by Jordan Reece
His Fleetman was flying, flying over the watery gray ribbons of the roads with stolen cargo in his satchel and the Sea Guard coming up fast behind him to reclaim it and cast him in irons . . . He was the Sea Guard storming the deep blue ocean after pirates . . .
Jesco was both Hasten Jibb, and himself watching this joyous man-child pedal about on his new bicycle. He knew the cities, he knew the streets, only the slimmest part of him had to mind where he was going in his deliveries and the rest of him was lost in thrilling fantasies and pleasant memories. The love of his bicycle was the love of a captain for his ship; he loved to stop at Worthing’s to see their new jackets and trousers all smart upon the racks because he and Dochi had always done that together, they’d pretend to be pirates and loot the store of what they wanted in whispers after Mama went to bed . . .
He’d had the fever and something was missing in him but Dochi said don’t you mind it, Hassie, and Hasten rode past a group of young women and knew that he should feel something but don’t you mind it . . . he didn’t mind it . . . he was on top of the world when he flew down the roads, he was free and he loved to be free with the sea winds in his hair . . . even the sun was laughing with him and he was happy . . .
He had money for stylish clothes, money for stories and his bicycle, a roof over his head and food on the table and he was aware that other people strove for more, but more was a nebulous quality and quantity in his head. Mama wanted more but Hasten was never quite sure what that was. More was what the other couriers talked about and he retreated because more was what they pressed on him, what kind of more did he want, a woman, a fellow, children of his own, a mansion, an autohorse and carriage with leather seats . . . he did not understand . . . was more working Golden Circle? He liked the more he got in tips. There was something here he did not grasp, something always far away and hard to see . . . something they were all hungry for, and when they got it they only grew hungry for something else, but he already had everything he wanted . . .
. . . don’t you mind it, Hassie, I like you just fine this way, you’re still my brother and I’ll always talk pirates with you . . .
Jesco nudged. A monotonous stream of deliveries peeled past him, but at its center was always Hasten who found them not monotonous at all. It was summer and winter and spring now, Hasten glad when the snow melted so he could climb back onto his bicycle. Some deliveries needed a horse and carriage or a wagon but on rural stretches he’d let the horse fly and that was almost as good as his Fleetman . . .
Nudge . . . nudge . . .
The appalling hoards within Lord Ennings’ mansion scandalized and delighted the boy within him, but the part of him that was a man pretended to see nothing amiss, moved things here and there as the lord wished, smiled and used his manners and accepted his tip and left. On the way home, he thought about a ship sinking from too much weight, and towering piles of extra furniture getting thrown over the side to be swallowed up in the blue.
He took the jewels to the bank . . . these he would not throw over the side, these he would clutch to his chest as the ship sank . . . he had them admitted and took the receipt to the office where he picked up a Silver job. It was an excuse to ride his bicycle, which had gotten sick of sitting in the corner waiting for winter to end, sick as Hasten had gotten sick of it. He flew to Melekei with the whirly-gigs filling his satchel and did not say no to lemonade since he was also sick of rum and hard tack from traveling the high seas.
She knew he didn’t understand more quite in the right way so she talked to him about bicycles and whirly-gigs and the stories that Hasten and her grandchildren were reading . . . he liked delivering here because she never made him feel badly about what he didn’t grasp . . .
Jesco gave the scene another push, and Hasten was riding away. He swooped from street to street and came up on his favorite house with all the statues. Fairies! Dragons! Even a mouse in a pirate hat! They would chase him back home in his head, shouting and throwing ropes to catch him with Captain Mouse sailing the roads in a ship.
A woman in the next yard waved and shouted, “Ragano? Are you with Ragano & Wemill?”
The statues fell back to wait. Hasten squeezed his brakes and coasted over to the sidewalk. He bumped up the curb and the woman came to the fence. She was somewhat pretty but that was where it ended . . . don’t mind it, Hassie . . . and he said, “Yes, I’m with Ragano & Wemill.” He had been to this house once before. It was the first autohorse he had ever delivered, which was why he remembered it so well. “I brought you your autohorse some time back.”
She smiled. Hasten had not been interested in the particulars of the woman, but Jesco paid them close heed. She was in her twenties, tall and narrow, with small breasts and her shape as straight down as an arrow beneath her housedress. Her wedding ring was large and garish. Four connected bands of strawberry gold went around her finger, all of them bearing streams of tiny diamonds, and the centerpiece was a massive diamond surrounded by a circle of smaller ones. Her earrings were just as eye-catching. From each ring hung thin bars of gold that extended halfway down her neck and clacked when she turned her head.
Her hair was dark blonde and pulled back with a clip. A pretty face but her smile was a grimace of bared teeth, and the deep blue of her eyes was also pretty yet the insincerity of her smile was matched with a flat gaze. She was examining Hasten Jibb with piercing intensity that he did not find intrusive, or even notice.
Look at that horse!
That was what Hasten was noticing. Parked in the driveway was a pale green carriage with a brilliant purple lily painted on the back. The autohorse was also purple, though paler than the lily, and not the one that Hasten had delivered. Hasten had never seen a purple autohorse before, and neither had Jesco. Nor had Hasten ever seen this carriage, and he came down this road all the time. She had a visitor.
“I remember you!” the woman was saying. “Look, I’m having a terrible problem. My autohorse is at the mechanic, I’m having a party tonight, and I ran out of time to mail some packages to Chussup and Cantercaster. They must get there today, or tomorrow at the very latest. Do I absolutely have to go through your office, or can I offer you money to deliver them? There are twelve packages and I’ll pay you five dollars each.”
Five dollars each! When he paused from surprise, she said, “Ten dollars. I must get these delivered!”
“I’ll deliver them,” Hasten said. He had taken side jobs plenty of times and pocketed extra cash that way. He didn’t know why couriers got in trouble for that if Ragano & Wemill found out, but he never said anything and they had never caught him.
Straddling his bicycle, he waited on the sidewalk while she ran into the house for the packages. It took some time for her to return since they had to be addressed, but he didn’t mind. He wheeled back a little to see if there were any new statues in the neighboring yard. There was! Under the broad leaves of a fern was a gingerbread cookie man with a bite out of his head. That was funny.
The woman returned several minutes later with all of the packages in a basket. She looked anxious as he slipped them into his satchel. “I’ll get them where they need to go,” Hasten said reassuringly. “I can do the ones in Chussup tonight since I live there, and I’ll take the Cantercaster ones early in the morning.”
“Thank you! It’s a load off my mind to get them out of here.”
“Did you want to put on a return address in case they don’t get accepted?”
“Oh, no. I’ve wasted enough of your time, and I know all of these people will accept them. I’ve mailed them little gifts many times.” She counted out his money, her earrings clacking as she nodded to herself, and the boy within him was dazzled. Golden Circle! He’d been lucky to get a penny tip in Iron, or a few pennies in Brass. Silver was where he started pulling in dollars, and Golden Circle was golden. That was a joke to him.
“Hope your horse feels better!” he said as another joke when he put the money in his wallet.
“I do, too,” the woman
said, and waved as he prepared to ride away. He’d made more from this side job today than he had from his hourly pay! More than he would make all this week! After he delivered in Cantercaster in the morning, and he would have to leave at the crack of dawn to get it done, he would go to his favorite restaurant and splurge on the Royal Platter. Sausages and pancakes and eggs and cut fruit with whipped cream . . .
The statues gathered in the next yard, mumbling mutinously and staring at him, and then they besieged the streets to chase after his bicycle. He knew that there was nothing actually there, but the furious stampede of one-legged flamingos, squat gnomes, sparkling fairies, and hopping toads made him soar. Added in the mix was a purple autohorse that breathed fire, Captain Mouse in his ship and the gingerbread cookie man brandishing a sword in fury since Hasten had taken a bite out of him. Chomp.
They were gaining on him! He went too fast around a curve to get away. The front tire hit a rock and the handlebars jerked. Truly was he flying then . . .
When the memories resumed, Hasten’s happy chase fantasy was gone. Rucaline! There was rucaline in the packages! Or at least there was in the one that had come apart in his fall. But the packages were all the same shape and the same weight. The only difference in them was the addresses. So he thought that they all contained little white cakes of rucaline.
Patrolmen had arrested three people who lived across the street back in his Iron days. He remembered them standing in the front yard, their hands cuffed behind their backs, their heads hanging, and Mama said, “Look at them! Look at them in their shame!” They had gotten in trouble for buying rucaline, and one was in even more trouble because he had given some of it to his friend, and she’d lost her mind on it. Once Mama went into the house, Hasten crossed the street. He had gone to school with one of the patrolmen. That was Levi Linski, a friend of Dochi’s when Dochi was alive, and he explained all about rucaline to Hasten.
If Hasten delivered these packages, he could be arrested. Then he was giving it to people who could lose their minds on it like that woman had. The police would take away his bicycle and his job in Golden Circle and he would go to prison and not feel the sea winds in his hair ever again.
Go to the police, Jesco thought to the man in turmoil wheeling home. But still alive within this man was a child, a very frightened child who did not know what to do. He was going to get in trouble, and he gripped the handlebars more tightly so no one could take his bicycle away. It never occurred to him to tell his mother, or to go to the office and hand over the packages to his boss. It never occurred to him that he was carrying a treasure trove in drugs that he could sell on his own. Rucaline was a drug and drugs were bad, so he had to get away from drugs.
The memory stopped, and the next one began. It had come clear to him in his room. In his mind’s eye was Dochi, and Dochi was telling him to take those packages back to the woman. Yes! He would give them all back, including the one that had gotten smashed, and the money on top of it, and say no thanks. She could find another courier to deliver those, or wait for her autohorse to come back from the mechanic. She could even borrow her visitor’s carriage and purple horse to do it. Hasten would not. He didn’t want to go to jail.
A boy. Angels above, a boy.
He swept through the darkening roads and arrived at the house. It was early night. There were carriages parked carelessly up and down the sidewalks, autohorses waiting patiently. Some of the carriages jutted out into the road and others had a wheel or two propped up on the sidewalks. All of the lights in the house were blazing behind the sheer curtains. That was right! She had said that she was having a party. The driveway was full of carriages, too. Black and tan and parked haphazardly so no one could get out.
He would have parked his bicycle on the sidewalk, but a stray horse was clopping up it. Dismounting, Hasten walked the bicycle through the garden. Everything had been tidy when he was here in the afternoon, but now it was a mess. There were cups on the ground, flowers ripped up and tossed aside, and someone had balanced a bicycle atop the fountain. Water coursed down the bars and dripped from the wheels. The air smelled of urine and ale.
There was laughter and shouting from the first floor of the house. More cups and puddles were on the porch, so he turned at the hedges and parked his bicycle there. He was going to knock on the door and ask to see her-
-he was-
-he was-
-she was—
She reeled over her own two feet and tripped on a bicycle, knocking it over and falling on top of it. Stoman shouted the carriage is this way, Lyza, you damn drunk, and she clambered out of the bushes and off the bicycle to tell him what she thought of him . . .
-she was-
-she was—
Such a pretty color! But it was big, a grown-up’s bicycle, and it was sticky!
The lady smiled at Patty. She had a lot of teeth like a shark, and she smelled. It was an ale smell when a shark should have smelled like fish, and a shark didn’t wear hoop earrings with diamonds either, or any kind of earrings at all.
“Fun, fun, fun! You can ride it everywhere!” the woman said. Her smile was a shark smile, all teeth and no lips. Patty looked up to Molly, who did not want the sticky bicycle, and could not take it with both hands. She was holding the flamingo statue so Patty was helping to keep it steady . . .
Jesco took his hand off the bicycle. Tammie and Scoth helped him down to the sofa, where he told them everything he had seen with Scoth writing it in his pad of paper. A dull throb was in Jesco’s stomach. “We still don’t know anything for sure,” he said when he finished.
“We know so much more than we did,” Scoth said. “We can place Jibb for certain at Grance Dolgange’s home in Melekei within minutes to a couple of hours of when he was murdered. We’ve got proof that she’s involved in the distribution of rucaline!”
“Horrible and no two ways about it,” Tammie said, having gone to the kitchen for a drink and flopping into the armchair. Liquid spilled over her fingers. Wiping off her hand, she said, “A real adult in his head and he wouldn’t have gone back. He would have gone anywhere but back. Any of us would have told him that. He could blow her whole operation, to her way of thinking, if he opened his mouth to someone. He could have demanded she pay him to keep his silence. That’s what she would have considered when he showed up on her porch. He’s going to want money to shut up, or to be let in on the business, or he’s got principles that will land her in hot water. She couldn’t see into his head that he just wanted to hand back those packages with the money and go home on his bicycle.”
Scoth spoke as he wrote. “She wanted to get that rucaline out of her house before the party, a party that has before damaged or flat-out destroyed portions of her property. Maybe she was worried that her friends would find it. With all the cakes that were in those twelve packages . . . that had to be a million dollars in rucaline. If she were ratted out for it, she’d spend the rest of her life in prison.”
“There had to be somewhere safe in that big house of hers to stow it,” Tammie protested.
“But I can see her being nervous about it. What if it was destroyed or stolen, and even more worrisome, what if a person found it and took some? Had a bad reaction and had to be taken to the hospital? That would gain the interest of the Drug Administration, whether she was involved or not, and there would be agents dispatched to speak with her. They’d start digging around in her life and her friends’ lives. Also, the neighbors had already complained to the police about her parties and what if they stopped by? It’s understandable she wanted that rucaline gone, and saw an opportunity when a courier went past her house. Also, the unusual carriage and autohorse that Jibb saw on his first stop there! Yvod Kodolli was described in a rag as owning a purple autohorse. But it doesn’t sound like that carriage was still there on Jibb’s second visit. Was it, Jesco?”
“If it was, it had been moved. Or else he left,” Jesco said. “There wasn’t anything special about the rest of the carriages. They were quality, bu
t regular colors and styles.”
“You think the body got dumped in that carriage, Scoth?” Tammie asked.
“That’s quite a conspicuous carriage to take around for someone doing something he or she wants to stay hidden,” Scoth said. “We canvassed the streets of Wattling immediately after the murder-”
“I was part of it, remember?”
“And not one person reported seeing a horse and carriage like that. Those are details that would stick out, especially so soon afterwards. That couldn’t have been the vehicle that got the body to Poisoners’ Lane.”
“Can’t assume he was dead then. He could have died in the carriage on the way, whatever carriage they took.”
“If only that bicycle had had eyes,” Scoth said. “But still, we’ve got him at that house now. He had the intention of walking up to the door and knocking on it. Who answered, and what happened then?”
“He got himself poked, that’s what,” Tammie said. “And not one of those loads of people thought to take themselves to the Melekei police and report it. Nice lot of friends she has. And one of them knew enough about seers to strip him naked.”
Jesco shifted to see what parts of his body worked and what didn’t. He was weakened but functional, and the dull throb was gone. “And burn his clothes and all of his belongings so no seer could ever lay a finger on them,” he added. “They could all be in the rucaline trade with her, those friends at the party. They wouldn’t have gone to the police then. They were protecting their business.”
