by D. K. Fields
‘The Hook is on a barge?’ Cora said.
‘You could say it’s our year.’
Crossing onto the deck, Cora did her best to ignore the slight motion of the river beneath her. The barge itself was dominated by a single sizable structure, like a one-room house made of wood. They stepped into near-darkness. At the centre of the room was a brown leather bag, like a stitcher’s, sitting atop a stone plinth that was roped off on all sides. A lone lamp illuminated it. Cora wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this.
‘This is it, your Hook?’ she whispered.
‘So I’m told,’ Finnuc said.
Once she was over her initial surprise, she had to admit the Hook did have a certain quiet power. She felt it in those around her, the small group who’d been ushered inside at the same time, and in the air of the barge. A tension, a tightness, a question hanging there, until Finnuc gave it a form.
‘Wonder whose blood it is.’
The bag’s handles had a smattering of red stains. She leant closer and caught the tang of metal in the air.
On the opposite side of the plinth, other visitors peered at the Hook, and more were pushing their way in from the gangway. Everyone strained for a glimpse. Apart from one person. Small, hooded, clinging to the far wall rather than trying to get closer. Whoever this person was, the Hook was already known to them. It wasn’t a draw.
Cora stepped back to let others take her place near the plinth. Finnuc was talking to one of the Commission ushers, and she took the chance to circle the plinth, slowly, pretending she was heading for the door.
When she got close enough to grab the figure’s wrist, she saw the inkings there, and then she understood.
The Casker storyteller. Nullan was her name, if Cora remembered that morning’s pennysheet rightly.
‘Brave, stupid, or both?’ Cora said quietly to the woman, fumbling for her badge with her free hand.
‘I wanted to see what people were making of our Hook,’ the Casker said in hushed tones. Her face was only half visible from the edge of her hood. ‘You can put that badge away. I saw you with the Commission boy just before. I know who you work for.’
‘And I’ve seen a dead storyteller lying on a stitcher’s slab,’ Cora hissed. ‘Are you looking to join him? Ento’s killer is still out there. What if they decide they fancy seeing the Hook too? If someone here should recognise you, no hood is going to keep you safe.’
‘Would you, Detective? Would you keep me safe?’
‘I’d try,’ Cora said. The Commission ushers called for them to move on – their time was up. Cora took hold of the storyteller’s arm and escorted her to the exit. ‘I’d try, just like I’m trying now.’
‘Then try harder. Find who did this, find who hurt Nicholas.’
Hurt him? There’d been worse done to him than hurt.
‘You knew Ento?’ Cora said.
‘I… yes, I knew him.’
They stepped off the barge and into the sunlight.
‘You knew him,’ Cora repeated uselessly, and then she understood. The way the woman’s voice had caught just before she said ‘Nicholas’. That she couldn’t bring herself to say what had really happened to him. ‘He went to see you that night, didn’t he?’
It was a guess, but as Nullan’s silence dragged on, Cora knew she was right.
‘I told him not to,’ Nullan said eventually. ‘That we had to stop once the election started.’
‘What happened?’
‘I waited all night for him, worrying. I knew something was wrong.’
‘You’re saying he never arrived?’
She fought free of Cora’s grip. ‘I’m not saying it – that’s what happened.’
‘Can anyone else speak to that?’
‘Just what are you implying? You can’t… I loved him.’
People were starting to notice their little discussion, starting to stare. This was the last thing Cora wanted. She’d meant what she said about the killer visiting the Hook.
‘Calm down,’ Cora told Nullan through gritted teeth. ‘You don’t want a scene and neither do I. Where were you and Ento due to meet?’
Before Nullan could answer, there was a wall of purple between Cora and the storyteller. Two Commission staff. Both women. Neither looked accommodating. Cora pulled out her badge but, just as in the queue, it did little good.
‘Storyteller Nullan has a tale to prepare,’ said one of the purple-clad women.
‘I’d say she does,’ Cora muttered.
The woman grasped Nullan’s elbow, making the storyteller wince. ‘We’ll escort you back to your lodgings, where you won’t be disturbed.’
Nullan was led away without any further fuss, soon lost in the crowd. Cora had to trust that the storyteller wouldn’t be hard to find in an official capacity, if it came to that. Though she’d have to get past the Commission security to reach the storyteller, even though she was a Commission employee herself! But there was the Commission and then there was the Commission. Her mother had never tired of making the distinction between the parts of it that mattered and the parts that didn’t.
Cora turned back to the barge. The Casker and Wayward storytellers together, doing much more than telling stories. It was hard to imagine. There were probably rules against it, knowing the Commission. And if Nullan was lying, she might have been the last person to see Ento alive. Or the first to see him dead.
‘Who was that?’ Finnuc said, easing beside her.
‘You wouldn’t believe me, even if I told you.’
Few would. Hearst? Sillian? The Wayward Chambers? Would any of them believe that Cora’s one lead, maybe even her one suspect, was the Casker storyteller?
Ten
Patron’s Mount was teeming.
Cora and Jenkins had set off from the station early in hopes of beating the crowds, but they might as well have stayed at Bernswick and done some work. The stack of papers on Cora’s desk was getting tall enough to challenge the Poet’s Spire, and she was dodging Sillian whenever she could. She had nothing for the chief inspector – at least, nothing she felt certain enough about to say out loud.
‘Caskers have drawn the crowds this year,’ Jenkins said.
To Cora, the square mile of the Mount looked like a carcass covered in flies: the black flecks buzzing to and fro.
‘Fenest can smell blood,’ Cora said.
‘What do you mean?’
What did she mean? Was it the red stains on the bag the Caskers had used for their Hook? Or the death of the Wayward storyteller? Or, worse still, the chance another ’teller might be killed – right there, on the Mount? Cora didn’t want to know what odds the chequers were giving on that. Jenkins was looking at her now, concerned.
‘The Hook, the bag,’ Cora said. ‘From the ’sheets I’ve read, that mystery has everyone excited. And today we find out why.’
As their gig made its slow way down the busy road, Cora could see people gathering all along the perimeter fence. Men and women of the Union who couldn’t get a place in the public gallery. They wouldn’t be able to hear the story from the fence, but they’d see the storyteller in the distance, and that would be something to tell their neighbours.
‘It’ll be hot for them today,’ Jenkins said, looking up at the cloudless sky, shielding her eyes. ‘For the voters, I mean.’
‘Hotter than for the rest of us? Does the sun shine on them specially, Constable?’
‘Anyone in a robe is going to feel the heat. This sun.’
‘Chambers too, then,’ Cora said.
‘But the fifty voters will have it worse. They’ve got to wear the masks as well.’
‘Something to tell the Amateur then, isn’t it? Unlucky enough to be drawn from the voting pool on a hot day.’ Cora wiped her face. ‘Hope it’s worth the sweat.’
The gig lurched to a stop and Commission staff dressed in purple tunics climbed onto the gig’s steps, demanding to see their papers. Cora pulled out her badge. Jenkins did the same on h
er side, and that seemed enough to get them waved through. That happened three more times until they reached the point gigs weren’t allowed to go any further, just a little way beyond the main gates to the Mount.
The big tent, which Jenkins informed Cora was the garbing pavilion for the voters, loomed above them. The canvas sides were almost painfully white in the morning sunlight, secured with ropes as thick as Finnuc’s arms.
‘My mother practically lived in that pavilion during elections,’ Jenkins said. ‘She couldn’t let the chests out of her sight.’
‘Chests?’
‘The voting chests. When the story’s finished, the voters go back inside and cast their votes.’
‘They don’t get much time to think about it, do they?’ Cora said.
Jenkins shrugged. ‘It’s mostly practicalities. Voters aren’t permitted to talk to one another, or anyone else, about their choice. And no one else can leave a story venue until all the votes are cast.’
‘They’d best be quick about it today, then,’ Cora said, squinting in the sun. She and Jenkins passed two rows of empty chairs facing the Mount, front-and-centre. ‘This where the voters sit?’
‘Yes. There isn’t usually this much security, though.’
In between the chairs and the Mount was a line of constables and a waist-high fence.
‘There isn’t usually a dead storyteller just before the election,’ Cora said.
‘I should think it’s too late now for anyone to harm Nullan. At least until after she’s told her story.’
‘She’s got plenty of stories to tell, that one.’
They reached the public gallery and a harassed purple tunic ushered them towards the few remaining seats. Uncomfortable wooden ones that Cora doubted she’d last the whole story on. She rolled a bindleleaf and looked around at this, the first story venue. Further back people had cleared space for blankets – much to the consternation of the purple tunics. And there were plenty of them, rushing about on one errand or another. Cora watched them as she smoked, doing her best to exhale in the opposite direction from Jenkins.
From where she was sitting, Cora could just make out the Commission boxes that flanked one side of the Mount. Along their tops were banners bearing the Spoked Wheel, and the six symbols of the realms, though they barely stirred in the slight breeze. The Chambers and the dignitaries and high-ups and the like would have plenty of shade in those boxes. Everyone else had to make do in the glare of the sun.
A bell rang and everyone in the public galleries stood.
‘This one going to have a happy ending, do you think?’ Cora said.
Jenkins gave half a smile. ‘After the blood on the bag? I’m not hopeful.’
‘Don’t imagine the voters are, either. But then not everyone finds happiness entertaining,’ Cora said, remembering a story about a naughty lapdog that turned out well, and the gruff pennysheet girl who voted against it.
‘It’s not just that,’ Jenkins said. ‘We have a serious reason for being here, and so do the voters. The Casker story will be just as much about the state of the current Assembly, the state of the Union and what they’ll do about it, as it will be about that bloodied bag.’
‘Sounds dull.’
‘If it is then they won’t win, will they?’ Jenkins said, her patience clearly running thin. ‘Every realm, in every election, in every story, is just trying to find that balance. Each does it differently. All to get enough black stones.’
‘All to keep the realms from one another’s throats.’
‘That too. A thousand years of peace, all because some people tell good stories,’ Jenkins said. She pointed to the garbing pavilion. ‘They’re ready.’
The canvas side opened and for a moment all that could be seen of the inside was a wall of darkness. Then the darkness began to move and became separate shapes of black: the hoods pulled low, the robes hanging to the floor. And the faces, oversized and fixed.
The Audience had come.
Fifty voters from across Fenest, each in a different mask so that every member of the Audience was represented and accounted for. There was the Heckler, mask painted red, his face a sloppy smile of too much ale. And the Devotee, with blue bulbous lumps for eyes forever closed to disappointment. The Critic always green, always pursed-mouthed, the Poet singing with a yellow tongue. The Stowaway and the Amateur, the Commoner and the Brawler, and all the rest; each one leaving the shadows of the pavilion to join the line of black robed figures in colourful masks moving in silence.
The Audience took up positions by their chairs but stayed standing, as did everyone else. This was why they were called the Swaying Audience. It wasn’t just because people tried to sway them with stories, but because when they all got together like this it was impossible to keep track of them all, there were so many. Not to mention that standing there in masks and robes they did appear to sway – Cora had to look away when her stomach started to churn.
‘Audience, welcome,’ the Master of Ceremonies called from atop the Mount. ‘In this, the two hundred and ninth election of our realms, we give you a ’teller who gives you a tale.’
‘The Audience is listening.’ The voice came as one from the robed bodies.
The Master bowed to the Audience, and then again as Nullan, the Casker storyteller, appeared.
She walked slowly around the crest of the Mount, and there was something compelling in the way she held herself, the way she stood above everyone else. She wasn’t hooded now. Her arms were bare but covered in ink – what shapes or pictures Cora couldn’t see.
Nullan stood silently for several moments, as if she was deciding when the quality of listening was at its peak. Her waiting made the air around her hum, a noiseless vibration. This was the dead Wayward storyteller’s lover. Perhaps the last person to see Nicholas Ento alive.
The storyteller began.
‘The man was dying. That was what the boy said.’
*
THE CASKER STORY
The man was dying. That was what the boy said.
He couldn’t have been more than ten, maybe eleven years old and he’d clearly been running for some way. He held onto the doorframe as he gulped at the hot night air. His skin – not just his face, but his arms and neck and shins – was as slick as the walls of my little hut.
‘He’s in a bad way, Sanga,’ the boy said.
I glanced back down at my desk, where a fly was settling on my stew. Half a meal was probably more than I deserved. I picked up my small bag and made to leave, but the boy didn’t move.
‘He’s not a rich man, Sanga.’
‘That’s fine,’ I said.
‘And he’s been drinking. Days, maybe.’
‘Days?’
The boy checked both ways of the alley, then he lowered his voice. ‘It’s not that. Something… else. You’ll see.’ He made the sign of the Tear, defiant in the face of my surprise.
‘Lead on,’ I said, trying to hide my resignation at the prospect of seeing to another man near death at the bottom of a bottle.
Late summer is a despicable time in Bordair. The very walkways and lakeside shacks swell in the muggy air, everything drips despite the clear skies and tempers are less frayed, more eviscerated.
‘Which bar?’ I said to the back of the boy’s head.
‘Barge of Good Hope,’ he said.
I didn’t know of it, but he was sure of his way as he ducked and weaved between empty alleys and boardwalks full of evening revellers. It may have been a holiday of some sort; I always found it difficult to keep track of those.
The larger ’walks were lit by oil lamps swinging on short chains from balconies and eaves. Though soft, it was not a flattering light, and faces leered out of the crowd. Painted youngsters – some not much older than the boy I was following – made crude gestures from the balconies. It wasn’t difficult to see their madams behind, more often than not waving their fans or scratching at their wigs. We passed one such establishment, the Merry Jig, where I was on the payr
oll. Madam Wishful saw me and pushed her way to the rail, much to the consternation of her charges.
‘Sanga Jeffereys!’ she called, loud enough to turn some heads. ‘Is it Tuesday already?’
It was Friday.
‘A hard working sanga, and worth every penny! No cheek in the Merry Jig goes un-turned by his professional fingers.’
Some of the boys and girls pantomimed just what cheeks she was referring to, and laughter rose above the general din of the crowded ’walk. I hurried to keep up with the boy and we made our way along the east shore of Bordair, passing through the busier districts. Then he turned towards the hills. The ’walks became streets, narrower than those by the shore.
‘Aren’t we going the wrong way for a barge?’ I said.
The boy grunted, though I couldn’t tell if it was in the affirmative or the negative. I was too far from my hut and, I’ll admit, too curious to turn back. The only light in the streets was cast by candles inside bed or sitting rooms, and I had to squint to follow the outline of the boy even though he was only a few paces ahead.
‘Were there not sangas closer by?’ I said in a kind of hush, not wanting to disturb good people in their homes.
‘Had to be you,’ the boy said, without turning. ‘They said.’
‘The dying man?’
‘No, his ’swain.’
That the dying man worked a barge was so much a given that the boy hadn’t mentioned it until now. To have a boatswain, and one that cared enough to send for someone like me, it must be a sizeable barge – one big enough to need a proper crew and the hierarchies that went with it.
‘You work the same barge?’ I asked the boy.
‘You might say that.’
‘What would the boatswain say?’
‘You can ask her yourself,’ the boy said.
As I rounded a corner I almost bumped into him. He was staring up at a single-storey building that was set high into the hillside. Tall posts, bearing all the hallmarks of ex-masts, appeared to prop up the place. The frontage had a spindly railing, broken in multiple places, and there was blood on the cobblestones below.
