Steampunk Hearts

by Jordan Reece

  “As always,” Jesco returned with a polite bow.

  “I hope to see you again on another case soon.” Taking up her case, she returned to the door.

  “Until next time, Tammie,” Jesco said.

  “I’ll be back before you know it, just as long as the fine citizens of this country keep murdering each other, and we both know they will.” Tammie smiled brightly. “Take care of yourself until then, Jesco, and get a fast rolling start should you come across someone with an agricultural sprayer over his shoulder, asking if you’re a member of Parliament. He’s up to no good.”

  “Ms. Squince!” Lady Ericho said in aghast. “Don’t make light of a madman!”

  Tammie threw Jesco a wink on her way to the door, and then Gavon ferried him to dinner.

  Chapter Four

  He was tottering around with his cane by the next day, and as fit as any man the day after that. Gavon was reassigned to other patients and the children hammered at Jesco for details of his latest case. He gave them only what was in the newspapers, since the case was unsolved, but the fact of the man being naked scandalized and titillated them enormously and they did not inquire much further. The story of poor Taniel caught them up in horror. Jesco took some comfort in that. The boy had not faded away entirely into the mists of time. Now his sorry life and sorrier demise was engraved in the minds of fifteen othelin children who reenacted his desperate flight in the garden until an unnerved nurse told them to stop coughing and squashing flowers in the throes of death.

  His pay came in the post and was duly allotted to his three interests in life. Rafonse had been secure in his financials, but his untimely death left his wife in a fix. The house was not quite paid for; Jesco’s two nephews attended an expensive, private academy and his niece was due to start there as well once she was old enough. With the money that Jesco sent, Isena didn’t have to return to South Downs with her children to live with their parents. Their education would cease at once, were she forced to do that. Teachers in farm communities only held school through the summer season, and the basics of reading, writing, and figuring were all that was supplied.

  Many of the othelin within the asylum had no one. Their families had turned their backs for good. To have the love of a sister, two worshipful nephews and a little niece made Jesco rich among his company. He had a few roots whereas they felt severed. That pain had been his own from ages eight to eleven before Rafonse pushed Isena and Jesco back together, and he did not speak of them too often lest he hurt someone inadvertently. But when his family visited, Jesco could hardly contain himself. This, this was his beautiful and loving sister, and they had the exact same shade of brown hair atop very different faces. These, these were his nephews Bertie and Alonzo, and Bertie was the top of his class while joking Alonzo was an echo in appearance of Jesco himself as a boy. And this tiny, golden-haired one at their heels was his niece Gemina, and she could count to one hundred and loved horses both biological and auto-mechanical alike.

  He wrote a letter to them upon his personal store of paper and pen that had no memories, tucked the money inside, and folded it into three before placing it in an envelope. The money would become new academy uniforms and keep the roof over their heads, food in their bellies and wood in the fireplace when it was cold. He was sure to have a letter in return from Isena within a week or two, thanking him and telling him all the latest in their lives. A nurse would read it to Jesco, and then he’d add it to the box of letters under his bed.

  That was the most important third of his pay. The rest was for play. Whirly-gigs were a massive expense, and he was also storing up for another trip to The Seven Temptations. It was well worth the cost. Brothels were abundant in Cantercaster, but many were squalid institutions where lust was to be dispensed of as swiftly as possible. He had seen that for himself in his initial venturing after love, in which he hadn’t known any better at eighteen but to walk in and see what was there. His youthful, undiscriminating nature had brought him to Hole in the Wall, which was exactly that, and it frightened him straight out the door with his lust flagging for all the wrong reasons. No part of his body did he want to stick through a hole in the wall, leaving it at the mercy of the invisible person on the other side. That failed first attempt led him to Carrot and Stick, and again he left unsatisfied. No, he did not want to be strapped to the wheel for a handsome man to flog him, or to grovel about in a dog collar shining his master’s boots with his tongue. From there he wandered into The Oily Toe, and at last he put together that a brothel was advertising its particular services by its name and outward appearance, and to these things he had to attend.

  And so he landed at The Seven Temptations, which was dedicated to luxury in every form. It was not a place for a fifteen-minute frolic. There was music and dancing in the ballroom, drinks and food in a fine dining room, and countless little living rooms in which to read or chat. Three times a year there were grand parties, and he had paid a mint to reserve Collier as his date for the last one. It had been a night of fortunes, the ballroom transformed into a sea of black-swathed tables with psychics stationed at each one to read cards and palms and birthdates, foreheads and chicken bones and dice. At one table the cards revealed that Jesco would die a solo adventurer in the Northern Ice; at another, his forehead showed a propensity to grand romantic gestures and a love of staying at home. The psychic reading the chicken bones had been blind and that had Jesco and Collier in fits of merriment. The man waved his hands over the spilled bones and claimed to see their vibrations with his third eye. Yet his lack of sight in the first and second ended in him knocking over a glass of wine.

  A few men and a woman had come over to visit in their time in the ballroom. They were also clients of Collier’s. He was gracious to them but turned down their overtures for companionship, and then he and Jesco had a wonderful meal before retiring to the special room where he would not be triggered into visions while making love.

  It had been one of the most perfect nights of Jesco’s life. In the morning, he wanted to invite Collier for a day about town. The autohorse races, the whirly-gig shops, tea at Obokin’s . . . but that was not who they were to each other, and not what they could do unless Jesco arranged for it with the brothel and paid out the nose for the privilege. The perfection gained a slightly sour note. All of their closeness was really an illusion. Still, he wanted to save up for another party, but that would mean not seeing Collier at all for long months.

  As Jesco went back and forth on it, an attendant found him to report a carriage had arrived. He put on his gloves and took hold of his wheelchair to steer it from his room. He was in no great hurry to get back into it, and resolved to keep his temper this time.

  Assuming that it was a police carriage, he was baffled when he went out to the driveway. This was someone’s personal carriage, an older model that was gray. It was well tended yet humble, and the windows were plain glass and showed no one inside. The autohorse was huge and dusty black. It turned its head to look at Jesco and a recording began to play. “Mr. Jesco Currane, please report to Saliwan Bank.” That was on the same street as the police station.

  Gavon hurried out with a sack. “Take your lunch along with you now.” He pressed it into Jesco’s arms like an indulgent mother. “There are cookies.”

  Once the wheelchair was within the carriage, Jesco took a seat and let Gavon close the door. The man’s hand had barely withdrawn an inch when the carriage jerked into motion. This autohorse was programmed to waste no time.

  There were no curtains over the windows, and the fabric of the two seats was worn. Jesco looked out to the trotting backside of the giant autohorse. For such a simple carriage, such a big horse was unnecessary. This one looked like it had the strength to pull two carriages. The police station had many carriages and autohorses, all of them clearly identified except for those used in undercover work. Jesco knew those. This was either a new purchase by the precinct, or something else was going on here.

  Several blocks passed away, th
e autohorse swishing its tail impatiently when it had to slow for traffic. Jesco became aware of how odd this carriage was on the inside. The ceiling was a little lower than it appeared to be from the outside, and it was covered in a glossy wooden panel. As well were there wooden panels at the four corners, extending from the ceiling down to the seats, and passing below them. The frames around the windows were thick and wide, giving Jesco the impression that he was traveling within two carriages: a shabby one that hadn’t been new since he was a boy, and one refurnished by a clumsy decorator who missed the threadbare fabric to reframe the windows and attach a new panel above. Jesco was heedful when the carriage rocked not to touch any part of it with the bare skin of his face. There were memories here to explain this oddness, but he needed his ability for other things.

  He was full of curiosity by the time the autohorse turned onto the road that would take them to the bank. Never before had the police sent for him without an escort. With the Shy Sprinkler’s latest prank, perchance, no one could be spared. He glanced out to the station as he rolled past. Nothing looked amiss, nor was there anything amiss at the bank coming up. The carriage slowed and stopped, and for several moments, he sat there in confusion.

  Then the door opened, and Laeric Scoth climbed in. “Third destination!” he shouted to the autohorse, and then he slammed the door and took the seat across from Jesco. The carriage lurched into movement and merged with traffic, bearing them away from the bank.

  “Good day,” Jesco said.

  “Good day,” Scoth said grumpily. He tucked a slim pocketbook into his trench coat and withdrew his pad of notes. Silence stretched out between them while he read.

  “Care to tell me why I’m here?” Jesco asked.

  Scoth looked up. He had beautiful brown eyes, or he would if there were ever any lightness in them. “Didn’t the horse tell you?”

  “The horse just said we were taking a trip to the bank.”

  The detective sighed. “Damn thing. The recorder keeps tripping at the same point and cutting off the message.”

  “Be that as it may, I still have no idea where we’re going, or why I came to the bank instead of the station.”

  “I knew the line would take ruddy forever, and it did.” Scoth’s eyes fell away and pages flipped. “We identified the victim. Hasten Jibb, twenty-seven, man from Chussup.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Five miles, six, just outside the western edge of the county. He worked as a courier for a company called Ragano & Wemill, also in Chussup. We’re off to interview his mother and his superior at his workplace. See if we can’t piece his last day together.”

  “Who identified him?”

  “It was a coincidence. We distributed his photograph to the other stations. One of the couriers from his company happened to see it over the front desk at Station Eight while dropping off a package. One hundred percent positive that it’s Jibb, and said he hasn’t shown up to work for days even though he’s always been regular.” Scoth looked weary, his eyes red-rimmed and bags beneath them.

  It was nearly lunch, and Jesco was getting hungry. He opened the sack and withdrew the meal that the asylum had made for him. There was a tomato and bacon sandwich wrapped in wax paper, a covered mug of water, two apples and a hunk of cheese, and another wrapped package of sugar cookies. As he took out the sandwich, he noticed the detective’s gaze touch upon it before returning to his notes.

  The man hadn’t slept or eaten or done anything but chase down this case and make sure his hair was perfectly coiffed. Leaning over, Jesco offered half of the sandwich. “I’m fine,” Scoth said.

  “Then you wouldn’t be leering at my lunch,” Jesco said. “They pack too much at the asylum anyway.”

  The detective took the sandwich and held it for a few beats like he was still trying to think of a reason to refuse. Jesco took a big bite from his half and crunched on it loudly. Scoth gave him a dirty look, surrendered to the good smell of the sandwich in his fingers, and took an equally big bite.

  “Is this a new police carriage? It’s odd,” Jesco commented.

  Scoth shook his head and swallowed hard. “It’s mine. All of the police carriages have been requisitioned for another case.”

  “The Shy Sprinkler?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I met the junior sketch artist.”

  “There are two, but you can only mean Tamora Squince. The second can’t string a coherent sentence together.” The detective looked around the carriage with a discerning eye. “What in this do you find odd?”

  “All of the extra panels. If your aim was to make it look nicer, you should have had the seats reupholstered.”

  “That was not my aim,” Scoth said.

  Whatever his aim was, it didn’t matter to Jesco. He wished Sinclair were also in the carriage. It was uncomfortable being alone with Scoth. “Has there been any progress on the Shy Sprinkler case?”

  “Not to my knowledge, but it isn’t my case. My concern is how this man,” he said, indicating his pad of paper, “came to be dead in that alley.”

  “Perhaps he was delivering something in the area and ran afoul of a miscreant,” Jesco said. “Someone who wanted to steal what he was delivering.”

  Flipping a page back and forth, Scoth said, “But why kill him for it? Just sneak up behind him, give him a thump, take the package, and run off.”

  “Jibb could have fought.”

  “The coroner found no signs of a fight. His knuckles weren’t bruised from delivering blows, nor was he bruised from receiving them; there was nothing on him but the stab wounds and very minor scraping from being dragged a short distance.”

  “He was caught off guard. Or sleeping in the nude. Then there would have been no need to strip him.”

  “But why was there a need to move his body? Was he killed at the home of a friend who wished not to be implicated?” Scoth waved away the idea and went back to the previous possibility. “This miscreant approaches him in the road, stabs him to death, takes the package if there is one and strips him naked, wraps him up in something so he doesn’t trail blood everywhere, and drags him into the dead zone? And then unwraps him and moves him into that alley? And no one saw this? The streets about the dead zone aren’t thick with traffic at night, but they’re hardly unoccupied.”

  “A carriage,” Jesco said. “They’d think something odd about a person dragging a body from one street to another, but not a carriage going past.”

  Scoth did not disagree. “And the location . . . was he left where he was because his murderer thought that no one would look in an alley in Poisoners’ Lane? Why not move the body deeper into the alley than where we found it, or kick trash over it? Or dump the body in the water?” Scoth was speaking more to himself than to Jesco. “Tramps go through there regularly, even though they shouldn’t. Did the murderer want him to be found? Or not want him to be found?”

  “If someone wanted him to be found, then just dump him in the road,” Jesco said. “No need to go into that alley at all.”

  “Someone wanted him to be found, but not immediately,” Scoth ventured. “But why would you kill a courier, steal his things, and want the body to be discovered? Jibb had to be in the area on personal business. It makes no sense otherwise, unless this is a message.”

  “A message?”

  “Murders can be messages. There were two street gangs put down in my first year as a detective, gangs that selected innocent people and killed them, marked them up with the opposing gang’s insignia and left them to be discovered. To get the opposing gang in trouble, to settle an old score or start a new one, which was carved into the flesh of the body . . . the victims had nothing more to do with it than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This could be Hasten Jibb’s end, to prove a point to someone that had little to nothing to do with the man himself.”

  “Are your cases usually so muddy?” Jesco asked.

  “We don’t all have your gift of seersight.”

  J
esco had been planning to offer a sugar cookie, but at that sarcastic dismissal, ate both of them. They did not speak again as the carriage rattled along through the many neighborhoods within Cantercaster. It was a bright day, and too windy except for the most diehard aviators to be up and about. The gusts of air ruffled the locks of the pedestrians and trembled the carriages. This one was heavier than it looked, and the wind failed in its challenge and parted around it.

  Ragano & Wemill was a solid brick building of two floors. About the door was a flurry of signs listing methods of delivery, weights, and costs. Bicycle, horse, autohorse, it was a bustling business and evidence of that was everywhere. Office workers passed behind many of the windows, walking at a fast clip and some outright running. The door swung open and shut every few seconds, customers going in and out with packages, couriers in green jackets bolting to the bicycle racks on the sidewalk or to the stables across the road. In the building’s driveway, a heavier delivery was being loaded into a wagon by a half dozen couriers. Already hitched, a sturdy white autohorse waited with its chest flap open for a destination card.

  The carriage pulled over to the curb and halted. Scoth opened the door and let himself out, holding it for Jesco to disembark and closing it behind him. A courier shot past them on his bicycle, shouting, “Pass!” With a thump-thump, he rocketed off the sidewalk and swerved into the road. The satchel over his back was stuffed to the brim.

  “Stay out here,” Scoth ordered.

  “Why?” Jesco asked.

  “It’s a madhouse in there. Someone knocks into you on accident and you’ll be seeing nothing to do with our situation.” The detective went up the steps to the front door and vanished inside, a clot of couriers coming out with their arms laden and calling to those at the wagon.

  For several minutes, Jesco waited beside the carriage and watched all of the activity. Bicycles were jerked from the racks and returned to it with a clatter; couriers bickered about the way to Amon Hollow; a man dropped a stack of packages going up to the door and swore heartily as they bounced down to the sidewalk. The chest flap was closed on the autohorse and a sole courier took the driver’s seat on the wagon. The autohorse pulled into the road and clopped away. Over at the stables, it was nearly as busy. Real horses finishing their shifts were being brushed and put away for feeding; fresh mounts were brought out and saddled. One was spooking at a scrap of paper on the ground, its nostrils flaring as it stamped a hoof. A groom spoke sharply and the horse quieted. Then the wind fluttered the paper, which was trapped beneath a rock, and the horse stamped again.