The stitcher and the mut.., p.16
The Stitcher and the Mute, page 16
Sillian stepped forward. Cora could smell her perfume: surprisingly floral. ‘From a distance only, Gorderheim. I don’t want them involved.’
‘They are involved. And there’s nothing to be done about it.’
‘You’re right: I can’t stop the Chambers seeking you out. But if I hear you even so much as step foot in the Assembly building of your own accord, it’ll be your badge, Detective. I’ll have no choice. Is that clear?’
‘No choice?’
‘Is that clear?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Cora waited until Chief Inspector Sillian was well out of sight before she made her own way out of Z’anderzi’s Kantina. There still seemed to be people everywhere, many not in a hurry to leave, despite the stuffiness of the air that now had a distinct smell of sweat to it. As she elbowed her way towards the door, she found herself knocking into Wayward, Caskers, and Rustans as well as too many chattering Fenestirans. All of them chewing over the message of the Perlish election story: keep the foreigns out.
*
The next morning, Marcus, the gruff-voiced pennysheet girl, brought the early editions of the ’sheets to Bernswick and stayed long enough to eat a whole bag of pastries before heading back to the streets.
‘Exit poll in The Spoke has the Perlish behind the Seeders,’ Jenkins said.
They were in Cora’s office, the door wedged open with a stack of old reports. It was the only way to get some air moving. The day was unbearably hot.
‘Good,’ Cora said. ‘I was hoping the voters weren’t all like that woman we were stuck next to. The one with the awful lips.’
Jenkins smiled, then carried on her perusal of The Spoke. ‘Those questioned said they liked the different parts of the Perlish tale but felt it lacked “emotional gravitas”.’
‘Butterman must have some new writers in,’ Cora said, thinking of the hack who edited The Spoke. ‘“Gravitas” isn’t in his vocabulary. Or “emotional” for that matter. What about The Fenestiran Times?’
Jenkins leafed through the ’sheets laid out on Cora’s desk, knocking over an empty cup as she did so. ‘The Times poll puts the Perlish ahead of the Caskers but behind the Seeders. The Wayward are still favourites to win, if they can find a new storyteller in time, after Ento…’
‘Well that’s something,’ Cora said, trying to chase away the memory of Nicholas Ento’s corpse. ‘Maybe the Seeders will see to Fenest’s potholes.’ She stood and stretched. Sitting for so long yesterday had played havoc with her back. ‘And The Daily Tales?’
‘Really, Detective?’
‘What?’
‘The Tales? I thought you were more… discerning.’
‘Just read me the headline, Constable.’ Cora pulled her coat from the hook. She was fairly sure she’d left her bindleleaf tin in her pocket.
‘“Perlish Petals: How to Grow Your Own Womanly Display”.’
Cora stopped. ‘That’s not funny, Jenkins.’
‘No, it’s not.’ Jenkins held up the ’sheet.
‘Audience take them, I don’t know why we bother. You never get any sense from something written down.’
‘Tell that to the Commission and their forms.’
Cora resumed her search of her own pockets. ‘Aha!’ She pulled out the tin, only to find it wrapped up in paper. ‘Is this your doing?’
Jenkins shook her head.
Cora untied the string and unwrapped her tin. From under the paper, a black voting stone fell onto the desk. A black stone for yes. But there was more; on the paper was an address. And below it:
Madame Vendler, how can this be a just system of government?
Madame Vendler – her old Seminary teacher. Why had someone given Cora Madam Vendler’s address? Cora hadn’t seen her in years. Hadn’t even thought about her in years. Vendler had been an old woman when Cora and her sister Ruth were studying; she’d surely joined the Audience long ago. The note was a mistake. Wrong pocket, and no surprise in the crowds at the Perlish story. Hadn’t she bumped into a whole load of people after her encounter with Sillian? She’d had the bindle tin in her hands before then. No note. So it must have found its way into her pocket as she left the Kantina. Now, in her office, she weighed the stone that had been wrapped against her tin, imagined putting it into a voting chest. A black stone for yes. A white for no. Two stones for one choice.
But what if the address wasn’t that of the old seminary teacher? What if the two parts of the note were separated? The address was one thing, Madame Vendler’s name another. A message, for Cora, as the black and white feathers found on Finnuc’s body had been a message, and likewise the black and white laces threaded through the mouth of Nicholas Ento, the murdered Wayward storyteller. Because Madame Vendler’s name was shared, by Cora and Ruth. Those times Ruth had answered back in the seminary – so many of them. How can this be a just system of government? In Cora’s memory, it was always Madame Vendler’s lined and liver-spotted face glaring back at Ruth.
Ruth… Was this message, this address, really from Ruth? After all these years? Perhaps Cora truly had seen her in Fenest. Now she was letting herself think it through, she recognised the handwriting. Ruth still dotted her i with a dash and looped her g.
‘Detective, are you all right?’
‘No— Yes. I’m fine.’
‘You don’t look—’
‘I’m fine, Constable.’ She screwed up the paper and stuffed it back in her pocket. The question, the address, could wait. Audience knew, Cora had been waiting to hear news of her sister for long enough. ‘I need to be doing something. Reading ’sheets won’t find us Tennworth. Where are we up to with that?’
‘Well, of the three female Chambers, we don’t yet have enough to whittle down the list as to which might be Tennworth.’
Cora kicked a couple of old pastry wrappers across the floor. ‘Casker Chambers Kranna certainly has something to hide.’
‘I saw you speaking with her before the Perlish story,’ Jenkins said hopefully.
‘Much good it did me,’ Cora said. ‘Kranna didn’t tell me much, but it was clear she is involved in moving that unlisted cargo south via the River Cask. But why, or who it’s for, we’re none the wiser. There seemed no obvious link between her and the Captain Tennworth who rescued Finnuc Dawson as a child, and who owns a winery in Fenest.’
Jenkins started to collect the rubbish from the floor, looking deep in thought as she scooped up the pastry wrappers and forgotten coffee mugs.
‘There’s not much point bothering with all that, Jenkins. Place will soon be in a mess again.’
But the constable wasn’t listening.
‘We could go back to dock forty-nine, Detective, couldn’t we? Maybe some of the Caskers there knew Dawson?’
‘They might, but that other bargehand, the one at the Perlish Hook, he said Dawson was a private man. Kept to himself.’
‘He could have had a sweetheart.’
Cora swallowed. There was nothing in Jenkins’ voice to suggest this was anything other than an innocent suggestion.
Cora handed the constable a teaspoon that had been hanging round far too long. ‘What are you talking about, Jenkins?’
‘You know, someone he cared for? Someone he told things?’
‘No, Constable,’ Cora said. ‘I don’t.’ She didn’t want them pulling at that thread. She knew how it ended. ‘I think we’re done with Caskers for a time. What do you know about the Rustan Chambers?’
‘Latinum?’
‘Well, you know that much at least,’ Cora said.
‘And that’s about the end of it; there’s a private person for you. I do know she’s not been the Rustan Chambers long.’ Jenkins dumped the rubbish she’d collected in a bin outside Cora’s office.
‘So not been in Fenest long?’
‘A few years at most,’ Jenkins said.
‘Well, she seemed to know who I was.’ Cora told Jenkins about the unsettling moment when the Rustan had mouthed ‘Detective’ across Z’anderzi’s Kantina, just before the Perlish story had begun.
‘It felt like there was something personal about it,’ Cora said, her skin crawling at the memory.
‘Personal how?’ Jenkins said, frowning.
The note in Cora’s pocket, the one with Madame Vendler’s address, seemed to grow heavy. Was it something to do with Ruth? It was frustrating, the way her sister kept snaking into her thoughts.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Cora said. ‘Rustan Chambers Latinum. What did she do before she was a Chambers?’
‘Do?’ Jenkins said, as if Cora were telling a tale to the Drunkard.
‘As in, earning a living.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Who would know?’
‘The Rustans, I suppose.’
‘As much as I’d like to go out and collar a Rustan, don’t we have more official means than that?’
‘Of course, the Commission keeps everything,’ Jenkins said, starting to sound excited. ‘All business records for the Union are kept in the archives in Uppercroft.’
‘Uppercroft? I thought that kind of thing was kept by the Commission in the Wheelhouse? Beans for the bean-counters, and the like.’
‘The Wheelhouse only stores the records pertaining to Fenest,’ Jenkins said. ‘Everything for the Trading Halls, Electoral Affairs, Wheeled Conveyances Bureau, The—’
‘All right, Constable, I get the idea. So you’re telling me that the records covering the realms, they’re held separately. In Uppercroft. But the building would need to be huge. There’s nothing like that in that part of the city.’
‘That’s because it’s underground,’ Jenkins said.
Cora pinched between her eyes. ‘Underground. Wait now, Constable. When we checked records for Tennworth, did we check the records in Uppercroft?’
Jenkins paled. ‘No,’ she said. ‘What with the winery being in the city…’
‘Right, I need to get out of this office anyway, or you’ll put me out with the rubbish next. Come on. If Tennworth did any business in the wider Union, any at all, we need to find a record of it.’ Cora grabbed her coat and stuffed her bindleleaf tin in the pocket. The same pocket as the note with the address. That would have to wait.
As they made to leave, Jenkins was in a rush.
‘What’s got you so excited, Constable?’
‘Uppercroft is also where all the old election Hooks go! Once they’ve finished being displayed – there’s thousands of them there.’
‘Fine. Just don’t be grinning like that the whole time.’
On the way out of the station they met Sergeant Hearst. Judging by his empty paper bag and the crumbs speckling his boots, he’d been up on the roof again. ‘Where are you two going in such a hurry?’ he said.
‘Commission archives,’ Cora said.
‘What, the ones in Uppercroft?’
‘The very same,’ Cora said over her shoulder.
‘Keep an eye on the archive walls!’
‘Why?’ Cora called back. ‘What’s wrong with them?’
‘You’ll find out.’
Nine
They caught a Clotham’s gig to Uppercroft; Commission funds wouldn’t cover the more expensive, and comfortable, Garnuck’s. But even a bone-shaking Clotham’s gig was better than walking. Cora’s foot was still playing up and, by the looks of her bandied legs, Jenkins was still feeling the effects of her time in the saddle from the trip to Perlanse.
The address of the archives, according to Jenkins, was 4a Mutton Fold. The gig driver had never heard of the place, which wasn’t a good start. The woman knew the street it was meant to be on, at least, and said she’d drop Cora and Jenkins there. The gig lumbered off with the customary Clotham’s rattle. Jenkins fished a pennysheet from the floor, left by the previous occupant.
‘Today’s?’ Cora asked.
‘No, it’s from yesterday. The main story is… Oh.’ Jenkins folded the page and seemed to have difficulty meeting Cora’s eye.
‘Oh?’
‘You’re not going to want to read it, Detective.’
‘Let me guess,’ Cora said, and settled back in her seat. ‘Finnuc Dawson was killed by bandits in Perlanse. Wrong time, wrong place, but one fewer mouth to feed on the Steppes.’
‘How can they print such rubbish?’
‘Don’t tell me you’re surprised?’
‘Less so by the day.’ Jenkins’ gaze was straying to the folded pennysheet.
‘Go on, read it. It’s election time; who needs to worry about truth?’
Jenkins opened the ’sheet and was drawn in at once. Cora reached into her coat pocket for the slip of paper there. The paper that had been folded around her bindleleaf tin. Someone had managed to give her that note as she left the Perlish story venue. It couldn’t have been Ruth amongst the people pushing to leave the building. Could it? Cora would have noticed her. Unless she was so changed after thirty years that she was unrecognisable. These were mad thoughts – that her sister was back, after all this time, slipping notes into Cora’s pockets at election venues. It couldn’t be from her. But if not Ruth, then who?
When the gig stopped they were on a wide thoroughfare. She and Jenkins stepped down onto well-maintained cobbles. No cracks deep enough to turn an ankle, no stinking water caught between them. Tubs of flowers were set out on the pavements and curly metalwork graced the streetlamps. People ambled to and fro, not in a hurry, not getting into fights over coach queues or the price of bread. A nice part of town. But no obvious archive in which to hunt for Tennworth’s name.
‘Best see if these folks can help us find this 4a Mutton Fold,’ Cora said, glancing about. ‘What kind of address is that anyway?’
‘A small one,’ Jenkins said.
‘That’s actually quite a good joke from you for once, Constable.’
Jenkins looked thrilled, her prominent teeth bared in a grin.
‘But it makes no sense,’ Cora added. ‘How can the archive be a small place? It holds the records of all the realms!’
‘Sergeant Hearst did say there was something funny about the walls,’ Jenkins said. ‘What if they’re—’
‘We have to find the walls before we can worry about them.’
They set about asking for directions. No one seemed to have a firm answer.
‘Behind the cobbler’s, but you have to go back and then back again.’
‘Go down the alley there and cut through by the carving of the wheel, but don’t go so far as the old well. Then when you see the sandstone, go back three paces.’
‘Isn’t it near the fountain? No, that can’t be right. Commission moved the pipes.’
Cora stopped outside a butcher’s. ‘Doesn’t this seem strange to you, Constable?’
‘I don’t know – the Commission probably moves all kinds of pipes.’
‘I meant it’s strange that a Commission department – usually one of the busiest places in Fenest – isn’t known to those who live near it.’ Cora threw up her hands. ‘I don’t think this place even exists.’
‘My mother used to talk about it so it must be here somewhere.’ Jenkins looked up and down the street as if the building might suddenly appear in front of her.
‘But she never took you there?’ Cora asked.
‘Said it was too dangerous.’
‘First Hearst talking about the walls, now your mother. What kind of place is this archive?’
‘Archives you’re wanting, is it?’ someone said.
A woman was standing in the doorway to the butcher’s. She wore a blood-stained apron that put Cora in mind of a stitcher, if it weren’t for the neat cuts of meat gleaming in the window.
‘I recognise that lost look,’ the butcher said.
‘You know where they are?’ Cora said, taking out her badge.
But the woman didn’t seem bothered to see it. She’d turned back into the shop. ‘This way. Watch out for the bones. I was about to take them out the back anyway.’
The shop smelled only faintly of blood, and was spotless: the metal trays winked in the sun streaming through the window, and the knives were bare of mottled marks. The butcher led them behind the counter, picking up a neat pile of bones as she went, some with scraps of flesh still clinging to them.
‘The archive is behind the shop?’ Cora said to the woman’s back, which bore early signs of a hump though she moved freely enough.
‘In a manner of speaking. There’s another way to get to the archives than through here. I couldn’t have everyone traipsing through every time there was a new bit of paperwork to file. Wouldn’t be sanitary, would it? I’d fail my Commission inspection.’
The butcher pushed open a door and hanging from the ceiling were the skinned carcasses of pigs. There was a soft gasp behind Cora.
‘Eyes on your feet, Constable. Deep breath now.’
The butcher wove between the pigs, heading for another door on the other side. ‘Just through here.’
They emerged into a narrow alley that curved out of sight in either direction. The buildings on the other side were no more than three feet away, and none of them had doors. The butcher opened a tall wooden box that stood by the back entrance to her shop, and dumped the bones inside. She wiped her hands on her apron, then pointed right.
‘Down that way, there’s another alley opening on the left-hand side. Take that, then it’s the first door you come to. If you reach the courtyard with the fountain, you’ve gone too far. That’s the best way back to the main road, when you’re done there. The archivist will show you. That’s if you can find him.’
‘That door in the second alley, that’s the sheep fold in the address?’ Cora said.
‘It was once.’ The woman craned her head to look at the strip of blue sky visible between the two sets of walls. ‘All this was fields once, before the city grew.’
‘People kept sheep here, in Fenest?’ Jenkins said.
The butcher shrugged. ‘They had the space then. Now we need Seeder farms to send us meat. Only the old names survive.’
‘The archive building must be old then,’ Cora said.
‘One of the oldest parts of the city, after Burlington Palace and First Wall. They say that’s why it’s the way it is. Built from tornstone.’
‘They are involved. And there’s nothing to be done about it.’
‘You’re right: I can’t stop the Chambers seeking you out. But if I hear you even so much as step foot in the Assembly building of your own accord, it’ll be your badge, Detective. I’ll have no choice. Is that clear?’
‘No choice?’
‘Is that clear?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Cora waited until Chief Inspector Sillian was well out of sight before she made her own way out of Z’anderzi’s Kantina. There still seemed to be people everywhere, many not in a hurry to leave, despite the stuffiness of the air that now had a distinct smell of sweat to it. As she elbowed her way towards the door, she found herself knocking into Wayward, Caskers, and Rustans as well as too many chattering Fenestirans. All of them chewing over the message of the Perlish election story: keep the foreigns out.
*
The next morning, Marcus, the gruff-voiced pennysheet girl, brought the early editions of the ’sheets to Bernswick and stayed long enough to eat a whole bag of pastries before heading back to the streets.
‘Exit poll in The Spoke has the Perlish behind the Seeders,’ Jenkins said.
They were in Cora’s office, the door wedged open with a stack of old reports. It was the only way to get some air moving. The day was unbearably hot.
‘Good,’ Cora said. ‘I was hoping the voters weren’t all like that woman we were stuck next to. The one with the awful lips.’
Jenkins smiled, then carried on her perusal of The Spoke. ‘Those questioned said they liked the different parts of the Perlish tale but felt it lacked “emotional gravitas”.’
‘Butterman must have some new writers in,’ Cora said, thinking of the hack who edited The Spoke. ‘“Gravitas” isn’t in his vocabulary. Or “emotional” for that matter. What about The Fenestiran Times?’
Jenkins leafed through the ’sheets laid out on Cora’s desk, knocking over an empty cup as she did so. ‘The Times poll puts the Perlish ahead of the Caskers but behind the Seeders. The Wayward are still favourites to win, if they can find a new storyteller in time, after Ento…’
‘Well that’s something,’ Cora said, trying to chase away the memory of Nicholas Ento’s corpse. ‘Maybe the Seeders will see to Fenest’s potholes.’ She stood and stretched. Sitting for so long yesterday had played havoc with her back. ‘And The Daily Tales?’
‘Really, Detective?’
‘What?’
‘The Tales? I thought you were more… discerning.’
‘Just read me the headline, Constable.’ Cora pulled her coat from the hook. She was fairly sure she’d left her bindleleaf tin in her pocket.
‘“Perlish Petals: How to Grow Your Own Womanly Display”.’
Cora stopped. ‘That’s not funny, Jenkins.’
‘No, it’s not.’ Jenkins held up the ’sheet.
‘Audience take them, I don’t know why we bother. You never get any sense from something written down.’
‘Tell that to the Commission and their forms.’
Cora resumed her search of her own pockets. ‘Aha!’ She pulled out the tin, only to find it wrapped up in paper. ‘Is this your doing?’
Jenkins shook her head.
Cora untied the string and unwrapped her tin. From under the paper, a black voting stone fell onto the desk. A black stone for yes. But there was more; on the paper was an address. And below it:
Madame Vendler, how can this be a just system of government?
Madame Vendler – her old Seminary teacher. Why had someone given Cora Madam Vendler’s address? Cora hadn’t seen her in years. Hadn’t even thought about her in years. Vendler had been an old woman when Cora and her sister Ruth were studying; she’d surely joined the Audience long ago. The note was a mistake. Wrong pocket, and no surprise in the crowds at the Perlish story. Hadn’t she bumped into a whole load of people after her encounter with Sillian? She’d had the bindle tin in her hands before then. No note. So it must have found its way into her pocket as she left the Kantina. Now, in her office, she weighed the stone that had been wrapped against her tin, imagined putting it into a voting chest. A black stone for yes. A white for no. Two stones for one choice.
But what if the address wasn’t that of the old seminary teacher? What if the two parts of the note were separated? The address was one thing, Madame Vendler’s name another. A message, for Cora, as the black and white feathers found on Finnuc’s body had been a message, and likewise the black and white laces threaded through the mouth of Nicholas Ento, the murdered Wayward storyteller. Because Madame Vendler’s name was shared, by Cora and Ruth. Those times Ruth had answered back in the seminary – so many of them. How can this be a just system of government? In Cora’s memory, it was always Madame Vendler’s lined and liver-spotted face glaring back at Ruth.
Ruth… Was this message, this address, really from Ruth? After all these years? Perhaps Cora truly had seen her in Fenest. Now she was letting herself think it through, she recognised the handwriting. Ruth still dotted her i with a dash and looped her g.
‘Detective, are you all right?’
‘No— Yes. I’m fine.’
‘You don’t look—’
‘I’m fine, Constable.’ She screwed up the paper and stuffed it back in her pocket. The question, the address, could wait. Audience knew, Cora had been waiting to hear news of her sister for long enough. ‘I need to be doing something. Reading ’sheets won’t find us Tennworth. Where are we up to with that?’
‘Well, of the three female Chambers, we don’t yet have enough to whittle down the list as to which might be Tennworth.’
Cora kicked a couple of old pastry wrappers across the floor. ‘Casker Chambers Kranna certainly has something to hide.’
‘I saw you speaking with her before the Perlish story,’ Jenkins said hopefully.
‘Much good it did me,’ Cora said. ‘Kranna didn’t tell me much, but it was clear she is involved in moving that unlisted cargo south via the River Cask. But why, or who it’s for, we’re none the wiser. There seemed no obvious link between her and the Captain Tennworth who rescued Finnuc Dawson as a child, and who owns a winery in Fenest.’
Jenkins started to collect the rubbish from the floor, looking deep in thought as she scooped up the pastry wrappers and forgotten coffee mugs.
‘There’s not much point bothering with all that, Jenkins. Place will soon be in a mess again.’
But the constable wasn’t listening.
‘We could go back to dock forty-nine, Detective, couldn’t we? Maybe some of the Caskers there knew Dawson?’
‘They might, but that other bargehand, the one at the Perlish Hook, he said Dawson was a private man. Kept to himself.’
‘He could have had a sweetheart.’
Cora swallowed. There was nothing in Jenkins’ voice to suggest this was anything other than an innocent suggestion.
Cora handed the constable a teaspoon that had been hanging round far too long. ‘What are you talking about, Jenkins?’
‘You know, someone he cared for? Someone he told things?’
‘No, Constable,’ Cora said. ‘I don’t.’ She didn’t want them pulling at that thread. She knew how it ended. ‘I think we’re done with Caskers for a time. What do you know about the Rustan Chambers?’
‘Latinum?’
‘Well, you know that much at least,’ Cora said.
‘And that’s about the end of it; there’s a private person for you. I do know she’s not been the Rustan Chambers long.’ Jenkins dumped the rubbish she’d collected in a bin outside Cora’s office.
‘So not been in Fenest long?’
‘A few years at most,’ Jenkins said.
‘Well, she seemed to know who I was.’ Cora told Jenkins about the unsettling moment when the Rustan had mouthed ‘Detective’ across Z’anderzi’s Kantina, just before the Perlish story had begun.
‘It felt like there was something personal about it,’ Cora said, her skin crawling at the memory.
‘Personal how?’ Jenkins said, frowning.
The note in Cora’s pocket, the one with Madame Vendler’s address, seemed to grow heavy. Was it something to do with Ruth? It was frustrating, the way her sister kept snaking into her thoughts.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Cora said. ‘Rustan Chambers Latinum. What did she do before she was a Chambers?’
‘Do?’ Jenkins said, as if Cora were telling a tale to the Drunkard.
‘As in, earning a living.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Who would know?’
‘The Rustans, I suppose.’
‘As much as I’d like to go out and collar a Rustan, don’t we have more official means than that?’
‘Of course, the Commission keeps everything,’ Jenkins said, starting to sound excited. ‘All business records for the Union are kept in the archives in Uppercroft.’
‘Uppercroft? I thought that kind of thing was kept by the Commission in the Wheelhouse? Beans for the bean-counters, and the like.’
‘The Wheelhouse only stores the records pertaining to Fenest,’ Jenkins said. ‘Everything for the Trading Halls, Electoral Affairs, Wheeled Conveyances Bureau, The—’
‘All right, Constable, I get the idea. So you’re telling me that the records covering the realms, they’re held separately. In Uppercroft. But the building would need to be huge. There’s nothing like that in that part of the city.’
‘That’s because it’s underground,’ Jenkins said.
Cora pinched between her eyes. ‘Underground. Wait now, Constable. When we checked records for Tennworth, did we check the records in Uppercroft?’
Jenkins paled. ‘No,’ she said. ‘What with the winery being in the city…’
‘Right, I need to get out of this office anyway, or you’ll put me out with the rubbish next. Come on. If Tennworth did any business in the wider Union, any at all, we need to find a record of it.’ Cora grabbed her coat and stuffed her bindleleaf tin in the pocket. The same pocket as the note with the address. That would have to wait.
As they made to leave, Jenkins was in a rush.
‘What’s got you so excited, Constable?’
‘Uppercroft is also where all the old election Hooks go! Once they’ve finished being displayed – there’s thousands of them there.’
‘Fine. Just don’t be grinning like that the whole time.’
On the way out of the station they met Sergeant Hearst. Judging by his empty paper bag and the crumbs speckling his boots, he’d been up on the roof again. ‘Where are you two going in such a hurry?’ he said.
‘Commission archives,’ Cora said.
‘What, the ones in Uppercroft?’
‘The very same,’ Cora said over her shoulder.
‘Keep an eye on the archive walls!’
‘Why?’ Cora called back. ‘What’s wrong with them?’
‘You’ll find out.’
Nine
They caught a Clotham’s gig to Uppercroft; Commission funds wouldn’t cover the more expensive, and comfortable, Garnuck’s. But even a bone-shaking Clotham’s gig was better than walking. Cora’s foot was still playing up and, by the looks of her bandied legs, Jenkins was still feeling the effects of her time in the saddle from the trip to Perlanse.
The address of the archives, according to Jenkins, was 4a Mutton Fold. The gig driver had never heard of the place, which wasn’t a good start. The woman knew the street it was meant to be on, at least, and said she’d drop Cora and Jenkins there. The gig lumbered off with the customary Clotham’s rattle. Jenkins fished a pennysheet from the floor, left by the previous occupant.
‘Today’s?’ Cora asked.
‘No, it’s from yesterday. The main story is… Oh.’ Jenkins folded the page and seemed to have difficulty meeting Cora’s eye.
‘Oh?’
‘You’re not going to want to read it, Detective.’
‘Let me guess,’ Cora said, and settled back in her seat. ‘Finnuc Dawson was killed by bandits in Perlanse. Wrong time, wrong place, but one fewer mouth to feed on the Steppes.’
‘How can they print such rubbish?’
‘Don’t tell me you’re surprised?’
‘Less so by the day.’ Jenkins’ gaze was straying to the folded pennysheet.
‘Go on, read it. It’s election time; who needs to worry about truth?’
Jenkins opened the ’sheet and was drawn in at once. Cora reached into her coat pocket for the slip of paper there. The paper that had been folded around her bindleleaf tin. Someone had managed to give her that note as she left the Perlish story venue. It couldn’t have been Ruth amongst the people pushing to leave the building. Could it? Cora would have noticed her. Unless she was so changed after thirty years that she was unrecognisable. These were mad thoughts – that her sister was back, after all this time, slipping notes into Cora’s pockets at election venues. It couldn’t be from her. But if not Ruth, then who?
When the gig stopped they were on a wide thoroughfare. She and Jenkins stepped down onto well-maintained cobbles. No cracks deep enough to turn an ankle, no stinking water caught between them. Tubs of flowers were set out on the pavements and curly metalwork graced the streetlamps. People ambled to and fro, not in a hurry, not getting into fights over coach queues or the price of bread. A nice part of town. But no obvious archive in which to hunt for Tennworth’s name.
‘Best see if these folks can help us find this 4a Mutton Fold,’ Cora said, glancing about. ‘What kind of address is that anyway?’
‘A small one,’ Jenkins said.
‘That’s actually quite a good joke from you for once, Constable.’
Jenkins looked thrilled, her prominent teeth bared in a grin.
‘But it makes no sense,’ Cora added. ‘How can the archive be a small place? It holds the records of all the realms!’
‘Sergeant Hearst did say there was something funny about the walls,’ Jenkins said. ‘What if they’re—’
‘We have to find the walls before we can worry about them.’
They set about asking for directions. No one seemed to have a firm answer.
‘Behind the cobbler’s, but you have to go back and then back again.’
‘Go down the alley there and cut through by the carving of the wheel, but don’t go so far as the old well. Then when you see the sandstone, go back three paces.’
‘Isn’t it near the fountain? No, that can’t be right. Commission moved the pipes.’
Cora stopped outside a butcher’s. ‘Doesn’t this seem strange to you, Constable?’
‘I don’t know – the Commission probably moves all kinds of pipes.’
‘I meant it’s strange that a Commission department – usually one of the busiest places in Fenest – isn’t known to those who live near it.’ Cora threw up her hands. ‘I don’t think this place even exists.’
‘My mother used to talk about it so it must be here somewhere.’ Jenkins looked up and down the street as if the building might suddenly appear in front of her.
‘But she never took you there?’ Cora asked.
‘Said it was too dangerous.’
‘First Hearst talking about the walls, now your mother. What kind of place is this archive?’
‘Archives you’re wanting, is it?’ someone said.
A woman was standing in the doorway to the butcher’s. She wore a blood-stained apron that put Cora in mind of a stitcher, if it weren’t for the neat cuts of meat gleaming in the window.
‘I recognise that lost look,’ the butcher said.
‘You know where they are?’ Cora said, taking out her badge.
But the woman didn’t seem bothered to see it. She’d turned back into the shop. ‘This way. Watch out for the bones. I was about to take them out the back anyway.’
The shop smelled only faintly of blood, and was spotless: the metal trays winked in the sun streaming through the window, and the knives were bare of mottled marks. The butcher led them behind the counter, picking up a neat pile of bones as she went, some with scraps of flesh still clinging to them.
‘The archive is behind the shop?’ Cora said to the woman’s back, which bore early signs of a hump though she moved freely enough.
‘In a manner of speaking. There’s another way to get to the archives than through here. I couldn’t have everyone traipsing through every time there was a new bit of paperwork to file. Wouldn’t be sanitary, would it? I’d fail my Commission inspection.’
The butcher pushed open a door and hanging from the ceiling were the skinned carcasses of pigs. There was a soft gasp behind Cora.
‘Eyes on your feet, Constable. Deep breath now.’
The butcher wove between the pigs, heading for another door on the other side. ‘Just through here.’
They emerged into a narrow alley that curved out of sight in either direction. The buildings on the other side were no more than three feet away, and none of them had doors. The butcher opened a tall wooden box that stood by the back entrance to her shop, and dumped the bones inside. She wiped her hands on her apron, then pointed right.
‘Down that way, there’s another alley opening on the left-hand side. Take that, then it’s the first door you come to. If you reach the courtyard with the fountain, you’ve gone too far. That’s the best way back to the main road, when you’re done there. The archivist will show you. That’s if you can find him.’
‘That door in the second alley, that’s the sheep fold in the address?’ Cora said.
‘It was once.’ The woman craned her head to look at the strip of blue sky visible between the two sets of walls. ‘All this was fields once, before the city grew.’
‘People kept sheep here, in Fenest?’ Jenkins said.
The butcher shrugged. ‘They had the space then. Now we need Seeder farms to send us meat. Only the old names survive.’
‘The archive building must be old then,’ Cora said.
‘One of the oldest parts of the city, after Burlington Palace and First Wall. They say that’s why it’s the way it is. Built from tornstone.’
