Read Online The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic) by Patrick Weekes - Free Book Online Page A

getting friendlier. Fendril passed over his notes, and the clerk went into the back room to pull the travel records.
    There was a new rug on the floor, he noted as he waited. It was bright orange, and didn’t match the rest of the room.
    “Found it.” The clerk stepped back into the main office, his hands raised to show that they were empty. “Without the forms I can’t write anything out, you understand, but I found what you needed. Nobody by the name of Isafesira de Lochenville has docked here, and that elven ship listed its destination as Ajeveth. Hope that helps.”
    “Immensely.” Fendril passed the young man a coin for his trouble. “Have a good afternoon.”
    He left the office, the strange new rug squishing under his boots. The bell rang as he pulled the door open, then again as it closed behind him, and Fendril stepped out into the afternoon sun, looked at the smiling people, and remembered right then that Maera didn’t drink kahva.
    The rug vendor from the Old Kingdom had empty slots in her shop-wagon. Her other rugs were gold and green and . . . yes, there was another that was the same shade of orange.
    Maera didn’t drink kahva. She would never have bought that garish rug for her office . . . and she wouldn’t have let her clerks give out information without Fendril filling out the proper request forms.
    Fendril sighed. He was getting close to retirement, and it would have been so damnably easy to just keep walking.
    He looked around. The market square was largely the same as when he’d gone into the registry office. The Imperial woman’s bodyguard with the big ax caught him staring and shot him a glare. Fendril looked away and walked as casually as he could around the corner.
    In the alley next to the registry office, the shadows were cool. It was clean, with a recently emptied trash bin and a side door that servants could use to come in.
    Before he forgot, he activated the message crystal. “Justicar Fendril, reporting on urgent request for information on whereabouts of elven ship bearing a book. Last known destination was Ajeveth.”
    With that done, Fendril pocketed the crystal and looked around. He squinted at the door and caught the slight irregularity in how it hung in place. He glanced back out into the street, and then crept closer to the door.
    When he got close, the freshly scarred wood on the frame was obvious.
    Quietly, very quietly, Fendril pushed the door open.
    In the back room, Maera lay dead, her head nearly severed from the rest of her body. The bodies of two men in sailor’s clothes lay next to her, one with his chest caved in and the other with a broken back. Chopping weapon, and a heavy one at that, the justicar in the back of Fendril’s mind noted. Not enough blood in the room. Whoever did this would have kicked in the side door and come in, then cut Maera down elsewhere. Probably the main office. A pair of sailors waiting to fill out forms, so they had to go, too. Big pool of blood, but the rug covers it up neatly.
    “I feared you were too wise to miss it,” came a woman’s voice from the doorway to the main office. Fendril felt muscles in the back of his neck tighten as he looked up.
    An Imperial woman stood there, smiling sweetly with lips that had been painted green. It wasn’t the woman he’d seen before, in the violet dress. This Imperial woman wore green-painted ringmail, and a pendant with a great golden butterfly hung from her neck, matching the makeup that trailed in a curving pattern from her eyes. “Tell me, Justicar, do you wish to know how they died?” she asked.
    Fendril knew two things for certain right then.
    He knew that the woman would not have asked that question if she didn’t stand to gain something from it, because people who went around killing port officials didn’t just make idle conversation. With that in mind, he was absolutely certain that he did not want to answer her.
    And second, he knew that the woman was not carrying a very large