The Missing Icebox

            Nascine ran.

            She wasn’t sure if they were following her. There was a patter of rain that made every leaf in the forest canopy above her act as a percussive instrument. She was not a stranger to the wild, but she felt more comfortable in cities. Cities had things like alcoves and alleys at relatively regular intervals, and the forest had been built only by comparatively random elements.

            All she could do was try to find the dark spots, heading for shadows. If the Agents were heading after her, she could not tell.

            She wasn’t entirely sure where she was. She had not even heard of Muiggenschire before coming here, though the climate definitely felt like home. Finding herself winded, she looked for a suitable hiding spot. There was a half-rotten tree trunk leaning over a little ditch that she figured she might be able to fit in. After a quick check to make sure there wasn’t some wild animal inside, she crawled down into it.

            In retrospect, it was not a terribly good hiding spot, only because it was too obviously a good hiding spot. The ditch, log, and stump essentially created a three-quarters barrier to sight, with the opening facing away from where her pursuers would be coming from. And while that made it more likely they would run past her, it also meant she could not see them coming.

            She waited, trying first to take quiet, shallow breaths, but then giving up, reasoning that the sound of rain was going to drown out such a small sound anyway.

            Nascine sat still for minutes. It was actually somewhat peaceful. Despite the cold, and the recognition that she was now absolutely covered in mud, she felt oddly refreshed. He eyelids began to droop, and she felt a soothing warmth spread through her body as she felt the shadow envelop her and…

            It had been an hour, she thought. At that point, she was shivering, and decided that staying in that ditch was no longer an option. Besides, it seemed she had lost her pursuers – if they were even still looking, they would probably have scattered far enough that she would be unlikely to come across any of them.

            When she crawled out of the ditch, she looked around. The forest seemed strangely different. She could not decide what it was that gave her that impression, but she had the strangest feeling that she had not gone into that ditch in the same forest that she now found herself in.

            Could it be another one of those shared spaces? she thought.

            If it were, it would certainly make it harder for them to find her – she doubted any of the House Agents were going to crawl into every ditch that they found.

            But perhaps her mind was simply playing tricks on her.

            She kept walking forward, relying on her own sense of direction as best she could. It wasn’t easy to tell where the sun was, given the clouds, but she thought she was heading north by northwest.

            Abruptly, the forest gave way to a rocky ledge about five feet above a narrow river. There were buildings on the other side.

            Wait, I’ve seen these buildings before, she thought.

            She was in Exbrooke, a rather fancy neighborhood in the eastern part of Ravenfort. The name of the neighborhood jumped out to her, and it took her a moment to remember – the disastrous Jaroka mission down in Narcia! It was coming back to her. They had designated a safehouse here in Exbrooke to serve as a panic-hole in case anything went catastrophically wrong before they got out of the country.

            The Rookery had plenty of these properties in rotation. It felt as if it had been ages since she had been “rescued” by Barclay– assuming the man hadn’t been the one to drown her himself. She felt a pang of guilt when she realized she hadn’t even thought about what might have happened to Chris Thatch, who Nascine still thought of primarily under his cover identity, James Tarson.

            The safehouse was fairly compartmentalized – it had been purchased with the budget for the mission, and it was possible that the Rookery would eventually rotate it out of use and sell it back on a public market, but it was unlikely that had happened yet. The Jaroka mission, in a way, had not really ended. As lead on the mission, she would have needed to sign some paperwork, and she did not remember doing so. As far as she could figure, only she, Thatch, and Kilarny – who had died before they met up with her in Narica – would know. The records would be there, but one would need to know where to look. She had no idea what was really “safe” anymore, but if she had had a chance to run, that’s where she would have gone. It stood to reason that Thatch might have gone there.

            She looked down at herself. She was a mess, with mud caked on to her clothes and even in her hair. She walked over to the river – the Vinely, as she recalled, a tributary to the Lockey – and cupped some of the chilly water in her hand, rinsing off as much of the grime as she could. When she got to the safehouse, she would enjoy a nice long shower, and certainly a cup of tea.

            She got a few looks on the street, as she made her way to the address. Thankfully the house was right over the river, so she did not have to go too far into the city. She tried not to think too much about the people seeing her. People saw strange things in cities all the time, and it wasn’t unthinkable that she had slipped and fallen face-first into a patch of mud. Exbrooke had more parks than developed blocks. She prepared a little anecdote in case anyone asked, but she knew that no one would.

            When she came to the house, she felt ready to collapse. Her rainy nap under the log had hardly been all that energizing, but more exhausting was the mental effort to decide what to do when faced with the convolutions of the House. It was tempting to think of them as mystical in power and scope, but they were just people. And even if they weren’t, the teachings of Kerahn stated that the gods aren’t really all that much more intelligent or mysterious than people.

            There would be a time for further contemplation. She had, she hoped, done something that the House would not predict – neither telling a lie nor the truth to the Queen – but she felt no closer to discovering who the mole was within the Rookery.

            Maybe draw a bath instead of taking a shower, she thought as she reached the door. She tapped the door in a few places – they used a keyless lock, both to frustrate anyone trying to pick the decoy keyhole and also to ensure that a fleeing thief would be able to get inside without needing to carry the key on them.

            She walked into the kitchen and ran the faucet, running the water through her hair – hair that she had allowed to grow far too long. That was when she noticed the dust.

            There was an enormous amount of dust on the counter. Yes, the place had been unoccupied for at least months now, but surely that wouldn’t account for such a layer unless someone had left a window open.

            Also, the electric icebox was missing.

            Nascine pulled her hair back. She looked to the door. There was a trail of muddy footprints leading into the kitchen, yes, but there was also a streak of mud that led down the hallway to the basement steps.

            Nascine walked down the corridor. She pulled off the baggy sweatshirt that Barclay had given her – it felt good to get the soggy thing off, and her shirt underneath was dry, other than the sweat from her exertion.

            The light was on in the basement.

            She saw now the yellow glow of incandescent bulbs spreading up through the open doorway. She stepped closer, and then she heard a low thud. A moment later, the light cut out.

            And then she heard a voice call out in pain.

            It was Tartin.

(Copyright Daniel Szolovits 2015)