Hidden Hieroglyph lived in the Platinum Complex, a small village of expensive houses a few miles to the southwest of the Palace. This circular enclave was composed of some two dozen white and gold houses placed in an artful asymmetry, with a winding cobbled road leading in and out of the gated community.
When Daring and Phillip landed in front of house number twelve, a light red Neighzer Manehattan was parked in the street just in front of the cottage; as they trotted past, they could faintly hear a radio transmission from the radio set concealed between the front seats. Striding up to the door, Daring rapped loudly at it.
A few moments later, the door opened wide and Night Light poked his head out. “Oh, hello!” he chirped, standing back to let them in. “Detective Deck said you’d be by soon.”
“What’re you doing here?” Daring asked as they entered, trotting past a bare coat rack.
“Velvet knows Hieroglyph: he’s helped her with her book research in the past, and he and I have compared astronomical works in the past,” Night Light explained as they entered the sitting room. “We just came here for a talk after he left for home; Velvet had a few things she wanted to check up on.”
The living room was surprisingly sparse. There was a low coffee table with a few old but still springy sofas and cushions surrounding it, a television with a set of rabbit ears that waved faintly in the air, and a table in the corner with a shrine to the alicorns composed a bowl of incense, a set of framed portraits of the six alicorns, and a well-worn Apocrypha’s Testimony.
Hidden was sitting on one of the blue cushions, his eyes focused on an open book that he held in his magic. Stacked Deck was sitting on the pale gold sofa, with Velvet perched on the light purple cushion. Velvet smiled and waved enthusiastically as the detectives entered.
“I was wondering where you were,” Deck nodded. He glanced down at his notebook. “So, Hieroglyph, where were you on the night of the fourteenth?”
“Four days ago?” Hieroglyph asked, hardly glancing up from his book on ancient Hayrabian. “I worked at the Palace until four o’clock, and then I went home to finish repairing a book from the Archives.”
“I don’t suppose anypony could verify that for you,” Deck commented.
“No, but I do not feel I need to justify myself for that,” Hieroglyph said coolly.
“Have you ever been to the Leaky Goblet?” Phillip asked, earning a sidelong look from Deck.
“No,” Hidden sniffed. “I have never been down that way.”
“I have!” Velvet chirped. “That’s the bar on Kindness Street. They serve this great pineapple twister.”
Deck frowned for a moment, then gave Daring a meaningful look. “Detective Do, I think it’d be best if Finder and I questioned Hieroglyph myself for a bit. Do you think you and the visitors here could wait in the study?”
Hieroglyph rolled his eyes. “If they must.”
“Oh, do you still have Pyramids of Southern Equestria?” Velvet asked. “I want to read that again!”
“Certainly,” Hidden nodded pleasantly. “You’ll find it on the shelf there, but please don’t touch anything on my work table.”
“Great!” Velvet chirped, standing up. “Study’s down this way.”
Phillip sat down on the sofa next to Deck and promptly started whispering into his ear. Velvet led Night and Daring down a hallway and into a smaller side room.
In stark contrast to the living room, the study was about full to bursting, even with an impressive amount of space. The two enormous bookshelves creaked and groaned beneath the weight of the many books that had been crammed into them; a section of the carpet in the center had been removed with some kind of basic magic circle etched into the hardwood floor in iron bands. The table in the back was covered in papers, all of them neatly stacked atop the workplace. A set of tools for rebinding and repairing books, including vice grips, thread and needles, bottles of ink, and brushes for glue. A phone sat on the corner of the desk.
“Ah, here it is,” Velvet said, plucking a thick book that featured a step pyramid on the cover from the shelf and opening it up to the middle of the book.
“So, what exactly brought you here?” Night Light asked Daring, who had begun looking around the study, slowly walking in a small circle as her eyes panned over the walls from floor to knees, then knees to eyes, and eyes to ceiling.
“A suspicion,” Daring replied, looking over the desk. Something here was nagging at her mind. She closely studied the carefully organized desk, glancing over the stacks of transcriptions and notes that covered the table except for an empty space right in the front.
“A suspicion?” Night Light asked, his eyes widening slightly. “You don’t think Hidden was involved in this theft?”
“You know I can’t say anything,” Daring replied, looking over the desk again. It finally occurred to her what her subconscious was trying to tell her: the desk was perfectly organized, a testament of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
And yet, there were some papers laying on the floor. Daring bent down to study one of the notes, written in a scrawling hornwriting.
“Must find way to control summoners: they keep calling to me from the other side, singing through the ink. If they ca”
A pen lay on the floor next to the note. A few more notes led in a trail towards the right wall, next to the shelf. He was interrupted and tried to stuff his notes away, Daring thought, following the trail to the wall. Daring squinted at the dark redwood panel as if trying to convince the walls to speak their secrets.
“What is it?” Night Light asked as Daring started tapping the wall.
“Aha!” Daring declared, drawing a hoof along a thin square line faintly etched into the wall, just barely visible unless viewed from the proper angle.
“A secret cabinet!” Velvet gasped, leaning in closer to the wall. She turned back to the bookshelf and started tugging books off them. “I bet that there’s a secret switch in these books here!”
“Velvet, calm down,” Night Light said, scooping up the books in his magic and carefully placing them back in the same places on the shelf. “We shouldn’t be messing with Hidden’s stuff. And besides, you don’t even know how to open that. A bookshelf switch is like something from—”
“My books?” Velvet asked with a quirked eyebrow.
“Well...yes,” Night Light admitted. “But you can’t really think that—”
“Hey, Velvet,” Daring said, pointing at a single large book on the shelf behind the unicorn with History of Steganography stamped onto the spine in black letters. “Could you hand me that one?”
“Sure,” Velvet said, plucking at the book.
But instead of the book coming off of the shelf, there was a click as the hidden lever-activated and the panel in the wall cracked open.
“Oopsie,” Daring said with a very insincere smile as Velvet stared, starstruck.
“How did you—?” Night Light gasped.
“Take another look at that book,” Daring pointed. “It looks like leather, but if you take another look at the pages…”
“Hey, it’s wood,” Velvet pointed out, tapping the false bundle of pages.
“Daring, we shouldn’t open that panel,” Night Light started to protest. “It’s priv—”
“Double oopsie,” Daring smirked, pulling the panel open with a wing to reveal an iron safe with a combination lock. “Shucks, Velvet, it sure was a big coincidence, you pulling that book. It’s lucky that Constitutional rights protect from police officials, which we aren’t, and not civilians, which we are.” Both mares smirked and winked at each other.
Night Light stared, mouth agape for several moments, then managed to ask, “Is this how you normally operate?”
“Yup,” Daring smirked.
“Wow,” Velvet said.
“So the Kyaltratek has been in the Archives since before you started as the curator?” Deck asked.
“Yes,” Hieroglyph answered, leaning forward in his seat to indicate his interest in the subject change. “That is one of the few surviving original copies: other versions translated into various languages can be found in various markets—some legitimate, some not—across the world. Of course, if one is interested in legitimate study, only the original will do.”
“And what would one need the Kyaltratek for?” Deck asked. “From everything I’ve been told, there’s all kinds of dark magic stuff in there.”
“It’s true that there are many spells in the Great Work that some consider to be...unnatural,” Hieroglyph admitted. “But it’s also an in-depth guide to more difficult magical theories that still have uses today, and descriptions of rare animals and beings that most regard as mere myth.”
“Some would say that the Kyaltratek is dangerous,” Deck said.
“Ponies are known to say foolish things,” Hieroglyph snorted. “The Great Work has been persecuted and hunted for years by blind, fearful ponies, on the claim that it is a danger. But all knowledge is dangerous in the wrong hooves.”
Deck let out a thoughtful hum, looking down at his notes.
“This is a new frame,” Phillip observed from behind Hidden, picking up the framed portrait of Speranza, the Founder of the Crystal Empire, from the alicorn shrine. The frame for the smiling crystal blue alicorn was composed of fine silver, many threads joining together into intricate bands that were decorated with sapphire hearts. “Where’d you get it from?”
“Sterling Eye,” Hidden answered, turning to face him. “It’s a small craft shop in Canterlot. I bought it a few days ago on a whim, wandering into their shop.”
“See, that’s interesting,” Phillip said, picking up the frame to reveal the logo on the bottom: a single silver eye with the words Sterling Silver set around its circumference in tiny letters. “Because Sterling Eye is on Kindness Street, and you said you’d never been down there.”
Hidden Hieroglyph suddenly seemed to turn into a statue, his eyes widening and his breath seeming to halt in his chest.
“Where’s your cloak, Hidden?” Deck asked, swooping in like a predator pouncing upon a startled and weakened animal.
“My...what?” Hidden sputtered, swaying as though physically struck, trying to keep his balance on the rolling ship that he suddenly found himself upon.
“The hooded cloak that you had earlier,” Deck pressed. “The one that you wore four days ago when you went down to that phone booth on Kindness and Hope and called Crescent Lock, having picked him out as your lackey for the theft. The one that you got coal-tar creosote on, just like your horseshoes. The one that you probably threw out when you realized that it had trace evidence on it that could be used to tie you to the phone booth.”
Hidden looked back and forth between the two detectives, then his eyes widened even more when Daring, Velvet and Night Light entered.
“Hidden, tell me it’s not true,” Night Light said.
“So, you got two choices,” Daring growled. “You can open that safe for us now, or we can get a warrant and break it open.”
“This is...this…” Hidden sputtered for a moment but fell silent underneath their collective glares. He was silent for a moment, then his face twisted in hatred.
“Nzzklya!” he howled.
Three spheres of blue light blossomed from his horn, twisting in midair to form into bizarre creatures composed of magic, each of them looking like a cross between a crab and a scorpion, with massive pincers and barbed tails. Each one pounced towards one of the detectives.
Daring threw herself back, shoving both the civilians to the floor as the beast slashed down at her with its massive tail, sparks dancing from the tip. Drawing her kusarifundo, she snapped it down and grinned briefly as she felt the weight smashing into the solid flesh of her target. The creature paused, seemingly stunned, and Daring followed up with a stomp: it felt like a soft shell, cracking and splitting beneath her hoof with a sound like a firecracker.
Her grin disappeared when a long polearm composed of more blue magic slashed at her head. She ducked and countered, but Hidden blocked her strike and shoved her back.
“You ruined everything!” he shrieked, insanity shining in his eyes as he swung at her again. Dodging the blow, Daring snapped her wrist to ensnare the weapon and pulled, twisting her entire body back. Pulled towards her helplessly, Hidden could only yell in rage; his cry was cut off by Daring’s elbow crashing into his jaw.
Too late, Daring remembered the beast. A lightning bolt of pain raced up the left side of her body and she fell, screaming. The crab-thing, its shell split and cracked, had crawled on top of her and was now stabbing its stinger into her side. Snarling, she grasped the thing’s stinger, but its pincers dug into her flesh, doubling her pain. A glance around showed that Phillip was now dueling with Hidden, his baton frantically parrying his polearm strikes as they danced around the overturned sofa, and Deck was currently dealing with both of the crab things, throwing up shields to block their leaping attacks.
Suddenly, two magical auras, brilliant purple and light blue, seized all three of the summoned crab things and pulled them away from the combatants. They floated away from the fight, all of them fighting furiously against the auras.
“Hurry, Night!” Velvet cried, straining to keep the beasts under control.
Grunting with effort, his horn sputtering, Night Light held up a pack of salt stolen from the kitchen and sprinkled it out into a circle on the carpet in front of them, carefully ensuring that it formed a full circumference. Husband and wife threw the three constructs into the circle, then touched their hooves to the circle’s edge.
There was a soft snap and Daring felt a crackle of magical energy tingle through her wings as the circle closed. Cut off from the magic that controlled them, the three constructs vanished, turning into mottles of pale light that sank into the carpet.
Deflecting a staff strike, Phillip spun into Hieroglyph and dropped his hips, tossing him over his shoulder and onto the floor in a single motion; the magical spear tumbled away and disappeared as well. Hidden cried out in pain as he crashed onto the carpet, but his scramble to get up was interrupted when he found two guns staring down at him.
“Let’s see if your gods can stop a bullet,” Deck smirked at the defeated unicorn.
Hidden snarled and raised his hooves. “If you hadn’t discovered me, I would’ve become more powerful than you could ever imagine!” he snarled as Deck hoofcuffed him. “The Great Work, it has been calling to me for years. It whispered to me that it could be all mine, that I alone would unlock its secrets! All foiled because of you two—”
“Oh, shut up,” Phillip rolled his eyes, holstering his weapon once he was sure the thief was securely cuffed. He trotted over to Daring, his eyes turning concerned. “Daring? You okay?”
Everything on Daring’s left side still ached and burned: when she tried to get up, every muscle screamed in protest and she fell back with a grunt. “Can’t move,” she groaned, glancing down at her side. There was a hole in her vest where the crab-thing had stung her, the skin beneath red and swollen.
“Take her to the study, I can help her,” Night Light offered, panting as he leaned against the wall.
Phillip gently bent down and, with Velvet’s help, scooped Daring up and slowly carried her into the study. Daring winced with every movement that jostled her shrieking body, focusing on taking slow breaths.
“Lay her down in the circle there,” Night Light instructed, following them in. “Velvet, there’s a phone there. Call the police.”
Phillip tenderly set Daring down in the circle: she lay on her right side, sucking in air. Night Light walked into the circle next to her and touched a hoof to the iron circumference.
There was another snap and tingle of magic that danced across Daring’s wings. She tentatively extended her unhurt wing, studying the sensation: the static electricity-like buzzing of flight magic was still present, but it felt...cleaner somehow. All of the magic was inside her wings, not tickling at the outside of her feathers.
“What happened to her?” Phillip pressed, his thin mouth betraying his anxiety.
Night Light winced a bit. “Venom spell: harmful energy that leaks into the skin and muscles, causing damage to every cell it touches. It’s not serious—the dose was small, thankfully—but she’ll definitely need a doctor, and a few days to rest and recover. Now, hold still…”
He charged up his horn and began to chant in a low monotone, thin clouds of blue energy swirling around the two ponies. The clouds gathered around his horn, then he released them with a single word, the spell soaring into Daring’s body.
She hissed as the energy seeped into her like ice water slithering into her pores, then let out a low sigh of relief as the cool sensation eased the pain. She slowly stood up: the muscles protested, slow and stiff to respond, but the pain was tolerable. “Thanks,” she nodded to Night Light with a stiff grin as she stood up.
“You still need to have a doctor look at that: all I did was stop the venom from spreading and repair some of the damage,” Night Light advised, breaking the circle.
“I’ll live,” Daring grunted, nonetheless allowing Phillip to support her. “Let’s take a look at that safe.”
Phillip guided her over to the safe and Daring leaned in close to study the lock. “Hmm…” Daring mused, tapping the center of the door. “If I had a drill, this would be easier. Okay, forty-digit combination lock.” She placed her ear against the door. “Been a while since I had to do it the old-fashioned way. Quiet, everypony, I need to concentrate.”
She slowly rotated the dial back and forth a few times, listening to the faint clicks of the lock as it knocked against the inner wheels. It took her a few minutes of work, but she finally grinned and started spinning the dial with confidence.
“Seven...thirty-three...twenty-two,” she declared, punching each number in. With a click, the latch opened and Daring swung the door open.
Inside was an assortment of notes, messily crammed into the interior, each one covered in thick scrawls. And at the bottom of it all was a large, dark green book with a serpent winding around a dagger piercing the sun and moon embossed onto the cover.
“The Kyaltratek,” Night Light whispered, his tone a mixture of awe and fear as Daring carefully removed the book from the safe.
There came a loud howl from the living room and the sound of struggling as Hidden fought against his captor. “No! You must not touch it, heathens!” he screeched. A moment later, his protests were cut off by a crackle of magical energy.
“Relax, they’re not gonna break it,” Deck replied sarcastically, his eye roll almost audible.
Daring laid the book on the table and carefully opened it. The faded pages inside were covered in sprawling cuneiform and hieroglyphs, occasionally interspersed with illustrations of bizarre creatures, blasphemous rituals, and strange shapes that twisted the stomach to look upon.
Finally, Daring found an illustration of the Amulet of Ina’yk, the red eye staring at her from the page. Every time she looked back at it, it seemed that the twisting tentacles behind the eye changed.
“Here,” she said, pointing. “This is what we need.”
“Paper, pen!” Night Light cried, rummaging through his saddlebags. He laid a pad of paper on the table and lifted up a pen in his magic, placing it on the paper. His eyes on the book, he started copying the pages, his pen flying across the paper as he captured every detail.
“Wow,” Daring commented.
“Could’ve used you in college, mate,” Phillip said.
“I make it look easy,” Night Light smirked. “Comes with years of practice.”
“Yes, Twilight taught you her method very well,” Velvet smirked, rolling her eyes. Night Light let out a soft grumble, frowning and flattening his ears.
“Okay, almost done,” he announced after a few more minutes. He scratched out a few more notes, added some final details, then nodded and started to close the book. “There! I can translate this for you later. Now we can--”
“Stop,” Phillip suddenly ordered, grabbing the book. He held the page open, pointing to an illustration of a set of circular runes.
“These symbols were what Zugzwang had tattooed onto him,” Phillip said. “Copy this page.”
“Who’s Zugzwang?” Night Light asked.
“Just do it,” Phillip grunted.
“All right,” Night Light nodded, pulling out another sheet and starting to copy the writing on the pages, scribbling away with blurring speed.
Before he had even completed one paragraph, there came a dreadful howl from outside. “No! No!” Hidden screeched, thumping and kicking furiously as he struggled. “You cannot! They will not—!"
“You gonna shut up?” Deck asked.
Night Light paused, looking up. “Keep working,” Phillip ordered, drawing his baton with a snap of his wrist and placing himself near the door, gesturing for Velvet to get behind him.
“Hey! Hey, stop!” Deck suddenly shouted. “Those cuffs block your ma—”
“Gluch’ni!” Hidden shouted, then there was a flash of silver light from down the hall, accompanied by a snap of metal.
“Shi—!” Deck’s curse was cut off by the crashing of a pony tumbling over a sofa. Rapid hoofsteps approached.
“Down, all of you!” Phillip ordered, moving to intercept. With a leap, he rammed his shoulder into Hidden, driving the pony into the wall with a pair of grunts and smashes.
Hidden snarled and locked eyes with Phillip, his irides flashing a vicious scarlet. Phillip froze, his eyes widening in an expression of horror as he fell to his knees, his baton slipping from his grasp. Whirling, Hidden reached out with a tendril of silver magic, snatching the Kyaltratek into his hooves before anypony else could react.
Kicking Phillip over and shoving a charging Daring aside, Hidden sprinted down the hallway and dove through a window in a chorus of shattering glass.
Phillip sat up, shaking his head and grunting as the spell wore off. Deck reentered the room, drawing his pistol, and Daring picked herself back up, hissing and limping as fresh pain rippled across her side.
“After him!” Daring barked, sprinting down the hall with difficulty and leaping out the window in a flap of wings, yelping as some of the remaining glass scratched her skin. Deck cleared the remaining glass out of the window and he and Phillip climbed out after her.
A trail of blood led across the immaculate grass and to the back of a neighboring house. Daring took to the sky, then immediately grunted and fell to the ground again as her entire body screamed in protest. “Motherfucking fuck shit bastard shitfuck!” she snarled, running down the trail after Hidden with difficulty. Phillip and Deck both overtook her, following the trail around the corner of the house. The back door had been kicked in, splinters hanging from the frame. The trio stacked up at the doorway, pistols strapped tight to their hooves. With a nod, they entered, weapons raised.
Immediately, everything went black. “Hey, who turned out the lights?” Daring called in the pitch darkness that seemed to swallow them. The darkness pressed down on them like a thick, wet blanket.
Deck’s horn sparked and fizzled as he tried to light it. “Something’s wrong with my magic,” he grunted. “You feel that?”
Daring did feel it, now that she thought about it: a strange, unpleasant scratching and itching beneath her feathers, clashing with the familiar flight magic that she normally felt. She winced, but pressed forward, pulling out a flashlight and clipping it to her vest as the two stallions both did the same. The beams of light were feeble, the shadows almost seeming to attack the light as it left their bulbs, but they provided enough illumination to faintly see a long hallway, the flowery wallpaper decorated with a few landscape and family photographs.
“I hear you,” Hidden’s voice said from the second floor, the sound traveling down the wooden stairs. “I am coming to you.”
“Hidden!” Deck called. The trio proceeded up the stairs, every step creaking beneath their weight. The sound almost made Daring wince as she proceeded behind the other two.
They rounded the landing and found themselves on a carpeted floor, at the bottom of a U-shaped hallway. Phillip paused to listen in the unnatural darkness, then pointed to the left.
“What...what are you?” Hidden’s voice came through an open doorway.
Then came a low hissing, growling noise, a sound that made everypony’s coat hair stand on end.
“No! No! Get away!” Hidden screamed. There was a scrabbling sound, then a howl of agony and fear.
Forgoing caution, the trio dashed forward and rounded the corner, bursting through an open doorway into a bedroom. And as one, they froze.
Hidden Hieroglyph was sprawled on the carpeted floor, his body still, face forever frozen in an expression of pain and terror: where his eyes had once been, there were now only two ragged holes, black slime and vitreous humor running down his face like tears.
But it was the thing standing over him that made them all freeze and stare in shock. The golden unicorn stood near the window, horn alight with swirling gold and black energy, the Kyaltratek in his hooves. He looked up at them with his cold, empty black eyes that locked onto Phillip’s.
He smiled at him.
It smiled at him, slimy tongues slithering back into its mouth like serpents retreating into their den.
“Dankeschön, Liebling,” Zugzwang said with a mocking bow.
Three revolvers rose and fired in a cacophony of panicked shooting, the muzzle flashes swallowed by the darkness, but Zugzwang vanished in a blink of golden light and the bullets thwacked harmlessly into the back wall. The darkness vanished with the pony’s departure, allowing sunlight to flood the room once more, illuminating the corpse in all its horror.
Deck dropped to the floor, clutching his head. “What the fuck,” he muttered, eyes unfocused. “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.”
Phillip and Daring both looked at Hidden’s body, then at each other. Both saw the same thought in each other’s pale, sweaty faces.
Tangsoppa was sitting at the table in the interrogation room, staring down at his cuffed hooves. An older white griffon sat on his other side, relaying his murmurs to the clover green unicorn with the graying brown hair perched on the other side of the table. The unicorn glanced down at his notes, then asked a question that the translator relayed to Tangsoppa. The captured pirate was silent for a few moments, then grunted a one-word answer. The unicorn scowled and protested, but the translator held up a placating hoof.
“This has been going on for a while,” Trace commented, staring at the scene through the one-way window.
“Guy was at least smart enough to ask for a lawyer as soon as we brought him in,” Red grunted, glaring at the pilot. He glanced at the unicorn. “I will admit, Vinny’s doing pretty well for himself recently. Look at him now: from personal injury and comp cases to defending crooks.”
“Well, getting to brag about defending the great Phillip Finder will do things to your reputation, I guess,” Trace shrugged, glancing down at the folder of evidence and photographs from the Näckros.
“Defended him for a grand total of twenty minutes,” Red rolled his eyes. “But yeah, you’ve got a point.”
The unicorn sighed and gestured to excuse himself, then walked up to the door and exited the interrogation room. Vinny Gamble looked drained and tired, the gray at his temples rather pronounced today, but his green eyes were still bright and alert.
“My client has said that he’s not willing to make a deal yet,” he reported.
“Tell him that we will bring this to trial if we have to,” Red snapped back. “And when we find Whitestone, he—”
Vinny held up a hoof, stopping Red’s tirade. “Detectives, this ain’t personal, all right?” he said. “My job is to do right by my client, and my client has told me that he might not have any love for Whitestone, but he knows better than to try to backstab her.”
“If we’re going to take her down, we need his help!” Red shouted. “We are this fucking close, and I am not gonna—”
“Red, hold it,” Trace interrupted. He plucked a photograph from the manila folder and held it out to his partner. “You see what I see?”
Red glared at the picture for a moment, then his eyebrows shot up as he realized what he was looking at. “Wait here, I’m gonna call the Griffon’s Head,” he replied, dashing down the hall.
“Eh, what? What is it?” a bewildered Vinny asked.
“Something that might help your client trust us,” Trace replied, holding up the picture.
It was a snapshot of the interior of the fishing vessel, a narrow room with a table and a bench squeezed into the passageway. On the wall were a few photographs of seascapes, shots of the river at dawn and dusk.
But on the left wall, partially hidden behind a picture of a tugboat cruising down the Maresippi at dawn, was a drawing in crayon. One could faintly see a childish depiction of a dark green griffon standing next to a smaller light brown griffon.
A few minutes later, Red returned, a triumphant grin on his face. “Bottgilia pulled through,” he reported. “And he knows his name: Ankare.”
Trace turned to Vinny and held up the photo. “Show him this and tell him that we can find Ankare and protect him,” he said. “Whitestone won’t be able to touch him, no matter what.”
“Now wait—” Vinny started to protest.
“Vinny, we both have our duties,” Trace interrupted gently. “But we’re both after the same thing here: justice.”
Vinny thought for a moment, then nodded and reentered the interrogation room. Trace and Red watched as Vinny slowly took his seat; Tangsoppa did not look back up at him.
Vinny sighed, then slid the picture forward and began to speak: without the speakers on, neither Trace nor Red could hear him, but Tang’s slowly widening eyes as he looked up at Vinny with a pleading crease in his face told them everything.
The griffon sat silently for a few moments, then seemed to ask a question. The translator relayed the message to Vinny. Vinny leaned forward and patted Tang on the shoulder with a silent, gentle smile.
Tangsoppa seemed to think for a moment, then slowly nodded, a single tear shining in one eye.
“Gotcha,” Trace grinned.