Yutten Turse in the style of Egon Schiele, as interpreted by DALL-E in January 2025.

  When Yutten Turse arrived at the investigators’ building, she headed straight to her boss’ office. Z?rgiebel had summoned her via a Disseminator message this morning, which was unusual, and she suspected he would not appreciate unnecessary delays.

  “Good morning, Z?rgiebel. You wanted to see me?”

  “Investigator Turse. Please sit.” She complied, noting the frown on his face. “Somebody broke into our records last night. Presumably to remove some piece of evidence or information. Apparently, they just walked right into the building, took whatever they came here for, and walked out again the same way.”

  “Huh. And our security?”

  “Constable Czerwinski was on duty. It seems he observed the intruder – or intruders, more likely, although he remembers only seeing one. He thought nothing was amiss and let them continue their way.”

  “Are you saying he was addled?” Addling was the general term for a variety of enhancement magics that did the opposite of enhancing a person. It was forbidden except in emergencies. Using such magics on a constable on duty was practically unheard of.

  “It would be unusual for Czerwinski to observe strangers in this building in the middle of the night and assume everything was just fine, don’t you think?”

  She was silent for a few moments. “Whoever is behind this is sending us a message, then. They are telling us they can do whatever they want.”

  “That’s exactly what they are saying. And I’m saying fuck them.” Z?rgiebel was the kind of person who used swear words to show that he was serious about something. “You’re my best investigator, Yutten. I’m putting you on this case. I want you to solve it. I want you to fuck these fuckers over so thoroughly they will never fuck with us again.”

  Very serious, then. “Anything more I should know?”

  “Yes. I have them on videocamera. But blurred.” That was fun. Using videocameras for security was so old school it was positively antiquarian. Any Transmuter could mess around with such equipment easily, and there were lots of Transmuters around. Conjurers, also plentiful, could blind or destroy surveillance equipment with bursts of energy. But Z?rgiebel had insisted that you would only take such precautions if you expected there were videocameras around, and nobody was using the old tech anymore. Score one for him.

  “Blurred in what way?”

  “The recordings are fine, it seems, but the person recorded is blurred. A countermeasure that appears to have nothing to do with videocameras as such.”

  “You mean they used obfuscation magic?” Only Protectors had obfuscation magic.

  “Look for yourself.” He gave her a videoscreen. An exquisitely blurred person – the kind of blur that would not strike you as blurred at all until you became aware of your utter inability to provide even a single detail about the person’s appearance. High skill.

  “Wow. If we go public with this –”

  “We can’t go public with this, Yutten. That’s not possible.”

  “Of course. Of course.” Embarrassed, she changed the subject. “Why is there just one person on all these recordings? There would have been several.”

  “Obviously. An Invoker for the addling. Presumably a Transmuter for the locks. And –“

  He did not say it aloud. A Protector for obfuscation magic. “So, at least three people. Where are the other two? Did they know where the videocameras were?”

  “I have hidden them well, Yutten. And with this level of competence, blurring three people instead of one would not have been very difficult.”

  “So presumably the person we are seeing is the Transmuter, and the other two are waiting somewhere where there is no videocamera? Outside perhaps?”

  “I suppose so. Seems weird to split up like that. I can’t explain it.”

  “Isn’t it harder to run obfuscation from a distance? Addling people you can’t see can’t be easy – if they split up like this, they must’ve had a Diviner with them as well. Right?”

  “Maybe they are so good at what they do that the extra difficulty didn’t matter. I don’t know, Yutten. Maybe ask the guy you know up at the University.” Z?rgiebel was referring to magister Chandrian Rothfuss, an old friend of Yutten’s who had specialized in magical theory and had been helpful in a number of previous cases.

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  “I will. You haven’t tried any Divination yourself yet?”

  “Thought it best to leave it to you. Never know what I might set off. But we could do it together if you like.”

  “That might be wise.” Yutten was known to be one of the most powerful Diviners in the investigator force, in Mikla at least, but it was always helpful to collaborate with someone. And there would be countermagics to deal with. “This afternoon perhaps?”

  “Sure. Come up here at two. I’ll make time for it.” Z?rgiebel was a busy man and did not often take the time for investigate efforts himself. “And Yutten?” It was like a thought suddenly occurred to him. “Be careful. Somebody with serious resources is behind this, and they are expecting us to give up without a fight. They would probably not be happy to know that we know so much about them already. I will front the Divination. You stay hidden.”

  “Z?rgiebel.” She never addressed him by first name. “That seems excessive. Surely they wouldn’t –“

  “We don’t know who they are and what they will and will not do. We don’t know what we are up against here.”

  ---

  Yutten spent a few hours reviewing and pondering the case. She visited Czerwinski, who opened his door visibly exhausted. He was not happy, obviously, and although he wanted to help, he basically had nothing to say, which frustrated him a great deal.

  Being addled was not only extremely disrespectful but also a violation of one’s rights as a citizen of the Confluence. She left him to his well-earned sleep.

  She sent a personal message to Chandrian and set up a meeting tomorrow. In some ways it would have been preferable to use the investigators’ Disseminator and thus get a high-priority and secure line of communication, like Z?rgiebel’s message to her this morning, but then it would also be official and on the record.

  When she contacted her acquaintances during an investigation, she usually went for low-key personal messages via the generic messaging system on the ether, which was the name most people used for the general Dissemination field employed to transmit information across the globe. Such messages might not be very secure, but they were also not very conspicuous.

  Eventually she went back to Z?rgiebel’s office. He still wanted to front the Divination, so she would stay in the background contributing energy. Z?rgiebel put a “Do not disturb” sign on his door and locked it, then they sat in chairs facing each other. Most people close their eyes when casting magic, but Yutten had found that it made no difference and preferred to keep her eyes open.

  They had a number of issues to investigate, but decided to start with the perhaps most obvious question: who was the person on the videocamera? Since the person they were looking for had access to high-level obfuscation, they weren’t really expecting to find anything with this head-on approach, but it seemed like a good way to test the waters and see what they were up against.

  The typical thing to do when setting up such an investigation was to power it minimally at first and spend most of your energy looking for countermagics, which could take several forms.

  Diviners, for instance, might leave detection magics that would warn them when someone tried to access a certain piece of information. Ambitious versions of such detection engrams would also try to identify the person seeking access.

  Invokers for their part could leave magic engrams that would make you feel that it was pointless to go on with the Divination, because the subject is so well protected you don’t have a chance. They had other shenanigans, too.

  Most difficult of all were the Abjurers, however, because they had magic to cancel your magic. The field of Abjuration also included a specific class of magic called obfuscation that directly countered Divination attempts.

  Since obfuscation magics had already been deployed against visual recognition, it seemed likely that such magics would also protect against Divination, and Z?rgiebel and Yutten were not surprised to find several nested levels of obfuscation magics protecting the information they targeted.

  Probably too much for them to penetrate on their own, especially since they had very little experience with Protector magic, but they decided to try anyway. Maybe they would get lucky.

  Besides the obfuscation magics surrounding the identity of their target, they could not find anything else lurking around even after spending a full hour scouting the area. They decided it was time to empower the main Divination.

  Z?rgiebel set up the schema for the engram, and Yutten directed her flow of energy into it. She was quite powerful, and didn’t mind demonstrating this to her boss now that there was an opportunity for it. He contributed too, of course, but they both knew she was the main energy source.

  As they slowly turned up the power, the outmost layer of obfuscation first budged, then collapsed. The second layer followed suit soon after. The third layer was more robust, but after some time it too started dissolving at the seams and then the decay spread inwards until the whole layer seemed about to –

  Something clicked. A separate engram hiding between the third and fourth layers of obfuscation sprang into action, moving very quickly. Z?rgiebel’s lips were still forming the initial f-sound of his favorite expletive as the hostile engram scanned him and sent off messages in several directions. He did not have time to finish the exclamation before something approached them at high speed.

  “Hello.” It was a nondescript, standardized voice. “Ah, Mr. Z?rgiebel, is it? Pleased to meet. You are trying to access classified information. May I enquire as to why?”

  “Um. Uh. Who the fuck are you? Why did you break into our records?

  “Mr. Z?rgiebel. Was it not obvious to you that this was a matter it would be best to leave alone? I believe that message was intended to be obvious.” As the voice spoke, something attached itself to Z?rgiebel. “You have no right to ask questions or Divine into our purposes. Please desist at once. This will be your final warning.” The voice cut off, and a field of cancellation magic swept away their Divination as if it were nothing.

  “Yikes. Are you ok?” Yutten looked at him with alarm.

  “Fuck. I think so. Except that something attached itself to me. It feels like a piece of tape glued to my brain.” He paused for a while, apparently casting a Divination engram. “It’s a surveillance engram, Yutten. It’s reporting back what I learn about this case.”

  “What? That’s outrageous. They have jurisdiction to do that?”

  “I don’t know. We don’t know what this is, Yutten. I’ll file a complaint, obviously.” He paused. “It didn’t feel like they were onto you, though. I don’t know if you want to work anymore on this case, but I know I can’t. But if you do – I hope you do – you can’t tell me anything. They will know what I know. Don’t tell me anything, Yutten.”