by Jordan Reece
“Was this in the alley?”
“I cannot say with surety. But I read nothing in the timepiece after that, so I would suppose so.”
“This man could have had the timepiece within his trouser pocket, which would explain the darkness and how you do not have more than impressions since it was not against his flesh. And as he dragged the body down the alley, he brushed against those beams. A nail snagged the chain. It dragged the timepiece from his pocket, and it swung between those beams and got caught. He may have not known it was gone when it was night and his mind was occupied with the body. This had to be what happened!” Scoth wrote furiously in his pad. “When he realized it was gone, if he has, he did not even know where he lost it. We almost missed that timepiece by day; how could he see it by night?”
The carriage rocked as the two street officers stuffed the bagged body into the compartment beneath the floor. Then they hurried back to the alley to begin their sweep of it for evidence. Ravenhill climbed into the carriage and took a seat as Sinclair leaned out the door and called to the autohorse, “Fourth Street Station, ho!” He closed the door and the carriage began to move.
Jesco was fading away into oblivion. His eyelids drifted down until he was looking at the world through a minute crack. Ravenhill said, “He see anything of importance?”
“This whole case may hinge on a timepiece left by accident in that alley, and little enough could the seer read from it,” Scoth said.
You son of a harpy, Jesco thought with well-worn loathing, and succumbed to sleep.
Chapter Three
He dreamed of angels and demons, delicate fingers slipping protectively over his shoulder as claws with fire at their tips scored deep gashes into the night sky. As winged armies stormed forth, shrieking and chattering in fury, Jesco awoke and stared up to the ceiling of his room in the asylum. It was a child’s nightmare, but that scrap of fabric in the alley had allowed him to touch the mind of a child, and in that mind fantasy and reality stood not as flip sides of a coin but side by side, their arms around one another. Jesco did not have those dreams on his own merit any longer.
He was too weak to turn, so he was trapped in his head until Gavon came to prop him up. That would not be for some time still. The light was gray. It was closer to night than it was to morning. Up on the wall, his star twinkled. That had been a gift from Collier. It was not a true star but a fragment of telaza held in a glass pocket within a star made of golden-dyed metal. In his childhood, Collier had been an Asqui roamer from Lotaire, just one more of those great waves of poor that moved with the seasonal tides through Ainscote. West they went in spring to pick the early greens at the industrial farms; then south as the days lengthened where they spread out to toil amongst fields of berries and vegetables and grains. In late summer, farm owners bid on lots of roamers to pull in the harvest. Those callused hands so desirable in the autumn months found no work in winter, sending the roamers east to the mountains where they cut through Modello Pass in their wagons for the warmth of Lotaire beaches. They spent their earnings, drank and lazed, and in spring, they returned to Ainscote again.
Collier’s father had lost him one winter in a card game to a whoremonger. He had only been fourteen at the time. Outright slavery was illegal in Lotaire, but people could be put in bondage for up to thirty years. Whoremongers circled the poorest Asqui communities like vultures, seeking prey in comely children on the edge of puberty.
Two days after the card game, Collier found himself in a different sort of lot. Naked and inspected like cattle, he was bid upon by brothels’ proxy buyers. When an old man representing a Lotaire brothel grasped his chin and demanded to see his teeth, Collier obliged and then spat in his face. It was his pride that caught the eye of another buyer, this one who purchased for the best Lotaire-owned brothels in Ainscote. That was a stroke of luck. Ainscote regulated its brothels, and took a dimmer view of bondage. A citizen of Ainscote could not be put in bondage at all; one coming from Lotaire or Brozzo had his sentence reduced automatically upon setting foot in the country. Fifteen years was the maximum, and his work was compensated commensurate with free laborers in his trade. It paid back his bondage swiftly, and if he made enough before those fifteen years were up, as often happened, the law required him to be released. After that, he was considered a full citizen and could go where he pleased.
Sold to The Seven Temptations, which supplied a finer crust of prostitutes to its clientele, Collier spent four years in training. Reading and writing, elocution and charm, he was not allowed a client of his own until he reached his majority. By then, there was nothing left of the dirty, hard-handed roamer boy in the poised young man in a fashionable suit, nothing but old stories and songs from Lotaire, and the folk remedy of a telaza to ward away nightmares.
It didn’t work, but Jesco liked it up there. He could not have a man with his condition, or live in a house like a normal person, and that had once pained him greatly. He had fallen in love with Collier at their first meeting and lived in torment for months that someone else would pay his debt to the brothel and steal him away. But Collier set him right, and gently. The intricacies of his ownership left him three-quarters part in control of his future, and he did not want to be one rich person’s plaything as he earned the last quarter and won his freedom. He loved Jesco as a client, and Jesco had to separate the whole of his heart from Collier since one did not pay for a heart returned.
And truly, he did not want Collier to see him this way. Helpless in bed, unable even to roll over, let alone feed himself or walk. Whenever Jesco went to the brothel, he was at his best. It was expensive, though. Jesco could not just roll about on any old bed when the sheets and blankets and pillows held memories, as did whatever Collier wore. An evening there had to be carefully prepared, his condition forefront in the brothel’s mind. Of the money he made through his consultant position with the police force, a third of it went to the brothel. Another third went to his sister Isena, and the last third to the whirly-gigs on his counter and desk. He took them apart with great pleasure to see how they worked.
The bell of the local church struck five reverberating gongs. Otherwise, the world was still asleep. Five had been Jesco’s rising time as a boy, his father liking to say that a good farmer rose with the cry of the cockerel, and a better farmer rose before it. Six days a week Jesco had slipped yawning from his bed, and on the seventh, he was granted his oblivion until the cockerel cried. That was the day they went to church. It had been many years now since he’d attended a service, even though the church with the bell was only a quarter of a mile from the asylum. To accept that he was not evil for his abilities had sundered him forever. Still, he missed the hymns and the incense, and the exciting stories of angelic and demonic wars that he and his siblings had acted out with sticks for swords.
Memories assailed him, both his own and those belonging to others. His heart thumped hard and sweat broke out on his brow. He stared fixedly at his star and breathed deeply to center himself. It was a mind trick that the nurses had taught him from long experience with seers. The flood of memories could not be stopped, and to try to stop them would make them even more desperate to be seen. He had to permit the clamor. But part of his mind he claimed for himself to see the star. The rest of it was stormed by fire and sickness and every form of cruelty, all of it dodging this way and that to turn him away from his star. He fastened himself to it like a rock within a tempestuous sea, noting each flicker cast upon the wall around it, the shafts of iridescent light stretching into the gloomy gray of his room.
The flash of blades crowded it out. Many times he had felt the cold intrusion of metal in his gut, his throat, his back . . . there was always a moment of disbelief within the person receiving it. Pierced all over, Jesco jerked from shock in the bed. He refocused on the star, fighting to see it around the blaze of a setting sun as a man ran full bore to the edge of a cliff and leaped . . . Air rushed up around Jesco, who gasped as the world fell away beneath him. But he kept his eyes
trained to the beams of starlight within the sun . . .
The room returned. It was like attempting to focus on a single voice in a crowd at a party, and the price of not doing so was his sanity. The weaker memories drifted away as his concentration on the star grew. One could not predict which way it would shine, and the small game of guessing pushed away a handful of the stronger memories. Better ones slipped into the vacuum left behind. It was not only ugly things he saw. No, there was the fish-raft going down, two children clinging to the boulder that had cracked their flimsy little voyager, a man and woman upon the shore diving into the furious torrents and swimming out to save them . . . the star burned upon those four wet heads, the adults churning their arms against the hungry water, each with a clutching child until they dragged themselves wearily onto the grass . . . There was the old woman from a century ago who pulled a wagon through a park and filled the mugs of the homeless with hot soup . . . There was Jesco drowning within the world . . .
Like a dousing of cold water, it released him. His eyes were burning. He had not blinked. To the Lotaire people, this twinkling rock was a piece of a fallen star to shatter upon the earth. It was something of a higher divinity than angels and demons bound to this planet. To Jesco, it was a touchstone to who and where and when he was.
It had been two days since Poisoners’ Lane, and as the minutes slipped by, he gained the strength to turn his head. Yes, there were his fingers too, and he kicked his left foot. These were good signs. Today he could sit in his chair, which pleased him. It was very dull to lie in bed all day, needing someone to prop him up, spoon mash into his mouth, wipe his chin, and embarrassingly, change his padded underwear. Foolish to push so hard in the alley! That was an act of pure temper, and the only one it ended up hurting was Jesco himself. Laeric Scoth had just gone on with his day.
As the light within his room turned from gray to pink, Jesco worked his way up to a sitting position. His chair was parked beside his bed, and as the pink became yellow, he got into it and rolled to the lavatory where he took care of himself. By the time the attendant came in, Jesco was white-faced in the doorway, too fatigued to ferry himself any further.
To the attendant Gavon, patient and nurse and doctor alike were all of five years old. He was good-hearted but slow-witted, fit for the duties of a junior attendant but never one to rise higher than that. Jesco had disliked him at first, but now he saw the comfort in a man who was incapable of thinking deeply about anything. The embarrassment about being changed was only on Jesco’s side; Gavon had no more embarrassment about changing him than he would a baby’s diaper. It was just something that had to be done, and that was all there was to it. To a person capable of empathy, of placing himself in Jesco’s shoes, the shared shame would have been acute.
“There now,” Gavon said in surprise. He was so tall that the top of his head nearly brushed the lintel. “Didn’t think to see you up and about on your own.”
“Up and about and needing a proper shirt,” Jesco said.
“Right, or you’ll give the ladies a scare, won’t you?” As he spoke, the man opened the closet and whipped a shirt from the hanger. He came to the chair, took off Jesco’s nightshirt, and helped him into the other one. Doing up the buttons, Gavon said, “Do you want trousers then, or just your drawers under a blanket?”
“Tears of angels, I’ll take my trousers,” Jesco said in indignation, holding out his hand for them. “Once a man starts going around in naught but his drawers and a shirt, he might as well just give up entirely.”
The attendant was oblivious to his tone. “A message by telegraph arrived yesterday evening from the station. Wanting work from you. Artwork, not the other kind. The sketch artist will be coming this afternoon.”
“Fine, fine,” Jesco said, lifting his feet minutely so that Gavon could pull on his socks. All Jesco had to do was sit there and describe faces as the sketch artist did all the work.
“A nice morning to spend in the drawing room after breakfast. Should we take your toys along then?”
Five years old indeed. “These are whirly-gigs,” Jesco said, as he had many times before. “Very expensive. They aren’t for children.”
“And your tool case,” Gavon said unflappably, hitching it to the handle of the wheelchair. He scooped up a canvas bag and dropped in some of the whirly-gigs like they were blocks and balls.
“Careful, careful,” Jesco warned. The attendant hitched the bag to the second handle, its contents clanking against the bar of the seat. The nurses always covered their hands when touching Jesco’s things, lest he pick up on their memories later on, but Gavon didn’t always remember to do that. However, he imparted nothing at the times he forgot. Jesco found it quite strange. It was as if Gavon had sprouted fully formed upon this earth when he walked into the asylum for his first day of work three years ago. Nothing made an impression on him, so he left no impression on anything else.
“I like that one you got,” Gavon said, rolling him out to the wood-paneled hallway. It was blindingly bright from the sun shining through the windows. “The one that changes color with the day.”
“It’s a weather-catcher,” Jesco said. It was one of his favorites, and so complex within its casing that he fretted every time he took some bit of it apart that he would never get it back together. “Centralized with the Mothership Aviator and attuned to every weather-catcher in all of Ainscote. With a few turns of the pointer upon the map, I can tell you if it’s going to rain all the way north to Surren or south to Port Adassa.”
Despite Gavon’s considerable height, the explanation soared straight over his head. “I like how it changes color all the time. I come in your room and it’s got a little sun on the front piece, telling me it’s going to be a nice day. Or raining and it’ll have sleet coming down at an angle. Snow for snowing and clouds for gloomy weather.”
“Yes, I like that, too,” Jesco said kindly as he was wheeled into the dining hall. Gavon left him at the private table that was just for Jesco, and went into the kitchen for his personal tray and utensils. The othelin children chattered to one another at a long table, the newest arrival watching them in a mix of wariness and longing to join in. That had once been Jesco. The pack of children that he had grown up with here had transferred to other asylums, were living on their own, or had taken work far away and were given housing by the companies to hire them.
At another table, a nurse was spoon-feeding a baby in a high chair. Abilities usually made themselves known between the ages of five and eight, with one exception in infant Nelle. She had been left on the asylum doorstep in a basket. The examination was over and done with in a moment when she wailed and shattered a window. Everyone within twenty feet of her had nosebleeds. In order to spare the glass and protect general health, the doctor had had to fit her with a special collar. It delivered a small zap when she cried. Now a little over a year old, she was the darling of the asylum with her big black curls, chubby thighs, and tinkling laugh. Even the mental patients smiled to see her toddling down the hallways and in the garden, and a fair number of them avoided the othelin patients for all they were worth.
Gavon delivered Jesco’s meal and started to fix a napkin in his shirt. Batting him off, Jesco said, “I’m well enough to feed myself, thank you.”
“That’s a good spirit you’ve got in you this morning,” Gavon said cheerfully. “Well then, I’ll go and say hello to everyone and come back to wipe you off in a few minutes.” He lumbered away.
After eating, Jesco was taken to the drawing room. It was a beautiful space full of small tables and comfortable chairs, a library of books along two of the walls and a grand view of the garden through the bay windows. Gavon set up a tray for Jesco to work upon and left him to it, only coming by now and then to check on matters and bring lunch.
Jesco deconstructed and reassembled for long hours, and then an attendant opened the door to the drawing room and threw him a significant look. The sketch artist entered a moment later. Another woman was with her, o
ne that Jesco didn’t know.
Lady Memille Ericho hailed from a proud old Ainscote family, never to sit the throne in its time of monarchy but ever in the wings as advisors. The fall of the kings and the advent of Parliament seated them high in government and university chairs. The luster had worn off the rose in the intervening decades, other old families and new upstarts to the scene commanding more power, but the good Lady Ericho carried herself from a time in which everyone in the land knew her surname. She was nothing but a sketch artist, the branch of her family fortune having been shaken of its leaves, but her posture was rigid, her manners and dress impeccable, and the roots of her nobility without question. Striding into the room with her long blue dress swishing about her ankles, she gave Jesco a curt nod. The attendant was already bringing over a chair, which she took as she motioned for a table. He supplied it in a snap.
Her features were too severe to be called pretty, yet her very aura drew attention. “Greetings, Mr. Currane. I trust my call has not been too soon.”
“Not at all, my lady,” Jesco replied, putting away most of his whirly-gigs. “I hope you are well, and your husband.”
“Quite well, thank you.”
The second woman was the complete antithesis to Lady Ericho. Ink smudges on her fingers and chin, her light brown hair askew in its braid and her dress soiled at the hem from a puddle, she had a threadbare satchel over her shoulder where the lady carried her art supplies in a polished case. For all the mess of her, or perhaps because of it, she had a friendly and approachable attractiveness. A plain gold band was around her fourth finger.
No sooner had the attendant brought the table than the lady laid her sketchpad atop it. “I have been assigned a junior sketch artist temporarily. This is Ms. Tamora Squince. Ms. Squince, bring over a chair and table for yourself.” There had been the slightest emphasis on temporarily, like she was relieved that their partnership was not going to be a permanent one.