The Seer (12 page)

The storm came and went in spurts, but it was building. Jesco could feel it in the air, a heavy anticipation that something stronger was brewing. It was going to last for days, according to the forecast. The sky was a sweep of dark gray from one end to the other, and as evening got underway, it became even darker. “I remember storms like these from when I was a boy,” Jesco said. “I lived on a farm. They smashed the crops flat.”

Scoth didn’t say anything. Jesco asked, “Where did you grow up?”

“Why do you want to know?”

It was hard to imagine somber Laeric Scoth as a boy. “So that I can know you.”

After a moment of silence, Scoth said, “Korval. You’ve never heard of it. No one has. It’s an out-of-the-way town along an eastern branch of the Razille River.”

“How did you get all the way to Cantercaster?”

“A lot of the towns and villages farther out have no official police force. It’s a passel of mayor’s sons and rich merchants’ daughters strutting about in uniforms to maintain order, and creating as much mayhem as they profess to restrain. They don’t know the first thing about an investigation. I wanted to gain a true education of crime and justice, so I applied to every university with a program for law enforcement in Ainscote.”

“How many did you get into?”

“One, but the best one, in my opinion. Nuiten. That was how I got to Cantercaster, and I stayed.”

When the autohorse reached the inn, Jesco stepped out into torrents of rain and was soaked in the time it took him to reclaim his suitcase and run to the front door. Scoth was a step in front of him, his lighter bag thrown over his shoulder, and he opened the door for Jesco in a hurry. They entered a warm foyer with cushioned chairs beside a fire, and a high ceiling with carved wooden beams.

Sheets had been laid down inside for wet travelers, and they walked atop them all the way to the counter. The innkeeper sent out a girl to board the autohorse in the barn and gave them a cheeky grin. “One room then?”

Startled, Scoth said, “Two, please.”

They had dinner in the side room, the waiter giving Jesco a curious look when he used his personal utensils, and then went upstairs to locate their rooms. They were directly across from one another. After unlocking his door, Jesco hesitated in the doorway and called out, “Did you go to Shining Water the day that you visited the lord and the woman with the whirly-gigs?”

Scoth was in his room and closing his door. Cracking it wider, he said, “No.”

“Jibb went there every morning, his mother told us.”

“It didn’t sound like he did anything there but eat.”

“The staff would know for sure, though. Perhaps he made a connection there. A bad one. If Rosendrie turns out to be nothing . . .”

“I’ll add it to the list,” Scoth said. “Will you be all right in there? I won’t come in tomorrow morning and find you in thrall from the sink?”

“I can take care of myself, thank you,” Jesco said.

“Better than you did in the alley, at any rate.”

It stung, but it was a fair dart for the detective to throw. “It can be hard at times to work with people who can’t stand me for being a seer, Scoth. You were talking to the others like I wasn’t even there, and I lost my temper.”

Scoth cocked his head like he couldn’t quite remember the particulars of the incident. Then he grimaced. “It was being there. Trying to direct an investigation in that poisoned place, remembering every minute or so that that kolymbium was sinking into us. My mind was in twists. It wasn’t anything to do with you.” He nudged the door back and forth. “I can’t speak for the rest, but I stand you just fine.”

The door clicked shut and his shadow vanished from the crack beneath it. Jesco went into his room, wishing that he had been more professional in the alley. To be in Poisoners’ Lane had put them all on edge. He was looking into a tidy, snug room at the inn but seeing that mat of trash and low-hanging, nail-studded beams superimposed upon it. And the body, naked and punctured . . .

Though his mind was with Hasten Jibb, he fixed up the room for himself. His sheets, his pillow, and his blanket went on the bed; his spare towels covered the sides of the sink and the top of the nightstand. It was not until the room was made as safe as it could be that he dressed for bed. Once within it, he doused the lamp with his hand covered, and rested in the darkness.

It was not truly rest when the corpse appeared every time he closed his eyes. Reaching down to his bag, he searched through the contents and pulled out his star. He leaned it against the lamp and stared at its twinkling.

Scoth was such a handsome man. The thought crowded in with the star and Jesco let it stay. Peace overcame him and he fell asleep.

Chapter Six

It should have taken one day to reach Rosendrie, but the storm made it two. Roads were washed out, invisible beneath roaring rivers that could not be safely forded. Scoth was forced to reconfigure the destination cards to a route on higher land. It took them miles out of their way, yet travel was swifter there.

The autohorse clopped on indefatigably through rain and hail and lightning alike, yet still came to a sudden stop on the high road. Cursing under his breath, Scoth went out to see what was wrong now. A tree had fallen, blocking their way, and an hour was spent in taking turns with a small axe to chop it apart and push it down a ravine.

Otherwise, the trip was surprisingly pleasant. Jesco took a page from Tammie’s book, modified it, and just talked like he didn’t expect Scoth to reply. The asylum gave him a wide variety of stories, from little Nelle and her collar to the ruined rucaline patients, the nurses and attendants and their lives, the out of control foliage always threatening to drown the building and its grounds in flowers. There had been the day when Jesco was fourteen that an aviator fought a battle with the wind and lost, bringing down her balloon in the garden. And then there was the night when a mental patient tried to burn down the asylum and sent them all out into the streets, coughing from the smoke and in their pajamas, and some in less than that. Jesco had been confined to bed at the time and too weak to even climb into his wheelchair, let alone steer himself out. He’d been deeply touched at how ten people from nurses to patients came hurtling into his room to help. His asylum family was good to him. Not one person had perished in the fire, everyone making sure that everyone else got out.

It was that story which provoked more than a nod from Scoth, who said, “I didn’t believe you boarded with the criminally insane.”

“We don’t,” Jesco said. “That patient had no record until that point, and he was removed at once to a more secure setting.”

“They go to Linvus Institute in Glensporra, the dangerous ones. I’ve caught a few who ended up there: a woman who murdered both her mother and her daughter; a man who liked to catch old folks, tie them up, and set them on fire. There was some debate over Mantis Man, if that was where he should have gone instead of Crofthollow Prison.”

“What do you think?”

“Four walls and a locked door was as much as I cared what happened to him.”

“But if you were the judge?”

Scoth considered it. “If I were the judge, I would have called it for Crofthollow just like how it went. There aren’t any medications to make him better. There isn’t a head doctor alive with a cure. At Linvus, they would try. It’s a waste of time and energy. His mental disorder is severe and unfixable, and he will always present a grave threat to those around him. At least locked up in Crofthollow, he’s surrounded by men who pose just as grave a threat to him. But you’ve seen into them, haven’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve seen into their minds, people like that.” Scoth shifted in his seat as hail tapped on the roof of the carriage. “You’ve been them, briefly. I know what they do; I know why they do it; but I can’t feel it.”

“You don’t want to feel it,” Jesco said. Indeed he had ridden about in those darkened souls now and then, and they made him shiver.

“But how do they feel?”

“They feel . . . free. Freed from the bonds of love and friendship, of the happiness and sorrow those ties can induce. None of these things they understand in any more than the most shallow of contexts. They know that these matters are important above all else to people, yet not to themselves. And because they are free, they are superior. This is how it is in their heads. They are proud to be who they are, of their remove from regular human affairs. They feel no qualms at stealing a purse, or setting someone on fire. People exist for them to take things from, you see, and they cannot empathize with the distress of their victims since they feel no distress themselves. People aren’t real to their perspective. No more real than animated dolls, there to be manipulated at leisure.”

“Please go on,” Scoth said when Jesco stopped.

Jesco called up the strongest memories that he had experienced. “Let me say it this way: what frees them also binds them. It leaves them with a void, and they seek to fill it. There was a man I walked within, a very attractive, charming man who hated the strictures of work yet loved to be surrounded by fineries, so he pursued rich and gullible women who could give him what he craved. He lived about a hundred years ago.”

“What was it about an honest day’s work he hated specifically?”

“Being told what to do, being expected to do things. Not being in control. To not be in control makes them rage. And they are toddler-like creatures in some regards: they can’t stand to wait for what they want. They want it now. Why can’t they have it
now
? They want it, they deserve it, and that means they should have it at once. He wasn’t going to work hard and save up for years when he had another way to accomplish his goal. A short cut.”

“So he chased those rich women.”

“It was irrelevant to him that some were married, or even married with small children. It was irrelevant that others were decades older and uninterested. People really were just dolls for him to play with. He worked obsessively at wriggling into their lives, and then he drained them. If one of his women ran out of money, he simply moved on and found another. If one caught on to what he was doing, he was enraged to be confronted. He felt their riches were his due. He left behind him ruined marriages, broken children, empty purses, and blithely did it all over again until he was old. Then the last woman had him evicted from her home, leaving him with no one and nothing. No longer could he enchant anyone with his looks, and he had to go to a poorhouse. Even in his last years, he was trying to finagle extra food and goods for himself. Stealing from the weak and dying, and getting beaten by younger men who caught him at it. A sorry life. Many of them end up like that. Alone and penniless, with a wide swath of destruction behind them.”

They passed a sign welcoming them to Rosendrie. The loveliness of it could not be concealed by the gray sky and streaking rain. Every home upon the blocks was stately; every road was paved and braced by white sidewalks. As Jesco enjoyed the prettiness of the place, Scoth tidied up the paperwork of timepiece orders and said, “I was in court to testify against a murderer a year ago. I said nothing more than the truth and he stood up so violently that the chair tipped over behind him. He pointed a finger at me and shouted
how dare you?
How dare you?
He had to be muzzled for the trial to continue. That was what he meant, I suppose, from what you said. How dare I confront him about what he had done when he could do whatever he wanted? He had that right.”

“That’s generally how a mind like that works.” After Scoth tucked the file away, Jesco said, “We weren’t in Poisoners’ Lane in our first case with that woman dead in her garden.”

“No, we were not. You were just being a pompous little prick.”

“I thought the same of you.”

It had grown easier between them, and Scoth again had one of his almost-smiles that waned before it waxed. “And now we’re older and wiser, and still pricks, eh?”

Jesco laughed. “Yes, still pricks.”

“I learned not to hang so much of myself upon one hook there. A detective has his pet theories, but a seer can blast them from the water with a thrall.”

He looked over expectantly, a teasing quirk to his lips, and Jesco said, “And I learned that detectives have egos as we all do, and to be more gentle when declaring a murderer.”

“You were so ruddy pleased with yourself, and all I could see was my entire education in the criminal process falling to pieces at my feet. You saw what I could not.”

“It was no comment on your education.”

“But I would have happily placed the wrong man in cuffs, and testified to land him in prison. To have my judgment proven so misguided was a shock. You can undermine everything. If only every detective could do as you do . . . but I would not have your vision, even so. The burden of sight at those crimes . . . I am heavy enough without it. I understand why those with seersight refuse to work with it lest they lose their sanity.”

The rain stopped. The autohorse was now leading them down a lovely lane lined with cherry trees. Pastures stood beyond them, soaked and crumpled from the deluge with standing pools in the lowest points. Avenues wound away from the road here and there, and all of them led to tall manors in the distance. They put to shame the first homes that Jesco had seen in Rosendrie. Those were only fine; these were masterpieces of architecture and wealth.

“Perhaps this woman killed Jibb, and sent a strong servant or two out in a carriage to dump the body,” Scoth said. “They might not have known that they were within the dead zone when they pulled Jibb into the alley.”

“Why doesn’t the government put up a fence around those blocks?”

“They did that several times, and posted guards to walk the perimeter. But those guards walked off the job in fear, and people stole the boards and bricks or knocked them down. It was seen as a waste of money when it kept happening. So they hung some signs at the roads leading in to the poisoned area, warning to go no further, and that’s all. Luckily, that part of Wattling is off most of the main routes.”

Jesco hadn’t seen those signs, but he had been within the police carriage and talking to Sinclair. “I suppose the people who live there remember well what happened, and stay away without encouragement. It’s plausible that the person to dump the body might not have known where he was. It was night. But would a servant have owned that timepiece?”

“Kyrad Naphates does appear to give them out quite readily.” The autohorse turned down an avenue, its feet splashing loudly in puddles. “We shall soon find out.”

At the end of the avenue was a driving ring centered about a fountain. It was overflowing from the rainfall, the small basin on top dripping down to the wider basin beneath, and that in turn seeping into the large one on the bottom. From there, it splashed down into the pool and dripped over the side to the pavement. Lights within the water dyed the streams a purplish cast. The purple became yellow, and then green.

The manor was a flawless construction, white and with a pale yellow trim. The windows ran from floor to ceiling, and the curtains were pulled back to reveal beautiful rooms on two stories. The porch was generous, as were the balconies, and several chimneys puffed smoke into the air.

The front door opened as Jesco and Scoth got out of the carriage. A butler stepped out in a pressed black suit and inclined his head in polite bewilderment. “Forgive me, gentlemen. I was not informed that we were expecting anyone.”

“I am Detective Laeric Scoth with the Cantercaster Police Force,” Scoth said. “We would like to speak to Mrs. Kyrad Naphates. Is she home?”

“The police! May I see some form of identification?”

Scoth showed his badge to the astonished butler, who ushered them in and left them in a drawing room with a promise that he would return at once. On a side table was a weather-catcher just like Jesco’s. It showed a tapering rain. Beside it was a clock, which Jesco passed over with indifference until something drew him back. The second hand was passing over a carving identical to the one on the timepiece. Wheat reached up to a cloudy sky, which was strewn with flowers. “Scoth, look.”

The detective took note of it. Footsteps returned down the hallway and the butler peered in at them. “Mrs. Naphates will receive you in the great room.”

He led them through lighted corridors, each bearing nooks that held paintings of pastoral scenes. Through an open door was a second, larger drawing room full of cherry wood furniture and decorative glass. No one was in it now, but that was where the timepiece had been given as a gift.

The butler pushed open double doors and admitted them to a cavernous room holding a dozen people. Several were crowded around a billiards table, shouting and laughing and too engaged in their game to notice the new arrivals. A servant came in from a side door, her tray loaded with drinks, and aimed for the table.

Two men were reading upon armchairs, one lazily turning a carrel full of books with his foot. It squeaked with every rotation. Both of them were good-looking fellows, one dark and one fair, and Jesco looked back to the billiards game. The four people there were uncommonly attractive as well, the men young, muscular, and dressed impeccably, and the woman equally lovely in her blue gown.

The butler was taking them to the far corner, where people were sprawled upon couches and chortling. Kyrad Naphates was among them, sitting in a careless posture upon a voluminous golden armchair. A wine glass was cradled in the palm of her hand, the stem hanging down between her fingers. She was older than Jesco had seen from his visions, and a tad heavier, but still radiant. A few locks of her hair hung over her breasts and the rest tumbled over the armrest and spilled down like a living flame. Her dress was long and white, and bore a golden belt that sparkled in the light.

Looking away from her companions, she beckoned to Scoth and Jesco with ringed fingers. Her expression was mild and puzzled. “The police, you say?” she asked as they came close. She motioned at the man upon the closest couch to move aside. He did so at once and she gestured for them to sit down. Putting aside her wine, she said, “How may I help you, gentlemen? Would you care for any refreshments?”