Chapter Two ~ Broken Footsteps
The train swayed as it left Feldkirch, metal wheels hissing over tracks slick from rain. Troll Tearsen watched the mountains slide away, pale ridges dissolving into cloud. The Grosses Walsertal shrank into memory, fog sealing itself behind them.
Across from her, Libaux Torrini leaned back in his seat, collar up, eyes half-closed. He hadn’t spoken much since Fontanella. She wasn’t sure if that was courtesy or calculation. His file had said he was disciplined once for insubordination. Maybe silence was his shield.
Outside, the land stretched flatter, valleys trading themselves for plains. Troll kept her gaze on the window. Every so often she saw her own reflection layered over the passing fields, her face fractured by poles and wires.
Her phone buzzed once. A message from Nurse Miyake Coscia: She is calm this morning. But tired. She asked again for you.
Troll turned the phone facedown.
---
At Lyon they changed trains. The Paris express was crowded, air thick with perfume and the faint iron tang of wet coats. Troll sat near the door. Two children chased each other down the aisle, their shoes squeaking. One dropped a marble.
It rolled past Troll’s boot, clicking once against the metal edge of the door before the boy scooped it up again.
The sound tightened her stomach.
Libaux glanced at her, reading the flinch. “They follow you,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
---
By the time they reached Collioure, evening had collapsed into violet dusk. The town pressed itself against the harbor like it had been poured there, shutters painted in weathered colors, streets narrow and tilted toward the sea. The air was salt and tar and something floral she couldn’t name.
Sound here was everywhere. Halyards pinged against masts like thin bells. Nets slapped wet against decks. Waves inhaled and exhaled, grinding pebbles into percussion.
Uma Arouje had ordered her here, voice flat over the phone: Follow the French connection. We can’t afford delay. Don’t come back empty.
The words had clung to her, even as the sea opened before her.
---
They found the body the next morning.
She was wedged in the stones at the edge of the breakwater. Miller Corbal, a teacher from Montpellier. Thirty-eight. Missing for two weeks.
Her hand was closed. Inside it: a marble.
This one was cracked, its surface fractured so that light scattered unevenly, jagged prisms shivering across her knuckles.
A sergeant explained in quick French: no witnesses, no clear time of death. Locals assumed the sea had given her back, but the tide here wasn’t that generous.
Troll crouched by the stones. She had seen this before, too soon, too near.
The marble shifted slightly in the corpse’s palm, as if eager to be found.
---
They questioned the painter first.
He sat on a stool near the quay, sketchpad balanced on his knee, charcoal rasping in circles. Always circles, layer on layer, until they blurred into dark constellations.
“She asked about children,” he said. His voice was dust caught in wind. “She wanted to know why the files don’t match. She said someone was folding lives, over and over, until they disappeared.”
“Did she mention a name?” Libaux asked.
The painter didn’t look up. “She said the name was silence. She said silence had a man’s smile.”
Troll watched the charcoal grind deeper into the paper. The sound was a rasp, rhythmic, steady.
---
In the municipal office, AV technician Luc cued up a recording. A security camera from Bar du Phare.
Speakers hissed, then resolved into distant voices, the clink of glasses, halyards striking masts outside.
And then: clink… roll… clink.
Contained. Not scattered. Inside cloth.
Luc boosted the sound. The marble’s movement sharpened. And beneath it—faint, breathy—an exhale.
A human pause.
Troll felt it inside her ribs.
Mage Meuller’s email replayed in her mind: The marbles are not evidence. They are performance.
---
That evening, they entered the bar themselves.
It was tiled in cream, mirrors doubling bottles, laughter bouncing too brightly. The espresso machine hissed like a tired animal.
A man sat in the corner with a canvas bag at his feet. The bag shifted when he moved.
Troll heard it: tch… tch.
Her pulse climbed. She set her coffee cup deliberately on his table edge. Porcelain kissed wood with a small, defiant note.
The man smiled. Too precise.
Libaux bent, pulled the bag open.
Not marbles. Fishing floats. Wooden, dull, colliding with low, hollow knocks.
The man smiled wider. “Vintage,” he said. “There’s a shop near the church.”
He paid with clattering coins and left. The floats thudded softly together as he carried them out.
The bar exhaled again.
Libaux sipped his coffee, expression flat. “Souvenirs.”
Troll said nothing. Her hand shook slightly as she lifted her cup.
She thought of Nunito Volker’s rigid hand, and now Miller Corbal’s fractured marble. Two bodies, two echoes.
Somewhere between silence and noise, the message was still waiting.
