Widow's Welcome

by D. K. Fields

  Cora snapped the lid shut.

  ‘Are you going to take it?’ the woman said.

  ‘That depends.’

  ‘On what?

  ‘Miss Harriet?’ A small boy was behind her. He clutched a broom and looked exhausted, but that might have just been the dirt.

  ‘Not now, Louis!’

  ‘I dun out back.’

  Cora glanced at the glassblower. ‘I’d say he’s finished for the day, wouldn’t you, Miss Harriet.’

  ‘Early tomorrow, Louis,’ the woman said with a grimace. ‘Deliveries as usual.’

  The boy bobbed his head and then ran for the front door. On seeing Jenkins he faltered, but the constable smoothly moved aside for him and he was away, no doubt worried Miss Harriet might change her mind. Jenkins resumed her post.

  ‘I don’t make him do nothing dangerous,’ Miss Harriet said, ‘not like they did at White Rock.’

  ‘He looked healthy enough to me,’ Cora said carefully, making sure the woman caught her meaning that the boy should stay that way. She handed her the box. ‘I can’t see this being much use to me, if you tell me how to find White Rock.’

  *

  Back on the street, turning corners as they’d been directed, Cora saw more and more of the red-flecked bird droppings. They’d started as sporadic embers on the soot-covered walls and roofs, but the closer they came to White Rock the more that fire came to life. She saw a few of the birds themselves, many of them pigeons, like those Hearst fed at the station, but these were gaunt, skittish.

  ‘They look uncomfortable in themselves,’ Jenkins said.

  ‘Much like the people of Tonbury,’ Cora said. ‘This must be White Rock.’

  They had come to a huge set of gates – locked. The pigeons seemed to coo disapproval as Jenkins read the Commission closure notice fastened there.

  ‘Unsuitable and unsavoury practices. No wonder tradesfolk are worried about getting caught with tornstone.’

  ‘But since when has the Commission worried about anything unsavoury, especially when there’s money to be made?’ Cora said. She tried the padlock but it was sturdy and shiny-new; none of this felt right, none of it was the Commission she knew. ‘They don’t close businesses and they certainly don’t spend money doing it.’

  There was something here that the Commission didn’t want people to see. Cora checked both ends of the street: empty.

  ‘How are your climbing skills, Constable?’ she asked, making sure her shirt was tucked into her belt. Best not to risk anything that could snag.

  Jenkins’ gaze drifted to the row of spikes on top of the gates. ‘Is this wise, Detective?’

  ‘Coaches, Jenkins. We’re looking for one that likely set off from this part of the city. That woman who nearly turned our lungs to steaming lumps of stone says she’s seen coaches here. I’d say we don’t have much of a choice.’ Cora wedged her foot between two bars and used the central beam to bear her weight, feeling the old twinge in her tendon, and thinking of Ruth as she always did when the pain came. But the gate seemed strong enough. They’d soon find out.

  It wasn’t easy, or graceful, but she managed not to impale herself on the top and landed on the other side without breaking any bones. Jenkins, looking reluctant, scaled the gates with ease.

  ‘I think you’ve done this before,’ Cora said. ‘Misspent youth while your mother ran Electoral Affairs?’ She was pleased to see the constable look shame-faced. ‘Come on. Let’s see what the Commission decided to lock up.’

  A wide drive led away from the gates and curved around the side of a tall brick building, the front of which was hidden from the street. Cora and Jenkins followed the drive to a courtyard full of conveyances.

  ‘Just carts,’ Jenkins said. ‘Not a place for coaches, it seems.’

  ‘Silence take them,’ Cora said.

  White Rock was a large, U-shaped building. Surrounding the carts were hitching posts, barrels stacked and not, and many more things Cora didn’t recognise. Strange vats that could have been for storage, except they appeared to have their own chimneys – as if there weren’t enough chimneys on the building itself; she counted sixteen before giving up.

  Jenkins checked the covered lean-tos that clung to the brick walls of the main building. ‘Nothing here,’ she called over.

  And there was nothing in any of the carts either, or in the barrels. A sack had caught between the wheels of a cart. Cora fished it out and felt the weight of something in a bottom corner. She reached in and her hand met a hard and gritty lump. Even before she pulled it out, she knew what it was.

  Tornstone was only dangerous when it was heated. Cooled like this, it looked harmless enough. She dropped the tornstone back into the sack and dumped both on the ground.

  She joined Jenkins by what looked like the main doors – a tall pair, wide enough for the carts to enter, likely for loading and such.

  ‘Thoughts, Constable?’

  Jenkins turned a full circle of the courtyard. ‘It’s not been stripped bare, not exactly. Whoever worked here, they’ve been moved on to somewhere else.’

  ‘With all this left behind? And who knows what else inside.’ Cora tried the doors but they seemed to be barred on the inside and would only thud against the frame. ‘No climbing over th—’

  A noise. Something falling with a thud and then a clatter.

  There was someone inside White Rock.

  Twenty-Two

  ‘It came from this way!’ Jenkins was running around the side of the building, away from the drive and the gate they had climbed.

  Cora followed, but in the poor air she was slow. All those years of smoking bindleleaf.

  She rounded a corner to see Jenkins’ uniformed legs disappearing into a broken window. A crate was just below it; a regular access way then, for whoever was using White Rock now. As much a trespasser as she and Jenkins.

  The constable was now lost from sight but Cora could hear her shouting at someone to wait. Cora jogged to the window and peered inside. Though the light was weak she could make out still, dark shapes – furnaces and foundry-type workings, she guessed. They were silent, like beasts in slumber. And Jenkins, on her hands and knees beside one, scrabbling under it.

  ‘Audience-sake, stop kicking me!’ the constable shouted at the furnace. ‘I’m only trying to help.’

  But then she was struggling to stand because she was gripping the shirt of one filthy, flailing creature.

  Jenkins dragged the child out from under the furnace.

  ‘Get off me! Get off!’ the boy shouted. His hair was matted, his face dark with dust and who knew what else.

  ‘Where did the others go?’ Jenkins said.

  ‘Others?’ Cora said.

  ‘There were a few of them – I couldn’t see properly. Think they got out through the back. This one didn’t move so fast.’

  Cora thought about heaving herself through the broken window but decided against it. She told Jenkins to unbar the main doors, and a few minutes later Cora was inside, face to face with the boy while Jenkins clung to his thrashing form. He was dressed, but only just – rags hung from his limbs. He seemed older than Marcus, the pennysheet girl, around thirteen, but thinner.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Cora said.

  ‘Silence take you!’ the boy spat.

  Jenkins looked appalled and gave the child a shake. ‘What sort of way is that to talk to someone who wants to help you?’

  ‘You don’t want to help me. You just gonna make me move on, like everyone else in this city.’

  ‘This city?’ Cora said. ‘You’re not from Fenest?’

  ‘So everyone says. “Go home,” they says. Like I can go back.’

  ‘Back where?’ Cora said.

  ‘Sweetpool.’

  ‘That’s a Seeder town.’

  ‘Lowlander,’ the boy said, with some pride. Jenkins flashed her a grin.

  ‘All right, a Lowlander town, and in the far south at that, isn’t it?’

  ‘Near Bordair,�
�� Jenkins said.

  Another southerner who’d left his home and come north. It was hard to see through the dirt if the boy had any black marks on his hands or feet, but if he did it was probably too late to worry. Jenkins had touched him. Cora had breathed beside him.

  ‘Family?’ Cora asked the boy.

  He looked at the floor.

  ‘So what are you doing here?’ Cora said.

  ‘Eating. Looking for work. You got anything I can do?’

  ‘That depends. First you tell me your name.’

  The boy chewed his lip and thought about it. ‘Tam.’

  ‘Right, Tam, next you’re going to tell me and nice Constable Jenkins here what you and your friends have seen in this place. What’s been going on here?’

  The boy looked confused. ‘Nothing. That’s why we sleep here. They left enough wood in the burners that we been warm.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘It was empty when we first broke the window.’

  ‘You’ve not seen anyone here since then?’

  ‘Not ’til you two came,’ Tam said.

  So, White Rock had turned out to be a dead end.

  ‘Well, you can’t stay here,’ Cora said, and the boy’s eyes widened. ‘I know someone who’ll give you a bed in exchange for some labour. Not the seed-sewing kind though. Beulah’s more in the… entertainment line.’

  Now it was Jenkins’ turn to stare at Cora.

  ‘Don’t worry, Constable. There are plenty of jobs Beulah needs help with.’

  Before the boy could protest, or even worse, thank her, Cora was on her way back outside. But something by the door made her stop. A crate, and on it a word, burned into the wood.

  Tennworth.

  She knew that word, but from where? The Seeder story, perhaps? She scratched at her nose, as if removing the itch there would do the same for that tickling memory. No, not the Seeder story. Some other tale.

  There were more crates nearby, all with the same word on them. Casks too.

  Tennworth.

  ‘Do either of you know what this means?’ she asked Jenkins and the boy, pointing to the nearest crate.

  ‘I’ve seen it,’ the boy said. ‘When we go over the back wall, we’re in the yard.’

  ‘What yard?’ Cora said.

  ‘I think a better question might be whose yard,’ Jenkins said. ‘Looks to me like a name.’

  Cora turned to Tam. ‘This yard, can you get there from the street?’

  ‘Guess so,’ he said. ‘I never went that way. Go right from the gates, maybe.’

  They left the building and returned to the daylight, and it was then Cora noticed that Tam was wincing. There was a rip in his shabby trousers, the stark red of fresh blood beneath.

  ‘Do they still make constables do basic stitching?’ she asked Jenkins.

  The constable sighed. She reached for the small pack that, by Commission regulations, was attached to her belt at all times. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Good. Then wait for me here. I won’t be long.’

  ‘Where are you going, Detective?’

  ‘To test my memory.’

  *

  She left the way they’d entered, climbing back over the gates. The glassblower had talked of coaches, and though there were none to be found at White Rock, they might not be far. Having come all the way to Tonbury and breathed this bad air, she might as well look around a bit more while Jenkins patched up the lad. And there was that name catching at her. Tennworth. She knew it, though she couldn’t think why, and to see it here, in the part of the city where the dirt had come from – it couldn’t be coincidence. Those were the stories the Audience liked least of all.

  Back on the street, Cora turned right, as the boy Tam had suggested, and followed the perimeter wall to see how far White Rock went. It was certainly a big enough building, but she didn’t see any more entrances. Eventually it became other businesses: a cobbler, a cooper, a winery. She glanced at the wooden signs and brass plaques as she passed. She stopped.

  Tennworth’s.

  The winery was closed, not by Commission order, like White Rock, but because it was always closed that day of the week, so the sign said. There was a tasteful figure of the Patron beside the door, with none of the usual detritus found at street-side shrines. Despite being in Tonbury this was a respectable establishment, the merchant’s word his bond, and the Patron was all ears for that. There really was a story for everyone. She peered through the window; a small shop, lined floor to ceiling with shelves of bottles. Something of the Perlish to it. She tried the door, just in case, but it was locked. Stepping back, she looked up at the dark windows of the upper floors.

  It was then she noticed the carriageway.

  It was open – no doors or gates – just a shadowy mouth leading, she guessed, to some kind of yard behind. She looked at the name plate again. Tennworth. Tennworth. Where did she know that name from? It was on the edge of her thoughts, just out of reach. Like the yard beyond the dark. A few steps more might make the difference.

  She kept close to the wall, using it to steady herself as she picked her way over the broken and uneven cobbles. The remnants of yesterday’s puddles pooled between them. She was about to call out when she heard a horse whicker from somewhere ahead, and stopped. She waited. No other sound came.

  ‘Hello?’ she called.

  No answer. Cora looked back the way she’d come, back to the street, and asked herself what she was doing. Tennworth. It was pulling her on. She kept walking and when she emerged from the carriageway, out from the darkness and under the gaze of the Audience once more, she found an answer, waiting for her.

  Wood, painted black, the door specked with the dirt she’d found next to Ento’s body. A boxy shape – too wide for the city that had come after it. The front seat missing the lantern found on every other of the kind that had replaced it. Horses in their traces, ready to drive again.

  She had found the old Commission coach.

  Ento had been killed inside it. And his killer?

  Someone was standing on the other side of the coach, the top half of their body hidden by the open door. She could only see their legs, clad in the purple livery of Commission uniform. Cora heard a voice murmuring inside the coach, then the door was slammed shut. The figure came into view on the other side of the horses, and then she knew why the name Tennworth was familiar. It was from the stories of the man now staring at her, a driving whip in his hands.

  Finnuc.

  Twenty-Three

  ‘I never asked what it was you did for the Commission,’ Cora said. Her voice sounded different somehow, distant but quicker, as if her thoughts were moving too fast for her mouth. ‘You’re a driver, then.’

  He licked his lips. Those lips that had kissed her yesterday. That she had let kiss her.

  ‘Among other things,’ he said.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Nothing you’d want to hear about.’

  ‘I think I might. Why don’t you tell me why you’re in possession of an outdated Commission coach? A coach I’ve been searching for. A coach where a man was killed. Nicholas Ento. I know you know that name. You asked me about him. Yesterday.’ She swallowed. ‘On the way to the Hook barge.’

  ‘Cora…’

  ‘The Wayward storyteller found in the alley behind Mrs Hawksley’s. His mouth stitched up. Tell me what you know about that, Finnuc.’

  He wouldn’t look at her. His hands tightened on the whip. ‘You won’t understand.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘I had to… I owe her everything. Everything. Can you even understand what that’s like? To be so much in one person’s debt. A person who could crush you, as if you were nothing.’

  He looked at her then, and she was taken aback by the despair written across his face. Finnuc was no longer the burly, bullish Casker she had come to know in the last few weeks, who had held her against the wall of the Hook barge. The man before her had wide eyes, trembling hands. But she made herself loo
k past those things and thought of Ento. Of the black and white threads that ripped through his flesh. Of Nullan who had waited for him.

  Another question came to her. A bad one. One she had to ask even as the words threatened to come out as bile.

  ‘Is this why you… Why we… The Hook barge, all the rest of it. It was just to get close to me, to find out what I knew.’

  He opened his mouth to speak but there was a noise, from inside the coach.

  There was someone else there.

  ‘Who—’

  ‘I’m sorry, Cora. For all of it.’

  He sprang forwards and made to swing himself into the driver’s seat. Cora was only a second behind and caught him by the shirt. She yanked him off the step and they both fell to the cobbles. He was back on his feet first, but he’d dropped the whip.

  Cora grabbed it and flung herself at Finnuc’s back again. With a struggle, she got the end of the whip around his neck and pulled hard.

  Finnuc spluttered a choke. He fought but soon enough she felt some of the strength go out of him. His hands fell away from the step up to the driver’s seat. She kept pulling and they staggered backwards together, falling to the ground. She thought of Ento’s throat, the purple ring left by the curtain cord. Finnuc would bear the same. But he would live.

  They were wrestling on the cobbles, Finnuc’s hands flailing as he fought for breath. Cora used her knee to push him face down. She pulled his wrists behind his back and tied them with the whip. His breath was ragged, his whole body shaking. Her hands too.

  But it was over.

  Then a noise, movement. The horses were pulling away, the coach lumbering behind them. Cora looked up. Someone was in the driver’s seat.

  She scrambled to her feet. ‘Stop! Police!’

  She grabbed the handle of the door and shouted again. The driver turned.

  No – it couldn’t be. It couldn’t—

  She fell from the coach, hitting the cobbles, tasting blood. She didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Could only watch as the coach clattered away, out of the carriageway and into the labyrinth of Fenest.

  Ruth.

  It was Ruth driving the coach.