Chapter 140 The Examiner’s Town

The van rattled out of the city at dawn, its headlights carving two beams through the thick fog. Nilo sat on the bench with his forehead against the window, silently leaking tears down onto the glass.

Pipa’s drone hovered above his knee wearing a tiny sea foam filter, a gift nobody requested.

Zinnia sat across from him with her notebook closed on her knee, watching the road disappear behind them. Since the manor gates she spoke only twice, each time to ask for the window to be opened.

"You haven’t said anything since your father’s, you can yell at me, I’m used to it," he said quietly.

"I am composing a speech for later, it is long, it has footnotes."

"Did your father ever explain why the Foxes rent rooms to tailors?" he asked.

She pressed her lips together, "I will ask him tomorrow, with footnotes, I will not accept a smile for an answer."

"I’ll bring a spoon, they’re very persuasive."

"That joke was not funny the first time... it is now a little funnier."

"Is it too late to turn the van around?" Jingles squeaked.

"Young man, retreat is for the unprepared, we are merely running late," Clangor replied.

Bruno stared at his gauntlets, turning the brass cuffs over and over, "My father stands before the Director this morning, I received a message, it said only that the ledger is a family matter."

"Families are matters, Steelhorn, the trick is not letting them become cages," Ganzo said without turning around.

Ganzo drove with one enormous hand on the wheel, the other clutching a folder and a half-eaten pastry. Whenever the road bent, the folder slid dangerously across the dashboard to threaten Pipa’s drone with paper cuts.

"Briefing time, children, Halloway, four hundred and twelve residents, famous for festival masks, the road went silent four days ago," he rumbled.

"Chat, a town of mask makers goes quiet, that is either a pottery strike or a horror film," Pipa said.

"The Corps sent an auditor to assess them, a routine field visit, he radioed once and then nothing."

"What did he say in the radio call?" Zinnia asked.

Ganzo cleared his throat, then read from the folder in a flat careful voice, "They are all very kind."

"That is not a distress signal, that is a compliment," Bruno said.

"It is when the man sending it is Examiner Brickle."

Nilo straightened so fast that he bumped his head on the van roof, scattering a few stray tears. A panel unfolded in the corner of his vision, dry as a ledger, listing the job in order.

[ MISSION BRIEF ]

[Town: Halloway]

[Rank: B]

[Pay: 40,000 marks]

[Missing: Examiner Brickle, 412 residents unreachable]

"Brickle, the man who stamped UNUSABLE across my forehead, I thought I was done with him," he said.

Ganzo glanced in the mirror, "The very same, the Director asked for you by name, or at least the first six letters of it."

Nilo wiped his eyes, "He finally remembers me, I’m touched."

Zinnia’s mouth twitched at one corner, "He does not, I suspect she merely wants you to rescue him out of spite."

A weathered sign at the roadside read Welcome to Halloway, Home of the Thousand Smiles, in cheerful paint. Beneath it someone scratched a second line with a nail, which Pipa’s little drone zoomed in to read.

"Chat, the scratch says they are all very kind, please stop being kind, I repeat, please stop," she whispered.

Halloway lay in a bowl of hills, four hundred cottages with doors painted red under a dishwater sky. On every doorstep stood a villager in a festival mask, hands folded, facing the road with perfect patience.

"Chat, count the doors with me, there is a person on every single one," Pipa breathed, her voice shrinking.

Ganzo parked the van beneath a lamp post and killed the engine, letting the silence settle over them. Four hundred masked faces turned toward the sound together, as though a single string ran through every neck.

"They moved at the exact same instant, nobody breathes that politely," she added, her voice cracking.

"Stay close, touch nothing, nobody eats whatever they offer, that is a Captain’s order wrapped around a very good pun."

"What is the pun?"

"I have not found it yet, Steelhorn, give me a minute."

He lowered his voice, rolling his massive shoulders until the hammer clinked, "Understand this much, children, I am holding back on purpose, if I swing Tusk in a town this small the map loses a page."

"Then we are the knives and you are the wall, Captain," Zinnia said.

"Exactly, Quartermaster, I will only be a wall for as long as nobody dies."

"The kids take the town hall, Bruno holds the road with Pipa, I climb that tower," he finished, tapping the folder against his knee.

"Chat, the Director only banned filming near the Collector, so this is legal, I checked three times," Pipa whispered.

Thin red threads trailed from each villager’s wrists, rising into the fog toward the tower above the square. Nilo noticed them only because a tear fell onto the road, lit one strand, and made it glow.

"Strings, they’re wearing strings," he whispered, "the Weeper’s tears light them up."

"The sorrow shows what was spun in grief, somebody wound these threads from something very sad," the Weeper murmured.

’A town on strings, a tailor with a drawer, a Master with moonsilver in his cuff. Everyone in this city is stitched to somebody.’

A small square man sat on the town hall steps, a clipboard on his knee, a gray mustache twitching. Red threads rose from his shoulders and wrists, yet he smiled like a man at a very good party.

"Examiner," Zinnia called softly, stepping out of the van, "we are Squad Nine, we have come to bring you home."

"Splendid, splendid, a candidate at last, and who might you be?" the man said, pencil poised.

Nilo walked up to the bottom step with his tears dripping onto the road, "You stamped me UNUSABLE once, sir, you probably don’t remember."

"Unusable, excellent, a fine name, a fine name indeed."

He wrote something on the clipboard with a trembling pencil, then looked up at Nilo with polite interest. A second later the interest vanished entirely, leaving him to ask the same question from the very beginning.

"Splendid, splendid, a candidate at last, and who might you be?"

"He forgot me in under five seconds, that’s a personal best even for him," he said, though his voice wobbled.

Zinnia leaned over the clipboard, then went very still, "He has written UNUSABLE next to your name four hundred times, in a column, the pencil is nearly through the paper."

"That’s the nicest thing he’s ever done, he remembered the one word," he said.

’He remembered the one word he wrote about me. That is the worst part.’

Nilo laid a gentle hand on the man’s shoulder, watching the smile slip for exactly one heartbeat.

"Run, the music is making them gentle... it is making me gentle... please do not let me be kind to you," Brickle whispered.

Then the threads tightened at his wrists, snapping the smile back into place like a trap.

The patter drained out of Nilo’s voice, leaving a level whisper that made Jingles stop mid pun.

"Whoever did this will answer for every line on that clipboard."

"The strings are not holding him, they are emptying him, look at how the thread eats his shadow," Calla’s voice drifted down from the rooftop above the town hall clock.

A violet cloak crouched on the nearest gutter, her pale mask tilted down toward the silent square below. Nilo glanced up, offering a tiny wave, while Zinnia exhaled through her nose like a kettle losing patience.

"Is the whole Night Viper Guild in this village, or only the one who steals my gloves?" she asked.

"Only the one, I am an independent consultant today."

"Whoever is pulling these threads is sitting in that tower, I counted four hundred and twelve lines, they all end up there."

Zilch’s voice slid out of the rack, flat as a blade, "Two heartbeats up there."

"Two Visages, then, not one, which makes this a B rank job with an A rank problem."

Ganzo grunted from the van, "Then we split the problem in half, one fist each."

Cadenza gasped from the bandolier, "Darling, a tower, a music box, four hundred marionettes, this is the most theatrical hostage situation I have ever witnessed."

Jingles whimpered from the bandolier, every bell trembling, "I know that tune... it is a lullaby, my mother sang it, no, I do not have a mother, why do I know it."

Pipa’s drone swung toward the crowd, its red light blinking like a nervous heartbeat in the fog. She lowered it quickly after one glance, whispering that no smile should ever look so well tuned.

"Bruno, wait for the Captain’s signal," Zinnia warned, ears twitching.

Bruno cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders, brass bracers clinking as he stepped toward the first row. A woman in a fox-eared festival mask raised both hands in welcome, her painted smile never once changing.

"Madam, I mean you no harm, I only wish to escort you from the square," he said, extending a palm.

"Welcome to Halloway, welcome, welcome, welcome, we are all very kind," the woman answered in a sweet flat voice.

Her fingers closed around his wrist with the grip of a vise, dragging his arm toward her mouth. Bruno yelped, twisting to pull free, only to feel the thread above her hand tugging him steadily closer.

"Steelhorn, hands to yourself, those strings pull both ways."

Zinnia caught his sleeve before he could reach the woman, mirror light flickering at her fingertips. She twisted her wrist, flashing reflected gold across the thread, which snapped with a tiny sigh.

Nilo lunged forward, shouting, "Catch her."

"I have her, I am merely very quick," Bruno wheezed, lowering the woman gently onto the doorstep.

"One thread cut, four hundred eleven to go, I dislike this arithmetic," Zinnia murmured.

The woman dropped like a puppet with the wires cut, folding into a sleeping heap in his arms. Every other villager turned their heads toward the sound, slowly, in a perfect unison that felt horribly rehearsed.

He held the sleeping woman close, "She is breathing, she is only tired, I will carry her to the van."

Behind the dancers the tower clock began to chime out of time, each note a half step wrong.

She drew her rapier, "We cannot cut four hundred strings by hand, not before they reach us."

He lifted his eyes to the tower, "Then we stop the music."

"Chat, if I scream, please enjoy the stream, I wanted you to have good memories," Pipa squeaked.

’Four hundred dancers, one lullaby. Stop the music and nobody has to get hurt.’

A music box tune drifted down from the tower, tinkling over the silent rooftops of the town. Four hundred arms rose in perfect unison, red threads snapping taut as the villagers began to dance.

"Nobody touch a single—" Ganzo shouted as the first row of masks lunged toward the van.