He’s stolen my daughter’s life, Chelson thinks.
No, Chelson counters himself. He couldn’t have. He was definitely worried when he came to Chelson’s house. A trader’s first skill is reading minds. Livion’s too stupidly open to fool him. Had he just killed Tristaban, Chelson would have known.
Besides, Livion’s incapable of murder. Personally, Chelson likes the boy. He’s perfect for his daughter, happy to be imposed upon, and willing to watch her drama instead of staging a competing show. If Livion didn’t drain away her craziness, he’d have to deal with it.
Despite all that’s happened, he has to admit he was lucky his daughter had accepted Livion. The junior wasn’t his first choice. He’d planned to partner Tristaban with his old captain Jeryon, another person dependably meek and meekly dependable, before he got himself killed and Livion showed his quality. Sometimes the best man does win, he thinks.
Whoever did do this will find that out himself, and what it’s like to lose to Chelson.
The guards emerge. Holestar shakes his head. “Nobody,” he says, “and no body.”
Ophardt runs down Brimurray with a squad of city guards carrying lanterns. Chelson greets them solemnly and points the sergeant to the foyer.
As the sergeant holds up a lantern to examine the debris and the city guards fan out to keep the gathering neighbors back, Chelson gives the footman a ferocious look. “Why did you bring the guards?” he whispers. “We handle house matters in-house. You should know that by now.”
Ophardt shrinks, hoping he will at least be kept on as a soil boy.
The sergeant touches the blood on the wall, slides outside, and closes the door to prevent gawking. He questions the footman, who tells him when he came, why, and what he saw. The sergeant asks if he saw anyone else on the lane; the blood is fresh so the killer might have been nearby. The footman scans the neighbors. They shrink back. Doors and windows close. Ophardt says he didn’t see anyone suspicious.
Chelson is about to say that he fears his son-in-law was involved when the sergeant bends and holds the lantern near the footman’s waist. It reveals a thin red smudge across his uniform. “Oh,” Ophardt says, “there was the barrowman.”
2
* * *
Near midnight Ject bars the door to his office and steps to a darkwood counter mounted on the wall. He dons a crisp white sleeveless tunic, lights several beeswax candles on the counter with a straw from his grate, and unrolls a red woven mat between them. Onto it he sets a white ceramic pot filled with clean water and covered with a white cloth. Next to this he arrays several objects removed from a finely carved box: an unhoned snow-white blade of deer bone, a tin with yellow paste, another with black, two more white cloths, rolled, and a horsehair brush with a black oak handle. He stretches and looks out the window above the counter, but the candles have snuffed his view of the lamplit Upper City. He pulls off his boots, stands one on the mat, dips a cloth in the water, and cleans it while considering what he knows.
There have been at least three murders in two days. The trade rider, stabbed in the East Harbor. A maid, horribly mutilated, found atop a warehouse in the West Harbor. Another maid, with her throat slit or torn open, found in Servants. Plus Chelson’s daughter, badly injured at least, taken from Lesser Silk.
She may be alive. Why would the killer take the body? Chelson, though, took the more pessimistic view, and, not wanting to involve Ject, said that his men would investigate. A second citywide search, which an owner’s daughter would merit, would indeed be very embarrassing, but Ject won’t miss an opportunity to indebt Chelson to him, so he’s ordered his men to make inquiries too.
Ject scrapes off some persistent splatter with the blade then washes off its residue. He shakes out a rolled rag, wraps it around two fingers, and digs out some yellow paste, a traditional dubbin of wax, soda ash, and tallow. This is one of his better batches, but the secret is in his black polish. He rubs it into the leather.
Ject considers the city guard from Quiet who is also missing. No one has seen him since he went on watch two nights ago—or no one’s said so out of fear of dismissal. He was in the same area as the two maids. If he were murdered, how would he fit with the rest?
And now he’s gotten a report of a man who assaulted a woman in Servants. He fled after she fought him off, leaving behind a substantial knife. He wore a long-sleeve black tunic and pants, and, from what little the witnesses saw of her, she resembled Chelson’s daughter. Why would she have been there? Did the same person catch her at home?
Could he have also been this barrowman? Black is the color mandated for night workers, though.