Officer Sudds' body had been located in a fetid sewer under the reservation; after of course an extensive search. Possessor Longform noted the state of decomposition of flesh as, "medium," and Possesor Manik agreed, nodding his oval brow with implicit correspondence. Possesor Longform wrote some scrawl in his spiral bound notebook and wiped the sweat off his brow with a silk embroidered, "Crest of the Wintermoon," face cloth. It was a peculiarly warm day in the old city, the Amnurian summer had not been kind to the teaming southern swamps; however the insects seemed to enjoy it. As they stood overlooking Sudds' bloating corpse, a swarm of tiny biting flies circled endlessly above their sunburnt bald heads.
"These things are just murder, Manik," Possessor Longform muttered at his colleague as he wiped the broken body on one of his accompanying solider's shirt sleeves, "I don't know how they deal with it."
"Er, what's murder sir? The bugs or the, er, murder," Possessor Manik said with his usual truthful lack of understanding pun, joke, mirth, of hyperbole.
"Eh, the murder of course Manik," he crouched over Sudds' blank expression, smelling the warm rank of the corpse melding with the waft of fresh bakeries churning out the daily rations.
"What makes a man kill an officer?" Manik held his hand over his heart in some mock salute. Possessor Longform stood, and pocketed the spiral notebook.
"What makes a man kill," he said. Manik gave him another one of his looks.
The intra Emperial street war between Possessors and Confession Men had been going on since, as any elderly resident of the Obelisk would gladly tell you, before anyone could rightly remember. Though they were technically corresponding divisions mustered to work in tandem for public safety and control, there was a heartfelt contempt between them which was borderline violent. In fact, it was past violent at times; during the last Revolutionary conflict, Possessors had broken the seal on Regulatory pact 861 and 12, by storming the Confession headquarters on level fifty and shooting (according to the Confession Men it was much more) four errant Confessors making moves for their rifles. Then again, two years ago Confessor Duggan had arrested and executed (personally) five members (Possessor Felix claimed twenty) of the Mid Level Possession Unit Squad. Recently the rivalry had lukewarmed into just that, a pleasant but bitter resentment that culminated mostly in misfiled paperwork and low levels of interoffice communication. To the public, well it wasn't quite clear what Confession Men and Possesors even did; though years of artful propaganda had taught most of the citizenry to have a healthy fear and respect for each. Since in reading this dossier you must have level five or higher security clearance, I can enumerate on their respective occupations to give you a better understanding of their relationship.
"There follows page after page of black lined, censored sentences," Fourth Teir Dimbley said turning over the official dossier to Confessor Storch. He gave it a puzzled look.
"So why am I looking at it?" Storch asked with a carnivorous purr. He flipped through the pages defiantly.
"Cause it mentions those two children you've been so furiously hunting," Storch sat up.
"What? Where?"
"It's a coded message sir. Obviously it's author was as shrewd tactician than we have ever seen. He wrote up in words (*a capital crime) the combined histories of two of the most notorious and corrupt groups in all the Obelisk; but it was more diversion than revenge."
"Diversion," Storch breathed, "Senator Boucham couldn't just go to his gallows peacefully." For a moment he relived the trial and lynching of the rebel senator; a trying time indeed.
"Not without a bit of a last kick at his old establishment enemies, that is," Dimbly handed over a second page, a single page, and the Confession Man eyed it over.
"Epoch?" He said, puzzled, "and Emert?" Dimbly let the brief moment of managerial bliss awash over him.
"Your lost boys."
No comments:
Post a Comment