The Seer (4 page)

That was where Taniel’s body had gone, to be tossed into the heaps and left to rot. His dreaming mother had no doubt been taken there, too, and everyone down to the horse in the road and the mouse in the trap.

The detectives were talking. Jesco tried to listen, but the thrall had drained him of a good measure of his strength. Sinclair was the only one who remembered that Jesco’s abilities did not come free, and he offered to fetch the chair. Scoth shook his head. “That wheelchair can’t be gotten around the pile of beams. Return him to the asylum; he’s of no more use to this investigation.”

“You’re welcome,” Jesco said, his temper reawakening despite his tiredness and the horror of the thrall. The detective did that to him.

Scoth looked offended, but Jesco didn’t wait to hear what he had to say. Turning on his heel, he stumbled away from the naked body. Sinclair came with him. A breeze whistled through the alley and fluttered the pieces of newspaper that Tokol had dropped. He’d also discarded the rolled-up pages that he had been holding earlier. Upon the mat of trash, the pages were bright against the dimness of its trodden brethren.

A sheet flapped against the pile of beams and flew up into the air. Sinclair sighed and called out, “Patrolman Tokol, a word of advice. One must preserve the sanctity of the scene of crime, not contribute one’s litter to it . . .”

The junior detective stopped abruptly and stared at the pile. Curious, Jesco did the same. The clouds over the dead zone were parting here and there, and the light had caught upon a silver gleam within the rotting wood. Seeing it as well, Tokol hurried over.

“Did you find something?” Scoth called.

“I don’t know,” Sinclair said, motioning aside the patrolman. Eager to rectify his errors by being overly helpful, Tokol covered his hand in a kerchief and put it between the beams. He pulled out an object hanging from a chain. It was a silver open-face timepiece, and a fine one. On a plate between the numbers, it was carved with wheat growing tall under a sky full of clouds and floating flowers.

The timepiece was clean, very clean, unlike everything else in Poisoners’ Lane. Tokol held it in the palm of his hand as Sinclair and Jesco took a look. Ravenhill and Scoth quit the body and came their way to see.

“This has not been here long,” Sinclair said. “It must have been hanging from a trouser pocket and gotten its chain caught on a nail in these beams.”

“And the chap didn’t notice?” Tokol asked in amazement. “
I
would notice if something lifted my watch.”

“Dragging a body and you might not have,” Scoth said, coming to Jesco’s side. The detective’s eyes were alight at this new discovery, far more than they had been with the scrap of Taniel’s shirt.

Jesco had gone almost too far in that thrall, and he was struggling to keep hold of himself and his time. They had been the same age at the Great Poisoning, Jesco and Taniel. But Taniel had lived in meanness from the day he was born and until Jesco was six, he had worked the fields of his family’s farm in the loving pack of his brothers and sisters. Singing as they planted, singing as they harvested, and fragments of those songs still came to him in dreams. Until his fingers upon the hoe became a dangerous thing, and the bed he shared with his brothers at night, and the fork with which he ate, he had been innocent of the ways of cruelty. And then he was remanded to the asylum, where he relearned what it was to be treated kindly. But Taniel . . . at no point had he had a measure of grace . . .

There was renewed excitement all around him at the timepiece. Unable to relinquish the pickpocket story to which he had fastened himself so strongly, Ravenhill said, “Maybe they were fighting over this.”

“Hardly worth a fight to end in murder, I should venture,” Scoth said, taking the timepiece from Tokol. He held it up by the chain and the clock rotated below. “This is very fine craftsmanship, no doubt, but there are no jewels within it. This would fetch no large sum of money.”

“I’ve seen a bloke kill another bloke over a couple of pennies,” Ravenhill said querulously. “This is worth a decent amount. People would kill for it.”

“Shall I then?” Jesco asked.

“We’ll take this back to the station for now,” Scoth said, not looking at him. “The chemist can tell us if it’s picked up too much kolymbium. But it doesn’t penetrate metal as deeply or as quickly.”

Ravenhill had become sulky at how his partner was not entertaining his hypothesis as much as he would like. “Perhaps it doesn’t have anything to do with the murder anyway. Just another waste of time like the fabric.”

“I could handle it and tell you all you need to know,” Jesco said. He was bleating into the wind for all the attention they paid him. Scoth stared at the timepiece like he was trying to summon some latent seer skills within himself rather than solicit Jesco for them, and Ravenhill was taking a surreptitious sip from a flask. Then he paused and spat it out into the alley. Mournfully, he dumped out the rest just in case it was gathering any poison.

“Tokol, get Amatu and you two bag that body,” Scoth ordered briskly. “Load it up in the second carriage and we’ll ferry it to the coroner. You two should do a fast but thorough inspection of this alley from one end to the other. Bag anything you could conceivably construe as related to this case, and do the same on the road here in both directions. After that, clear out. I want the two of you to be leaving this place in no more than an hour.”

“Yes, sir,” Tokol said.

“Get started.” They moved aside so that Tokol could go down the alley and relay his orders to Amatu. Next, Scoth addressed Ravenhill and Sinclair. “After we drop off the body at the coroner, we’ll take this timepiece to the chemist for testing and make sure it has not imbibed too much to be handled. Then we can examine it properly. This carving in the middle is quite distinctive, and the maker could lead us to the buyer . . .”

“Or I could do it,” Jesco said in frustration, already with a glove removed.

At last, Scoth spoke to him. “Haven’t you had enough for the day? There are other seers who-”

“Who have been driven mad, or refuse to use their skill altogether for fear of what they will see,” Jesco snapped. Losing his patience, he snapped the timepiece away from the detective.

-he was-

-he was-

-he-

-was-

-gone—

When Jesco opened his eyes, he was no longer standing at the end of the alley. His feet were swaying and his arms were tucked across his chest as Scoth carried him to the carriage.

He had pushed too far. He’d known that he was in danger of doing that when the police carriage first turned down the lane of the asylum, and he had promptly done it anyway from pique. Scoth was grim above him and the timepiece was nowhere to be seen.

Sinclair held open the door to the carriage. Grunting, Scoth got Jesco inside and upon a seat. “The next time,” the detective said in irritation, “you feel like showing off how marvelous your abilities are, wait until you are stronger so that I can be amazed.”

“The next time,” Jesco said in the same acid tone, “you feel like requesting my assistance, do a better examination of the crime scene so that you present me with the real clue before a red herring. That would amaze me in turn.”

Scoth’s lips tightened and his eyes flicked outside the carriage to where Ravenhill was fidgeting. Jesco understood from that look that Ravenhill had been the one to inspect the alley and miss the timepiece. Removing a pad of paper and pen from his uniform, Sinclair said, “Should I stay in the carriage and write down anything Mr. Currane has to say about the timepiece, sir?”

“No, I’ll do it,” Scoth said, pulling out his own paper and pen. “Help the officers get that body out of the alley and into the compartment. We should not tarry here.”

Jesco’s legs were numb. He fumbled clumsily for his pocket, but his glove was not in there. “Did you see where my glove fell?”

Scoth sat down across from Jesco and covered his hand in a kerchief. He pulled the glove from his trench coat and offered it. When Jesco leaned over to take it, he nearly fell out of the seat. The second thrall had left him boneless.

The detective moved swiftly to catch him. “Would you be better served by your chair?”

“Yes. There’s a belt and a latch that can be fitted around my hips.”

“As I recall.”

They had worked very few cases together and the last had been a long time ago. For him to recall a detail so minor was a surprise to Jesco. Scoth dropped the glove upon his lap and turned to the chair, which was facing the wrong way for Jesco to get in. The brakes kept Scoth from turning it. He bent down to unlock them as Jesco struggled to get the glove on.

Days. It was going to be days before he could walk again. But that was why he lived in the asylum, where his meals would be fixed for him and an attendant would help him to the lavatory and anywhere else he had to go.

Scoth was triumphant with the brakes and turned the chair; Jesco failed with the glove and had to endure the detective putting it on for him. They worked together to get him into the chair, Scoth’s hands digging around Jesco’s sides for the halves of the belt. Once snapped into place, the detective retook his seat and picked up the pad of paper and pen.

He looked at Jesco as voices echoed in the alley. Ravenhill wasn’t being of any assistance. Through the window, he could be seen leaning upon the autohorse and yawning. Jesco did not envy anyone having Ravenhill as a partner, even Laeric Scoth.

The detective’s expectant posture bothered Jesco. Only the timepiece mattered to him. “The fabric belonged to a boy who worked in the mill there,” Jesco said. “His name was Taniel, he lived on the Mowe with his mother, and he was ten years old when he died.”

“But it has nothing to do with this case,” Scoth said.

“None,” Jesco said, defeated at how this boy had interested no one in his life, or even in his death save a peeping seer. All of the information from the second thrall had crashed into him at once, and was in a complete tangle in his mind. He closed his eyes to sort through it.

“Should we do this later?” Scoth asked.

“A woman,” Jesco said. “I saw a woman.”

“A
woman
? It had to be a strong woman to drag that man’s body.”

“I didn’t say that I saw her dragging anything. I saw the face of a beautiful woman with red hair. She was in her forties or so, and weathering time well. This timepiece is tied to her somehow. I believe . . . I believe it was a gift. A gift that she gave to a man, a much younger man.” He opened his eyes, but saw the man before him.

“Her son?” Scoth queried.

“No.” Jesco couldn’t ferret out their relationship, but it hadn’t been a familial one. “It was within a case, this timepiece. I saw her face as the man opened it and touched the clock. She was smiling . . . yet he was not pleased to receive it. This gift was not what he wanted. He was . . . he was pretty. Not handsome, but pretty. Soft, weak features . . . black hair hanging to his shoulders. Twenties, early twenties.”

“Whose memory was this? The man’s?”

“Yes. I think the timepiece was new at that giving, and the person to make it imparted no memories. That’s common with something that one has done many times. Just a job, a routine, not thinking or feeling anything much as it is performed. But the recipient of the timepiece flooded it with anger, this young man. He held it only for a few seconds. I didn’t get his name.”

“Would you recognize his face?”

“I would recognize both of them in an instant. She gave this gift to him in a grand drawing room. I would recognize that as well. I have no sense of the time . . . but the clothes they were wearing, those are fashions that one might see today, or not too far in the past. The furniture in the room is crafted of cherry wood, and there is much decorative glass and flowers.”

Scoth looked in dissatisfaction at his notes, which he had recorded in precise print. “Is that all?”

“This was not an object much handled,” Jesco said. “Its first impression was of that anger at its unveiling. After that, it was kept in its case.”

“He didn’t wear it because he didn’t favor it,” Scoth murmured as he wrote. “He rejected it. He wanted a more expensive piece, do you think? With jewels?”

“He wanted something else entirely, although I cannot say what. This gift was meant as . . . a goodbye. A severing of their relationship, however it was. Occasionally after that scene in the drawing room, I saw him opening up the case and touching the timepiece briefly. Always he was angry when he did it. This was no fleeting aggravation but more akin to rage. Behind him . . . behind him at these times was a shabby room with peeling wallpaper and a spindly wooden table.”

“But it is not a woman’s body in this alley,” Scoth said. “He was furious at her. Perhaps this raging man could not strike out at her, but selected a person important to her in some way.” He scratched out a line on the pad. “Conjecture. We have far too little information from your visions to draw any conclusions-”

“I would like to get through this before my total collapse, which is most assuredly on the horizon.” Sleep was calling, and it would be many hours before Jesco awoke. “Once again, the lid of the case opened. The man with the black hair looked a little older. A few years had passed since the giving of the gift. And he was thinner. In the first scene, he was quite well nourished. In this one, it was like he had not eaten well in a long time. It was not the face of a gaunt man, but one in need of much better meals. This time, the anger in his eyes was matched with hope. He lifted the timepiece and spoke to a woman. Equally thin, and with straggling blonde hair. He said that he had her now. Not the blonde, but that beautiful redhead who gave the piece to him. The blonde looked worried and told him not to involve himself. He threw her an angry look and returned the timepiece to the case as the blonde fretted that he was going to get himself killed. He didn’t know what he was dealing with when it came to these people.”