“Magistrate, what are we doing here?”
Jedlow's morning had not begun well. He had been dreaming, a formless sensation of shifting emotions, idle pleasure displaced by subtle fear and looming dread. He had pictured Magistrate Ductio, authoritarian and brutal, and Lynnis Chalcer, exotic and distant. Beyond them crept a dark and rearing shadow, a faceless figure that lurked at the edge of hearing, murmuring its accusations and its self-pity. Piety Korsolten. She was dead but her ghost demanded its due of him, and Jedlow was overwhelmed with helplessness. He awoke with a start as the door of his room crashed open and Ductio thrust a mug of some steaming brew at him. “Get up, guardsman. We've some fucking work to do.”
It was still dark when Jedlow drove them down along the spiraling Coalface Hill road toward Greater Poetsbridge. The foggy morning air held a bitter chill as it raced by. Jedlow shivered and cast an envious glance back at Ductio, who was huddled in a blanket on the floor of the buggy. He flicked his switch across the flanks of the horses. They responded with contemptuous snorts but their canter became a gallop.
They raced through broad streets bordered by reaching firs, a wall impassable but for the occasional inconspicuous lane way. These led to the various student residences and rimward colleges of the University, glimpses of white columns and steepled roofs the only hints of their presence. Jedlow wondered aloud if their destination lay down one of these but Ductio clarified the matter with curt shouted directions.
They emerged from the tree corridor through a great iron gate manned by a sullen, hypothermic looking youth who hurried to open up and wave them through when he saw their uniforms and the gold emblem painted on the buggy. This was a great garden of flower beds, shade trees and benches, at the centre of a ring of grandiose white buildings. These were individually less monumental than the Ducal estate on Coalface Hill, but taken together formed a vast and daunting edifice. In the gloom of the sun's feeble early glow, they seemed to Jedlow to breathe with patient intent. He found himself intimidated.
Following a final barked instruction - “Third on the right” - he steered the horses towards a comparatively unassuming building presided over by a dark brass statue of some learned notable. Without waiting for Jedlow to halt the horses, Ductio jumped out and made for the entrance, gravel crunching underfoot. As Jedlow found a trough to stop in front of, he could hear Ductio hammering on the door and bawling demands for access. Above a window here and there was flung open and a sleepy face would peer out. Ductio scathingly berated the onlookers until one of them volunteered to get the door and another promised to summon a Doctor Elgard.
As Ductio stood impatiently stabbing his walking cane into the gravel, the foot of the door and the base of the statue, Jedlow ventured his question.
“It's a school. We're learning something,” snapped the Magistrate. The door opened and a frightened student perhaps slightly older than Jedlow bid them to enter. “Shut up and take us to the mortuary.”
They were led down two flights of stairs and a short hallway that ended in a door marked with the warning “Teaching staff only”. This Ductio ignored, opening the door and dismissing the harried student with a caution to “Find Elgard and tell him if he's not here on the fucking minute I'm going to kick his teeth in”.
Jedlow lit a lantern hanging alongside the door and peered into the cold dark beyond the doorway. Three rows of metal cots laid end to end spanned the room. On all but a few lay a corpse under a calico sheet. At one end of the room lay a long workbench with gutters running along its perimeter. Several tiered shelves lay alongside. These contained a wicked collection of metal instruments, some of which he recognised from a brief stint working in a neighbour's butchery. Against the opposite wall were several display cabinets within which lay glass bottles occupied by a unseemly variety of internal organs, only a few of which he was able to identify before averting his gaze.
“Fuck. Stinks in here.” There was an acrid miasma that pricked at his nostrils and burned the back of his throat. Breathing was not difficult but it was uncomfortable.
“We use a number of preservative chemicals to inhibit the putrefaction process,” announced a stern voice clearly accustomed to lecturing. They turned to see a man of advanced middle age wearing his bedclothes and an expression of annoyance. “Magistrate Ductio, what can possibly justify this intrusion at so uncivil an hour?” The man seemed utterly unintimidated by Ductio, which was unprecedented in Jedlow's brief acquaintance with him.
“I'm probably interrupting some great medical breakthrough, am I Elgard?” sneered Ductio. “Piety Korsolten, brought in two days ago. Have you cut her yet?”
Doctor Elgard shrugged indifferently. “We are not supplied with names, you know that. Describe her.”
“Forty or so. Tall for a woman. Murbish skin, thick eyebrows, red hair to her waist, a bit of flesh on her.”
“I know the individual you mean. Come.” He led Ductio down one aisle towards what Jedlow was trying very hard not to think of as the trophy case. He followed, reluctantly assuming the invitation extended to him as well. Besides, he had the only light.
Elgard relieved him of the lantern and hung it on a hook above one gurney. “The cadaver has been cleaned and catalogued, but not dissected. As you can see, we are unusually well supplied at the moment.”
Ductio pulled the calico coversheet away and discarded it on the floor. The stinging smell redoubled, mingling with a cloying sweetness and a noisome flatulent stench. Jedlow choked as silently as he could manage.
The skin of Piety Korsolten was a horrific patchwork of black bruises and flesh scraped raw, but it was the state of her face that finally provoked Jedlow's stomach into convulsions. He clapped a hand to his mouth and turned away in desperation as geysers of regurgitated tea sprayed between his fingers. He dropped to his knees and vomited noisily under an adjacent corpse trolley.
“Fuck sake, boy. I thought you grew up on a farm?” Ductio shook his head in contempt as Jedlow spat tearfully and wiped at the corners of his mouth. “Don't get that shit on your uniform. I won't have a Sentryman looking like a fucking bar mop.” He returned his attention to Doctor Elgard, who was watching Jedlow with mild curiosity. “What can you tell?”
“She was struck with a blunt instrument to the head. Repeated blows from the front. Aimed at the face and right side of the head, judging by the depressions here, here and there.” Doctor Elgard indicated the various injuries as he spoke, with no more emotion than if he was pointing out a vaguely interesting cloud pattern. He took the corpse carefully by the head and one shoulder and lifted it for Ductio's view. “The skull is fractured above the nape of the neck. Without a more thorough examination, I would venture that this was the fatal blow. She likely fell over backwards and broke it on some hard surface.”
“I doubt it. She was found in her bed. Goose down mattress, cushions everywhere. Soft female shit. You couldn't break a fart on a bed like that.” It was a challenge. Ductio's eyes gleamed with some undefined triumph.
Elgard was unmoved. “That she was struck about the face is certain. That she fell and caved in her skull is also certain. It is not I who is in the business of drawing conclusions from evidence, Magistrate.” He set the head of Piety Korsolten carefully down.
“She was killed somewhere else?” The words popped out before Jedlow had time to censor them.
Ductio turned and glared suspiciously. “What did you say, boy? Speak up. I asked you a fucking question.”
Jedlow swallowed a bitter tangy gulp of saliva. “Well, sir, I mean if she was killed by falling on her head and she was on a soft bed, then she must of been killed somewhere else and then put in bed after.” It came out in a rush, too quickly for him to think about whether it made sense.
Elgard said with a certain satisfaction, “Very good, Guardsman -?”
“Jedlow, Mas- er, Doctor.”
He looked fearfully at Ductio, but the Magistrate had turned back to the body, saying “Right. Makes sense. Didn't think this was going to be fucking straightforward. I'm going to kill fucking Kilritch. What else?”
Doctor Elgard mimed “Well done” to Jedlow and continued with his lecturing tone. “According to the students who were assigned to prepare the body, she had had sexual intercourse on the night of her death.” Jedlow didn't want to think about how they might know that. “They have been reprimanded for their indiscretion in circulating that information.”
“Clothes?”
“There is a basket behind the examination bench in which garments of decent quality are saved. They are laundered on Oxdays, so whatever this individual wore should remain.”
Jedlow searched the basket without waiting to be told that this would be his duty. There was a wide range of clothes discarded within the vast hamper. While Ductio and Elgard spoke in low tones, he sorted the basket's contents into piles of men's and women's clothing. Given Piety Korsolten's height, he quickly narrowed it down to a handful of larger items. In a flash of insight, he guessed that the item he sought would be either evening or bed dress. After a second and more nauseating revelation, he selected a long golden embroidered silk chemise stiffened and stained brown with dried blood. He silently offered his prize to Ductio.
The Magistrate laid it across both palms and raised it to eye level, turning it and lifting it this way and that. Drawing it to his broad hooked nose, he sniffed in a deep breath. Then another. “Thought so,” he muttered, thrusting the ruined silk at Elgard. “What about that then?”
Elgard made a more cautious sniff and frowned. “I'm unfamiliar. Is it a woman's fragrance?”
“Not if she's got any sense. That's powdered yellowpetal.”
“Pharmacology is not my strongest field of academic interest,” said Doctor Elgard, “but isn't that a toxin?”
Ductio grinned. “Yeah, not half. If I were you, Doc, I'd lock myself well away from company for the next hour or do.” He gestured wildly at the surrounding cadavers. “And I definitely wouldn't try to fucking ride it out in here.” He turned to Jedlow. “Let's go, boy. I'm of a mind to take the country air.”
***
Holthock knocked gently. Receiving no answer, he pushed the door open with his free hand and stepped into the room. The curtains were drawn and the room was sullen with dark. He set the breakfast tray on a small bedside cabinet and threw the curtains open, saying with false cheer, “Come along now, girl. It's another day. Let's be having a smile.”
Sarema was propped against a mountain of cushions, presents from her fellow singers who had ignored Trigosi's dictate against visitors in an act of defiant sorority. She lay buried in blankets, a protective cocoon. Only visible were her head - the facial bruises still livid, the hairless patch a barren red wound high above her swollen right eye, the torn ear lobe beginning to scar – and her left arm. This was thrown listlessly across her chest, the wrist bound inextricably to two flanking wooden splints. The barely visible fingertips were blackened with bruising, the nails mere jagged splinters.
Her face was waxy, expressionless. She stared at a fixed point and blinked infrequently. There was no indication she had heard him speak.
He struggled to suppress his despair beneath a veneer of burbling happiness. “The nurse says there's nothing to worry about. Cuts and bruises. Superficial. You'll need to stay off the ankle of course – no dancing for you for a week or two, my love. Paid holiday courtesy of Master Trigosi, eh? How many are there as can say that, eh?” He sat gently on the bed and applied a damp cloth to her face. “The wrist is hardly a break at all, she says. Just a tiny little crack in the bone. You'll be waving it at the boys again in no time. I just know-”
He winced as this came out and trailed off into an embarrassed silence. He finished dabbing the cloth and laid it carefully across her ruined hairline. Taking a spoon and bowl of cool porridge from the tray, he began to feed her. He had to prod the spoon at her lips before she would acknowledge each bite. She ate without enthusiasm, unmindful of the occasional dribble of escaping gruel.
“All the girls are worried about you, you know. They say you won't sing with them when they visit. You could give them a song, couldn't you? Ease their concerns? They're worried, as I say.”
No response.
“Master Trigosi, he's taken matters in hand. He says -”
“No.” The word was a hiss forced past swollen tongue and lips.
Holthock leaned forward, encouraged. “What's that, my pretty Woleji doll?”
“No,” she repeated. “Not Tr-Trigosi.”
“My flower, I don't underst-”
Louder now. Anger. “Trigosi will not...have my...revenge. It is mine. Mine!” She turned and fixed him with wide eyes. “Aricia told me his name. She told me all their names. You know who they are.”
Holthock could not deny it. For a few gratifying moments after Addenfarrow had fed her his coins, he had been elated. The patronage of so prestigious a client as good as guaranteed weeks of successful trading as sycophantic admirers trailed in his wake. Thoughts of the rewards Trigosi would be sure to lavish had distracted him from his normal diligence. He had missed seeing the danger and Sarema had paid for his mistake. His guilt had been a stifling shroud for two days. He nodded. “They are powerful men.”
“Powerful men,” she agreed bitterly. “Trigosi cannot make them suffer the way they must!”
“Boss Trigosi will -”
“He will do nothing!” spat Sarema. “What these men did to me was a message to Trigosi! He has been shamed! Put in his place! He is a wallowing craven too feeble to act!” She tried to clench a fist and cried in pain. Tears pooled at her eyes but her fury overcame her sobs.
“Sarema, you said it yourself! They are powerful men! Seneschal Addenfarrow is second only to Duke Vormura! Nothing can be done!”
Through clenched teeth she declared “For money, there are always men willing to do harm. Find one for me! I have a little money.”
Desperately Holthock protested “It will not be enough!”
“It may be,” she insisted. “I will work for what I don't have. I'll fuck every sailor in Fellport if I have to.” She struck him, hard, across the face. “Don't dare tell me no! Don't dare deny me my vengeance!”
Holthock reeled in shock. Sarema was transformed. The generous, teasing, laughing dancer he had known a few days ago was scourged away to leave this vengeful, baleful creature. His fault.
She saw his guilt and struck. “I am owed this, Holthock,” she said. “You did not protect me. Do not protect them!”
Her puffed face was red with humiliation and venomous intensity. Holthock could not bear her accusatory gaze. He turned away in shame, feeling her scrutinising eyes all the same.
Finally he found he could not deny her. “I know a man who may help,” he said.
Sarema's glare did not waver. “Then promise me you will meet him. Pay him what he wants, promise him whatever he asks! Promise me!”
Holthock was defeated. “I will ask how this thing can be done,” he said. “I promise.”
***
Ductio was beginning to act very oddly, decided Jedlow. The moment they had returned to the buggy, he had begun to whistle, not very well but a recognisable tune nonetheless. He had declared “You must be famished after all that spewing, boy,” and Jedlow had been unable to detect the usual tone of sarcasm. In fact the Magistrate sounded almost sympathetic, adding “Head back to the city. Stop if you see an open bakery. Lazy buggers must be up by now. I fancy a custard pastry.”
He had then settled back on his cushioned bench and exuberantly hummed 'The General's Other Daughters' to himself, occasionally singing a lyric when he could remember them or substituting an amusing obscenity. Jedlow sneaked a glance. He was swaying more or less in time with his music. As the horses set off at a trot, Ductio overbalanced and nearly fell backwards out of the buggy.
“Magistrate?”
“Pastries, guardsman. You can drop me off and then run your errand, eh hey hey hey?” He finished his sentence in song. Jedlow had never heard anything so unsettling.
“Errand, master?”
“You're going back to Fenchrow. Find out everything he knows about yellowpetal. Who brings it in, where it comes from, who sells it.” Ductio giggled. Jedlow discovered new frontiers of disconcert. “Anything from the past few weeks.”
“Me, Magistrate? But I'm just a -”
But Ductio had passed out and was snoring like a lumber mill.
***
Kramus liked boats. He didn't know much about them but he had a lubber's conception of them as engines of freedom. Sometimes he imagined himself away from Fellport, away from the crowds, the noise, the suspicion. He imagined himself on the deck of a ship like this one, looking out at the endless tracts of ocean. Sometimes he wondered what it was like in other lands, where someone like him was the foreigner and nobody spoke a word of Phalish. Somebody once told him that the food was different there. He didn't see how that could be, food being food and everything. They'd probably been pulling his leg.
He and Sellton were making their regular appointment with the crew of a Cenautic ship which called in Fellport about once every six weeks. The ship's second mate, a Keerish with bulging forearms and no neck, sold them the occasional crop of petals. When those weren't available, he would usually have something else of interest stowed away in some private corner of the hold, from cases of wine to spices to tapestries to inventories of other vessels to barrels of Gomsakan scented oils. There was always something worthwhile to be had for good prices.
“Desigit leaves are getting popular with the lads up at the University,” Sellton was telling the Keerish mate and his crony, a one-armed Cenaut wearing a jerkin of canary and blue checks. “They mix it in with their morning brews. Proper help to the recall, so I understand.”
“Is not problem. Plenty in Gloscha, How much is you need?”
“Make it four bales,” remarked Sellton, making a careful note in a black pocket journal. “Don't want to over-commit. The Professors might have a crackdown.”
The mate shrugged with laconic disinterest. “Is whatever. More else?”
“We had an assurance you would have some yellowpetals for us this voyage.” Sellton was unable to keep the annoyance out of his voice. Kramus felt the same way. Their buyers wouldn't take well to disappointment. Without a fresh supply, their stockpile would dry up within the week.
The sailors exchanged a nervous look, which sounded bells for Kramus. Hello, what's this? “Something amiss?” he asked.
“Is...is hard to right now find,” stammered the chequered sailor. “Winter. Is bad for flowers growing.”
Sellton was obviously just as suspicious.“What are you talking about? I thought your supplier grew them in a hothouse.”
“Is – is frost, is -”
Kramus interrupted. “There's no frost. What is this dog shit? Are you trying to do us over, Jallo?”
“No, no, Mister Kramus,” said the mate. “Is frost, like he said.”
“And I said there's no fucking frost.” Kramus read this as fact in their faces. “Where's the fucking 'petal you said you could deliver?”
The Keerish mate deflated. He recognised in Kramus' tone that his weak bluff had been called. “There was other buyer,” he admitted. “Pay three times more. Took whole bundle.”
“One bundle? How many flowers? Six?” Kramus had to admire that in his partner. He didn't waste time getting angry about things that couldn't be helped, he just got straight on to getting the facts. You can throw the man out of the Sentry, he thought, but once a guardsman... Not that he would say so to Sellton's face again, not after the last time.
Besides, getting hot and taking action, that was Kramus' side of the partnership. He tried to guess how Sellton would deal with the sailors' indiscretion. There had been an arrangement, after all, that had been broken, leaving them inconvenienced. They'd tried to cover it up too. That ought not to go unpunished. They had a reputation to protect, didn't they? On the other hand, there was no denying that the Keerishman was a resourceful contact and their relationship had been mutually rewarding. And he had to admit that picking a fight with a gang of sailors on their own ship was tactically unwise. Kramus decided that Sellton would probably want to let it go with a warning that the next betrayal would not be treated so lightly.
The mysterious buyer would not get the same relief.
Sellton pressed the sailors for a description of their competitor, which they supplied to the best of their circumscribed vocabularies. Was he acting alone? Did he know who he was crossing? Did he plan more purchases?
This latter they confirmed, giving a date three days hence. The was meeting already set up.
Right.
After the predicted caution, he and Sellton left the ship and found a quiet pub to discuss their response. Over a teeming mug of ale Kramus said “Whoever this card is, we should put him down hard.”
“Agreed,” said Sellton, “but some questions do occur. Somebody is making moves against Trigosi. Is this connected? Another thing: we've had to work hard to build up demand for 'petals. Where is this blonde guy making sales?”
“We can ask him all that when we have him strung upside down over a shark pool,” decided Kramus without concern. “Much as I admire your nonchalance, Master Kramus, I feel we may be best advised to proceed with caution.”
“Darcus and Ilchark?” Kramus named two associates whose propensity for brutality was exceeded only by their willingness to exercise it for money.
“Why take chances? Bull Zelmann is a crack with a crossbow. Let's get him in as well. Standard offer, no need to tell them what it's all about. We don't need any more little rumours getting back to Boss Trigosi.”
***
“Tell me everything.”
Battis Fenchrow lay back on the padded couch and resisted the temptation to fidget with his itching blindfold. That was the arrangement. These sessions were far too juicy, in every sense, to jeopardise it. Even before the girl began tugging his beeches down to his knees, he was stiffened with the illicit thrill.
Beside his head, the Ballad Dog drew up a chair and made himself comfortable. “Where would you like me to begin?”
Fenchrow sighed as the girl shifted her weight about to improve her position. “Where else? The Duke.”
“He has not been seen abroad in several days. I have heard there was an altercation. A violent exchange between his Grace and senior Sentry officers.”
“Who?” Ah. The girl's fingers and tongue were soft as feathers.
“Magistrate Ductio. A staff officer named Siner Kilritch.”
“What were they arguing about?” gasped Fenchrow, trying to control his breathing.
“Gently, Felice. Master Fenchrow has turned quite red.” His voice was amused and superior. Not for the first time, it occurred to Fenchrow that his informant was of noble breeding. His manners were refined, his education exemplary, his manner that of a patron indulging a subordinate. No doubt his career as a muckraking rumourmonger was a furtive entertainment, a tawdry pastime to break the monotony of idle wealth, an amusing secret from his high society friends. Fenchrow often speculated about the Ballad Dog's motives. It excited him.
The Ballad Dog said “The precise subject of dispute is not known. If I may speculate, two possibilities immediately spring to mind. One is the likely baseless assertion, currently enjoying another round of circulation, that foreign agents are abroad, sowing mischief and discord. I think that one may be safely dismissed as too commonplace to raise tempers, however. That leaves us with the subject of the wellbeing of the charming daughter of Lady Charmaine, of whom it has been remarked in certain circles that she has taken to melancholy.”
Fenchrow was not surprised. “You told me he was fucking her.”
“I suggested that his Grace was intimate with a young relative. I gather from the lurid headlines of your recent edition that you may have inferred a great deal more than that.”
“I pride myself on my ability to – hah! – to fill in the missing details,” retorted Fenchrow. “If you would be more forthcoming with the particulars of your anecdotes...” Oh, faith! She was using her teeth! He had noticed her teeth right away, straight and white in her wide smile, when she had entered his office a few minutes earlier. She had held up the blindfold in one hand and the card depicting a dog in silhouette in the other and she had smiled with her white, winning teeth. He'd been stiff as a truncheon since then.
“I tell you as much as it suits me to,” replied the Ballad Dog dismissively. “If you are unsatisfied with the content of my reports, perhaps I should consider pursuing another career?”
“Not at all, not at, huh, all,” Fenchrow soothed between heaving breaths. “You, you had something else for me?”
“Well, if you are certain I can continue to be of use? Just so then. There are stirrings that perhaps the Accord between the forces of, shall we say, law and order and those of chaos and malice is perhaps no longer as strong as it was.”
“Hap-hap-happenstance or design?”
“You are too suspicious, Master Fenchrow. You see conspiracies everywhere.” The girl's ministrations suddenly ceased and there came the soft flutter of shucked clothing. Abruptly her weight was upon him and sliding down around him. He grunted and thrust his hips in response. “I've heard elsewhere of trouble between the salooners. Mistress Korsolten, was she just the first?”
“It's possible. There are deep interests invested in that quarter. Criminals like Berber Trigosi have bought a sheen of legitimacy with their ill-found wealth. That ascendancy is becoming common. It is a source of some resentment for the old guard.”
“Then it will come to war?” The thought rode a surge of excitement. His loins swelled with pressure and burst their banks.
The Ballad Dog laughed, not quite a sneer. “Everything does, eventually.”
***
Fowart knocked hesitantly. Like most of the rest of the Moistened Cardinals (except Nana) he was unsure now precisely how to relate to Bey. The suddenness of his appointment and the revelation of his social pre-eminence were seismic events, undermining their already shaken stability. “Sir Beyda?”
Bey had commandeered Piety Korsolten's room, after having Nana remove her more intimate personal effects. He was now debating changes to the menu with the senior chefs, the hot-tempered northerner Gardenio and a reserved matronly woman named Breanna. Bey informed them of his planned changes to the menu to appeal to more cultivated tastes. Breanna's response was thoughtful consideration of the proposal but Gardenio was a staunch opponent. “I 'spect things are different in the south, m'lord, but hereabouts folks don't go foreign. Tuck is tuck, is what we say.”
“They'll see it differently once they have a taste,” Bey assured them. “You'll see. The art's in making people want what they don't realise they're missing. Fowart, stop hovering, man. What's the matter?”
“More visitors, Sir Beyda,” simpered Fowart. “I'll send them away if you wish, but I think you might want to take their call.”
“For the last time, just call me Bey, or 'boss' if you must,” said Bey, exasperated by the table captain's bids at ingratiation. “And whether I want to take their call depends on who is calling, yes?”
“Master Heronvale and Mistress Clerrance,” announced Fowart importantly, directing knowing looks at the chefs, who just rolled their eyes, “of the Chattering Casket and Nutmeg, respectively.” He raised his brows with great significance. “Your competition, Sir Beyda,” he added redundantly.
Bey wondered why it had taken so long. “Reassure the master and the lady that I will join them momentarily, Fowart. Arrange for refreshments, if you please. I am afraid we'll have to continue this later,” he added to the cooks, who shrugged and departed. He slipped on his doublet and took a moment to add a cravat to the ensemble. First impressions, he told himself.
His guests were accepting snifters of a fine berry liqueur when Bey swept into the sitting room attached to his office. He had not had time to redecorate in here and winced to see Mistress Clerrance examining a gaudy nymph statuette painted in a variety of bright metallic hues. Numerous other examples of Piety Korsolten's tastes, which ran somewhat to the indiscriminately colourful, were placed about the room.
Clerrance was an elegant woman of perhaps forty, with rich dark skin and raised ridges of tattooing about her alluring black eyes. Her corseted dress of crimson satin was accessorised with fat bows trailing black ribbon and a broad-brimmed black hat. Heronvale was at least twenty years her senior, a gruff-faced authoritarian with precisely-trimmed moustache and hair that might have been cropped, dyed and waxed less than an hour ago. He said, “So you're the one,”, not appearing concerned with his lack of civility.
Bey took the high moral ground and bowed deep, holding one palm out in the Murbish fashion. He dipped into a kneel before Mistress Clerrance and brushed his fingers across his heart. “Mistress Clerrance,” he oozed, “such a pleasure. And to you, Master Heronvale, please be welcome.”
He indicated to Heronvale that he should take his comfort on the settee, failing to mention that an hour ago he had caught Nana on it, pleasuring herself with items of statuary. “To what good fortune may I accord this visit?”
Clerrance purred, betraying traces of a Keerish lilt to Bey's keen ear, “Good fortune indeed, Sir Beyda. Such rare providence is scarcely creditable.”
“Aye,” agreed Heronvale, every inch the gentrified farmer. “Lucky doesn't begin to surround it. I'd never so much as heard your name before this morning, yet here you are sucking on the richest plum in Fellport.”
Bey waved this away with a modest smile, as though he had judged it a compliment. “Oh, I assure you I am known well enough about the estates of Shackleford in Deremar. Too well known, as a matter of fact. It all became most tiresome. I fancied to take the seaside vapours, so here I have landed.”
“Your timing is immaculate, Sir Beyda,” observed Clerrance. “Piety Korsolten is not dead three days and here you are, the personal appointee of the Duke himself.”
They are on a fishing expedition, Bey realised. They must know that Duke Vormura didn't intervene directly on his behalf. They want to know who I know. He shook his head disarmingly. “I am merely a civil functionary, I assure you. My appointment ensures only that a debt to the state is discharged.”
Heronvale harrumphed. “Revenue from a sale would have achieved the same end, Sir! It is uncontestably the case!” He was turning red, though with chagrin or the inflammatory liqueur it was impossible to tell. “I would have placed an offer myself.”
“Of course you would, dear Udo,” said Clerrance with smooth composure, “as would I. But what is done is done. Now perhaps, Sir Beyda, you will indulge us a moment longer with your intentions for the Moistened Cardinal?”
“My mandate is very specific, mistress,” he replied. “I am to take whatever measures are necessary to ensure the ongoing solvency and profitability of this establishment. I intend to use every power at my disposal to attract a distinctive and exclusive clientele and to keep them. They will be lavished with attention by my staff, they will dine on rare and succulent dishes, they will consume the finest potations. And their remaining senses will be dazzled by entertainments of compelling wit and dazzling spectacle.”
“Spare us your harbinger's spiel, master,” commanded Heronvale. “Your intentions are clear. You plan to compete with legitimate men of business, with the blessing and backing of the Duke. It is unacceptable! An outrage! You, a jumped-up country aristocrat with dizzy notions of proper society playing the tycoon. This is an insult!”
Bey stiffened. “Master Heronvale, I am not in the habit of receiving aspersions to my character. I would kindly ask you to recall that you are a guest of this establishment and -”
“No longer, Sir Beyda,” interrupted Heronvale, leaping to his feet in a fume. “And if I may be so bold as to predict, I expect to be one of the few!” He strode from the room, trailed by a hand-wringing Fowart.
That went well. Bey allowed himself a small satisfied smirk before turning back to Mistress Clerrance. She was fanning herself with her own hat, unconcerned by the altercation. “I apologise for my companion, Sir Beyda. His outbursts are quite disreputable. Then again, you do place him in a most awkward position.”
“Unintentionally, you may be sure.”
“Oh of that I have no doubt,” Clerrance said. “Still, the Chattering Casket is but a lane or two away. It will be of little consolation to Heronvale that you will him no harm when his customers become yours.” She smiled. It did not seem that her acquaintance's subsiding patronage troubled her.
“And what of Nutmeg, mistress? I should hate to be the cause of any inconvenience to so graceful and refined a host as yourself.”
Clerrance smiled and rose. “Pray do not be concerned on my behalf, Sir Beyda. I am most certainly not. Good day.”
***
This is it.
Lynnis Chalcer crept unseen along the hall on the third floor of Coalface Estate. She had now abandoned the disguise that had provided her with this much access. The boots, long coat and tall fur hat of a guardsman - along with some padding to hide her figure and a nondescript arrangement of fake whiskers - she had stuffed in a chimney. They would be discovered sooner or later, but they would not provide any clues to identify her. Their previous owner had not seen her and in any case would probably never wake to bear witness to the assault.
She struggled to maintain constant breathing. She was out of her element, operating in broad daylight, but her reconnaissances had revealed a surprising laxity in the habits and discipline of the Ducal household guards during the day. She could not afford not to exploit any opportunity.
She padded on bare feet from one room to the next. On the rare occasions that she heard anyone coming she would duck into one of the abundant alcoves or secrete herself behind statues, tapestries or great oak furnishings. She was unseen. Her one apparent concession to the possibility that she might be intercepted and forced to flee before she could complete her task was the red silk ribbon wrapped tight around her face and throat, revealing only her eyes. It provided passive protection of her identity, a useful enough trait, but its true purpose was more particular and might be served at any moment.
Duke Vormura could be anywhere, but during the day he almost never left his estate. His carriage was still stabled. She doubted he would have left on foot, though it was possible he was somewhere in the mile or so of gardens. But Lynnis had scrutinised his nocturnal habits with careful attention, and she knew where he would mostly likely be found at this hour.
The ground floor was occupied by reception areas, two dining halls, a grand ballroom and other social venues, as well as a small army of servants. The first and second floors were residential, occupied by various dignitaries, functionaries and relatives of the Blue Duke. Considering his family's history of resolving disputes with assassination, it didn't surprise her that he kept his closest kin where he could see them.
The third floor was for the exclusive use of the Duke himself, and unfortunately benefited from more than adequate security. She had been forced to risk being seen to avoid the household guards. They each carried a sword and some had crossbows. Lynnis carried a leap sap and a wire garrotte. She couldn't afford a direct confrontation.
After she had disposed of her disguise, she levered open a window with a sharp iron poker and climbed to the next storey. A few hundred yards away, two women strolled under parasols in the gardens. They did not see her.
She had used a wire lever to slip the latch on the third floor windows and had slipped into what appeared to be a study. The walls were hidden behind floor to ceiling shelves of books. A complicated brass structure showing the positions of the stars and planets was suspended by chains above a long escritoire desk. Here and there was a comfortable seat, a liquor cabinet, a smoke censer. Pointing toward her access windows was a telescope of brass and oak. Muffled human noises were audible from beyond two heavy oak doors etched with bramble patterns in the Inkritic style.
Lynnis took a brief moment to compose herself. She began another exercise, a mental recitation of rhymes and mnemonics that helped her transform her conscious thoughts. In the time it would have taken to say it, she was thinking entirely in the Lephali language.
She slipped the sap from its sleeve pocket into her hand and crept to the door. Two voices. One was a bass growl, urgent and dominant. The other was young, a girl, compliant and fearful. Lynnis gritted her teeth. There would never be a better moment. She shifted her weight, shouldering the door open slowly. She was tensed to spring if the room's occupants became alarmed, but she was in luck. The door's swing was smooth and noiseless.
The room was a bedchamber. Its centre piece was a capacious poster bed drapes with fold upon fold of billowing silk curtains obscuring its occupants. A row of tinted crystal windows were thrown fully open, flooding the room with a breezy winter chill. There was a fragrance like scorched nuts and flowers dancing with tantalising familiarity on the excited swirls of steam that rose from a bathing pool that lay between Lynnis and the bed.
She sprang over the pool. The thickest curtains shielded her from the sight of the two gasping figures on the bed. In an instant she was at its foot, crouching. She rose cautiously and peered through gaps opened by the flicking curtains.
A man, heavy set and hairy, streaming with sweat despite the cold, lay atop an adolescent girl, narrow-limbed and narrow-hipped. He was grunting with exertion as he thrust at her. Her bottom lip was bloody from being bitten, her eyes were rolling in stupefaction, her legs and arms clenching him in a potent embrace. Lynnis guessed she was fifteen at most.
Her eyes narrowed in vicious satisfaction. This made it easier.
She struck like a startled adder. In a quick movement she leaped through the curtains and fell with both feet on the man's back. She looped the garrotte over his head, noting almost unconsciously the patchwork of dark blue birthmarks on his face and forehead that had earned him his despised sobriquet, and threw her entire weight backwards. The Duke's head snapped back, his eyes rolled white, his back arched in desperation. He could make no sound through the constriction.
The girl yelped in pain and horror as the Duke's weight was drawn away and she saw the terrifying red-faced apparition looming behind him. He ejaculated wildly, unnoticed by all. As Lynnis followed her movement through and dragged her victim off the bed, the girl began grabbing wildly at the curtains and moaning in terrified confusion.
Lynnis landed heavily beside the Duke, the garrotte now twisted even tighter by her bodily torsion. His tortured face was already turning from raging red to a deep purple of resignation. He flailed his arms in her direction but she slid and writhed out of his grasp and sight. He had barely caught a glimpse of her yet.
The girl scrambled to the edge of the bed, clinging to the post as though it was a mast in a storm. Her eyes were wide with incomprehension, then denial. Finally, when she could bear the struggle to understand no longer, she screamed. It was a pure, high tone of utter fear.
Lynnis reacted without thought. She found her feet, wrenched the Duke into a more convenient position and the drove one foot into the side of the girl's head. Her cry ceased instantly. She spun once, tumbled from the bed and fell with limp awkwardness into the heated pool.
“Besha!” she swore. The girl had been swallowed up instantly by the steam rising from the water's surface. The Duke kicked spasmodically. He was not yet dead. Lynnis could not see the girl but knew that she might already be drowning. There was nothing else she could do.
She loosed her grip on the grips at either end of the garrotte, which retained its firm and bloody grip on the Duke's throat. As he floundered and clutched at his throat, she circled in front of his and kicked him twice, as hard as she could manage, in the testicles. Now a wheezing gasp clawed its way from his throat and he collapsed once again.
Lynnis spun and scanned the pool for the girl – there she was!
A door in the wall before her, which would have led to the central corridor, burst open, tilting off broken hinges. Two men appeared there with raised crossbows and fired with nerveless immediacy.
A bolt hit Lynnis just above the hip as she dropped to one side and rolled. Swearing in Leph, she charged at the men and hit one across the knee with the lead sap. His kneecap cracked and he fell screaming.
Lynnis punched at the face of the second man, the middle knuckle extended to puncture an eye. He wailed and dropped the spent crossbow, raising his hands to his face. She snatched the sword from his belt in a spinning wrench and drove it down into back of the man on the floor. Wrenching the weapon out, she spiked it pommel-first into the second man's undamaged eye.
Another man, a Sentry guardsman, burst in from the hall. “By the cankered fucking saints!” he bellowed in disbelief. He slashed at Lynnis with an unformidable knife, raking a vicious welt across her left side. Her linen shirt was stained red as she span away.
She knew this one. Siner Kilritch. Senior administrator for the Sentry. Not important enough to stay and fight to the death. Completing the assassination was out of the question now. Time for the backup plan.
Correction. Time to make up the backup plan.
“Ne tass fe tuvazo, sedrissa tass! Cocci fe Lazare!” she babbled. It was a nonsense of invective and Lephali imperialist zealotry. Even in the likely event that none of her witnesses understood the expression, the meaning would be clear.
The assassin pounced at Kilritch, kicking one of his knee sideways. He flicked the knife again, skimming it across her raised palm. She snatched at his wrist, turned it and forced his grip to loosen. He lost track of the knife. His leg gave out and he collapsed, falling next to the blinded squealing guard.
“K- Ki- Kil-”
The Duke was not dead, as expected. Lynnis backed away towards the bed, wrapping both palms about the embedded bolt jutting from her swelling hip. With a heaving sigh she yanked it out, falling back on the bed almost in a faint.
“K- Kilritch,” gasped the Duke, his voice an unrecognisable rasp. “Kill that bitch!”
As though she were lazily getting out of bed on a warm summer morning, Lynnis rolled across the bed and flopped onto the floor. She was losing alarming quantities of blood but there was no time to think about that. She yanked hard on one of the curtains until it came down in a billow.
“Yes, your Grace!” Kilritch snatched up a discarded crossbow and wrenched at the pouch on the dead guard's hip until the bolts spilled out. He selected on and loaded it with fingers trembling with adrenaline.
Lynnis grabbed the ends of the curtain in either hand and looped them around her wrists to form a closed hoop. Stumbling on her weakening right leg, she backed toward the row of windows.
Kilritch raised the crossbow and tried desperately to steady it as the assassin climbed up on to the window frame. It seemed to become heavier as he held it. As it drooped in his grip, a twinge in his chest made him glance down. It seemed to him that he recognised the knife butt sticking out of his shoulder. “Saints,” he muttered, “I'm murdered.”
The fruit trees below had seemed tall and imposing when she had used them for cover on one of her previous surveillance outings. Now they were impossibly flimsy and distant. There were also the only thing between her and a fifteen yard fall.
As she launched herself, arms outstretched with the silk slung between them to catch at the first leafy branch she passed, the crystal window shattered like a thunderclap.
At that precise moment, she remembered the drowning girl.