Free Garrett Investigates by Elizabeth Bear

alive she’d probably have a bone to pick with you over your error.”
    Clemens huffed into his mustache. “In any case, she spoke German; she is dead; the book is in the possession of a homicide investigator. It seems a natural supposition.”
    Garrett opened the book to the page she had previously marked and extracted “Josh’s” clipped-out column on the cryptozoology of the North River Fjord. She extended it between gloved fingers. “I don’t suppose you know who writes under this pseudonym of ‘Josh’?”
    He didn’t extend his hand to take the trembling slip of paper. “That would be your humble correspondent, madam. She clipped it, I gather? It’s so gratifying to have a fan.”
     
    ***
     
    After the pilot, Garrett began interviewing the ship’s other officers. She was just about finished with the mate when a hesitant rap on the door paused him mid-sentence. She was reasonably certain he hadn’t been about to produce anything functionally useful, but she gestured him to continue anyway. When he paused, she raised her voice and called, “Enter!”
    O’Brien leaned in the door to give her a look Garrett wanted to interpret as shared amusement over the irony of the captain of a vessel tapping on the door of his own cabin.
    “Captain?”
    “Mr. Manley found the trunk.”
     
    ***
     
    It hadn’t got far. Just across the hold, stacked atop a bay otherwise half-full of sacks of sugar. A cargo net had been tugged aside and inexpertly refastened; O’Brien said that error had been noticed by one of the roustabouts. He also said that no one had touched the misplaced trunk since it was discovered.
    Garrett examined it first in situ . It was hard to tell which of the dents in the sugar sacks might have been made by feet, but she measured a few for safety’s sake. Then, she confronted the trunk.
    The best procedure would have been to clear every potential subject from the hold. But the best procedure would have had her here twelve hours ago, and the ship never leaving the waters of New Amsterdam.
    And look how swimmingly and in accordance with her authority—and the Crown’s—all that had been carried out! Alexandria Regina should consider herself lucky that the Colonies still bothered paying their taxes. For a moment, Garrett closed her eyes and allowed herself nostalgia for London, when she had had the full power and the authority of the Enchancery and the Crown behind her every investigation.
    Well, she’d made her decision to try her luck in the Colonies. It wasn’t as if she could take it back.
    “Well,” said O’Brien, who had been observing curiously but silently, “we know he’s strong enough to drag a loaded trunk the width of the hold.”
    “Assuming it’s loaded,” Garrett said. The box was blue, steel-strapped, and had an intrinsic lock rather than a padlock. She wondered if she’d have to witch it open. “You don’t think it Mrs. Abercrombie could have done this for herself?”
    “Would a woman be strong enough?”
    It was a big trunk. Garrett thought she might have dragged it, fully laden with clothes. Not books. Lifting it up the pile of sacks without tearing one, however—
    She touched the latch with gloved fingers, depressing the catch. To her surprise, it sprang open.
    She glanced at O’Brien, to find him gazing with pursed lips at her. “Do you suppose it will explode?”
    He smiled tightly and would have stepped forward to assist her with the lid, but she gestured him back. Balanced precariously on the sacks—her tidy little boots were never meant for this kind of escapade—she checked the trunk for residue of sorcery or explosives. Both came up negative.
    Surely if there were a booby trap, it would have gone off when the catch released?
    “Well,” she said. “Here goes nothing.”
    She flipped up the lid.
    —nothing. In fact, there was nothing at all inside. The sanded interior was smooth and plain.
    Garrett blew a lock of hair out of her eyes. She stood back, so