Preview: The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 5

Here's part 5 of your intro to The Necromancer's Gambit, due September 23rd. The Necromancer's Gambit follows the travails of a cell of mages operating in Portland.

Previously:
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 1

The Necromancer's Gambit, part 2

The Necromancer's Gambit, part 3

The Necromancer's Gambit, part 4

The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 5, The Investigation, continued

“Shouldn’t we analyze the crime scene?” Rook asks.

“This isn’t the scene, just where they dumped the body,” I tell her. But there’s something hopeful in her voice, so I decide to give her the remedial lesson quickly.

I kneel beside the body, and use my pen to move what’s left of his pants to the side. “Look at the burns, melted skin, charred muscle. Heat of this kind would have destroyed this room, but the carpet isn’t so much as singed. Point of fact, there’s no blood, no melted skin, nothing in the carpet. He was well-done before he ever got here.”

“The other reason we won’t find anything is here: look at the ankles. Snapped, but through the burnt flesh- you can see the difference between the meat on the outside and on the in; body fell post-mortem. And you smell the brimstone- sulfur, rotten egg stink? Killer teleported it in here, and either fucked up the transport spell or didn’t give a shit, because the exit was too high. Corpse came in in an orthostatic position- standing; the fall caused the compound fractures, probably to the tibia. Best we’re going to get will come from the corpse itself, but we’ll have to get it to the lab to analyze it.” I turn to Pawn. “Bring my car around.” I toss him the keys.

I unfold a wedge of silk and lay it flat next to the body. Tim helps me roll the corpse up in it like a burrito, and I put my coat on its shoulders. “Now help me lift the bastard.” I get most of the weight in the legs, and Tim lifts the head and throws that over my shoulder.
We make our way across the dance floor muttering apologies. “He’s a little drunk. Excuse me. My friend’s sick. Can you let me through?” We’re lucky it’s nearly last call, and everybody’s either hammered or looking to get laid. Rook’s an appreciated distraction, and makes two men carrying a body through the club less seedy than it should be.

Pawn pulls up, and I set the corpse in the front seat with a little difficulty, belt him in.

Rook gets in the back, and Pawn saunters off. “What was that about a vamp?” she asks as I start the car and pull out into traffic.

“That’s right, Salem doesn’t have a colony. But vampires can smell magic. They’re not too specific; this guy could either be magic or have died by it, but it at least lets us know when to look into things, and when to just leave it for the normal cops.”

“So where are we taking the body?”

“Bishop’s lab.” That didn’t seem to be enough for her. “You could call Bishop a renaissance man- but she’d probably say that’s sexist. She’s our resident polymath.”

“She?”

Her coven likely told her we don't allow women into gambits, which isn't strictly true- though it isn't the norm, either. “Yeah. We recruited her from a Seattle coven, when our old bishop, Alfil- the elephant- quit. We didn't think he’d retire. He never used to forget anything, but his mind started to go. First little things, incantations, names of spirits, but it got worse, until half the time he’d forget I wasn’t a pawn anymore.”

“About that. Pawn said he trained you. But unless I’ve got things backwards, you basically outrank him- at least as far as a gambit can be said to have ranks.”
“It’s a long story. And since you’ve only met him tonight, a little too early to tell. But that long story short, I took his spot, he took mine.”

“In other words, he got demoted, and they promoted you.” Almost too bad she isn’t looking to be a horsey. Seems to have the chops.

And I’ll cop to being impressed that when we get to Bishop’s lab, she isn’t dainty about getting the corpse out of my car and back on my shoulder. He’s still heavy, but I shudder to think how much he weighed before most of the moisture was cooked out of him.

Rook beats me to the front door by several seconds, and is about to reach for the knocker. “Wait.” She stops, and lets me through. I knock out, “Shave and a hair cut,” with my fist and leave a six beat pause before finishing with, “two bits.”

“A second,” comes Bishop’s voice through the door, then she opens it. Rook is shocked that Bishop’s younger than she is.

I push my way between them with the corpse. “Fresh delivery of long pig, a little overdone. But I know how you like your meat- as charred and blackened as your shriveled heart.” She grins at me.
Bishop never knew her father. Her mother told her he was in politics, though she never knew if that meant he was in the Seattle gambit or if he worked somewhere in the non-mage government. Her mother died when she was 16, officially protoscience-related lung cancer. Bishop spent her last two years as a minor as a ward of the gambit, apprenticing with the brightest minds they had. When she turned 18, King convinced her to come to Portland.

Because she was new, by far the youngest member of the gambit, and maybe because she was our only girl- try as Queen might to make that not true sometimes- she developed sometimes-paternal relationships with the rest of us- a whole handful of flawed father-figures.

On the subject of figures, she's maturing, aged enough I can't tell myself she's just the kid she was when she moved down here anymore. She's got short, red-brown hair that she's always forgetting to pin back. Because of that, it's rare when she doesn't have a piece of food or corpse hanging from it.

“You always bring me the nicest things,” she says, still smiling at me. “But come in, come in, the coffee’s a little cold, but the hot cocoa’s warm and fresh.”
I set the corpse down on her slab, while Rook stares at her. “You’re so pleasant, and, and bubbly, despite him setting a dead body down on your table. It’s weird.”

“It helps that the cocoa’s caffeinated. Loco Cocoa. But it’s only weird because of the dichotomy, since you spent the evening with the glower twins. They see the ugly side of people. I get to see the fascinating side- which is frequently the inside.” Bishop sets down her mug, and tears into the silk sheet, unwrapping the body like it’s Christmas. “You want the sheet back, or the usual?”

“Yep.” She’s got a chute down to her incinerator in the basement, and she drops it in. The silk is contaminated, physically from contact with the body, and magically, because I’ve been carrying it around in my jacket pocket. Burning it means keeping the next crime scene clean, and preventing somebody from dumpster diving and using it as the focus of a sympathetic spell against me.

“So this is the Salem Rook, huh? Seems a bit dainty to be a castle, but it’s nice to meet you.” Rook frowns, and looks at Bishop’s skinny arms with some confusion. “And nicer still that your coven is finally joining the 21st century.”

“Uh, it’s nice to meet you, too.” Rook reaches out and shakes Bishop’s hand, then immediately walks to the sink and begins vigorously scrubbing her hands.

“No offense. But I don’t want to contaminate the evidence.”

“Okay,” Rook says, while Bishop finishes drying her hands and puts on a pair of gloves. “So what is it a Bishop does?”

“I’m a protoscientist. I study things that aren’t accepted as fact by most people, but that exist anyway. Alchemy’s a good example. Before chemistry was a science, a lot of the foundation for it was laid by alchemists. Same with the astronomical aspects of astrology. But protoscience isn’t just limited to the arcane. For example a colleague of mine in BC is studying binaurul beats, used to induce specific brain states, applicable for health or just getting someone baked with sound. The theory is that it can be used to induce shamanic trances, but it’s really just sigil magic by a different name.”

Bishop spends a moment taking in the body, before she says, “I was thinking of getting some KFC, and when you said you were bringing the new Rook, I thought we could split a bucket, but now, the smell of this- why go out when we can eat in?” Rook stares at her with wide eyes. “What, are we not laughing about that, yet?” Then she says, “Oh, right- she doesn’t know the story.”

I take that as my cue to tell it- since Bishop only knows it secondhand, anyway. “Alfil, in one of his later in life oopsies- this was right before he retired- was supposed to check some decomposition for me, to see if it was natural or supernatural. Instead, he spent the better part of an evening performing a complex diagnostic spell on sliced, peppered turkey, while eating corpse, lettuce and tomato sandwiches. Really, he was lucky; he only got mild food poisoning. I get worse from the Chinese takeout down the street.”
“I think that’s because they age their corpses,” Bishop said solemnly.

“How long you think it’ll take to get an idea what we’re looking at?” I ask her.

“I can tell you you’re looking at a big burnt guy. If you want me to be able to point out more than roast chestnuts and a blackened tree stump, you’ll have to give me a few hours.”

“Cool.” I check my phone. “It looks like Pawn’s got his CI to the safehouse. Let us know when you've got something concrete.”


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