The Seer (18 page)

“But it’s old then!” Sfinx said happily, coming back to the present. “One hundred and fifty years old and we’ll all be dead, and people not even born today will be staring and gawking at it.” Everyone swarmed around that particular whirly-gig, trying to peek into the future through it just as those future people in the boy’s thrall were trying to peek into the past.

There was dinner to be had and a nurse read Jesco the letter from his sister. She and the children were well, and they were planning a trip for the end of summer to visit him. The hotel room had been booked for five days, just a quarter-mile from the asylum so they could pick him up every day and take him along on their sightseeing. Jesco could hardly hold back his smile. Included in the envelope were shorter letters from his nephews, and little Gemina had sent a picture she had drawn of two identical horses, one helpfully labeled an autohorse so that he could appreciate the difference.

He would go shopping in the meantime and buy all of them gifts. Taking the letters back to his room, he returned the star to the wall and readied for bed.

. . . she had been a very bad girl . . .

Of all the memories to haunt him, this one was quite benign. It just put him in mind of Collier, which was never a bad place to be. But when he went to sleep, he dreamed of Scoth. Scoth at home, stubble on his cheeks and his hair a mess, tools in his pockets and the tension of work subdued within him. Jesco sat in the chair in the upstairs workroom as Scoth fiddled about, people appearing in the skylight to peer in. Hasten Jibb with a bloody chest, a mother and daughter with ribbons in her hair . . . Jesco didn’t mention them and Scoth didn’t look up, and the dream went on in that fashion with Jesco vaguely aware that it
was
a dream.

The next morning passed in idleness, and in the afternoon, one of the rucaline patients died. The man’s heart had given out. The very large family stormed in on waves of grief and fury, their shouts filling the corridors when they refused to be contained to the presiding doctor’s office. At first they attacked the doctor and nurses for incompetence, and then their anger turned upon one another. It was Cousin Nammie’s fault for giving him the rucaline and his mother’s fault for not caring for him at home and his brother’s fault for not taking him in when his mother couldn’t do it anymore. They fought about what little inheritance the man was leaving behind, should it go to his mother or his siblings or his wife of two months at the time he overdosed. She was now raising his ten-year-old daughter that he had never met, and she was the only one of the lot with any common sense. No one could speak without screaming and the child was getting upset, so the mother ushered her out the front doors and did not return.

The rest of them fought about what should be done with the body, burial or cremation, where and when, and on and on it went in chaos for the better part of two hours until the attendants threw them out. Peace was restored to the asylum, though the nurses grumbled at one another that Doctor Haskins was too soft and should have expelled them much sooner. Then Nelle toddled over to Jesco, who was sitting upon a sofa in the drawing room. She was crowing about her toy and clambered up beside him, and pressed it to his cheek when she lost her balance.

He hadn’t had time to move, and suddenly was in thrall. Someone yelled, “No, no, no!” and yanked the girl with her toy away. She burst into shrieks and the collar zapped her.

“Be glad to put this day to bed, all of us,” a nurse said with a tired shake of her head as she brought the wheelchair to the sofa. Jesco’s strength was returning already. It had been a fairly new toy and the touch brief. But he did not trust himself to walk, and let the nurse steer him to the dining hall.

“Her shoes are starting to pinch her feet,” he said from being Nelle temporarily.

The nurse had known him for a long time, and took his word for it. “I’ll pass it along. What I wouldn’t have given to have you around when my children were small and couldn’t explain to me why they were fussing!”

They said a prayer for the deceased man that he might find a home among the angels, and dinner was served. The children ate quickly and fled the room, since an attendant had promised to show them a magic trick if they bathed and dressed for bed without delay or complaint. The adults filtered out in twos and threes, and Jesco had just finished a refill of his soup bowl when Scoth appeared in the doorway. His eyes went over the patients and stopped upon Jesco, and then he strode in, snagged an empty chair, and plunked it down on the other side of Jesco’s private table.

“Why are you in the wheelchair? What did you bloody well do to yourself this time?” he snapped in disapproval.

“It was an accident, and a small one,” Jesco said. “A child touched me with her toy. She only wanted to show it to me. What brings you here?”

“I was coming back from the Hall of Records on Cornice Street and it takes me right past the asylum.”

“Sure, right past it if one goes completely out of the way.”

Scoth’s lip quirked. “You know what I named the destination card for the asylum? Prick Pick-up. Now be quiet and listen to this. I looked up a lot of things today, starting with the Tralonn Corporation. It’s a wealth management branch of a bank, handles billions of dollars in client assets. It seems that the Rosendrie South Press wasn’t doing well financially, which was why the Armex family put up a part of it for sale. Tralonn owns half of it and took over the daily operations; the family owns the other half and stepped back.”

“The paper became the mouthpiece of a bank, or a division of it.”

“There are twenty-five members on the board. Eight of them have ties in some way to Ainscote mines. The ones that interested me most are two men named Ivan Camso and Torrus Kodolli. Merlie couldn’t remember the name, but all of her attempts had similarities. Camso’s father-in-law owns Shayner Gems, an operation at the southernmost tip of Ainscote. Now, Kyrad Naphates’ mines do precious little in way of gems. Oil shale, limestone, rock salt, potash for fertilizers, those are the larger chunk of her gigs and they’re spread out all over this country and abroad.”

“They aren’t competitors,” Jesco said.

“No, they aren’t. Then I looked into Kodolli and things got more interesting. He’s got competing interests in his company named Agrea, and Agrea makes S. Pecost & Sons look like sweethearts who care. Half the mining deaths in the last one hundred years were in Agrea-owned mines. Fought or flat-out ignored every regulation in all that time, and only conceded reluctantly when the government started to fine Agrea outrageous amounts. That was after Naphates changed her mines. It was a domino effect, really, what she started. She increased the wages, made it safer, recognized the union, let government officials inspect, and all of that. Miners at other companies began to agitate for the same treatment, walking off the job and costing the owners money. I can see why the heads of the industry would have a grudge against her. They were doing things exactly how they pleased and one of their own betrayed them. Old Cluven Naphates let the fox into the henhouse when he married a former miner, and I mean it as a compliment to the fox.”

Gavon stopped at the table with a bowl of ice cream and Scoth interrupted himself to scold, “You can’t give that to him! You’re touching it with your bare hands!”

“It’s all right,” Jesco said. “For some reason, Gavon doesn’t impart memories to my belongings. Gavon, could I have a second bowl for the detective here?”

“Oh, sure,” Gavon said placidly. Even the stern homicide detective was five years old in his head, and he asked, “Do you like chocolate or vanilla?”

“I don’t need-” Scoth started.

“I’ll get you a scoop of both and you can decide.”

“I don’t need-” Scoth repeated helplessly to Gavon’s retreating back.

“When’s the last time you ate?” Jesco asked. “Oh, that’s right, you haven’t yet today. You’ve been working, and hunger is for the common man.”

“I had something at breakfast,” Scoth grumbled.

The attendant returned with a bowl and spoon, which he handed to Scoth. “Now, mind you, don’t touch Jesco’s table. He’s a seer.”

“I am,” Jesco confessed.

“Ruddy insane, the whole lot of you,” Scoth mumbled, and pushed a heaping spoonful of chocolate into his mouth.

“Did you learn anything else today?” Jesco asked.

“I’m getting to it,” Scoth said, swallowing ravenously on a second spoonful. “Kodolli is a very old man with homes and business offices all over Ainscote. He also maintains a home and office in the Sarasasta Islands.”

“Is he of such influence that a newspaper would mention him attending a Cantercaster play?”

“Don’t skip ahead. He married his wife Cliya Burne when they were in their thirties. Burne is a well-known acting family in the theater world. She acted herself when young, never top-bill but she didn’t have any trouble getting cast in smaller roles. Whether that was talent or her family name, I can’t say. She retired upon her marriage and bore two sons, Morgan and Flike, and one daughter Sherra. Flike fell off a cliff at a party and killed himself at fifteen.”

“How did he manage to do that?”

“Bunch of young fools being daredevils and it cost him his life. So that was the end of Flike Kodolli. Sherra took her mother’s maiden name of Burne when she became an adult and is still acting today under it. She’s married to another actor, no children, and her company tours in northern Ainscote.”

“And Morgan?”

“Morgan Kodolli is a vice-president of Agrea. Married and with two children, both of who are now in their twenties. It makes sense that this family would be mentioned in the papers for attending performances. I looked into their charitable contributions and there are several playhouses that benefit from them. Then I pulled up the papers in the cities where they’re located and yes, the Kodolli name comes up here and there, especially on Benefactors’ Nights, where a special dinner and performance is thrown in honor of the people who donate large amounts of money. Torrus Kodolli attends often. Not every one, of course, since he’s constantly traveling between his offices. It’s not evidence of anything, but it’s reasonable to assume this could be the man that Tallo Quay was chasing.” Scoth dribbled the melted drops at the bottom of the bowl onto his spoon to consume those as well.

“Kodolli could be very bitter at Kyrad Naphates still,” Jesco said, stringing it together as he spoke. “And Tallo Quay could have known that from living in her home as an escort. He could have heard her talking about Kodolli, and other mine owners who were angry with her for how the industry changed. And when she angered Tallo, he went snooping and found out who in Parliament was secretly helping her business along. Would that information be valuable to Kodolli?”

“They get voted in,” Scoth said. “Know your enemies and then pull every dirty political trick you can to get them voted out. Or simply go to the press and accuse them of slipping her favors on the sly. Ruin reputations, start investigations . . . yes, I can see how Quay would think he was holding the jackpot in those names. And what did he want for himself? He wanted an acting career. Ivan Camso has no connection to the theater, but Kodolli! Who better to approach than Torrus Kodolli, married to a former actress, the father of a current actress, and with a possible grudge against Naphates? Sadly for Quay, Kodolli is a very hard man to track down.”

“Did you look up what play it could be?”

“I searched for tragedies that don’t get put on very often. I wish Merlie Jonkins could have been more specific. But I did find, at Luthen Playhouse, a run of Scarred Crest. That fits the bill, if you pardon the pun. It’s a famous play, but it’s run only twice in the last ten years. It was playing in autumn three years ago. Merlie said Quay took his coat and gloves because it was getting cold. I thought she meant the showing was at night, but perhaps she meant the time of year. It was mentioned in the Cantercaster-Oftow News that Torrus Kodolli would be attending the Benefactors’ Night. There was a long list of benefactors printed on the back page of the community section. His wife wasn’t mentioned, but I learned from another source that she is an invalid. Her health is poor, and she stays in their island home. The warmth does her well.”

The dining hall had cleared out considerably while they talked. Only two women were left at a far table, one casting admiring glances to Scoth. “Do you know where Torrus Kodolli is now?” Jesco asked.

“I do, in fact. He’s in Somentra currently, up in the hills miles away where he rents space in Cable Holding. We’ll be going to his office tomorrow, unless you have somewhere else to be.”

“Still, nothing in this connects to Hasten Jibb. Anyone could have lost a timepiece there. We’re only assuming it has something to do with the body.”

“What are the odds that not one but two people went down that alley in Poisoners’ Lane, and at roughly the same time?”

“Does Torrus Kodolli own a home in Melekei? Or anywhere on the route that Jibb would have taken that day to get home?”

Deflating a little, Scoth said, “No. But this is the only lead we have. The only other piece that’s new to this is what a courier saw on the road Jibb was taking home.”

“You didn’t tell me about that.”

“I had flyers put up around Melekei and in the streets around his home, asking the public for information. A response came in just this morning. I stopped at the station before I went to research and found a letter on my desk. A courier from another company, Stanley Moss of Post on Wings, claims that he saw Hasten Jibb in late afternoon picking up his bicycle off the side of the road in that stretch of farm country outside Melekei. He slowed and asked if Jibb was all right, and Jibb said that he’d hit a rock going too fast on his way to Chussup and went flying. But the bicycle was undamaged, and Jibb wasn’t hurt. Landed in tall, thick grass and that cushioned it. Moss rode on and left him behind, picking up the packages that had fallen out of his satchel.” Scoth shrugged. “Nothing queer about that, and there wasn’t even a bruise from it on Jibb’s body the next day. Moss said there’s a sharp, pebbly turn there that he’s taken too fast himself, and nothing was amiss about the scene, so he’d forgotten all about it until he saw the flyer. Maybe Jibb was embarrassed about the fall, so he wasn’t in good spirits when he got home.”