“Verney rents this place from me.” Rocquespur minced forward with a click-click of his red high-heeled shoes. As usual, he was dressed as if for an historical masquerade: loose breeches of sapphire hiding his suspected chicken legs, a shirt in a violently clashing shade of blue, long coat with huge mirrored buttons, a garish pin shaped like a demented bird at his neck. There was a patch on his chin and rouge on his white cheeks, and he wore a long curly wig with what looked to be a small ladies’ hat pinned to it. The odor of dry snuff clung to him. He nudged the corpse’s hand with one disdainful toe.
The hand crumpled.
Rocquespur froze, eyes narrowed and glittering. “Interesting.”
Rafe gingerly picked up Pyotr’s other hand. It was dry and paper-thin as if all the insides had leaked out, as if it would crumble any moment. Rafe laid it down quickly in case it
did
disintegrate into powder in his hand.
“Some kind of poison?” Rafe kept his voice low, afraid that a loud sound might cause poor Pyotr’s body to collapse into dust.
Rocquespur glanced around the room and shrugged his thin shoulders.
A man was dead and he was bored already. Rafe got to his feet and glared into the Marquis’ dark eyes, “The last time I saw this man”—he indicated Pyotr who had been so scared of the dark and then died all alone in it—“was in Blackstone, where he helped me. Now his body is in Oakhaven, in the warehouse of a suspected smuggler of Blackstone goods. How do you explain that, Rocquespur? And if this is Verney’s lease, why are
you
here today of all days?”
“I have the right as landlord to inspect the warehouse. You’ll find that I squared it with Verney quite a while ago. And as to ragamuffins like this tattered fellow being found in here? Well, people break into these places all the time for shelter. You’ll find that I filed a complaint with the police about it months ago.” Rocquespur’s mouth turned down aggrievedly. “I see no reason for you to think I have a connection with this man.”
“Except—” Rafe bit down hard on the word. Isabella was the only connection between Pyotr and Rocquespur that he could think of.
But she had said so passionately last night
I hate him!
And Bryony had said Rocquespur wanted Isabella dead.
“Except?” A predatory gleam shone in Rocquespur’s eyes. “Except for what? Or
who
?”
“Verney,” Rafe got out the name through clenched teeth. “He’s quite your minion, isn’t he? Quite a number of his unsavory dealings are known to me.”
“It is expedient for me to be temporarily allied with him.” Rocquespur bestowed a sour smile upon Rafe. “You’ll find he fears and hates me as much as I loathe him. In politics, anyone is dispensable. Your uncle knows this well.”
“So, you’re going to pin this on Verney, eh?”
“What is there to pin? Some Blackstone drone finally managed to escape his dreary existence under the Protectorate, arrived in Oakhaven via the river and canals, and crawled in here to die of malnutrition and exhaustion. After all,
you
managed to break in here. Verney has not been maintaining this place.” The Marquis looked around discontentedly. “No lights, no guards, half-empty. I am very cross with him.”
Rafe narrowed his eyes at this callous indifference to poor Pyotr. “We must call the Guarda Publica. There will be questions.”
Rocquespur sighed and put a scented handkerchief to his nose. Rafe took a step back from its pungent smell. “Yes, I expect so. Do take care of it, won’t you, Grenfeld? I fancy you know where I live—your uncle certainly does. I shall leave you the light.”
Without another word, he click-clicked away, leaving Rafe wishing that he did have a warrant in his pocket for the arrest of one Marquis of Rocquespur.
“Nothing.” Coop stabbed his mushroom and onion wrap with a fork. “No poison and no illness causes a body to disintegrate like that. It’s as if he were sucked completely dry! Organs dissolved, bones turned to gelatin, skin peeling off in sheets—and he can’t have been dead for more than a day, if we believe Verney’s people that there were no signs of him when they were last at the warehouse.”
Rafe poked at his own cress-and-cranberry sandwich, which had cost far too much for such wilted greens and tiny berries. “Wil?”
The last member of the party—a former comrade-in-mischief and another younger son forced to seek his own employment—shook his head. “It
could
be as Rocquespur said. There was one unlatched window cracked open on the right side of the warehouse. We found a shabby bedroll in one of the offices and a knapsack of clothes. A tin cup of water on the desk, and a greasy paper basket—might’ve had fish and chips. A dozen vendors could’ve sold it to him.”
“But where would Pyotr have gotten the coinage to pay them? Oakhaven corals aren’t exactly plentiful in Blackstone.” Rafe balled his fist in frustration. It was well past high moon, closer to Fruit than Pollen, and he’d been at the warehouse all day. He’d asked for Wil and Cooper to be pulled off their duties to help him, because he could trust them to not mess up his investigation. Rocquespur was a powerful man, and any one of the other guards and clerks crawling through the warehouse in the glare of the mage lights Rafe had begged off his military contacts could’ve been bribed to discard a valuable piece of evidence, hide a letter, unlock a door.
“He could’ve worked for pay,” suggested Wil.
“Then there’s a river boat or barge somewhere whose crew would recognize him.” Rafe pushed aside his plate, and started scrawling notes on a piece of paper. “A Blackstonian is a rare animal around these parts. His bedroll and clothes—were they all of Blackstone origin? Anything he picked up in Oakhaven leads one to suspect
someone
was helping him. It would be like Rocquespur to stick the poor old man into a dark warehouse, though.” Isabella, he thought. Isabella had given Pyotr gold coins. None of those had been found among Pyotr’s possessions, only a handful of Oakhaven coins. Rafe wrote “moneychanger” on his list.
“What about the goods in the warehouse?” asked Wil. “There didn’t look to be anything obviously illegal among them.”
“No, but finding a murdered informer on the premises has given us greater leeway to examine Verney’s internal records. The ministry clerks took away stacks of documentation. It’ll take them weeks to compare them with customs office records, especially those from Clearwater and Ironheart, but if there is any fraud, they’ll find it.” Rafe grinned. “Verney was livid.”
“And Rocquespur?”
Rafe made a half-growling noise. “Yes, he was scheduled to inspect the warehouse this morning. Yes, he is in the habit of doing so every year, but whenever he feels like it. I didn’t even get to see him or Sable. His man left me cooling my heels for an hour and then gave me a statement. Couldn’t answer any of my questions, either.” Rafe showed his teeth in a mirthless smile. “Leo’s working on it.”
The Grenfeld-Rocquespur rivalry was well-known. Wil nodded and grabbed a handful of peanuts as he drew himself up to his feet. Exhaustion lay shroud-like and heavy on his shoulders. “I need some sleep. It’s been a long night and a long day and I’m on duty again in another few hours.”
“By Sel, man. Get to bed before you collapse all over Longhill’s floor.” Rafe indicated the empty food shop, abandoned even by the late lunchers. Even the owner had quit the front room, though occasional clangs from the kitchens showed that someone was still hard at work.
Wil offered a tired smile and trudged off, shouldering his helmet as if it were a great weight. Rafe frowned at his friend’s back.
“Fellow’s a martyr to his duty,” Coop observed. “Or is he working off romantic disappointment?”
“What, Wil?”
“Yes, Wil.” Coop stared at Rafe, then gave a short laugh. “You dope, haven’t you noticed how he would stare at Bryony, back in the days she used to eat here with us, before she became so grand?”
“Wil and Bryony? I never thought it.” Rafe shook his head ruefully. “I had some notion of you and Bryony, perhaps. It was the way you two would tease each other.”
Coop gave a hoot of laughter. “Oh, no, being an Ironheart proudwife would never have suited Bryony. And she never looked twice at poor Wil. And now…” He gave Rafe a direct look. “I’m sorry for what she did and how it eats you up, but no one forced her hand, Rafe. She’s a grown woman, like it or not, my lad.” He wagged a fork in Rafe’s direction.
Rafe swatted it away. “Bryony’s been ill-done by the laws of Oakhaven
and
my family. I wouldn’t blame her for being resentful, which she isn’t.”
Coop shrugged, amiably. “As you say, mate,” he drawled in the Ironheart accent Rafe rarely heard from him. Then, leaning forward, serious again, “I thought you’d be interested to know that I’ve seen it before.”
“What before?”
“The touch-it-and-it-crumbles condition.” The lantern at the table threw shadows on Coop’s face as he settled back. “Back in Ironheart, when I was a child. We’d just declared independence, Blackstone was ready to pounce, and Oakhaven was still waffling about how far to support us. Some older boys found this corpse, see, corpse of a man working on the gas lines in a new part of town…”
“…where it was all dark?” put in Rafe. Pyotr had been afraid of the dark, died in the dark. The miners had been afraid of voices, and Isabella… there had been that mine and
things
and… he couldn’t remember. It was all a murky soup.
“Yes, I suppose.” Coop gave him a funny look. “I wasn’t supposed to look, but I snuck in and saw that corpse.” He shuddered. “Should’ve turned me off doctoring, one would think, but it didn’t. The men frowned and the women kept the children close and the bigger boys whispered “krin” and took turns frightening us silly with scary stories.”
“Krin?” The word tugged at Rafe’s memory.
“Demons that suck your soul. You don’t have them here? It might be a Free Cities thing.” Before being forcibly settled in Ironheart, Coop’s people had lived in the Free Cities, which had been conquered by Blackstone.
“They call them Soul Eaters in nursery tales here,” said Rafe, slowly. “They pick off people in the dark one by one.”
Isabella
had told Pyotr to keep his house well-lit at all times.
He couldn’t imagine Isabella being worried about mere creatures of the imagination.
Unless they were not.
“But here’s the surprising thing. Guess who came out of the latticework to deal with our collapsed corpse problem? Rocquespur!”
Rafe stared. “What?”
“Not this one, but the previous one. The flamboyant, gregarious chap. Everyone liked him. He wore a golden coat and a diamond pin shaped like a bird I’d never seen and handed out sweets to all the children.” Coop smiled at the memory. “But he took care of the problem, the corpse disappeared—along with what caused it in the first place—and nobody talked about it ever again.
Especially
not my father.” Coop’s father was known for his stern demeanor and unyielding principles, and had served on the Ironheart Council for decades.
“So, what do you think of that?” said Coop, with the air of having pulled a gold coin out of Rafe’s ears.
“I think it’s time for me to go find a girl,” said Rafe. Isabella was the connection between Pyotr and Rocquespur, the old and new Marquises, him and the things in the dark. He tossed corals on the table. “Thanks, Coop!” and left, leaving his friend staring at him with baffled amusement.
R
AFE SAT AT A
table made out of pine boards salvaged from an old mill, surrounded by piles of yellowed paper. Earlier in the day, Uncle Leo’s people at the ministry had carted to his house all the surveying records they could lay their hands on—not just Oakhaven’s, but reports from Ironheart surveyors and scraps of information brought by fleeing Goldmoon refugees. Surveying was one of the of many grey areas that both the Ministry of Information (ruled by Leo Grenfeld) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (presided over by Rocquespur’s ally, Lord Mercersmith) had jurisdiction over. It took both Leo’s authority and Rafe’s wheedling of personal contacts to amass this mound of bureaucratic efficiency.
Leo had decided that Rafe should pursue his research in Leo’s own house, to safeguard his findings from Rocquespur’s spies. Leo had left around Wither for a high-level cabinet meeting to discuss the antimachinist threat and the disturbing reports of Blackstone troop movements. Leo’s manservant was also out, leaving Rafe alone in the house. Rafe had spent the last day and a half attempting to run Isabella to ground. Hatter in the Emerald Market reluctantly admitted he’d seen her a couple of times. A few more dealers confessed to having done business with her, but none could give any clue to her whereabouts. Rafe had bribed some street sweepers to keep watch on Rocquespur’s home and office for Isabella. Last of all, he’d alerted officials at the train station, the canals, and roads to keep an eye out for her.
He had the feeling she’d be bound for Ironheart soon enough.
There was nothing else he could do in the investigation of Pyotr’s death until more information came in. But Rafe was too wound up to sleep, meet up with friends, or catch up on mundane paperwork. He
had
to remain active, had to do something.
So he threw his mental energies into the matter of finding the Tors Lumena. He owed it to Pyotr and Berlioz, now both dead, to make something of the information they had given him.
Rafe jumped out of his chair and knelt beside a massive chart of the Barrens that took up most of the floor. Surveyors had been covering the same ground over centuries, crisscrossing across the tracks of expeditions gone by. The least he could do was narrow down the possibilities of where the Tors Lumena might be.
Something prickled the back of his neck. Rafe froze, compass and pencil still in hand. It felt as if someone had brushed by him, raising every hair on his skin to attention.
He looked uneasily at the mage lights recessed into the ceiling, remembering poor Pyotr in the dark and Coop’s talk of krin. But they burned steady and bright, showing no signs of sputtering out. Shimmer-made mage lights were known for the steadiness of their light, and Leo would have nothing but the best in his house. Rafe let out a breath, but the feeling of someone else’s presence in a house that should’ve been empty persisted. He put down his instruments and rose to his feet.