Darkwalker

by E. L. Tettensor

  “Zera does. In her business, reputation is everything. She has made a good name for herself, but she is still Adali. It would not take much of a scandal to ruin her.”

  “How am I supposed to find out who started a rumor?”

  “Start with the other salon hostesses,” Lenoir suggested. “Such rumors are usually invented by those who are envious or competitive. Seek these ladies out, or their servants. Failing that, see if you can find out who is actually doing the talking. Whoever is behind it may have paid someone to provide grist for the mill.”

  Their food arrived. It was half cold, and the venison loin on Lenoir’s plate looked like a giant rusted nail. His nostrils flared in disapproval, but his belly could not wait for a better option. He glanced at the table for a fork and knife; seeing none, he stopped the barmaid.

  “What for?” she asked, visibly bewildered.

  “For eating like a civilized human being, madam.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Bloody Arrènais snob,” she muttered as she flounced away.

  “Bloody Braelish barbarian,” he retorted under his breath.

  “So when do I get to meet Lady Zera?” Zach did not wait for cutlery, but plunged his fingers straight into his pie.

  Lenoir snorted. “Why would Lady Zera want to meet you?”

  “Because I’m irresistible,” the boy deadpanned.

  Lenoir burst out laughing. “Zach, one day you will be a man, and a man must learn his place in the world. Take no offense, but believe me when I tell you that Lady Zera will never in her life come within ten miles of the likes of you.”

  • • •

  The noise of the alehouse was beginning to bother him. He was accustomed to the silence of the cemetery, the airy nothingness that settled like fine ash over a place of death. This place was too alive. The light seared his eyes, the laughter jangled his nerves. He felt too warm sitting here in the glow of the hearth. All around him, folk were talking and drinking and milling about. He wished they would go away, all of them. His drunkenness only heightened his irritability, and he knew that if he did not leave soon, he would find himself in a brawl.

  He had been tense ever since leaving Brackensvale. Everywhere he went, people felt hostile. He knew he must be imagining it, yet he could not shake the feeling that his guilt was as obvious as the beard on his face. People stared at him accusingly, as if they knew. Children especially—they looked frightened whenever he came near, as though they expected him to do them harm. He could not long linger in a crowded place such as this before he began to sweat, sure that at any moment the Metropolitan Police would descend upon him. If they caught him, he would swing for what he had done—or worse.

  The gravedigger stood up abruptly, his chair scraping along the floor loudly enough to draw looks from the other patrons. Slamming a few coins on the table, he grabbed his cloak and headed for the door. Outside, it was cool and quiet, and he took deep, grateful breaths. His head seemed to clear some. He pulled his cloak over his shoulders, his gaze moving briefly over a man standing in the shadow of a doorframe. He felt a moment’s annoyance that his solitude should be interrupted again so soon, but when he looked up from fastening his cloak, the man was gone. Good.

  He weaved a little as he made his way down the street, but there was no one to see. It was late, and the windows that faced the street were dark. The streetlamps struggled against a moonless night, doing little to illuminate his way. That was just as well too. He had always preferred to abide in darkness.

  As he walked, he became dimly aware that the sound of his own footsteps was echoed by those of another somewhere behind. He turned, angry words on his lips, but there was no one there. Strange—he was sure he had heard something.

  He turned into a narrow alley. His footing was uncertain, obliging him to keep his gaze trained on the ground as he walked. Suddenly, a shadow spilled across the stones in front of him, liquid black, flitting from right to left. He looked up at the rooftops in time to see movement.

  He froze, and there was a moment of stillness. Then the air exploded in whirring and flapping as a clutch of pigeons burst forth from the eaves. The gravedigger’s cry of shock dissolved into a string of curses at the filthy creatures.

  Just ahead, the end of the alley was marked by a shaft of pale light from a nearby streetlamp. But the way was not free: standing silhouetted against the glow was a man. It was the same man, the gravedigger realized, that he had seen in the doorway near the alehouse. Little of his face was distinguishable in the darkness, but his eyes were clearly visible, shining as though lit from within. They were an uncanny shade of green, vivid like those of a cat, only brighter.

  There was something in those eyes, something that caused a cold sliver of fear to slide itself like a blade into the gravedigger’s ribs. He checked his stride and turned, retracing his steps up the alleyway. He moved as quietly as he could, straining to listen to the darkness behind him. Footsteps sounded, echoing closely in the narrow confines of the alley. The gravedigger quickened his step, listening carefully. Sure enough, the footsteps behind increased their pace.

  A sob of terror clutched at the gravedigger’s throat, and he burst into a run.

  He made for the river, taking random turns in an effort to break his pursuer’s line of sight. But he did not know the city well, and soon the street disgorged him onto a bridge. It was horribly exposed, but he had no choice: he pounded on, his head bent low as he sprinted. Only when he reached the far edge of the bridge did he look up, and what he saw stopped his heart. There, waiting for him at the other end, was the man with the flashing green eyes.

  It was impossible, unnatural. The gravedigger’s knees buckled, and he sank slowly to the ground. “Please,” he sobbed quietly as the green-eyed man approached. “Please.”

  The man stood over him now, expressionless. The gravedigger’s last thought was that he looked like an avenging angel.

  So beautiful.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Brier and I canvassed most of the town,” Kody was saying, “and nobody could recall seeing a stranger around before we arrived. But then, just as I was getting ready to give up, a laundry girl told us that she had seen an Adali man ride in the night before. She couldn’t tell us much about him—apparently, she didn’t see his face—but she did say he was wearing a purple riding cloak, the traditional embroidered kind. Pretty distinctive, wouldn’t you say? Anyway, she said it was almost dark when he arrived, so he would have had to find a place to bed down for the night.”

  Lenoir was only half listening to the sergeant’s babbling. The other half of his attention, the more interested half, was devoted to spinning a copper coin on the surface of his desk. He let it whirl until it began to wobble, whereupon he slapped it flat and took it up again, flicking it between his thumb and forefinger to set it off anew. He was not normally given to such fidgeting, but this routine of Kody’s had been going on for days, and Lenoir was at his wits’ end. He had reminded the sergeant how many times—a dozen?—that a crime unsolved after the first two days was likely to remained unsolved forever. But still Kody was undaunted, riding out to Brackensvale or North Haven day after day in a fruitless attempt to turn over some useful clue in his hunt for the corpse thief.

  “The innkeeper denied seeing any Adali, but of course he would. Bad for business if word got out that he let such folk sleep in his beds.”

  “That is one explanation,” said Lenoir. “Another might be that he had not in fact seen your Adal.” The coin set forth again.

  Kody frowned as he watched its progress across the desk. “Yes, well . . . So that’s the latest from North Haven. The bit from Brackensvale is even more interesting: apparently, the gravedigger from the boy’s cemetery is missing. Nobody can be sure exactly how long he’s been gone—guess he wasn’t missed—but even the priest can’t recall seeing him since the boy’s body went missing.”

  He paused
, seemingly waiting for his listener to comment. Lenoir merely slapped the wavering copper piece down. Kody flinched; Lenoir could see the muscles in the sergeant’s jaw twitch.

  “Am I keeping you from more important matters, Inspector?”

  Lenoir met his eye for the first time since the conversation began. “Yes, Sergeant, you are. And keeping yourself from them as well.”

  Kody nodded slowly, his jaw still taut. “Really. So nothing I’ve just told you has any value, then?”

  “The value of a piece of information lies in our ability to make sense of it, to determine its significance. Otherwise it is just a distraction.” Lenoir leaned over the desk, arms crossed. “So, tell me, Sergeant, what is the significance of what you have just told me? Your Adali stranger in North Haven, your missing gravedigger in Brackensvale—what do they mean? What has one to do with the other? We do not know the fate of either, so how will they help us find the corpses?”

  “I don’t . . . I haven’t . . .” He floundered. “I just need more time—”

  “Would you search the Five Villages for a man in a purple cloak, Kody? Would you abandon your search for the bodies to look instead for the missing gravedigger? Begin a new investigation that may or may not be related to the one you are supposedly pursuing?”

  Kody’s face flushed, and his hands balled into fists. Lenoir knew the sergeant wanted to hit him, was a heartbeat away from leaping across the desk. But as always, Kody’s discipline won out and he merely took a long, shaking breath.

  Lenoir rose from the desk and fetched his coat. “You have not got a constellation here, Sergeant Kody,” he said, heading for the door, “and it’s time for you to grow up and quit stargazing.” He did not wait for a reply, but left Kody sitting alone in his office.

  His step was brisk as he headed down the stairs to ground level, where the bulk of the Metropolitan Police went about its business. The second floor was reserved for men of rank such as Lenoir; the rest of the men shared a single open space on the ground floor, an area affectionately known as “the kennel.” Today, as always, it was a hive of activity, for a city as large as Kennian had more than enough crime to keep its six-hundred-odd hounds busy. Most of the sergeants, watchmen, scribes, and others who milled about the kennel were occupied with petty crimes, for more serious affairs were reserved for the inspectors. Even so, Lenoir occasionally envied the lower ranks the simplicity of their work. He remembered fondly his days on the streets of Serles, how the citizenry looked to him as a symbol of justice, a chivalric figure to whom they could run when they were in distress. Chasing down thieves, breaking up duels—so satisfying, so uncomplicated. The life of an inspector was not so. Not in Serles, and not in Kennian.

  “Inspector,” said a voice, breaking into Lenoir’s thoughts. A young watchman approached him at the foot of the stairs. “Sergeant Innes sent me to find you, sir. He’s at Merriton’s place.”

  “Merriton?” Lenoir frowned, riffling through his memory for the name. “The surgeon?”

  “Yes, sir. He’s with some nobleman—I think he said his name was Arleas? Anyway, he’s been beaten pretty bad. Unconscious, face like a heap of plum preserve.”

  Sighing, Lenoir nodded. Visiting a surgery was reliably unpleasant. At best it was a place of pain; at worst it offered up some of the most gruesome sights ever beheld. Lenoir would rather watch an autopsy than the work of a barber or surgeon. At least with an autopsy, the poor soul having bits of him sawn off was already dead. Still, he should be grateful for something to do that did not involve listening to Kody drone on about the corpse thief, so he thanked the watchman and headed out.

  He arrived at Merriton’s to find the situation just as the watchman had described it. On a slab in the middle of the room lay a finely dressed man of middle age, or so Lenoir judged; in truth it was difficult to tell, for he had been beaten to the point of being virtually unrecognizable. His face was grotesquely swollen: thick fleshy eyelids the size of a child’s fist, cracked lips, skin a palette of vivid purples and blues. The surgeon, Merriton, hovered above him, whistling softly to himself as he draped leeches across the unconscious man’s bruises. A short distance away, Sergeant Innes loomed over the scene like a gargoyle.

  Innes inclined his head in acknowledgment as Lenoir approached. “Morning, Inspector. Thought you’d better see this, seeing as this fella’s a nobleman and all.”

  “Arleas is his name,” Merriton supplied cheerfully. “I told you that already. I know his chambermaid quite well.” He resumed his whistling.

  Tempted as he was to comment on that detail, Lenoir focused on the task at hand. “Why didn’t you take him to a proper physician?” he asked Innes. Merriton glanced up sharply, but decided to hold his tongue.

  Innes, a great ogre of a man, shrugged his massive shoulders. “Dunno, Inspector. Only I found him not far from here, and he looked in pretty bad shape, so I just figured I’d better get him seen to quick.”

  “And quite right too,” said Merriton. “These wounds need bleeding right away, or the dark blood will infect him.”

  Lenoir suppressed a shudder. He had grown accustomed to living in Braeland over the past decade or so, even if it was considerably less advanced than Arrènes and the other civilized nations to the south. But occasionally he was reminded that this little country was scarcely more than a land bridge to the savage lands beyond, and nothing called that to mind quite so forcibly as medical matters. Situations such as these made it seem as though he had stepped back through time to the dark days before the Age of Awakening.

  The surgery looked more like a torture chamber than a place of healing. The tools of Merriton’s trade were laid out on a long table like an exhibit in a museum of the macabre: saws, carving knives, rasps, and even more sinister-looking devices whose purposes Lenoir could not even begin to guess at. A putrid smell hung in the air, vaguely reminiscent of a butcher’s on a hot day, as though the reek of rotting flesh had somehow seeped into the very floorboards. Or perhaps the smell came from the bloodstained rushes strewn beneath the patient’s slab. The thought caused Lenoir’s stomach to twist over itself.

  He turned to Innes, who was idly swatting at the flies buzzing near his ear. “Has he been unconscious since you found him, Sergeant, or did he say anything?”

  “Nothing, sir, but I found this on him.” Innes held out a letter, unsealed, which Lenoir took. It read simply, This afternoon, tea time. Lenoir turned it over and examined the seal. He recognized the family crest immediately, even though he had been half-drunk the last time he saw it.

  “Very well, Sergeant, stay with him. If he wakes within the next two hours, find out who did this to him. If he doesn’t, fetch a goddamn physician, will you?”

  Innes grunted again as Lenoir shouldered past the surgeon, who was admiring his handiwork with a disturbingly satisfied grin.

  • • •

  Lord Feine kept Lenoir waiting for nearly an hour. It was possible he knew why the inspector had come and sought to avoid the interview altogether, but Lenoir thought it equally likely that Feine simply took pleasure in reminding his guests of his superior rank. In any case, his expression when he finally arrived showed neither nervousness nor smugness, but merely the sour look he always wore, as though nothing around him were quite to his liking.

  “How good to see you, Inspector,” said Feine, his inflection utterly flat. He strode across the room to a handsome wingback chair near the hearth, his hand fluttering at Lenoir in an anemic invitation to sit. “Can I offer you some lunch?”

  “Very kind, sir, but no, thank you. I’m afraid that I am not paying a social call.”

  Feine arched a single finely trimmed eyebrow. “Indeed? Official business, then? How disturbing.” Lenoir judged that His Lordship would sound more disturbed if he had just located a hangnail. Feine produced his pipe, and Lenoir found himself staring for the second time at the family crest that ostentatiously ador
ned the bowl.

  “There was a man beaten in the streets this morning, savagely so,” said Lenoir, studying Feine’s expression carefully.

  The eyebrow leapt again. “Awful.”

  “I believe you know the victim, since if I am not mistaken, he is a fellow parliamentarian. Arleas is his name.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Feine, as though Lenoir had just correctly identified a species of plant. “I know him well. Splendid fellow.” He held Lenoir’s eye and said nothing more.

  Lenoir knew already where all this would lead. Feine had not even bothered to inquire what any of this had to do with him, the way an innocent man, or a man inclined to pretend innocence, would do. Such confidence in a suspect could mean only one thing: he considered himself untouchable. Sometimes this was because the suspect believed there was no evidence to condemn him. More often, however, when it came to the nobility, it was because they were simply not afraid of whatever evidence there might be.

  “I would like to show you something, Lord Feine,” said Lenoir, rising. “May I?” He took Feine’s silence for permission and approached. “This letter was found on the victim. It bears your seal, but I think it must have been written by someone else in the household. The handwriting is quite . . . feminine, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Feine looked over the letter, and for the first time, his expression cracked. It was subtle—lips slightly pursed, nostrils flared almost imperceptibly—and it was gone in an instant. But it was enough for Lenoir. “I wonder, sir, if you are the sort of man to allow himself to be humiliated. I must say you do not seem to me such a man.”

  Feine had mastered himself once again, and he smiled as he handed the letter back. “And you do not strike me as the sort of man whose lifestyle can be supported on the salary of an inspector. Men of such modest means do not often find themselves frequenting Lady Zera’s salon.”

  There it was. Lenoir had seen it coming; Feine’s demeanor had told him to expect it.