The Seer (3 page)

“What pickpocket would bother to drag the body over here?” Scoth pressed. His aggravation at Jesco was gone, and he was struggling mightily to contain it with his partner. “Let the body fall and walk away, that’s what a pickpocket would do. And I hardly think this fellow was strolling about the streets naked. That means the pickpocket dragged him all the way over here and stripped him as well. Why? What was significant about his clothing?”

Ravenhill blinked slowly.

“This was done in cleverness,” Sinclair said, getting back to his feet and speaking through his kerchief. “The murderer knew that the police would bring a seer, so he removed every article of clothing to ensure the skills of one such as Mr. Currane would be nullified.”

Removing a pointer from the inner pocket of his trench coat, Scoth extended it. He slipped it beneath the arm of the deceased and examined it. Then he let the arm fall. “That is not the skin of someone dragged over several city blocks. Also, look at the size of him. He was a big fellow, tall and well muscled. To pull him so far would have been slow work even for a strong man. And if he was going to go this far, why not go thirty more feet to the river and dump him in? He would not have emerged for days, and the current would have borne him away.”

Scoth peered down the alley to the river, and then back to the road. “I think that he was brought here from that direction, dragged by his feet from the road and down this alley. And I cannot see how this would be the work of a pickpocket. This fellow ran afoul of some other kind of mischief.”

“Perhaps
he
was the pickpocket,” Ravenhill said, content in his hypothesis that the unlawful alleviation of funds had something to do with it. “Tried to rough up some big bloke a few blocks away, and the big bloke gave him what-for, final-like. But the big bloke, see, he isn’t clear as water with the law. He couldn’t come to the station and give an honest tale without us finding out about him. Got to get rid of the body, so he pulled it over here and left him in the suit his mama first saw him in. Should have the patrolmen walk the blocks outside the dead zone, ask if anyone saw two men having a squabble, or one man dragging another away. Should visit all the saloons and brothels and opium dens, too.”

Reminded of the poison all about them, Jesco said, “Surely this debate could take place in the station. If there is no clothing for me to read, then why did you send for me?”

“Let you read the bricks and trash and things,” Ravenhill said.

“If he was murdered elsewhere, then he will not have imparted any of his thoughts, feelings, or sensations to this alley. I can do nothing.”

Scoth had gone into his trench coat again. He withdrew a small evidence bag. Now it was Jesco’s turn to be aggravated. The whole conversation was unnecessary if there had been something left on the scene. Undoing the drawstring, Scoth said, “This was stuck to a nail near the head of that beam just over there, a bit of fabric. It could have come off the deceased’s clothing, or his assailant’s.”

Jesco had to refrain from snatching it away. Swallowing down on his temper, he removed his gloves and tucked them in his pockets as Scoth said, “It may have nothing to do with this-”

“I shall be the judge of that,” Jesco said tightly. Attaching a clasp to the end of the pointer, Scoth put it in the bag and pulled out a torn white scrap. It was dirty. He hesitated as he looked at Jesco, like he didn’t know what to say.

Jesco didn’t wait to hear the next jab or hypothesis. The jabs were childish and all of the hypotheses irrelevant. He pinched the scrap between his fingers, and stepped aside within himself.

Chapter Two

-he was-

-he was Taniel—

She was sitting in the chair, his mother, gray and wasted and talking fooleries to no one. If only her Da hadn’t died, if only her Ma had remarried, if only the little boys hadn’t succumbed to cholera, if only she hadn’t had to drop out of her petty school to pulp rags into paper, if only Taniel’s father wasn’t lost to opium, if only her hands worked . . . if only . . . if only . . . if only—

He was Taniel and he was
sick
of her dreams of that pawned silver bracelet he was
sick
of her dreams of Taniel in a robe at university he was
sick
of her dreams from the first one to the last one and that was all she did, sit in her chair and tell him these dreams full of air . . .

That was all she ever told him, weeping in her chair, weeping against his back in the tiny bed with her putrid breath puffing over his shoulder,
we lost so much, Taniel, our family has lost so much
-

He had said that he was going to work in the cotton mill and instead of yes, you are the man of this family . . . instead of yes, you will bring home money and we will eat . . . instead she moaned like she was breaking inside and said the demons, the demons blighted us, you are too good for mill work, you should be studying for university! I saw you, I saw you in your scholar’s robe at Nuiten, I saw you clipping by with booksHe was so famished that he could cry . . .

Jesco was looking into a dim and inhospitable room, cracks in the walls caulked with newspaper, and the walls themselves were slick with dampness as a thin fire snapped and twisted. It appeared that the walls were smoking, but no, it was fog, fog seeping from the saturated pogo. Pogo was good for nothing.

The smell in the air was enough to make a person choke. It was sewage coming from the yard, the lavatory having overflowed. A woman was sitting upon a chair. Wrapped in layers of ragged clothing, she wept as a boy sat in the corner with a sullen expression. They lived in the Mowe now, and the Mowe was the worst street in all of Wattling. Nothing green or sweet could grow in the Mowe. Even the sun shrank away from the warren of dilapidated tenements.

The boy was nine, and with a black eye compliments of Yudo’s gang from walking down their alley. Taniel had only taken it since he was being chased by two of the boys from the 45. There was no cohesive Mowe Street gang, nor had he succeeded in forming one, but none of it mattered because he had gotten a job. So his mother could spin her dreams to the demons who plagued them, rather than spinning them to Taniel, and he was going to earn some
money
. The mills wouldn’t take children under the age of ten, and when Old Lady Marro had asked why he wasn’t working yet, he told her the reason and she laughed. She asked him if his age was printed upon his person and called him stupid.

At first, he’d been mad. Then he knew that he
was
stupid. He had gone to a mill just that day and told the Boss Man that he was ten and the Boss Man told him to show up at six in the morning sharp. One day soon Taniel was going to have coins in his pocket, and one day he would get back at Marro for disrespecting him, too.

This bleak story wasn’t giving Jesco the information he needed. He nudged and it sped up. Now Taniel was within the cotton mill, his plans to strike back at that old woman forgotten. From dawn to dusk he worked with the other children, hustling down the avenues between the spinning-frames. He was pleased with his employment because the mill-owner supplied them with a hunk of bread at lunch, and once a week, butter scraped across it. Not full of air, his bread and butter and pay, but his mother still wept at how he was working in a cotton mill when she had seen him at a university. When he could not even read! When he could not trespass the roads about his home to get to school! When—

Jesco nudged, pushing the timeline closer to where the scrap of cloth belonging to this angry boy ended up speared upon the nail in the alley. Although Jesco retained the understanding that he was in the alley in some future point, the detectives all about him and a man’s body at his feet, all he saw before his eyes was the past. To and fro the boy went, home and the mill, the mill and home, and then, and
then
he came to the mill one day at dawn and Jesco sensed that this day was what he was seeking.

The boy was now ten, and his hand was stinging. He had slapped his mother just minutes ago when she draped the filthy bed sheet around him and said in excitement,
see, see, now you are a scholar! Doesn’t it feel fine! Go to school today, Taniel, go to school!
Her words had made a wild panic rise in his body. His stomach emptied to that grinding ache of hunger that grew sharper and sharper and then it shriveled to a point beyond pain, when he just wanted to sit in his corner and look at nothing, think nothing,
be
nothing . . . He had his work and it filled him with food but she would fill him with letters and that pain would come back . . .

Go to school!
She smiled and her eyes glowed brightly with her dreams. In fright and rage, he’d slapped her. She did not slap him back but fell stunned to the bed as he let the sheet drop to the floor.

At the mill, he did his work with the slap never straying far from his mind. It had felt
good
to strike her, and if she dreamed at him again, so would he slap her again to wake her up!

He ate his bread at break but it did not sate his hunger. It was his mother’s fault for talking about school. Part of him was still panicking, and he wanted to fill his stomach until it burst. That would make him feel better. He ate the last crumb of his bread and schemed to get more from the kitchen. Oh, it was easy, too easy!

It was a half-day and there was little else for him to do until dismissal. He took himself to the kitchen and offered to check the traps. The three women who were in there gave him the job with gladness, hating to do it themselves. One was washing dishes and two were still awarding themselves a break in the corner although the whistle had blown. He busied himself and they swiftly forgot him to work and chat.

Going from trap to trap, he let himself into the pantry. Oh! There were special soft rolls in the Boss Man’s basket for later, cheese and butter and ginger candies. Did they count the rolls? Taniel didn’t know. But he could not resist the temptation. Buttering a roll with his finger, he shoved it into his mouth. He took a chunk of the cheese and gobbled that up, too. Two of the ginger candies went into his pocket for later.

Someone was coming. He heard footsteps and a woman coughing. His heart pounding that he might be caught in the Boss Man’s food, he bent down solicitously to a trap with a mouse in it.

It was still alive, its leg caught under the bar. If not for those footsteps, he would have pressed down on the bar to make it squirm and squeak. The dust and spilled flour in the pantry made a tickle in Taniel’s throat and he coughed. The woman outside was still coughing as well.

Jesco wanted to pull away. He was himself, standing apart; he was the boy, feeling sick and frightened. Taniel was on his hands and knees now, coughing violently on the floor of the pantry as the mouse stilled. Something crashed and Taniel turned. The woman who had been washing the dishes had fallen just outside the open pantry door. Blood was coming out of her nose, froth from her lips, and she was staring right at Taniel with her brown eyes open wide in terror. The ring of white contracted as her facial muscles relaxed, the terror ebbing to a distant stare that pierced through him.

It was the flour and dust, the boy reasoned, and the cotton fibers. The kitchen was not the cleanest place and it was getting in their lungs, coating them and keeping out the air. He scrambled to his feet and ran across the pantry, where he leaped over the woman and fled from the kitchen. The two women in the corner were doubled over and hacking so hard that they shook.

Downstairs in the opening room, where the bales of raw cotton were removed from their bags, Taniel could hear a storm of coughing. One man was struggling to come up the stairs as Taniel passed by. He looked up to the boy and spoke through froth. “Help! Help-” Then he collapsed and Taniel ran on.

The lappers were doubled over and coughing when they should have been cleaning the cotton. The card hands were down on the floor, twitching and their fingers splayed out. The Boss Man had collapsed on his desk in the office. What was going
on
? Taniel’s throat was tickling fiercely and he swallowed as he dashed through the mill, trying desperately not to cough. It was the same in every place he passed, the machinery forgotten, men and women and children bent over and coughing, falling to the floor, bleeding and frothing and crying out weakly for help, laying still and staring, staring at nothing . . .

Demons. Demons! It was the Last Day that the Church spoke of, and to which Taniel had paid little heed. Demons were assailing the mill to collect the sinners. They would be taken to hell and just this morning, dear angels on high, just this morning Taniel had slapped his mother! Just
seconds
ago he had planned to torture that mouse!

The demons were coming for him. He could feel them on his heels, slavering with hunger for this sinner boy, and he was going to burn in fire for eternity if he did not go faster than they did.

A few people like him were coughing as they ran, most of them children. Terrified, Taniel turned to the door that would carry him out into the street. So did a girl, a hint of crimson edging from her nostril as she ran alongside Taniel. Then she fell, bumping into him. He staggered but was not knocked off his feet. Sunlight was bright out the dusty windows and if he could just get outside, this demonic affliction would no longer mark him as its own . . .

Angels watch over you
, Jesco thought as he watched the frantic, sprinting boy. It was a useless platitude when this event had played out long ago. It was not uncommon for seers to lose their minds and terrible things,
terrible
things had Jesco seen through his ability. Things that made him weep in the night and now he would add this demon-fearing boy to his store of memories, the girl who hadn’t made it to the door, the hundreds of mill workers wracked with coughing as they fell.

Taniel made it to the door and beheld a horrific sight. It was not just the mill that the demons had overcome. Bodies were everywhere in the lane, people dodging them in horror only to fall in turn. The boy ran along the road as a horse drawing a wagon crumpled. The driver fell from his perch with a cry and even birds were falling out of the sky . . .

The boy had not been baptized. He recognized that this would save him, and wheeled sharply into the alley. He only had eyes for the mucky water at the far end, which was not safe to drink but surely the angels would not begrudge Taniel’s oath to fealty with soiled water when his heart was theirs in whole. The demons had come to collect but they would not collect him just so long as he got one finger into that blessed water!

The tickling became unbearable and he coughed. Then a fusillade of coughs broke from him, each one spurring the next to be worse, and his pace slowed. The river . . . the river . . . the boy listed like a ship upon a stormy sea as he ran, and then he fell, his small body striking the heap of beams. Nails pierced through his shirt and scored along his side, drawing blood as more leaked from his nostrils. He lay in the alley’s filth and stared in agony at the river where salvation waited . . . he just had to get up and go a little farther and he crawled on his belly like a baby as the scrap of his shirt ripped away on a nail . . .

“No,” Jesco said quietly after the dying boy vanished. The detectives were all staring at him, and he felt like he had been run over by a carriage. Knees shaking and head throbbing, he put out a hand to the grimy bricks to steady himself. Then he jerked away before touching them and went into his pockets for his gloves.

“Nothing to do with this murder?” Scoth asked about the scrap, which he took from Jesco.

“That is from a death during the Great Poisoning.” No longer did Jesco feel any aggravation for the detective or the street officers. Being in thrall often did that, especially if what it showed him was something grave and terrible.

“The things that you must see,” Sinclair said somberly. His flabby cheeks wobbled as he looked around anew at the alley. “The Great Poisoning indeed.”

Since it had nothing to do with this case, Scoth let the scrap fall to the mat of trash. Ravenhill looked up to the beams and said, “We should let him have a feel at the garbage under the body.”

“But this man was not killed here,” Scoth reminded him.

“Well, he could check a few things at least. Just in case.”

“It’s not as easy as that,” Jesco said in a winded voice. “They cost me, each and every one. Only give to me what you truly feel may bear a relevant memory.”

“I didn’t know if this one would be relevant or not,” Scoth said. His tone was strained and defensive. “And we can’t stand about doing that here at any rate when it takes the seer so long to perform a single reading.”

Jesco did not react to the criticism. The boy had fallen just a few feet shy of where they were standing today. Parliament had had to form disposal teams, which went through every affected street and building to gather the bodies. As it was not safe to burn them, and it was worried that putting them in a mass grave would eventually deliver the poison to the groundwater, they were piled in sealed wagons and driven all the way to the sea. There they were loaded onto ships, which set sail for Palamin Atoll. Formerly a prison island, it had been many years since it was used for that purpose. The contaminated bodies were dumped there and covered in horan salts to make them unpalatable to sea birds that might consume them and spread the contamination.