quester amongst the flowers 15

 there was a deluge in the night and not a drop in the bathroom. bliss. 

 

Chapter 15

 

Cayban had fallen asleep on the deep and comfortable sofa in Miz Rubia’s personal sitting room, and Quester had lifted his legs, put a pillow under his neck, and covered him with a couple of rugs. He had no intention of waking the man when he rose in the morning, long before the winter dawn, but Cayban grunted.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Half an hour past hora quintus,” said Quester.

“Well, that was a comfortable sofa, I’ve had almost five hours good sleep,” said Cayban. “Oh, Burdock, you’re a star.”

Burdock came in with coffee.

“I knew me lud wanted an early start, sah, so I figured you’d be wanting to work wit’ him. Miz Kiliana is busy in the kitchen.”

“She is?” Quester was startled.

“Yes, me lud,” said Burdock. “Seems the little flowers here eat nuffin’ but kibble in milk for breakfast, an’ Miz Kiliana didn’ feel it suitable for you, me lud,” said Burdock. “Or me,” he added in a heartfelt voice.

“She’s quite right,” said Quester, horrified, correctly interpreting Burdock’s appellation of ‘kibble’ as cereal products rather than the street name for reconstituted meals, which turned into nutritious, if not very exciting stews if heated in water. Kibbled meat made such dishes as the mutton hash so loathed by the troops on Pince Eddard Island, and meat bars of all kinds were the foodstuffs of most of the lowest. The next might have canned comestibles, and only the wealthy had real meat or fish or vegetables. Or those growing it, of course. Of course, the point was that nutritious but less popular parts of the animal might be made into meat bar or kibble, which meant that every part could be used. The prisoners would be eating very basic food; and it was part of the process to break them.

Quester had dressed with care, his magenta cope over grey robes and the ruby badge of the Justiciars declared who he was. He waited for Cayban to have a quick shower, and drink his coffee, to walk with him to the gymnasium block.

Here they met Purity, who was setting out the breakfast Kiliana, Merrialla, Jessica, and Marilyn had brought.

“Oh, this is wonderful,” said Quester. “Thank you, girls; two of you I don’t know.”

“Merrialla and Marilyn, my lord,” said Kiliana.

“But I’m only the maid,” said Marilyn, hastily.

“Leo, may I ask her to come as my maid, at least until Gavrilla is well? You said I should have one,” said Kiliana.

“I don’t see why not,” said Quester. He smiled at Marilyn. “Gavrilla  is undergoing surgery to correct a problem she was born with, she was not hurt in my service; I do my utmost to protect my people,” he explained.

“I’d love it,” said Marilyn. “I’d like to travel, and here, I’ll always see where Iris isn’t, if you know what I mean.”

“I know precisely what you mean,” said Quester. “I am so sorry we were too late to save Iris.”

“She did know better than to go off with strange men,” said Marilyn, sniffing hard. “I suppose him being a patrician and a teacher meant she thought it would be all right. I ain’t well educated, but if I can help Miz Kiliana help you catch people like that, I’ll feel I done right by Iris. And so long as I sends money to Da from time to time, he won’t care.”

“Then consider yourself hired,” said Quester.

 

A full breakfast was discussed by Quester and those of his team who were awake to enjoy Kiliana’s culinary expertise, Quester waving the girls, including Marilyn to join him. The staff, it appeared, were fed boiled or poached eggs, normally considered invalid food for the girls, and Kiliana had commandeered eggs to make an omelette, which was well filled with anything she could get her hands on, and brought over in a warming trolley.

“What’s the plan for the day?” asked Kiliana.

“I want you amongst the girls to see if anyone else reveals heresy that they know about,” said Quester. “Eusebius is sending us some help to arrest people from the upper echelon.  Meanwhile, Peet and I will be interrogating the bank fraudsters.”

“The ones with all the aliases?” asked Kiliana.

“Yes, and I am hoping that knowing all their aliases will make one or more of them decide to talk,” said Quester. “Not being heresy or treason, I can’t threaten putting them to the question.”

“Doesn’t destabilising the economy count as treason?” asked Kiliana.

Quester stared, and then laughed.

“How devious! Yes, technically, it could.”

“Oh, well, now you have something else to hold over them,” said Kiliana.

 

oOoOo

 

 

“So, when are you going to give me breakfast?” asked the man, with bravado. He had been taken from his dark cell to a room with one bright light shining at him.

“I ask the questions, you answer them,” said the low, cultured voice of the shadowy figure behind the light.  The prisoner frowned. He did not know the voice, and he thought he was familiar with most of the voices of the upper echelon of the Lictorium.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” he tried again.

“Dissembling is quite useless, Brad Chetway,” said Quester. “We are well aware that you have variously been known as Chet Bradway, when setting out to kill Lindon Bain, at which point you were also Chester Bradley of the Admirable Banking Collective, before which you were Bradley Chetton of the short-lived Acme Banking Company, responsible for the nano-second heist, adapting to the move to physical pay slips with your next move. Currently, you are Buster Chetley of the Clarified Banking Advisory, and lictors are taking your place apart for the plans of whatever heist that was set up to clear.”

“I want to see Senior Lictor Fredrik Oran,” said Chetway.

“You can want to see anyone you like, but it’s not going to happen,” said Quester.

“You think you’re smart!  I don’t know who you are, and I know all the senior Lictors, so you’re plainly some jumped up lieutenant who thinks he’s smart, and you are so going to get your balls in the blender when Oran finds out,” snarled Chetway.

“Oran talked,” said Quester. “And I’m way above his paygrade. Senior Justiciar Quester is my name, and you are under arrest for grand larceny, fraud, murder, and destabling the economy.” He paused slightly. “That last charge brings you under the charge of treason, which means that physical persuasion can be used in your interrogation.”

The even, unemotional voice was more terrifying than threats.

Chetway was an old lag. He knew when the jig was up.

He talked.

 

“My brother-in-law, that’s Darren Dale, is accountant to one of the ‘LeetXk,” said Chetway. Quester nodded, recognising streetslang for the Elite Ten Thousand. Even in more rarefied circles, referring to them as the ‘Xk’ was not unknown, using the Roman X for ten and the k for thousand. Chetway went on, “And he hoped to use his employer’s accounts to launder some of the money. Only his employer caught him, and asked for his cut.  That’s why we have a better setup this time; it should have been foolproof with extra funding, we planned to move the fractional accounting of every government official on the payroll into an account called Zzyx, and then move it through the Clarified Banking Advisory, a bit at a time.”

“Would that make much?” wondered Quester.

“Oh, man! You have no idea,” said Chetway. “Have you any idea how many public workers there are? From the street sweepers on their three point seven five one four Imperials an hour, to you... well, I don’t know what you take home, but I know it’s well enough paid to make anyone stupid enough to try to bribe a Justicior the world’s stupidest. It doesn’t really matter, because when they add up your pay for the week, there will be a fraction of a cent more than a whole number, and that normally is rounded up, or down.  But even a street cleaner doesn’t quibble about one cent more or less, and does not know he is losing zero point zero eight nine something of a cent from his two hundred and forty Imperials a week. So we round them all down, and get a few hundredths here, and maybe ninety percent off someone else; but in general, half a cent off everyone, by average. So, do you know how many people work for the government?”

“About half,” growled Cayban.

“Hello, Lictor Cayban,” said Chetway.  “I thought I’d stymied you.  And I don’t say you’re wrong about those who work for the government, I should have said, those who are paid to work for the government.”

“Tens of thousands in the judiciary alone, counting clerks,” said Cayban.

“Ninety-seven thousand,” said Chetway. “You have cleaners as well as clerks. Half as many in the fire and emergency services, as many and more in the medical services. As many again in the militia, and many times that of ordinary filing clerks, menial workers and so on. Three and a half million. That’s one and three quarters million Imperials. Every week. Between six of us, now; even taking off the odd payoff, like to Lictor Oran, whom we made guilty by association so he doesn’t even need paying off more than once a year to show that we can. We clear a quarter of a million each, every week.”

“Blessed Abe!” said Quester.

“Abe’s balls!” said Cayban.

“And I thought it was so slick,” mourned Chetway. “It’s not really making a difference to the government, who pays out anyway, nor to those who have one cent less a week; even to the sump-rats, a cent here or there makes little difference, and government workers are well above sump-rats.  How on earth did you catch us?”

“Because Lictor Cayban was disturbed over the idea of sending an innocent man to execution,” said Quester.

“Well, nobody expected Lindon Bain to die, and we weren’t complaining about a scapegoat,” shrugged Chetway. “It was just bad luck for him, you know?”

“I take unauthorised loss of human life very seriously,” said Quester. “Well, when you name your noble confederate, you will all face charges of being accessories to murder, and to attempted judicial murder, in allowing a man to go to his death, as well as treason for interfering with government monies. In addition to the fraud charges. I doubt you’ll be executed or made into Shackled, but I suspect it will be long years in a penal batallion.”

“And if I don’t give up my noble friend?”

“I put you to the question.”

“Fair enough; he can’t do me enough good to take that for him,” said Chetway, with a shrug. “His name is Leem Partikion Vanrensulus.”

Quester sighed.

That was, if he remembered correctly, Kiliana’s friend, Jessica’s father.

“And what about Harmonia Claudion Vanrensula, his wife?” he asked.

“You do know your LeetXk,” said Chetway. “I believe she knew about it.”

“Some of them,” agreed Quester, with a sigh.

“Dear me, not a friend of yours?” sniggered Chetway.

“No; but he has a minor daughter, who is an innocent,” said Quester. “And that’s where crime, even without the murders, leaves mess. Your sister, I presume, either knows about her husband’s crimes, or else suddenly she has a husband in trouble; any children bereft of a father.  A young girl bereft of both parents at a time of life when girls need support. Tell me about your sister.”

“She won’t know a thing; she hates me,” said Chetway. “Darren won’t have told her. They have no children; she works as housekeeper to the Vanrensuli, and they don’t like children.”

“Well, she might as well continue to be so, and act as female companion to Jessica, if I make the child my ward,” sighed Quester. “Take him back to his cell; breakfast in about an hour, I believe.”

“That’s what’s worse than the hard labour,” sighed Chetway. “The cuisine.”

 

Mopping up the testimonies of the others in the gang was quick enough. Once they understood that, not only were they bang to rights, but that a point could be stretched to permit being put to the question, they sang like birds.

Darren Dale demurred somewhat.

“What about my wife?” he demanded.

“Your brother-in-law says she knows nothing,” said Quester.

“He’s right; I wouldn’t tell her about anything like this,” said Dale. “But when it comes out, and the Vanrensuli have wriggled off the hook, they’ll fire her, and make sure that she never gets another job, to spite me for talking.”

“They will not, because they won’t be wriggling off the hook,” said Quester. “I already have a charge of heresy waiting for them, in addition. And as I am going to be their daughter’s guardian, I will be authorising their estate to be paying her wage and to look after the child.”

“Poor brat, they don’t want her,” said Dale.

“I’ll note your compassion,” said Quester.

 

oOoOo

 

Quester was amazed to discover that it was time for regular breakfast for the girls and staff.

“Let us go and join them,” he said. “We are doing well, so far, and I should like to lead grace for them.”

“Kibble,” said Burdock, mournfully, his belly growling.

“Bread and butter, at least,” said Quester. “We already had a real breakfast.”

The Justiciar and his staff made a stir in the dining hall. As with lunch, the meal was something of a buffet in nature, the girls helping themselves to plates or bowls and food from a side buffet-bar. Quester was delighted to find porridge amongst the dishes on offer, and helped himself generously. The girl, Marilyn, dodged out with larger bowls for Burdock and Purity, and was beamed at by those individuals.

Quester banged on the table.

“Time for Grace,” he said. “Who knows ‘Sacred Buzzing Bees?’ it’s a short, sung grace... what, nobody? Kiliana, Burdock, Purity, help demonstrate it.”

Folding their hands in the eagle blessing, his assistants sang;

Sacred buzzing bees

Carry nectar in your knees

At command of Blessed Abe.

He insisted in the girls joining in.

“A short, sweet song of blessing,” said Quester, happily, adding honey to his porridge.

“We understood you had risen early to start... er, interrogation,” said Principal Hawlus, half afraid of speaking up, but not wishing to leave an uncomfortable silence.

“Indeed, and the criminals brought in overnight have recognised when they have little choice of escaping charges, and they have confessed to their relatively lesser crimes without trouble,” said Quester. “Now, we are not expecting to get to the serious heretics much before late afternoon, so perhaps Miss Peta might be permitted some time out of each class for the girls to collect their sports kit from their own lockers pro tem? The juniors have, I believe, Etiquette, followed by dancing in the first period, the middle class dance after break, and the seniors in the afternoon. Perhaps if the juniors move first, and start their class a little late, having less time for dancing, the seniors might follow them, as I believe they would have flower arranging and botanical drawing, a lesson lacking a teacher, and then the middle class can proceed immediately after break. Then all are sorted out.”

“As you command, so shall it be, my lord,” said Hawlus.

Quester waved a tea cup.

“Oh, a suggestion, merely,” he said.

“We are delighted to take the Justiciar’s lightest pronouncements as law,” said Miss Peta, who twinkled at him.

“How kind,” murmured Quester.

The girls went on their way after breakfast, and Quester’s team held a rapid conference. They were unaware of relays of girls moving things.

Quester was glad of the time to plan exactly how to swoop on the Elite Xk, and to get out his own picture of the Blessed Abe to pray for guidance in proceeding.