Dust and Light (7 page)

I shook my head to clear it. “I should finish it now,” I snapped. “Details come sharper on the first connection. What’s wrong?”

“Naught, I trust,” spat Bastien, mouth twisted into a sneer. “But you’re going to work inside the prometheum from now on. You attract far too much interest.” He snatched the stick of plummet away. “We’ll speak of it later. For now you stay with me.”

The portrait wasn’t right. But without examining it, I’d no idea why. The image burning inside me would not manifest without my hand in contact with the page. In the main, I was pleased not to be constantly plagued with all the faces I’d drawn, but an unfinished work irritated like grit in a raw wound.

Constance bawled for a yard boy to bring a sheet. As they covered the child and carried her away, Bastien’s expression, only half-masked by his unruly hair, was entirely grim.

“Now,” he said, once we were alone, “I’ve a whore to question, and the other witnesses are dribbling in. Best you see how we do things. But don’t think you’ll escape this contract, no matter how much you dislike it.”

Dull and shivering, I followed him across the yard. Never had it taken so
long for my senses to clear. But then, I’d been very deep in the work and wasn’t used to being interrupted. What had set Bastien off about the contract?

And how long had I worked? The light was failing. Snow drifted from lowering clouds, vanishing into the fire bowls with a quiet hiss. A few of the biers were draped with yellowed sheets, their occupants abandoned, but most were empty. Hours, then. Two, at least.

Something was wrong. I pressed a fist to my forehead. Enchantment smoldered like a snuffed torch behind my eyes.

“If you’re dissatisfied”—I matched my stride to the coroner’s—“I need to see the portrait to perfect the details.” Interrupted while drawing a living subject, I could always insist on a new sitting. But the dead must be burned or buried in a reasonable time, identified or not, and even if held back, I’d no idea how long a dead face would resemble a human person’s, much less its living antecedent’s.

“Later,” snapped Bastien. “And you’d best have answers. That contract gives me remedies if you trick or deceive.”

“I’ve never—” But he was clearly in no mood to listen. What was he talking about?

My steps dragged as I crossed the smoky yard behind Bastien. Gods, how I wished to be home, bathing away the stink of this place!

Most of the vendors had gone. The coffin maker’s girl huddled on a stool outside his stall. The purveyor of oils and unguents, pantaloons sagging in the damp, engaged in excited conversation with two of the yard workers. Their attention was fixed on the main gates.

I kept my head down into the sharp north wind, uninterested in any newcomers.

“Coroner!” Garibald’s sharp hail halted Bastien. Like an obedient donkey I paused, as well.

The sexton cast a blistering glance my way and shook a dirty finger toward the gates. “Seems your prize has a visitor already—another spelltwister what refuses to step out the gatehouse.”

“Damn and blast!” Bastien whirled about, spitting daggers. “Who is it?”

I shrugged, mystified.

“This inquest is a pot boiling up,” snapped the coroner. “I must be there to stir it, and I want my expensive pureblood at my side. So be this the First Curator or your revered granny, get rid of him.”

G
aribald grumbled all the way to the gate. “Someone had best tell the high and mighty that us around here have work to attend. I’m no runner to carry messages.”

Speculating wasn’t going to soothe the sexton. Perhaps Leander had decided to see me safely home. I couldn’t imagine what other pureblood might have followed me to this vile place.

I entered the gatehouse alone. The growing dark revealed only a bulky man in a thick, ankle-length pelisse. But when he turned, recognition shocked me out of mind. “Master Pluvius!”

“Discipline, lad! We do not speak names in a den of ordinaries.”

“My sincerest apologies, master. I just—I never expected to see you here.”

A Registry curator at Necropolis Caton? No pureblood in the world would expect that. Yet hope struck embarrassment and astonishment aside.
This was all a mistake. He’s taking me back.

“I needed to speak with you privately, Lucian. To express my outrage at . . . this.” His gesture at the view beyond the gate completed his thought. “Your talents will be sorely missed in the Archives.”

If such words spoken through clenched teeth were not enough to blight my greening hope, the morose head shaking and sympathetic clucks that followed certainly sufficed.

“I’m glad to hear it was not poor work,
domé
.” Manners were hard to come by.

“Certainly not. Had Albin allowed, I would gladly have taken on the duties as your negotiator.”

“I appreciate that, master.” Though it seemed unhelpful that he would say it here, rather than in front of Pons and Albin. “It would be enlightening—Master, why was I dismissed?”

“Curators’ deliberations cannot be shared. To come here and imply that our decision was not unanimous is violation enough. But when your grandsire contracted you to the Registry, I took it as a personal contract as well—to see to your development as an artist and as a man.”

Pluvius had always been complimentary about my work and supportive as I dealt with our family difficulties, but he had never directed any particular attentions my way beyond suggesting I keep my clothes clean. And though he was forever looking over my shoulder, he’d had little mentoring to provide. He was a historian, not an artist.

“If I just understood—?”

“I will do my best to see this situation remedied. But I have to warn you—”

His hesitation left me teetering on a ledge for a very long while. What could be worse than this shameful fall?

“Warn me,
domé
?” I said at last.

He blew a long displeasure.

“Maintain exemplary discipline and detachment, Lucian, and strict control of your . . . talents. Rumor could cost you everything.” His thick-gloved hands squeezed my shoulders. Then he strode toward the gate.

Before I could possibly respond without screaming, he paused and glanced over his shoulder. “Oh yes, did you leave anything behind in the Tower? Access will be difficult with this new contract and all. I’ll be happy to have your things sent round.”

Confused at the abrupt shift, it took me a moment to think what he meant. Pens, I supposed, brushes, my favored inks that I’d bought for myself.

“No. Nothing.” I’d taken everything home.

“All right, then. Be sure we’ll find our way through.” With a nod, he was gone.

Knowing Bastien’s boot was tapping, I’d no leisure to consider this frustrating encounter. It was good to hear I had a sympathetic advocate in the Tower. But as I hurried away, Pluvius’s kind reassurances and abortive warnings lodged in my gut like bad meat.

C
onstance, adorned in her white
robes again, stood beside a bier near the prometheum steps like a divine guardian. A straw-haired girl in a dirty red cloak fidgeted alongside her.

Bastien jerked his head when I joined him, and he pointed to a nearby column, one of a row of them, each topped by a flaming bowl. “Keep close enough to hear, but avoid making a distraction of yourself, if you can tolerate such a state.”

I moved into the ring of shadow beneath the fire bowl. Why did I need to be here? These people’s business was none of mine. Pluvius’s visit was a reminder. Purebloods purposely lived apart from the world. Our lives were not our own.

“First we see if our lady of the night recognizes our corpus.” Bastien stepped into the light and twitched a finger at Constance.

A shrouded body lay on the bier. When Constance uncovered the face, the straw-haired girl spat in it. Constance grabbed the girl’s hand before she could snatch the copper coins from the dead man’s eyes.

The straw-haired girl wrenched her arm away. “A foul day when I told that one where I bedded,” she said, sneering at de Seti. “He’d come willy-nilly and run off my other customers. He were a brute, no matter his fine clothes. Favored rough play, though it made him wheeze and sweat like a pig. Praise the Mother he’s dead.”

“And so you helped yourself to his purse,” said Bastien, perched on the corner of the bier, arms folded as if he weren’t sharing the seat with a dead man. “Can’t blame you for that.”

“The scabby prick plunger were alive when he left me three nights ago,” the girl snapped. “So you can just stuff that idea. Did I take his purse, I’d not be wallowing in that shitehole where they found me, now, would I? I’d be moved north to the river country, where I’ve kin.”

The girl’s coarse manner jolted me. But somehow worse, she was no older than Juli . . . and a harlot. The very idea of a woman who sold her body to strangers was grotesque and appalling, but I’d never imagined one might be so young. Or so damaged; one of her eyes was puffed and livid, her wrists raw, and her lips scabbed.
Rough play
 . . .

“Step aside with Garen there,” said Bastien. “Soon as all my witnesses have gathered, we’ll go inside, and you’ll tell us all about the beast.”

Garen, the lanky, dark-eyed senior runner, ushered the girl out of the
way, as Bastien turned to a burly, bearded man newly arrived in the circle of firelight. “I’m Bastien, the coroner. And who might you be?”

“Ferrand, stonemason,” growled the hulking fellow. His arms were the size of the stone pillar and the chest beneath his tool satchel was as wide as the prometheum steps. “Had to leave the mill early to get here, so there’d best be some use in it.”

“You found the dead man in Doane’s Alley yesternight.”

“Aye.”

“And is this the man?”

Constance uncovered de Seti’s face again, this time far enough to show the black stitches that supposedly held his soul inside his pale flesh.

My throat clogged. The worries of the everyday world had kept me from dwelling overmuch on the next, but no matter the truth of gods or heaven, I believed human folk had souls to hold or lose. Even brutes.

“Aye. The very one.”

“How did you happen to be there?”

“’Tis my usual way ’tween mill and wife.”

Bastien yawned and twiddled the corner of the sheeting, as if he were conversing with a taverner about naught more important than a day’s brew of ale. “I understand he was tucked in a coal scrape off the alley. Whatever drew you to peek in there of a cold night?”

“A pickthief were trying to cut my tool bag off me. Happens near every night. Just as I laid into him, a second fellow bolted out the scrape. Figured that one were the thief’s partner, likely his boy, as he was a squinchy thing. When I walloped the snatch and sent him running after the boy, I poked my head in the coal scrape to see if there were a third. Found this fellow.”

Thieves, harlots, coal scrapes . . . Surely a “squinchy thing” hadn’t murdered such a big man as de Seti.

Bastien’s unblinking gaze remained fixed on the mason. “Would you recognize the pickthief or the runner?”

“I would. Wife says I’ve eyes like a rat in the dark.”

“And did your wife enjoy the contents of this fellow’s purse?”

The accusation startled me entire. Had Bastien lost his mind? The mason was clearly an upright man.

Constance hissed as Ferrand yanked a small sledge from his belt and slammed it onto the bier, jarring both corpus and coroner. “I make these
tables, you know. Could break this’n if I chose. Man accuses me of stealing from the dead best be ready to lie atop one of ’em.”

To his credit, Bastien did not flinch. “Good enough,” he said without the least stammer. “Now stand aside for a moment, Goodman Ferrand. I do believe the constable brings the grieving family and the rest of our witnesses.”

Indeed an ear-cracking wail echoed from every wall and pillar. I twisted around to see. What now? More
walloping
?

“Valdo! Oh, Valdo!”

A group of men variously dressed shuffled into the firelight, followed by a blowsy woman in black draperies. An old-style pyramid wimple covered her hair and neck. “Where is he? Sky Lord’s grace, not here!”

Constance performed her role yet again, flipping the sheet down and back. The woman shrieked and collapsed across the draped body. One might easier believe the violence of her grief if half a day had not passed since she identified him from the portrait.

“Mistress de Seti and all the rest of you, I am Bastien de Caton, Coroner of the Twelve Districts of Palinur, bound by the king’s law to investigate suspicious death.”

The widow popped her head up and the rest of her body followed. “I understood a trull murdered him and stole his purse. Is that her?” She extended an accusing finger to the straw-haired girl on the steps. “Harlot! Murderer! How dare you stand in his presence? Why is she not hanged already? Where is my silver?
Twenty
lunae in that purse!”

“Where is your son, mistress?” Even as he spoke, Bastien spun in place and lunged toward me. I jerked backward, whacking my elbow yet again, this time on the sheltering column. But the coroner missed . . . or rather . . .

Bastien dragged a squirming body from the other side of the column.

“Young Willem,” he said, “why do you lag behind in the shadows? Come, boy, step up and bid farewell to your da.”

Bastien shoved the stumbling boy, also draped in black, to the bier and threw back the sheet entirely, so that all could view the dreadful sight—two great seams of black stitches holding the pale flesh together in a V shape from shoulders to groin.

Such a vile cruelty. The boy, slight and wan already, doubled over and retched miserably on his father’s bier. I came near doing the same. My
appreciation of Bastien’s tactics—which had grown without my realizing—plummeted.

“That’s the runner!” bellowed Stonemason Ferrand. “Saw him dodging out the coal scrape yesternight!”

“Who is this madman?” demanded the widow. “My son—”

“You’re sure, Ferrand?” Bastien had a firm grip on Willem’s collar, even as the boy puked.

“Aye. I’ve eyes like—”

“Like rats in the dark. Yes. Well, boy? Were you in Doane’s Alley yesternight?”

A weak head shake. Bastien yanked him up, almost lifting him off the ground. As the Widow de Seti shrieked protests, he posed the question again. The boy just sputtered and moaned as the coroner rummaged inside the lad’s cloak.

“Hmmph.” With the satisfied grunt, Bastien held something up to the light—a dagger with a ruby in the hilt. “Well, well, what have we here—already a young master of the house? Could this be your da’s dagger that went missing? I’ve a sorcerer nearby, you know. He could magic it and tell me where you got it. Step out, pureblood!”

Sighing, I adjusted my mask and stepped out. The boy wailed and flapped his arms as if he might escape through the air.

“Inside with all of you!”

Surely Bastien could not believe the drivel he spoke. Ordinaries had all sorts of idiotic ideas about what sorcerers could do. Though there had been a time . . . My second bent might have told him a great deal about the dagger, but that part of me was five years dead.

As the odd collection of people moved toward the steps, Bastien jerked his head at me, smirking. I followed the babbling party into the prometheum. Not reluctantly.

T
he inquest, held in a
solemn inner chamber, was quite brief. Bastien sat at the head of a long table of scraped pine. A bronze pendant fashioned in the shape of a hammer hung from his neck—the symbol of his office, I supposed—and a wooden gavel lay in front of him. Everyone else sat on stools around the table. I remained standing near the door.

Bastien went through all the same questions, but in a clear sequence. De Seti’s colleagues told of a bitter man whose strength was failing him
and who tried to regain it by picking fights with everyone—his wife and sons, his neighbors, his fellow draymen, and his whore.

Bek, the surgeon, his quiet voice steady despite his palsied hands, witnessed that he found no evidence of stabbing, bruising, poison, or any other murderous ending that might evidence itself beneath a man’s skin.

“Now you, boy, best tell the truth, else . . .” Bastien’s wagging finger led Willem’s eyes to me.

His eyes the size of inkwells, the quivering Willem told of his mother sending him to search Doane’s Alley when his da failed to come home, as she’d long discovered the location of his harlot. When he returned with the news that his father lay dead in the dark little crawl off the harlot’s alley, she sent him back to fetch the purse, the weapons, and his father’s cloak and boots.

“I were scairt to touch him, but Ma swore I must before some beggar crawled into the hole and found him. But I couldn’t get the cloak, as he were so heavy and hard froze, and before I could get his boots, some ’un yelled at me.”

“And then you ran off, Willem.” Bastien shook his head like the arbiter of doom. “Left your da lie there. Disobeyed the king’s law that says the dead must be collected. What kind of son are you?”

“Ma said, ‘Leave the whoring jackleg where you found him.’” The sniveling boy wiped his nose on his sleeve and cast an ugly glance at the straw-haired girl. “Said a slut’s cesspool was a proper end.”

When all was spoken, Bastien banged his gavel on the table. “It is my judgment that Valdo de Seti of the Wainwrights’ District died of an attack of spleen, brought on by his rough whoring. All other matters, such as thieving from the dead and abandoning a corpse, will be reported to the district magistrate. By the authority of the king of Navronne—whoever he might be at present—I judge the Widow de Seti must turn over the purse of twenty lunae and the two weapons as fee for this investigation, which could have been avoided had Willem or his mam reported the death like honorable folk and Willem not sneaked away like a common cutpurse. Constable will retrieve the goods and bring them here to finish this matter. So say I, Coroner of the Twelve Districts of Palinur.”