A scream snapped him out of his blind rage. It was Zach’s voice, and it was coming from just over the parapet. Lenoir scrambled to his feet, staggering at the sight that greeted him.
A charred and bloodied Vincent was hauling back on his whip like a fisherman with a huge catch, dragging something unseen over the parapet. His blackened flesh was kindled into flame, burning away what remained of his muscle. In moments, he would lose the ability even to move. Lenoir lunged at the parapet. Zach was dangling by his arm, the scourge wrapped tightly around his wrist. The boy was screaming as his flesh died in the grasp of the accursed weapon. Reaching down as far as he could, Lenoir grabbed Zach’s forearm and heaved.
They tumbled over the top together. Lenoir heard the air hum as the whip came free and found a new target, and then his ears were filled with Zera’s screams. He twisted his head to see what remained of Vincent drop to his knees, his bare bones cracking against the stone. Only scraps of flesh hung from him now, but he no longer needed any. The scourge did its work without his help, squeezing the life from Zera’s throat in seconds. Then, as Lenoir watched, Vincent disintegrated into a pile of ash. The scourge flashed once with a faint green light and vanished, leaving Zera’s blackened throat behind. Moments later, even the ash was gone, borne on the wind to God-knew-where.
Lenoir rolled Zach gently onto his back. The boy’s skin was deathly pale, but his eyelids fluttered. Suddenly, his body lurched, and he began to choke. Lenoir just managed to get him onto his side before he vomited. Instinctively, the boy’s arm curled up to his stomach, as though he could protect it from the pain he remembered, or the morbid sensation that had replaced it. He opened his eyes and gasped.
“It’s all right, Zach,” Lenoir said gently. “You are safe now.”
The boy’s eyes fixed on him. There was no recognition there, only lingering terror. Lenoir’s heart sank. He had seen that look before, in the eyes of the boy Mika, whose experience left his mind violently shattered.
“You are safe, Zach,” he repeated, more firmly this time.
Slowly, Zach’s gaze came into focus. Fear gave way to confusion, then relief. He tried to speak, but succeeded only in choking again. Lenoir helped the boy to sit until the coughing fit subsided.
“Where is he?” Zach gasped.
Lenoir hesitated. “Who?” He hoped Zach had no memory of Vincent. The boy had gone through enough without having a sight such as that to haunt him for the rest of his days.
“The other boy.”
Lenoir shivered. “You saw him?”
Zach paused, confusion returning to his eyes. “Sure I did. He was here. I mean . . .” He trailed off uncertainly.
“It does not matter. What matters is that you are safe, and we can go home.”
“Home,” the orphan repeated absently, as though testing a foreign word. Lenoir kicked himself inwardly for his thoughtlessness. But Zach had other things on his mind; he looked down at his arm, hefting it awkwardly as though it did not quite belong to him. “My wrist feels funny.” He took in the sight of his blackened flesh with surprising equanimity. Perhaps all his fear was spent.
Lenoir sighed. “Yes. That will never go away, I’m afraid, but you will get used to it. And yours is a small wound, hardly noticeable. It will not greatly affect your life.”
Zach nodded, accepting this appraisal without comment. He looked around, seeming to take in his surroundings for the first time. His gaze came to rest on Zera. “Who’s that?”
Lenoir looked over. She lay on her stomach, her face turned toward them, eyes fixed on some distant plane. Lenoir wondered whether she could see Vincent. He wondered whether Vincent was looking out at them through her eyes. He shivered again. “That is Lady Zera,” he said, surprised at the tinge of regret in his voice.
“She’s dead.”
“Yes, she is.”
“I guess I don’t need to work for her anymore, huh?” Zach looked up at him, and for the first time, Lenoir saw something like the familiar boyish curiosity blooming in his eyes. He could not help smiling.
“No, I don’t suppose you do.”
“I’m hungry.”
Lenoir got to his feet, extending his hand to help the boy. “Well, then, we should get you something to eat. But first, I think we had better find a place to wash up.”
They headed for the stairs, Lenoir limping on his injured foot, Zach wobbling on shaky legs. “Is it too early for steak?” Zach asked.
“I don’t think so.”
Lenoir held the door open. Zach paused on his way under Lenoir’s arm, looking up at him severely. “You took a really long time, you know.”
“I know,” Lenoir said softly. “I am sorry, Zach.”
The boy shrugged. “You can make it up to me later.”
Lenoir forced a smile. He could never make it up to Zach, not if he had a hundred years, let alone the single day that remained to him. But for the next few hours at least, he was damn well going to try. He could not think of a better way to spend his last day alive.
“T
his place is small,” Zach said, scanning Lenoir’s apartment with an air of faint surprise.
“It is,” Lenoir agreed, “though it is surely more comfortable than your quarters at the orphanage.”
“Not much,” Zach said with the brutal honesty of the young. “You really live here?”
“You thought it would be grander, perhaps?”
The boy shrugged. “I guess so, yeah. I mean, you’re an
inspector
.” He pronounced the word almost reverently.
“Indeed. A poor public servant, alas.” Lenoir gave a mock bow. “I do not wish to blunt your ambition, Zach, but it is not so very glamorous being a hound. The truth is, we hounds occupy a modest rung on the social ladder. I suspect there are talented whores who earn more than I do.”
“A good whore does pretty well, from what I’ve seen.”
Lenoir regarded him with rueful affection. A child in one breath, a seasoned adult in the next. Perhaps that was what drew him to the boy—that compelling mix of innocence and experience. Living proof that it was possible to live among the poison without becoming fatally ill, that one could see the world for what it truly was, yet still work toward something better. “Would you prefer to sleep at the orphanage?” he asked.
Zach shook his head. “I won’t get any sleep there. The sisters will ask me a million questions, and the other kids too.”
“So I thought. Rest here, then. Later on, you can go down to the station and give your statement.”
Zach looked up at him. “What do you mean,
I
can go down? You’ll come with me, right?”
Lenoir pasted on a smile. “Yes, of course. Now rest.”
The boy was fast asleep within minutes. He was exhausted, but otherwise appeared none the worse for his ordeal—except, of course, for the scar on his wrist. Lenoir found he did not have it in him to explain the nature of the injury, or how Zach came to have it. Lenoir had not spoken of it again since they quit the tower, and Zach had not asked. The boy seemed to accept the scar as a relatively benign consequence of his captivity, and considering what had almost happened to him, Lenoir could not disagree.
He left Zach in peace and headed for the station. He would send one of the watchmen to the orphanage to tell the nuns that Zach was safe. He had debated going himself, but he needed to use these last few hours to file his report, for there would never be another opportunity, and he did not want the details of the case to die with him. Not that there would be much for the Metropolitan Police to follow up—there were no arrests to be made, at least not with the evidence on hand, and anyone whose involvement could be proven had already received judgment. But Kody’s family, and Hardin’s, deserved to know what had happened to their sons.
The station was nearly deserted. The hounds were still swarming the streets in search of Hardin’s killer. Lenoir found the chief in his office, poring over a stack of recently penned reports, his leathery face pulled into a forbidding scowl.
“Where in the flaming prisons of the below have you been?” Reck said as he looked up from his papers. “I was beginning to think you got the same treatment as Hardin!”
Lenoir sat. He had not been invited to, but he did not think he could stay on his feet for much longer without passing out. He had never been so exhausted in all his life. “I told you I was tracking down the kidnappers.”
“That was two days ago!”
Lenoir snorted incredulously. “Two days,” he whispered in amazement.
“Is something funny, Inspector?”
Lenoir rubbed his eyes, the lids feeling like rasps against the bloodshot orbs. “No, Chief. It’s just that I can hardly believe it has only been two days. So much has happened.”
Mollified, the chief sat back in his chair, arms folded. “So let’s hear it.”
“I know who attacked Kody and Hardin,” Lenoir said without preamble. “At least, I know who ordered it done, and where it took place.”
Reck grunted. “I’m relieved to hear it, because we’re getting nowhere out there.” He gestured dismissively at the pile of papers on his desk. “Fifty reports, and the best information we have is that Kody bought a meat pie across the street. The rest of it we already knew. He talked to Izar before he left, but he didn’t say where he was going, or why. Izar is in a state, as you can imagine. Thought he should have seen it coming, and other such guilt-ridden nonsense.”
“Ridiculous. It would have been nearly impossible for anyone to reconstruct Kody’s lead based on what he learned at the prison, even if the prisoners cooperated fully.”
“Which they manifestly did not. Stedman, idiot that he is, started off the interview by telling the prisoner that Hardin was dead. Guess how eager she was to talk after that.” Reck shook his head in disgust. “If I thought I could get by with only three inspectors, I would just fire him and get it over with.”
You had better hold off on that,
Lenoir thought wryly. Aloud, he said, “I suspect what Kody learned at the prison went to motive, which he was able to piece together in conjunction with information we found in Berryvine.”
“Well?” The chief spread his hands impatiently. “Don’t keep me in suspense. Who do I have to round up?”
“No one. Hardin’s killer is already dead. Her name was Zera, known as Lady Zera by those in her social circle.”
Reck’s eyebrows rose. “Lady Zera? Well, that certainly explains a lot, like why we were called to the scene of a shoot-up at her place last night. Do I have you to thank for that little massacre?”
Lenoir shifted uncomfortably. “I was there, although I only killed one man myself.”
“We found two killed by gunfire. The rest were strangled with some sort of barbed rope. Looks like the barbs were poisoned too.” The chief narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing Lenoir intently.
“Zera had powerful enemies,” said Lenoir, choosing his words carefully. “I stayed out of their way, so long as they were working in my interests.
Our
interests.”
The chief frowned. “Let’s come back to that in a minute. You want to explain to me why we got word of the incident from a neighbor, and not you? Why didn’t you wait for backup before you confronted her? You’re too seasoned an officer to be pulling greenhorn crap like that, Lenoir.”
I had backup, Chief
.
Better backup than any hound.
“I was in a hurry. A boy’s life was at stake.”
Reck seemed to accept that. “You knew this Zera, didn’t you? Seems to me you’ve been seen at her salon once or twice in the past.” He paused to let that sink in. Lenoir wondered how long the chief had been waiting to spring that little warning on him.
“I knew her well,” Lenoir said. There was no point in denying it.
“Why would she want Kody and Hardin dead?”
“I don’t know the full story, but she obviously believed they knew something that could connect her to the kidnappings, so she wanted them disposed of.”
Reck rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I wonder how Kody figured it out.”
“I’m not sure he did. He might only have sought her out as a source of information about the Adali. We might never know for certain.”
“Wouldn’t that be a kick in the ass?” Reck said sourly. “Death by coincidence.”
“Kody is dead, then?”
“He’s the same. I was talking about Hardin.”
Lenoir nodded. “Anyway, I would be surprised if Kody actually knew much about what the kidnappers intended.”
“Which is what, exactly? And how was Lady Zera involved?”
“I believe that a small group of Adali was in the process of procuring a very significant favor for someone powerful, in exchange for major land concessions to their clan. Zera was the liaison.”
The chief shook his head blankly. “I don’t get it. What does that have to do with kidnapping children?”
Lenoir sighed and passed a hand over his eyes again. “I will explain everything, I promise. I came here to file a full report. Better for you to read that. The story is . . . complicated.”
To his immense relief, the chief only grunted and said, “Sounds like it.”
“I had better get started,” Lenoir said, rising. “Have you sent word to Kody’s family?”
Reck inclined his head briefly. “They came in on the stagecoach last night. The mother isn’t taking it well.”
“They never do.” Pausing at the door on his way out, Lenoir said, “It has been a privilege to work with you, Chief.”
Reck eyed him suspiciously. “Going somewhere, Inspector?”
Lenoir gave a thin smile. “I was only thinking that it has been a very long couple of days.”
“That it has,” Reck said quietly. “That it has.”
• • •
Lenoir scanned the cramped lines of his handwriting, reading over the report one last time. He had not bothered to use a scribe. He told himself that was because he needed time to sort through his thoughts, but the truth was that he wanted to be alone while he recorded the depressing history of his investigation. It was so easy now to connect the dots, to trace the constellation among the stars. He spared himself nothing in the retelling, and he was sure that the chief, in reading the report, would shake his head in disgust at Lenoir’s incompetence.
Lady Zera’s frequent questions surrounding the investigation should have betrayed an unusual interest in the case,
Lenoir read.
I should have noticed these signs, but my judgment was clouded by my personal relationship with the accused.
Dipping his quill in ink, he added a note in the margins:
I was also quick to dismiss coincidences that Sergeant Kody remarked upon.
If Kody died, Lenoir wanted it known that the sergeant had not been as blind as his supervisor.
In other details, he was more economical. While he could not avoid mentioning
khekra
, and the intention of Los and his cronies to use Zach in their magic, he did not go into particulars. Let his colleagues get that information from Merden, if they chose to interview him. Spelling it out in his report would make him sound insane, or at least backward and superstitious. That might damage the credibility of everything else in the report, and Lenoir did not want to provide any excuse for the case to remain open. He owed that much to Kody and Hardin. On the matter of
khekra
, therefore, he confined himself to the bare minimum, saying only,
It is a common belief among the Adali that magic can produce curses or windfalls, and such spells often go for a steep price. I have concluded that Los and his followers intended his magic to result in something of great value to the Duke of Warrick, in exchange for which they hoped to secure grazing rights to His Grace’s lands.
Lenoir’s eyes paused on the next line.
While the motive is clear, there is no tangible evidence of any contact between the kidnappers and the Duke of Warrick.
He read the words aloud, and they stuck in his throat.
“What did you know, you bastard?” he whispered at the page. He was not sure what he himself believed. It was possible the kidnappers had not yet approached Warrick with their plan, intending to contact him only once they had succeeded. Or Warrick might have been in on it from the start. In the end, what did it matter? Lenoir had no proof. Carelessly accusing Warrick would cause the Metropolitan Police no end of grief, and for what? Even if he was guilty, the odds of him being held to account were virtually nil.
Dipping his quill again, Lenoir underlined the words
tangible evidence
. He was confident that Lendon Reck would understand him perfectly.
No amount of editing, however, would address the most glaring flaw in the report, which was the absence of any mention of Vincent. Nor was it simply a lie of omission; to account for the shoot-up at Zera’s, Lenoir had been obliged to fabricate something. His report described an unknown Adal, implied to be a member of the Asis clan, who pursued the kidnappers and picked them off one by one.
If my information is correct,
the report said,
the man called Raiyen was exiled from the Asis clan for performing
khekra
, which was forbidden among them. It is my belief that Raiyen’s designs were in part intended as an act of atonement, a way of regaining his status within the clan. He reached out to his kinsman and fellow witchdoctor, Los, to assist him in the enterprise. However, if their actions were not sanctioned by the clan elders, the clan could well have taken the law into their own hands, as Adali are frequently known to do, preferring their own traditional justice to the more formal mechanisms here in the Five Villages.
With any luck, the deaths at Zera’s apartments, as well as those at the cathedral, would be explained as an act of vigilante justice. The Metropolitan Police would make some effort to track down the culprit, but the Asis clan would claim to know nothing about it. And they would be telling the truth. It was an unavoidable loose end, but Lenoir was reasonably confident that it would not be enough to prevent the case from being closed.
He gazed at the finalized report for a long moment. Absurd as it was, it felt as if his entire life were on those sheets of parchment. It was the last record he would leave behind.
It was shortly before dusk when Lenoir left the police station. For some reason, he found himself heading for the market square, the place where he had first spoken to Vincent. It seemed like the most appropriate place to meet the spirit again, for the last time.
Lenoir sat on a bench and watched the evening routine unfold. He felt much calmer than he had two nights before, when last he sat here waiting for Vincent to appear. There was no longer anything to fear. It was not that he welcomed death—he would happily have deferred it indefinitely—but he could face it now, serene in the knowledge that Zach was safe. Lenoir had done what he set out to do.
“There is no redemption,”
Vincent had said, but he was wrong. Lenoir had reclaimed something of himself in these, his last hours of life. He was no longer filled with self-loathing. His apathy had given way, if not to peace, then at least to acceptance.
He might have dozed off, for darkness seemed to come upon the square suddenly. Lenoir felt eyes on him, and he twisted in his seat to find Vincent watching him from the shadows. In spite of his resignation, he could not help the spasm of fear that jolted his limbs. Would Vincent speak to him, or simply attack without warning? Belatedly, Lenoir wondered if the market square had been a poor choice of venue after all.
At least my death will cause a spectacle,
he thought wryly. It would be nice to be remembered for
something
.