A City Lost By Time: PART 2 by Jeni Meadows
This is part 2 of Jeni Meadows’ serial A City Lost By Time. Click here to read part 1 first.
Only a handful of lamps lit the Investigations Office when they arrived, giving the foyer a dilapidated atmosphere and throwing twisted shadows onto the walls. Taire led the way undeterred, wishing the cleaner a cheery good morning as he passed, and disappeared through a set of metal double doors. Staven hurried after him.
They passed into a long corridor, just as gloomy, containing nothing but another set of double doors at the other end. Taire pushed through them into the main office. He scooped up a splint of wood from a table by the door, and lit it against the dying flame from a thick candle that had almost burned out. Staven stayed close to him as he carried the flame carefully across the room, swerving around furniture in the darkness, until they reached a desk with Taire’s name scrawled messily on a piece of paper tacked to one end. He lit the two lamps that stood at the ends of his desk, and waved the splint out.
“Why doesn’t this place have any windows?” Staven asked. “It’s creepy.”
“Because it was designed by an idiot,” Taire grumbled, sitting down. “I’m campaigning for a skylight.”
Staven smirked, and pulled up a spare-looking chair. As he sat down, the cat stirred from around his neck and leapt gracefully onto the desk, where it stretched out its front paws and curled up again at the base of one of the lamps, purring happily. Taire looked at it in contempt for a moment, then reached down and pulled open one of the drawers under his desk.
“So now what do we do?” Staven asked.
“Now,” Taire declared, reaching into the drawer with a grunt, “we research.” He dropped a heap of paperwork onto the desk between them and gestured to it proudly.
“What’s this?”
“This is everything we know about Ms. Theodora Peerson,” Taire said. “I pulled it out from the file room yesterday.”
Staven picked up a handful and flicked through them. “You’ve got her primary school report cards in here.”
“Yup.”
“And a transcript from a job interview she had with the Council.”
“Oh, that’s where that went. Thanks.” Taire took it out of his hand.
“But why’s that important? How does knowing how good she was at school, or that she didn’t get a Council job, help us?”
“We use it to build up a picture of her,” Taire answered “For example, from her glowing school report cards I would assume that Ms. Peerson was attentive, studious and followed the rules. Not the sort of person who takes a planned holiday without telling anybody. That interview was with the Scholastic Division, which you’d think she’d be well cut out for, but it didn’t go well, so we can guess that her way of looking at her work is somewhat outside the academic norm. We’re trying to get a sense of who she is so we can understand why she might’ve disappeared in the night. It’s very basic detective work. You should be good at it, you were a journalist for ten years.”
Staven nodded slowly, and looked back at the reports in his hands. Apparently, Theodora had excelled at cultural studies as a child, but hadn’t enjoyed maths. Was that helpful? He had no idea.
They lapsed into silence. The minutes ticked by, and gradually Taire’s colleagues filtered into the office, filling the room with a warm glow as they lit the lamps at the surrounding desks. They chatted quietly, but paid little attention to Taire and none at all to Staven. They weren’t hostile – far from it. They just assumed the pair were busy and left them alone. Staven respected that.
They carried on like that for about an hour. Staven was no closer to any answers, and he was starting to think that Taire was just trying to waste time, when suddenly the double doors at the end of the room burst open and a tall man in an ostentatious suit strode in, briefcase swinging from one hand.
“Good morning, good morning, how are we?” he chirped to the room as he passed through, but no sooner had the words left his mouth than he disappeared through a door at the other end of the Office, closing it with a slam behind him. Quiet settled once again. Staven squinted to read the plaque on the wall next to the door: “Natán Nyberg, Head of Investigations”.
“Who’s that?” he whispered to Taire.
“My boss,” Taire whispered back.
“What happened to the Regional Captain?”
“He is the Regional Captain. Except he wanted to make his mark, so he changed the name.”
“That’s…”
“Shh. He’ll be back in a second.”
As if on cue, the office door burst open again and Nyberg emerged, smiling vaguely at the room, not meeting anyone’s eye. He looked around for a moment, then headed to Taire’s desk. Taire didn’t look up from the document he was reading, even when Nyberg arrived at his desk and started tapping a rhythm on it. Staven had no idea what he was supposed to do. It got very awkward, very quickly.
“Taire,” Nyberg announced, finally, in a voice too loud for the room. “Good morning.”
Slowly, Taire raised his eyes.
“Good morning,” he responded, quietly. There was a slight pause.
“How’re you doing?” Nyberg continued. “Your mother alright?” He spoke quickly, as though the words were being chased from his mouth.
“She’s fine, thank you,” was all Taire said.
“Cool, good stuff. Anyway,” Nyberg pointed to Staven without looking at him. “Who is this?”
Taire waited to see if Nyberg would address Staven directly.
“This is Staven Heskin,” he said eventually, with more gravitas than Staven felt he deserved. “You know, the reporter? I’m bringing him in on a case.”
Nyberg blinked for a moment. “Why are you doing that?”
“Because he has a set of talents that are useful to me.”
Nyberg stared down at him, and the shadow of a smile fell off his face.
“Are you talking about yesterday’s Missing Persons case?”
“Yes.”
“See now Taire, remember how we talked about this? Remember we said we’d be prioritising smaller cases for now, yes? To bump up the numbers and get some quick wins in? Just for a couple of days, before we concentrate on the more detailed ones. You remember our conversation? That’s what this Office needs, Taire, we need quick wins, we need to increase our conversion rate, and we need to send better numbers up the ladder to the Office in the City. So while we don’t have any life threatening cases, because let’s be honest, she’s a scholar, she’s not gone far, let’s put that aside for now and pick up on those smaller jobs for this week, okay? Because that’s how we’re gonna do great things for this Office, Taire, that’s how we get ourselves to better places. Alright?”
Nyberg didn’t even wait to finish his sentence before walking away from the desk. He took two paces backwards, nearly knocking into a young man carrying a stack of papers, then called the “alright” over his shoulder as he swept back into his office. Once again, the door slammed closed.
Staven gaped. He looked at Taire, who had leant back in his chair with his arms tightly folded, a scowl on his face.
“So that was my boss,” Taire mumbled, his gaze boring a hole in Nyberg’s door.
“Wow,” Staven said. “Just… yeah. Wow.”
“Mmhmm.”
“What… what was all that?”
Taire sat up and let a deep sigh through his teeth. “Nyberg is a politician, not an Investigator. He wants to be the best at what he does, and to be fair, since he turned up our performance has improved tenfold. But he doesn’t have… what’s the word..?”
“A human soul?” Staven offered. Taire smirked.
“I was going to say ‘empathy’. He doesn’t have the empathy you need to do this job properly. He just does it by the numbers.”
“What’s his Proficiency?” Staven asked.
“Nobody knows. He’s never mentioned it. He could be listening to us through the walls right now, I have no idea. It freaks me out.”
“He’s not a Sensory, Taire,” a woman’s voice called from behind them. “If he was, you’d’ve been fired a long time ago.”
Staven turned in his chair as a woman in her late twenties sauntered up towards them. Taire smiled. Staven noticed it – it was the only genuine smile he’d seen on Taire’s face all day. The woman moved around the desk to stand where Nyberg had stood, and she tapped twice on the desk, smirking.
“Staven Heskin, this is Anneli Bryce, our resident Linguapath.”
They shook hands.
“I know you,” Anneli said. She turned around to wave at the postman as he made his way across the Office floor. “You used to write for the Herald. I liked your stuff.”
“Oh. Thanks.” Staven felt his face turning red.
“What’s his excuse for bringing you in?”
“Something about using me as a means to annoy your boss, I wasn’t really following.”
Anneli snorted. “So go on then,” she said teasingly, poking Taire in the chest. “This MP case. Got any leads?”
“Actually I was hoping you could help with that,” Taire said, pulling the book they’d taken from Theodora’s house out from under a pile of bank statements.
“We found this writing all over her study,” he told her, “and a load of maps that all centre around this place.” He opened up the page with the elaborate painting of the city. “I was hoping you could figure out where it is.”
She took one glance at the page, then narrowed her eyes. “You’re either having me on, or you’re both complete morons,” she said. Taire blinked at her. “I don’t need to figure it out, you philistine. That’s Maerûn.”
“Oh shit, of course it is,” Staven blurted, leaning over the picture. “I only got a glimpse earlier. I feel like an idiot.”
“And so you should,” Anneli agreed.
“Um…” Taire piped up. “May-where?”
Anneli stared at him. “Maerûn. The lost ancient city. Cornerstone of our civilisation until a mountain collapsed on top of it, about a thousand years ago? Ringing any bells?”
“Vaguely,” Taire sulked, “the name’s kind of familiar. Look, I didn’t pay attention to that stuff at school. I left it to nerds like you two.”
Thunder crossed Anneli’s face. “And now the nerds have all your answers and you’re the one looking stupid. Well done there.”
Taire pulled a face. “If they were so brilliant, how did they lose a city?”
“They didn’t lose it,” Anneli snapped. “I just said, it was built at the foot of a mountain, and that mountain collapsed, burying the city and everyone in it.”
“Mountains don’t just collapse, though. This is why I didn’t like learning about the old histories, it all sounds made up.”
“If you want to be scientific,” Staven said, “some theories postulate that it was actually a volcanic eruption that drowned the city in magma. Although, others say that the inhabitants of Maerûn went digging, and they found something that Nature didn’t want them to find, and She punished them for it.”
“I’ll stick with the volcanic eruption hypothesis, thank you very much.”
“Suit yourself.”
“So we know that Theodora had a thing for ancient history. Can that book be any more helpful?”
“This is The Maerûn Chronicle,” Anneli said, frowning down at it.
“I’ve read that,” Staven said.
“No, you’ve read the modern translations. This is… I think this is an original. That’s almost impossible. The work she’s done to restore this is gorgeous.” She turned it over gingerly and examined the spine. “How much did you say she has?”
“Loads. A whole study full.”
“Next time you go over there, let me know, I’ll come with you.”
Taire grinned. “Want to go now?”
“No,” she sniffed. “Despite my curiosity, I’m going to get on with what I was directed to do by our superior officer until instructed otherwise, and I can only suggest that you do the same.”
As she finished saying this, Nyberg’s office door crashed open and he strode forth, heading directly towards them. He did not look happy. The postman slipped away behind him, his face pale.
“The Gods must be smiling upon you today, Taire,” Nyberg barked, dropping a letter onto his desk. “This is from the City. Apparently your missing scholar has a cousin on the Royal Council who’s demanding that she be found immediately.” He gestured vaguely at the three of them, and added, “Top priority.” Then he turned and vanished once again into his office. Taire settled back in his chair and grinned at them smugly.
Twenty minutes later, the three of them were standing silently in Theodora’s study. Anneli was frowning at the wall of maps. Taire was pretending to do the same, casting sidelong glances at her that lingered for a little bit longer each time. Staven perched on the windowsill.
“The funny thing,” Anneli said eventually, “is that she has all these books that are older than anything, and she has all this notepaper and ink and pens, but she doesn’t seem to have made any notes.”
“Did she write in the books?” Taire asked. Anneli stared at him.
“No. She did not.” She looked back up at the shelves. “I just feel like there should be more.”
They talked on, but Staven wasn’t entirely listening. As he stared out of the window, a sparrow fluttered down from a young tree and hopped around on the low stone wall outside. It looked content. Well-fed.
Staven frowned as he looked at the wall. It was one of many identical walls that sliced up the row of gardens running along the back of the terrace, but unless the window was obscuring his view, it looked as though the wall gave Theodora’s garden an extra metre’s width than there was inside the house. He stood up, opened the window, and leaned out. No, there was no mistaking it. The two definitely weren’t in line.
He stood up and went to the desk, right in the middle where a square gap in the shelving served as a notice board. Scraps of paper were dotted around, and covering it like bad stitching was a network of tiny holes where tacks had been pulled out and moved. He ran his finger over them. The wood between them was finely cracked, like ripples in water. That was odd. He narrowed his vision, drawing in on that series of cracks, and immediately noticed that they weren’t deep, that another surface lurked behind them, pierced by the tack holes but unaffected by the cracking in between. It was paint, Staven realised. The panel had been painted over to look like hardwood.
“What are you doing?” Taire asked, his voice too loud in Staven’s head. He winced and pulled away, blinking his vision back to normal, and he rapped a knuckle against the panel. It echoed loudly. Taire and Anneli grinned.
“I love a good secret compartment,” she declared.
“Is there a switch?” Taire asked, diving under the desk.
“I don’t think it’s that sophisticated,” Staven said. “Look.” He pushed at the panel and it wobbled. “I think we just…” As he pushed, he twisted, and the panel slid roughly upwards. It got stuck twice, but eventually the whole thing disappeared into the shelves above. When Staven let go, it stayed there. He had no idea how to get it down again. He’d worry about that later.
The panel revealed a gap in the desk deep enough to account for the room being shorter than the garden. In it, more shelves had been installed, but these were clumsier than the ones in the study, fixed in place by an untrained hand. They were completely covered in notebooks. Scraps of paper emerged randomly from all of them, and some were held together by pieces of string wrapped around their spines. There were over a dozen, crammed together in that tiny space.
“Well.” Anneli said, pulling gently at the notebook in the bottom right corner. “This is more like it.”
“What are you looking for?” Taire asked, peering over her shoulder. He needn’t have bothered. The notebooks were written in the ancient script of Maerûn, just like everything else in the room.
“Anything that might tell us what she’s doing and where she’s gone,” Anneli said distractedly. “Move out the way, will you? You’re blocking my light.”
Taire stepped backwards and she moved slowly towards the windows, reading from the back. Taire’s gaze followed her across the room. Staven looked at him, an eyebrow raised.
“What?” Taire whispered.
“Nothing,” Staven teased. A smile spread slowly across his face.
“Oh, shut up. Don’t even...”
“Boys,” Anneli interrupted. “We have a problem.” She looked up at them, and they looked back, faces expectant. “She thinks she’s found it.”
“Found what?” Taire asked. Staven’s heart sank.
“This,” Anneli said, gesturing around them. “She’s gone into the mountains. She thinks she’s found the Lost City of Maerûn.”
Written by Jeni Meadows
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.