by D. K. Fields
‘It’s long past time I went back to Bordair,’ Nullan said. ‘If it weren’t for Nicholas, for Ruth, I would have gone back as soon as my story was finished.’
‘Going to see that woman with the tea kettle?’ Cora said.
‘Seems as good a strategy as any to work out what to do with a life. You could come with me, Cora, see if Rilla can help you with your Rustan.’
‘That’s one of those matches she wouldn’t help with,’ Cora said, and the truth of it was so sad, she had nothing else to say all the rest of the miles back to Fenest.
But she did make some decisions.
*
When the north gate of Fenest came in sight, Cora assumed the herd would disperse. She thought the wagon bearing the Hook would continue to the Seat of the Commoner where it was to be displayed, with one or two outriders at most to see it safely there. But the Wayward herd gave no sign of falling away, and so it was that several hundred horses entered the city’s narrow streets – a river of animals surging forward. Coaches and gigs found their way blocked, foot traffic came to a chaotic halt, and the noise of hooves on cobbles made for a relentless din as it echoed off the surrounding buildings. People stopped what they were doing and stared, open-mouthed, at the spectacle.
Now that they were back in the city, Cora had to be on the alert again. Word that Ruth was still alive could have made it back to Fenest already, and so Morton might even now be setting her next move in motion. Cora checked on her sister. Ruth was riding close to her, but not close enough, as far as Cora was concerned. The herd had had to thin out to make its way through the streets so there was only one other rider on either side of Ruth now, and Cora was two lengths behind. If the Latecomer was paying attention to this tale, he’d surely see that, with any luck, the chaos of the herd would keep Ruth safe for now.
And chaos really was the right word for what was happening. If Cora had still been at Bernswick, this would have been a nightmare. She could picture it now. People would pour up the front steps of the station to report the city being overrun by Wayward horses, which would soon turn to complaints about the disruption and the increasing levels of mess the horses left behind them. The desk sergeant would be overwhelmed as he tried to get everyone to fill in the appropriate form in the small space by the main doors. As constables tried to fight their way out, Jenkins in the lead, Sergeant Hearst would skulk off to the roof where, along with his beloved birds who nested there, he could look down on the streets filled with horses. From her window on the top floor of the station, Chief Inspector Sillian would look on with horror at Fenest grinding to a halt, and guess that her attempts to stop Ruth had failed. That thought cheered Cora up and gave her renewed strength to stay in the saddle just a bit longer, and to ignore the knocks her knees were taking as the horses pressed together in the narrow space.
The Commoner’s love of crowds meant that his Seat had been built in the middle of a large open square. So when the herd arrived there, not only was there space to spread out but also to actually dismount too. Scores of constables were there to meet them, sent from the parts of the city that hadn’t yet been blocked off by the steady stream of horses. But no one from the Commission seemed to know what to do, given the unexpected arrival of the herd. That was no bad thing.
When Cora’s feet hit the ground, she thought the rest of her might join them in a heap on the cobbles, but then Nullan appeared from somewhere and caught Cora by the elbow.
‘You got a place lined up for us to stay?’ Cora asked the Casker.
‘Of course.’
‘Then let’s get going.’ Cora lurched out of the way of a horse’s hindquarters as it swung around, too close for comfort. ‘It’s not safe being out in the open like this, and not just because of the herd.’
‘I’ll let you tell your sister that.’ Nullan looked at the wagon bearing the Hook, which had Wayward crawling all over it. ‘Ruth wants to see it installed in the Seat. Frant gave her a whole list of instructions for hanging it straight.’
‘Then she can give them to someone else. Someone who isn’t a target for a murderous Chambers.’
‘After you, Detective.’
The title felt more like it belonged to Cora again, now that they were back in Fenest. Not that this was the city she recognised, it being full of horses.
She pushed her way to where Ruth was directing the men and women unloading the rolls of canvas. A guard of Wayward had formed outside the open doors of the Seat of the Commoner to block the view of the growing crowd of gawkers – mostly pennysheet sellers who could slip beneath arms and duck low to the cobbles. Purple tunics were dashing out of the Seat and adding their noise to the chaos.
Cora reached through the press of bodies surrounding Ruth, her hand grazing the stiffened hide of Wayward cloaks, and caught Ruth’s arm. Her sister spun round, tense as a fighting dog who thinks they’re being attacked. Cora was pleased at the reaction: Ruth hadn’t let her guard down. If anything, she looked more alert and determined. Certainly less tired than she had in the last few days.
‘Ruth, it’s not safe you being here.’
‘But—’
‘Only so far you can test the Latecomer’s patience,’ Cora said, pulling her, gently, away from the wagon. ‘Don’t make this Hook another dead storyteller.’
Ruth’s fingers drifted to her side, where Tannir had stabbed her. She nodded, and gave some instructions to a grizzled Wayward woman who had lost most of her teeth. Then together they headed to where Nullan was waiting for them in the shadow of a coffee house flanking the square.
As they dodged between the horses, Cora stole glances at Ruth. There was a look on her sister’s face that Cora recognised from their days in the Seminary: Ruth was ready to stand up and say her piece. But instead of challenging teachers about the fairness of the Union, she’d be standing before the Union itself to tell that story. A new version of the one she’d first told Cora on the night she’d left Fenest all those years ago.
‘Does it seem different to you?’ Cora asked. ‘The city, I mean.’
‘I’ve not been back here often since I left,’ Ruth said, ‘but every time I set foot in Fenest’s streets, I get the same feeling.’
‘Overcome with love for the old place?’ Cora said dryly, dodging a drinker caught between gawping at the Wayward herd and bringing back up his day’s ale.
Ruth covered her nose against the drinker’s less than pleasant aroma. ‘It’s as if I never left. Joining the herd, marrying Frant, having Nicholas… It’s like none of that happened.’
‘There was plenty that came before that,’ Cora said. ‘You stealing the papers from the study, selling the story of the embezzlement to the pennysheets. Or does it feel like that never happened either, Ruth?’
‘You make it sound like I was in the wrong, Cora! It wasn’t me who stole from the trading halls.’
‘Or me, but the years that followed…’ Cora was all at once weary. The days in the saddle catching up with her, leaving Marcus behind, Serus… And it was so much more than that too. It was thirty years of not knowing what had happened to Ruth. Of living with the shame of their parents’ theft.
She was so, so tired of it all.
‘I should have gone with you,’ she said.
‘I should have stayed to see that you were all right, Cora.’
‘I doubt Mother would have let you keep your old room, not after you exposed them.’
Ruth’s laughter brought her closer to Cora. ‘True. I was ready to leave that house anyway. But I could have found a way to stay close by. Help you out, after Father—’
‘Too late for any of that now,’ Cora said.
Ruth gave a deep sigh. ‘I’m not so sure. Morton made a lot of money from what our parents did in the trading halls. Arrani said that played a big part in Morton becoming the Seeder Chambers. If we can stop Morton’s plans, we can put right one wrong, at least.’
‘The Gorderheim wrong.’
They stood aside for a gang of constab
les rushing to join their fellows in the chaos of the herd.
‘You know what always surprised me?’ Ruth said. ‘Why you never changed your name. “Gorderheim” will always be associated with our parents, the money. When you joined the police you could have started over, become someone else. Why didn’t you?’
Cora swallowed, the words hard to find, but if not now, then when?
‘I thought if you came back… I didn’t want to make it hard for you, to find me, I mean. But you didn’t.’
‘Cora, I’m sorry. I—’
‘Made a good story for the Drunkard,’ Cora said.
‘I’m here now, Cora.’
It was all Cora could do to keep walking, to stay upright, to stay focused. She checked her pocket: Beulah’s key was still safe. She’d need the underground routes to get Ruth to whichever new safe house Nullan had in mind. Keeping her there for the next three days while the Hook was displayed, that would be harder.
As Cora and Ruth reached Nullan, Cora caught the hood of a pennysheet lad, stopping him mid-shout. She already had the words of the message she wanted him to take, had been working them out all the way back to Fenest. The conversation with Ruth had made up her mind to send that message. Time could get away from a person. With a coin begged from Ruth, Cora paid the ’sheet seller for his trouble, and he hared into an alley. Whether it would work, she had no idea. But she had to try. Nullan had asked what she’d do after the story. It was about time she started thinking about her own future, as well as the future of the Union.
‘Ready?’ Cora asked Ruth.
‘Guess I’m paying for a coach.’
‘No need for that,’ Cora said, ‘as long as you two are up for a walk, stretch the legs after all that time in the saddle?’
Nullan frowned. ‘Cora, you keep saying we need to keep a low profile, not be out in the streets.’
Cora led them into an alley. ‘We won’t be in the open. Time you two got to know the other side of Fenest. The one that runs beneath us. Nearest door is in the games house round the corner.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Ruth said.
Cora started down the alley. ‘You’ll see. And if we’re lucky, we might even get a hand of cards in before we go below.’
Twenty-Nine
The next morning, Cora was back outside the Seat of the Commoner. She’d travelled beneath the ground most of the way, but the Seat was on her route and curiosity had got the better of her, so she’d climbed back up to ground level through an obliging butcher’s shop. Now, as she stood in the shadow of one of the large trees in the square, she thought she could smell blood. Had she caught her coat on one of the many hanging carcasses on her way out of the shop? She couldn’t find any spots of blood.
The queues outside the Seat were long – the longest she’d seen for any Hook in this election. In any election. And the headlines shouted by the pennysheet sellers who strolled the length of the queues told her why: Wayward Hook paints picture of destruction! What do changes in the Tear mean for the south?
She didn’t allow herself to think about Marcus, instead studying the faces of those in the queue. They were worried. There was nothing like the excitement she’d seen in those waiting for the Rustan Hook. And the expressions of those leaving the Seat this morning were even more grave than those waiting to go in. Even the purple tunics managing the site looked sombre too. News of the Wayward painting would be spreading through the city, and the whole Union. Preparing the voters for the story to come, and the choice they would have to make.
Cora stepped aside for a couple walking past her, their heads bent close together in hurried conversation – she didn’t think they’d even seen her. They were young, the woman with a stack of pennysheets tucked under her arm, the man worrying at the patchy beard he was trying to grow.
‘But it’s so different from the first canvas to the last,’ the man said. ‘What else could it mean?’
‘Not that,’ the woman said. ‘It can’t mean that. The ground can’t simply just open.’
‘It did once before, didn’t it? When the Tear was made, and now it’s—’
‘Don’t,’ the woman said. ‘I can’t bear to think it’s true. Those people in the camps…’
The couple continued down the street, their voices replaced by others all saying variations of the same thing as they crossed the square in front of the Seat of the Commoner: the Tear is widening. What would the Wayward story tell the Union of this catastrophe?
A fresh pennysheet headline came booming across the square to distract her: Wayward lose battle with Wheelhouse: story to be told at Easterton Coach Station.
This was news to Cora, and troubling too. The coach station wasn’t on the map of Beulah’s underground routes. There were few buildings on the site which meant there were no obvious places to emerge. No obvious places to hide, either, from a Wayward with a knife, sent on a mission to kill a storyteller and step into her place. Which raised the question of just how to get Ruth to the point she’d seen all the other realms’ ’tellers reach: standing in front of the audience, taking a deep breath, uttering their first line. That moment felt both uncomfortably close and impossibly far away.
She’d left Ruth under the watchful eye of Nullan in the new safe house – three rooms on the top floor of a lodging house, not far from Easterton Coach Station, which was now apparently convenient. Nullan must have had some idea that venue was possible, even if it wasn’t the head herders’ choice.
Of all the places Nullan had found for Ruth to hide in, the ones Cora had seen at any rate, this was the most comfortable. It had proper beds for a start. The Child knew, they could all do with some rest.
Ruth didn’t seem to think so though. She had been sitting in the corner of her room when Cora had gone to sleep in the adjoining one, and was still there that morning. It looked as if she’d been facing the wall all night. More of her tanketting: practising her story, making her memory strong. Cora had left her to it, but not before she’d made Ruth swear on all the Audience members, including the Mute, that she wouldn’t leave the lodging house. The head herders had no idea where she was and, hopefully, that meant neither did Tannir.
Just as she was about to leave the square, Cora saw someone who might shed light on Tannir’s whereabouts.
Jenkins was out of uniform, heading for the back of the queue: an ordinary Fenestiran wanting to see the Hook, like anyone else. The Poet’s bells had only recently chimed the half hour, which meant Cora had time before she was due to be somewhere. She went after the constable, falling into stride beside her only after having to break into a jog. It wasn’t just Jenkins’s long legs that had her walking faster. It was having young lungs free of bindle-smoke damage.
‘I’ve seen it, can save you the bother of the queue,’ Cora said.
Jenkins whirled round. ‘Detective!’ Her grin was huge, and real. It was hard not to feel good about that, and Cora didn’t bother to correct the constable. There were worse things to be called.
‘Quietly now, Constable. We don’t need to tell the whole Union we’re here, do we?’
Jenkins’s over-sized teeth disappeared, and she nodded solemnly. Cora led her to an alley that looked onto the square, and they went as far as the first bend, which kept them out of sight of the queue and anyone coming up the other way.
‘Have a lot of horse mess to clean up yesterday?’ Cora asked her.
‘Enough to fill all the flowerbeds of Fenest. Some divisions are still moving it.’
‘Hearst got you on other work, I hope?’
Jenkins fidgeted, warming her hands in her pockets. She was wearing a long navy coat that had an expensive-looking cut, even to Cora’s untrained eye. Even out of uniform, Jenkins favoured a blue jacket.
‘The sergeant said I should keep tailing that Wayward, the bald one.’
‘And?’
Jenkins’s gaze dropped to the puddle at her feet, and Cora’s spirits dropped with it.
‘I’ve lost him, Detecti
ve. It’s been days since I’ve seen him. I was wondering if he’d followed you, wherever it was you went.’
‘I had other problems than Tannir. Do you think he’s still in the city?’
‘I suspect so. I last saw him two days ago near the Wheelhouse, but lost him when a group of coaches arrived at once. I’ve been trying to find Marcus to pass the message on but—’
‘No need to worry about that anymore, Constable.’
‘What do you mean?’
Cora waved the question away. ‘Keep looking for Tannir. Any news, send it to the Dancing Oak.’
‘My mother’ll be pleased.’
‘Donnata spending more time over that way, is she?’
Jenkins sighed. ‘Now she’s discovered the Oak, she doesn’t want to leave.’
‘Happens to the best of us. I saw you at the Rustan story. You got the voting chest detail?’
‘I did.’ The constable’s face brightened. ‘I’m down for the same at the Wayward story too.’
A sound from along the alley: water splashing, a low voice muttering. Cora’s hand went to her coat pocket. Jenkins, too, was alive to trouble, in a way Cora hadn’t seen before. Somehow, without her constable jacket, she looked more at home in the streets. Perhaps there were the makings of a plain-clothes detective in her yet.
The source of the noise came into sight – an old whore splashing through the puddles, not seeming to notice the water landing on her rouged cheeks and on her wig of black curls. The woman stomped her way past Cora and Jenkins, giving each a glance that spoke of disgust, then she was gone, into the square.
‘So you finally know where the voting chests go,’ Cora said. ‘Like mother like daughter, eh?’
‘People say that, but—’
‘But you’re your own woman.’
Jenkins met her eye. ‘I am, Detective. I really am.’
‘Good. You’ll need to be in the months and years to come.’
‘You mean with the Tear widening?’
‘With what comes next.’
The Poet’s bells chimed again, and Cora knew she had to leave to make her meeting on time. Whether he came or not, she had to be there. She had to give this a chance.
