Chapter 9: Where the Ghosts Lie
The rain fell in torrents, thunder echoing.
Bibi's Bar was teeming with smoke rather than conversation, silence rather than music. That's when the door opened with a creak that sounded like a sentence.
Aster entered like someone who had just buried a body and was still carrying a dirty shovel. His cape was torn, his eyes flashing, his hair in a messy bun. He saw Murta in the corner, stirring a green liqueur.
- I need your help. - Aster said, without drama or preamble.
Murta didn't look up.
- If you're going to hide a body, wait for Safo to come back with the cloths. If you're going to steal one, tell me from which pocket.
- This is the last time.
Murta looked up. She wasn't judging. She was just weighing things up. Like a judge who's already seen the crime, the defendant, and the outcome.
- They took my metrile - Aster continued.
The word fell like hot lead between the glasses.
Myrtle didn't ask if it was true. She knew. She'd known Aster since the days when a pin and a look were enough to steal an entire coat. And if Aster wasn't trembling, it was because she'd already accepted that she could die.
Myrtle pulled up the chair next to her.
- Start at the beginning. And only lie at the end, please.
The story came between gulps of silence.
- The Sand Suns had intercepted my delivery of pure metrile bars, marked for Baron Von Kalter, one of the few clients who paid in blood, gold, and promises not to hunt you. I was supposed to deliver it. I didn't. - She said, almost embarrassed.
- It wasn't a sale. It was an interrupted robbery.
- Ah, even better. - Myrtle murmured.
- The problem is twofold: the Sand Suns have the metrile, and the same name is hiring for death. And they were preparing to deliver the package to the Wintergreen Champions.
Myrtle considered letting it go. But Aster was... Aster. And guilt is a kind of high-interest debt.
- Okay. But it'll be my way.
...
Every good plan starts with three things:
A stolen map; A lying uniform; And an invitation so fake it seemed too real.
Myrtle dressed as a High Representative of the Strategic Minerals League, with a gold scarf around her neck, a leather clipboard, and an accent somewhere between a diplomat and an expensive brothel owner. She demanded an inspection of the Salma XIII customs warehouse, a temple disguised as a warehouse, where the metric bar was hidden.
While she distracted the clergy and henchmen with long words and regulatory threats, Aster descended through the vaults as if slipping into a familiar past. She had tools, she had acid, and she was in a hurry.
The exchange was clean:
A fake bar, made of light steel and metallic varnish, for a real bar, marked with a cast seal.
Identical weight. Same shine. It just wouldn't hold up to a crash test, but by then, they hoped to be three ports and two countries ahead.
...
It worked. For seven hours.
On the eighth, Karv, the Sand Suns' contact, noticed something wrong. Not with the bar, but with the signature on the receipt. Murta, of course, had even forged the stamp. She'd forgotten Karv was illiterate. He would never have signed with his own hand.
When they realized the trick, the Suns didn't call the Vermillion. They called in knives.
...
Murta escaped. But not entirely.
They caught her between the back of the Cathedral and the greenhouse pipes. They shot her. She ran with a dislocated arm, half her coat burned off, and blood on her teeth.
Aster… Aster disappeared.
Maybe she ran. Maybe she stayed. Maybe she bought time with the only thing she had left: her life.
Murta only remembers hearing the screams.
Then, darkness.
...
Morning dawned opaque over Sa'Marhis, as if even the sun hesitated to cross the rumor-laden rooftops. Aster's body had not yet been found, which, for Myrtle, was worse than any confirmed mourning.
Safo entered the room unannounced. He wore the same look as always, but without the veneer of irony.
- You have a whole gang behind you. Why didn't you ask me for help with the robbery? - He asked.
Myrtle didn't answer. She just lit a cigarette with her good hand.
- I don't know.
- Myrtle, it seems we're screwed. Sworn to death.
She remained standing, arms crossed, as if any movement could undo her.
- I messed up. I'll clean it up. You don't have to...
- I do! I do, Myrtle. - He cut her off.
- It has to do with who we are. With who we appear to be. And what we let others think of us.
Safo tossed a bloody bundle onto the table. It was a handkerchief, with the burned seal of the rival Sand Suns Gang. Inside, a slender finger, with a familiar ring.
- This isn't just a threat. It's an invitation. And I'm not polite enough to refuse.
...
While the mafia grumbled and the streets burned with ill-spoken barbs, San'Epthis fumed about its industrial routine. There, the Rilken Minerals and Refining Consortium was preparing the most valuable shipment of the decade: 17 ingots of refined metrila, destined for a willing buyer from Gavia to the south.
Then he arrived.
An expensive fabric tie, a discreet ring, a smooth, flowing Gaviense accent.
- Engineer Romain Delacre, in the service of industrial progress.
With documents forged by Myrtle, a gold badge, and the charm of a minister on vacation, access to the refinery was secured. The show began.
Goose, as cargo master, commanded with grunts and harsh orders.
Rat, underground, altered labels and sabotaged seals with the precision of a blind watchmaker.
Kid, infiltrated the foundry with a "borrowed" badge, dosed compounds and tested purity with the eyes of a chemist and the hands of a magician.
Myrtle, in the silence of a cheap hotel, rewrote maps, stamped fake authorizations, and signed documents with hands that trembled only after midnight.
...
When loading was time, Kid walked between cranes like a conductor without a baton.
- Monsieur Hirscht, we have a problem.
The inspector, a fat, methodical man, hesitated before the "official" report presented. Kid spoke of sabotage, diplomacy, imminent war.
- If this cargo is delivered contaminated, it's not just your job that's at stake. It's the balance of provinces and trade alliances.
Hirscht paled.
Late that night, two trains departed.
One with the adulterated cargo, destination: Raschenburg, a city that only existed in Myrtle's documents.
The other, loaded with the real 17 ingots of pure metrile, traveled along abandoned tracks, reactivated by Rat weeks before. A ghost train.
In the last car, Monsieur Hirscht, sedated, tied up.
- If they want to pick him up. - Safo said at the edge of the harbor, looking at the leaky boat with the cargo and the Monsieur.
- He's in the same place where they took Aster.
The boat was sinking.
...
The Hospitalar Holy House was teeming with patients. Safo entered.
- What's the reason for your visit? - asked the attendant.
- Grotto Goblins.
The man paled and called for a security guard.
- Come with me, sir.
He was led through sterile corridors to a white room. Two chairs, backs to each other. He sat. He didn't turn around.
The other arrived silently. He sat behind.
- She was in a dead end. - Safo murmured, without irony, without a shield.
The voice behind him replied:
- You killed the manager of another gang... after stealing from them.
- They stole first. And they killed one of mine. Did you want me to keep smiling?
- I wish you'd come talk to us first! We could solve it for you.
The silence that followed was marble.
- You're a valuable asset, Safo. We'll solve your case. But you owe a debt.
The cargo is 80 ingots.
The price for peace between gangs and clearing your name is another 100.
You already owe us 20.
You have five months to pay.
The man stood up.
He left without saying goodbye.
The door opened.
The security guard looked at Sappho.
- You may leave, sir.
...
At the San'Epthis crematorium, a process was already beginning. The nameplate bore the corpse's name:
Iris "Aster" Rivers; Chemical Engineer, sister, friend, and confidant.
- So? - Myrtle sat staring at the ground.
Sappho twirled the coin between her fingers.
- We're going to need some big hits.
- How much?
He looked up at the overcast sky.
- Ones worth the whole world. Or at least... enough to make us forget where we came from.