Four and Twenty Blackbirds

Tal nodded his thanks, and went back to the ward-room to see if there was anything in the way of orders at his locker. He didn't expect anything—the weather had been so miserable all day that it wasn't likely the Captain had bothered to stir from his own comfortable house just for the purpose of appearing in his place at the station. When he made his way past all the tiny cubicles and entered the ward-room, he found his assumption was correct.

The stove back here had another cheerful fire in it, and the desultory comments of those going off-shift told him that the Captain had indeed sent word by a servant that if he was needed he could be found at home today. No wonder all the stoves were fired up—the Captain wasn't here to economize!

Nice to be able to work from home when the mood hits,he thought sourly, for Captain Moren, Captain Rayburn's predecessor, had spent most of his waking hours at his post, and the only time weather had ever kept him away from the station was the ice-storm of the year he died. Even then, he'd actually set out for the station, and it was only the urging of the constables that knew his ways and came to persuade him to turn back that prevented him from trying to reach his appointed place.

But Tal kept those words behind his teeth; you never knew who was listening. 'Anything I should know about?' he asked the constable he was relieving.

'Not a thing; nobody wants to move outside in slop like this,' the man said, holding his hands over the stove. 'I looked in on a couple folk I thought might be in trouble down by the docks, but they've got smarter since the last storm; families are moving in together to share fuel.' He laughed sardonically. ' 'Course, with twelve people packed in a room, they don't need much fuel to warm the place up. Even the joy-girls have doubled up until the weather turns. I guess they figure they might as well, since there won't be any customers out tonight, or maybe they think they'll get a tip to split if they're two at once, hey?'

Tal shrugged; there wasn't much he could say. Except that at least now some of those women he feared were in jeopardy would no longer bealone, not for the duration of this cold snap, anyway. And for tonight, at least, none of them would be on the street.

But the last one wasn't taken on the street, was she? I wonder what she was doing there; the girls who pose as street-singers don't usually visit blacksmiths. Futile to speculate; he could find out for himself, tomorrow. That was his day off, and he would be free to invade any beat he chose to.

Tonight he would take advantage of the storm to go a little out of his area and visit the Church morgue. Technically, there should be a Priest there at all hours, praying for the repose of the dead and the forgiveness of their sins—but as Sergeant Brock had pointed out, in weather like this, it wasn't at all likely that anyone would be there. The dead-cart couldn't go out in an ice-storm, for the pony might slip and break a leg, and no amount of roughing his shoes would keep him safe on cobblestones that were under a coating of ice an inch thick. So there was no reason for the Priest in charge of the morgue to stir out of his cozy cell, for he could pray for the souls of those laid out on the stone slabs just as well from there as in the icy morgue. If his conscience truly bothered him, he could always take his praying to the relative discomfort and chill of the chapel.

So Tal would be able to examine the bodies at his leisure, and see what, if anything, was true about the story the Desk-Sergeant had heard, that there was something strange about one of the bodies.

He got his uniform cape out of his locker, and layered it on beneath the waxed-canvas cape. His baton slid into the holster at his belt, his dagger beside it, his short-sword balancing the weight on the other side. Beneath the weight of his wool tunic and breeches, knitted shirt and hose, and two capes, he was starting to sweat—better get out before he got too warm and killed himself with shock, walking into the ice-storm.

He took his spiked staff in hand and clumped slowly back out, saluting Sergeant Brock as he headed for the door to the street. There was a constable at the front entrance handing out the storm-lanterns; he took one gratefully and hung it on the hook in the end of his staff. It wasn't much, but on a night like tonight, every tiny bit of light would help, and if his hands got too cold, he could warm them at the lantern.

He opened the door and stepped into the street. There wasn't much wind, but the pelting sleet struck him in the face with a chill that made up for the lack of wind. He bent his head to it, and told himself it could be worse.It could be hail, he reminded himself.

But it was hard to think of how anything could be worse than this; ice so thick that if he had not been wise enough to strap on those metal ice-cleats, he'd have broken an arm or his neck in the first few paces, and cold fierce enough to drive every living thing from the street tonight. It would be a bad night for taverns and families with an abusive member; no one would be going out for a drink, and people with bad tempers didn't take being cooped up well. More often than not, the abuser would take out everything on people who could not run out of doors to escape him. A colicky baby that wouldn't stop crying, a child with a cough that couldn't be soothed, or a woman with the bad luck to say the wrong thing at the wrong time—the triggers were many, but the results were all depressingly the same. There would probably be a few—children mostly—beaten to death before morning. Nights like this one brought out the worst in some people, as the inability toget away set tempers and nerves on edge.

Try not to think about it. There's nothing you can do to prevent any of what's coming tonight. You'd have to have a million eyes and be everywhere at once. Tal set the spike of his staff carefully, lifted a foot and stepped forward, driving the cleats into the ice before lifting the other and repeating the motion. His beat would take three times as long to walk tonight.

He was glad that he was not the morning man, who would be the one to deal with the bodies that would turn up with the dawn. Sometimes the perpetrator would manage to hide his crime by burying the corpse or dumping it in the river, but it would take a truly desperate person to manage that tonight.They never learn; they call the dead-cart and say the mate or the kid 'froze to death,' the constable shows up with the dead-cart and sees the bruises or the smashed skull, and that's the end of it. Another battering, another hanging. It generally never even came to a trial; a Justiciar would see the evidence and pronounce the verdict before the end of the day. An easy conviction, but Tal was weary of them, for nothing ever seemed to change, no matter how many batterers were hung.