The city’s scavengers had already descended, scouring the street clean of potentially salable debris, everything from candlesticks to pot shards. Had they carried off anything telling?
Jean-Claude turned his attention to his driver, Mario, a quiet man with a sun-browned face several shades darker than the average swarthy Aragoth. He had put up with Jean-Claude’s agonized mutterings without comment or complaint.
Jean-Claude asked, “Monsieur, how would you like to help track down a killer?”
Mario gave him a quizzical look. “What would you have me do?”
“Put the word out that I am in the market for debris from yesterday’s bomb blast. I will pay top coin for items that interest me. Potential sellers should queue up here, and I will attend them shortly.”
“Se?or, the scroungers, they will bring everything they can find—old bones and bits of glass—and claim it was from the blast.”
“And I will send them packing,” Jean-Claude said. “I am looking for just one thing.”
“And that is?”
“It’s a surprise.” Even to me. Likely he’d find nothing of interest, but he had to try.
The street was packed with people moving hither and thither on their own business, and even the royal seal on the side of the chaise granted little reprieve from the press. There was a general clockwise motion to the action. Jean-Claude hefted his crutch—the damned thing made him look old and decrepit—and debarked on the left side of the conveyance to take advantage of the flow. It was like stepping into a very lumpy river that bumped him around in a direction that only averaged forward.
With no small relief, Jean-Claude stepped up into the entry niche of the bombed building. It was a tenement, something else he had failed to notice yesterday. Had anyone talked to the owner yet? That should have been Kantelvar’s first stop. Instead, he was playing courtier to Isabelle. If there were a prize for being somewhere else when the action happened, Kantelvar would have won it. Well, that wasn’t quite true. He had fought Thornscar aboard the Santa Anna; he just hadn’t done a very good job.
The apartments were built in a square around a courtyard centered by a tall pole strung with pulleyed ropes that did double duty as guy wires and washing lines. A dozen or so women and thrice that many children bustled about their daily chores, glancing up at Jean-Claude only for the oddity of his appearance. He asked the first one he encountered where he might find the building’s owner and was directed to the bombed-out room.
Jean-Claude considered the problematic stairs and toyed with the idea of sending an urchin to fetch the owner down to him. Alas, he wanted to have a look at that room himself, so he lurched, step by grimacing step, up to the second floor.
Jean-Claude found the owner and a gang of carpenters in the damaged room, using jacks to install a brace so that broken timbers could be replaced. There were holes in the floor and ceiling to match the ones in the walls. What was left of the floor was smeared with blood from the guards who had not gotten away. Jean-Claude quietly said the soldier’s prayer on their behalf—just in case it mattered—and turned his attention to the man who was directing traffic. “Monsieur, might I have a word?”
The man turned and paused long enough to stare Jean-Claude up and down. His sweaty face went a bit paler. “You are the man who escaped. Se?or, forgive me. I did not know—”
“I am not here to accuse you of anything … yet,” Jean-Claude said with just enough bite to make the man wince. “What I want to know is, who occupies this room?”
“No one. These rooms have been empty for weeks.”
“Rooms?”
“This one and the one next to it.” He pointed through a hole in the wall where the mirror, now a shattered spray of glass, had stood. “The owner raised the rents, and I haven’t been able to fill them.”
“You’re not the owner?” It was true, the man didn’t look nearly rich enough. “Who is?”
“Duque Diego.”
Of course. If Duque Diego wanted to take another shot at murdering Isabelle, he had to provide his killer with a platform from which to strike, and a couple of empty rooms filled the bill nicely. Too nicely. Kantelvar’s protests of secrecy aside, Duque Diego must certainly have known he was suspected of the first assassination attempt, and what sort of idiot leaves such an obvious trail back to himself? Not a man like Duque Diego. Of course, if this assassin wasn’t Diego’s, then the choice of this corner apartment for the shooter’s perch might have been purely coincidental. Or it might have been that someone else knew Isabelle’s defenders knew about Diego’s first attempt on her life and therefore picked him as a convenient subject for a frame. His ownership of the building could mean anything, or nothing.
Jean-Claude asked, “Has anyone else come asking questions like these?”
“Two men came last night from the Temple inquest. I told them everything I’ve told you.”
Jean-Claude grunted; those would be Kantelvar’s men. “Did they examine the room?”
“The searched the whole building and took away two men.”
“Were they witnesses or suspects?”
“I have no idea, se?or. One does not question the inquest.”
“We’ll see about that.” He was going to have some pointed questions for Kantelvar when he was done here. And why am I here? If there had been any clues left after the bomb blast, odds were they had been taken by Kantelvar’s men, stolen by scavengers, or trampled by the repair gang.
He searched the sharpshooter’s room as best he could with the work gang in the way. The bomb had blown away an ox-sized hole in the floor and in the slat-and-plaster wall. The smell of gunpowder lingered. He poked through the wreckage with his crutch. It was all wood and plaster and straw. Then he moved to the room next door. The mirror frame and most of the glass had ended up in small pieces on this side of the wall. There were some pot shards. Frustration extruded its slimy tentacles into his brain. What am I looking for?
He wished he could have brought Isabelle with him, or at least her perceptions. She observed things so closely that even inanimate objects seemed to talk to her. Jean-Claude was better with people. People wanted to tell you their secrets. Secrets were only secrets because they were important to the holder, something to be obsessed about. A secret that wasn’t important was just a memory. All you had to do was find the right place to apply the pry bar, and secrets would come flying out of wherever they’d been wedged.
“You are the musketeer?” came a thick, drawling voice from behind him. Jean-Claude hobbled around to face a square-shouldered man with dark eyes set slightly too close together. He wore a red doublet with ripped sleeves, slops, and high boots. He carried a rapier at his side, and a main gauche.