Fog Season

by Patrice Sarath

  He nodded. “I see I have no choice but to agree. Therefore, you have my word.”

  “We believe that Guildmaster Trune is back in town.”

  “Interesting,” Mr Fresnel said. “And what is your evidence?” He took a small notebook and pencil out of his vest pocket, and waited.

  “He sent his coachman to try to abduct my sister.” She watched his reaction. She expected astonishment, but he was as calm as if she had been discussing an invitation to tea. He drew the rest of the story out of her, his questions to the point and unemotional. She knew, though, that he was taking in more than he wrote down in his little notebook than her simple answers.

  “That must have been shocking. Was she injured? How was she rescued?”

  “She was not injured, and she–” Yvienne stopped. Fool! She had almost told him that her sister rescued herself, thank you very much. “The coachman fired off his pistol, frightening the horse, which bolted, dragging the cab over the man.”

  He nodded. “And why do you think it was Trune, and not some other criminal? House Mederos has enemies, does it not?”

  “We know it was Trune because my sister recognized the cabbie as Trune’s man. As for our enemies, the threads all lead back to Trune.”

  “So why her? In fact, why again, Miss Mederos? Trune abducted your sister once before, is that right? That was the night the Fraud was revealed. You know,” he said, musing, “I’ve never understood why he did that.”

  “Humiliation,” she said, her voice low to keep it under control. “Hatefulness. Beastliness. We now know Guildmaster Trune sought to destroy my family to keep the Great Fraud from being uncovered.”

  He nodded, judiciously. “But not you?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “He humiliated your sister, but not you, the eldest daughter. Why is that, do you think?”

  Anger rose in her, and she knew he could see it and understood where it came from.

  “You should ask him that, Mr Fresnel. I came here only to tell you that the man you were engaged to find is back in town, which should certainly help you uncover his whereabouts. I did not come here to be interrogated. Good day, sir.”

  She turned without waiting for him to respond, her heart hammering. She tried for poise as she crossed the lobby toward the entrance to the busy street, head high, all the while thinking, I have just made a dreadful mistake. She had the terrible feeling that she had told Mr Fresnel far more than she meant to.

  Abel stood in the little salon a few moments longer. The image of her sister in a cab on her way to the bank had practically overwhelmed him, so strong had been Miss Mederos’s anxiety. His line of questioning had been designed to bring out strong emotions and it had worked. It had been a rare case of not requiring touch to get the answers. All he needed was at his fingertips. He caressed the small note she had sent him, carefully folded and hidden in his palm. It had enabled him to forge a link. Whatever was top of her mind would be transmitted as powerfully as if she had shouted it at him – which, in a way, she had.

  Tesara Mederos was at the bank and she was alone.

  The bank of Port Saint Frey with its six massive columns rose above the street, blocking out the gray sky. A bulky doorman in his magnificent coat with gold epaulettes guarded the door, and customers came in and out, hurrying in the miserable weather. Abel kept watch from across the street, his hands in his pockets and hunched against the rain, watching and waiting. He knew he was barely visible in the dour weather. Strictly speaking, to go unseen was not one of his talents, but he had a well-developed knack that was aided by his unprepossessing appearance. No one noticed him, even those pedestrians who brushed past him on the sidewalk.

  Finally, the door opened once more, and Tesara Mederos came out, wrapping her muffler around her throat. Abel timed her steps. He would wait until she reached the broad avenue. He would intercept her just as she turned the corner. The anesthetic-soaked handkerchief was in his pocket. It would be the matter of a moment to cover her mouth with it, and with her reeling and half-senseless, support her to his rented carriage, a miserable nag between the shafts. No one would notice them.

  And then she stopped, and his well-timed plan went straight to hell.

  Elenor Charvantes and her bastard of a husband came out of the bank at the same time as his quarry. Abel cursed as she looked directly at him, and he knew she saw him. He went into motion immediately, as if he were just arriving at the bank. Otherwise she would wonder what he was doing there, and his cover would be all for naught.

  He drew abreast of Tesara. “Excuse me, miss,” he said, angling to touch her. He couldn’t take her now, but if he could but touch–

  “Oh, I beg your pardon!” she said, giving him a glance devoid of recognition, and she stepped out of his way. She looked back at Elenor, though, and her expression was distressed.

  Elenor stopped dead when she saw Abel approaching, color flooding her cheeks. Jax’s eyes narrowed in fury. Abel made a point to bow.

  “Lieutenant Charvantes. Mrs Charvantes.”

  Elenor’s color was still high but she had recovered. “How do you do, Mr Fresnel?” She made a point to curtsey.

  Jax Charvantes grabbed his wife’s arm, yanking her up from her curtsey, then pulled her along. Elenor gasped as she stumbled.

  Tesara’s raw anger was tangible to Abel, perhaps because he felt the same. He watched as the Mederos girl stepped forward, her fingers curling at her sides. Was he imagining it, or were her gloves aglow?

  “How dare–” she began, her voice a low growl.

  Elenor turned back, her face desperate, begging her wordlessly not to interfere. She glanced over at Abel too, pleading with him. Stop her.

  Other customers on the broad steps were turning to look now. Elenor’s face was white except for high color on her cheekbones. She turned and followed her husband to their carriage. The coachman handed her in, Jax followed, and the sound of a slap could be heard. The coachman whipped the horses to a trot, and they were off.

  The Mederos girl clenched and unclenched her fists, then thrust them into her pockets, as if aware that her control was dangerously weak. She breathed hard, swallowing.

  Nausea. He knew. His talents were different, but it had taken him the same way at first. She didn’t know how to control her powers, and if she wasn’t careful she would be destroyed by her untamed energy. Doc would fix that.

  “How I hate that man,” she said at last.

  “Yea, verily,” Abel said, and she started; she had forgotten he was there. They looked at each other. “This damnable weather,” he added with an amiable smile that projected deference and sympathy. “Miss Mederos, I wondered if you cared to accompany me to the tea shop around the corner?”

  She looked at him for a long moment. The energy still coursed through her. He waited, hands in his overcoat pockets, his unprepossessing face, slightly stout physique, and his receding hairline radiating harmlessness. He readied himself – as soon as he touched her he would have to overcome her. There would be no time for a second chance.

  Her expression unreadable, she said at last, “No, thank you, Mr Fresnel. You have a pleasant day.” She turned without another word.

  Desperate times, Abel. He pitched his voice to carry but his tone remained neutral, disinterested.

  “I know what’s happening and I can help.” The fog had almost swallowed her up but she stopped, turned, and faced him. All around them were the shrouded figures of hurrying pedestrians, but they were alone in the gloom, intently focused on one another. Abel continued.

  “Every time you make it happen, your heart races, your stomach twists, and it feels like the shock goes inside you. Sometimes it feels as if there’s more power than you know what to do with, and it frightens you.”

  “How–” She stopped. Swallowed. He could barely see her expression but he knew she was transfixed.

  “You are in great danger, Miss Mederos. If you are not careful, the p
ower will consume you. If you come with me, I can take you to someone who can teach you how to use it properly.”

  Doc would destroy her in the process, but that didn’t matter. Better to be remade by Doc than to combust internally. More than her hands were glowing now. She radiated energy. She was trembling with the exertion to keep from lashing out at him. He feared what would happen if she lost control.

  He reached into his pocket, handed her a card, careful not to touch her lest he set her off. She took the tiny scrap of cardboard, her attention still focused on him. He nodded at the card. “Doc Farrissey is the man you want. He’ll teach you – everything. I can take you to him.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she said at last. “I– I have to go.”

  She turned and almost ran. She had virtually disappeared into the fog when he called out again, this time with more urgency.

  “You know where to find me – I’m at the Bailet Hotel. And Miss Mederos, one more word of advice. Don’t use it on yourself.”

  She was gone. Abel stood alone in the fog and dripping rain, sweat rolling down his back, unpleasant in the damp chill. Her control had been extraordinary; he was lucky she had been able to constrain her energy. Such raw power; no wonder it was eating at her from inside. He let out another long breath.

  “Abel,” Doc was wont to say when was in a rare avuncular mood, “sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.”

  Yes, he had been very lucky right then.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Has He Returned?

  Has Guild Liaison Trune, a man most wanted for engineering the Great Fraud of Port Saint Frey, returned from whence he fled? The word in the coffee shops among the venerable Names is that Trune is back and preparing to commit more mischief. Chief Constable Renner, however, says not. “If Trune were back we would have him in custody.” He further stated that he thought repeating unsubstantiated rumors were a ploy by this esteemed publication to sell papers. For shame, Chief Constable!

  The Gazette

  Interesting, Abel thought, reading the rebuttal in the most recent Gazette. Was the chief constable serious in his denial or was it a clumsy effort to lure the wayward Guildmaster out of hiding? Who else knew besides the Misses Mederos that the cabbie was Trune’s man?

  The Port Saint Frey Library kept all volumes of the Gazette bound in large heavy covers. The librarian gave Abel a stern once over before showing him to the reading room. The gloom of Fog Season was dispelled with cheerful reading lamps. Abel found a place at the end of a long desk and took off his overcoat, planning to settle in for the day. There were only a few patrons at the library. One, an old, whiskered fellow dressed in rags, dozed at the other end of the table, snoring intermittently. He snorted awake, giving Abel a hard, considering look. It was not at all the look of a homeless drunkard. Abel gave him the same look back, and the old gentleman responded with a disdainful hmph, and shook himself back to sleep.

  The librarian came back, lugging a heavy book with a wooden spindle for a spine. She set the book down.

  “Leave it here when you’re done. We’ve got people who can file it properly.”

  “I will. Thank you.”

  She gave him another stern look over her spectacles, and for good measure left him with the same derisive noseful as the old man.

  Abel began leafing through the last year of the newspaper, its leaves of broadsheet yellowed but still legible.

  The usual stuff – notices, shipping news, weather – impacted the city’s livelihood far more than reports of distant war. Abel skipped over the weather. He noted a few interesting tidbits in passing. A dock war was brewing, according to the notes some intrepid reporter took on some skirmishes. It didn’t sound as if the constabulary was aware of what was going on under their noses. There were some interesting notices under Household Help: someone was running a ring of light-fingered housemaids, if the slang were the same in Port Saint Frey as it was in Great Lake.

  There. Under Homes to Let, he ran his finger down the list of available houses and homes that were no longer on the market.

  Let to Mr Elfinnier, with wife and three children, a cook, and a housemaid, on Breque…

  Let to Mrs Finanetti, widow and weaver, on Talifieri Ave…

  Let to Mr Caravellito, a single man, with no household, on…

  There were seven houses let in the past month to single gentlemen. Abel copied them down in his little book, his quick notation indecipherable to any not in the Harrier organization. He would make quick work of running down these leads and identify the house TreMondi had shown him in his mind. It was possible that Trune had come back to town earlier than that, but Abel didn’t think so. Trune would need but a few weeks to suss out the habits of the Mederos sisters and make the snatch. Furthermore, he would know that all the leases were accounted for in the Gazette each week, so a nom de guerre was in order. He would have Trune in a few days at most, and once he handed him over to the Guild, he would deliver the Mederos girl to Doc. The aborted attempt at the bank was a mere setback. He was more prepared now.

  Abel began leafing through the rest of the papers, skimming for more information on the Fraud and its players.

  The cheeky campaign of the Gentleman Bandit began just after Saint Frey’s Day in the spring and he struck early and often in the weeks that followed. One of the first to be hit was a lively party of young merchants. In a town such as Port Saint Frey, there would always be feckless young idiots with more money than sense and no sense of self-preservation. Easy pickings for a daring thief.

  There were many such reports of the audacity of the Gentleman Bandit. He had been described by witnesses as a neat, slender fellow, equally at home in the drawing rooms of his victims as they were. He wielded two pistols, wore a mask, had either handsome blue eyes or piercing black ones, depending on the particular bent of romanticism of each witness, and never spoke. “But his gestures were as eloquent as any speech,” claimed one young lady.

  At the Iderci salon, he held his pistol to the head of one merchant – ah, that was Lupiere, Abel noted – and forced a young lady to gather up the guests’ valuables. Abel’s attention sharpened at the description of the young lady in question – daughter of a disgraced house. Abel read the reporter’s breathless description of the night – at the villain’s direction, the girl had gathered up the valuables and then was used as a human shield before exiting through the garden doors.

  The young lady in question rose to the occasion, throwing off the doubts about her honor and honesty. With great fortitude she pointed the direction the evil-doer had taken in his flight. “There! There! He flees down the alley!”

  And yet he slipped the net once again, Abel thought. Imagine that. So which Mederos sister would be at a salon at the Iderci mansion that night, to be in position to grab the cash and pass it off to the Gentleman Bandit? TreMondi said Yvienne Mederos was using her position as governess to cover for other activities. Acting as accomplice of an armed robber was certainly more like her than walking the wharves, as TreMondi suspected. But even that was unlikely. Whatever Yvienne Mederos had been up to at night when she was supposed to be teaching astronomy to her charges, it was not playing second fiddle to a two-bit pretty-boy thief.

  That was not her style, Abel thought. Yvienne Mederos ran things – she wasn’t anyone’s sidekick. And it was her sister who was the society gambler, who upset the good ladies of Port Saint Frey because she won their pin money from them. And it made sense, he thought – if Tesara Mederos collaborated with the Gentleman Bandit, it made sense that he was there on the fateful night. No doubt they planned a sweet take, and it was only when Trune turned the tables that things went bad.

  Abel felt as if he were on the verge of putting all the pieces together. He looked into space, not really seeing the shelves upon shelves of books in the reading room and through the doorway into the rest of the stacks. He felt eyes upon him and turned to the old man who gave him another beady-eyed look, li
ke an impudent crow. Then he lolled back into sleep, his snores sailing into the rafters.

  Something else impinged upon his concentration; voices, albeit hushed, at the front desk – one familiar.

  Shock coursed through him, shock and anticipation. Even as he told himself to move, to hide so she couldn’t find him, he stayed stock still, hands on the newsprint, as the voices grew louder.

  “I know I saw the advertisement for watered silks in last week’s Gazette, but Cook used it to wrap fish,” Elenor Charvantes was saying brightly as she followed the librarian into the reading room. She had on an overcoat of deep brown that accentuated her gold locks and pale pink cheeks. Her eyes were the color of a twilight sky. She looked straight at Abel. He looked down indifferently, but he could feel his face heat. With barely a pause, she finished, “And I just need to find out which shop had them. I can’t rest, you see, until I know.”

  “He has the Gazettes,” the librarian said. Her peremptory tone indicated that she expected Abel to abandon whatever frivolous research he was doing for the benefit of Mrs Charvantes.

  “I simply can’t rest,” she repeated, her color high but her eyes fixed upon his. Abel nodded.

  “Of course,” Abel said. “If you would allow me.” He turned the volume around so it faced the seat opposite. Elenor nodded with great dignity and turned to the librarian.

  “Thank you,” she said, and sat. The librarian turned on her heel and left them to it. The old fellow kept snoring.

  Abel leaned forward, his fingers steepled so he wouldn’t touch her. Elenor closed the portfolio and opened it from the beginning, leafing slowly and carefully, skimming each and every ad. He kept his voice low, just above a whisper, so that his words were as light as air and almost as soundless. She followed suit.

  “You haven’t rested?” he said.

  “No. They are watered silks, you see.”