Chapter 23: The Restricted Case
Brassville reached the Keeper brutally, as usual.
Heat first. Boiler breath bleeding through the carriage seams. Then metal, sharp with coal and oil. Under it, blood. Fresh from kitchens. Older on the cobblestones. A split lip. A cut hand. A small dental office somewhere near the next crossing, already busy.
The Keeper closed their eyes for a moment.
Bren Reed, mechanist and the Keeper’s left hand, kept the carriage steady through the morning traffic. The Keeper preferred silence while travelling, and Bren was perfect for it. No pulse disturbed the peace. Not since the day the Keeper had turned him.
“Air would be faster,” Bren said, grouchy. The scarlet undertone in his eyes briefly deepened.
The Keeper ignored him. The old-fashioned way was better. Land did not fall.
The Government District came into view. All stone and glass. The air grew cleaner by a fraction. Officials tried hard to keep this part of Brassville smelling civilised. Which was not the same as clean.
“One hour,” the Keeper told Bren, and stepped out.
The Great Council Administrative Office looked stable.
The world around it was not.
The reception hall had the spirit of a morgue. The floor hummed faintly with mirror conduits beneath polished stone. Sections divided the space in clean lines, marked with brass plates and numbered signs. Pneumatic tubes clattered overhead without pause, carrying documents deeper into the building.
Clerks sat behind long counters sealed from visitors by glass partitions. Blank faces. Indifferent eyes. Hands moving through papers, stamps, dials, and registrations with the same slow precision. No one looked at people unless procedure required it.
The queue of Mirrorwalkers was short this early in the day. They stood apart from one another with practised politeness, pretending not to recognise familiar faces. The Keeper appreciated the custom. Walkers spent enough time knowing too much about each other already.
One of them was arguing with a clerk.
“I prevented a full nexus collapse,” the man said tightly. “Not a temporary stabilisation.”
The clerk adjusted a brass dial. He waited for a register to finish ticking before answering, “Form seventeen B. Processing time eight to ten weeks.”
“That is absurd.”
“Next.”
The Walker stood there another second. Anger fighting bureaucracy and losing badly. Then he collected his papers too sharply and walked away.
The Keeper passed the queue and moved toward the Contract Section.
Blood smelt heavier there. Small cuts. Registration samples. Fresh signatures pressed too hard against paper by nervous hands. The Council did love blood when it came properly labelled.
The Keeper moved on.
The Information Bureau sat to the side, quieter than the rest of the hall. Cleaner too. Less blood. More paper. The Keeper stopped at a brass machine fixed into the counter and selected the current date. The mechanism answered with a low sound and unfolded a pale hologram upward into the air. Lists formed immediately.
Malfunctioning mirrors. Sealed mirrors. Coordinates beside each entry. Precise. Official. The Keeper read through the list once. Then again.
The mirror in the Scarlet Valleys was not there.
They stayed still for a moment. Not surprise, just confirmation. Then they moved to the counter and slid their brass ident plate into the narrow slot beneath the glass.
“Updated list,” they said. “Paper copy.”
The clerk took the plate without looking up. The mechanism swallowed it with a click. Several seconds passed. Somewhere deeper in the wall, a printer started rattling. The plate returned first. Then a grey sheet. The Keeper checked it immediately. The mirror was missing there too.
The Keeper folded the paper once and moved to another section of the Office. They slid their black calling card through the slot, silver name first, and requested an audience.
The clerk took it with the usual indifference. Then he read the name. The indifference left his face. It disappeared completely when the Keeper named the person they wished to see.
Confirmation took only minutes.
A runner appeared and silently led the Keeper away from the main reception hall into a long corridor. There were fewer footsteps here. Thicker walls. Less public. More honest.
They stopped before a heavy wooden door. A plaque beside it read:
Lady Elena Maris Venn-Areenholm
Senior Councillor, Mirror Affairs
The Keeper stepped inside, and the door closed behind them.
They did not return to their mansion immediately after visiting the Great Council. They moved into the posh part of the city. Two old family houses. Two short, efficient visits. By the Keeper’s standards, it was satisfactory.
Outside, the city looked too familiar to them. Centuries had passed. Steamhollow people had not changed much. Better coats. Smarter vehicles.
The smell stayed the same.
By the time the Keeper returned to the estate district, evening had settled over Brassville. Their mansion stood back from the road behind iron gates. Old trees planted around the house long before the neighbourhood became fashionable.
The carriage slipped quietly into the garage.
Inside, the mansion remained exactly as it always did. Clean. Ordered. In the main hall, high ceilings disappeared into shadow above dark wooden walls. Furniture older than most cities in Steamhollow stood beneath arcs of mosaic windows. The room looked like a piece of the Scarlet Valleys misplaced in Brassville.
Bren moved ahead of the Keeper without a sound. He adjusted the old, large armchair beside the fireplace, shifting it slightly closer. The fireplace itself remained cold. Bren activated the hologram instead. Flames appeared behind the glass immediately, soft and realistic, without producing heat.
The Keeper hated real fire. The smell. The temperature. But they liked the view.
Bren placed the low footstool in front of the chair, then returned carrying a tall glass of warmed artificial blood. Expensive. Rare in Steamhollow, and not common even in the Scarlet Valleys. Dark enough to pass for the real thing in low light.
The Keeper accepted it without looking.
Finally, Bren crossed to the old music box near the wall. Brass buttons clicked softly beneath his fingers as he selected the Keeper’s preferred compositions. Music filled the room in low, distant notes.
Only then did Bren leave.
The Keeper leaned back in the chair and closed their eyes.
For a moment, the mansion almost felt habitable.
It did not last long before Bren returned quietly.
“Lady Elena Maris Venn-Areenholm.”
The Keeper opened their eyes slightly and nodded once.
Elena entered the hall and settled into the armchair opposite them in the familiar way of a regular visitor. She carried herself with polished manners and old money confidence, though age had started making small claims. Grey threaded through her dark hair. Fine lines rested around her eyes and mouth. Still energetic. Permanently tired.
Bren placed a glass beside her. Ancient red wine from the Keeper’s private collection. Elena’s favourite. Then he crossed the hall, turned off the music, and disappeared again without interrupting the silence further.
Elena took the glass and sighed softly before speaking.
“You were right. The mirror in the Scarlet Valleys was sealed last week.”
The Keeper listened without moving.
“They found a body nearby,” she added after a short pause.
The Keeper opened their eyes fully and looked directly at her face.
“It is restricted,” Elena continued. “Even I cannot access the full file before the autopsy is completed. The identity is coded. I assume they already know who it is, but the case was locked immediately.”
“Who is handling it?”
“Office of Reflective Crimes.”
“ORC?” The Keeper’s voice stayed calm. “They suspect murder?”
“Most likely.”
The Keeper’s eyes focused on their glass. “What about Eric and Vesk?”
“Eric is still in the Walker registry, but with a note marked ‘unreachable’. He missed tax reporting, so the Office tried locating him.” Elena took a slow sip of wine. “Nothing useful.”
“And Vesk?”
“Still on the wanted list, somehow. Artefact trafficking, illegal routes, all the usual stuff. ORC stopped caring after the raid a few months ago. They confiscated half the artefacts his people were moving. In the official report after the raid, he is marked as ‘missing’.”
The Keeper’s eyes returned to her face. “And unofficially?”
Elena looked tired for a moment. “Unofficially, no one expected Vesk to disappear completely.”
The hall stayed silent except for Elena’s pulse. The Keeper heard the change in it before they asked the next question. “And the purple collars?”
Her heartbeat jumped hard enough to be obvious even across the room.
“Mostly rumours,” Elena said carefully. “There were reports over the last few years. Walker accidents, strange behaviour, some recruitment attempts. But nothing strong enough to open a real investigation.”
“And now?”
Elena looked into her wine instead of at the Keeper. “Now we have missing Walkers.”
The Keeper said nothing.
Elena exhaled slowly. “There is still no evidence that Walkers were taken against their will. Not officially. Not until recently. If we count Vesk, Eric, and Ophelia.”
“If.”
Elena’s mouth tightened.
The Keeper leaned back slightly. “Elena. I need information about that body. And every report connected to purple collars. Names included.”
Elena met their gaze directly this time. “I know the Council is not perfect.”
The Keeper remained silent.
“But we are trying to do the right thing.”
“The right thing,” the Keeper said quietly, “would have been telling me when the first body appeared.”
Elena’s fingers tightened around the stem of her glass. “That is not fair.”
“No.” The Keeper met her eyes. “It is accurate.”
Elena aged right there in the chair. Not physically. Just tired in a deeper way.
“You have always been the most important person in our family,” she said softly.
The Keeper looked at her for a long moment.
“No,” they said. “Alara was.”
Elena went still.
“When her family needs me, I come.” The Keeper’s words landed and stayed there.
Eventually, Elena finished her wine without another word and stood. Bren appeared almost immediately to escort her out, silent as ever. Elena did not look back as she left. Pride, perhaps. Or fear. In that family, the difference had always been poorly maintained.
The hall settled again once the front doors closed. The Keeper remained in the chair for another few minutes. Then they stood and moved to the wall. The mirror, its frame marked with the Keeper’s emblem, opened without resistance.
Haven greeted them with cool air and quieter corridors. The Keeper walked directly to the Library.
A mirror wall stood near the back section, decorative enough that visitors rarely questioned it. Reflections shifted softly across the glass as the Keeper touched it. The mirror recognised them. The Keeper stepped through and entered a huge, cold, perfectly organised hall.
Their archive.
Mirrorwalkers from the first generation to the present.
The earliest shelves held scrolls and leather records worn thin with age. Alara Venn, the first Mirrorwalker. Her children, her grandchildren, her distant family. Notes written in different hands across decades. Bloodlines traced carefully between worlds.
Further inside, the archive changed with time. Bound ledgers gave way to mechanical storage cylinders, brass-labelled drawers, glass plates, and finally modern hologram files glowing faintly in ordered rows.
A few centuries of names surrounded the Keeper. Families. Crossings. Deaths. Disappearances.
The Keeper moved toward one of the newer sections and activated a hologram file.
Vesk.
Unconfirmed origin. Smuggling routes. Known associates. Artefact trafficking.
The Keeper sat at a narrow brass desk and added several new notes through the old mechanical keyboard. The keys answered softly beneath their fingers. The new entry locked into the system.
Then the Keeper opened and updated two more files.
Eric Still.
Ophelia Rialt.
When the hologram files settled into place, the Keeper leaned back slightly and looked across the archive.
The Council had regulations.
The Keeper had memory.
Walkers did not vanish in numbers by accident. The pattern was becoming visible again.
The Keeper remained still, listening to the low hum of the archive and the quiet weight of every name they had kept when the Council had failed to.
They must step in.
They always did.
Since the day they met Alara Venn.