Zenetra's hands clenched into fists. Of course she'd already figured out there was no file to collect. They were in the Cold Room, a place for unsolved cases. "I gathered Inspector Hatwig had nothing to do with this. Why did you bring me here?"
Tilde brushed away errant strands of blonde hair that dangled over her forehead. "To collect the blueprints for the Noire Estate."
Though it sounded like a ploy, Zenetra took a step closer. "Why would my blueprints be down here?"
Tilde spun on her heels to the wall of boxes and trailed her hands up and down in her search. "Noire, Noire. Where are you, Noire? Ah-ha! Here we go." She grabbed the black box labeled Noire, Xuxa and set it on a narrow ledge built into the unit. "I thought it odd that they were archived here. Housing blueprints are meant for family eyes only, you see. Then I figured they were used by the constables investigating your sister's disappearance and were not returned to your father because they had been filed incorrectly. It happens more than you'd think."
Zenetra grew hot despite the coolness of the basement. She had wanted to wait one more year before digging into her sister's disappearance. A star adorning her breast would have made her brave enough to begin the search anew, or so she convinced herself, but there was no avoiding what lay inside that box now. "How did you know they're for the Noire Estate?"
"They had your name on it! Found the blueprints crammed in with another case. In my second year of training, I was assigned to find a link between the drugs that killed Mr. Ashwell and the new ones circulating the streets—" Tilde cut herself off with a slight blush. "Eh, never mind. That's not the important bit. Anyway, after I found your blueprints, I filed them in the right place and then, if you can believe it, forgot all about them! I swear I meant to give them to Commissioner Fokle, but you know how training is—wickedly brutal!—and then I went to the countryside for fight training the following year. They cut you off from everyone and everything. You just finished, didn't you? Well, anyway, when I entered my fourth and final year I was stuck down here in the dungeons every single day. No lie! Every. Single. Day. I wasn't fond of tracking the Drug Kings but my field trainer liked my thorough research skills so he kept me on his team. I can spot patterns, you see. Patterns no one else can connect."
Tilde gave Zenetra a worn-out smile. "This is my first year as a legitimate constable, but it feels like I've been doing this for much longer. It's fine, I suppose. I want to get at least two years under my belt before I begin training for the Reaper test."
Zenetra's mind switched from the black box with her sister's name on it to the radio transmission report. The Reapers had been dispatched to find Scarlett Burn but returned empty-handed. "You want to be a Reaper?"
A wistful expression came over Tilde's face. "I want to be a Reaper more than anything. My mother always read me a story right before bed. You know, the ones for children? One night my father did it instead. His choice of book was a biography of Tiva Bilberry."
"Ah." Zenetra was pleased to note that her voice had gone back to being more cordial. "I take it she became your hero after that?"
Tilde nodded vigorously. "Everything Tiva Bilberry contributed to the world...well, no one's been able to do anything remotely similar since."
"She was an amazing woman." Zenetra cautiously took another step closer. With no body and no burial, the black box bearing her sister's name was as close to a coffin she had to mark her sister's existence.
"I sure think so," said Tilde. "But my family...they've never liked the idea of me becoming a Reaper."
Zenetra could not tear her eyes from the box, but the ringing in her ears was nearly gone and her body had returned to its normal temperature. The top of her sister's box had accumulated eight years' worth of dust. Distractedly, she asked, "But your family was okay with you joining the CF instead?"
"No," replied Tilde, more downcast than before. "It was all over the papers, our disagreements. Someone tipped them off that I had a girlfriend, too. Not that me having a girlfriend matters here in the UDF. Can you believe relationships like Valentina's and mine are still being debated in the other nations? Strange that people think it's the body that matters instead of the soul. I'm glad to be a Democrite. UDF is the most advanced of the Five Nations."
"In certain respects."
Their nation was once a place of fear and death to all those with magic. Tilde was right, though. The United Democratic Federation was the fastest growing nation and far more open-minded than the Northern Realm, the Stone Republic, and in some cases, even more forward-thinking than the Kingdom of Marzhan.
Tilde carried on in her brusque manner. "My mother told me to stop my foolishness, as she called it, but my father gave me his approval on the condition I come back to work for the family company. I think he felt guilty he was the one who put those foolish notions in my head."
Zenetra couldn't imagine having an argument with her father. He was the only family she had left. She doted on him as much as he doted on her. "Have you smoothed things over with them?"
"Not yet. I have a stack of letters at my place that I've never sent." Tilde sighed. "It helps me to write them. I just don't think it would do any good presently."
Though Zenetra was genuinely interested in Tilde's story, she knew she was deliberately delaying opening the box by asking more questions. "What does your girlfriend think about that?"
For her part, Tilde did not seem to mind Zenetra's inquisitiveness into her personal life. "I started writing letters to her first. We can't discuss anything with civilians, as you know. Not about work or cases or other constables. Valentina supported me when I chose to join the CF and I thought to myself, "How is Valentina supposed to know who I am if I can't tell her what I do?" So I bought a journal and every day of training, I wrote a passage in it. The journal strengthened our relationship. I'm lucky to have her." Tilde rubbed her fingers together in the universal sign for wealth. "She's not from our kind of background and sometimes I think she feels herself inferior to me, but there's no one else I'd rather be with."
Zenetra caught the admission of Tilde coming from a rich family and then all thoughts of nefarious intentions vanished. "You—Oh! Thorpe as in Thorpe Architecture!"
Tilde's eyes were bright even in the gloomy basement. "That's us! All of the manors on your estate were designed and built by my grandfather, including the mansion."
"So you know a great deal about blueprints?"
"I know a thing or two about them, yeah." Tilde reached forward and placed a hand over the box. "Don't worry. I didn't look at your estate's secrets. I may be practically disowned by my family, but trust and integrity still run deep in my veins."
Zenetra blinked several times. "What estate secrets?"
"Every structure built by Thorpe Architecture has at least one great secret. Your mansion probably has hidden rooms, underground passageways, blocked off stairwells—" Tilde regarded Zenetra with confusion. "Has your father never mentioned any of them?"
"No." Zenetra's answer sounded defensive to her own ears. She quickly followed it up with, "but I never asked."
"Well, your father probably thought you were too young before, and then you went and joined the CF." Tilde flicked off the cover of the box. "Once you have the blueprints, you'll know everything."
Despite her aversion to seeing the contents of her sister's cold case, Zenetra's gaze flew to the box. Resting within was an armful of smooth, wooden tubes. Scrolls of blueprints were tucked inside. Zenetra uncorked one and shucked out the rolled paper. The blueprint was for a small cottage on Noire Lane, with tiny lines and numbers filling the page. A list of materials and their cost were on their own separate sheet.
"See," said Tilde, pointing at the design of a room. "This white squiggle means it's a movable wall. Most people hide those behind a bookcase or something. A place no one would suspect to hide a secret."
Zenetra counted at least three white and wavy lines. "What do people use these for?"
"Hiding things they don't want their guests or their servants to know about. Hiding themselves in case there is a robbery." Tilde took the blueprint, rolled it up as tightly as she could, and stuffed it back inside its tube. "Some people just enjoy having secrets."
"Does Thorpe Manor have them?"
Tilde gathered all the tubes from inside the box and set them on the narrow ledge. "Yeah, my family home has a few. Found one inside the fireplace when I was playing hide and seek with my brother. That was interesting."
Zenetra's mind was in a tizzy. As always, it circled back to her sister. "Maybe someone knew about a secret passageway and grabbed Xuxa?"
"I hate to break it to you, but if these blueprints are in CF archives, it's more than likely your father handed them over for the investigation. The constables would have had to search everywhere." Tilde pulled out a file from the bottom of the box. "Here. Check the notes."
A thick file, no less than twenty pages, opened to reveal a black and white caption of a nineteen-year-old Xuxa Noire, who was a girl forever held in time at that age. Xuxa had the same black hair and milk-white complexion that Zenetra had, even in the dull light of the caption, but her intense gray eyes were as haunting as the ghost of her memory. It was not lost on Zenetra that she was now as old as her sister at the time of her disappearance.
"Your sister didn't eat much, did she?"
Zenetra rubbed her finger over the image of her sister's prominent cheekbones. "From what I remember, Xuxa ate a lot. Lunch and dinner were always four-course meals when she was around." Setting aside the caption, she turned her attention to the pages scrawled with black ink. Though the handwriting was sharp and narrow set, she soon deciphered the writer's style and read more easily.
After several silent minutes, Tilde asked, "Anything?"
Zenetra scanned the reports, becoming overwhelmed the more she read. There was a long list of constables and volunteers who searched the grounds the night Xuxa disappeared, compiled by a name that caught her by surprise. "Inspector Hatwig led the investigation."
Tilde glanced at the file. "Yeah, I know."
"You read this?"
"It was in the papers at the time," said Tilde. "Dad and I read it together every morning before he went off to work. The public practically persecuted Inspector Hatwig when she failed to find any solid leads. It wasn't just her, though. Look who was overseeing the whole investigation."
Zenetra already knew whose name would be there. The commissioner had been the one to tell her that they couldn't find Xuxa. Still, when she read Adelric Fokle's report, she felt slightly vilified.
In scribbled handwriting, Commissioner Fokle had written a list of possible suspects. There was her father, Charlie Tedman, Mivan Murkwood, Enzo Sprague—who was Xuxa's personal assistant at the time—and then there, under the names of those adult men, was her own.
Zenetra Noire – Motive; Jealousy?
"He never mentioned that," Zenetra mumbled. She sped through through the rest of the file, which verified the kind of in-depth investigation the CF was known for, and threw the folder back into the box. Over the years of cadet training, she had feared a skeleton file. "There's nothing here that mentions they looked in any secret passageway."
Tilde shrugged. "Maybe these blueprints were here before your sister went missing? Maybe they brought it in for the investigation into your mother's murder?"
A black box labeled Noire, Xareen lay untouched and dusty next to the empty space where her sister's cold case files were kept.
"Mamma was killed in the shipyard," Zenetra said in a voice as light as a feather. Though it was easier for her to talk about her mother's death because she had been a girl of three when it happened, she spoke with as much respect as she did when talking of Xuxa. "Why would the CF need housing blueprints for that?"
Tilde held up her hands. "I honestly don't know."
Strumming her fingers over the edges of the box, Zenetra's mind spun around the lack of information. "This is all a bit fishy."
"It's just a rumor, mind you," began Tilde, "but I heard that for famous people, the CF creates false files and hides the real ones."
"Why would they do that?"
"Because the Hive has spies in the force! Anyone slippery enough can get down here and snoop around like we just did. If someone else had gotten a hold of these blueprints, your estate's secrets would be compromised. They may already be compromised."
"I suppose you're right." Zenetra thought of the reporters hounding her for an interview. It was frightening to consider that someone could be lurking in a secret passageway in her house, spying on her and her father. "I'll have to speak with Commissioner Fokle about this later."
"Oh, good. He might not let you join the search and rescue if he thinks your mind is on another case."
Zenetra placed the lid back on the box, gathered the skinny tubes lying on the tabletop, and shoved them into the deep inner pockets of her winter jacket. "Thanks for this."
"We're a team now." Tilde returned the box to its rightful place before rubbing her hands free of dust. "Our lives are in each other's hands when we set off on our assignment. We must trust each other."
"Even Field Trainer Onnan?"
Tilde's face pinched. "Eh—maybe not him. He's rotting from the inside out."
"A bit."
"He spat on your face! I saw it in the dustbin."
Zenetra buttoned her jacket. Garryk Onnan was the least of her problems. "Hardly. He spat on a caption of me."
"It was still your face."
They were nearly at the vault door where Constable Avery awaited them when Tilde stopped. "Listen. Tomorrow is going to be intense. Onnan tests Inspector Hatwig's patience at every opportunity. Try to stay out of their way. Hatwig can handle herself."
Zenetra remembered Commissioner Fokle's similar warning. "Duly noted. All that really matters is finding Scarlett Burn and bringing her back."
Tilde shoved her hands in her coat pockets and scuffed her heels against the floor as she walked. "Do you really think she's still alive?"
"Windriders are good vessels," Zenetra said with genuine honesty. "Sturdy. If Scarlett didn't get knocked into the Triad, she could very well be alive."
"But if Scalawag lost its readerboard like you think Ms. Burn was trying to say, then it's possible she crashed."
"Windriders are designed to stay afloat as long as the wings are on," Zenetra reasoned. Much like the roamers Noire Transport produced, airships made in the Gryphons Isles were built to last. "It's possible Scarlett's floating in the middle of the Ghost Sea waiting for someone to come rescue her."
There was silence, and then Tilde said, "You're very optimistic about finding her alive."
Zenetra crossed her arms over her chest. The tubes of blueprints pressed against her ribs, reminding her of their presence. "I'm just being realistic. Scarlett Burn is an experienced flyer. She has a great airship. She was smart enough to know something was wrong and that she was stuck in some kind of magnetic zone."
"I hope we find her." Tilde pulled a lever and the lock of the door to the archival department released. "I would hate to see her name on a box in the Cold Room."
***************
Preview for next chapter:
Along the way home, a strange flash of red raises Zenetra's defenses. Lucky for her that she just finished fight training.
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