004
The Name-SeekerYoorae started the next day with the agonising realisation that she really needed to be in four places at once. There were, of course, the courts, though she had been hearing a lot of cases recently and on the third day of the week every fortnight she only acted as Magistrata until lunch time — an arrangement she was ever grateful to Kyungsoo for. It never stopped the clerks from trying to get her to work the full day, and Kyungsoo always had to spend a couple of hours in the morning arguing with them about it. Kyungsoo always won.
The second was down by the docks, at the prison where the murder had taken place. Yoorae wanted to get to the bottom of why the Nuisance had been killed. What information had he had that made somebody want to silence him forever?
Then there was the man in the tavern whose historian friend had been abducted. If he was correct about what the abductors had been wearing, it was the first time in three or four years that there was actual concrete evidence of the crew of the Pirate Prince making landfall. There were rumours of sightings every couple of months, but it was rare for something to be as certain as this.
The final place was with the Name-Seekers. They weren’t due to be meeting as a group again for a few days yet, but Yoorae felt that what she’d learnt over the past day was too important to wait that long. It was also possible that Junmyeon or the other professors might know the historian who had been abducted (she hoped it wasn’t one of the historians that she knew), and that that might give them a clue as to what the Pirate Prince was after. After all, he was only likely to abduct somebody for information — or possibly a ransom.
“Don’t forget Yongguk’s got some street kids for you to deal with this afternoon,” Kyungsoo reminded her as she took her last opportunity to shiver and stick her hands between her thighs for warmth before people came in for the first trial. Yoorae nodded distractedly, wondering if she could get away with drawing up a little heat with her sigil magic. Her intentions must have been clear on her face, because Kyungsoo confiscated her stylus from her pocket before she could reach for it.
“No,” he said. “Magistrata time.”
“But Kyungsoo,” she protested childishly, “I don’t like being a magistrata.”
Kyungsoo huffed incredulously. She pouted at him, but he didn’t relent.
By the time Yoorae was finished for the day, the courtroom was so cold that her breath was condensing on the air. She was quick to pull out her cloak and gloves from where she’d stashed them under her chair and to wrap herself up in them while Kyungsoo checked that all the documents she’d reviewed were in order and tucked them away into a satchel.
“Right, let’s go find Yongguk,” Kyungsoo said once he was done, raising his head.
They set off into the wintry streets. The centre of town was busy since it was market day, and Kyungsoo had to pull Yoorae away from one or two stalls with interesting products as they passed through the area on their way to the city watch administration buildings. Yongguk was already waiting for them, wrapped up in warm furs. He walked with them down into the north side of the city, which was much poorer than the rest and backed onto a huge, towering cliff face, on top of which sat the ruins of the old royal palace. Kyungsoo took the opportunity to fill him in on everything they’d learnt the previous night as they went. Yongguk looked worried.
“I know the men who’ve been patrolling the docks this week,” he said. “None of them have reported any strange ships and as far as I’m aware there have been no sightings of it anywhere around the island. How did the Pirate Prince’s crew even get on land? Unless they’re masquerading as an officially registered ship and crew, we would have caught them.”
Kyungsoo turned to Yoorae. Clearly the only answers he could think of involved magic. Yoorae shook her head, but something uncomfortable was beginning to niggle at the back of her mind, almost like a memory she couldn’t quite reach.
“Kidnapping, though,” Yongguk went on. “It’s the second case I know of in the past few months. Didn’t you say that the friend of the Nuisance who was murdered was kidnapped at the new moon? The night before last was the new moon, wasn’t it? When was the historian kidnapped?”
“Either last night or the night before,” said Kyungsoo. “Why? Do you think the two are related?”
Yongguk shrugged. “The Nuisance was screaming at the sea to give his friend back, wasn’t he? It’s a possibility, that’s all I’m saying.” He stopped and pulled out a key. Yoorae could sense sigil magic on it.
They had reached a run-down building in a largely uninhabited area. Yongguk checked up and down the street quickly before opening the door and ushering them inside. The place was an old house in bad need of repair, but still furnished and still obviously lived in, from the clothes on the floor and the rumpled cushions on a couch not tha
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