Tryal's Curse 3.1

Chapter Three~
Evian Threshold

~*~

It was past midnight in Syti and the Local Relations Office was silent. It had closed at dusk, for outsiders, but for the night-workers it had only been an hour since they retreated to their beds. The shutters were closed. The doors were bolted and covered with engarvments to keep people out.

Someone rapped at the door.

It did not look like a very special place, the Office, being both shabby and old. Somehow, it carried the appearance of a building that has been wedged in the wrong place, at the wrong time. It was a sore on clear skin. A brick among tiles of marble. It was a weird place, that was what the shoppers said, with their heels clacking against the cobblestones and their noses stuck in their Orbs as they sent messages to who-knows-where-and-why.

However, it is also to be said that, being a weird place, the Local Relations Office reserved the right to attract attention. To its right was a Post Office with gleaming windows and to its left, a Print Shop. The Office’s wooden sign, which consisted of the letters ‘LRO’, swung lightly in the wind. It creaked. The rest of the building did, too.

The someone rapped at the door a little harder.

A cold wind passed by, its jowls quivering, obviously in a hurry to get from someplace here to someplace there (and to other places in between). It did not notice the ancient building—for it was more than five hundred years old, if that has not yet been mentioned—or the way it seemed to sigh as the wind passed. The pot plants lining the pavement sighed as well. Their leaves whispered sekrets.

Despite the creaking, and the sighing, and the whispering, Evian Threshold felt it was a quiet night. He tossed and turned in his bed, in the apartment above the Office, blankets twisted around his legs. It was hot. He was in the middle of a dream. He did not get up, but dozed, dimly aware of yelling and the kicking of heavy boots against wood.

Yes, Evian’s subconscious thought placidly. It was as quiet as it could be in a sprawling city filled with strangers, as quiet as it could be when the nearest bar was seven hundred footsteps down the street.

Let it be established once again, for posterity.

It was a quiet night. 

Until the someone ceased rapping and ‘BANG!’ed at the door of the Local Relations Office with all the tenacity of a rogue rent. It was an exceptionally rude someone, thought Evian, still half-asleep. An exceptionally loud someone. He pressed a pillow over his ears and held tight onto his dream, his subconscious muttering and irritated.

Evian did not know this, but this someone was Inspektor Luin Sheal. He was, in addition to being rude and loud, also exceptionally bald. He held a clipboard to his chest and was flanked by seven odder-looking men, all dressed like the night in wild flight. Inspektor Luin’s eyes were protuberant and searching; a vein pulsed in his temple as he rat-tat-tatted on the door.

‘Localis Relations, open up the door! I am Inspektor Luin and I have with me the Yoral filer—I mean, beg your pardon’—the protuberant eyed man threw an apologetic glance at his companions—‘the Royal Rifle Crew, as sent by King Trent to search all suspect areas in Adreitus. Open up!’ And he rat-tat-tatted a little harder. When the lights inside the Office did not turn on, he kicked the door with a fancy-booted toe. He yelled again. He cursed and threw a tantrum.

Then, he noticed the bell. He wondered why he had not seen it before and, somewhat sheepishly, he pressed it.

The door began to vibrate strangely. Luin backtracked, clipboard digging into his chest. The edges of the door glowed—it was like strange Ixister magic, Luin thought, and his mouth hardened into a thin line. Almost immediately, the thin line gaped open, as music blared from the bell and it began to sing. It sounded like this: 

‘There is a STRANGER at the door,
so come, so come and see!
There is a STRANGER at the door, you dwellers,
so open the door—so open the DOOR!’ 

Luin hissed; his clipboard fell to the ground; his fingers dug into his ears. In the apartment above the Office, Evian Threshold hissed, too. Black cracks appeared along the corners of his dream-world. He pulled the covers over his head and grunted. ‘Nyeeeh…’

If there was something that irritated Evian Threshold more than paperwork, it was an interrupted dream.

The doorbell continued to sing. Evian huffed and sat up. ‘I’m up! Quieten!’ he said. The doorbell ceased its singing and Evian slumped in bed again, rubbing at his eyes with the corner of his downy pillow. His eyes fluttered shut again, and as they did, Luin chose to deepen the dent in the front door with his boot again.

BANG!

‘Up! Up—I’m up!’ Evian cried. He stumbled out of bed and looked around for his overcoat. It was dark in the room. Very dark, so that the furniture and the shadows—everything—looked like hulking, distorted logs. Evian felt his way around, carefully, making sure not to stumble over the uneven flooring. His hand curved around a chair’s back and … something soft draped over it.

Coat, his sense of touch informed him stoutly. He picked it up and threw it around his shoulders, not even bothering to button it up. The coat was important to him. The coat was the one item he had to have on him if the visitors were the people whose arrival he was dreading. Raiders. Inspektors. Evian’s imagination went wild. He took in a deep breath and shook his head. Not raiders or inspektors, he thought. Customers. They must be customers.

‘Don’t see why Simon couldn’t have opened the door,’ he muttered, inching towards the door as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He walked down the passage and towards the stairs.

At the top of the stairs, he paused. This pause was an extremely important pause, because, unbeknownst to Evian, his sloth-like movements were making the Inspektor—and his seven companions—rather impatient. The Inspektor kicked the door again and swore. Evian winced.

It wasn’t odd to have customers coming at this time of night, because complaining was a job unrestrained by the natural order of night and day. But, Evian admitted to himself, it was rare. And after the raids down at the East End of Syti, he had been especially paranoid during his night shifts. He quickly felt in his pockets for what he had hidden there. The heavy, round object met his searching fingers and he relaxed, if only slightly. He had to check first before he let them in—whoever they were, wherever they came from. They could be Inspektors and they could take objects of a potentially hazardous nature from him.

Evian tapped at his chin, thinking, eyes darting downstairs every now and then. Pale blue light flooded the lower level—the workplace; it was the light the inactive Orbs gave off, when the Complaint Network was dozing. His brow furrowed. 

‘Simon,’ he whispered, peeking over the banister. ‘Simon.’  His coworker, stationed downstairs, didn’t reply. Evian growled in his throat. He was probably asleep. The idiot. He could probably sleep through an earthquake, Evian thought grumpily, and then wake up and demand to know why everything had shifted place.

Evian shifted uneasily. Door or no? he thought. No or door?

This was frustrating.

The doorbell rang again. Evian made a strangled noise at the back of his throat. Mind made up, he stalked back to his room.

Once back in the familiar darkness, he walked towards the crack of light issuing from the space between the shutters. Throwing the window open, he shivered as a blast of cold air smacked him in the face. He blinked furiously, then stuck his head outside to see who had rung the bell.

He was met by a sight that turned his feet to ice. His knees clattered together. Eight faces had looked up when he had opened the window, seven faces gaunt and grim, and one face that made him feel both queasy and like he wanted to laugh. The face that made Evian queasy was currently contorted in rage. It was, however, not the face, but the gleaming pate atop his head that caught Evian’s attention. He had never really seen a bald head that shiny before. He gaped at it for a moment before shutting his mouth, hoping he just looked more surprised than shocked.

Inspektor Luin from his Highness’ High Commission of Searching and Identifying Suspicious Objects, glared up at him.

Evian blinked. Twice.