The Autumn Republic

“That’s what the police think,” Fell said. “They think that the culprit waited until the offices were all clear, came in through the back, and quickly placed two black powder kegs, rolled the fuse out into the alley behind the building, lit it, and ran.”

Adamat took a deep breath of Fell’s pipe smoke and drummed his fingers on his stomach. “Do you know anything about a person not having a shadow?”

“What does that have to do with the investigation?”

“Nothing. Just curious.”

Fell considered this for a moment. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”

“A pity.” He let out a sigh and returned to the matter at hand. “I can make three easy assumptions of the assassin. Whoever did this was just hired muscle. They were hired by someone who knew Ricard well. And they didn’t want to kill everyone in the building.”

“How do you determine that?”

“One: The kinds of people who want to kill Ricard won’t dirty their own hands. Two: They dropped the first barrel under Ricard’s desk. Ricard loves his parties, but he likes to stay relaxed by slipping out about halfway through the night for a quick dalliance with whatever young lady happens to be handy.”

Fell gave a quick nod, the corners of her mouth turning up slightly at that. “But why the second barrel?” she asked. “The floors were reinforced because of the way Ricard had had this place built. They should have placed the barrel in the middle of the cellar, where the blast could have killed the people standing above it.”

“Why did Ricard build the cellar that way?”

“So he had ‘someplace evocative to take his guests to pick out wine,’ ” Fell said, slipping into a startlingly accurate impression of Ricard. She let the impression drop and Adamat could see the realization hit.

“He loves to show off his wine collection,” Adamat said. “For a party like the one last night, the assassin had a very good chance of catching Ricard either in his office or in the cellar. Those two spots would allow for the best chance of killing Ricard without killing everyone else in the building.”

SouSmith flipped his silver coin in the air and caught it coming back down. “Doesn’t help us.”

“It does help us,” Adamat disagreed, “if only a little. The person would have to know Ricard fairly well to know those two items. Or else they had an inside source who does. Regardless, it lets us narrow in on the few dozen people who knew Ricard best, rather than spend our time combing through the whole of Adopest.”

Something else was bothering Adamat, and he couldn’t quite place it. The explosion was… off in a way that he couldn’t grasp.

He left SouSmith and Fell near the cellar stairs and went back to Ricard’s office. Tracing the blast patterns on the floor and remnants of the wall, he worked his way carefully around the room and then into the hallway. Once he was satisfied with that, he borrowed a lantern from the policeman in the street and descended into the basement, where he traced out the blast pattern and examined the walls.

The whole process took about an hour. Fell sifted through the bits of papers remaining in Ricard’s office and SouSmith idly flipped his coin. When Adamat finished, he went to Ricard’s office and cleared his throat.

Fell looked up from the floor, her eyebrows raised.

“The blasts were far too big for the size of the barrels,” Adamat announced.

Fell scoffed. “You couldn’t possibly know that just by looking.”

Adamat tapped the side of his head. “Perfect memory. It makes eyeballing measurements much easier. I’ve seen my fair share of explosions and I don’t have to be a scientist in these matters to see that the destructions caused by the barrels downstairs and at Ricard’s desk were far more thorough than would have fit in those two places.”

“Could it have been a powder mage?”

“Perhaps. It would explain the other thing I realized.”

“Which was?”

“I thought the barrel had been placed under the basement stairs. But it wasn’t. It was right in the middle of the basement hall, where anyone could have stumbled over it.”

“That makes sense if they were trying to do this quickly.”

“It’s… too quick. Ricard has dozens of servants. Maybe fifty or sixty on the night of one of his parties. The chances of both his office and the basement being empty are incredibly slim.” He paused to examine the outside wall of the office and then went back to the basement stairs, noting the long hallway leading to the basement. He did some mental math, then returned to Fell and SouSmith. “Someone could have thrown the explosion. It would require two people working together, but that’s not out of the question.”

“A grenado,” SouSmith said.

“Like a grenado, yes. But much more powerful.”

“We’re going back to a powder mage,” Fell said. “One of Ricard’s enemies could be employing a foreign powder mage. I’ve heard of mercenary mages.”