Farewell to the Liar

by D. K. Fields

  Truth be told, she hadn’t worried too much about rent and breakfast herself for a while after that, not when she’d first got back from seeing the Tear. But in the last few days, back in Fenest and focused on Ruth, keeping her safe, it was easy to forget the threat that was slowly coming for the north and the hardship it would bring.

  Though she’d seen it herself, with her own heat-scorched eyes, now she was back in the alleys and the cut-throughs of the city, with the cries of the pennysheet sellers sounding at all hours of the day, she could almost tell herself it wasn’t real. That the Tear was where it had always been. Still where it was since it came into being and drove the first peoples north, with only the people who became known as the Torn staying in that fiery place, their bodies changing to keep them alive.

  And when the news of the Tear widening seemed fanciful – a story – that was when Cora could see what Ruth and her allies couldn’t: that the people of the north failed to make sense of the half-truths in the pennysheets, of the camps outside Fenest’s walls, because they didn’t want to make sense of it.

  Was it any wonder that Morton’s plan to build walls, to keep some people safe and let others suffer to maintain the version of the Union she preferred, was an attractive one? Part of Cora wanted to be on the safe side of any wall that went up. Part of her wanted what Morton was offering.

  These thoughts were with her as she went down the stairs of her lodging house. They were with her as she opened the front door to the street. When she shut that door behind her, they lingered in the little lobby along with the coats, umbrellas, walking sticks and boots no one claimed to own. But the thoughts would be with her again before too long. There seemed no escaping them.

  No escaping the people watching her either: Morton’s people, trying to find Ruth.

  Across the street from the lodging house, a young woman was trying to quieten a mewling baby. Nothing out of the ordinary in that. But the woman, the way her gaze darted to Cora as soon as she stepped into the street then quickly back to the blanketed baby she was rocking, Cora knew this woman had been waiting for her.

  Cora took out her bindle tin and lit up a ready-rolled smoke. The woman didn’t look at her again, but she didn’t move either, just stayed in the middle of the pavement. She wasn’t waiting at a gig post or buying from a ’sheet seller. There were no stalls or shops on this street. No one had stopped this woman to talk. She was just standing there. And she had made the mistake of looking at Cora.

  To be sure, Cora headed down the street, but in the opposite direction to the safe house where she was due to meet Ruth and Nullan. The woman with the baby followed. She kept her distance, but she was there, and whichever turn Cora took, the woman took too. Cora had one last drag of her bindle and threw the still-burning end into the street.

  The safe house wasn’t far, but it looked like Cora’s route would be longer this morning. She’d memorised the map of below-ground passageways that Beulah had given her, for a price Cora had yet to fully determine, and knew that there was a door nearby. A pennysheet boy hove into view, and Cora stopped to buy from him. Behind her, the woman’s step faltered, then quickened as she made the choice to walk past Cora rather than linger in the middle of the street.

  The pennysheet boy was talking. ‘There’s none dead.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The fire at the distiller’s. It’s a miracle, they’re saying.’

  The woman was a little way past Cora now. Cora let the boy chatter on, only half listening as she handed over a penny for the ’sheet.

  ‘What are they saying caused the fire?’ she asked him.

  The boy shrugged. ‘Something to do with the windows.’

  The woman wore a coat of light blue wool that dropped low across her backside. The baby’s pale blanket hung over her arms.

  ‘Windows?’ Cora said to the boy, keeping the woman at the edge of her gaze. ‘How do windows start a fire?’

  The boy was sloping off. ‘You’ll have to read the ’sheet, won’t you.’

  The woman’s pace had slowed. Watching her, Cora could almost feel her need to turn back to see her mark. But that would give the game away, wouldn’t it? A few steps more, and the woman was forced to turn a corner.

  Cora took her chance and ran in the other direction, trying to ignore the tightness in her chest that came from all her years smoking. She wondered at what the ’sheet seller had said – none dead at the distiller’s? That wasn’t what Ruth’s people were saying. But there was no time to think about that now. She ducked into a tool-sharpener’s shop. The man at the workbench looked up from his knives.

  ‘Can I help—’

  Cora flashed him Beulah’s key – the sign all the door guardians knew, so Beulah had told her – and he nodded. ‘Down the back. There’s a rug, trapdoor beneath it.’

  Why did it have to be a trapdoor? There were easier ways to leave a place.

  ‘A woman will come in,’ Cora said, ‘with a baby. Keep her talking.’

  He was grumbling about needing more from Beulah for his pains, but Cora had seen the rug. She caught the higher pitch of the woman’s voice – just the sound – as she shoved the rug aside. The key fitted the lock, as it did all the doors Beulah controlled, and Cora lowered herself into the darkness. The trapdoor had some kind of spring mechanism which allowed it to fall back, the rug attached so if the woman should find some reason to check the back of the tool-sharpener shop, there’d be no sign of a way out.

  This was the moment Cora tended to panic, when the darkness was absolute. But she knew there’d be the makings of a light nearby. That was a condition of having guardianship of Beulah’s doors, and being paid for it. She took a deep breath to calm her chest then fumbled on the floor. The surface of this passageway was sandy, gritty. Sometimes there were boards, once even carpet. Her fingers closed on the cool glass of a lamp, and beneath it were flints. She struck a light and felt her heart ease almost at once. Time to get going.

  She was heading for a baker’s that was near the safe house. Not a long journey underground today, or at least it shouldn’t be if she went the right way. Since joining Ruth and needing to throw Morton’s people off her sister’s scent, Cora had had some trips that went on and on, time becoming meaningless. That was when doubt crept in: Had she taken the right turn? Was there meant to be a bend here? Shouldn’t she be out by now? There were risks in using Beulah’s underground routes, risks the old chequers had been keen to point out.

  ‘A few have joined the Audience down there, Detective, I can’t lie. They get lost and then expire before anyone else comes across them. I’d hate for you to join the Audience that way.’

  ‘It’d make for a good story to tell them when I arrived.’

  But not today. She kept the route in her head and kept going. The important thing, Beulah had said, was to avoid turning round. That was how people got lost, no sense of direction. On she went, passing under who knew what shops, houses, story venues? Beulah might have routes that ran beneath the Wheelhouse, home of the Commission. Even now, above Cora’s head, there might be hundreds upon hundreds of Commission staff, all wearing their various shades of purple, noting every detail of life in the Union. Once in a while, faint noises reached her from above – what sounded like furniture moving, a bell ringing, and even the sharp high note of a woman’s laugh.

  Her lamp revealed a fork in the passage, and a picture crudely chalked on the wall. Cora held the lamp closer. Was that white square meant to be a bag of flour? She squinted. Or a tooth? Was she heading for a stitcher who pulled teeth?

  ‘You need some better picture-makers, Beulah,’ Cora murmured, and was surprised how loud her voice was. Not that there was anyone to hear her. Or was there? Cora had no idea how many people Beulah had given keys to. There could be anyone down here. That thought spurred her on, and she tried to focus on something that had been circling in her head since she’d left the Bird House the day before: the Wayward Tannir and his missing gloves. She mulled on that a
s she trudged the hidden ways beneath Fenest, and at last, there was a change in the stale air. Wafting along the tunnel was the warm, stomach-tightening smell of freshly baked bread.

  *

  She found Ruth and Nullan looking at a map of the River Tun. They were in the small back room of the hat-maker’s that was the current safe house. There was cloth everywhere: rolls stacked floor to ceiling, drapes of it hanging from precariously tilting rails. And scattered about were wooden blocks crudely carved into head shapes. It made Cora think of the carved and hewn representations of the Audience found throughout the capital and the Union, in Seats and outside betting rings, as if the Audience had all had their heads chopped off, and they’d somehow ended up in this stuffy room.

  ‘Got any coffee?’ she asked Ruth.

  ‘Yes, but it’s not hot.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  Ruth looked her over then poured a cup from a reassuringly huge pot. The cup felt too fragile in Cora’s large, calloused hand. She worried she’d crush it and the coffee would stain the piles of cloth that were impossible to escape.

  ‘You all right here?’ Cora asked her. ‘Any problems overnight?’

  ‘No fires, if that’s what you mean,’ Ruth said.

  From the floors above came enough noise to suggest at least some of the Wayward election contingent, Ruth’s allies, were crammed into the same building.

  ‘Nice of you to finally join us,’ Nullan said. The Casker was perched on a bolt of deep black cloth.

  ‘I was waylaid.’ At the sight of her sister’s worried face, Cora added, ‘Nothing to fret about. Here.’ Cora handed over the pastries she’d bought from the baker’s. The smell had been too much to resist. She cleared a stool of a tray of pins and sat down. Her leg, still healing from the Hook barge fire, was feeling the effects of the walk. ‘Before I go to see the Rustan Hook, tell me something. Who knew you’d be away from the distillers yesterday?’

  Ruth took a bite of a pastry. ‘Only you and Nullan.’

  ‘What about the lad who found us near the south gate, when we came back from your meeting in the wood?’ Cora asked.

  ‘Him too. But that’s it.’

  ‘So Tannir wouldn’t have known you’d left the distillers?’

  ‘He shouldn’t have known,’ Nullan said, ‘let’s put it that way. But with the head herders backing his case to replace Ruth as the storyteller, who knows who might be tempted to say more than they should.’

  ‘No,’ Ruth said, and swept the crumbs from her lap with force. ‘Tannir did not know I would be leaving the distillers yesterday. Cora, why are you even asking about this?’

  ‘Old habits die hard,’ Cora said, and stretched out her legs as much as she was able in the tightly-packed room. On her injured leg, the flesh was still tight and hot to the touch. And the person who had rescued her from the Hook fire was on her mind now. ‘I think it’s worth investigating what happened at the distillers.’

  ‘Why?’ Ruth said. ‘We know it was Morton. She’s been after me ever since I arrived back in Fenest. You’ve been telling me that every hour of the day.’

  ‘It wouldn’t hurt to be sure.’

  ‘You think Tannir was involved?’ Nullan said. ‘I can’t see the sense in that.’

  ‘Not been much sense in anything since this election started,’ Cora muttered.

  Nullan turned to Ruth, ‘But if we can find something on Tannir’s involvement, something we can prove, then you’d have some leverage with Hyam and the other head herders. That would go a long way right now.’

  Ruth appeared to mull this over, then said to Cora, ‘If you do investigate the fire, it needs to be done quietly. If the head herders thought we were accusing a Wayward of killing our own people…’

  ‘Trust me. I know someone who can help.’

  ‘Can we trust them?’ Nullan said.

  ‘I’d trust him with my life.’

  ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,’ Ruth murmured.

  Seven

  Since the Hook barge had ended up at the bottom of the River Stave, thanks to the fire which had nearly killed Cora, the election Hooks had been displayed at the Seat of the Commoner. Cora arrived at the Seat in plenty of time for the official opening of the Rustan Hook, but the queue was already snaking down the street. From the blankets draped across shoulders, the baskets now empty, and the yawns that broke into excited chatter, many had slept outside the Seat to make sure they were the first inside. Cora joined the end of the line. Constable Jenkins had been right about Cora’s inability to jump the queue without her badge.

  If Jenkins herself were here, she’d be just as bad as those around Cora – loud and grinning. She’d say it was no wonder people came to see the Hook in such numbers. It was the closest most of them would get to the election story due to be told in three days’ time, after the Hook had had its Commission-authorised time on display. The idea of the Hook was to hint, to keep people talking, to keep them speculating about the Rustan story to come. And to keep them betting, of course: chequers in black-and-white jackets worked their way along the queue, taking advantage of people with time on their hands and excitement in their bellies. There were a few constables among them, keeping the crowd safe and orderly, but none she recognised. The Seat of the Commoner was in a part of the city not usually covered by the Bernswick division, and Cora was grateful for that. She didn’t want to see any familiar faces from the station.

  As the queue shuffled forwards, the man behind Cora – a fat Perlish as oily as one of their cheeses – bumped into her. She gritted her teeth and inched ahead, getting uncomfortably close to the person in front of her: a Seeder, from the looks of her. Great, Cora was stuck between people from the two northern realms of the Union. The north that not only looked down on the south, but also cheated it too, over-charged it, robbed it blind in some cases, always aided in doing so by the capital, Fenest. That was what Ruth had told her, and after all that had happened, Cora could believe it. Could believe, too, that their parents had been part of it with their work in the trading halls.

  The Perlish man behind her shuffled forwards.

  ‘Keep your distance, friend,’ she said, without a hint of anything approaching friendly.

  He folded his arms and eyed her over his spectacles, the glass of which was small as pennies. Surely he couldn’t see out of them? More Perlish fashion nonsense.

  ‘I’ve got every right to stand here,’ he said. ‘You don’t own this bit of street, do you? Fenestirans.’ He looked like he would spit, if he wasn’t so fancy. ‘You think this election is all about you.’

  ‘Fenestirans are the ones who vote, no one else,’ said the Seeder woman in front. ‘That’s the Commission rule. It’s laid down in article fifteen, point three, where it also says that the voting pool should be drawn from as wide a range of Fenest’s population as possible. Now, the way I see it is: the districts must be equally…’

  This had the makings of a long morning. Cora considered slouching away, but there was someone she needed to meet and a good chance he’d be here for the opening of the Rustan Hook. So she gritted her teeth and gazed out at the street.

  The queue made slow progress. Cora was close enough now to the doors of the Seat to see the carvings on the wood. With each step closer, the faces and bodies carved into the wooden panels grew more distinct, more like the bodies queuing to get inside. As unthinkable as it was to have Hooks displayed in a Seat, the choice of the Stalled Commoner, Audience member for stories of decisions, and of crowds, was in many ways appropriate.

  Just a few feet from the door, she spotted who she’d been looking for: Serus.

  She saw his hair first. As usual, the auburn length of it was pulled into a topknot that flashed in the late spring sun. It was a good match for the warm colour of his slipdog hide coat that he wore all year round, whatever the temperature. The worn hide was like nothing else, and had a kind of give to it like butter. She grabbed Serus’s arm as he passed and felt the softness of th
e coat. And the firmness of his muscled arm beneath.

  He pulled back, ready to curse whoever it was that had got hold of him, but then he saw Cora. A smile set his metal cheekbones sliding over one another. A Rustan body modification was still a sight she had to get used to, even at her age.

  ‘I was beginning to think you’d left Fenest,’ he said, moving close to her, his voice low and just for her ears. ‘I went to the station,’ Serus said. ‘The sergeant there, the one who likes the birds…’

  ‘Hearst.’

  ‘He told me what happened, with Sillian.’

  ‘Not here,’ she murmured, and gave the tiniest nod to those either side of her in the queue.

  Serus understood at once. ‘Come with me. I was heading inside anyway. The first display is about to start.’

  The Seeder woman beside her gasped then whispered excitedly to the child clinging to her knees.

  ‘Display?’ Cora said to Serus.

  He grinned. ‘Don’t you read the pennysheets? It’s been all over them, though not the timings. That side of things has been kept quiet. For the surprise.’

  ‘Serus, I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Time to find out.’

  Together they entered the Seat. Cora felt the closeness of Serus beside her and had to admit it felt good. Commission purple tunics flanked the doors, controlling the numbers to stop a stampede.

  ‘Fire Investigator Serus,’ Cora said loudly, ‘I hope your realm has something to show these good people?’

  On hearing Serus’s official title, the young purple tunic nearest them stood a bit taller and tried to puff out his scrawny chest. Cora did her best to hide her smile.