío left the housewares without any regret. She had been kidding. Mostly. Her exasperation with her parents was all too real, however. “Is that what you’re getting your parents?”
Both their parents had married on 12 February, though Hala’s parents in 399 after the founding of the city of La Beneficia de nuestros vecinos y los seres celestiales (La Bene for short) and Rocío’s in 444 and 439 and a few other years as each short-term marriage contract came up for renewal. Rocío had lost track on purpose, one of her small acts of defiance that made her feel like she was maintaining some distance from her parents. The marriage anniversary was one of those coincidences that had helped both Rocío and Hala reach out in friendship when they were first partnered together at the CJC seven years ago.
Hala stopped short. Rocío followed her line of sight to a short frazzled woman in front of a chemist’s stall. She wore the loose bronze sarong secured with a sash through the legs and thick gold earrings of the river folk. Her mousy brown hair was braided close to her scalp. All of that made her stand out.
The chemist leaned across the counter and stabbed an aggressive finger at the woman and then at the medicines displayed in glass bottles and little cardboard boxes. The river woman lifted pleading hands. The chemist, a typical Benerex woman with dark brown eyes and dark hair looped up and secured with twinkling metal pins, shook her head and pinned something in place on the counter with her hand.
The river woman backed up. Her hand flashed out, snagging something else. She spun on her heel and dashed away.
The chemist, outraged, shouted, “Thief!”
Rocío didn’t need Hala’s logic skills to see where the thief would have to run; her own spatial skills were pretty good after seven years on the stage and another seven in the CJC. There was a gap where a vendor had failed to show up, and beyond that there was only one more ring of stalls and then the comparatively empty plaza itself, where the thief could lose herself among people enjoying the day and not be hemmed in by stalls.
Rocío surged forward, blocking the gap just as the thief careened into it. She bounced off Rocío. Hala boxed in the thief from behind.
The young woman glared at Rocío and put her hands on her hips. Weird behavior for a thief. She was shaking though.
“You have no right,” the woman said, her voice throttled with anger and a slight accent. “Get out of my way.”
“You’ve been accused of theft,” Rocío said, recovering from this unexpected opening sally. “We’re detectives from the Miraflores CJC, so we do have the right.”
“Yeah? Go ahead, ask what I’ve stolen.”
A crowd had gathered around them and now they murmured with a nasty undercurrent. Just a few months ago, a foreigner had used imported magic to infect people in the city with malaria, and since then foreigners had been the target of a few assaults. The malarial mosquito fairies had scarred the psyche of the city, and that didn’t just go away. This could turn ugly quickly.
Rocío looked past Hala, expecting to see the chemist hovering nearby to demand the return of her property, but she was still behind her counter, half turned away with her arms folded, and not looking in their direction. Weird behavior for a business owner. The weirdnesses were just piling up. Rocío lifted her chin in a signal to Hala, who considered the shaking woman and then turned to the chemist.
“I’m not leaving my stall! What if there are others like her, just waiting to steal more?”
“She has a point—”
“Of course she does, she’s Benerex like you,” the river woman broke in hotly.
“—about her wares,” Rocío finished calmly, not matching the rising emotions. “Will you come back so we can get to the bottom of this?”
The river woman raked the crowd with a scathing glance. “Do I have a choice?” She stalked stiffly back to the stall. The crowd barely let her through.
“Come on,” Rocío said, “give us some room.”
A few people stepped back, pressing into the bystanders behind them. Rocío could tell they weren’t going to leave, so she didn’t undermine her perceived authority by trying to make them, but she began to worry about riots and mayhem and melees. It had been almost three weeks since the last riot and the city was finally calming down. Before that, periodic waves of hysteria had swept the city, fed by the less reputable newspapers and people’s reasonable fears. And also a few times when someone spooked because a pigeon that looked like a MMF flew by.
“What are you accusing this woman of stealing?” Rocío asked the chemist.
“Why, that quinine she has in her hand! Enough malaria medication to dose a school.” The chemist jutted her head forward belligerently.
It had to be quinine.
Another ugly grumble rippled through the crowd. Rocío put her hand up, gesturing for quiet. “It is still malaria season.”
“It’s a lie! I didn’t steal it.” The river woman’s voice shook with tension, her back stiff with outrage and fear. “It’s enough for one person. And I paid for it, a whole Ka sol, because she wouldn’t tell me the price, wouldn’t sell it to me even though I could see it sitting right there and my family needs it. A Ka sol should buy enough quinine to dose a school.” She took a deep breath and spoke more calmly. “She can’t have too many coins from the Ka Empire.”
“And that’s probably fake! You know what these boat traders are! She’s hoarding or means to murder us all in our sleep.”
Unfortunately, Rocío could follow this brand of illogical logic. People had hoarded malaria medication and chemists had raised their prices sky high until the governor intervened.
“On the contrary, Señorx,” Hala said, “Hoarding has not been a problem for almost two months. There is enough malaria medication for everyone, especially as the normal malaria season is half over. You do remember that it’s a crime to deny anyone lifesaving medicines, don’t you? And that you could lose your license?”
“She’s not people!”
The river woman fell back a step, her face going as grey as her vest. Rocío scanned the crowd, looking for fellow advocates, trustworthy familiar faces or anyone who could help if the worst happened. A man in a Ya loincloth and cape wisely disappeared down one of the aisles. The majority of people stayed, looking angry, though a few seemed merely curious.
“That’s enough,” Hala said sharply.
“You can’t expect me to—” the chemist appealed to the crowd.
In a quieter voice, Hala said, “If you incite a riot, I won’t have to arrest you because we’ll all be dead.”
The chemist looked around uncertainly.
One man muttered, “I’m not dying on her word,” and elbowed his way out of the crowd. A few more people left. Too many stayed.
A man who had been buying a tincture from the chemist put down the glass vial with a click and stepped away. “It’s true, the woman did try to pay, but she,” he pointed at the chemist, “wouldn’t take her money.” A few more people, maybe the speaker’s friends or family, shifted away from the chemist, physical distancing reflecting their emotional distancing.
The river woman’s expression seemed to struggle with itself: incredulity that anyone was standing up for her, resentment that they had to, and relief.
An anonymous voice shouted agreement. Rocío sighed to herself at this evidence of human nature. So it was okay to act like someone wasn’t a person, but it wasn’t okay to say so out loud. I guess it’s progress, when people internalize that as unacceptable behavior. I’ll take it. She could feel the mood of the crowd turning and her pulse slowed. They were less likely to riot now.
“Señorx,” Hala said to the chemist, “I was going to give the two of you a summons to the adjudicator to rule on the accusation of theft, but now—”
“A summons?” the chemist cried wrathfully. “She won’t be here. She’s a vagrant, they’re all vagrants.”
This time no one called out in support. A few more people left, looking shamefaced.
“But now I’m going to fine you for disturbing the peace,” Hala finished. She raised her voice and addressed the spectators. “Who will do their civic duty and appear as witnesses? More, who will uphold La Bene’s reputation? I can’t catch you all before you disappear into the market, but do we want our city to be known as inhospitable and prejudiced?” Hala could do a bit of acting of her own when she wanted to.
Several people stepped forward. Hala took a summons pad out of one of her many pockets and started writing. Of course she had a summons pad on her day off. The chemist tried to retreat behind her counter and Hala blocked her. “I will look for the Ka Sol first.”
The thin paper of a summons crackled as Hala passed it to Rocío, who passed it to the river woman. “This is for tomorrow. When you go to that address, they’ll tell you what day to return for the adjudication. Will you be in La Bene long enough to testify? It would help. You might get your money back.”
The woman clutched the medicine to her chest. “How long?”
“A few days at least.”
The woman’s gaze flickered nervously between Rocío and the people around them. “Probably. I, uh, I have to go.”
“How do we get in contact with you?”
“I’m Pilar of The Resolute. That’s my boat. We’re docked at the upriver piers.”
“Rocío,” Hala called. She held up a gold coin. “She had only one.”
The chemist glared, the muscles in her forearms twitching as she repeatedly clenched her hands.
“That’s in your favor,” Rocío told Pilar. “If you need anything, I’m Detective Díaz and that’s Detective Haddad. We’re in the Miraflores Community Justice Center on the Plaza de los mártires. It’s all on the summons.”
Pilar looked like she was going to say something but the chemist started arguing with Hala. Pilar flinched back and scuttled away.
“I’ll protest to the adjudicator,” the chemist said. “I know my rights.”
“You do that,” Hala said placidly. “You’re still getting a summons.” She ripped off the summons and, when the chemist didn’t accept it, placed it on the counter and weighted it down with the discarded glass vial. As soon as Hala’s back was turned the chemist made an obscene gesture.
“She had the coin in her pocket.” Hala said as she joined Rocío. She wiped her hands on her shorts. “Three more people came forward as witnesses.”
“Good old appearances,” Rocío said. “They’ll testify at the hearing to show each other they’re not like that, it’s just other people who are ignorant and prejudiced.”
“If it works in our favor, I won’t protest too much. Did you get her name?”
“And her boat’s name, which is as good as a surname, just before she disappeared. I told her she’d probably get her money back.”
“We might see her again on that account.”
They stopped at a water station for Hala to wash her hands. Though she never actually complained about putting her hands in other people’s pockets, Rocío knew Hala didn’t like doing body searches. Rocío checked her pocket watch. The metal chain and the watch case were warm, indistinguishable from the heat of the day or her own body heat. “We still have time before the tacata competition.”
“Good.” Hala shook water from her hands, ignoring the limp towel provided for that purpose. She led them purposefully, though they still stopped to look at a cascade purple orchids, dark red cosmos and cheery yellow poppies, all so cleverly done in paper that from a distance they looked real and for Rocío to quiz a bookseller about whether he had the scripts for the biggest performances of the upcoming theater season and when he would get them. But they reached the exposition section for magic machines with plenty of time.
A few years ago an automobile had been the talk of the market and soon after the CJC had somehow acquired one. It was hard to drive and had a tendency to explode (so far no one had been hurt) but was useful on occasion when horses, bicycles or carriages weren’t fast enough and need outweighed caution. As a result, Rocío and Hala liked to keep an eye on the more extravagant inventions. Which wasn’t to say they were all bad; electric lights powered by the magic of La Bene had first been shown at the summer market when Rocío was about eighteen, and now they were a reliable and ubiquitous feature of life. More recently someone had invented a recorder small enough to be useful for advocates and they were still stumbling through the implications for their work.
Rocío was an indifferent magic user; Hala was better, but the CJC had professional magickers who had gone to University for forensics and other practical things. In La Bene magic manifested as electrical energy, an extension of the body’s electric field beyond its bounds and under conscious control. In school, everyone learned to warm their tea and to not accidentally give others electrical shocks.
A trolley that didn’t look that different from those already in use in La Bene had pride of space on the very edge of the market, possibly because it was the biggest contraption in sight. It didn’t have the usual hookups for horses so probably it had an internal engine like the automobile. Rocío shuddered. That was a tragedy waiting to happen if it worked as well as the auto.
In front of one of the other exhibits, a bunch of people with sashes over their wrap dresses were shaking aprons and chanting. One of the men stepped to the side, giving Rocío a clear view of the signs planted in front of them.
“Launderers demand official employment re-education” and “We remember the lightkeepers.” A quarter of a century ago, lightkeepers were employed to light the oil street lamps of the city and deliver wood, coal and oil for home use. Then lights powered by magic were invented and the vast majority of lightkeepers were very quickly unemployed. A few had the magic skills to transition into the new job and taught others, but without the University certificate for their magic level it was hard for them to compete with the wave of new, younger workers, who had gone to University.
“Do you see any advocates?” Rocío asked, still thinking about mobs and riots.
“No.”
They lingered on the edges, assessing the mood of the crowd. Just as Rocío concluded her initial worry was lingering adrenaline, Hala said, “Not every crowd becomes a mob.”
“They seem more business-like than anything,” Rocío said.
The group shifted again like a school of fish, and Rocío saw the object of their protest. As was the current fashion, the metal machine resembled an animal, in this case a sheep with a barrel for a body and a suggestion of a face in the mechanism on one end, and a lever on the other for a tail. The sign said “Automatic clothes washer.”
Another group with their aprons still on huddled around a man and a woman with exhibitor tags. They had the air of conducting intense negotiations.
“If we go into partnership,” one of the launderers was saying, “you can install your machines in the laundries we already own and our customers will become your customers. You will have an assured demand.” She gestured at herself and the other launderers. “Between us we have decades of experience.”
“Centuries.”
“But—” the female exhibitor protested, possibly with air castle images of her future status as a wealthy monopolist disappearing before her eyes.
The eloquent launderer scratched his chin. “Have you considered the different water temperatures and rotation speeds needed to wash different fabrics? We can help you with research and development. After all, we are the experts.”
“That is a design challenge we haven’t been able to solve,” the male exhibitor said to his colleague.
“I want a closer look,” Hala said, stepping closer.
Rocío usually wasn’t as intrigued by machines as Hala, but she could see the potential of an appliance that could do laundry. Hala probably appreciated it even more as her large family generated mountains of dirty clothes every week. Rocío hung back, staying clear of the crowd. The adrenaline still pumping through her veins made her twitchy.
Hala, the exhibitor and the launderers talked animatedly for a few minutes. Grinning, Hala returned. “Intriguing! I got his card. This is finally starting to feel like a day off.”
Rocío grinned back at her. “You’ve had your turn. Now it’s mine.” She took Hala’s arm and pointed them west. “It’s time to dance.”