Widow's Welcome

by D. K. Fields

  Merith was missing. A high moan escaped me.

  I fell beside the sack-wrapped body.

  ‘No,’ I said. I kept saying it, over and over again.

  ‘It’s not your fault, Sanga,’ the captain said.

  I tore away the sack around Merith’s head. She was as pale as the Widow and her eyes were open, but no blood stains. I undid all their careful wrapping, not one of them moving to stop me. Merith’s hands were unmarked. Her ankles. Her ankles.

  Her ankles were covered in bruises.

  I stared at those storm clouds until they crackled with pent-up lightning and swirled in malevolent colours. Someone had done their best to make Merith’s ankles look like she’d been touched by Black Jefferey. To my eyes their efforts were poor, but perhaps the others saw it differently – wanted to see it differently. Perhaps one indiscriminate dealer in death was enough for them. It was the story they were ready to believe, given everything that had happened on the ship. The lump on the back of Merith’s head, the blood half-hidden in her hair, told me another tale than plague.

  I stayed there, trying to understand the indifferent cruelty of an Audience who would hear such a tale, until someone touched my shoulder. I flinched at the touch of Mona’s hot hand. None of the remaining crew appeared any different. There was no change in their countenance and no sudden outpouring of guilty tears. I swallowed everything: the burning accusation in me; the urge to strike each and every one of them; the roar of despair that boiled in my likely tainted and weakened lungs. I swallowed it all.

  I coldly rose and walked, one deliberate step after the other, until I reached the cabin. There was a pool of Brin’s blood in the centre of the room. I didn’t walk around it. I lay still and quiet on the bed, where crewmen had shivered and sweated and bled and died.

  I might have slept in the time between lying there and hearing her voice through the door, but I couldn’t be sure. What was the passing of days to me after all that happened?

  ‘You might not understand, Orin. You might never understand,’ Mona said, as clear as if she were beside the bed. Maybe she was. ‘But I want you to, for better or worse. I will tell you a story. A story we both can take to the Widow.

  ‘When I was a child, my father put a stone above the front door of our home. Carved on it were the words: “Know your place, and then find it among the Audience”. When we moved, the stone moved with us. Damn how much it cost, or how much my mother tutted, the stone was taken out of one house and put in the next.

  ‘When he died, she buried it with him. I’m not sure if that was an act of kindness or defiance. But the stone’s place was with my father.

  ‘What place does this ship have, Orin? Where does it fit? Not in Bordair, not here on Break Deep, nor in the nothingness beyond. It shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be here. There is no here.’

  I staggered to the door but my hand faltered on the latch. I had to be sure of every word she said, but couldn’t bring myself to see her. Instead I pressed my forehead against the door.

  ‘Most Caskers are happy enough with their place,’ she said, ‘happy enough on a river, on a barge, plenty to tell the Washerwoman. A life they understand, beneath an Audience they understand. Some people: my father, my brother Dahey and plenty of others besides, we want to keep it that way.’

  And in the silence that followed those words I knew why she’d killed Merith, Merith who had survived the plague. Merith who might have helped me tend the others who yet lived. Merith who was hope.

  Mona wouldn’t let any of us live. No matter the unpredictability of plagues or dwellers, we were all as good as dead the moment we stepped on board.

  *

  I wished that my other self would do what needed to be done. His approach was direct and unfailing, and he was everything I was not. But in this Black Jefferey failed me.

  I waited as long as I could, almost starving myself in a kind of paralysis of inaction, of indecision. I could only take so much of the ensuing self-loathing, and it was that which drove me from the cabin. I stood painstakingly slowly. My legs shook from the balls of my feet all the way to my hips, as if my exposed ribs and prominent shoulders weighed a ship’s worth of crew. Hunger was through feasting on my insides and instead sulked where my stomach once was. I eased the door open a fraction; it was heavier than I remembered. In my other hand I held the knife I’d used to kill Brin.

  I staggered, lively as a corpse, through a dead ship.

  Fian had passed, still in her hammock. Judging by the damp patch beneath her she had been one to sweat in the fever, and not that long ago. There was nothing I could do for her, except maybe cut the hammock’s ties, but that felt pointless, childish even.

  I saw no one else below deck, from one end of the ship to the other. Beyond the hammocks the galley was predictably empty. Though I knew I was hungry, the thought of food, of anything passing my lips ever again, made me shudder. I fled from fruit that was near ruin.

  At the door to the captain’s cabin I paused only briefly, feeling sure there was someone inside.

  Mona was by the table, which was covered in open map scrolls, just as I had seen the captain so many times before. She seemed to understand what she was looking at, and she kept her gaze on those thin, faint lines when she said, ‘Hello, Orin.’

  I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. ‘I realise now, I never told you my name,’ I said, my back to her.

  ‘You didn’t have to. I chose you, not Cope.’

  ‘Because I saw Dahey die?’ I said.

  ‘I may not believe your legend myself, but the Audience are fickle. What better way to bring plague and death to this ship, than to have Black Jefferey himself aboard?’

  I turned, the knife clear in my hand. Perhaps she saw it catch the light, or perhaps she could just sense the keenness of its edge, the readiness of it.

  ‘Is that for me?’ she said.

  ‘For us.’

  ‘I was wrong, then, when I said you wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘I understand we both deserve the Widow’s judgement. And I’ll take my chances with the rest of the Audience.’

  ‘We could wait for the plague,’ she said calmly, as if discussing options for an afternoon stroll.

  ‘You don’t need to pretend anymore, Mona. I know you survived it. Why else would you be alive?’

  ‘Oh, you know, do you? Why are you still alive then, Sanga?’

  ‘Because I am the plague.’

  She gave a mocking bow. ‘Then I thank you, for making my role in this tale all the easier.’

  ‘But if you were so certain there’s nothing out there, why not just let Cope and her crew sail back as failures?’

  ‘To be sure.’

  ‘To be sure,’ I echoed.

  We locked eyes and I slowly drew the knife across my wrist. The pain was less than I had anticipated, distant somehow, and edged with relief. Blood ran like the Cask down my wrist and spread into its many tributaries around my fingers. I put the knife on the table and took a pace back.

  ‘Would you—’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  Concentrating, as if she were threading a needle, she cut both of her wrists. I left her there to die alone; another thing we both deserved.

  *

  And yet one more thing I was to be denied.

  On my way back to my cabin I heard someone calling ‘Sanga’ from the deck. Sanga, again, weaker this time; a rattle from a voice I recognised as being more Black Jefferey’s than her own.

  The captain was propped against the main mast, shivering, her hands completely blackened.

  I tried to laugh at her for the folly of everything she had done, everything she had said since I first met her. I wanted to laugh. But nothing came.

  ‘Sanga. Tell me what you see,’ she croaked.

  I opened my mouth, but she shook her head. She pulled herself up with the help of the mast – I offered no assistance and she asked for none. I was so weak I was in danger of being blown over by t
he gentle breeze. I saw Darcie curled at the base of his wheel like a sleeping cat.

  The captain pointed. ‘Tell me what you see. I don’t trust myself,’ she said.

  I squinted against the setting sun.

  ‘Land, Captain Cope. I see land.’

  Eleven

  The Casker storyteller, Nullan, bowed and waited. There seemed to be a collective intake of breath from the crowd and then, finally, people began to clap. It seemed like thoughtful applause rather than one of any real enthusiasm. At least, that was how Cora felt as she joined in. Those she could see in the rows of the public galleries wore puzzled expressions, their brows furrowed. The masked voters would be impossible to judge but she guessed they, too, would be wondering what to make of the Casker story. But that wondering didn’t necessarily mean all fifty stones would be white for no.

  Cora wasn’t sure what to make of it, what it might mean as the story that opened the election. She was even less sure if it had any relevance to her case. It felt like there was something to be found, some hint of the two storytellers’ relationship, in the tale of the sanga, Mona, and the ship. Wouldn’t Nullan find it impossible not to make some reference to her recent loss? But if she had, it took a greater mind than Cora’s to find it amid all that talk of plague and Break Deep.

  Nullan was still alone on the slope, somehow staying on her feet despite such a long story. Across the Mount, purple tunics were busy doing… something. Closing procedures, Cora supposed. The voters were all filing into their big pavilion.

  ‘They’ll be at their heaviest now,’ Jenkins said.

  ‘The masks?’

  ‘The stones. That’s what my mother says people told her, when they came back into the pavilion. The stones in their pockets felt heavier just before they were cast.’

  At the end of their row, a purple tunic was calling for people to stay in their seats until the votes had been cast and the voters had removed their masks of the Audience.

  ‘“The hammocks hung like abandoned spider webs”,’ Jenkins said. ‘Who’d have thought the Caskers had such poetry in their blood?’

  ‘There was more blood than poetry,’ Cora said. ‘Like I told you on the way here, Fenest could smell it.’

  ‘It was a little grim, wasn’t it?’ Jenkins looked hot and tired. Cora imagined she looked the same.

  ‘I’ve seen worse. I’m sure you have too.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Jenkins said. ‘And maybe the Caskers just wanted to match the city’s mood – the death of Ento.’

  ‘Or they knew something about it.’

  ‘You think the Casker story might be about Ento’s death?’ Jenkins said.

  ‘Perhaps. Not the murder necessarily, but it’s hard not to see Ento’s sewn mouth as a sign someone wants the Wayward tale silenced. Plague does a good job of that, making people silent.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Jenkins looked at Nullan again. ‘A connection between Ento’s death and the Casker plague…’

  Cora wiped the sweat from her face. ‘I don’t know. You can see meaning in anything when you’re short on leads. I’m sure the story has given the pennysheets plenty to talk about at any rate.’

  ‘Oh great,’ Jenkins said, as if she could already hear more shouted headlines full of plague.

  Beside the pavilion a mess of purple tunics and uniformed constables were gathering. With something close to a flourish, a whole side wall of the tent was rolled up and a huge chest appeared. The chest was escorted to a constabulary coach, though where it was bound, Cora wasn’t sure. Some secret safehouse known only to a handful of top names in the Commission, she guessed, given that the chests weren’t opened, the votes not counted, until all the stories had been told. The Casker tale was the first, and now the votes had been cast for it: fifty black and white stones. Fifty opinions on the Casker story. Perhaps fifty seats in the Assembly for the Caskers, but Cora doubted it.

  One story told, five remaining, and she was no closer to catching the killer.

  Jenkins was staring at the voting chest.

  ‘You all right, Constable?’

  ‘Just thinking how I would have voted,’ Jenkins said.

  The voting chest was secured, and the coach departed.

  ‘Commission people like us only have to make sure the election happens,’ Cora said. ‘I try not to worry about who actually wins.’

  ‘But it’ll have an impact on our lives just the same,’ Jenkins said.

  Cora opened her bindleleaf tin. ‘Not much we can do about it though, is there?’

  Twelve

  Cora glanced up from the pennysheet she was reading as another group of constables rushed past her door. Something had the station all stirred up but she was too tired to seek trouble out. Let it come to her.

  She’d slept at her desk last night and had been rudely awoken by Marcus delivering the early morning editions.

  Brushing a scattering of pastry crumbs from the pennysheet – she’d found something stale but edible in the third draw of her desk – Cora tried to focus. The ’sheets packed as much tight print as they could into their columns, but it would have taken more than the whole pastry to obscure the headline: Casker Opening Disaster!

  She didn’t think it was that bad. It had certainly kept her attention on a hot day, sitting in a hard seat; what more could the Commoner ask of a story? And the snippets of conversation she’d overheard since – in the streets, in the shops, in her lodging house – were mostly positive.

  The pennysheets disagreed.

  She flicked through the other ’sheets. Though they said it in different ways, the opinion was the same: the Caskers had gambled and lost. They’d chosen a grim tragedy, but Cora could see why: those kinds of stories had won elections in the past. It wasn’t always about entertainment – though plenty of people enjoyed sad tales. Stories like the one the Caskers had chosen this year could be damning enough of the incumbent realm – or even the Commission – to please the voters and the Critic. But it seemed the Caskers had misjudged things. Commission exit polls showed that only a third of those asked would have voted for the plague story. Fenestirans hadn’t responded well this year to what was being labelled a ‘disaster story’. Was a plague ship sailing off into oblivion too far removed from the voters? Or somehow too close? And did it mean anything for her case? Part of her wished someone would offer her a ship bound for Break Deep.

  She flicked through the rest of the ’sheets. They were talking as if they knew what was inside the voting chest, as if the Caskers had lost already. But not everyone had ruled out the first story’s success.

  ‘I’ve got a mark on the Caskers,’ Jenkins said, handing Cora a welcome cup of coffee. ‘Mad not to with those numbers.’

  Cora looked at the bottom of the ’sheet. ‘Thirty-two to one!’ She held it up to be sure. ‘That can’t be right. We’re one story in.’

  ‘I s’pose the chequers know their business.’

  ‘This is why I don’t bet on elections,’ Cora said. ‘What’s all the fuss out there?’ She gestured to the corridor where more uniformed men and women hurried to and fro.

  ‘No one’s saying much, not to me, anyway. But from what I can tell, something’s happening in Murbick.’

  ‘There’s a lot of somethings happening in Murbick, Constable, and none of them are good.’

  ‘This one’s big,’ Jenkins said.

  ‘Not another dead Wayward?’

  ‘Not that I’ve heard.’

  ‘Thank the Audience.’ Cora let out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding.

  ‘It’s something to do with controlling a crowd,’ Jenkins said. ‘They’re calling in help from across the city.’

  ‘Not you, though?’

  ‘Sergeant said no, not me, nothing to take me away from this case.’

  And thank the Audience for that too, Cora thought. Constable Jenkins had proved herself an asset so far and Cora couldn’t spare her. Not if she was going to have any chance of finding Ento’s killer before th
e election ended.

  ‘Well then,’ she said, ‘any luck finding Nullan?’

  ‘She hasn’t been back to her lodgings since the story. I left someone I trust there in case she shows up.’

  ‘I need to talk to her. Where would a Casker storyteller go after telling their tale? A bar? Docks? Back up the river?’

  ‘I don’t know, but he might,’ Jenkins said quietly, nodding to the doorway.

  Cora almost fell out of her chair.

  Finnuc Dawson was standing there, a bloody handkerchief pressed to his forehead.

  ‘You look pale as a Perlish milkmaid,’ Finnuc said, with a lopsided grin.

  ‘What happened?’ Cora said, making her way over to him.

  Finnuc peeled away the handkerchief, wincing as it pulled at a nasty gash at his temple. ‘Someone threw a bottle, threw more than one actually. I was getting into a gig. Just glad they didn’t hurt the horse.’

  ‘Jenkins, get Pruett.’

  ‘But he’s—’

  ‘Just do it!’ Cora said. She eased Finnuc into her chair, which creaked alarmingly under his weight, and took a closer look at the cut. It wouldn’t be easy to stitch, so close to the bone. ‘Why would anyone throw a bottle at you?’

  ‘It’s why I was coming here in the first place. I wanted to know… I wanted to be sure you were safe.’

  ‘Me?’ Cora said.

  ‘With what’s happening in Murbick,’ he said, ‘I was worried.’

  ‘Just what’s going on? The station’s like a tumbled wasp nest, and now this.’

  ‘Started last night. Folks in Murbick think—’ Finnuc sighed. ‘They think they’ve got Black Jefferey.’

  Cora opened and closed her mouth twice before saying, ‘From the story?’

  ‘From the story.’

  ‘But that’s…’ Cora wasn’t sure what it was. Impossible? Some kind of joke? ‘There’s always been strange types down there.’

  ‘First count put the queue at two hundred,’ Finnuc said.