Farewell to the Liar

by D. K. Fields

  ‘Where were you anyway?’ Cora asked Nullan, once the dead Seeder was well behind them.

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘You were meant to be with me and Ruth while she waited for her contact. We agreed, Nullan.’

  The Casker shrugged. ‘I had something I needed to do.’

  Was she avoiding Cora’s eye?

  ‘Something more important than protecting the new Wayward storyteller?’ Cora said, louder than she meant to.

  ‘There’s many ways to do that, Cora.’

  ‘Too many to tell me, it seems.’

  Another shrug from Nullan, and that was the end of it. Another mystery Cora would have to solve herself.

  They walked in silence until the clearing came in sight. Then Cora spoke the thought that had been taking shape ever since the curly-haired man had dropped from the tree in front of her.

  ‘People must come for the bodies eventually,’ Cora said.

  Nullan glanced at her. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Because the ropes are left ready for the next who need them.’

  *

  Ruth was waiting for them in the clearing where Cora had last seen her, before she’d disappeared into the gloom of the trees to meet her contact. Whoever that was, there was no sign of them, but Ruth was pacing, her gaze darting around.

  She was shorter than Cora – like most women – and wiry where Cora was broad. To look at them, Cora knew few people would guess they were related. Her sister looked tired; her thin face seemed to have gained new lines in the last few days. More grey peppered her temples and reached back into her dark hair, which had been long until that morning but was now cut close to her crown – Nullan’s work, after Cora’s insistence. There were only a few years between them, but Ruth looked so much older than forty-three, as if the years away from Fenest had counted double what they would inside the capital.

  Cora was going to call out but then stopped herself. It didn’t feel right to shout in such a place. Hardly felt right to speak at all.

  Ruth saw them and threw up her hands. ‘I told you not to leave the clearing, Cora! From the look on your face, I can see you now understand why.’

  ‘All too well,’ Cora said, and lit a bindleleaf. There was still a shake in her hands, but it wasn’t as bad as before. Steady enough to light the rolled leaf rather than burn herself, which was something.

  ‘Well this makes a change,’ Nullan said.

  Cora and Ruth glared at her.

  ‘It’s usually the detective here telling you what to do, Ruth, or telling you what you can’t do.’

  Detective. Cora winced at the word.

  ‘Don’t call her that,’ Ruth told Nullan. ‘That’s from the past. We’ve got to look forwards.’

  ‘You got what you needed then?’ Nullan said.

  ‘Our friend told me the place. It’s not far from where we thought.’

  Cora had no idea what they were talking about, and she got the distinct feeling that wasn’t an accident. There had been plenty of these cryptic conversations since she’d joined Ruth’s web. She drew deep on the bindle and tried to control her frustration.

  ‘How long?’ Nullan said.

  ‘Four days and it’ll be ready.’ Ruth took the bindle from Cora and took a short drag. ‘Can your friend get us there that soon?’ she asked Nullan.

  ‘She’ll say she can…’

  ‘And can we trust her?’

  Nullan stood taller, squarer, somehow. ‘Definitely. I’ll send a note to ask—’

  ‘Even the Stowaway would be sent mad by you two,’ Cora said, grabbing the bindle back from Ruth and scorching herself in the process. ‘And the Stowaway likes secrets! If I’m going to help you, Ruth, you need to tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘Soon, Cora. But for now, it’s best you don’t know.’

  ‘Best for who?’

  Ruth gave her a long look. ‘Best for the Union.’ Then Ruth strode past her. ‘We should get back. There’s a lot to do before we leave.’

  ‘Leave? Where are we going?’

  ‘I hope you don’t get barge-sick, Cora.’

  Two

  They reached the treeline without seeing anyone else in the woods, dead or alive, and then the camp was before them. The structures here looked even more temporary, if that was possible, than those close to the city walls. People sheltered under roofs made of crates, or blankets spread between carts. This was the back of the camp, where the new arrivals set down their burdens. By the looks of things, there were plenty of newcomers. Cora, Nullan and Ruth made their way through those who stood around looking dazed, grubby and worn out from the journey north, and into the densely-packed tents of those who’d been here too long already. Cora wondered which of these poor folk would be the next to enter the trees, to find the ropes left ready for them?

  What had been a sad huddle of canvas lean-tos outside Fenest’s southern wall just a few days before had by now become a sea of awnings and poles, grubby scraps strung on lines between them that might be clothing, if the wearer was desperate. The number of people coming up from the south was growing. Having seen the changes in the Tear for herself, Cora now knew why.

  She’d left the smell of death behind her in the woods, but the smell of life in the camp was just as hard to bear. There was a latrine dug somewhere near the south gate but, judging by the poor air, it wasn’t enough for all the wretches scratching an existence on this scrubland between the city limits and the start of the Lowlands’ good earth. The road leading south, away from Fenest, capital of the Union of Realms, had been left clear of tents, but on either side of it, every inch of ground was being used by someone. The camp seemed weighed low with the sense of waiting.

  On the journey from the trees back to the south gate of Fenest, they didn’t speak – not of the barge trip Ruth had hinted at, nor of the people swinging from the trees. They each kept their own counsel as they stayed in single file, which Cora insisted on: Nullan in front, then Ruth, and Cora bringing up the rear. And they had to go at Cora’s pace too. A pace set by many years of smoking bindleleaf.

  It took a while for Cora’s vision to readjust to the sunlight after the gloom of the wood, but she felt easier about being in the open with Nullan there: another pair of eyes to see danger coming, and Nullan was pretty handy with the short cutlass she carried. But still Cora was nervous. This kind of terrain, the sheer number of people – it was almost impossible to know if it was safe for Ruth. Smoke curled into the air from the scattered fires. From some hidden place, reedy singing drifted. A song about a land rich with sinta fruits. A sad song from the Seeders – Lowlanders, Cora corrected herself again.

  She couldn’t quite believe how much the camp had grown. It had only been, what, a few days since Detective Cora Gorderheim – as she had been then – had returned from the Tear. Not so long as a week, Cora was almost sure, but time had been getting away from her. That was what happened when you stopped working. She’d admit freely, if anyone asked, that since losing her job she’d become like a Casker barge drifting in a current, no hand on the tiller.

  But no one had asked her. There were other, more important things to think about. The Tear was widening. The southern Lowlands had been consumed in lakes of boiling Wit’s Blood. The election wasn’t over – there were two stories still to tell, those of the Rustans and the Wayward. And there was a storyteller who needed protecting: her sister, Ruth.

  Lowlander Chambers Morton wanted to change the Wayward story, and that meant stopping Ruth, now the Wayward storyteller. Cora had to keep her sister safe, keep her alive to tell her story. But the Audience knew, there were some days that Cora felt like pushing Ruth into a pit of boiling Wit’s Blood herself. Thirty years without Ruth in her life, and now that she was back everything had changed. Cora felt as if her own life had fallen into the Tear since Ruth had reappeared.

  As they picked their way between the tents, Cora heard Chief Inspector Sillian’s parting words in her head again. That had been happening far
more often than she’d like, couldn’t seem to get rid of them: On this day and from this day forwards, you, Detective Cora Gorderheim, no longer bear this rank. You are henceforth stripped of all titles and duties, barred from entering all police premises in Fenest and the wider Union, forbidden to speak to, or fraternize with, any serving officers. . . There’d been more to it, of course: like all Commission activity, removing someone from their post was long, dull, and involved too much paperwork. But it was Sillian’s words which wouldn’t go away: you, Detective Cora Gorderheim, no longer bear this rank.

  The camp. That was what she had to focus on. Protecting Ruth was her job now, and it was all that mattered. Make sure Ruth could get safely back inside the city. Make sure Ruth told the Wayward story.

  They passed two girls drawing in the mud with sticks, passed an old Rustan man, old as the Rusting Mountains he’d left behind, mumbling into the sleeve of his slipdog hide coat – The bats, where are the bats. In front of Cora, Ruth slowed, her gaze drawn to a sinta crate piled with cups and saucers, red flowers the pattern – the things people saved when the world was falling apart around their ears. Cora caught the smell of horses that seemed always to cling to Ruth: sweet and sour at the same time. Once you’d lived as a Wayward, travelling the Union by horseback, as Ruth had been doing since she’d left Fenest all those years ago, there was probably no way of washing it out.

  Ruth’s fingers trailed the lip of a cup and then a woman dragged the crate away. The back of her white shirt bore a web of vines, stitched in bright green thread. But there was mud all over the cloth. Like the soil for the stitched vines, Cora found herself thinking. All these people, their lives uprooted, their futures uncertain. How would the Union protect them?

  Ruth. Ruth was the answer.

  ‘Keep moving,’ she muttered to her sister. The high arch of the south gate wasn’t far now. Just a little further, and they’d be back in the safety of the streets Cora knew so well.

  A cart clattered out of the archway towards them. It was travelling fast. The density of the tents had forced Cora, Ruth and Nullan closer to the road than Cora liked. They had to cluster together to let the cart pass. When it was all but past them, Cora caught sight of the man hanging on to the tailboard. A Fenestiran by the look of him. Young, well built, and staring right at Cora. As if he’d been expecting to see her there, outside the city’s south gate, at this time in the afternoon. With Ruth, a storyteller who a Chambers was looking to kill. Cora pulled out the weapon that had replaced her police-issued baton: knuckledusters. Easier to hide in her coat, quick to make use of. She was liking them more and more.

  ‘You see him?’ Cora said, without looking at Ruth. ‘Get behind me.’

  There was no response.

  ‘Ruth, for Audience sake!’

  She turned. Ruth wasn’t there. Neither was Nullan. The air drained from Cora’s lungs. She looked desperately across the tents. Finally, she caught sight of her sister’s newly shorn head making for the arch. Cora spun back to face the man on the cart, gripping her ’dusters, but the cart was heading down the road, the man on the tailboard picking his nails, no care for Cora, or for Ruth. It was getting to her, this fear for Ruth’s safety. And if she were honest with herself, she was feeling the lack of her badge. You, Detective Cora Gorderheim, no longer bear this rank.

  Cora hurried to catch Ruth and Nullan, feeling the burn of many years’ bindle-smoke tearing at her chest. Her sister was certainly fitter than her, after a life in the saddle and building other people’s fences, and Ruth wasn’t about to wait for her rasping, breathless younger sister.

  ‘Beginner hear me, Ruth, do you want to get yourself killed like Ento?’

  The name of her son brought Ruth to an abrupt halt, her boots deep in a puddle. Nullan kept walking, her pace quickening, as if she could outrun her own loss. Somewhere nearby, a dog was whining. Ruth’s thin shoulders seemed to quake. She didn’t turn around.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Cora said. ‘I shouldn’t have said that, about Ento. Nicholas, I mean.’

  Nicholas Ento – the Wayward storyteller murdered on Chambers Morton’s command. And now his mother was putting herself in the same danger.

  Cora reached out to touch Ruth’s arm, but her sister slipped away and started walking again.

  ‘You’re so keen to be back in the city, Cora, we’d better keep going, hadn’t we?’

  ‘Ruth…’

  This time, Ruth did turn round, and her pale, worn face looked at once like Ento’s. Cora hadn’t noticed the likeness before, but then, when she’d found his body in the alley between Hatch Street and Green Row all those weeks ago, it was hard to get a sense of what the man had looked like before his death. Him being strangled, his lips sewn shut.

  ‘What?’ Ruth said quietly.

  Cora inclined her head to the right. ‘This way. It’ll be safer, further from the road.’

  They let Nullan go on ahead. Cora suspected the Casker needed that.

  ‘Got any more bindleleaf on you?’ Ruth said.

  Cora passed her sister the tin. ‘Since when have you been smoking?’

  ‘Since you made me put these clothes on.’ Ruth tugged at the lapel of her green felt jacket as if just to have it anywhere near her was unpleasant.

  ‘Morton’s people are looking for a middle-aged Wayward woman with long dark hair,’ Cora said. ‘That woman had to disappear.’

  ‘Fine,’ Ruth said. ‘But did I have to end up looking like… like…’

  ‘Like?’ Cora asked, feeling a laugh coming on for the first time in she didn’t know how long. Now wasn’t the time, though the Drunkard knew it felt good.

  ‘Like a jumped-up Seminary brat!’ Ruth shuddered.

  It had been Beulah, the old chequers who ran the Dancing Oak, who had found Cora the clothes. No questions asked, but it was another favour that would have to be repaid at some point. Given what she now knew about the Tear widening, Cora had stopped caring so much about paying off debts. Things like that, they didn’t seem important anymore.

  Ruth was rolling her shoulders and stretching her neck with discomfort. Beneath the jacket she had on a shirt of dark cloth with bits of lace around the collar, and her trousers were as Fenestiran as they came: close-fitting, soft wool. With her thin frame, her hair cut short, and finally out of the Wayward riding habit, Ruth could almost pass as a man. The fashions, Beulah had told Cora, were those of today’s well-to-do Commission staff – those from the better families, those on the rise through the ranks. Those like the Gorderheims, in fact, before Ruth fled Fenest and ruined the whole family’s life thirty years earlier.

  ‘You might ride with the Wayward now, Ruth, but you are a Fenestiran.’

  ‘I haven’t been that for a long time. Too long. Some things you can’t go back to.’

  ‘And yet here we are,’ Cora said.

  The arch of the south gate was before them, and with it, the noise of Fenest. Cora made Ruth wait while she checked the way ahead, then they slipped back into the bustling city.

  On the steps of a coaching inn just inside the arch, pennysheet sellers shouted their competing headlines. Carts clattered over cobbles. A dog howled and a woman cursed. The bread man told stories of his rivals’ less than savoury habits in the flour room. A line of chattering Seminary children, their studies over for the day, were herded by an aged teacher whose stick tripped a chequers, his eye on his slips. Here, inside the city was life, in all its noisy glory. Outside, there was only despair.

  Cora let out a sigh of relief. The story of today wasn’t one for the Drunkard after all. Instead it was a story for the Calm Luminary, who heard tales of forests and of peace. Cora hoped those in the trees had found peace at last.

  ‘Rustan Hook opens tomorrow!’ cried a pennysheet boy. ‘Queues expected overnight for the Wonder of the Rusting Mountains.’

  A Hook – a glimpse of an election story, displayed three days before the story itself was told. Designed to whip Fenest into a frenzy for the tale. From the soun
d of the queues, the Rustan Hook was working before it had even opened to the public. An older woman stopped the headline-shouting boy and bought a ’sheet. Several more eager customers were unwisely drawing out their coin-purses – Perlish, by the look of their oiled hair and feathered jackets: visitors to the capital for the election. They’d be wise to keep their wits about them. There were always light fingers in this part of the city, so close to the gateway to the south. Cora turned away. That wasn’t her problem anymore. Nullan was waiting for them at the entrance to an alley, and Cora and Ruth headed over.

  The Rustan story would be the fifth tale of this election – the two hundred and ninth election of the Union of Realms. Each realm sent storytellers to the capital to win votes, votes that won that realm control of the Assembly, which in turn meant power over the Union for that term. Every five years this happened. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it had lasted.

  But what would happen after Ruth told the Wayward story and the news of the Tear widening was known? Would the six realms of the Union break apart, separated by the wall Lowlander Chambers Morton wanted to build? That was a story for the whole Union to learn, and a story for another day. For now, Cora could only think about keeping Ruth safe. And that meant getting back to the distillers where they’d been hiding out since yesterday; the last in a long line of safe houses that Nullan had arranged for Ruth and her allies.

  They turned into an alley where the noise wasn’t so bad and there were only rotting vegetables to deal with, rather than skittering crowds.

  ‘Send word to your friend,’ Ruth told Nullan. ‘Once the Rustans have told their tale, we’ll need her.’

  ‘I will. I’ll meet you back at the distillers.’

  ‘And bring some hot food!’ Ruth said.

  Nullan grinned, the piercing in her lip flashing. She turned to go, back to the main thoroughfare, but Cora stopped her.

  ‘We might have a problem first.’

  From the shadows at the other end of the alley, a man had appeared. A heartbeat passed, nothing more, and then he was running at them.