by Jordan Reece
An attendant came out at once to help with the chair, the wind even shaking the thin fabric of his disposable gloves as he changed his grip on the bars to bring it down to the ground. He rolled it inside fast, the wind pushing at him with such ferocity that both he and the chair went off course and nearly hit the wall.
All that was left of Jesco’s lunch was one apple and the hunk of cheese, which he offered to Scoth. Scoth shook his head and Jesco gleaned that it was not personal but automatic. He placed them next to Scoth and went to the door of the carriage.
“I’ll try not to call on you unless I have something firmer on this case,” Scoth said uncomfortably.
Jesco wondered what he would see if he touched a belonging of the detective’s. “It’s not only those on the police force who care what has happened to the victims. The seer does, too. I walk with them. I walk with them as they were when living. I know them as I know myself, and I want to bring them justice just as much as you do. If not more, because for a short time, I am them.”
The detective looked at him with an inscrutable expression, almost as if he were trying to see Hasten Jibb within Jesco. “They walk with me,” Scoth said in a whisper.
“Be kinder to yourself, Laeric,” Jesco said, and got out of the carriage. Scoth called to the autohorse and closed the door. The carriage went around the drive. Just before it turned onto the lane, Jesco caught a glimpse of the detective through the window. He had the cheese at his lips.
Chapter Five
“I see ’um,” the boy said, his eyes fixed to some far-off point. He was the new one, and he was in thrall beside Jesco’s private table in the dining hall. The nurses and attendants were busy and had not noticed. Jesco was eating quickly, having received a message that he was going to be picked up for further investigative work on the Jibb case. The message had also told him to have a bag packed for several days.
Nine-year-old Sfinx had rather the opposite problem of Jesco’s. His thralls concerned the future, he had no way to guide them, and there was no way at all to protect him from it. Luckily for the boy, the thralls were random occurrences that came upon him once or twice a week. He remained marginally aware of his true surroundings while in thrall, and when Jesco did not reply, Sfinx repeated, “I see ’um, sir.”
“What do you see?” Jesco asked.
“What’s here and what’s not. The asylum, see, it’s not here. It’s gone. Ripped down and carted away. You’re dead. I’m dead. Everyone here is dead. There’s a house here now, with a great big picture box on the wall. The pictures are moving. They’re telling a story about a dragon. A man and woman are sitting on the couch, and they’re wearing funny blue trousers. I see ’um. The house rattles a little ’cause the flying tube full of people is passing over.” His look became more distant still. “The house is gone. They’re dead. Their children are dead, and their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren. Now this is a street. It’s full of shelled carriages that move on their own, no horses or autohorses, and there are dozens of people going into shops for the holidays. I see ’um. Shops on the first floor, apartments on the second floor, little colored lights strung everywhere in the trees and everybody is talking and laughing. But then it’s quiet. Real quiet. You never seen anything so quiet, sir, so quiet when it shouldn’t be quiet at all. The buildings are crumbling. Curtains hang out the broken windows. Some places are just heaps of rock, and the street is cratered. Nothing grows. Nothing moves but shadows and it’s always dark.” The boy’s head turned so that he could see something, and he said fearfully, “No. Something is moving out there.”
He fell silent to stare at it. Jesco motioned to an attendant, who set down a tray and came over. The woman put her hands on the boy’s shoulders and said kindly, “All right then, love, leave Mr. Currane to finish his meal.”
“And then it’s green,” Sfinx said as he was steered away. “Green grass and blue sky and white clouds, and little yellow flowers growing in bunches. Everywhere you look, it’s beautiful. A woman with dark skin and a red gown appears from a shaft of light like an angel. She’s walking through the grass and picks a flower, and then she laughs to the heavens.”
It was odd to listen to someone foretell what would happen in this very place hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of years in the future. Jesco thought about it over the last of his eggs, profoundly relieved to have his own problem and not the boy’s. It was likely just as odd for people to listen to Jesco tell them of the past. He had witnessed ancient times through artifacts, touched inadvertently or with reason.
“Ach then, you’re a precious thing, aren’t you!” He looked up to Tamora Squince, who was scooping up Nelle into her arms. The girl crowed as the junior sketch artist spotted Jesco and came to his table. He set down his fork and pushed back his chair. In good cheer, she said, “Sorry to interrupt your meal, Jesco, it’s just that you and Scoth are dropping me off at the train station to catch a ride to Hooler.”
“Not a problem,” Jesco said, picking up his suitcase.
A nurse came to take Nelle. Brushing back her hair, which was loose today and hanging almost to her elbows, Tammie smiled at a table full of patients. They looked away from her stonily. “Who put sand in their drawers?” she asked as the two of them walked out of the dining hall. “It isn’t because I’m wearing trousers, is it? It’s not such a rare thing to see a woman in trousers anymore.”
“They’re here for mental problems, not othelin issues,” Jesco replied, “and some don’t like to have to share space with those like us.”
“Oh, for the love of angels! Like talking to tiny green fairies that nobody can see is somehow preferable to what you do? Sometimes I marvel at people, and not the good kind of marveling. I marveled a bit at Captain Whennoth this morning, if you catch my drift.”
“Caught it.”
“He told Scoth days ago not to use any of the police carriages since they’re in use for the Shy Sprinkler case. Scoth solved it fine and dandy by using his own personal carriage. Today the captain tried to requisition that as well, but he can’t, of course, since it doesn’t belong to the station. But he needs it, he complained, and pulled the official police business angle on someone who works in the police business! Scoth said no, but at my suggestion he kept the peace by offering to drop me off. That spares a police carriage the errand. The captain had to content himself with that. And how can he work with Scoth for all these years and still mispronounce his name so regular? It’s not Scoth what rhymes with moth; it’s Scoth like both. You’d think the captain had just met him.”
At the far end of the hallway, Scoth’s carriage was waiting in the driveway. The door was open, and Jesco’s chair was already inside. “I’m off to Hooler for a week to work on all the missing cases in that county and the ones surrounding it,” Tammie said. “They want age-progression pictures. An eight-year-old girl snatched twenty years ago doesn’t still look eight years old, does she?”
“How can you guess what a girl will look like after twenty years?” Jesco asked.
“If I’m lucky, I’ll have a photograph of her at eight to work from. Then I’ll get photographs of the siblings and parents, anything they can give me. If I’m unlucky, I’ll just have a drawing at the time of the disappearance to work from and nothing else.” She opened the door for him and they stepped out into the sunshine. Heavy clouds were building at the horizon, a deep gray mass that shifted and stirred with the wind. Scoth nodded from the autohorse, where he was busy at the chest flap rearranging the destination cards.
“That’s going to be a blisterer,” Tammie said about the impending storm. “Kind that rips the carrots right out of the ground if it doesn’t drown them first. How long do you think you’re going to be gone, Jesco?” Forgetting what he was, she attempted to take his suitcase to load it into the compartment. He drew back and so did she, remembering.
He loaded it in beside two much smaller bags and they stood together, waiting for Scoth to finish with the autohorse. “I have t
o take extra things,” Jesco said. “My own utensils, plates and cups, sheets and a blanket.”
“That’s a pain in the arse.”
On the contrary, he was excited to be taking a trip. “Do you know where I’m headed?” He asked it loudly enough to make a point to Scoth that the message had been absent that information.
“Crikey, don’t you tell your own seer where he’s going?” Tammie asked Scoth blithely. “Don’t hold it against him, Jesco, the station is in a bloody conniption and I could barely hear myself think when I first got in. The usual nonsense going on, and the press got hold of the Shy Sprinkler case, Parliament is yelling their fool heads off and sending representatives daily to ask for updates, and on top of everything, that prat Patrolman Stamax came in all puffed up ’cause wouldn’t you know it? He broke the bicycle theft ring operating in the area. Everyone’s got six things to do with only two hands and there he is wanting accolades for the sorriest trio of red-faced boys you ever saw, thirteen years old, fourteen at most, bawling at the top of their lungs and pleading to not tell their mums and dads or they’ll get the whippings of their lives. But you still don’t know where you’re going, do you?”
“I do not,” Jesco said.
“North to Vasano. The expert gave his opinion on the timepiece. He recognized the insignia as belonging to the late clockmaker Wotalden Seele. The initials were something different since Seele used different names for different lines of his creations. Richest of the rich want something only for themselves, not something lesser folk can buy. This was one of the cheaper lines. Still nice though, and worth a pretty penny. He didn’t make anything too common; his pieces were usually very special.”
“Did you meet the expert? How do you know all this?”
Tammie motioned to Scoth. “He told me on the way over. For a while it was like pulling teeth, but he’s like most quiet folk, if people like me just keep yammering about something stupid, eventually he won’t be able to stand it anymore and he’ll throw in something smart. That gets a conversation going. Did you hear that, Scoth? You didn’t know what you were messing with when it came to me. It was all by design.”
Incredibly, Scoth chuckled at the horse. Tammie grinned. “Take that as a lesson, Jesco. Pick something nice and stupid for your carriage ride. I’ll get you started on the way to the train station. Have you given your autohorse a name, Scoth?”
“Yes,” Scoth said, closing up the flap. “Horse.”
“Horse the Autohorse? It’s like you didn’t even try,” Tammie said as they loaded into the carriage. “Some people get all clever, call their horses Widget or Gears. You know what would be very clever of you since you like to name things what they are? Call it Otto. Sounds just like auto, and you’ve played it. That’s what I would name an autohorse if I had one.”
“Being a detective must pay very well for you to have an autohorse of your own,” Jesco said. He wouldn’t have made such a comment with only the two of them, but Tammie’s ease had embraced all three as the carriage rolled away from the asylum.
“It was an inheritance that paid for it,” Scoth said mildly.
“You had a great-aunt or great-uncle leave you a chest of gold?” Tammie asked, impressed. “My great-aunt Corstina tied herself in knots over which of the nieces and nephews should inherit her sixty-five piece teardrop flatware set that was really just sixty-four pieces because my father swiped a dinner knife while he was playing pirates with the lads and lost it. She held that over his head for forty years. But none of us wanted her flatware so all her worries were for nothing. It just gave her some excitement in her last years to think of the family fighting to the death over her dinged-up, rusty cutlery.”
“From my parents,” Scoth said. “They died within weeks of one another and I sold their properties.”
“That was a lot of properties or a couple of quite fine ones. Well, don’t keep Jesco in the dark. Tell him the update on the case just like you told me,” Tammie prompted. “He went to visit that rich and crazy lord.”
“Shooster Ennings?” Jesco asked.
“The very same,” Scoth replied. “He gave me a list of the jewelry that Jibb was told to take to the bank. Then I went to the bank and cross-checked-”
“How can you skip the best part?” Tammie exclaimed. “Jesco, that old coot has a mansion packed with junk from floor to rafters! All the windows are blocked and some of the doors as well, and there are only narrow passageways for a person to walk. Part of it collapsed behind them as they were going through it and the lord said off-handedly to never mind, he has a tunnel to get back that way. Millions of dollars, this man has, and there he is bending down to crawl through a freakish tunnel surrounded on all sides by the mess, and there’s Scoth crawling along behind him and afraid the whole thing is going to collapse and squash them both to death.”
Scoth raised his eyebrows to indicate that Tammie was telling the truth of it. “What constituted the mess?” Jesco asked.
“Everything under the sun and moon,” Tammie said. “Tell him!”
“Paintings, stacks of books, musical instruments, and whirly-gigs he means to repair,” Scoth said. “Tools, molding furniture, chewed heaps of suits and gowns, children’s toys, it was a graveyard of fineries and home to no small amount of mice and their droppings.”
“But Scoth assured me that he has had a bath since yesterday,” Tammie said, wrinkling her nose. “Sickening. And every room in that mansion is that same way, and the lord’s got a bunch of other mansions and I’m sure they’re in that condition as well. He pays Ragano & Wemill to shuffle it all around as takes his fancy. This month he might want the paintings all together in this house; next month the whirly-gigs in his place that has a workshop. But Hasten Jibb didn’t steal any of those jewels.”
“Lord Ennings gave him a small, decorated box containing three necklaces of pearl, ruby, and sapphire, two emerald rings, and an intricate wooden bracelet,” Scoth said. “I showed him the photograph of the timepiece and he did not recognize it as his.”
“But he asked to have it should no one ever claim it,” Tammie said, “to contribute to his collection.”
“At the bank, I was admitted to inspect the goods in his name,” Scoth said. “It was all there: the box, the necklaces and rings and bracelet. Jibb delivered it intact. The senior bank clerk who oversaw him said that he was in good spirits. They had a laugh about the delivery, the clerk joking that the lord was just going to send Jibb back in a few weeks to collect the jewelry and move it somewhere else.”
“It doesn’t sound like Lord Ennings has anything to do with this,” Jesco said.
“I never had the sense that he was hiding anything. He was sorrowful about Jibb, and agitated at the inconvenience it presents him in finding a new courier that he trusts. The relationship between the lord and Jibb was strictly professional and quite amiable; he had nothing to gain by killing someone who always did as the lord wished and without complaint.”
“He’s not all there in his head, not even by half, but he’s no murderer,” Tammie said. “And then Jibb had the Silver job in Melekei, and Scoth went to see that old woman, too. Jibb delivered her whirly-gigs in the afternoon and she was happy to see him. It’s been a couple of years since he’s come by her place since moving up to Golden Circle. She gave him a glass of lemonade and five dollars. Makes me think I’m in the wrong profession. Nobody tips me for a drawing.”
“Was Jibb still in good spirits by that time?” Jesco asked.
“He was,” Scoth said. “Mrs. Daphna Cussling said they had a drink and a chat about the whirly-gigs she’d purchased, and he helped her get down her box of tissue paper and ribbons so she could wrap them up as gifts. She called him the boy who never grew up. She didn’t know about his fever, but she could tell that he was immature. Yet it was a harmless immaturity, he was polite and responsible with his work, and she liked him very much. After their visit, he rode away on his bicycle. It was late afternoon. She showed no signs of deception and had no
reason to harm him, nor is she physically capable of doing so herself. She is frail from age and has heart trouble.”
“Husband thinking that the courier was flirting with his wife?” Tammie guessed.
“Widowed,” Scoth said. “Her cook confirmed Jibb’s visit, and brought in the lemonades for them. All was well.”
Something had happened between that late afternoon in Melekei and the evening when Jibb arrived at home in Chussup. “Did Mrs. Cussling see which way he rode off?” Jesco asked.
“She didn’t, but the cook did as she went out to pick herbs from the garden for dinner. He turned left down the road, which was the normal route he would take to either get home or return to the office. Nothing was amiss at that point.”
“But something was soon after.”
“Mrs. Cussling lives at the farthest edge of Melekei. He would have passed through the whole of the city and a few miles of farm country before he pulled into Chussup. I tried to retrace the most likely route he would have taken. It leads through many streets of fine homes and shops, no dangerous territory, and there were plenty of couriers about on bicycle and horse. I stopped at the east gatehouse that he would have had to pass through to leave Melekei. The guards took no special notice of a man in a green jacket that day in their logbook. They tend to wave couriers on.”
“Then what is the point of having guards?” Tammie said.
“Melekei is a home for the financially comfortable. It isn’t couriers they want to watch for but beggars and troublemakers. Anyone who looks a little suspicious has his or her particulars noted, and passed on to the other gatehouses and the police force. They’ve had a real problem with people coming in to beg and steal. Hasten Jibb drew no attention to himself going in or out that day.”