Widow's Welcome

by D. K. Fields

  The old troughs hid Cora as she took in the sizeable yard. The hulking stone square of Tithe Hall dominated the far side. Purple tunics stood at the rear entrance. And on the other side of the yard, dark shapes brooded in the morning light.

  Commission coaches. Black, the Spoked Wheel picked out in white on the doors.

  Shouting came from the rear entrance to the Hall.

  ‘What?’ someone called.

  ‘Voting chest’s arrived!’

  She risked a glance over the water troughs. The double doors at the back of the Hall were still open but there were no longer any tunics to be seen. Now was her chance.

  She slipped clear of her hiding place and hurried to the corner of the yard.

  The old Commission coaches might have borne the same black-and-white livery as the ones that toiled through Fenest now, but that was where the similarity ended. Where the current coaches gleamed, with polished lacquer and brass, these were dull. Five of them, all with their paint chipped and peeling. Boards broken, some with drooping roofs, others with doors hanging from their hinges.

  Cobwebs, dust and damage – all things that shouldn’t have been on working coaches. But there was something missing that should have been on a coach, right at the front. She checked all the coaches. Each was missing something that was on every other coach in Fenest, regardless of whether it was company-owned or Commission. It was against the law to drive without them.

  Lamps.

  So here was the proof, as far as Cora could tell, that it had been one of the old Commission coaches that had come to Mrs Kettleby’s house. The reason the landlady couldn’t see any details of the coach wasn’t because the driver didn’t light his or her lamps – there weren’t any to light. These older coaches didn’t have the fittings.

  And that had to be why whoever collected Ento used an old coach rather than a new one, that and the fact the old coaches weren’t recorded by Easterton. Two kinds of cloaking. Whoever came for Ento wanted to be traceless.

  In front of Cora now were five old coaches in varying states of disrepair; Ento could have been killed in any of them. She pulled the handle of the closest one, but it was stuck.

  There was a noise – inside the coach.

  She stiffened, waited. It came again: a scrabbling sound, and then a whine. Someone was inside. Cora gripped the handle, took a deep breath, and pulled.

  The door opened with a shriek of metal and then something big and heavy and white was on her.

  Kicking, scrambling, it was so close to her face she couldn’t see it. Only the colour, and teeth that gnashed and snapped. She could smell its meaty breath – feel that breath against her cheek. She flailed, punching uselessly at solid muscle with her free hand.

  She reached for something else, anything, in the gravel of the yard. There, hard and metal and with an edge, she slammed it against the dog’s head.

  Again. And again.

  The yelp cut right through her. She’d hit something important, maybe an eye or an ear, and the dog was off, its weight gone. The way it moved, its head listing to one side, and the noise it made – she almost felt sorry for the thing. It headed straight for the open doors of the Hall. Shouts from inside reached her; catching that stray would keep the purple tunics busy for a while.

  Cora got to her knees and stayed there, catching her breath, letting her heartbeat slow. Her hands were deep in the long grass and the weeds that had grown round the coaches. Looking more closely at one of them, she saw that a thick bramble coming through the wall had ensnared its back wheels. These old, forgotten coaches hadn’t moved for a long time, since they’d been taken off the streets. Or rather, these five hadn’t moved. At the end of the row, deep, empty wheel-ruts and flattened weeds told a different story.

  There was a sixth coach, and it wasn’t here.

  She grabbed hold of a wheel and hauled herself up, then looked inside the coach the dog had been living in. It would have been fancy, once: a tiny brazier in the corner; well-padded seats covered in velvet; thick curtains to keep out the cold, as well as any unwanted attention. The dog had got in through a hole in the roof and had made itself at home. The seat’s velvet was ripped, the stuffing frothing out. But time had done its work too. Mould bloomed across the wooden panelling and the curtains were holed with rot. Rags, only held on their rail by the cobwebs, though still drawn open by—

  Cora climbed into the coach. She tucked her nose into her elbow against the stench. She reached out a hand, and as she touched it, she knew. No thicker than her finger. Not coarse, not rough, but well made. A length of cord, gathering what remained of the coach’s curtain.

  Pruett’s description of the murder weapon came back to her. A thin length of cord. Not too roughly made.

  This was how the Wayward storyteller had died: the curtain cord pulled tight around his neck. Ento had been killed inside the coach that came for him.

  Eighteen

  Eventually, despite her discovery, the smell drove Cora from the coach. She took a moment as a welcome breeze stirred the yard. She now knew how Ento had been killed. She still didn’t know who had garrotted him with that cord, or why. But now she was closer to finding out; if she could find the right coach, she could find the driver.

  First she had to find a way out of the yard.

  Going back through the tunnel without Marcus to guide her wasn’t an option. Odds were good on her getting lost and becoming another body connected with this case. No way out from the yard: the walls were too high, and the gate was locked as well as barred. Nothing for it but to go through Tithe Hall itself. Thankfully the double doors at the rear were still open and unattended. As she drew closer, she heard the murmur of the crowd inside; so the story hadn’t started yet.

  The Seeder story. About to be told, right there, right in front of Cora.

  She slipped inside. Ento had been killed, his mouth sewn shut, to silence his story. The other realms, their stories, they were all part of it. Whatever Sillian said about simply finding the killer, Cora had to work out why Ento had been killed. She had no choice but to listen.

  *

  It was hot and rank in Tithe Hall, so many bodies pressed into close quarters. The high ceiling and thick stone walls did little to help. The Hall was big, but smaller than the Mount. Maybe it made sense to tell a Seeder story in such a place, where people made good on the living they scratched from the earth.

  Directly opposite her, the front entrance was crowded with people trying to get into the public gallery. Constables had formed a barrier by the entrance and purple tunics shouted for order. Few people seemed to be getting through into the Hall itself. Cora moved a little closer, skirting the Commission box, which already held the Chambers and their aides, and then she saw the reason for the delay, for the crowd pushing.

  The purple tunics were checking people’s hands and feet as they came in: Black Jefferey, still being told. She’d had some time to think on what the Caskers had done in telling that story. Like most sensible folk in Fenest she now understood that the Casker story hadn’t cursed them all by conjuring a plague. Nullan was just the messenger, telling a city what to expect of the coming days. The harbinger – that was the word Nullan had used, though she’d been talking of the Wayward storyteller when she said it. They were both harbingers. Perhaps all storytellers of any worth were. And was that the end of the story – a plague to come? Or was there something else Cora wasn’t seeing? It might not be plague that had brought people to Fenest in the first place. What if there was another cause, the plague only the symptom? And Ento’s death part of it.

  Cora looked around the Hall at the tiered rows of benches, at the ’tellers platform and at the heaving bodies, jostling for room. She recognised a large, lumbering figure: Henry from the pay department at the Wheelhouse. He’d found a way to get inside – the result of some favour, no doubt. The Commission ran on that currency.

  But Henry might regret coming to Tithe Hall, as might Cora herself; if one of those purple tunics sho
uld find a blackened ankle or finger, there’d be a stampede. She slunk back towards the rear doors and wedged herself into a corner. She stepped on something soft and caught a sickly-sweet smell. An over-ripe sinta, softened to a pulp, edged out from under her boot. She might be in the dirt but at least she was close to a way out. She’d stay to listen, but she wouldn’t let a story kill her.

  It was loud in the Hall. Those already in the gallery had to shout over one another to be heard. But there wasn’t much chatter from the Commission box, by the looks of it. The Chambers were there, wearing their robes and all stony-faced – though she counted only six of them. The Chambers for the Seeders was missing, most likely with the storyteller they’d chosen personally, from all the Seeders who could tell a story that year. Milling among the rest were aides and lesser Commission staff, one of which was Sorrensdattir: the Torn woman Cora had met at the Opening Ceremony, and who had seemed to know something of the Wayward story. Perhaps she had a few ideas about the other stories too. Cora made a mental note to ask Jenkins to find out where the Torn woman was lodging.

  A bell sounded and the noise of Tithe Hall dropped away.

  The Audience entered, their colourful masks looking, leering, and weeping in every direction. They took the seats left empty for them, for the voting stones now in the pockets of their robes.

  And then the Seeder storyteller stepped into the quiet that waited for him. He was broad in the back, tall and young – much younger than Nullan, the Casker storyteller. His hair was cut close to his head, and what was left of it looked reddish. He wore Seeder colours: brown, dull green, a mustardy-yellow. Colours of the land. A sharp collar and worked cuffs. Work clothes, perhaps, but cut from better cloth for this special day.

  He was nervous. Even from where she was standing, Cora could see the storyteller’s hands had a tremble. When he cleared his throat the sound was thin, weak. That didn’t bode well. A murmur went through the crowd and Cora felt their restlessness. Could this young Seeder manage what his realm asked of him?

  The storyteller cleared his throat again, this time with more purpose, and then he began. With each word, his voice became stronger, as if the story led him to certainty.

  ‘The talents of the boy Ghen were first noted by his mother.’

  *

  THE LOWLANDER STORY

  The talents of the boy Ghen were first noted by his mother. It was she who watched him pinch off the early buds of myrtleberry branches without crushing the comings of the second, better berries beneath. She who saw the swiftness with which he cut back the sinta branches after harvest. Unlike his heavy-handed father, Ghen lost none of the young fruit, even though the blades were large in his nimble fingers. This was in his twelfth year of age, and his seventh year working all seasons in the fields the family leased from Hend, who owned much of the land in the valley at that time.

  It was his mother who had the idea, but she waited another season, to be sure. Then she wrote to Sot, her sister, suggesting Sot should visit. It had been years since Sot had come to the house, despite the fact she lived nearby – only over the hill and two lanes more. But Aunt Sot was a busy person, too busy to come to the fields Ghen’s parents farmed, and too busy to be visited. Ghen wasn’t sure what it was that kept Aunt Sot so busy, but it wasn’t farming and therefore it wasn’t something his parents spoke of.

  But his mother did speak often of Aunt Sot’s wealth: her good linens, and how she could drink Greynal every night if she wanted to, rather than only on harvest days to toast the Neighbour like they did. Aunt Sot could bathe in Greynal if she liked, so his mother said. At these words Ghen’s father sighed and stared sadly at the walls of the kitchen that needed tempering, the cupboard doors hanging not quite square, and, somehow, stared past those doors to the damp creeping at the back of those cupboards. And then he went out to walk the edges of the fields. The rest of the family knew he must be left to do so alone. His walks eased his worries, of which he had many.

  None of his worries were the fault of Sot, of course. Ghen knew that it was Hend who kept his family poor, kept them from bathing in Greynal. It was because Hend’s rents were high.

  Ghen’s parents farmed well: they were good tenants who brought forth row after row of myrtles, glossy sintas, medlars that lasted two seasons once boxed and put to rest in dark barns, red holens when everyone else in the valley only managed green, and even figs, which, as everyone in the valley knew, were vulnerable to blight. Yes, Ghen’s parents were excellent farmers, and this was a source of pride for Ghen when he met his friends Rit and Melle by the river, his work for the day done. He loved to tell them of the first medlar flower opening, to list the number of sinta barrels he’d filled in a single day. Rit and Melle had their own news too, of course: news of yields and prices, but their families’ lands didn’t thrive the way Ghen’s did, even though they owned their fields. Ghen’s parents’ success made his chest swell with pride, and made Rit and Melle envious, because they were each of them children of the Lowlands and they lived to see the land flourish.

  And flourish it did, with the help of Ghen and his sisters, but still they were poor. However high the prices for medlars, however many rare red holens Ghen’s mother managed to sell on market day, there was never much money left at the end of the month to set aside for buying the land from Hend, which Ghen’s parents yearned to do. After the rent was paid and a few pennies spent on the things the family couldn’t do without – new shoes for Ghen’s sisters one month, sinta nets another, and every month the poultice from the Wayward woman who lived by the bridge, for his younger sister Elin’s cough, which never went away – there was little in the jar kept under the floorboard by the stove. And pennies didn’t buy land, and so his father went walking round the fields, and his mother’s anger fell on Sot, because she was better off, because she wasn’t around to hear and, most of all, because Hend was not to be cursed. Everyone in the valley knew that.

  Ghen had only hazy memories of his aunt. He thought of her as being rather like a tool that wasn’t often used. A turnpoke, for instance, needed one year in three when the holens showed their leaves at last. He thought she might have dark hair.

  One day, towards the end of summer, rather than cursing Sot for her wealth, his mother said she’d written to her, asking her to come for the sinta harvest. When she said this Ghen’s father left the house and banged the door shut behind him, needing once again to walk the fields.

  Aunt Sot won’t come, Ghen thought. She’d not come when his sisters were born, or when Elin’s cough was so bad even the poultice from the Wayward woman didn’t help and his mother thought Elin would die, so why would Sot come for the sinta harvest? One thing Ghen did know for certain about Sot was that she didn’t farm.

  *

  ‘Maybe she works in the long house,’ Rit said.

  The children were in the river, which was low after the summer months; small islands of exposed sand sat between the channels. They were looking for mostins to trap and sell to the Wayward woman by the bridge. She paid a penny for three or exchanged them for a poultice: seller’s choice.

  Rit idly poked a stick into the sand at his feet but nothing moved. The evening felt as hot as the day had been and the three of them were tired from their work in the fields. It took less effort to imagine what Sot did for a living than to trap mostins.

  ‘You think Sot works for Hend?’ Ghen said.

  ‘He has forty men and forty women in the long house kitchen,’ Rit said.

  ‘Kitchens,’ Melle said. ‘Hend has ten of them, and ten dinner tables. He eats a plate at each one for every meal. That’s why he’s so fat. Quick, Ghen – the jar!’

  A mostin was emerging from the sand, its wings shifting the grains, its legs pulling free. This was the best time to catch them, when they were slow and unused to the light. Ghen gave the jar to Melle, who planted it over the still wriggling mostin with practised swiftness.

  While she held the jar in place, Ghen pushed the lid under the confused mo
stin, scooping both it and a handful of sand into the jar. The creature would have to be cleaned before it went to the Wayward woman; she was very particular about that. That would be Ghen’s job. He had the nimblest fingers, both Rit and Melle had told him so.

  ‘I’m not sure about Sot working in Hend’s kitchens,’ Ghen said, pulling another jar from his bag. ‘You can’t afford to bathe in Greynal if you work in a kitchen.’

  ‘She could blend,’ Rit said, resting on his stick.

  ‘My father says that pays well,’ Melle said. ‘The prices they pay in Fenest. And it’d mean Sot would have the Greynal for bathing.’ She used her hands to scrape back the sand.

  ‘Maybe,’ Ghen said. ‘But why would anyone want to have a bath in Greynal?’

  Melle gave a cry of delight as her fingers caught the wings of another mostin. Ghen readied a jar but Melle’s hands faltered.

  ‘Dead,’ she said. She took Rit’s stick and turned the creature over, tearing a wing as she did so.

  She stepped across one of the water channels to a fresh patch of sand. Ghen knew he should follow, be ready with a jar, but the dead mostin was still lying there. It wasn’t right to leave it like that so he quickly reburied it. As he stood he realised Rit was watching him, his blue eyes narrowed.

  ‘Ghen!’ Melle shouted, and both boys hurried over.

  The mostins came thick and fast after that, and soon all but one of the jars he’d brought contained a live creature. Their wings batted the glass walls, leaving smoky marks of fint. That was why the Wayward woman wanted them, because fint healed all sorts of ailments. Ghen put the jars carefully in his bag and Melle helped him sling it across his back. Rit carried the sticks. Dusk had settled so it was time to start for home. Sunrise would come soon enough, and each of them would be out in the fields to greet it.