Of all the speakeasies in the Eagle Territories, the South For Winter has always been the one with the most iconic approach to dodging the eagle government’s prohibitionist goons: it moves.
Disguised as a rusted old traincar, the South For Winter rattles across the plains on the old iron railways that have connected the towns and cities of the Territories ever since the birdfolk lost their power of flight. Only the most trusted friends of the sharp old heron barkeeper, Gallinule Crake, ever know when or where the South For Winter is arriving, and the only certainty is that it will always be gone at least a night before the authorities catch up.
Corvis Meek is not himself so close a friend, he reflects, as he gazes down at the long, thin, talon-raked throat of Gallinule Crake. Not so close that he would know yet that the migratory speakeasy was currently stopped outside of the crumbling mining town of Crowroost, if its proprietor hadn’t been murdered between stops. But close enough, apparently, to be the one Crake’s widower sends a telegram to when they needed a murder investigator in a hurry who knew how to keep his beak shut.
Meek shifts on his perch by the bar, and wraps the talons of a vestigial forewing around one of two glasses of linseed whisky that Crake’s widower, Mallard, has poured without asking. With a resigned shiver through his feathers, he turns his gaze away from the heron corpse. “At first glance, I’d have told you this was an open-and-shut case,” he says, tipping whiskey into his scratched black beak. “Known violator of prohibition laws, raked to death by talons and left as a warning. That has all the signs of government Prohibitionists.” He places the empty glass on the bar and shakes out his feathers uneasily. “Only thing is, those talon marks are all wrong. They’re the right size and the right cross-section for a sparrowhawk, but they’re shallow and crooked. A trained killer using his own pounces doesn’t leave third-rate scratches like that. This was a smaller bird – probably a seed-eater – using someone else’s severed talons.”
He shivers, the shabby black feathers around his neck and shoulders ruffling. It’s an unsettling thought.
“It wasn’t the Prohibitionists,” quacks Mallard, his tear-reddened eyes fixing Meek with a fiercely determined stare through the small round lenses of wire-rimmed spectacles on his bill. “The Prohibitionists don’t know where we are. If they did, they’d have destroyed more than just Gallinule.”
Meek meets his gaze silently. “The list of people who knew where to find you is very short,” he notes. “It looks a lot like this has to have been one of your patrons. One of your regulars.”
“It would,” replies Mallard quietly, swallowing. “Except. Galli thought we were being tailed.”
“Tailed?”
“Followed. The same guy showing up in three towns in a row, he said. Not a regular. An unfamiliar face.”
“Casing the joint,” surmises Meek.
“I promised him he was only being paranoid,” Mallard whispers to himself, his warbling voice barely loud enough to make out the words. Meek doesn’t have anything to offer for that, except maybe a chance at some answers.
“Takes a determined bird to case a joint while the joint is on the move,” he says. “Do you have a description?”
Mallard shakes his head. “I didn’t see him myself,” he admits. “But…” He points a webbed hand to the speakeasy door. The metal outer door of the train carriage was unlocked and undamaged when Meek got here – another mystery – but the homelier wooden door installed just inside it has been forced, the wooden frame splintered. “In the top corner,” says Mallard. “On the right. Trapped in the crack of the dovetail joint. There’s a feather. Left behind by the bird who broke the door down. The bird who followed the South For Winter to the middle of nowhere and killed my husband.”
Meek hops onto his feet and moves to the door. He reaches up a dextrous wingtalon and pulls something out of a crack where the edge of the doorframe joins the top. A tiny, soft feather. Pure white.
He looks down at the feather, and then up at the dovetail joint it came from, and then across to Mallard Crake.
“You’re telling me a dove tailed this joint?”
The Court of Ranternal Affairs 