hills. Better still were the tales told of his exploits after the War, as he cleared the parlors and drawing rooms of the Regent’s many critics in a variety of colorful and lingering ways.
“High enough.” I gulped back a spurt of misgivings over having a creature like Hisvin know my name. But I’d started this. Now I had to finish it.
“Now then. Here’s what I need you to do.”
Chapter Eight
And so, after lo these many years, a prodigal, if not entirely repentant Markhat returned to the bosom of Father Church.
Evis’s black carriage rattled jauntily along. It was mine for a time, and Halbert the driver called me “sir” and meant it. With my new black hat and Halbert opening all my doors, I was having a difficult time feeling contrite or the least bit in need of tearful confession.
I had just enough on my mind, though, to keep me from singing. Evis had answered most of my questions, but one thing still nagged at me, all the way to my first stop at Wherthmore Cathedral.
Why, pray tell, had we disturbed poor Allie Sands at all? Say everything I’d surmised about a new-moon vampire blood-feast was true. Say a renegade Church sorcerer was involved. Say one of the major Houses was footing all the bills and minding all the cloaks while the slaughter commenced. Say it was all true.
Why in Heaven’s name would you leave a moldering halfdead-infected corpse behind, buried in a grave so shallow it could claw its way free at the first hint of an easy meal?
Why not just dump the blood-drained body in an alley as the lads scurry home to floss their teeth before sunrise? The dead wagons will roll and the ovens will burn, as the saying goes, rain or shine. What’s one more well chewed corpse?
Had to be the number of bites, I decided. But I doubted that the Watch did anything but shove the bodies into the ovens, after they’d made a thorough forensic examination of the victim’s pockets or purses. Still, the blood- culters had to be cautious, I decided. It would only take one sharp-eyed Watchman and one Hill doctor to realize what was happening.
I watched poor folk scamper out of my way through my clean glass windowpane and mulled that over. The thing we’d raised had been rotted-but thinking back, I decided it hadn’t had any hands.
Had she been left out of sloppiness? Maybe. Taking Martha Hoobin merely because she worked at the Velvet wasn’t smart. Could be the ceremony had run late and the principals had left and the mop up crew had just decided to pull up a few old street cobbles and leave the body there, rather than risk hauling it outside in the dawn.
Or maybe Evis and his pale, well-groomed agents had been noticed, and Allie Sands was someone’s way of saying hello.
I hoped not. But I didn’t need Momma’s cards to see the likelihood of such a thing.
We passed the Velvet, and I waved to Hooga, who didn’t see me. I found myself hoping Darla would be out on the street, but she wasn’t, and we passed.
Wherthmore is Rannit’s largest, oldest church. It was built so long ago the Brown River has since changed course. The two knee-high granite walkways that extend from the steps, it is said, once led right down to the jetties and the wharves. Now, it takes half an hour just to get from the Brown River to Cambrit, and another half to get to Wherthmore.
The cathedral itself soars up five stories-impressive when it was built, but merely average now. It’s made of pink granite, festooned with scowling demons and topped off with triumphant if pigeon-spotted angels, right hands upraised, wings outspread as they descend from the heavens to alight on the Church and bestow blessings on the faithful.
Soot-black thick soot from the crematoriums, soot no rain will ever wash away-has left all twelve of the big oval stained glass windows so black you couldn’t make out the scenes laid within them.
Find in that what metaphor you will.
Halbert stopped the carriage, set the brake and tied the ponies. Then he opened the door, made a little bow and winked.
Half a dozen red masks watched the show.
“I won’t be long,” I said, stepping out.
Halbert just nodded, and marched away, and I stepped into the cold shadow of an angel’s stone wings and made for the steps of Wherthmore.
Two priests, two halls, two rooms. That’s all it had taken to get me from the front doors to the office of one Enris Foon, First Hand of the Holy Arm of Merciful Inquisition. That, and the name of Hisvin, which I’d spoken often and loudly.
I sat in a straight-backed chair and wondered if there was a Second Hand, or perhaps a Right Foot, until a priest so low he lacked a title or a mask wordlessly ushered me in to see Enris Foon himself.
His office was nothing special. Church title or not, it wouldn’t be fit as a closet at House Avalante. My own spacious accommodations rivaled it for cleanliness, for instance.
Enris was seated at a rickety pine desk. He held a mask on a stick before his face, and from the churning of his neck muscles and the smacking behind the mask, I gathered I’d interrupted his lunch.
“Are you of the flock, my son?” he said, after a particularly spirited round of chewing and swallowing.
“I’m my own flock. And I’m here on business. You can put the mask away.”
He lowered the scowling red mask.
He was maybe seventy and thin and bald and he didn’t get much sun. He had close-set brown eyes and a hawk nose. What hair he did have was all in his eyebrows and his ears. Both could have used a cut, or at least a comb.
“All right.” Give him credit-he said it without rancor. “What can the Church do for you today?”
“I’m looking for something.” I pulled a sheaf of papers out of my coat’s breast pocket. Evis had supplied the whole thing, from the silk paper folder to the gold-leaf tie to the readily visible skull-and-spider seal of Encorla Hisvin himself.
Father Foon saw, but he didn’t bat an eye.
“Ten years ago, a barge called the Embalo sank up around Gant. On that barge was a big crate. In this big crate was a smaller crate. In this smaller crate was a chest-a chest a foot long and half that high and half that wide.” I shaped a box in the air with my hands. “It was lead, and it was sealed. The gentleman who lost it wants it back.”
“I see,” said his Handedness, looking genuinely perplexed. “And you think I know of this item?”
“Probably not. But I think you might know about this.”
I’d reached again into my pocket as I spoke, so I pulled out the silver comb and thumped it down on his desk.
And I watched him. I watched those eyes for any flicker of recognition. I watched that face for any hint of fear.
All I saw was a man wondering how best to get rid of me without pissing off the rich folks who’d employed me.
Which didn’t really mean much. I’ve met people who can lie with utter conviction, people who simply don’t live in their faces. He might have buried Allie Sands himself. Remorse just isn’t found in some hearts.
“And this is?” he said.
“This is a silver comb. One of two-dozen silver combs, of Lot 49, bound for Rannit via Gant. They were in the big crate that housed the smaller crate that housed the sealed lead box. They’ve started showing up in Rannit. My employer has deduced that since the combs have made their way up from the bottom of the Brown, that perhaps his box has too.”
The Hand frowned. “I still fail to see why you’ve brought this to me. The Arm cleanses items polluted by willful apostates. We do not deal in submarine treasure hunts.”
“This comb has been Cleansed. Which means that somehow it wound up, at least temporarily, in the hands of the Church. Which means the Church knows who owned it, what their name is and probably where they are right
