Authors: Jordan Reece
“It broke when I fell off my bicycle,” the man said. “I know what these are. I know what these are and I won’t deliver them. I’m sorry.”
The package in his hand was busted open, the rucaline visible inside. She felt dizzy at how badly this day was going. Pinched between his knuckles was the cash that she had given him. He opened up his satchel to show her the rest of the packages. “I don’t want anything to do with this. Drugs are dangerous. I came to give these back to you.” Something crashed from within the house, a lamp or a mirror shattering.
She didn’t believe for a minute that the package had opened by accident. He’d gotten curious and gone nosing. “Name your price,” she said flatly.
He looked at her in bewilderment. She was dealing with someone even less intelligent than Yvod. “A hundred per package?” she asked, switching to a coy smile to charm him. “Two hundred?” Perhaps he wanted a regular cut, to be the courier for every delivery. He wanted more money. It was always about money. “Three hundred? Your own courier company? Or would you like something else?” Her smile grew even coyer. She’d sleep with him if that was what it took, give him the time of his life and wrap him around her little finger so he’d do anything for her. Sex didn’t mean a thing to her and he was handsome enough.
It was apparent that he preferred men from how he didn’t react to her flirtatious smile. He tried to give her the busted package. When she didn’t take it, he said, “I’ll put them on the porch for you. Good night.”
“No!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t there any amount of money-”
“No, thank you,” he said.
He placed the broken package on the banister and reached into his satchel for another one. Voices boomed in the entryway. Stepping to the courier as he put down a second package by the first, Grance said in panic, “All right. But, please, will you put them in the stables for me? I would appreciate it very much.”
Jesco did not want to watch, but he had to. A little of Collier’s star burned within his inner eye, and part of his mind trained itself upon the shifting beams as Hasten Jibb returned the packages to his satchel. He went down the stairs to the garden, and Grance went back inside the house. She cut quickly through to the kitchen and dropped a casual reference to the couple having sex in the parlor. The two people eating shrimp snorted with laughter and went to see.
Grance’s hand . . . Jesco’s hand . . . went out to the spare knife in the side drawer. She slipped outside and headed for the stables, the blade hidden up her sleeve. Letting herself in, she closed the door for privacy. No one had parked in here, or could when the Eddpras had left their carriage in front of it.
The courier was looking for a place to put the packages down when there was no table or counter to hold them. She motioned to the corner, where he bent to stack them up neatly. When he was done, he turned and offered the cash. “And here’s your money.”
“Thank you,” she said, taking it, and stabbed him.
She did it twice, deeply and viciously with her mind as blank as the sky. She was just handling the problem. He cried out but no one heard. Everyone was in the house, the windows and doors closed. When he fell, she waited for him to still and let the blade drip on his shirt. Then she wiped it off on his trousers and checked herself over for blood spatter.
There was none. Now for the rucaline. She gathered up the packages and slipped out the back of the stables. In the gardener’s shed? Not safe. In a flowerpot? That could be smashed and the contents discovered. Snagging a spade from the shed, she covered her hand in a rag and hastily dug shallow holes in the soft earth beneath three of the bushes along the fence. There she buried the rucaline. Afterwards, she rid herself of the spade and rinsed off her hands with the hose.
Now for the body. She didn’t know what to do with that. Burying packages was one thing; a body was quite another. And the clothes . . . she had to do something about his clothes and satchel or else a seer could . . . She stripped him and hid everything in the shrubbery behind the stables.
Getting her father from the house, Grance brought him to the stables to see the naked body. She’d gone out for air, heard an odd sound from the backyard and headed over to identify the cause . . . sob, sob, clutch Papa’s arm . . . this crazy, naked man had appeared out of nowhere, came at her with that knife . . . no, she had never seen him in her life, Papa, he was a mental case and she’d managed to turn the knife back on him as they struggled . . . Papa, was she going to go to
prison
? . . .
No, baby, no
. . .
Papa, we can’t have the police here tonight. We can’t! I thought I saw Ailie with rucaline in there! I wasn’t sure; he was hiding it from everyone. Papa, what do we do? If the police search my house and find Ailie with any of that . . .
Papa had never been hard to play. She had seen through him since childhood. He liked to be the hero but those chances were few for a man who lived under the thumb of his father. Torrus Kodolli filled the room with his presence, dominated conversations and demanded everyone be his reflection or else he decimated them. Papa bridled beneath his outward compliance. That was why he fought so often with Yvod, who also filled the room and could not bear a pair of eyes to look elsewhere. Grance went to Papa with messes for him to fix and he leaped to the occasion, loving an opportunity to step from the shadows of both his father and son.
He could not resist a chance to be in charge, to call the shots, to be the big man. As she had calculated, he did exactly that. She hurried to fulfill his commands to go out to the road and make sure that no one had blocked in his carriage, and to find a spare rug, blanket, or tarp.
His carriage was at the curb and free to move. The party was still carrying on within the house but it would not be long . . . no, they did not have much time . . . She went inside and was thankful that everyone was still engaged in carousing. Taking her oversize throw from the back of the sofa, she sneaked back to the stables.
They wrapped up the body and blade together, Papa whispering that she was never, ever to invite Ailie to a party again. Grance shook her head fervently.
Never, Papa, never.
Then they cleaned up the blood with the gardener’s rags and carried the body out to the carriage. Darkness had fallen and no one was around but a wandering horse, which was grazing upon a neighbor’s lawn. No sooner had they shoved the body inside than the front door opened and two of her friends spilled out. “Grance, there you are! Grance, you’ve got to see what they’re doing now!”
Papa smiled tightly and hugged her. He hissed in her ear, “Go in there and pretend everything is fine. I’ll take care of this.”
. . . thank you, Papa . . .
. . . oh no, he has to go, my father is so sorry to be leaving, he wants to stay and have a good time, but he’s overtired . . . yes, the doctor thinks that he will be fine if he just takes it easy . . . he got his jollies from those trollops dancing and is that couple still going at it in the parlor . . . it’s three couples now? . . .
. . . laughter . . .
Jesco nudged to the bonfire, which Grance had set up as a cover to get rid of the bloody clothes and rags that she had tucked into the satchel. When they went up in flames, she was filled with relief. Nobody was interested in going into that dark corner behind the stables except to relieve themselves. The packages were not going to be discovered. That was where she should have put them in the first place!
But everything had worked out fine in the end. Drinks were pressed on her and burning down her throat and she danced . . . tomorrow morning she’d dig up the rucaline when everyone was gone, wipe off the dirt and get it in the post. Before she did anything, that had to get done. Not at your home, not on your person, and most assuredly not
in
your person . . . she’d been warned long ago how to stay safe in this game and she’d taken all of it to heart . . . the people who got caught always tripped up on one or more of those three rules.
Not her, however. Yvod and the courier had tried to trip her up, but she was still standing. The courier wasn’t, and Yvod wouldn’t be for much longer. He’d be wise to enjoy himself while he still could. The problems were being solved, and she gave herself over to revelry. Dancing and drinking and blindfolding a man before she pulled him away with her for play . . . he didn’t know who she was but her body excited him, his hands on her breasts, between her thighs, he pushed himself inside her and she lost herself in the crackling of the fire, the singing of the crickets and rhythmic grunting of her lover . . . as soon as he spilled his seed, she would fade away and he would always wonder which woman at the party he had been with . . . that was as pleasurable as the sex to her, to deny him her identity . . .
Jesco nudged. She had worn the earrings three times since the murder, her new favorites, but the memories held nothing of interest and then . . . she disappeared.
He blinked and trembled, Scoth pulling the earring away. Jesco was on the floor of the car, his hands crossed over his chest and his head balanced on Scoth’s knees. Scoth was being vigilant that his trousers did not touch the back of Jesco’s neck. Beneath Jesco was a blanket, presumably a new one from the supplies car. His bare skin upon it was not triggering a thrall. Crammed beside them in the narrow aisle was Cheffie. He was putting a sterile bandage over the stab wound, his hands in gloves.
“I saw her do it,” Jesco said, weak from his wound or the thrall, or a combination of the two. A spare pair of gloves was resting on his chest, and he put them on shakily. “Grance Dolgange murdered Hasten Jibb in her stables during the party, and Morgan Kodolli took the body away in his carriage.”
“And Yvod?” Scoth asked.
“Yvod Kodolli brought the rucaline to her house that afternoon. He wasn’t supposed to do that; the delivery was supposed to arrive within a shipment of carriage parts at her husband’s store. But he was not present at the murder, nor did he have prior knowledge of it.”
“Tallo Quay? Anything about him? Or the timepiece?”
“Nothing about Tallo Quay, but she hasn’t owned these earrings long. And there was nothing about the timepiece. That must have come from Morgan.”
“I want your ablest men and women working on board this train,” Scoth said in a stentorian voice to Cheffie. “We will search car to car and take them into custody. As soon as we arrive in Port Adassa, I want their police station notified and a barred carriage sent to transfer them to a holding cell. Do you have a nurse or doctor on board?”
“That’s me, too,” Cheffie said apologetically. “I don’t think he’ll die from this, but I’ll call over the medical carriage at the port station to take him to the hospital.”
Jesco could feel his legs, but could hardly crook them at the knee. Still, he could turn his head just fine and raise his arms. He would need his wheelchair for a short time, but that was back in freight and inaccessible until they arrived. He closed his eyes as Cheffie said, “We can get Brant from the third class cars, Margo too, they’re the closest. If they’re not in those cars, the next attendant up will be Hankum. He deals with a lot of our drunks-”
-he was-
-he was-
-he was Laeric—
Jesco looked so pale and it was stupid,
stupid
to have brought him along, to involve him in a fight when one touch could flatten him . . . if something worse had happened then Jesco was going to walk with Laeric and that would sting more than all the rest put together . . .
The thrall broke as Jesco was heaved upwards. He found his feet, though they would not hold his weight, and the two men helped him through the post car to the luggage buckets. Clearing a space between the last bucket and the shelving units, Scoth set him down and said, “I’ll be back. I promise. We’re going to throw all three of them in the brig and then I’ll find you a better seat than this one.”
“Don’t let me walk with you,” Jesco said, pulling the blanket around his chest. “Let me go, Laeric. When it’s time, no matter how it comes about, just let me go. I won’t be leaving with regrets, so don’t have any for me.” Scoth looked stricken as Cheffie vanished around the staggered banks.
He pressed a rough kiss to Jesco’s forehead. “You’ll walk with me always,” he said, and backed away to go after the train guard.
Jesco was not worried. He had every confidence in how it was going to play out, Scoth and a fleet of train employees searching the cars, descending upon Grance and Yvod and cuffing them. Hauling them to the brig with their father to wait out the last of the journey to Port Adassa. This case was ending at last, even if there were still some loose ends to tidy up.
. . . she had been a very bad girl . . .
. . . a scholar! Doesn’t it feel fine! Go to school today, Taniel, go to . . .
. . . Hold on tight to my back and I’ll swim across! . . .
. . . chase! They were catching up, the fairies and flamingos and . . .
. . . everything in the world is a bloody menace to you . . .
No, that last one was Jesco’s. That was a real memory. The world shifted all around him, whirling pools of memories rising from the floor and all of them wanting him to look in. He stared ahead to the image of Laeric Scoth and the world steadied as he slipped into sleep.
He woke up in a hospital bed, the sheets so new that they had creases. Still dressed in his trousers but with an equally new gown for a shirt, he blinked blearily. The table beside him held a glass of water in his personal cup. Pushed up beside the bed was his wheelchair. He had scant memories of getting from the train to the hospital, or how long it had been, and his stab wound had somehow gotten stitched with him unaware.
Out the window, the sky was gray. It was very early morning, and he was in need of the lavatory. He got out of the bed, tested his legs, and found that they held. Going to the door, he saw the lavatory straight across the hallway. No one was inside.
When he stepped out, he went to the nurses’ station to quietly ask what was going on. Every room he’d passed held sleeping patients. There was a message for him, which one nurse read out loud. “All three suspects have been detained. Will stop by when I can. Signed, Laeric. Postscript: don’t touch anything.” The nurse put down the message. “Well, that’s not very nice, is it?”
Jesco had taken it very differently. “He’s just brusque. It isn’t meant poorly.” The nurse did not look convinced. Since there was nothing else to do, and his legs were weak, he took himself back to bed.
By morning he was feeling much better. After breakfast he walked to the hospital’s common room and took a seat. The view from the big windows was of the sea. He had seen it many times through other people’s memories, but this was the first time as himself. Waves rolled in, their crests white as they crashed to the sand. Seagulls called and swooped through the sky as holiday-goers walked along the beach with umbrellas over their shoulders to keep off the sun. Children crafted sand castles and darted in and out of the shallow fans of water to spread over the shore with each wave. It was a beautiful, entrancing scene, the beating of the waves coming through the glass as a steady, soothing rumble. Jesco could not look away. When he was stronger, he wanted to stroll down to that beach and watch the ships trailing along the horizon.
That was where Scoth found him sometime later. The night had been long and it didn’t look like the detective had spent much of it sleeping. The products he used in his hair had lost their control, so he was a rumpled yet riveting mess. Falling into the armchair beside Jesco, he said, “We got them. We got them on everything.”
“I’m glad,” Jesco said. “Do you need me to touch a belonging of Morgan Kodolli’s to get his memories about Hasten Jibb’s body?”
“No. He confessed. He doesn’t want a seer touching him. The demons know what else you’d dig up. I’m sure you’ve got a thousand questions, but I’m too tired to think so just let me ramble as it comes to me. How about I start with Kyrad’s erstwhile escort Tallo Quay? So the fellow went to the theater to talk to Torrus Kodolli, who sent him away. That much was true. Morgan was there that night, and saw it for himself. What the old man failed to mention was that he arranged to meet up with Quay at Agrea’s Cantercaster office later that night. It isn’t far from the theater, and they don’t use that office. Most of what’s in it is storage, years of old paperwork and the like that nobody needs but hasn’t gotten rid of yet. One room is still set up as a conference space, and that’s what you saw, the chandelier hanging over the table. What you didn’t see was how much dust was all over everything, and that there were heaps of boxes, stacks of ledgers, and old file cabinets lining the walls. Quay came in and shared his dirt, and he pushed that timepiece over the table to prove he had a real connection to Naphates.
“But Torrus Kodolli doesn’t play those games, his son told me. If Quay would sell out Naphates, he’d sell out Kodolli once something better came along. Kodolli hates disloyalty, even if it hasn’t happened yet. He wasn’t about to help a turncoat. The old man had his bodyguards strangle Quay and take his body away in Morgan’s carriage. The remains were buried in the fields behind the home Torrus Kodolli keeps in Cantercaster. Apparently, Quay is not the only one out there. Missing union organizers, prosties who saw too much, people threatening to cause the old man trouble . . . we’re going to be digging up those fields real soon.”
“Was it Torrus Kodolli who sent those riders after us in Somentra?” Jesco asked.
“No. That was Morgan. Don’t ask questions,” Scoth groused.
Jesco smiled and let him continue. “The bodyguards forgot to take the timepiece along when they went off with Quay’s corpse. It had gotten knocked off the table, still in its case, during the struggle. Morgan found it when he was going over the scene to make sure nothing of Quay was left. Since the place is storage that no one goes into, the old man just kicked the case with the timepiece in it behind the boxes. Then they left in his carriage and the affair was done.”
“They should have thrown it out!” Jesco exclaimed.
“It didn’t seem pressing to them. No one was going to find it there. The low-level employees of Agrea don’t have keys to that office, nor do most of the high-level employees. None of them had any reason to take a carriage over to that office. Like I said, all that’s in there are reams of old paperwork, broken equipment and extra furniture. It’s junk. Junk that needs to get sorted through, trashed or donated, and no one’s bothered with it in many years. The company just pays for the space rather than put in the time to discard everything. It was very late at night by that point and the old man wanted to go home. So that was the end of Tallo Quay, and how the timepiece transferred to Torrus Kodolli.”
Beside the nonstop hurly-burly of human activity, the waves rolled in peacefully and had all along. Every breath that Jesco had taken upon this world had been with this lovely, tireless ocean curling and uncurling its rippled blue skirts unseen. They watched it, Scoth stifling a yawn.
Pulling off his glove, Jesco put his hand over Scoth’s. Fighting off another yawn, Scoth said, “I think, in a strange way, that Morgan was happy to rat out his father. He has lived in that man’s shadow all his life. Taken his orders, bent over backwards to please him, and all to be told that the deceased brother Flike had showed a lot more promise for business. Morgan is a petty, jealous, vindictive man. But then you look at his father, and you understand why. Anyway, Quay was buried, and his timepiece forgotten in that office. Life went on. The old man kept his company going and pried a little into the background of the Parliament members slipping Naphates favors. But Morgan thought his father was hesitant to go on the attack. Naphates is well liked, and he’s got so much dirt of his own that he doesn’t want pried into and dug up. An attack would have to be elegantly designed, and Torrus Kodolli is getting on in years. Losing some of his fangs, Morgan said. But perhaps his father
is
designing something, and hasn’t thought to inform or involve Morgan. That’s also possible. Torrus doesn’t confide in his lesser son. That’s neither here nor there.”
“But the article that went after her . . .”
Scoth gave him an irritated look, but turned his hand over and interlocked their fingers at the same time. “There was a family kerfuffle going on around the same time as Quay’s murder. The old man was sick of seeing Yvod’s name in the papers for acting like a hooligan, and was tired of paying all his court fees. Yvod couldn’t go three months without getting into fresh trouble, and his grandfather was shelling out left and right to shut people up and lower his sentences. What was printed in the papers was nothing compared to what the old man paid to keep out of them. He wanted Yvod to show initiative, get involved in the family business or take a job elsewhere. Just do
something
more than drinking and fighting and whoring, and costing his grandfather money. Torrus Kodolli has worked every day of his life for well over sixty years, and he can’t stand that his own grandson hasn’t worked a single day ever. He cut off Yvod and Grance both. They were receiving extremely generous allowances on a monthly basis.”
“Why Grance as well?”
“Same reason minus the trouble. The old man makes money and those two do nothing but spend it, whether it’s on court fees or jewelry shopping or ritzy vacations. He wanted them to take some pride in themselves, learn the value of a dollar, because one day the company will pass on to them. But Yvod couldn’t even graduate from university, he failed out of three different schools, and Grance graduated but she’s never shown any interest in picking up the torch. They don’t want to work like they see their grandfather and father do. They’re spoiled rotten since the cradle. Anything they’ve ever wanted, they’ve gotten. Up until their grandfather cut off their allowance in the hopes that it would propel them to become adults.”
“It didn’t,” Jesco observed.
“It didn’t,” Scoth repeated. “It was too late for that. Until he brought down the hammer on their allowance, Grance had just been handling a little rucaline. It was something she got involved in when she and Yvod were at Nuiten. It wasn’t so much about the money for her as it was the thrill. The thrill of outwitting law enforcement; the thrill of getting away with it. She slipped it into the country and gave it to the dealer, who did the dirty work on the streets and handed back a stack of bills. After she lost her family money, she got married fast to the wealthiest man she could convince to put a ring on her finger. That won her a beautiful home in Melekei and plenty of money to spend, but not the exponential amounts that she was accustomed to living upon. She expanded her rucaline business greatly as a result.”
“The neighbor heard the husband complaining about how much she spent.”
“The Dolganges are a rich family, but they live rather on the modest side compared to how they could. She’d run through the money Dircus gave her, run through her rucaline money, and be at loose ends until more came in. She has entire storage spaces around Melekei and Cantercaster filled with clothes and furniture and jewelry. She has to eat at the best restaurants and stay in the most expensive rooms at the finest hotels. She grew up like that and that’s how she intended to keep living. That was how she went from one dealer to twelve, and she had plans to take it further than that. And no, the husband doesn’t know a thing about the rucaline, before you ask. She kept him in the dark, as well as her father and grandfather, and everyone in her social circle save her brother. Rucaline was the perfect business to her perspective: she did very little yet made money hand over fist, just as long as she didn’t get caught. And then Yvod interrupted the system of delivery to bring it to her house personally the day of the party.”
“She panicked,” Jesco said.
“She adores the thrill, but she’s no fool. She knows damn well what happens to rucaline distributors. She and Yvod were looking at life imprisonment. She wanted it gone and paid Jibb handsomely to take it away. But then he came back and she killed him.” Scoth shook his head. “She’s one of the cold ones. Stone cold. There’s no heart beating behind that breast, that’s for certain. Her father was distraught at times in his interrogation; her brother showed some worry, although most of it was for himself. He didn’t know that Hasten Jibb got murdered that night. But she was flat when she talked. Completely flat. Committing murder was nothing to her. She doesn’t care a whit about who Jibb was. He just got in her way. That people lose their minds on rucaline is nothing to her either. Then they shouldn’t have taken it. That’s how she thinks. It’s not her problem. She wrapped up the body, sent it off with her father in the carriage, and that was that.”
“Mercy,” Jesco pleaded. “Tell me about the timepiece.”
Scoth sighed and acquiesced. “As she went back into the party to suggest a bonfire, Morgan Kodolli went off with Jibb’s body. He had no idea that Hasten Jibb was actually a courier. He had taken his daughter’s word for it that this was just a homeless, crazed bum wandering naked around Melekei who had attempted to assault his daughter. Melekei has had a lot of problems with miscreants, problems that they’ve been trying to quash with more security at the outskirts of the city. Morgan rolled out of Melekei, looking for a place to dump Jibb and not wanting to take the body to those fields and bury it. Then he’d have to involve his father in this. And as he was sitting within the carriage, he had an idea.”
Scoth took a moment to stretch and Jesco glowered at him. “He knew that Kyrad Naphates was up for that liaison position, but it was a lot more personal than that. After Cluven Naphates died all those years ago and she inherited, the old man offered to buy the mines and she refused. So he ordered his son to bedazzle her. Morgan was a strapping young buck at the time, and his father didn’t think it would take much to sweep a silly girl off her feet.”
Kyrad stirred within Jesco’s memories. She adored her entertainments, that much was true, yet there was nothing silly about her. “But she was quite determined to not get married again.”
“And that doomed him to failure in his attempt to woo. He pulled out all the stops: flowers and gifts in the post, poems at a party and a fancy dinner just for two. She was the most beautiful woman in Ainscote, she had the company his father was after, and Morgan wanted her badly. He thought they would be the sharpest couple in the country, splashed on the front page of society papers, and invited everywhere to meet the best people. But his dreams came to nothing. She didn’t want him back. As the son of the man who owns Agrea, he’s not used to women who say no. All he’s ever had to do is flash his last name and his wealth, and women fight to be on his arm. He was handsome once but nothing to look at now, yet that’s true to this day.
Kodolli
is a magic word. He’s proud of who he is.