The Seer

by Jordan Reece

  Jesco shook his head to dismiss the worry. “I am not in thrall. It is simply strange to be in this haunted place that I’ve heard about since childhood.”

  Sinclair saw the truth of it and returned to gazing out the glass. “It was the worst of the worst even before the poisoning, a squalid place, no sanitation, no clean water, no insulation or ventilation in many of the buildings. I heard about how they slept here, three to a bed and two under a bed, rented for eight hours and then it was three more to the bed and two underneath. Then the same again in another eight hours. There could be fifteen people living in the smallest of rooms, forty in a larger one, and that house, that house there, it must have held hundreds.” He motioned and moved aside so that Jesco could look. They were passing a huge, centuries-old house with two floors. Hints of its former grandness remained in the stone quoins, the columns and pediment about the front door, and the oriel windows. When first built, it had been the home of a very rich person. Now it was a cracked and smudged disaster with shattered glass.

  “Only to see it in its heyday. The gardens had to have been splendid,” Sinclair said wistfully. There were no gardens now. Nudging up on either side were cheaply constructed tenements, each shrugging a deferential shoulder towards the once fine mansion. “This used to be the belle of the river. Called Wadalabie in olden days, before industry took root here.”

  Amused, Jesco said, “Are you a man of history, Sinclair?”

  “A man of insomnia. A book of history cures it.” He smiled as Jesco chuckled. “Many lords and ladies kept summer homes in Wadalabie. Did you know some of the earliest photographs were taken here? A collection called Place of Dreams showed it in all its finery: mansions and stables, and paths of white stone going down through fields of flowers to the river. A boat ran between Wadalabie and Rosendrie, where they could travel to shop. A short and pleasant trip on calm waters. But those lords and ladies died in time, and left their homes to their children, and some of them leased out those homes or sold them. And then the Industrial Revolution swept through Ainscote, and it transformed this place entirely. Wadalabie to Wattling, mansions to tenements, stables to textile factories, and no trace left of those paths or flowers.” He looked once more to Jesco’s hands. “Have you seen things like this, how time changes the world? You must.”

  “Yes.” It was why Jesco had to be so careful about what he touched.

  The carriage made another turn and slowed. They had arrived at their destination. Then Jesco was stepping out after the junior detective, and into Poisoners’ Lane where the alchemist had wrought his destruction in one of these very buildings.

  It was the grimmest place of all. Along either side of the narrow gray road were tall brick buildings, all of them coated in grime. They were eyeless, as the windows had been removed and sealed up with bricks to discourage anyone from going inside. The doors were sealed in the same way, making every building wholly faceless. Above, the sky seemed only to be a reflection of the road beneath in its gray flatness. No trees pierced the rooftops and no birds flew overhead. All that existed within this claustrophobic lane was itself. The rest of the world felt miles away. Even the river, as close as the far side of the buildings to Jesco’s right, made no sound.

  There was another police carriage parked in the road, and a voice hailed Sinclair from an alley. Jesco breathed shallowly to take less of the air in this place into himself. Over twenty thousand people had died here almost simultaneously. Should ever there be a place ripe for spooks, this would be it. Failing to quell his anxiety, he followed Sinclair to the alley. The patrolman Tokol was standing at the end of it, a newspaper rolled up in his fist. Despite being of the same age as Jesco, he still looked like more of an overgrown boy than a man. Greeting Sinclair warmly and ignoring Jesco, Tokol moved aside to let them pass.

  “And a good day to you, too,” Jesco said loudly, forgetting his resolve to take in as little air as possible while he was here. Embarrassed, Tokol grunted a hostile good day. Jesco did not have to inquire to know that Tokol accepted Church teachings that what he did was obscene, but that placed the boyish officer in a quandary. The police relied on seer skills to assist in solving crimes. He resolved the matter by pretending Jesco did not exist, which was why Jesco took a special delight in reminding the officer that he most assuredly did, had every right to be here, and that his word was not only admissible in court but preferred.

  The alley was piled with a tall heap of long beams on one side. Rags and bits of paper were trapped in the heap, and nails protruded from the rotting wood. The ground was carpeted in layers of trash, so trodden upon that it lay mostly flat, and it reeked of mold. Fresher trash was present in a few sheets of newspaper, which Tokol had discarded.

  More beams connected the buildings on either side, one so low that Jesco had to stoop to pass beneath it. The purpose of the beams was beyond his kenning. Jesco was no student of architecture, but from the way the buildings leaned, he guessed that they were holding them at bay so that they did not collapse upon each other.

  Also within the alley was a duo of his least favorite detectives in Steon Ravenhill and Laeric Scoth. Ravenhill had no animosity toward Jesco, but he had grown increasingly incompetent over the years. Now fifty, he was a man who drowned the horrors of his work in ale and smelled suspiciously even now at mid-morning. His wife had left him recently, and he had fallen apart further in her absence. Stubble-cheeked, slumping, and slovenly with stains on his lapel, his oily, graying hair hung in lusterless locks from too long without washing.

  Scoth was his protégé and partner. Twenty years younger and unmarried, he cut a fine, straight-backed figure in his spotless uniform and trench coat. Even the wind skirted around him rather than muss his thick brown hair. He patronized the same brothel as Jesco, who had seen him once in the dining room with a male prostitute, and again in the back garden. Scoth hadn’t noticed Jesco on either occasion, and Jesco hadn’t waved. Everything about Scoth irritated Jesco. In fairness, everything about Jesco appeared to irritate Laeric Scoth. The first murder case they had worked together was a disaster, Scoth a newly minted detective absolutely certain that he knew who was responsible for the dead woman in the garden, and Jesco blasting his certainty to shreds with one touch of the woman’s skirt. Scoth had never forgiven him.

  Another street officer was posted to the far end of the alley, and that was one who loathed Jesco even more than Tokol did. She studiously looked away when she noticed Jesco observing her. He did not repeat his boisterous greeting, because now he could see the body.

  The man was naked and laying flat on his back, his arms raised over his head. Fair-haired, pale skinned, and with unnaturally light blue eyes, his natural pallor had been enhanced by death. His only color was in the smears of blood on his chest, and grains of dirt from the alley. The rest of him was ghostly white, even the slug of his tongue, which was visible in his gaping mouth. His head was tilted to the side and he stared unblinkingly at the filthy bricks.

  “There was a case I had,” Ravenhill mumbled, and the smell of spirits grew heavy around him. He weaved a little on his feet. “Young fellow got drunk and was leaping roofs. He fell into an alley and right onto a post dumped at an angle there. Speared him straight through the groin and he bled out in minutes.”

  The man before them was also relatively young, somewhere in his twenties. Scoth’s eyes were fixed to the body. He had always been resentful that his powers of observation flagged in the face of a seer’s abilities, and he did not acknowledge Jesco. Sinclair crouched down by the head, a kerchief pressed daintily to his nose and mouth.

  “I don’t think he was leaping roofs here,” Jesco said.

  “Is that your professional opinion?” Scoth asked acidly.

  “It is my unprofessional opinion,” Jesco said, “seeing as you haven’t supplied me with anything for my professional one.”

  He was a very strong seer, but he could not read from flesh. Ravenhill looked up to the buildings on either side like he was gau
ging them for distance. Someone going at a run could have leaped them, but the chances of a person getting drunk, wandering into Poisoners’ Lane, scaling a building, and disrobing to leap roofs was infinitesimal. The man had not gored himself upon a beam either. None of them were bloody over their heads, and the two deep punctures in his chest looked like the work of a blade.

  “We shouldn’t stay here long,” Ravenhill rumbled.

  “Then let’s do this swiftly,” Scoth said. “He was not murdered in this place. That much is clear. There isn’t enough blood. He was struck low elsewhere and dumped here sometime last night.”

  “How do you know it was last night?” Jesco asked. It was not to aggravate the detective but true curiosity. “You can’t conclude that by insect life or lack thereof in this place.”

  Aggravated anyway, Scoth did not look like he was going to answer. But then he saw Sinclair’s interest, and deigned to respond. “He is not decomposed, indeed, he has barely begun to bloat. The tramp did not find him by scent. I would say that this man was alive and well less than twelve hours ago, and only sometime after that did he meet his fate.”

  “Perhaps this was a mugging,” Ravenhill said, drawing down his eyes from the rooftops. “No one around here to act as a witness.”

  “What pickpocket would lurk about in this part of Wattling?” Scoth asked.

  “Said yourself the body was dumped. So that’s what happened. This fellow is strolling about the streets outside the dead zone, minding his own business, and a pickpocket comes up and demands his money. Happens all over Wattling every day and night. Then the fellow fights him but ends up on the wrong side of the blade.”

  “What pickpocket would bother to drag the body over here?” Scoth pressed. His aggravation at Jesco was gone, and he was struggling mightily to contain it with his partner. “Let the body fall and walk away, that’s what a pickpocket would do. And I hardly think this fellow was strolling about the streets naked. That means the pickpocket dragged him all the way over here and stripped him as well. Why? What was significant about his clothing?”

  Ravenhill blinked slowly.

  “This was done in cleverness,” Sinclair said, getting back to his feet and speaking through his kerchief. “The murderer knew that the police would bring a seer, so he removed every article of clothing to ensure the skills of one such as Mr. Currane would be nullified.”

  Removing a pointer from the inner pocket of his trench coat, Scoth extended it. He slipped it beneath the arm of the deceased and examined it. Then he let the arm fall. “That is not the skin of someone dragged over several city blocks. Also, look at the size of him. He was a big fellow, tall and well muscled. To pull him so far would have been slow work even for a strong man. And if he was going to go this far, why not go thirty more feet to the river and dump him in? He would not have emerged for days, and the current would have borne him away.”

  Scoth peered down the alley to the river, and then back to the road. “I think that he was brought here from that direction, dragged by his feet from the road and down this alley. And I cannot see how this would be the work of a pickpocket. This fellow ran afoul of some other kind of mischief.”

  “Perhaps he was the pickpocket,” Ravenhill said, content in his hypothesis that the unlawful alleviation of funds had something to do with it. “Tried to rough up some big bloke a few blocks away, and the big bloke gave him what-for, final-like. But the big bloke, see, he isn’t clear as water with the law. He couldn’t come to the station and give an honest tale without us finding out about him. Got to get rid of the body, so he pulled it over here and left him in the suit his mama first saw him in. Should have the patrolmen walk the blocks outside the dead zone, ask if anyone saw two men having a squabble, or one man dragging another away. Should visit all the saloons and brothels and opium dens, too.”

  Reminded of the poison all about them, Jesco said, “Surely this debate could take place in the station. If there is no clothing for me to read, then why did you send for me?”

  “Let you read the bricks and trash and things,” Ravenhill said.

  “If he was murdered elsewhere, then he will not have imparted any of his thoughts, feelings, or sensations to this alley. I can do nothing.”

  Scoth had gone into his trench coat again. He withdrew a small evidence bag. Now it was Jesco’s turn to be aggravated. The whole conversation was unnecessary if there had been something left on the scene. Undoing the drawstring, Scoth said, “This was stuck to a nail near the head of that beam just over there, a bit of fabric. It could have come off the deceased’s clothing, or his assailant’s.”

  Jesco had to refrain from snatching it away. Swallowing down on his temper, he removed his gloves and tucked them in his pockets as Scoth said, “It may have nothing to do with this-”

  “I shall be the judge of that,” Jesco said tightly. Attaching a clasp to the end of the pointer, Scoth put it in the bag and pulled out a torn white scrap. It was dirty. He hesitated as he looked at Jesco, like he didn’t know what to say.

  Jesco didn’t wait to hear the next jab or hypothesis. The jabs were childish and all of the hypotheses irrelevant. He pinched the scrap between his fingers, and stepped aside within himself.

  Chapter Two

  -he was-

  -he was Taniel—

  She was sitting in the chair, his mother, gray and wasted and talking fooleries to no one. If only her Da hadn’t died, if only her Ma had remarried, if only the little boys hadn’t succumbed to cholera, if only she hadn’t had to drop out of her petty school to pulp rags into paper, if only Taniel’s father wasn’t lost to opium, if only her hands worked . . . if only . . . if only . . . if only—

  He was Taniel and he was sick of her dreams of that pawned silver bracelet he was sick of her dreams of Taniel in a robe at university he was sick of her dreams from the first one to the last one and that was all she did, sit in her chair and tell him these dreams full of air . . .

  That was all she ever told him, weeping in her chair, weeping against his back in the tiny bed with her putrid breath puffing over his shoulder, we lost so much, Taniel, our family has lost so much-

  He had said that he was going to work in the cotton mill and instead of yes, you are the man of this family . . . instead of yes, you will bring home money and we will eat . . . instead she moaned like she was breaking inside and said the demons, the demons blighted us, you are too good for mill work, you should be studying for university! I saw you, I saw you in your scholar’s robe at Nuiten, I saw you clipping by with booksHe was so famished that he could cry . . .

  Jesco was looking into a dim and inhospitable room, cracks in the walls caulked with newspaper, and the walls themselves were slick with dampness as a thin fire snapped and twisted. It appeared that the walls were smoking, but no, it was fog, fog seeping from the saturated pogo. Pogo was good for nothing.

  The smell in the air was enough to make a person choke. It was sewage coming from the yard, the lavatory having overflowed. A woman was sitting upon a chair. Wrapped in layers of ragged clothing, she wept as a boy sat in the corner with a sullen expression. They lived in the Mowe now, and the Mowe was the worst street in all of Wattling. Nothing green or sweet could grow in the Mowe. Even the sun shrank away from the warren of dilapidated tenements.

  The boy was nine, and with a black eye compliments of Yudo’s gang from walking down their alley. Taniel had only taken it since he was being chased by two of the boys from the 45. There was no cohesive Mowe Street gang, nor had he succeeded in forming one, but none of it mattered because he had gotten a job. So his mother could spin her dreams to the demons who plagued them, rather than spinning them to Taniel, and he was going to earn some money. The mills wouldn’t take children under the age of ten, and when Old Lady Marro had asked why he wasn’t working yet, he told her the reason and she laughed. She asked him if his age was printed upon his person and called him stupid.

  At first, he’d been mad. Then he knew that he was stupid. He had g
one to a mill just that day and told the Boss Man that he was ten and the Boss Man told him to show up at six in the morning sharp. One day soon Taniel was going to have coins in his pocket, and one day he would get back at Marro for disrespecting him, too.

  This bleak story wasn’t giving Jesco the information he needed. He nudged and it sped up. Now Taniel was within the cotton mill, his plans to strike back at that old woman forgotten. From dawn to dusk he worked with the other children, hustling down the avenues between the spinning-frames. He was pleased with his employment because the mill-owner supplied them with a hunk of bread at lunch, and once a week, butter scraped across it. Not full of air, his bread and butter and pay, but his mother still wept at how he was working in a cotton mill when she had seen him at a university. When he could not even read! When he could not trespass the roads about his home to get to school! When—

  Jesco nudged, pushing the timeline closer to where the scrap of cloth belonging to this angry boy ended up speared upon the nail in the alley. Although Jesco retained the understanding that he was in the alley in some future point, the detectives all about him and a man’s body at his feet, all he saw before his eyes was the past. To and fro the boy went, home and the mill, the mill and home, and then, and then he came to the mill one day at dawn and Jesco sensed that this day was what he was seeking.

  The boy was now ten, and his hand was stinging. He had slapped his mother just minutes ago when she draped the filthy bed sheet around him and said in excitement, see, see, now you are a scholar! Doesn’t it feel fine! Go to school today, Taniel, go to school! Her words had made a wild panic rise in his body. His stomach emptied to that grinding ache of hunger that grew sharper and sharper and then it shriveled to a point beyond pain, when he just wanted to sit in his corner and look at nothing, think nothing, be nothing . . . He had his work and it filled him with food but she would fill him with letters and that pain would come back . . .