The Detective Fourteen 

The day they finally meet.

He had dozens of skills that all centred on discovering the truth, on piercing through lies, and on taking disparate facts and piecing them together into an accurate history. 

He was good at his work.

He was standing in front of the murderer.

He... she? He wasn’t quite sure. The child was, at his estimation, between ten and twelve years old. A pre-teen. They came up to his mid-chest if he stood, and he wasn’t a particularly tall man. Red hair, freckles, probably weighed no more than seven stone wet. 

Their clothes were simple, but clean. A set of overalls, cotton, dyed a deep blue, a knit sweater made of an off-white wool. No obvious pulled stitches on any of the clothes. No obvious stains, or wear. Not a richer person’s clothes, but also not something the average worker would wear. Too clean and presentable.

Magic. They had magic, and it was tightly wound around them. He wouldn’t have noticed except that he was very much trained to. Unfortunately, that was as far as his abilities went when it came to such things. 

Then he felt at their feelings and their emotional state. 

Calm. Annoyed. This was someone caught in a mistake of their own choosing and who was frustrated by their own lack of attention. A craftsman whose slip of the hand had caused a minor mistake.

The child’s eyes twitched. They took in the rest of the room. The nobles, the mage in the corner, the officers stationed on the other side at a table. The flick was quick and professional, tagging weapons, areas where they could move if they had to. Their hand twitched. Reaching for a weapon? Magic readying for a rapid casting? 

Malory gestured at the seat across from him. “Sit?” he asked. 

“I’m not sure I want that,” they said. Their voice was softer than he expected. Feminine? They were a little young to tell, but he suspected that his hunch was right. That didn’t quite fit the overall profile, however. Women tended towards less directly violent crime, at least statistically. 

“Please? We should talk,” he said.

She hummed, then glanced at his table. He had a small booth to himself. Two benches, facing each other, with a table between them. There was a cup of tea there already, and yesterday’s paper. 

“Fine,” they said before sitting. 

The table came up to the child’s upper chest. They looked tiny behind it. Mallory sat across from them. Slowly, he reached to the side, towards his bag. “Did you want to order anything?” he asked.

“Sure,” they replied. Their eyes locked onto his, and if he had any doubts, they fled.

A child cornered like this, by a stranger, by a person in a position of authority, would be afraid, curious, cautious, or distracted. There was curiosity there, but that was it.

He had locked eyes with serial killers that set off fewer skills.

Mallory raised a hand, calling the waiter over. The sweaty man came, and Mallory ordered for them both. There were pastries available, and warm sweet tea, the kind that a noble child may enjoy. 

Then he returned his focus onto the child. “Why did you do it?” he asked.

“Do what?” 

“Let’s start from the beginning. Who was your first murder?”

The child blinked, paused, then hummed. The pause stretched. They touched their chin. “I committed my first premeditated murder at the age of seven,” they explained. “A police officer. Or someone that worked with them, in any case. He beat his dogs. He wasn’t well-loved. Actually, quite the opposite. A repugnant man. But he worked for the bullies, and so he was useful to the right people.”

“That’s young,” he said.

“A little, sure,” she said. “But old enough to know better. It was sloppy work.”

“You said it was premeditated.”

“Any deaths before that were accidental,” she, they, replied. They grinned, the smile toothy and lopsided and... cute? He felt the emotion rise up in him, then flushed it out.

“Don’t do that, please,” he said.

“Tsk.”

“What about afterwards? Ditz?”

“Hm? That was me, yes.” 

“Why?” he asked. 

Then he paused as the tea and pastries arrived. The child lit up, smiling at the waiter. They immediately took a bite and made a happy noise. “Thanks for this. I didn’t realize how hungry I was. Though I did have breakfast.”

They set the pastry down onto their plate, then looked up to him. “Why what?”

“Ditz. The other dungeon.”

“Do you know why my father died?” they asked.

“I do not.”

“Killed by the bullies. Just men doing their job. Probably didn’t lose any sleep over it. So I figure, the blame goes up one level, you know? If a thug is hired to kill someone, who is ultimately responsible?”

“The thug and the one who hired them,” he replied. “They both had the option not to.”

“See, I think I agree with that. But what if someone hired the person that hired the thug? What if it keeps going? And what if it’s an organization?” They shook their head, a frown marring their face. “It’s... we tend to ignore abstractions. A person does a bad thing? That’s their fault. But an organization? It’s still their fault, but somehow that fault isn’t shared evenly. It’s... distributed, diluted. I never liked that.”

“I’ve heard similar arguments before,” he said. “I don’t know if they excuse murder.”

“That’s the thing. It does.” They smiled, took a long sip of the tea, then set it down with a clink. “This is nice. Thank you.”

He cleared his throat, then moved his hand slightly to the side. His fingers managed to slip into his bag.

“The dungeons. Why?”

The child shrugged. “The city needed to be destroyed. No, sorry, that’s not quite true. The industry of the city needed to go. Since a significant portion of that industry relied on the dungeons, then it follows that removing one would demolish the other, right? A man must eat to live. Remove the food, and he dies, eventually. In this case, we wanted the man to stop hitting precious things with hammers. Seeing as how it is impossible to convince him otherwise, we removed his food, and watched him starve.”

A god was involved.

That was more of gut-reaction, but it felt right. The child’s speech was far above what a person of that age should manage. They had social skills, but also magic, and also likely some sort of combat skillset. Maybe more. 

Which god?

He ran through the possibilities before narrowing it down. A god of nature. It had to be. 

The city was... counter, in many ways, to natural inclinations. There were lesser natural gods that had faded from attention, and there had been incidents with their followers, but the last of those was decades ago, before this child was around.

Who remained?

No, he couldn’t guess at that. He would need to speak with a scholar or a priest. The knowledge alone was enough. It would narrow it down for him. 

“You... you do know how many will suffer from this.”

They nodded. “I do. I’ve considered it. It’s kept me up a few times. But just a few. Tell me, detective. When you arrest someone, do you ruin their lives? You sacrifice one person, no? But it’s to save others. One for many?”

“It’s not the same,” he replied.

They shrugged. Their hands moved under the table. “I guess not,” they said before leaning back. “I’m not doing this to save people. I’m just getting rid of the rot, as it were.”

He opened his bag, reached within, and found the cold certainty of steel. His standard-issue revolver. His hand closed around the handle.

“So, which god is it?” he asked.

They blinked. “Wow. Clever. Feronie.”

He nodded. A forbidden god. One often considered evil. That fit with what had happened, he supposed.

“And what’s the plan now? Will you come peacefully? Now that the damage is done?”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” they said.

“I didn’t think so.”

I hurt something inside of him, but he moved the gun around.

At the same time, there was a sting. A spell wrapped around his hand, his skin felt flush, warm, painful, like he’d dipped it in boiling water. The spasm was almost enough to make him drop the gun.

Almost.

He pulled the trigger.

It clicked.

The spell loosened and stopped, and Mallory finally brought the gun up and over the table. The shiny bare metal was covered in a patina of rust. A few small mushrooms were poking out between its few moving parts. His hand was covered in growing welts and blisters. It shook.

“Rust, rot. It’s surprising how strong it is against something like that. For all that the machines of industry are impressively destructive, they are no more resistant to entropy than anything else.” 

She rose, and he went to do the same, then a spasm hit him, and he started to cough.

The pastry. It had turned a little green on the edges. There was a growth on its side. A small, thumb-sized mushroom, gently spewing a line of spores into the air.

Mallory coughed again, even if he tried not to. He reached for a handkerchief.

“I’m sorry. A little. I don’t know if that’s worth anything but... well, yeah.”

“I...” he sucked in a breath. “I’ve been chasing you for a month,” he said.

“Really?” She blinked. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Mallory heard others starting to cough in the carriage. It downed out the sound of light footsteps walking away.

***

The End