by Tim Clare
Real, vital people, reduced to a few scars in rock. Truly, they shall be as the morning cloud, and as the early dew that passeth away, as the chaff that is driven with the whirlwind out of the floor, and as the smoke out of the chimney. There was no crawling out from beneath the heap of corpses. Every day it grew deeper.
Hagar wiped a film of sweat off her top lip. So much of her life had been marked by corrigibility, impermanence – a sense that no action was irrevocable, no mistake final. Wounds healed. Massacred populations were gradually replaced. Pain and glory oscillated around a steady median. What she contemplated, what bore down on her, implacably, was a single, permanent act. If she failed, this living damnation might persist for millennia. Billions of fates balanced on the blade-edge of her courage.
No longer. A tiny, feckless aristocracy had fed off the world’s life energy for too long. The secrets of this planet were meant for far greater things. The honours were just the beginning.
Delphine would not stop her. Not even Morgellon would stop her. She would win because she had to. She would use his powers to tame the beast. She would save everyone.
The city would be waking soon, hungover, ugly with remorse. Paranoia gnawing at its sinews. A rich, ripe cholera-corpse, bloated with contagion.
Ready to explode.
Hagar picked her way down the steep, twisting street, towards the low town and the stilt city. The cobbles were littered with spent firecrackers, incense sticks and the occasional pale slash of glutinous vomit. Bunting that, in the blazing torchlight of the previous night, had fluttered gay and magnificent, now sagged between shuttered windows like lank seaweed.
As she descended, the atmosphere grew more humid. The bay was southwest-facing, crescent-shaped. To the northeast, the Maw delta exploded out of the jungle, a mile-wide chain of islets and mudbanks, threaded together by wooden piers, pontoon docks and rope bridges. The stilt city curved south, a palimpsest of boardwalks and ad-hoc cabins scribbled over the sea. Windmills flashed in the early morning sun. Spiked heads of lightning rods shivered like strange thistles.
An ache had started in her stomach. She recognised the pain as Morgellon’s. He had not taken his medicine yet. Withdrawal symptoms were beginning to rack his body.
It was too late for drunks and too early for beggars. Most of the street was still in shadow, sunlight a strange, encroaching benediction upon the slates and chimney pots.
She heard footsteps and ducked into a doorway.
A member of the city peace came running down the hill – a short, human woman clad in a white cotton smock and green sash, her carbine on a shoulder sling.
‘Miss Ingery? Miss Ingery!’ She sounded out of breath.
As she was about to run past Hagar stepped out into her path and hailed her. ‘Good morning, officer.’
The officer nearly barrelled into her. She took a step back, clasping her chest.
‘Miss Ingery, Sheriff Kenner requests your presence at an incident on the Rue Viné immediately.’
‘Hasn’t he got better things to do, with the Grand-Duc arriving?’
The officer shrugged apologetically. ‘That is the message.’
‘How did you find me?’
‘I was on my way to your lodgings.’
Hagar scrutinised the officer’s close-set brown eyes. ‘Can you tell me the nature of this incident?’
The officer shook her head. ‘He requests you attend immediately.’
‘What’s the address?’
‘I’m to lead you there myself.’
Hagar felt the gaze of a dozen shuttered windows overhead. Technically, she could refuse. Kenner was not arresting her. She outranked him. Technically.
A glazier’s sign creaked in its brackets. What could be so important that he would send for her so early? And why her, of all people? He hated the palace interfering.
‘All right.’ Hagar straightened her leather gloves, surreptitiously checking the garrotte concealed in her cuff. She flattened down her jacket and flashed the officer her best compliant smile. ‘Lead the way.’
The skeleton lay in pieces on the stone floor. Holding a handkerchief over her nose and mouth, Hagar took a rough inventory: here was the skull, lying on its side, yellow in the candlelight, then several inches away the separated mandible, missing most of its teeth, then the cervical vertebrae still connected with a pulp of white gristle, the clavicles and scapulae, the ribcage mostly intact, bedded in traces of a nondescript puce mush, both arms – one of which lay some distance off to the right but was held together by knots of connective tissue, the knuckle bones, metacarpals and short phalanges scattered like the oddments of some exotic children’s game, the other arm flush with the ribcage and missing a hand – the massy pelvis, again glistening with grots of organic matter, then the thighbones splayed, the shinbones and fibulas pointing back towards each other in a bandy-legged parody of a dancer.
Hagar crouched. She surveyed the bones with a sense of anti-climax – she had expected a murder scene, not a relic. She could not see how this musty old skeleton was a matter requiring her expertise.
‘Don’t touch it,’ said Sheriff Kenner, his voice deep, his inflection flat. The mountainous harka was watching solemnly, his candle smoking in the foul cellar air. His huge forearms were a striking oxblood against his white cotton smock. When he inhaled, a bulge rose in his throat, straining against the muscles of his jaw.
Beside the skeleton was a three-legged wooden stool and an old-fashioned pepperbox pistol with four rotating barrels. She glanced at Kenner.
‘Has this been fired?’
Kenner hesitated. He had to stoop to keep from catching his huge horns on the ceiling beams. They were wide as his shoulders, his neck extending from a great hump of muscle in such a way that he appeared to be perpetually lunging. The candle fluttered as he exhaled heavily through the slits of his nostrils. He gestured with an upturned palm.
Hagar was unsure whether he was indicating she should stand, or that she should pick up the gun. She chose the latter.
The pistol’s grip was smooth, coated in a matte lacquer. She held the candle close to the lock plate. It was dusted in grains of fine black powder.
‘Fingerprints?’ she said.
‘Just the deceased’s,’ said Kenner. ‘And now yours, of course.’ He let the innuendo hang. ‘The victim wasn’t shot, as far as we can tell. The gun was not fired. All four barrels are loaded.’
Hagar stared at the pistol. She lifted it to her nostrils and sniffed. Under the cellar’s pervasive, faecal stink she detected a sharper, acrid scent – something like urine. Perhaps it was the smell of the spent fulminate charge, or the metal. She sniffed again, then caught Kenner watching her and put the gun down.
She pressed a knuckle to her lips. ‘What smells so bad?’
Kenner swung his candle to reveal a bucket in the corner. ‘The victim had been in the room for some time.’
Hagar glanced at the skeleton. ‘Decades, at a guess.’
‘You misunderstand. He was alive last night.’
She regarded the bones with new interest. She had thought the address looked familiar, though she had never been here personally. Could this be Dr Noroc? Had he been right all along?
The ache was spreading through her midriff, a liquid bruise. She phrased her next question carefully.
‘Did he . . . live here?’
Kenner stared. She wondered if he had heard, then he said:
‘The victim believed someone – or some coalition of persons – was trying to kill him. He had accused several . . . prominent citizens.’
‘Let me guess. They’re all in the running for Prefect?’
Kenner nodded. Hagar had spent some time catching up with Fat Maw civic law. The Prefect was elected by the city aldermen from one of their number. To qualify as an alderman you had to own property and rent your annual seat on the council. In practice, the only people who could afford to do so were the clique leaders – the Doyens, Doyennes or Doyennos. They t
ook contributions from their members to buy their place on the Spire Council and, in return, they represented their clique’s interests. Whoever they chose would take on administrative duties for the continent and would be made into Lord Jejunus’ valet or handmaiden, just like Hagar.
‘We thought he was mad,’ said Kenner, ‘but talk like that could be seen as seditious. An incitement to revolt. We put him under house arrest, for his own safety. We planned to keep him here until tomorrow, when the election is over.’
‘You’re saying he died a few hours ago.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Sheriff. This is a skeleton.’ She tongued the gap left by her missing canine. ‘How can it be him?’
Kenner tilted his head back. He peered at her over the collars of his eyes, his face judderingly underlit.
He took a couple of clumping steps forward, his hooves crunching on the gritty stone floor. He lowered his candle and pointed at the bones.
‘Bronze bracelet on left wrist. Damage to the left eye socket consistent with a known existing injury.’ He gestured towards the corner. Candlelight gleamed off something small and round. ‘Glass eye.’
‘All easily faked.’
He snorted. ‘It troubles me that you consider procuring an entire human skeleton easy.’
‘People die, Sheriff. Bones are in plentiful supply and low demand.’
Kenner inhaled, the candle flame fluttering. ‘The victim did not leave this room. The door locks and bolts from the inside.’ He held the candle towards the lone exit. Hagar saw that part of the jamb had split; the sturdy iron bolt housing lay on the floor in a mess of splinters. ‘We had to break it down to get in. There’s no other entrance.’ The candle flickered as he swept it about the cellar. ‘The floor is stone, the walls and ceiling are solid.’ He reached up and thumped the heavy black joist bisecting the ceiling. ‘We had an officer posted at the top of the stairs. The victim didn’t trust us to keep him safe. He insisted on barricading himself in the cellar.’
‘Is there a room above this?’
‘Yes. The kitchen. The officer could see it at all times.’
‘Is it possible your officer did this?’
Kenner looked down at the floor, breathing in deep, ruminating tides.
‘Yes. And I’m aware of the implications, given the current political climate. I’m holding him at the poste de police – partly in case of reprisals.’ Kenner sighed. ‘I don’t believe it was him. Even if he had wanted to commit murder, I don’t see how. The victim refused to open the door to us. He was armed and paranoid.’
Hagar glanced at the fallen skull, the blind shock in its sockets. ‘When was the victim last seen alive?’
‘Yesterday. But we heard him when the shifts changed. An officer knocked on the door. The victim refused to open it but he answered her questions. There’s no other way out. Eight hours later, when the shifts changed again, the officer reported concerns the victim was not responding. We broke in and found the body.’
‘What was left of it,’ said Hagar. Pain was intensifying, a hot ache in her bones and organs. She steadied herself on the wall, concentrating on the texture of rough plaster, the immediacy of the sensation. It was real. It was hers.
‘You seem uninterested in who the victim was.’
Hagar gritted her teeth. ‘On the contrary.’
‘It’s as if you know already.’ Kenner’s tone was low and affectless.
She clawed at the wall. ‘Damn . . . Wait!’ Her heart was bursting. She felt the arteries in her left arm open up.
Suffering left in a cool rush. She stifled a gasp of pleasure. Morgellon had taken his dose for the morning. God bless you, Uncle.
She opened her eyes. The room had tipped onto its side. She was looking up at Kenner from the floor from where she had fallen. His face was a mask of disapproval.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ he said.
‘I suffer from fits.’ She picked up her candle, which was still lit, and straightened it in its holder.
‘Brought on by awkward questions?’
‘Brought on by my bond with our Lord Jejunus.’ She left an appropriately reverent pause. ‘I experience the Grand-Duc’s pain on his behalf. Sometimes it overwhelms me.’ Especially when he delayed taking the medicine he was addicted to.
Sheriff Kenner glowered, but invoking the palace had the desired effect. Whatever he thought of her, the reality of her position, and a reminder of her true age, carried weight.
The heavy red ridge of his brow sank over his eyes. ‘He was a doctor.’ His jaw worked in slow circles. ‘Which means he was a member of the leech clique. They’re one of the weaker cliques, but on a day like today, an attack against even the most junior member may be viewed as a declaration of war. You see my problem.’
A pleasant torpor was spreading through Hagar’s limbs. She felt giddy with it. Ecstatic.
‘Must you solve it?’ She spread her arms, revelling in the movement. She giggled. It was horrible, how Morgellon’s moods bled into hers. Kenner must think her quite mad. ‘Dispose of these bones. Say the doctor left town. By the time the truth gets out the election will be over.’
‘I thought nuns didn’t lie.’
‘My vows forbid my telling a lie. Not from acknowledging the utility of one.’
Kenner contemplated this. ‘Perhaps. Still.’
‘Someone in this city can enter a locked, windowless cellar, subdue an armed man and strip the flesh from his bones.’
‘Just so.’ He inhaled through a closed fist. ‘Can it be a coincidence? The Grand-Duc leaves the protection of his palace in Athanasia for the first time in generations. The day before his arrival, an assassin appears who can . . .’ He swallowed, leaving the implied blasphemy unspoken. The rulers of the perpetuum were, officially, unkillable. ‘I need to make progress.’
She caught an edge to the sheriff’s glance. ‘You think it was me, don’t you?’
‘It’s one of the more palatable scenarios. You have a reputation. At least the Grand-Duc would be safe.’ He turned his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Ado’s Salts?’
A memory surfaced. She grimaced, closed her eyes. With the expertise of centuries, she pushed it back under.
‘What about them?’
‘They eat flesh, don’t they? Mixed with water. Might someone have flooded the room? There’s a mousehole just behind you.’
Hagar turned. In the bottom of the plaster was a hole. She went down on her hands and knees and held the candle to it. She could not fit her hand inside. It appeared to go back just a few inches.
‘I’ve some experience of them,’ she said, ‘and the answer’s no. We’d smell them. Ado’s Salts stink. Also, they’d have stripped the varnish off the stool’s legs.’ She gestured at the wooden stool beside the skull. ‘And where would all the water and dissolved flesh go?’ She glanced around. ‘The floor slopes away from the hole and there’s no drain.’
‘Poison, then?’
‘I’ve never encountered a poison that eats flesh. A touch of necrosis here and there, yes. Withered extremities. But not this.’ She walked to the open door. It was a single piece of solid wood. She slid her palm up and down it, feeling for hidden panels. ‘The simplest explanation is collusion between several officers.’
‘But why strip the flesh from the bone? Why not shoot him through the head and claim he attacked them?’
Kenner was right. It was a disturbing development, so close to the Grand-Duc’s arrival. She had considered many impediments to her plan, but not a second assassin. If they killed Morgellon, they killed her. And she had so much still to do.
‘Return to the poste,’ she said. ‘Keep news of this contained. Let me make enquiries.’
‘Oh no.’ Kenner shook his head. ‘Don’t interfere.’
‘Too late. You asked me here. I have a mandate. If the city is unsafe, the Grand-Duc won’t come ashore tomorrow and the inauguration won’t take place.’ And her chance to bring him down would be gone forever.
‘And I’ll help.’
He rested a palm on the iron rosette of his dagger.
‘Perhaps public order would be best served if I threw you in jail.’
‘Is that why you allowed me down here? To see if I’d confess?’
‘You’ve not yet denied involvement.’
She cast a glance over the scattered bones. ‘It pays to choose one’s words wisely.’
Kenner’s wet, pink eyes narrowed.
‘News of this will be out in a matter of hours,’ she said. ‘Your officers are implicated. If you kick down doors, the Doyens will lie to you, then they’ll order reprisals against whoever they think violated the treaty. They—’ she almost said ‘trust’, ‘—tolerate me. I’m bound by the vows of my order. I already have what they’re competing for. I could be the last honest person in Fat Maw.’
Kenner lifted the candle so it burned an inch from his snout. ‘I’ll warn you one last time. Leave the city. Go and never return.’
‘You know I can’t do that.’
‘Then there’s nothing more to say.’
He snorted. The flame extinguished.
Hagar felt dozens of pairs of eyes fall upon her as she entered the slaughterhouse. Doyenne Lesang approached across the filthy stone floor, swinging a spiked hammer.
‘Hello, Hagar!’ She smeared her hands across her apron, took the cigarette from her mouth and leaned in to kiss Hagar’s cheeks. ‘Did you have a nice festival? So rare to see you here at the yard! I thought you hadn’t the time, what with all your, ah . . . duties. Will you take some tea?’
‘No, thank you.’ Blood sluiced through a channel between them, bubbling into a grate. The huge, glass-roofed slaughter area stank of dung, coppery raw flesh and cigarette smoke. Terrified whinnies and bellows echoed off the bricks, underscored by the thin, whispering thwip of scolders striking rumps with willow switches, scrapes and thumps and the crack of butchers’ spades cleaving skulls, and a constant locusless chorus of merry whistling.