Absence of Mercy

by S. M. Goodwin

  Jasper’s vision blurred red, but he couldn’t spare a hand to clear his eyes.

  The earth shook beneath Horus’s feet as the Russian artillery pounded away, the sulfur and blood and terror in the air thick enough to coat his tongue: it tasted like death.

  The world was cloaked in smoke and echoed with explosions and the screams of horses and men. Jasper lost sight of the men from the Seventeenth who’d once flanked him.

  “Close in! Close in!” It was Jasper yelling, although he hardly recognized his own voice, which was drowned beneath the wailing of the wounded and the hysterical laughing and shouting of those still fortunate enough to be alive.

  A shadow burst from the haze and slammed into Horus; boots and stirrups caught, briefly tangling before Jasper could wrench his leg free. The agony from his twisted knee was even sharper than the wound in his shoulder; his vision doubled and then tripled with pain. Jasper blinked to clear his watering eyes. When he could see, the soldier beside him was gone, his riderless horse shearing off into the smoke.

  Just ahead, two soldiers exploded and sent ragged chunks of man and horse raining down in all directions. Horus slowed but didn’t falter as he navigated mangled corpses.

  The shots had missed Jasper by mere seconds.

  Fear at what he’d just avoided mingled with blood and pulverized bone and made his gorge rise. He retched until his chest burned, but the cholera had left nothing inside him to bring up.

  The barrels of the Russian guns emerged from the haze without warning. Horus reared and gave an equine scream of terror. The world became a babble of languages, the explosion of guns, and steel clashing against steel, cast iron, and bone.

  Jasper’s arm moved without orders from his brain. Although his attack was sluggish and uncontrolled, his saber struck a fleeing Russian soldier in the back of the head. The blade hit just below his helm and sank deep. The man staggered to the side and would have yanked Jasper out of his saddle if he’d not released the pommel.

  Saberless, he reached for the knife he kept strapped just below his knee, but his left arm no longer responded to his commands. Instead, he held tight to Horus with his legs and awkwardly groped for his side arm with his right hand.

  He’d just taken aim at a Russian soldier when a horse and rider soared over the gun on Jasper’s left and slammed into Horus’s flank, sending his shot wide. Jasper clung to his saddle with burning thighs as Horus was forced into a too-narrow gap between abandoned guns. Jasper’s right leg—his only fully functioning limb—got mashed between his horse and the cannon. Cold fire blazed up his right side, and his pistol slid from his fingers. Horus reared and screamed at a charging Cossack, one of his hooves kicking the bayonet out of the man’s hand before coming down on his head.

  A deafening shot exploded somewhere close, and Jasper’s head filled with blinding light and a thousand needles of pain.

  Squinting through his agony, he urged Horus on, but the big gelding staggered a few steps and then collapsed, crushing Jasper against unforgiving cast iron. He couldn’t breathe. He was choking, dying—

  “My lord—my lord!”

  A face loomed above him as Jasper’s yell filled the darkness.

  Strong hands grabbed his shoulders and held him pinned. “You are dreaming, my lord. You are here now—it is a dream. It is only a dream.”

  Jasper’s eyes darted, expecting to see the filthy walls and bloody floors of the hospital in Scutari. Instead, he felt a soft bed beneath him, with sweat-soaked sheets coiled like serpents around his naked, shivering torso.

  He blinked up through the dimness.

  “Paisley?” His voice was hoarse from screaming.

  “You are safe, my lord.”

  Relief surged through his body, sucking the air from his lungs. He struggled to breathe, in and out, in and out. I’m safe now, he told himself, not quite believing it.

  * * *

  Jasper was never able to sleep after he’d had The Dream, so he pulled on a pair of drawers and commenced the exercise program he’d been following for as long as he could remember—which, granted, wasn’t saying much. He had no bags to work, so he did an extra one hundred sit-ups and push-ups. By the time he finished, his body was limber, loose, and slick with sweat.

  Awake and invigorated, he toweled himself dry, slipped on his robe, and drank coffee, reading the newspaper while Paisley set out his shaving equipment.

  Neither of them spoke about the dream he’d just had: they didn’t have to; they’d both been at Balaclava that day. Although Paisley hadn’t been in the battle itself, Jasper knew his servant had suffered a hell of his own when Horus’s body was found—but not Jasper’s.

  For almost a day, Paisley believed him dead or captured.

  By the time a young corporal brought Jasper back, barely conscious and draped over his saddle, his normally stoic valet was frantic. It was the only time in almost two decades that he’d seen Paisley lose his temper. It was also the last time Paisley gave in to his emotions, even counting the nightmarish weeks in the hospital, where vermin, disease, and filth were more dangerous than the exhausted surgeons who dug shrapnel out of his skull and shoulder.

  A knock on the door pulled Jasper away from his memories, and he looked up to see Paisley carrying a breakfast tray.

  Jasper grimaced; he despised eating so early in the morning. “I’m n-not hungry.”

  The shift in Paisley’s expression was so slight that the average person would not see it without the aid of a magnifying glass.

  But Jasper was not the average person.

  He heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Very well, you t-tyrant. Put it over here and pour me another c-cup of coffee.”

  Paisley managed to gloat without changing expression.

  “You will be gone all day, my lord?” he asked as he handed Jasper the steaming cup and arranged the various plates on the side table the same way Jasper’s nurse had done to tempt his appetite when he was little.

  “Yes, most likely.” Jasper couldn’t help noticing that Janssen’s murder was on the front page of all four newspapers Paisley had ordered delivered.

  “I thought your Trickers might do, my lord.”

  Jasper looked up. “Hmm?”

  “I know it is unconventional, but you will have to wear your rust trousers with the black Gieves and Hawkes. Your Lobbs will never be the same after the treatment they received yesterday.”

  He knew Paisley was displeased with him when he referred to every item of Jasper’s clothing by proper names. He had no earthly idea which of his shoes was a Tricker but supposed it must be a sturdier brogue than the pair of soft leather ankle boots he’d worn yesterday. He had to admit he’d not expected quite the level of filth he’d encountered during his brief investigations.

  “I’ll wear buckskins and Wellies if you w-wish,” Jasper said mildly, biting into a piece of toast to hide his smile.

  “We shall not be reduced to such straits as that, my lord. Not yet.”

  Jasper turned back to the paper.

  Alard Janssen: Philanthropist, reformer, devoted husband, and pillar of the community found murdered in a rubbish alley.

  Jasper was displeased—but not surprised—to see that details of Janssen’s murder, such as the stabbing and garroting, had also made it into the article, along with speculations that this killing might be related to the earlier two. Wherever the newspapermen had acquired their information, they’d not yet learned about the missing flesh.

  Jasper was just about to turn the page when an abbreviated report of an assault caught his eye. He read it, laughed out loud, and then said, “Listen to this, Paisley:

  Assaulted by his Wife—James Finn and his wife Johanna got into an altercation about eleven o’clock at their residence on No. 109 Washington-Street. Johanna was drunk at the time and struck her husband in the head with a hatchet, inflicting a deep and dangerous wound. The wounded man was taken to the hospital, and Mrs. Finn to the First Ward Station, but she was yesterday dismissed, it b
eing decided that she gave her husband no more than he deserved.

  “Very droll, my lord.”

  “Tsk, tsk. You have no s-sense of the absurd.”

  “If that is the sort of justice the American police mete out, then the situation is worse than absurd: it is criminal.”

  “What? You don’t believe some crimes are justified?”

  “The law is the law.” He punctuated his proclamation with a long, rasping hiss of the razor on the strop.

  “There is no place f-for anything else? What if this man had been b-beating his wife?”

  Paisley grunted, refusing to be drawn, so Jasper turned back to the New-York Daily Times and an extended discussion of the recent meeting of the board of councilmen, which had devolved into a brawl—or perhaps it was more accurate to say the brawl had been punctuated by brief moments of discussion. The substance of the dispute was, naturally, the current disarray of the city’s police force. The minutes read more like a pub scrap than a meeting of government leaders.

  Jasper flipped through the rest of the paper: a proposal for improving the machinery for laying telegraph cable, the daily shipping news—Jasper saw his own name listed among yesterday’s arrivals—various amusements, public notices, and houses for let.

  “There is a section for properties to let.” He held up the paper.

  “Thank you, my lord. I have the matter well in hand.”

  Which was Paisley’s way of telling Jasper to mind his own business.

  “Shall I send your acceptance to the Loman dinner party tomorrow night, sir?”

  “No, I have too much to do.”

  “What about the Bergin dinner next week?”

  “You won’t stop hounding m-me until I agree to go, will you?”

  “I believe there is to be dancing, my lord.”

  “Well, that s-s-settles it, then. Send the d-damned acceptance and polish up my dancing slippers.”

  “Very good, my lord.”

  Jasper tossed the paper aside and stood. “Have a look for a c-club while you’re out and about today.”

  That wiped the smug expression off Paisley’s face. Jasper hadn’t belonged to a club of any kind since university. But here in New York he was a social neophyte, and the quickest way to get up to speed on who was who was to socialize.

  “An athletic club, my lord?”

  Jasper took the seat in front of the mirror, where Paisley was waiting.

  “And social—p-perhaps I’ll join one of each.” He watched his servant’s face in the mirror for a reaction while Paisley soaped him.

  He was not disappointed. Paisley raised his eyebrows the merest fraction of an inch—the equivalent of a full-blown eye roll in any other man. “Of course, my lord.”

  Jasper grinned.

  Paisley picked up the freshly stropped razor. “I cannot be responsible for your nose if you pull faces while I am shaving you, my lord.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Jasper was walking through the lobby when somebody called his name.

  He turned to find Hieronymus Law and barked out a laugh. “Mr. Law. I m-must admit you are the l-l-last man I expected to see this morning. You l-look as though a strong wind would knock you over. You should be at home in b-b-bed.” Or on a packet to some foreign land.

  As Law came closer, Jasper saw that the man looked even worse than he’d initially thought; it was a bloody miracle he was upright. Not only was he gaunt, but one of his eyes was partially swollen shut, and his skin was an unhealthy shade of yellow. He was nicked and cut all over, as if he’d shaved with a scythe. Jasper had seen more prepossessing cadavers.

  At a hair over six feet, Jasper did not find himself looking up often, but Law was a veritable giant. Cleaned up and shaved, he was younger than Jasper had first thought—closer to twenty-five than thirty. Hands the size of serving platters tightened on the rim of his battered brown hat. “I wanted to apologize.” Law met Jasper’s gaze as well as he could with only one eye. He had the startling green eyes and ginger hair of an Irishman, but his accent was American. “I shouldn’t have lied. It was just—”

  Jasper had no interest in watching the man grovel. “You d-did what you had to; don’t let the m-matter concern you.”

  “I’d like to help.”

  “What you should be d-doing is f-fleeing the city.” And Jasper should probably be fleeing with him. “McElhenny will send men for you the m-moment he knows you’re at liberty.”

  “But he couldn’t arrest me if I was helpin’ you, right?”

  “I have my p-pick of officers who haven’t been s-s-sacked for reasons of m-moral turpitude to help me find my way.”

  Law’s bruised jaw tightened. “I can run from New York, sir, but I couldn’t run from myself.”

  Jasper gave the man a hard look; to his credit, Law didn’t squirm.

  “I can tell you all about Sealy and Dunbarton; I remember it like it was yesterday. Donahue—the man I partnered with—left the force about a week before they arrested Caitlyn Grady.” He stumbled slightly over the name. When Jasper merely stared, Law worried his cracked and peeling lower lip. “I ain’t gonna say I’ve never done nothin’ wrong, but I ain’t the sort who’d sit by while an innocent woman went to the hangman.”

  Jasper thought back to the brief exchange he’d had with Captain McElhenny yesterday. He had to admit McElhenny’s ranting hadn’t made sense. The excitable, ill-humored Irishman had vacillated between saying Law took money from the woman and making it sound like the detective had sacrificed the prostitute to further his career aspirations. Jasper had smelled the lies on McElhenny when he claimed that it had been Law who destroyed the case files.

  To own the truth, Jasper was impressed that Law hadn’t run off; he’d come here to offer his help.

  Maybe he has nothing to run off to—or no money to run off with? Perhaps he will use this opportunity—and authority—to extort money, the way many dirty coppers do?

  “I’m n-not sure whether you will want to w-work with me. I have n-no tolerance for lying or c-corrupt practices. I know p-protection-money rackets and bribery are pervasive, but I will n-not countenance such behavior.”

  “I know you’ve no reason to believe me, sir, but all the stories McElhenny told about me ain’t true.” Law hesitated, opened his mouth, seemed to rethink himself, and then pressed his lips together.

  This is a mistake, Jasper. Go back upstairs, have Paisley pack, and leave. Who cares if the duke laughs when you return scant weeks after setting off?

  Only the thought of returning to London and no employment kept Jasper standing where he was. Besides, wasn’t it his Christian duty to give the man a second chance—to practice forgiveness?

  The voice in his head laughed.

  “I’ll take you on,” Jasper said, getting the words out before he changed his mind. “But if I f-find you’ve c-c-crossed the line even a little, I will see you in p-prison myself. Don’t lie to me again, D-Detective, not even by omission.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  Jasper gestured to the hotel doors. “I’m off to check on the g-good d-doctor Feehan and then to Solange’s.”

  “Feehan’s a drunk, sir. Whoever sent Janssen to him shoulda known better. He ain’t done a decent postmortem in years.” Law frowned and then added, “Unfortunately, he’s the one who did the work on Dunbarton.”

  “Ah. W-Well, perhaps he made a copy of the p-postmortem for his own records, as the p-police copy was l-lost with the file.”

  Law made a noise that did not sound promising.

  Outside the hotel, the doorman had the carriage Jasper had called down for.

  Law took the rear-facing seat, his hat perched on his lap, his eyes on Jasper’s stick. He was carrying the amber today, and he offered it to the other man, who gave him a startled glance before taking the smooth ebony wood cane. His giant, rough hands were surprisingly deft as he examined the handle, lifting the lump of amber to study it closer.

  “Is that a—?”

  �
�A scorpion. It’s called an inc-c-clusion.”

  Law held it up to the brownish light coming through the dirty carriage window. “It don’t seem right to say a bug is beautiful, but it’s somethin’ else. Old, is it?”

  “It could be fifty m-million years old.”

  Law’s lips parted in amazement. “I was feelin’ old this mornin’, but that makes me feel a mere lad.”

  Jasper smiled and took the proffered stick.

  “I hope you don’t mind, sir, but I stopped by the Eighth on my way over.”

  “You’re a very b-brave man, Detective.”

  “I wanted to speak to Captain Davies myself—as a gesture of respect—and thank him for the opportunity.”

  Lord, Jasper was sorry he’d missed that conversation.

  “And how did Captain D-Davies receive you?”

  “Er, well, he wanted to know what the hell I was doin’ there, but I reminded him of what you told me yesterday.”

  Jasper laughed. “Did you, now?” He was beginning to like this man.

  Law’s freckled skin darkened. “He told me he didn’t want to see my face around his station.”

  “Ah well, you have c-company in that, Detective.”

  “I ain’t got no right to be called that, sir.”

  “The title is yours for as l-long as you work with m-me.”

  Law’s smile was small and fleeting. “Thank you, sir. You said yesterday that Janssen was killed the same way as Sealy and Dunbarton?”

  “I’m t-told the manner was s-similar, but without postmortem reports, I have no r-real idea. Why don’t you t-tell me about the others.”

  “A garrotin’ with cuts to the midsection, on the right side?”

  “Janssen’s cuts w-were on the left.”

  Law asked, “Er, this might sound odd, sir, but what kind of cuts?”

  “F-Four stab wounds—all delivered with some force, in my opinion.” Jasper mimed holding a knife in his fist. “I b-believe they were delivered in punches, slightly tearing the w-wound on removal. The direction of the tears indicates the k-killer was behind him. The knife had a p-prominent guard with quillons that left indentations in the flesh.” Jasper flipped open his notebook, in which he’d sketched the impressions of the guard, and handed it to Law. “And of c-course the missing chunk of flesh.” He cocked his head. “S-Sound familiar?”