Hale, Ginn

by Wicked Gentleman (lit)

  "I don't.. .Look at me, Sariel." I thrust my upturned arms out at him. "Open your eyes and actually look at me."

  Sariel stared into my eyes for several moments. Slowly, his gaze moved over my dirty face. He glanced to my bare chest and at the white scars there. He followed the white letters over my shoulders and then down my arms. His expression was gentle until the moment he caught sight of the bruised, deep furrows that years of needles had left on both my arms. He looked away, but not before I saw an expression of revulsion flicker across his handsome face.

  I folded my arms back in across my chest. I had invited his gaze to force him to admit that I was a wreck of what I had been. Still, the moment he glanced away from me, rejection knifed through me like a deep wound. It was what I had expected-demanded, even—but still it hurt me.

  "You just need a bath and some rest," Sariel said, but he couldn't bring himself to look into my face.

  "I know what I need, Sariel. In fact, I need it more than I need you." My bitterness at him made my words come out more harshly than I had wanted. "Don't patronize me with that 'all the boy needs is a bath, a bed, and a hot meal.' Save it for your Good Commons gatherings. I know perfectly well what kind of man I am."

  "It isn't who you are; it's only what the Inquisition did to you." He was sitting up now, his red eyes glowing almost as brightly as the cherry of his cigarette.

  "They took you in three times before they came after me, and you're the same as ever," I responded as coldly as I could manage.

  "That's because I just confessed. I told them what they wanted to know, and I paid my fines." Sariel glared at me. "What were you thinking, trying to hold out?"

  "I promised you I wouldn't betray you."

  "It was only a fucking fine, Belimai!" Sariel was shouting now. "Fifty coins! Didn't you think I would have paid fifty coins just to not have you hurt? Did you think I was that cheap?"

  "I didn't know what the charges were," I snapped. "I didn't know, and I didn't want you to end up roasting at the stake because I—" I cut myself short, realizing that this whole thing was going wrong. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. All of this was over. It had come and gone. Screaming at Sariel now wouldn't alter even a moment of the past. Not even his one glance of repulsion could be taken back, now.

  "I'm too tired to fight with you, Sariel. And I don't want to, in any case," I said.

  "Neither do I." Sariel leaned back again. "Fighting is about the last thing I want, honestly."

  He took a drag off his cigarette, and I looked up at the sky. The stars were still shining brightly, though a pale blue light crept up from the horizon.

  "It's a nice night, isn't it?" Sariel asked at last.

  "Yes," I agreed.

  "Can we start over?" Sariel asked, and I knew he meant more than the conversation.

  I wanted to tell him that we could. But the past could no more be forgotten than it could be undone. It would always be between us. When I looked at him, I could not help but remember who I had been and how low I had sunk since then. No matter how many years passed, I knew that I would never be able to think of him without recalling my time under the prayer engines. He would think of the same things when he saw me.

  "No," I said. "Let's just go on."

  A few more moments of silence passed. Sariel blew smoke rings, and then as a thick plume of smoke floated up from between his lips, he whispered the word, "Moth." The smoke curled into the form of a gypsy moth. Its wings beat against the breezes, dissipating as it rose up.

  I smiled. Creating smoky moths had been the first magic Sariel had accomplished. He had shown them to me on a night much like this one, when the two of us had snuck up to the roof of the school. I remembered how his young face had been flushed with exertion and pride. He had singed his hair and burnt one of his fingers, but that had hardly mattered to him. Now he made it look as effortless as breathing.

  Sariel leaned languidly on one elbow, as if he were on the edge of sleep. He watched me, but from the shadows of his lowered eyes. I didn't catch the word that he whispered, but the smoke that rose from his mouth whirled up into two slender forms. They circled each other, the thin trails of their bodies winding together. At last they drew into an embrace that swallowed them both.

  Sariel looked directly at me then. As much as he wanted to return to the past, I needed to leave it behind. The man I was could never reclaim that time of trust and pride. I no longer fit into it. I looked past Sariel to where black walls of smoke still hung over Edward Talbott's house.

  "Did you know Joan Talbott very well?" I asked.

  "I knew her," Sariel said, "but we weren't associates outside of Good Commons. She was never willing to get her silk gloves that dirty."

  "Tell me about her."

  "What do you want to know?" Sariel looked slightly unsure of the turn of the conversation.

  "What connection she had to Peter Roffcale and to a woman named Lily and another named Rose."

  "So, Captain Harper really has hired you for his investigation." Sariel frowned. "I thought he might have just brought you along with him to protect himself."

  "He hired me," I said. Whether to investigate, to provide a buffer from others of my own kind, or just to waste his money, I didn't know.

  "Mica might have killed him if you hadn't been there." Sariel moved a little closer to me. "She raised Peter from the time he was nine. When we heard that he had been murdered, she.. .Well, you saw how she was. She's almost wasted away to nothing."

  "Did Mica know Joan also?"

  "Oh yes, they were fond of each other. I think Mica believed that eventually Joan would come back to Peter. She used to say that the girl was just scared. She needed time." Sariel shook his head. "Joan wrote a lot of our speeches, some of the best ones. But she never had the courage to deliver any of them or to attend any of the demonstrations. Peter and Lily read most of what she wrote. Rose took the vitriolic ones.

  "Rose had a sweet look about her that let her say vicious things without losing the crowd. Peter did six months of labor for one of Joan's speeches. Lily spent ten months in a reformatory for Prodigal women. Rose was charged, but I think the judge couldn't bring himself to give her more than a fine. Even I've given speeches that Joan wrote. I was charged for public indecency for one." Sariel smiled briefly at this. "Joan, on the other hand, never even stepped into an Inquisition House unless it was to take a lunch to her half-brother—"

  "Half-brother?" I asked.

  "Captain William Harper," Sariel said, as if I should have already known that. "His father was some Inquisition abbot who got his head ripped off during the mine riots. Joan was the child from the mother's second marriage."

  "I see."

  "They're a rich family. Though you wouldn't know it from the captain. They own a huge estate house out past St. Bennet's. Before she married, Joan had a house up near the banks all to herself. She hired Peter on as an under-gardener. He carried her speeches down to us in Hells Below. I suppose he provided other services as well. It must have been quite nice for her. She could express her displeasure with the society around her while still enjoying its amenities."

  "You sound like you hated her," I commented.

  Sariel frowned a little, thinking about it.

  "No," he decided, "I'm just bitter; perhaps, jealous. She had so much that the rest of us didn't. She was in a position to help many of us, but she was never willing to risk her own comfort. It's easy to get angry at her for that. But if I had been in her situation, I don't know that I would have done more. She did try to take part in a demonstration once."

  "What happened?" I asked

  "We broke into the Taylor Shirt workhouse and released twenty Prodigal children who were being rented out from a reformatory and forced to work. One of the shift foremen pulled the fire siren and the Inquisition rushed in on us. Joan was grabbed along with about ten others of us, but when we reached the Inquisition House, she was gone."

  Sariel lifted his cigarette, then realiz
ed that it had burned down almost to his fingers. He flicked it to the street below.

  So, the woman had disappeared more than once. I found that interesting.

  "Do you think that Harper got her out?" I asked. It struck me as something he'd do.

  "He could have." Sariel shrugged. "In any case, she didn't come back down to Hells Below. About three weeks later we found out that she had gotten married to Dr. Edward Talbott. They'd been engaged for a few months, but none of us had known. That was the last we heard from her."

  "Peter Roffcale wrote to her," I said.

  "I suppose he would have." Sariel looked down at his hands. "He never blamed her for leaving, but anyone could see that it tore him up to know she'd married another man."

  "He mentioned that Rose and Lily had been murdered in one of his letters. Were there others?" I asked.

  "Dozens. Members of Good Commons have been going missing or turning up in pieces for nearly a decade. One or two a year." Sariel flipped out another cigarette. He lit it and took a deep drag. "Recently, it's gotten worse. We used to make reports of missing persons. But since Peter was killed in custody, I think it's obvious that the Inquisition abbots don't give a damn."

  Sariel's voice almost trembled with anger, then he stopped speaking. He simply stared up into the sky and drew in breath after breath of cigarette smoke. He had probably known all of the Prodigals who had been murdered. They would have been his friends and companions in Good Commons.

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  The words were embarrassingly worthless. My sympathy was as little good to Sariel as his forgiveness was to me.

  "It happens," Sariel replied.

  "Are you safe?" I couldn't help but ask. There was nothing I could offer him if he wasn't.

  "No." Sariel smiled and shook his head. "None of us are ever safe, really. I've heard there's a sorcerer who sells potions made from Prodigal's bodies. He lures children away with candy and then chops them up and cooks them. There's also supposed to be a lord's club that requires every new member to kill a Prodigal as proof of his valor. Then there's always the Inquisition, over-zealous nuns, and simple, sick bastards. A lot of people seem to want Prodigals dead. The only protection we really have is each other." Sariel glanced over to me. "So, I'm safer than you, aren't I?"

  "Maybe." I realized that I had made a mistake in asking after Sariel's safety. I shouldn't have left the impersonal inquiries about Joan Talbott.

  "You never had any sense about how to look after yourself," Sariel went on. "You've gotten yourself into the company of an Inquisition captain. You're living alone, above ground—"

  "Sariel, I've been living like this for six years. I've learned how to take care of myself."

  "You can't always do it alone, Belimai. Sooner or later you're going to need someone else to help you." Sariel pulled himself a little closer to me. "Come back to Hells Below. There's room for you at Good Commons."

  "You want me to join Good Commons?" I couldn't quite believe that Sariel was serious. Hadn't he understood what I had said to him, how deeply I had changed?

  "You'd have friends there. You'd be involved in important work. We could help you come clean." Sariel placed his hand on mine.

  A cold, almost nauseous sweat broke out across my skin. It wasn't just the thought of being with Sariel, constantly knowing that I had failed him. As a member of Good Commons, I would doubtless be brought into an Inquisition House again.

  The well-oiled whir of the prayer engines hummed through my mind. The slashes across my back began to pulse with pain. The scars that covered my body ached. I pulled my hand from Sariel's.

  "No, I think I'm a little too settled in my present life," I answered quickly.

  I didn't care if he thought that my choice was a sign of the depths of my addiction. It was better than having him know the truth. Once, I had loved him enough to destroy myself for him. But I was no longer the same man. I was no longer that strong.

  "It's nearly morning. I should go." I stood and walked to the edge of the roof.

  "So, it's goodbye again?" Sariel asked.

  "It has to be said sooner or later." I stepped off the roof and let myself drop lightly to the ground.

  I heard Sariel's quiet goodbye from high above me, and I whispered my own in return. It was all that I had left to say to him.

  Chapter Nine

  Gloves

  Morning light streamed into Harper's sitting room and reflected across his clean white walls. I flinched from the brightness, even behind the smoked lenses of my spectacles. Harper handed me a cup of coffee and sat down in a straight-backed chair across from me.

  His hair was damp and clean. His clothes looked crisp. The freshness of his surroundings only exaggerated his exhaustion. Deep blue shadows stained the skin under his eyes. His lips were pale. Oddly, exhaustion seemed to suit him. I was growing used to seeing him looking worn out. It gave me a sense of knowing him to realize that I had expected to see him this way.

  "How's your back this morning?" he asked.

  "Not too bad." The cuts still hurt, but there was no point in dwelling on them. I drank a little of the coffee. It was bitter and too strong.

  Harper poured cream into his coffee and then added three spoonfuls of sugar. He picked up the small, silver sugar spoon easily despite the black gloves that encased his hands. Sunlight glowed at his back, cutting a hard white line around his dark form.

  "There was a fire at Edward's house last night," Harper said. "He was lucky that there were a dozen or more Inquisitors in the area when it broke out."

  "It wasn't luck."

  "What do you mean?" Harper asked

  "I was there. I saw the girl who did it. She told me she wanted to make sure Edward got out of the house alive."

  "What?" Harper stared at me in shock. It was pleasant to see such a strong reaction on his features. A moment later, and the expression was gone.

  "Who was she?" Harper asked.

  "She didn't tell me her name." I drank a little more of the hot, black coffee. "She was small. At first I thought she was a child, but when I got a good look at her, I realized she was full-grown. I think she might have been a member of Good Commons. She mentioned Lily and Rose, the same names that were in Peter Roffcale's letter to your sister."

  "Lily Abaddon, Rose Hesper." Harper closed his eyes and rubbed his gloved hands across his forehead as if he were attempting to soothe a headache. "She probably was a member of Good Commons. What else did she say?"

  "Not much. She wasn't in the best shape—"

  "She was hurt?"

  "Not physically, but she didn't seem too far from crazed." I poured several heaps of sugar into my coffee. "She said she tried to stop another murder but got there too late. A boy named Tom. Do you know anything about that?"

  "Thomas Mills." Harper frowned. "We found his body last night, about an hour before the fire at Edward's house. The body had only been partially gutted. The girl must have interrupted the murderer before he could finish up."

  "Murderers," I said. "She said they killed Tom. So that's more than one murderer."

  "But she didn't mention any names?" Harper asked.

  "No. She seemed to have other things on her mind."

  I stirred my coffee while I thought about the Prodigal girl. Edward was blameless. If she did not want to harm Edward Talbott, then what had been the object of the fire? I wondered if she had known of Joan Talbott's disappearance.

  "Was anyone harmed in the fire?" I asked Harper.

  "Mercifully, no." Harper frowned just slightly. "In a way, I suppose that it's good that Joan is missing. The fire started in her empty room. If she had been there, I don't know how she would have survived."

  "Do you think that could have been a coincidence?" It seemed unlikely to me.

  "The fire starting in Joan's room?" Harper took another drink of his coffee. "I don't know. I've been too tired to think about it."

  I didn't believe him. I hadn't noticed exhaustion keeping him from
thinking about anything else. Still, if Harper wanted to keep his thoughts to himself, that was his right.

  I had my own suspicion as to why the Prodigal girl had burned Edward Talbott's house. She wanted to punish Joan, to make the woman pay for abandoning the members of Good Commons. I wondered if the girl had believed, as Peter Roffcale seemed to, that Joan Talbott had some protection she could offer them.

  "So, were you up all night?" I asked.

  "Yes," Harper sighed. "After finding Thomas Mills and the fire, I couldn't sleep. I just spent the rest of the night going through old records."

  "Perhaps you should try to get some sleep now." I set my cup of coffee down.

  "No." Harper shook his head. "I managed to find one thing last night while I was looking through the records on Thomas Mills."

  "He was in Good Commons?" I guessed.

  "Yes, he was," Harper said. "But he also had a legal counselor by the name of Albert Scott-Beck."

  The name meant nothing to me. I let Harper go on.

  "Scott-Beck counseled Roffcale also. In fact, he visited him in his cell just an hour before you and I arrived."

  "Do you think he murdered Roffcale?" I couldn't keep from leaning a little closer to Harper. The prospect of a solution drew me.

  "Perhaps. I couldn't find any direct connection between Scott-Beck and Lily or Rose, however both women received legal counsel from his firm. Scott-Beck's partner, Lewis Brown, defended Lily when she was brought up on charges last spring. Brown also advised Rose a few months before that."

  Harper drank a little more of his coffee.

  "The firm takes on a good number of charity cases, mostly Prodigals who have no other means of legal defense at their trials. Almost every Prodigal in Good Commons has been defended or given counsel by Scott-Beck or Brown."

  "Did either of them know your sister?" I asked.

  "Joan?" Harper shook his head. His light hair was beginning to dry into loose curls. "She was never involved in any demonstrations or public readings. No charges could ever have been brought against her."

  "So she had no connection to this Scott-Beck or his partner?"