Mysterious Ways (Viatanesian Mysteries Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  Mysterious

  Ways

  Book One of the Viatanesian Mysteries Trilogy

  Abbie Evans

  Copyright © 2021 by Abbie Evans

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover art by Aleksandr Kademo https://www.instagram.com/kadartss

  For Katie

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  Isabella was trapped. With the metal bar pinning her arm she half-crouched, torso uncomfortably twisted towards the ground, and steadfastly gazed at the floor so she could pretend — just for a moment — that the mortifying predicament in which she currently found herself had gone unnoticed.

  “You’re stuck, Commander,” one of her men called out, clearly noticing it.

  She forced herself to look up. Half-a-dozen bewildered guards stared back. She smiled at them, teeth gritted through the pain. “So I am.”

  The guard who had called out scratched his chin and looked doubtful, as though he weren’t sure this could be true. “In a mousetrap,” he helpfully added, after thinking it over some more.

  She nodded. A flush was creeping up behind her neck to her ears.

  “Big one,” he continued. “Would be better used for trapping cats, or something of similar size to cats. Maybe weasels?”

  “Baby rage demons?” suggested another of her guards.

  “Mice that are unusually oversized,” one of the less imaginative ones yelled with a firm nod.

  “Not humans, though,” the first said. “Much too small to kill a human. Look, the Commander’s clearly alive.”

  “So I am,” Isabella said again. “Liam, your observations are most astute.” She looked at her arm to distract herself from the mortification. Blood had begun to seep out around the metal jaws digging into her flesh. It pooled a little, built up, then spilled over and ran down her arm in slow rivulets towards the cheese. Her eyes widened as she tracked the streams, the gap between blood and gouda steadily closing.

  Theodore immediately understood the gravity of the situation. He took a piece of cloth from his satchel, leapt down beside her, and wrapped it around her lower arm to protect the thick wedge of cheese.

  Blood thwarted from reaching its destination, Isabella exhaled in relief and gave him an appreciative smile.

  “Don’t worry, Commander,” he whispered, noting her flushed cheeks. “It could have happened to anyone. You weren’t to know the trap was under an invisibility spell.”

  She took a deep breath and shook off the initial shock, looked up at her men and snapped back into action. “Well, don’t just stand there and stare. Ezra, Cyrus, Liam, search the church for the thief. She may still be here. Arrius and Nicobar, return to the guardhouse and look into how she got her hands on demon magic. Theo, help me get this cursed contraption off.”

  The guards jumped to attention at once, scattering in five different directions around the church, boots stampeding all over the stone floor.

  Isabella turned back to the mousetrap clamping her arm down. She prodded it with her other hand, still slightly stunned it was real. The pain was real enough, and its solid form could not be denied, but it had materialised so suddenly when she’d reached down to grab the cheese. The sharp jaws dug into her arm up past her elbow, and she gripped it with her free hand and tried to wrench it off. It moved a few inches.

  Theo knelt beside her. Working together, they managed to prise it upwards until it snapped back. She flung it several metres away, a clang ringing out around the church when it landed. The relief of it no longer pressing down on her bicep was immense, and she sat down with a thud to examine her bleeding arm.

  Theo’s face was full of concern. “We need to get you to a healer.”

  She shook her head. “The wound is minor. The cloth will be sufficient for now. Is the cheese all right?”

  He inspected it carefully. “It appears undamaged, but she could have poisoned it. I wouldn’t eat it if I were you.”

  Isabella pulled a face. “Wrap it up and we’ll take it back to the guardhouse for examination.”

  She stood and adjusted her tunic, flung her cloak back around her shoulders, and turned in a slow circle. The place was deserted. Early morning sunlight glittered in through the stained-glass windows casting a rainbow of colours on the pews. It was chilly in here in spite of the cloudless skies outside, and there was no sign of the priestess who had sent an urgent messenger at dawnbreak to inform the City Watch of the robbery. Cerys Neria, she’d said, a known thief, con artist, and general nuisance to the City Watch, had only gone and stolen a statue of the Goddess herself.

  Theo put the cheese in his satchel and eyed the pedestal where the trap had been waiting for them. “Cerys must’ve had a beast of a time lugging the Goddess out of here.”

  Isabella followed his gaze. An empty pedestal where once the statue had stood gave an unsettling air of desertion to the church, a place of worship now devoid of its Creator. She could still see it, the statue that had stood tall on that pedestal for as many years as she could remember. The Goddess overseeing all who entered, her thick wave of hair cascading in curls down to her waist, robes cascading down to her feet, her perfectly serene face warm and inviting in spite of the cold marble.

  A door banged behind them. Pounding boots approached. Isabella turned to see Liam rushing back from behind the pulpit. “Commander,” he said breathlessly. “It ain’t just stealin’ this time. She’s done a murder.”

  Isabella and Theo exchanged an alarmed glance. Immediately they ran, following Liam up the aisle, past the pulpit, and through the small door that led to the priestess’s office.

  She smelled the fear as soon as they entered. It lingered in the air still, though the priestess was long dead. Isabella stared down at the body in dismay. The holy woman lay in a pool of her own blood, her white robes stained red, unseeing eyes wide open and terror-filled. Her throat had been slit, and her hand lay limp beside it, drenched in blood from the effort of staunching the flow.

  Isabella swallowed down the nausea. “How could the Goddess allow this to happen? To a priestess?”

  “She works in mysterious ways,” several guards automatically answered.

  Isabella suppressed the flicker of annoyance the words caused. She had heard this statement all too often lately and it felt ever more unsatisfactory each time. But she could not blame the guards for saying it; it was the oft-stated answer to any unanswerable question, and certainly it was true enough.

&n
bsp; She tore her eyes away from the body. She had seen many murders before, but never a priestess, a holy servant of the Goddess herself. “Cerys has never murdered before. She’s a thief and a con artist, but she doesn’t kill. Why would she do this?”

  “Maybe the priestess tried to stop her from taking the statue, and there was a struggle,” Theo suggested.

  “But she had already stolen the statue when the priestess sent the messenger.”

  He frowned and fiddled with the straps of his satchel. “Or she decided the stakes in these cat and mouse games she plays with you aren’t high enough. She’s escalating.”

  “Perhaps,” said Isabella, with a rueful glance at her arm. A welt was already forming. By this time tomorrow she would have a prominent angry and red reminder of the incident. “The message is certainly clear.”

  Liam rubbed his chin with a sage nod. “That it is.” His brow creased. “What’s the message?”

  “Well, I should think something like I’m not the mouse, you’re the mouse.”

  “Ah,” said Liam. “Oh. Yeah, that could be it.”

  “I hate to say it Commander,” Theo said, “but she’s good enough at evading capture when it’s only stolen artefacts on the line. If she’s progressed to murder, she’ll be all the more motivated to elude us.”

  “Aye, slippin’ outta sticky situations is what she does best,” Liam agreed. “She’s slippery as a recently moisturised eel, is that woman. We’ll never catch her now.”

  Isabella feared it was true. She nodded slowly. “She’ll go deep underground, or leave Solistopia entirely, escape beyond the outer reaches of the realm. We may never find her.”

  “I FOUND HER,” a yell thundered out in the distance. The small group of guards started at the sound. Isabella swivelled on her heel and ran from the office, swerved around the doorway and bolted along the passageway towards the voice. The guards raced after her. Ezra stood at the back entrance of the church, wildly gesturing at them to hurry. Isabella burst out onto the steps and came to an abrupt stop at the sight that greeted her.

  The church graveyard lay before them, rays of sun bouncing off the headstones. A havoc demon sprawled out across the roof of a slate mausoleum and lolled about in the warmth. Cerys stood amongst the graves, clutching the statue of the Goddess in her arms, barely able to hold it upright. It was two feet taller than her, and she struggled to haul it towards the mausoleum. She was red-faced from yelling angry insults up at the demon, who basked in the sunlight and paid her no heed.

  Cerys stopped mid-yell and slowly turned to look over at Isabella and the guards. She gripped the statue tighter and threw them a flustered smile. “Ah.” She looked down at the ground. “Erm.” A quick glance at Isabella from underneath her lashes. “Well.” She tapped her fingers on the statue. “Fancy seeing you lot here.”

  Her head whipped back towards the demon, harried expression morphing to a glare. “Your tardiness is to blame for this.”

  Isabella drew her sword and marched towards them. Cerys awkwardly navigated her body behind the statue. It threatened to topple over, and she stumbled against it, wrenching it upright again. “Don’t come any closer or I’ll…” she looked around wildly.

  Isabella paused a few feet away and reached for her manacles. “You’ll what?”

  Cerys locked eyes with her. “I’ll push her over.”

  “You’d never. Not the Goddess.”

  The con woman yelled up at the demon again, her urgency growing. “I paid for my passage already you shrivelled up softcock. You have to take me to the underworld. Satan’s expecting me.”

  “Price has gone up,” the demon said, his voice a croaky rasp. “I shan’t open the portal for you until you’ve procured a warmth charm for me.”

  Isabella continued towards her. “You’re under arrest.”

  The statue teetered sideways precariously. Cerys hefted it upright as best she could and dropped the confrontational attitude, instead adopting a look of contrition. Beseeching, as though she could beg her way out of this. “Come now Isy, don’t be cross with me.” A disarming smile, a tilt of the head, eyes widening in what Isabella supposed was intended to convey innocence. “It was only a little joke. Didn’t you like my gift? That’s expensive gouda from the artisanal cheesemaker on Lucidus Street I stole for you, I know it’s your favourite. A little pain for cheese is worth it, surely.”

  “Not under arrest for the trap,” Liam shouted, running up besides Isabella. “For the murder!” This proclamation was accompanied by a dramatic sweep of his arm, which Isabella swiftly ducked to avoid.

  There was a long silence. Cerys’ mouth fell open, confusion spreading across her face. A flop of dark hair had fallen over her eye, clammy in the heat, and with her hands otherwise occupied she tried to blow it away to questionable success.

  The demon sat up, intrigued. “Murder?”

  Isabella coughed. “Well, actually, for the trap as well. That’s assaulting a commander.”

  “Oh, right,” Liam said. “For the trap too then.”

  “And for stealing a statue of the Goddess, and procuring an invisibility spell from a demon.” Isabella threw a look at the havoc demon. “I assume that was you.”

  He swung his scaly legs over the roof edge and glared at her as though she’d slighted his honour. “Assumptions are made by fools and fraudulent fortune tellers.”

  “And, of course, for stealing a wheel of cheese from the Lucidus Street cheesemaker,” Isabella finished.

  Cerys stared, bewildered, between all of them. “What are you dehydrated plumeheads talking about? What murder? I didn’t murder anyone.”

  “The priestess is dead,” said Isabella.

  The demon threw back his head and cackled.

  “Well, I didn’t do it,” said Cerys. “I never killed anyone.”

  Six faces swivelled in unison towards the demon. He stopped laughing when he saw their expressions and held his hooves up defensively. “Avert your accusatory gazes at once. You know I cannot enter churches.”

  It seemed to dawn on Cerys now that her situation was more perilous than she had realised, and her pleas to the demon increased in desperation. “Please, Firesh, you have to take me.” Her voice was a low whisper, a panicked eye flicking towards Isabella. “They’ll send me to the Judge if you don’t.”

  He shrugged apathetically. “No charm, no passage.”

  Isabella eyed the demon. The sense of havoc emanating from his body was slowly spreading in her direction, the swell of chaos already at the base of her spine. It threatened to creep up and spill out, but she shook it off, kept it at bay, and confronted him directly. “Giving humans access to demon magic violates the Three Plane Accord. I could have your second plane privileges revoked.”

  His lizard eyes flashed. “Your lack of evidence rivals your lack of ability to evade traps.”

  Isabella looked back at Cerys, but before she could speak, a hissing sound came from the roof of the mausoleum that fast increased in volume. It became a howling of discordant syllables, syllables that were cloaked in malevolence and clashed against their ears like cymbals. The havoc demon was chanting an incantation in demon tongue.

  “Firesh,” Isabella called out, “if I hear one more word of that demonic spell I shall report you to the angels.”

  The chanting stopped.

  She turned her focus back to Cerys.

  Then a scuffling sound from the roof of the mausoleum. All heads swivelled upwards once more. Silence fell over the guards as they listened to the demon’s movements. Isabella was directly below the stone edifice now, she could see nothing. Swiftly she raised her sword and stared at the edge, ears pricked. The scuffling stopped. A heavy stillness descended over the graveyard.

  Then, in muffled murmurs so low they were barely audible, came the sound of the demon valiantly attempting a screeching chant in the quietest of whispers.

  Isabella rolled her eyes to the heavens. “Ezra, take ca
re of that would you.”

  “Gladly, Commander,” Ezra shouted.

  She waited until she heard him take the two leaps up to the roof and wrestle a protesting Firesh to the ground before swinging her sword back to Cerys.

  Cerys pulled herself up straighter and shielded her body with the Goddess. “Satan wants the statue. She’ll be extremely vexed if I don’t bring it to her.”

  “What does Satan want with a statue of her sister?”

  “Why, she wants to see if she can use it like a voodoo doll of course.”

  Isabella gaped at her. “Like a… but that would never wo—” she stopped and considered the prospect for a moment, throwing a questioning glance at Theo. “Would that work?”

  He looked uncertain. “Maybe?”

  She shook her head and strode forward, grabbed Cerys by the arm and spun her around.

  Theo, Cyrus, and Liam frantically leapt towards the statue and grabbed it before it toppled over.

  Isabella pressed Cerys against the side of the mausoleum and snapped the manacles around her wrists.

  “Oh, Isy don’t,” Cerys said, squirming in her grasp. “You know I’m no murderer. I may have done a few things you frown upon, relieved the rich of a little burdensome gold — really it weighs down their pockets so, they ought to thank me — a few instances of identity theft, a little light demonic fraternisation, but I wouldn’t kill a priestess.”

  “Cerys Neria,” Isabella said. “By the authority of the Queen, the Senate, and the Council of Enchantresses, I am arresting you for the murder of Amadea Cardaiges, priestess of the city of Solistopia’s 11th Church of the Vitalic Goddess. You’re coming back to the guardhouse with us.”

  Chapter 2

  A signal flashed from the watchtower as Isabella and the guards approached the guardhouse on horseback. The great iron gates swung open with low creaks and groans, gently carried off in the summer breeze. They rode through the gates into the yard and dismounted, boots creating a dusty cloud as they hit the sand in a series of thuds.