The Seer (7 page)

Now she was adding color to the picture of the woman, a pink flush to the cheeks and red to the hair. “That made Scoth tick down to boom. He flat-out refused to take point on the Shy Sprinkler case or have anything at all to do with it until the man actually murders someone. The captain told him to pack up and get out of the station since he couldn’t follow orders. Scoth came flying out on a wave of wrath and plopped himself down at his desk to look over the latest identifications that have been coming in for Mr. Dead in the Alley. He was calling the captain’s bluff and the captain let it be called. He saw Scoth there for the rest of the morning and didn’t say a word to remove him.”

“An exciting day,” Jesco said, thoroughly entertained by the garrulous junior sketch artist.

“One of those arguments that you can see both sides, to my mind. But if I ever get myself murdered, I’d want Scoth on the case. He’s a veritable bloodhound. I don’t know how he stands to always have Death looking over his shoulder with that sad line of pictures. He had a brother or cousin murdered when they were lads, they say at the station, and that’s why he’s got such intensity about everything. Unsolved case. Having a bad morning all the way around with Detective Ravenhill so drunk that he passed out in his chair, and then he woke up and got reassigned to investigating poison companies. He didn’t throw a fit about it. Didn’t care. So Scoth doesn’t have a partner for the time being. Not that Ravenhill is much of a partner, but don’t go around telling people I said that or I’ll tell them that you said it first. He needs a bump on the backside to retirement. Any time he talks to me, I have to hold my breath or risk getting drunk on the fumes.”

After Jesco picked out the cards for the blonde, Tammie constructed the face from them and started work on a fresh page. Lying upon Lady Ericho’s abandoned table were the completed pictures of the black-haired man and beautiful older woman. They were almost exactly the people in his visions. “Where did you receive your schooling?” he asked.

“I grew up in Flanders, a little place far southeast of here that’s just above the Squasa Badlands. I’ve been drawing since I was supposed to be doing my chores as a girl, and I was accepted for the two-year program at the Cantercaster Institute of Art when I was eighteen. My parents were fit to be tied. I had a proposal from a lordling with a squashed nose that would have given me a title, but that world is gone, eh? Titles should have gone down with the kings but they can’t bear to let go of what once made them important. That aside, even if
he
had been a
she
, and the title still meant something grand, I just couldn’t wake up next to someone with a squashed nose everyday. It’s such a distraction. Every time he came around, all I could see was the great, bulbous cauliflower of his nose. When he breathed, it sounded like he was whistling with the air forced in and out of those two tiny slits for nostrils. I told my mother that I would be in prison for his murder within days of our wedding from having to listen to his nose whistle, and all she had to say about it was that lords and ladies are sent to a nicer prison than commoners so I should marry him anyway. I just wear this-” she gestured to her ring, “to dissuade strange folk into coming up and offering themselves, as has happened too many times especially when catching a carriage.” Erasing the curve of a cheek, she redid it as Jesco looked out the window. Lady Ericho was taking a brisk constitutional around the garden paths.

Redoing the cheek, Tammie said, “How long have you been stuck here in this asylum?”

“Since I was eight,” Jesco said. “It isn’t an imprisonment. Here my needs can better be served.” He turned his hands over in explanation and nodded to the chair.

“Does your family come to see you? Are they understanding? A lot aren’t, as I’ve heard.”

“My oldest sister comes to visit every few months, and brings her children.”

“Just a sister out of a whole family?”

“Yes.” It was a painful topic for Jesco, who fell quiet as she drew. Being a seer and a child of the angels was incompatible with divine teachings, and the Church had a strong hold on the farm communities still. His ability aligned him with the plagues of the earth. They had tried to drive it out of him when he was six, the prophets of the church in his hometown of South Downs. By hand, by lash, by paddle, by hunger, by thirst, they strove to return him to the angels and finally gave him back to his parents in defeat. The dark king of seersight had laid a hand upon Jesco, and it would be best if they just . . .

To their credit, his mother and father did not kill him. But they were simple folk without a letter between them, and they were terrified of their son who writhed and screamed and slept for days only to wake up and do it all over again. They locked him in the attic and mourned him in the community, their poor son fallen to fever and swept away before a doctor could be summoned.

Two of his older brothers, Lyall and Novani, unlocked the door on occasion to beat him bloody and spit on him. His father showed his love through a belt when he was drunk. Almost twenty years later, Jesco could recall with perfect clarity his mother’s thin, pale face framed by the gap in the door where she gave him food and drink.
Jesco? Are you being a good boy? Are you praying? Wear out your knees in prayer and the angels will hear . . . they will not turn away the penitence of a child . . .

They had. But luckily for him, whispers about his faked death and imprisonment were spreading, and at last they landed in the ear of someone in the South Downs police force who had sympathies for othelin. Jesco was freed, and brought to the asylum.

Tammie was now adding color to the blonde woman. Awkwardly, Jesco said, “My family was, and is, very religious. But my eldest sister married a man of science and he convinced her that I was simply an aberration of genetics, not a child of demons. Rafonse died a few years ago in a carriage accident, but Isena still comes to see me. Rafonse is the one who got me interested in whirly-gigs. He worked for a company that sold them.”

Giving him a sympathetic nod, Tammie pressed no further. “Well, I won’t ask exactly what you paid for that weather-catcher, because then I’ll want one and I’ve got too much claim on my coin already. I’ve got a rough notion of that price tag and it’s a flincher.” Adding a final dash to the last sketch, she held it up for his opinion. “Is that the woman you saw in your vision?”

“It is.” Tammie had captured her well, all the way down to the nervous expression.

“I don’t recognize any of the three, not that I would, but hopefully someone will if Scoth is still employed and working on the case. Strange, this murder. Strange all the way around. I can’t make head or tails of anyone dragging a body to Poisoners’ Lane of all places. You couldn’t make me go into the dead zone for any reason under the sun and stars.” She put the drawing on the empty table and packed her things haphazardly in the satchel. The door to the drawing room opened and Lady Ericho came in. Giving a crisp nod to the three pictures, she stowed them in her belongings.

“Mr. Currane, it has been a pleasure,” she said formally.

“As always,” Jesco returned with a polite bow.

“I hope to see you again on another case soon.” Taking up her case, she returned to the door.

“Until next time, Tammie,” Jesco said.

“I’ll be back before you know it, just as long as the fine citizens of this country keep murdering each other, and we both know they will.” Tammie smiled brightly. “Take care of yourself until then, Jesco, and get a fast rolling start should you come across someone with an agricultural sprayer over his shoulder, asking if you’re a member of Parliament. He’s up to no good.”

“Ms. Squince!” Lady Ericho said in aghast. “Don’t make light of a madman!”

Tammie threw Jesco a wink on her way to the door, and then Gavon ferried him to dinner.

Chapter Four

He was tottering around with his cane by the next day, and as fit as any man the day after that. Gavon was reassigned to other patients and the children hammered at Jesco for details of his latest case. He gave them only what was in the newspapers, since the case was unsolved, but the fact of the man being naked scandalized and titillated them enormously and they did not inquire much further. The story of poor Taniel caught them up in horror. Jesco took some comfort in that. The boy had not faded away entirely into the mists of time. Now his sorry life and sorrier demise was engraved in the minds of fifteen othelin children who reenacted his desperate flight in the garden until an unnerved nurse told them to stop coughing and squashing flowers in the throes of death.

His pay came in the post and was duly allotted to his three interests in life. Rafonse had been secure in his financials, but his untimely death left his wife in a fix. The house was not quite paid for; Jesco’s two nephews attended an expensive, private academy and his niece was due to start there as well once she was old enough. With the money that Jesco sent, Isena didn’t have to return to South Downs with her children to live with their parents. Their education would cease at once, were she forced to do that. Teachers in farm communities only held school through the summer season, and the basics of reading, writing, and figuring were all that was supplied.

Many of the othelin within the asylum had no one. Their families had turned their backs for good. To have the love of a sister, two worshipful nephews and a little niece made Jesco rich among his company. He had a few roots whereas they felt severed. That pain had been his own from ages eight to eleven before Rafonse pushed Isena and Jesco back together, and he did not speak of them too often lest he hurt someone inadvertently. But when his family visited, Jesco could hardly contain himself. This, this was his beautiful and loving sister, and they had the exact same shade of brown hair atop very different faces. These, these were his nephews Bertie and Alonzo, and Bertie was the top of his class while joking Alonzo was an echo in appearance of Jesco himself as a boy. And this tiny, golden-haired one at their heels was his niece Gemina, and she could count to one hundred and loved horses both biological and auto-mechanical alike.

He wrote a letter to them upon his personal store of paper and pen that had no memories, tucked the money inside, and folded it into three before placing it in an envelope. The money would become new academy uniforms and keep the roof over their heads, food in their bellies and wood in the fireplace when it was cold. He was sure to have a letter in return from Isena within a week or two, thanking him and telling him all the latest in their lives. A nurse would read it to Jesco, and then he’d add it to the box of letters under his bed.

That was the most important third of his pay. The rest was for play. Whirly-gigs were a massive expense, and he was also storing up for another trip to The Seven Temptations. It was well worth the cost. Brothels were abundant in Cantercaster, but many were squalid institutions where lust was to be dispensed of as swiftly as possible. He had seen that for himself in his initial venturing after love, in which he hadn’t known any better at eighteen but to walk in and see what was there. His youthful, undiscriminating nature had brought him to Hole in the Wall, which was exactly that, and it frightened him straight out the door with his lust flagging for all the wrong reasons. No part of his body did he want to stick through a hole in the wall, leaving it at the mercy of the invisible person on the other side. That failed first attempt led him to Carrot and Stick, and again he left unsatisfied. No, he did not want to be strapped to the wheel for a handsome man to flog him, or to grovel about in a dog collar shining his master’s boots with his tongue. From there he wandered into The Oily Toe, and at last he put together that a brothel was advertising its particular services by its name and outward appearance, and to these things he had to attend.

And so he landed at The Seven Temptations, which was dedicated to luxury in every form. It was not a place for a fifteen-minute frolic. There was music and dancing in the ballroom, drinks and food in a fine dining room, and countless little living rooms in which to read or chat. Three times a year there were grand parties, and he had paid a mint to reserve Collier as his date for the last one. It had been a night of fortunes, the ballroom transformed into a sea of black-swathed tables with psychics stationed at each one to read cards and palms and birthdates, foreheads and chicken bones and dice. At one table the cards revealed that Jesco would die a solo adventurer in the Northern Ice; at another, his forehead showed a propensity to grand romantic gestures and a love of staying at home. The psychic reading the chicken bones had been blind and that had Jesco and Collier in fits of merriment. The man waved his hands over the spilled bones and claimed to see their vibrations with his third eye. Yet his lack of sight in the first and second ended in him knocking over a glass of wine.

A few men and a woman had come over to visit in their time in the ballroom. Those were also clients of Collier’s. He was gracious to them but turned down their overtures for companionship, and then he and Jesco had a wonderful meal before retiring to the special room where he would not be triggered into visions while making love.

It had been one of the most perfect nights of Jesco’s life. In the morning, he wanted to invite Collier for a day about town. The autohorse races, the whirly-gig shops, tea at Obokin’s . . . but that was not who they were to each other, and not what they could do unless Jesco arranged for it with the brothel and paid out the nose for the privilege. The perfection gained a slightly sour note. All of their closeness was really an illusion. Still, he wanted to save up for another party, but that would mean not seeing Collier at all for long months.

As Jesco went back and forth on it, an attendant found him to report a carriage had arrived. He put on his gloves and took hold of his wheelchair to steer it from his room. He was in no great hurry to get back into it, and resolved to keep his temper this time.

Assuming that it was a police carriage, he was baffled when he went out to the driveway. This was someone’s personal carriage, an older model that was gray. It was well tended yet humble, and the windows were plain glass and showed no one inside. The autohorse was huge and dusty black. It turned its head to look at Jesco and a recording began to play. “Mr. Jesco Currane, please report to Saliwan Bank.” That was on the same street as the police station.

Gavon hurried out with a sack. “Take your lunch along with you now.” He pressed it into Jesco’s arms like an indulgent mother. “There are cookies.”

Once the wheelchair was within the carriage, Jesco took a seat and let Gavon close the door. The man’s hand had barely withdrawn an inch when the carriage jerked into motion. This autohorse was programmed to waste no time.

There were no curtains over the windows, and the fabric of the two seats was worn. Jesco looked out to the trotting backside of the giant autohorse. For such a simple carriage, such a big horse was unnecessary. This one looked like it had the strength to pull two carriages. The police station had many carriages and autohorses, all of them clearly identified except for those used in undercover work. Jesco knew those. This was either a new purchase by the precinct, or something else was going on here.

Several blocks passed away, the autohorse swishing its tail impatiently when it had to slow for traffic. Jesco became aware of how odd this carriage was on the inside. The ceiling was a little lower than it appeared to be from the outside, and it was covered in a glossy wooden panel. As well were there wooden panels at the four corners, extending from the ceiling down to the seats, and passing below them. The frames around the windows were thick and wide, giving Jesco the impression that he was traveling within two carriages: a shabby one that hadn’t been new since he was a boy, and one refurnished by a clumsy decorator who missed the threadbare fabric to reframe the windows and attach a new panel above. Jesco was heedful when the carriage rocked not to touch any part of it with the bare skin of his face. There were memories here to explain this oddness, but he needed his ability for other things.

He was full of curiosity by the time the autohorse turned onto the road that would take them to the bank. Never before had the police sent for him without an escort. With the Shy Sprinkler’s latest prank, perchance, no one could be spared. He glanced out to the station as he rolled past. Nothing looked amiss, nor was there anything amiss at the bank coming up. The carriage slowed and stopped, and for several moments, he sat there in confusion.

Then the door opened, and Laeric Scoth climbed in. “Third destination!” he shouted to the autohorse, and then he slammed the door and took the seat across from Jesco. The carriage lurched into movement and merged with traffic, bearing them away from the bank.

“Good day,” Jesco said.

“Good day,” Scoth said grumpily. He tucked a slim pocketbook into his trench coat and withdrew his pad of notes. Silence stretched out between them while he read.

“Care to tell me why I’m here?” Jesco asked.

Scoth looked up. He had beautiful brown eyes, or he would if there were ever any lightness in them. “Didn’t the horse tell you?”

“The horse just said we were taking a trip to the bank.”

The detective sighed. “Damn thing. The recorder keeps tripping at the same point and cutting off the message.”

“Be that as it may, I still have no idea where we’re going, or why I came to the bank instead of the station.”

“I knew the line would take ruddy forever, and it did.” Scoth’s eyes fell away and pages flipped. “We identified the victim. Hasten Jibb, twenty-seven, man from Chussup.”

“Where is that?”

“Five miles, six, just outside the western edge of the county. He worked as a courier for a company called Ragano & Wemill, also in Chussup. We’re off to interview his mother and his superior at his workplace. See if we can’t piece his last day together.”

“Who identified him?”

“It was a coincidence. We distributed his photograph to the other stations. One of the couriers from his company happened to see it over the front desk at Station Eight while dropping off a package. One hundred percent positive that it’s Jibb, and said he hasn’t shown up to work for days even though he’s always been regular.” Scoth looked weary, his eyes red-rimmed and bags beneath them.

It was nearly lunch, and Jesco was getting hungry. He opened the sack and withdrew the meal that the asylum had made for him. There was a tomato and bacon sandwich wrapped in wax paper, a covered mug of water, two apples and a hunk of cheese, and another wrapped package of sugar cookies. As he took out the sandwich, he noticed the detective’s gaze touch upon it before returning to his notes.

The man hadn’t slept or eaten or done anything but chase down this case and make sure his hair was perfectly coiffed. Leaning over, Jesco offered half of the sandwich. “I’m fine,” Scoth said.

“Then you wouldn’t be leering at my lunch,” Jesco said. “They pack too much at the asylum anyway.”

The detective took the sandwich and held it for a few beats like he was still trying to think of a reason to refuse. Jesco took a big bite from his half and crunched on it loudly. Scoth gave him a dirty look, surrendered to the good smell of the sandwich in his fingers, and took an equally big bite.

“Is this a new police carriage? It’s odd,” Jesco commented.

Scoth shook his head and swallowed hard. “It’s mine. All of the police carriages have been requisitioned for another case.”

“The Shy Sprinkler?”

“How did you know?”

“I met the junior sketch artist.”

“There are two, but you can only mean Tamora Squince. The second can’t string a coherent sentence together.” The detective looked around the carriage with a discerning eye. “What in this do you find odd?”

“All of the extra panels. If your aim was to make it look nicer, you should have had the seats reupholstered.”

“That was not my aim,” Scoth said.

Whatever his aim was, it didn’t matter to Jesco. He wished Sinclair were also in the carriage. It was uncomfortable being alone with Scoth. “Has there been any progress on the Shy Sprinkler case?”

“Not to my knowledge, but it isn’t my case. My concern is how this man,” he said, indicating his pad of paper, “came to be dead in that alley.”

“Perhaps he was delivering something in the area and ran afoul of a miscreant,” Jesco said. “Someone who wanted to steal what he was delivering.”

Flipping a page back and forth, Scoth said, “But why kill him for it? Just sneak up behind him, give him a thump, take the package, and run off.”

“Jibb could have fought.”

“The coroner found no signs of a fight. His knuckles weren’t bruised from delivering blows, nor was he bruised from receiving them; there was nothing on him but the stab wounds and very minor scraping from being dragged a short distance.”

“He was caught off guard. Or sleeping in the nude. Then there would have been no need to strip him.”

“But why was there a need to move his body? Was he killed at the home of a friend who wished not to be implicated?” Scoth waved away the idea and went back to the previous possibility. “This miscreant approaches him in the road, stabs him to death, takes the package if there is one and strips him naked, wraps him up in something so he doesn’t trail blood everywhere, and drags him into the dead zone? And then unwraps him and moves him into that alley? And no one saw this? The streets about the dead zone aren’t thick with traffic at night, but they’re hardly unoccupied.”