A City Lost by Time: PART 1 by Jeni Meadows
Staven Heskin woke to the sound of banging on his front door. It was still dark outside, the clock read quarter to four. Nobody knocked on his door. Certainly not this early in the bloody morning. He didn’t move for a few moments, but the banging came again, and then he knew who it was. His mood immediately soured.
This, Staven decided, was a new low, even for him. Knocking at his door at four in the morning indeed, on a… Staven didn’t actually know what day it was. Midweek, probably. He groaned and sat up in bed.
The banging came a third time, and Staven flung the covers away angrily and stomped downstairs, rubbing his face. He pulled the door open, interrupting another knock, and lo and behold revealed his brother-in-law Taire Westergard standing on his doorstep.
“Good morning,” Taire said. Too cheerfully. His breath fogged in the freezing air, and his nose was red. “Can I come in?”
Realising that his only other option was to stand there letting the heat out, Staven grudgingly moved to one side.
“I need your help with something,” Taire announced, skipping out small talk as was his want. “If you’re not busy, of course.”
Staven watched Taire gaze around his living room and knew just how obvious it was that he was not, in fact, busy, and hadn’t been for quite some time. He took a deep, slow breath.
“What could you possibly want with me at four in the morning?”
“Well, firstly, I promised Mother I’d pass on that she’s upset that you don’t call round anymore…”
“Taire, don’t start. Not now.”
“No, no, I’m not starting, I’m just saying. That’s not why I’m here.”
Staven sighed and sank into his favourite armchair.
“I wanted to ask,” Taire continued, “if you’d give me a hand with something at work. A very tricky investigation has crossed my desk, and I could use a second pair of eyes, and I thought it’s the sort of thing you’d find interesting. Please?”
“Don’t you have a partner for things like this?”
“He’s on leave. I just need some help for a couple of days. A part-time sidekick, if you will. Just follow me around and agree with everything I say, and you’ll be fine. And you’ll get to solve a mystery in the process.”
“Taire…”
“Come on. When was the last time you left the house?”
“Yesterday. I ran out of milk.”
“You know what I mean. Left the house to actually do something. And when was the last time you cleaned, for that matter? Something stinks in here. Worse than you.”
“I think you’re avoiding the all-important question, which is why we’re having this conversation at four in the morning.”
“That’s because for reasons I probably shouldn’t vocalise, I need to have a look at this before I go into the office. And I had a feeling you’d need some time to get ready.”
Staven was quiet for a moment. “What’s the investigation?”
“Missing person. Why, are you curious?”
“If I come with you, will you stop bothering me?”
“Not only will I stop bothering you, but I will tell Mother to do the same. And I’ll buy you breakfast. You look like you haven’t eaten properly in weeks.”
Forty-five minutes later, as the first light of the sun was barely poking through the gaps in the houses, the two of them were walking quickly down the empty main street. They went in silence, across the market square towards the West. The fancy side of town. Staven felt himself getting grumpy again. Not that he had to try very hard.
“Let me guess. A huge bag of coins was delivered along with the note asking you to prioritise this one.”
“Actually, no, although I can see why you think that. We got this one from a particularly… let’s say conscientious resident. She writes in almost every day with something – last week her neighbour’s cat was genuinely stuck up a tree.”
“She sent a crime report for that?”
“She did. Yesterday, though, she actually came into the Office in person, which she’s only ever done once before, to tell us that she hasn’t heard a peep out of her next door neighbour for a couple of days, so we figured we’d better check it out.”
They turned down a side road, where the houses started to spread out and greenery sprouted between them.
“That’s… really odd. Doesn’t it get annoying?”
“A bit, but she’s elderly, and I think we’re the only people she talks to. It’s sad, really.”
Staven immediately felt terrible.
“So who’s gone missing?” he asked quickly.
“None other than Ms. Theodora Peerson,” Taire declared, turning off the road and skipping up the steps to an elegant, but not very well looked after, section of the terrace.
“You say that name like I should know who it belongs to,” Staven said, following him.
Taire looked at him. “You should. The Peerson family? The oldest and once wealthiest trading family in the city?”
“Yeah, but I thought the line had died out.”
“Almost. Theodora’s the last, unmarried and un-childrened, and has never had any interest or aptitude for the family business so was quite happy to just let it collapse. Which is probably a good thing, since it would’ve taken a miracle to get it back on its feet again after her father’s stewardship. She’s been living here quietly her whole life, her neighbour says.”
“So not the ideal target for a kidnapping, then.”
“I wouldn’t have thought so, no.” Taire frowned. His knocking had, predictably, gone unanswered. They waited in silence for a minute, then Taire tried the handle. Neither of them expected it to open on the first try.
“Hello?” Taire called out as they entered. They stepped into a tiny hall with a neat row of shoes on the floor and coat hooks nailed to the wall. A narrow staircase led up to the right, and a closed door faced them. “Ms. Peerson? We’re from the Investigations Office. Apologies for coming round so early…” Taire trailed off. There was no response.
“You have a look down here. I’ll go upstairs and check she’s not a heavy sleeper or something.”
Taire took off, and Staven headed through the hallway into a kitchen. It was perfectly normal, if a bit small. The decoration was tasteful, the crockery expensive but not ostentatious, and the table, which could’ve comfortably fit four, had been pushed into the corner. Clearly, Ms. Peerson rarely expected guests.
Nothing stood out, so he moved towards the door at the other end and pushed it open. The study beyond was clearly the feature of the house. An oak desk stood against the far wall, immaculately tidy, with shelves growing upwards into the ceiling holding notebooks, loose paper, writing equipment, and other oddments Staven couldn’t identify. To the right of the desk, the wall had been replaced by a window overlooking a small, tidy garden, at the end of which ran a quickly flowing stream. On the other side of the room, Theodora had constructed a network of display cabinets, each of which contained an ancient-looking map. Some were enormous, with a level of artistic detail that should’ve earned them a place in a museum, while others were actual tools for navigation, covered in diagrams with symbol keys filling their margins. All of them were annotated in the script of an ancient, long dead language.
But it was the fourth wall that amazed him the most. Floor to ceiling, wall to wall, books of all sizes and colours stood in neat rows on bespoke shelves that left just enough space for the door to nestle in their midst. They were all adorned in the same script that covered the maps, and they smelled old, as if history itself was staring down at him.
Taire announced his return with a thud – he’d probably bumped into the kitchen table – and he flung the door open with such force that it bounced off the shelves on the other side of the wall. Staven winced.
“Well, the good news is she isn’t dead upstairs… Woah.”
“Woah indeed.”
“What is all this?”
“I don’t know. That language is ancient, and I have a funny feeling that these books are original copies, although I’d have to have a closer look to check.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah.”
“She’s clearly obsessed.”
“Passionate, I think, would be a better word.”
Taire was quiet for a moment, staring up at the wall of maps. “What else?” he asked.
“Come again?”
“What else? Did she take them down and read them, or are they just for display?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you could. If you looked.”
Staven’s heart sank. He could feel Taire’s gaze on the back of his head, but didn’t turn around.
“I haven’t done that in a very long time, and if you brought me here to make me do it again then you’re going to be sorely disappointed.”
“No, actually,” Taire answered, with sufficient venom to make Staven turn around. “I brought you here for the entirely selfish reason of making sure that my boss, hitherto the bane of my existence, doesn’t saddle me with an inappropriate new partner before Staffing can do the paperwork for Hagan’s replacement. He did it to Rafe when Ayre retired, and I won’t let him do it to me.”
All the energy drained out of Staven, as if that one accusation had been his limit for the day. “I have no idea who any of those people are,” he grumbled. Taire waved a hand dismissively.
“Hagan’s my partner, he’s taking leave to help raise his first kid. It’s adorable, I wish him well. The other two don’t matter, they’re just colleagues I’m using to make a point.”
“Which is?”
“Which is that I dragged you out here for little more than my own personal gain, so since you actually bothered to come with me this morning, could you please help me out? If you want to slink back into your cave when we’re done, be my guest. You’ve made it perfectly clear on several occasions that it’s no concern of mine.”
Taire stomped back into the kitchen without waiting for a response.
Staven shook his head, and as he did so something on the bottom shelf caught his eye. He crouched to get a better look at it. The shelf had two parallel grooves scratched into it, in line with the edges of a huge wood-bound volume. He ran this thumbnail through the left-hand scratch, and it didn’t give. The book’s spine contained a network of cracks where centuries of opening, closing and being pushed around had weakened it. And, interestingly, where recent repairs had been done, using a newer leather. It was good work. He almost hadn’t noticed.
He didn’t want to prove Taire right, but the truth was that he’d come with him because he was curious. He closed his eyes, and when they opened again the spine of the book filled his vision, each hair-wide crease a gaping chasm and every mote of dust a mountain. The sprawling network of fingerprints was obvious, and dense. Staven flicked his eyes to the next book along on the shelf, and saw that in comparison, it had barely been touched. This must be one of Theodora’s favourites.
Staven tugged gently at the spine, and the book slid perfectly through the grooves on the shelf. He picked it out, blinking rapidly to return his vision to normal, and tipped it over to see where it would fall open.
A crash rang from the kitchen. Staven leaped to his feet, the book falling to the floor. He ran into the kitchen.
“I’m fine,” Taire grumbled, and Staven found him sprawled on the floor surrounded by pieces of crockery, a cupboard door open above him, and the faucet in the corner gushing water fast enough to fill the sink. An old, grey tomcat was standing on his chest, hissing at him suspiciously. Staven laughed. He couldn’t help it.
Taire groaned and shoved the cat off his chest. It leaped up onto the table and sat, the picture of innocence, licking its paw and casting the occasional glance at Staven.
“And now we have another problem. There’s nothing in this house to suggest there’s a cat living in it. Careful, it looks diseased.”
Staven reached out towards the cat, letting it sniff his fingers, and was rewarded by it rubbing its face into his hand.
“Nah,” he said, “he just needs a bath.”
Taire glared at the cat, then turned to the stream of water.
“What happened with the tap?” Staven asked
“Just shut up for a second, would you?”
He let out a breath, and his frown deepened until his eyes shut completely. The torrent of water began to recede, and when it was only a trickle he reached out and tightened the tap. When he opened his eyes his face was red, and Staven decided not to press him further. He started picking bits of crockery off the floor.
“Did you find anything next door?”
“Not really. There’s definitely one book she’s handled more often than the rest, but I only looked at one shelf.”
Taire dropped the last of the broken pieces into the sink and went back into the study. The book lay open on the floor, revealing a beautifully illustrated depiction of a mountain towering over a magnificent golden city. It glowed in the sun, its spires climbing the sides of the mountain and looming over the trees and foothills that surrounded it. A road wound around from the city gates and away into a forest at the bottom of the painting, and mighty eagles filled the blue sky above.
“That… looks familiar,” Staven said slowly, but Taire was in no mood to theorise. He snapped the book shut.
“We need to go. I’ll bring this with us – someone in the Office will be able to read it. Probably.”
“I’ve not looked through all the shelves yet,” Staven protested.
“We’ll come back later. We just need to be in the Office before my boss.”
“Oh yeah, your cunning plan to make me your temporary partner.”
“Why do you say that as if you don’t think it’ll work?”
“Because I don’t,” Staven said, heading back through the kitchen. “I have no faith in this plan of yours whatsoever.”
“Thanks very much. What’re we going to do with the cat, by the way?”
Staven turned and saw the cat still sitting regally on top of the kitchen table. It looked up at them, meowed, and with no further warning leaped onto Staven’s shoulder. It fussed its feet for a moment, claws digging into skin, then sat, wrapping its tail around his neck.
“I suppose he’s coming with us,” he chuckled.
“No, we can’t take her cat,” Taire protested.
“I don’t think it’s hers. Besides,” he wobbled his shoulder, receiving a threatening whine for his trouble. “I don’t think I can get him off now.”
“Fine,” Taire sighed, “But if it is Theodora’s and you lose it, you’re explaining it to her.”
Staven grinned and pulled open the front door of the house, and they both stepped out into the cold morning sun.
Written by Jeni Meadows & Illustration by Gaby Carr
Jeni's professional life involves customer service and office management at a local charity in Lancaster. When she's not doing that, she's organising the practicalities for a small theatre company, writing a series of increasingly complicated novels, or she's trying to learn sign language. Or she's playing video games to procrastinate doing any of the above.
PART 2 will be out soon…