by Hilari Bell
“It is, and I choose not to use it. Mayhap ’twill fade, eventually.” I wished I believed that it would. On top of my unredeemed status, this must make my presence doubly dangerous to those around me.
“As I said, it’s your choice,” Fisk remarked. “But stop looking so appalled. So you can make water wetter? So what? It’s not going to destroy your enemies or enrich your friends. Unfortunately. We could use help in both those departments right now. I don’t suppose…” His hopeful expression was patently false.
“No, I know of no way to use magic to find Master Maxwell’s enemy. Or to make you rich. Sorry.”
He returned my wavering smile. “You see. You make water wetter, but nothing else changes. And water’s wet enough.”
Which he proceeded to prove by dousing the remaining embers with plain pond water. Was Fisk right? For all its strangeness, was making magic so terrible a thing? It had saved folk last night, buying precious time for Jimmy to clear the building. Mayhap Fisk had some logic on his side after all, though I still felt freakish and frightened as Fisk led me back to start working on a disguise. But I no longer felt so very alone, and for that I was grateful.
I’d not have thought that donning a disguise could distract my thoughts, but the way Fisk deals with disguise could distract a man from a toothache.
“Try limping. All right, forget the limp. Maybe an eye patch.”
“One wouldn’t be enough to make a beggar, and I refuse to go about blinded. Mayhap ’tis—”
Fisk moaned. “How about mute? It’s the only way you’ll pass as anything but noble if you can’t lose that accent.”
“You’re the one who wanted me to pass for a beggar. Why can’t I—”
“You haven’t seen the writs. They describe you down to the holes in your socks. The scar’s the biggest problem.” Fisk gazed at my face as if he was thinking of amputating it. “A beggar has an excuse to grow a few days’ stubble. I wish beards weren’t so unfashionable now; that would solve the problem completely.”
“I don’t care about fashion. I can grow a beard.”
“Yes, but the object is to keep from attracting attention.”
“You’ll never pass him as a beggar.” Nettie’s Ma had been vastly amused by the whole process. “He’s too…too…”
“I know,” said Fisk grimly. “But no one looks twice at a beggar. It was worth a try.”
“Too what?” I asked.
“Do you have any ideas?” Fisk asked Nettie’s Ma.
“Traveling bookseller? Some of them have noblish accents, and it’s a good excuse for being on the road. I’ve even got a pack that’ll do.” She rose and went to pull a crate from beneath her table.
“You know, that might work. Max hasn’t sold his books yet, so there’s even stock to hand. But what about the scar?”
“Too what?” I pulled off the battered hat that Fisk had forced on me.
“Here it is!” Nettie’s Ma pulled out a pack and held it up. The leather was crumpled from long confinement but it looked sturdy and in good repair.
She gave it to me to straighten while she and Fisk argued on. Hoping to discover some clue as to why I’d make so poor a beggar, I paid more attention to the argument than the task, until I came across a tanner’s mark on the bottom corner of the pack, a light circle over a dark one. He said the light circle was his good luck, so he put it on top. Master Clogger’s remembered voice drowned out Fisk’s, and my heartbeat pounded in my ears.
“Mistress, where did you come by this?” I thought my voice sounded normal, but they broke off to stare at me.
“Dibby got it off a corpse,” Nettie’s Ma replied. “Washed up about where you did. Most things that go into the river hit that beach—the current slows there. Dibby lives up channel from it, and goes there most days to see what’s come down. It’s not like that lad had any more use for it. Does it bother you?”
“No, ’tis only…” I passed the pack to Fisk, pointing out the mark.
His eyes widened. “When? When was the corpse found?”
“Last summer.” Nettie’s Ma looked from Fisk to me, baffled by our intensity. “Why? Did you know him?”
“No,” said Fisk. “But if he was who I think he was…When in the summer? Please. It may be important.”
Her brows lifted. “Then you’re out of luck. I don’t keep track of the days. I know I got the pack in summer because I used it to gather herbs, but that’s all I can tell you. Dibby might know more. He buried the man.”
So we set out to find Dibby.
“It could have been anyone,” I told Fisk. “Clogger sold his work in this town for years.”
“Yes, but the timing’s too close—it has to be Clogger. We should have thought of this before. We knew our enemy killed the other witness.”
Fisk’s expression was grim, but excitement lit his eyes. I must confess I felt the same, except when I thought of the wheelwright’s grief. Besides, it might not be Clogger. Or there might be no way to identify the corpse. Or there might be nothing to tell us who killed him, after all this time. I said as much to Fisk, who snorted.
“The way our luck runs, this Dibby will be off to visit relatives for the winter.”
Nettie’s Ma laughed.
And Fisk proved wrong, for Master Dibby was there when we arrived at his ramshackle hut. ’Twas built half of wattle and daub, like Nettie’s Ma’s cottage, and half of scavenged timber. Master Dibby’s scrounging was apparent in his furnishings as well, all bits and pieces that might have been fine when they were whole. Master Dibby himself was small and spry, despite the hump that lifted one shoulder, and his dark eyes were bright with intelligence. But when we asked him for the date he found the corpse, he gave us a glance of amused astonishment.
“I’ll just have to check my calendar. You want the date? No one here cares about things like that. It was late summer, if that helps, and the tides were high.”
Fisk sighed. “A man vanished from town around the time you found that corpse. A tanner, whose work this is.” He showed Dibby the mark.
“Then you’ve likely got the wrong man. We send a listener into town when a body turns up, and no one was looking for this ’un.”
“They wouldn’t have,” I said, realizing how clever our enemy had been. “If it’s the man we think, he told his kin he was leaving for another town. Do you have anything else of his, Master Dibby?”
“His belt, which has the same mark.” He sucked in his stomach and turned the leather to display it. “I traded off most of his clothes. They didn’t fit me.” Indeed, he’d be hard put to find clothes that would, but he went on without self-consciousness, “Tanner, huh? I thought he was a sailor, though the clothes were wrong.”
“How’d he die, Dib?” asked Nettie’s Ma. “You never said.”
I should have thought to ask that myself.
“Knifed,” Dibby replied. “And it looked like he put up a fight, poor fool. That’s one of the things that made me think he was a sailor. They go that way, sometimes, and not many captains’ll hold a ship to look for ’em.”
My pity for the dead man grew, whoever he was, but Fisk went on doggedly, “If he had two things with Clogger’s mark, it’s even more likely he was Clogger. Why did you think him a sailor, Master Dibby? They don’t carry this kind of pack.”
“No, nor wear boots like this ’un had. I told you the clothes were wrong. It was the spread of his money that made me think sailor.”
“The spread of his money? You mean he wasn’t robbed?”
“Oh, he was robbed. Least his purse was gone. But he’d sewed a couple dozen gold roundels into the hem of his jacket, and whoever killed him missed them.”
“The jacket hem is the third place a thief would look,” said Fisk. “Right after the boots.”
Dibby shrugged. “I didn’t find ’em till his jacket was dry and I started wondering why it was so heavy. He had coin from all over the realm, and sailors often have purses like that. Though not usually so full. I
’d have said merchant, but they don’t end up knifed in the river. Here, I’ll show you.”
Fisk’s eyes widened. “You still have the money? After five months?”
Dibby smiled. “Where would I spend it? You say he had kin? I’d appreciate it if you’d see it back to ’em.”
He went to the back of the room and dug into a battered chest. “It’s most all here.” He poured a small sack of coins onto the table.
The rest of us bent over the glittering heap. “I see what you mean,” murmured Nettie’s Ma. “Here’s one from Horncastle. That’s to the south, isn’t it?”
The coin’s design was worn, but the name and crest of the city where it was minted were clear enough on the “town” side, as was the face of the liege whose fiefdom held that city on the “heads” side.
“Horncastle’s south,” said Fisk. “But Bawden is north.”
“He went far afield, whoever he was.” Dibby stood back from our gathering since he’d already examined them. “There’s several coins from Tallowsport. Nothing from Crown City, though. Not much from any inland city, which was another reason I thought him a sailor.”
“Where’s Kemit?” Nettie’s Ma asked curiously.
“Very far south indeed,” said Fisk slowly. “At the tip of the great desert. But even Kemit isn’t as far away as this.”
The coin glittered on his palm, but the anger in his eyes was brighter.
“D’vorin? ’Tis a long way indeed, but I don’t see…” Then I did see, and my mouth went dry. “That’s preposterous! He’s a rich man. Powerful. He’s a friend, for pity’s sake! There’s no motive!”
“D’vorin? I’ve never heard of it.” Nettie’s Ma looked from one of us to the other.
“D’vorin, Mistress, is a very small port, to the very far north, on the other side of the realm. Most ships never get that far. Most never pass Tallowsport. But we know of one merchant who trades there, oh yes, we do. I think we’ve found our connection.”
“It couldn’t be Worthington,” I said. “He has no motive.”
Nettie’s Ma was taking us by raft to a place from which Fisk could find his way back to town, for he was afire to investigate his absurd theory.
“How could a local tanner get D’vorin coins, except from a man who trades there?”
“He could have won them from a sailor who’s been there.”
The truth of it silenced Fisk for five full seconds.
“All right. But if it’s Worthington, that solves the timing problem. He learned we were going to try to clear Max the night we arrived. The first fire was set the very next night. And Worthington has enough money to pay someone to take that kind of risk.”
“Yes, but he didn’t know I planned to visit Mistress Skinner day before yesterday, so he can’t be the one who set the mob on me.”
Fisk scowled. “No one outside the household knew about that. So unless it really is Jud—”
His jaw dropped. His eyes widened. And curse him, he said nothing about the revelation that had so obviously occurred.
“Fisk? Speak to me. Fisk!” The blow I launched at his shoulder was harder than it need have been, but he made no complaint. And instead of communicating, he closed his eyes and began pounding his palm against his forehead.
“We’re stupid. We’re so stupid. Even being amateurs doesn’t excuse this. We’re stupid.”
“I should probably warn you that if you don’t tell me what you’re talking about, I’m going to throw you overboard.”
“Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
“You can’t swim.”
“There’s no excuse for idiocy like—No, all right, take it easy, you’re rocking the raft. Michael, think! We knew a servant had to have planted those forged ledgers, right?”
“It seemed like a logical possibility, but I talked to all of them and—”
“Who knew you were going to talk to Lenna Skinner? List them.”
“You,” I said pointedly. Fisk grinned. “Me. The rest of the household: Maxwell, Anna, Mistress Judith, Mistress Lissy, the children, the Trim—No.”
“Trimmer. Right there, listening to all our plans as we made them. No wonder Worthington knew everything we did!”
“But he stayed! He was loyal!”
“Stayed, without pay, for four months. That should have made me suspicious from the start. No servant can afford that kind of loyalty—especially not a man whose wife’s dresses are in better repair than my sisters’.” He fell silent, awaiting my next argument, but now ’twas my turn to remember.
“The note.”
“What?”
“The note that led us to the Old Ropers’ Home. He said a boy delivered it, and when I said I hadn’t heard the knocker, he said the boy had come to the back. But Trimmer came into the kitchen from the dining room. From the front hall. There was no boy. He had the note in his possession all the time. You’re right, Fisk—we’re fools.”
There was a moment of silence while we contemplated this unfortunate fact. I broke it. “If Trimmer was bribed, by whoever it might be, what do you mean to do about it?”
“Lie,” said Fisk. “I’m tempted to strangle the truth out of the him, but that might warn Worthington—oh, all right, whoever it is—that we’re on to him. They already know you’re alive; the girls were worried, so I told them this afternoon, and that means that Worthington knows it too. Hmm. I’ll tell everyone I’m working on a plan to smuggle you out. Maybe it’ll give me a chance to check a few things out without every building I enter going up in flames.”
“And if ’tis not Master Worthington? Then what?”
“Then I’ll strangle the truth out of Trimmer. Why are you so convinced it isn’t Worthington?”
“Because—” The raft grated on the bottom near the bank. I started and looked at Nettie’s Ma, who gestured for me to continue. “Because I can’t imagine what his motive might be. And I think his liking for Maxwell is genuine. Worthington kept him from being prosecuted. Lent him money and support.”
Fisk rose to his feet. “I’d feel guilty enough to do those things if I’d set up a friend. Mistress, you already have my deepest gratitude, but I’m afraid I’ll have to impose on you further. How can I let you know to pick me up?”
“You can’t,” said Nettie’s Ma. “I’ll meet you here tomorrow night at dusk, and you can tell us what you’ve learned.”
Fisk frowned. “I probably won’t be finished by tomorrow. Maybe the next night would—”
“Tomorrow!” Nettie’s Ma and I spoke together, though my voice was sharper. I suddenly realized that Fisk had found a way to keep me from fleeing without him—there was no way I could leave now! “Tomorrow, Fisk,” I repeated firmly. “Or I’ll think something has happened and come in search of you.”
“Don’t do that! You’re not safe in this town. I’ll come tomorrow night.” He stepped off the raft and splashed through the shallows to the bank.
“Fisk, be careful. Whoever this man is, he’s dangerous. If he suspects—”
“Why should he? I told you, I’m going to lie.”
“Then lie well,” I commanded, and wondered at the strange smile that lit his face.
“I always do,” he said. “But in a way, I hope it isn’t Worthington.”
“’Twould be hard for Max,” I agreed, “to know his friend betrayed him.”
“Friendship be hanged.” Fisk grinned. “I still want it to be Judith.” He strode off before I could caution him further, which was mayhap as well, for my nagging sprang more from my own worry than from any likelihood that Fisk would fail to take care.
I talked Nettie’s Ma into letting me take the pole for a time—sore wrist or no, I could no longer endure sitting idle. I pushed off into the shallows, and Nettie’s Ma sat crosslegged where her weight balanced mine and neither laughed nor complained as I steered us in circles.
The sun was setting, its mellow light flashing on the ripples produced by my clumsiness. The chill of the winter day was giving way to re
al cold, and the birds had retired. The loudest sound was the splash of my pole, and the peace of the place settled into my heart and eased it. When Nettie’s Ma spoke, her voice was so soft, it didn’t even make a ripple in the stillness.
“You like the marish, don’t you? Most find it muddy and drab, but it touches you.”
“Yes. ’Tis a subtle beauty, but I think it as lovely as any place I’ve seen.”
She nodded, and the silence returned as I steered us around a bend, overcorrected, and spun us lazily until I got the raft straightened and moving forward again.
“Have you thought what you’ll do when you and your friend are finished here? When this Worthington, or whoever it is, is discovered?”
“Move on,” I said, trying to fight the chill that touched my heart. Once the crime was solved, it should be possible to persuade Fisk to stay. He loved his family, and having cleared Max, he’d have earned his place. If he failed, and they had to leave, they’d need him even more. Even more than I would. The raft started to spin again and I swore.
“You could stay here.”
“In the marish?” I stared at Nettie’s Ma in amazement.
“Aye. It’s not as harsh a life as you might think. And those marks on your wrists would matter no more to the human folk here than they do to the birds and the otters.”
“I always wanted to travel,” I said slowly. “To see the sun rise over a different hill each morning. But you’re right. Out there, ’twill be hard to be…I don’t know how to say it. Unchanged?”
She nodded. “It’s almost impossible not to become what folks think you are. In all my life, this is the only place I’ve been able to be who I am. You already know the shape they’ll be pushing you into. Think on it, that’s all.”
I did. And I shivered.
CHAPTER 12
Fisk
It was dinnertime when I reached Max’s house, even though I went straight there. I didn’t bother to elude the deputy, disguised as a ratcatcher, who picked me up shortly after I emerged from the marish. Potter was no fool—he knew where Michael would wash up, and when I didn’t resume my search first thing tomorrow, he’d know he was alive. Potter was no problem, for Nettie’s Ma was right about the marish. It was Worthington who worried me.