Stars Rise

LXXXIX. Hora Decima

Guardia Chief Roman Valda arrived at the party as late as he could.

It had been a busy afternoon, lots of paper pushing, lots of paperwork. Busy work.

The chief investigated the murder of Exequi Fortunato. He talked to the suspect, Nadia Valerian, for three hours, even though he knew in the first minute she was innocent.

Then he apologized sincerely for wasting her time and released her.

One investigative team was leashed up in their offices all day filling out forms in triplicate regarding the attempted murder of Exequi Potestas, even though the Invernali branch of Constellation had the right to prosecute the offenders. There was paperwork too for the second assassination attempt, which resulted in three deaths, for which the boss would successfully claim self-defence.

Another team wrote up boss Fortunato's assassination, and another was deployed to Constellation's downtown office to inquire into a blackmail tip.

It would and had come to nothing except getting rid of a dozen guardia from the station.

The rest of the guardia were under orders to remain in the bullpit until they determined the cause of the sun rising and setting early, while Chief Valda shot down all of their ideas and rejected their warrant requests. They were all terrible theories anyway, and if his officers happened to solve the case with one of their longshots, they would be available to pursue other investigations.

Such as the boss of Invernali's illegal connection of an unlicensed magician to his star router.

About half an hour ago he ran out of meaningless tasks for every team all at the same time and couldn't fake actual work any longer. He returned to Potestas Tower to arrest Ilan Potestas. Personally, if slowly.

"I'll take two officers with me to make the arrest," Valda had ordered. He left out the word "only." Only two guardia. "Mars and Julius." He, Mars and Julius exited the elevator and stopped where they were to examine the partygoers in front of them as if it would take a minute to tell if one of them was the boss.

It wasn't as if they were wearing masks.

"Should we split up?" said Officer Regus Mars, a tall, loyal guy, possibly the only person on the force who would obey the chief out of actual loyalty. Julius was shorter, balder, quite old and a little dopey, and the chief brought him along because he was unintelligent and unambitious enough to follow orders, and not dumb enough to do anything stupid.

"No," said Chief Valda. If they split up they would find the boss quickly. "I'm going to need both of you to assist with the arrest. Security won't break any laws to help the old man, but the illegal magician, Julian Somnare, may resist arrest. He is to be taken into custody and faces execution without trial. He may fight back." That excuse had the added benefit of being true.

The chief saw a security guard nearby. A tiny round communication link in front of her mouth teleported her words somewhere else, likely to boss Potestas. The chief wasn't an expert lip reader, but he expected her to say something like, "Sir, the guardia are here," and her lips seemed to form those words. Unless Valda was only seeing what he wanted to see.

He led his two uniformed officers into the crowd, which swayed to either side to let them pass even though no one looked at the guardia.

Somehow the chief knew where the boss would be, although he couldn't see across the bar lounge to the other side. Over hundreds of heads, he could see the glass wall, and in his mind's eye he could see the boss in front of the window; he pictured the boss looking out it with his back to the chaos of music and dancing. That would be good, if the boss was all the way on the other end of the floor, past all these people — the chief could waste a few minutes getting to him. Potestas had plenty of time to get away.