Ascension day, p.1
Ascension Day, page 1
Contents
Title
Copyright
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
Thank You
Character List
Places
Also By the Author
About the Author
ASCENSION DAY
Ageless Mysteries - Book 6
Vanessa Nelson
ASCENSION DAY
Ageless Mysteries - Book 6
Vanessa Nelson
Copyright © 2022 Vanessa Nelson
All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction.
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Reproduction in whole or in part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.
Click or visit: http://www.taellaneth.com
To my wonderful readers. Thank you for following Thea’s adventures. I hope to see you soon for the next adventure.
CHAPTER ONE
Thea kept her walk to a steady, even pace. Walking with purpose but not fast enough to alarm anyone, or slowly enough that the people around her would think to stop her. There was an almost visible tension in the air after the recent Ageless murders and the city’s residents were paying closer attention than normal to what the Watch members were doing. The sight of a Watch uniform speeding through the streets during the day would draw the wrong kind of attention. The pace she had chosen was a fine balance, but so far it had been working. She had been able to keep an eye on what was happening around her and also hear snippets of conversations among the groups of people she passed.
The streets she was walking on were packed earth, not cobblestone, and sticky with mud after rain the day before. The rain seemed to have captured all the worst smells of this part of the city from the foul smells from a nearby open drain to the stale, musty odour of old sweat and unwashed clothes and bodies. In the wealthier districts of the city, the residents got together to pay for spells to counter-act the smells of drains and were able to afford to clean their clothes. But this was Highfield, where the poorest residents of the city made their homes, many of them crammed into tall, over-crowded buildings badly in need of repair.
Up ahead, a group of people were arguing in loud, belligerent tones. There were ladders propped up against the buildings on either side of the street, one person up each ladder holding either end of something that made no sense to Thea’s eyes as she approached. It looked like random wooden objects hung from a piece of rope, and she could not work out its purpose.
After some more shouting from the people on the ground, the people on the ladders took another step up and Thea saw that the random objects were, in fact, carved letters. They hung suspended over the street, swaying slightly as the people on the ladders fought to hold them and also pull the ends of the rope onto heavy iron hooks embedded into the buildings. They were not making much progress, both of them struggling with the weight and pulling against each other.
Thea came to a halt among the people on the ground, who fell silent and eyed her sideways.
She looked up at the letters swaying overhead and frowned. She did not think that the people were violating any laws. At least, none she was aware of. But they had managed to jumble the letters up and she was wondering how to tell them.
Even as she hesitated, there was a sharp snap and the length of rope, with its letters, tumbled down towards the ground, heading for the group of people who had been standing under it.
Thea stepped forward, raising her arm and deflecting the wooden letters. The impact and weight of them thumped against her forearm, side and leg. She would have bruises. But she would survive and she would heal. The people around her, all human, would not have been so lucky.
More shouting arose. Some of it directed at her.
One of the men who had been up the ladders, a young, skinny lad whose shirt and trousers were too short for his lanky frame, slid down the ladder and rushed over to Thea.
“Ma’am, are you alright? I’m sorry. The rope snapped.”
“I’ll be fine, thank you,” Thea said, lowering her arm. Two of the letters and the rope had got tangled around her forearm and she unwound the rope, letting it and the letters fall to the ground. “Is anyone hurt?”
“No. No thanks to you,” one of the older men, one of the shouters, told her, glaring at her. He was much shorter than she was, making up for his lack of height with his self-confidence. He puffed out of his broad chest, tucked his thumbs into his wide waistband and scowled, heavy eyebrows drawn together. The crown of his head was bald, a thick and wiry thatch of hair circling his head, nearly joining with his eyebrows. “What did you do to make it fall?”
“Don’t be so ridiculous, Marn,” another of the group on the ground said. A stout woman with deep brown skin and fine lines around her eyes and mouth, hair covered by a plain cloth headscarf. She might have been anywhere between forty and sixty. “The Watch Officer saved your hide. That thing could have killed you. I told you we needed stronger rope.”
“Oh, you’re full of opinions, aren’t you?” Marn sneered, turning on the woman.
“All the same,” Thea said, raising her voice a fraction to cut through the argument, “if you are going to hang heavy objects over the street, perhaps an extra length or two of rope would be a good idea. And as the letters are on the ground, you can rearrange them, too,” she suggested, trying for a softer tone.
“Did Marn mix up the letters again?” the woman asked, lifting her brows. “No, don’t look at me, I don’t read, dearie. He’s supposed to be the smart one.”
“I think you were trying to spell out Ascension Day,” Thea said, keeping to the softer tone. It was unusual for someone to openly admit they could not read at all, and creative spelling was something she was familiar with. “You’ve got a few letters mixed up.”
“I told you,” the skinny lad who had been up the ladder said to Marn, some satisfaction in his voice. “But you wouldn’t listen to me, would you? Said you knew better, didn’t you?”
“Gentlemen,” Thea said, lifting a hand, sensing an old, bitter argument about to resurface. “At the moment you are blocking the street. May I suggest you make the repairs and try again another time?”
“Or what?” Marn asked, jutting his chin out at Thea.
“Now, Marn, there’s no need for that tone,” the woman said, clearly used to settling the man’s temper.
“She can’t do anything to me,” Marn said, sneering, still glaring at Thea.
“Well, I could arrest you for blocking the street and disturbing the peace,” Thea said, keeping her voice calm and not making any move towards the rope at her belt. She was needed elsewhere, for a far more serious crime. Besides, in her judgement, the people here had been careless rather than dangerous. “But if you agree to take it all away for now and bring them back later, when you’ve made some repairs, then I won’t.”
“We’re trying to honour the Archon, see,” Marn said.
One of the other men in the group, who had been silent until then, muttered something under his breath that sounded like “not that she deserves it”. Thea chose to ignore the words. She had sharper hearing than humans, and there was enough tension in the air already without her making something of a throwaway comment. Besides, if she arrested everyone who spoke ill of the Archon - as she was supposed to - there would be almost no one left on the streets of the city.
“I am sure the Archon will appreciate your efforts,” Thea said, and wondered just how many other streets over the city would find themselves decorated with strings of letters over the next few days in the run up to the day itself. The Archon had only made the announcement of the Ascension Day celebrations a week before. It was typical of the ruler that she had just decided that her entire population should celebrate her rise to power with so little notice, and so little care for what else might be happening around the city and her wider empire. She expected compliance.
Marn glared back at Thea, still suspicious but seemingly unable to find anything to argue with.
Before he could find something else to accuse her of, or get angry about, Thea excused herself and went on her way, making a mental note to alert the Sergeant of the local Watch Station about the hanging letters just in case Marn and the others did not, in fact, add extra rope. The entire city was due to be out on the streets for Ascension Day, and it was all too easy for her to imagine the letters falling and doing serious injury to innocent passers-by.
There had been enough death and injury in the city over the past few weeks. Thea did not
~
Two streets further along from Marn and his fellows, Thea reached her destination. A tall building squashed between two other tall buildings, all of them badly in need of repair. They were made of pale, faded red bricks with even more faded mortar. Most of the window openings were empty or covered with boards or what looked like fabric. The few panes of glass she could see were cracked, in danger of breaking completely. There were plants growing out of gaps between the bricks in the upper floors of the building, closer to the available light.
There was also a cart outside the building that Thea had seen before. A plain wooden affair, with a flat loading area and an ancient, patient pony with a dull, shaggy brown coat at the front. The pony was dozing, one leg resting, clearly expecting a long wait. Thea remembered the cart at other crime scenes across the city, waiting to transport bodies to the mortuary.
The sight of the cart always brought a lump to her throat as it meant there was another dead body on its way to be tended to with expert care. Another person who had left the world with an unexplained death that needed investigation.
Today, the presence of the cart also told her that she was not too late to the scene, at least. The body was still inside.
There were two Watchmen at the door of the building. There to keep an eye on the pony and cart and also keep watch over the scene, Thea guessed.
“Good morning,” she said to them both. “The physician and examiner are inside?”
“Yes, ma’am. They’re expecting you. It’s the top floor,” one of the Watchmen said.
“Do you have any details on the dead man?” Thea asked, bringing out her notebook and pencil.
“Name of Birky Mixson, ma’am,” the Watchman answered, without needing to consult his own notebook. “Worked as a scrubber at one of the slaughterhouses in Fallowfield.”
“Fallowfield?” Thea’s brows rose. That was almost entirely across the city. It was a long way to walk there and back for each shift. And being a scrubber - one of those responsible for keeping the building clean after the butchers had done their work - was a tough job.
“Ay, ma’am. It’s not such a bad journey if you go across the docks,” the Watchman answered.
“That makes sense,” Thea said. “Do you know who found him?”
“One of the other tenants, ma’am. Apparently he works nights, would normally use that bed for the day. He found that Master Mixson was dead rather than sleeping.”
“I see.” Thea paused, writing a few sentences then putting the notebook and pencil away.
“Mind your step on the stairs, ma’am,” the other one said. “There are a few holes.”
“Thank you both,” Thea said, and went into the building.
A few holes was an understatement. The wooden staircase she had to climb up was more holes than solid wood. It was a miracle no one had fallen through it entirely, she thought.
The building was four stories tall, full of smells that made her wish for one of the physician’s candles from the mortuary. The candles were infused with magic and a citrus scent that cancelled out noxious fumes.
As it was, she tried not to breathe too hard as she made her way to the top floor, wondering what a lowly worker in a slaughterhouse could have done to get himself killed.
Unlike the floors below, which had been divided into rooms, the top floor was completely open, with no dividing walls. It must have been intended as an attic, the roof sloping down to the front and back of the building. The inside of the roof was formed of the roof beams and the woven strips of bark that the outer tiles would rest on. The walls to either side were formed of bare brick with no plaster or paint. The space itself was set out with a row of narrow cot beds at the front and back of the building, under the sloping roof, with wooden chests at the end of the beds, most of them with locks on. Thea could not help thinking that with this many beds crammed into the room, the building owner would be getting more than enough payment to afford to replace the stairs.
The beds she could see were all empty, little more than bare, stained mattresses formed of tough, pale fabric. The whole room was drab and dull from the muted red bricks to the ancient, bare floorboards. Her deep red Watch uniform stood out like a beacon. She wondered if the occupants kept their blankets in the chests along with their belongings. Even a worn-out blanket would have value in this place. She remembered the Watchman downstairs saying that someone had wanted the bed for the day and wondered what had happened to the nightshift workers who might rely on this place to sleep during the day.
She had known rooms like this existed. Places where workers could find a spot to rest at a cheap rate. It had always struck her as immeasurably sad. People arrived in this city with hopes and dreams of a better life, of escaping whatever it was they had left behind them. And many of them ended up in awful rooms like this, paying over their hard-earned wages for a place to sleep and probably having to share their mattress with bed bugs and the occasional larger vermin.
She tried to shake off her sadness and look around with a more professional eye. The room would normally be full of strangers, trying to get some rest before their next work shift. She would need to speak to the ones she could find.
At the far end of the room were the familiar figures of the Watch’s physician and examiner, along with their bags of equipment and a stretcher propped up against the end of one of the empty beds. Iason in particular, with his immaculate dark suit and close-cropped black hair, looked out of place in this dismal room. He was crouching by the low, narrow bed, his back to Thea. Dina was dressed in her normal, plain and crumpled clothes, kneeling on the floor at the end of the bed, going through the contents of one of the pair of wooden chests that sat there. She glanced up, her bright red hair an odd point of cheer in the gloomy room.
“There you are. Made it up the stairs, I see,” Dina said.
“Indeed,” Thea said, making her way across the floor with some care. There were quite a few sagging floorboards and some odd-looking damp patches that she did not want to stand on. “Good day to you both. What can you tell me?”
There was a body lying on the narrow bed. Birky Mixson had been a thin man, and had died curled on his side, facing the wall, both hands under his cheek. He was wearing plain, worn work clothes similar to the outfit that Dina was wearing, although his were made of cheaper fabric and might once have had colour, long since faded to dull brown. There was a thin, faded grey blanket folded at the end of the bed, which Thea guessed had been covering him through the night.
“Another one,” Iason said, voice heavy. He looked up from the body, face grim. “A single knife wound through the back. I will need to look at him in the mortuary, but I guess it was the same as the others. The knife went between the ribs and into his heart.”
“Another one, indeed.” Thea crouched beside the physician, eyes travelling over the back of the dead man. There was a small slit in his shirt, with remarkably little blood around it.
“Third one,” Dina said, as grim as Iason.
“Yes,” Thea acknowledged. The third person killed in this manner in the past week. Coincidentally, since the Archon had announced the Ascension Day. It was most likely random chance, but the connection was still there in Thea’s mind. The other two had also been found in their beds, apparently also killed in their sleep.
But the first two victims had been in the wealthier districts of the city, sleeping in their own houses and their own bedrooms.
This man had been killed in a room with other occupants, at the top of a flight of hazardous stairs. And he had not been in a job where it was likely he would make enemies.
“The Watchman downstairs said he was Birky Mixson,” Thea said.
“Yes. He told us. A scrubber. It explains the faint smell of cleaning fluid on his clothes,” Iason said. “From the smell, I’d say he worked at the Hartley butchers.”
“Hartley?” Thea repeated, trying to remember the layout of Fallowfield. “That’s the three buildings together at this side of Fallowfield, isn’t it? Close to the docks?”
