As he approached, a couple was exiting the shop, accompanied by a man wearing the same livery as the coachman. The footman, for so he appeared to be, assisted the lady to climb into the carriage; Lenoir quickened his step to reach them before they departed.
“Hold a moment, please,” he called. The lady leaned out of the window with a quizzical expression, and the three men turned their heads to look at Lenoir.
“What can we do for you, Inspector?” said the footman after Lenoir had introduced himself.
“Actually, it is your coachman I wish to speak with.” Lenoir looked up at the man on the perch. “Sir, were you driving this carriage yesterday afternoon?”
“I was,” said the coachman warily. He looked uncomfortable in his tacky green tunic.
“Did you pick up a young boy in the poor district, sometime in the afternoon?”
The man shook his head. “No children, sir, not yesterday. But you might try the other coachman, Marrick.” His yellow glove gestured in the direction of the shop. “Out back, washing the other carriage, I think.”
Lenoir followed the coachman’s directions through the shop and out to the back, where a man in breeches and an undershirt was mopping the running gear of an identical green and gold carriage. He swore under his breath as he worked, and did not seem to notice Lenoir’s presence until the inspector cleared his throat.
“Oh, excuse me, sir,” Marrick said sheepishly, rising. “It’s only that the paint keeps flaking off when I wash it. Frustrating, you know?”
Lenoir was supremely uninterested in the tribulations of carriage washing, and he hoped his expression conveyed as much. “I am here from the Metropolitan Police, and I would like to ask you a few questions.”
A worried look crossed the coachman’s face. “The police? Is there something wrong?”
“I wonder if you can think back to yesterday, to the people you drove in your carriage. Do you remember a boy, about ten years old? Name of Zach?”
“Oh yeah, yeah,” Marrick said enthusiastically, clearly relieved. “I remember the kid. Filthy little beggar, he was. . . .” He paused, flushing slightly. “Excuse me again. No disrespect intended. . . .”
“Not at all. That is quite helpful, actually. It means we are almost certainly talking about the same child. Was this yesterday afternoon?”
The coachman nodded. “Picked him up over on Barrow Street, about two hours before sunset, I think.”
“Was there anyone else in the carriage?”
“Course! The boy couldn’t very well have paid for it, now, could he?” Marrick gave a timid laugh.
Lenoir did not so much as hint at a smile. “Perhaps you would indulge me, sir, by telling me who else was in the carriage.”
The coachman scratched the back of his neck nervously. “Oh, right. Well . . . he didn’t give his name, actually. I mean he hadn’t booked or anything, he just flagged me down. We’re not supposed to do that, if you want the truth—my boss would box me around the ears if he knew. Doesn’t conform to the image, he says, picking up folks as though they were common hitchhikers. . . .”
Lenoir listened to the man’s drivel without comment, his face expressionless. But this seemed only to intimidate Marrick further, and he began to wander so far off topic that for a brief moment Lenoir considered cuffing him into silence. In the event, he merely said, “Stop. Try to focus, please. Short answers. Now, where did you pick this man up?”
“Warrick Avenue,” the coachman gulped.
“And where did you drop him off?”
“Berryvine.”
Lenoir blinked in surprise. Berryvine was almost two hours west of Kennian. “He must have paid you well.”
Marrick only nodded mutely.
“Was the boy with him when you dropped him off?”
Again, Marrick nodded.
“And did you have the impression he knew the boy?” Zach’s uncle flashed briefly through his mind.
Marrick considered this. “Well, I couldn’t hear their conversation from up front. But now you mention it, I guess not.” He hesitated, then shook his head firmly. “No, I reckon he couldn’t have known the boy, because he seemed to just sort of happen upon it. See, at first he just said he wanted to ride around town for a bit, but when he saw the boy, he asked me to stop. I don’t know what he said to the lad, but he looked happy enough to get in the carriage. And then the customer just asked me to take them to Berryvine, and that’s it. I dropped them on the main street, and he didn’t say where they were headed.” Marrick paused guiltily. “Guess I should’ve known something wasn’t right, him picking up a strange child like that.”
Lenoir ignored this, a knot tightening in his stomach. Any lingering doubt that Zach had met with foul play had now dissolved; the coachman’s description sounded like a classic case of a predator luring a child. Such things were not uncommon in Kennian, and orphans were especially vulnerable. Few people thought to wonder about the disappearance of a street urchin, and those that did tended to dismiss it as nothing out of the ordinary, just as the nun at Zach’s orphanage had done. All too often, the first sign of foul play was the discovery of a corpse.
Lenoir had only one question left. “What did he look like, this man? Would you know him if you saw him again?”
Marrick glanced skyward as he thought. “Well, let me see . . . He was tall, I suppose.” This seemed the limit of his powers of observation, for he was silent a long moment. Lenoir was on the verge of giving him a solid shake when the coachman added, “Oh, and his skin had a darkish hue. Might have been Adali.”
It was not much, but at least it was something to go on. If the man really was Adali, that would certainly narrow the field. Lenoir was skeptical, however, as he always was when a witness identified a suspect as Adali. As a race, the Adali were so distrusted that many witnesses either lied outright, preferring to see an Adal in jail rather than no one at all, or merely remembered the suspect as an Adal, when in fact that was not the case. The mere presence of an Adali camp near one of the outer villages was often enough to provoke a surge in the number of reported crimes.
He needed to return to headquarters and see if he could find Kody, for he would need help if he was to interview residents of Berryvine quickly. He only hoped the sergeant was there and not out chasing his phantom corpse thief.
• • •
Kody was in the middle of dictating a report when Lenoir found him. He was taking his time, waiting patiently while the scribe scratched his words out in full. You never knew when the smallest detail could be important, and Kody wanted to make sure that the scribe got everything down. He’d made it clear that he wouldn’t tolerate shorthand or paraphrasing, so he paused often and for as long as it took for the quill to stop moving. He’d just started up again when Lenoir stalked up to the scribe’s desk. The inspector didn’t even offer a greeting before cutting into Kody’s recitation.
“Get your riding cloak, Sergeant. We have work to do.”
The scribe looked up from his notebook, his quill poised in midair. He glanced uncertainly between Kody and Lenoir.
Because I’m not doing any work here?
Kody thought irritably. Aloud, he said, “I’m in the middle of a report, Inspector. I spent the morning talking to some of the other sergeants, and I found out some interesting things.”
Lenoir’s lip curled. “Excellent
.
I can see you are on the verge of solving the crime of the century. But if you can delay your historic triumph for a few hours, I require your assistance to find a real, live child.”
Kody felt heat rise to his face, but he bit back the caustic reply that was on his lips. There was no point in antagonizing Lenoir. The man was his superior and had every right to divert him to another case. In truth, Kody was surprised Lenoir hadn’t already done just that. Still, if he didn’t finish his report now, there was a good chance he might forget some detail that could prove pivotal later on.
“If you could just give me five minutes, sir,” he said as evenly as possible, “and I’ll be finished here. I want to get this down while it’s fresh in my mind.”
A moment of indecision flashed across Lenoir’s face. Then, to Kody’s relief, he said, “Be quick about it.”
Kody cleared his throat, then hesitated uncertainly.
“An Adali male was spotted,” the scribe supplied helpfully.
“Right. An Adali male was spotted in Brackensvale some days ago by the blacksmith, who lodged a complaint with the constabulary claiming that this Adal had stolen a horse and most of his tools. Constable Sownes visited the village, but was unable to locate the suspect, and no one else in town reported seeing anyone matching the suspect’s description. Referring to Constable Sownes’s own report on the matter, quote, ‘It is possible that an Adali male was in fact in Brackensvale. However, there is no evidence that the individual was involved in the theft of Mr. Estes’s horse or his tools,’ end quote.”
Kody glanced at Lenoir to see if the inspector had caught the significance of this. But it didn’t look as though Lenoir was even listening; he stared fixedly at the floor, his eyebrows knotted as though he was deep in thought.
Pursing his lips in irritation, Kody waited until the scribe’s quill stopped bobbing. Then he raised his voice a little and said, “I would like to refer here to my previous report, in which I noted that a witness in North Haven claimed to have seen a strange Adal in town on or about the night the Jymes boy’s corpse disappeared. To have a witness in Brackensvale also claim to have seen a strange Adal on or about the day the Habberd boy disappeared is quite a coincidence.”
Still Lenoir didn’t look up. Was the man stone deaf? Or was he feigning indifference purely out of spite?
To the below with him,
Kody thought sourly; if the inspector could ignore him, he could ignore the inspector.
“Lastly, I was informed that Constable Crears of Berryvine reported a boy missing yesterday. A live one, that is. His parents haven’t seen him in two days.”
It was as though Lenoir had been startled from slumber. His head shot up. “What did you say?”
At last.
“A boy has gone missing in Berryvine, Inspector,” Kody repeated gravely. “A
nine-year-old boy
.”
Lenoir swore quietly in Arrènais, his gaze abstracted. Then he said, “Get up, Sergeant. You have finished your report. We must ride to Berryvine immediately.”
Kody was momentarily stunned. He’d never seen Lenoir react so vigorously, not even for a murder. Wary but hopeful, he grabbed his cloak and followed Lenoir to the police livery.
As the stable boy fetched their mounts, Lenoir said, “The boy I am looking for is also in Berryvine. But he was taken there from Kennian.”
Of course.
Kody should have known better than to think Lenoir gave a damn about some merchant’s boy in Berryvine. “Whose son is it?”
Lenoir frowned. “Pardon?”
“I assume he’s a nobleman’s son? Or did his family offer money to find him?”
He knew he’d gone too far as soon as he said it. Lenoir turned to him slowly, his face a cold mask, and when he spoke, his voice was low and dangerous. “That is the last time I will tolerate your impudence, Kody. If there were another sergeant I could count on to assist me, I would relieve you of your duty here and now. Fortunately for you, your colleagues are buffoons and imbeciles. But if I hear so much as a single word out of your mouth between here and Berryvine, I will have you thrown in Fort Hald for insubordination. I do hope I have been clear.”
He snatched his horse’s lead out of the hands of the startled stable boy and heaved himself into the saddle. Kody followed suit, his face burning. Lenoir had never spoken to him like that before, but he didn’t doubt for a moment that the inspector would follow through on his threat. Whatever questions Kody had, he’d have to swallow them. It would be a long ride to Berryvine.
T
he rag in his mouth was sour with someone’s sweat. Zach would have gagged, but his tongue was immobilized. His lips were raw and chapped, and he was desperate for water. But he hadn’t seen anyone in a long time. Hours, probably. It was almost as if they’d forgotten about him—which was weird, considering how much trouble they’d gone to in bringing him here. They had actually been pretty careful with him up until now, almost as if they were afraid of hurting him. But they weren’t taking any chances either; his wrists were bound so tightly that his arms had gone numb behind his back. He’d long since given up trying to work at the knot. It was too tight, and anyway he had only his fingertips for leverage. He had dragged himself along the floor of the room, heels to bottom, in search of a loose nail or something else he could use to cut himself free, but that hadn’t worked either. It was too dark to see, and groping along the floorboards with the flats of his hands turned up nothing.
Zach didn’t know what they wanted from him. He hadn’t asked, and no one had volunteered the information. The Adal who brought him here had said he needed help on his berry farm, a few extra hands to pick the remaining fruit before the first frost. He’d offered money, but not too much—not enough to make Zach suspicious. It had sounded like easy work, and it wasn’t as though Zach had other commitments. There was Lenoir, of course, but the only payment the inspector ever offered was food. That wasn’t a bad deal, but it wasn’t the same as money. Zach could spend coin of his own on the food and drink he liked, not the greasy, tasteless stew Lenoir insisted he should eat, or the sour wine the inspector insisted he should drink.
Still, Zach was angry with himself for not realizing it was a trap. The Adal hadn’t been the first to try to lure him somewhere, after all. Besides, he should have known that an Adal wouldn’t own a berry farm. The Adali never stayed in one place long enough to till fields, and anyway, the townsfolk wouldn’t have stood for it, not when there were so many local people without land of their own. But none of this had occurred to Zach yesterday when he had climbed aboard that ugly carriage. Then he’d thought only of the coin he would earn and what he would spend it on. A new hat, first of all, and then some shoes. And after that he would take his friend Kev to an eating house—the Courtier, maybe. And Kev would see that Zach really did know a big-shot inspector, and Lenoir could tell Kev about how important Zach was to his work. Then Lenoir and Zach would teach Kev how to make up stories about people, stories that were true and that you could tell just by looking. And then maybe Kev would want to be a hound too, and they could be partners someday.
Zach’s throat started to close a little, and his eyes misted. He swallowed hard, determined not to cry. There wasn’t anyone to see him, but still.
A loud bang sounded, startling him. A door had been slammed shut in the room next door. Muffled voices came through the wall, and the creak of someone’s weight traveled along the floorboards to where Zach was sitting. Turning his back to the sounds in the next room, Zach inched along the floor toward the wall until his shoulders were up against it. The voices came through more clearly now, and thin blades of light flickered in and out of view as shapes moved about in the other room.
Zach’s heart sank as he realized the voices were speaking Adali. There were at least three of them, he judged, and maybe more. They sounded excited, but maybe a little nervous too. Zach strained to hear every word, even though he didn’t understand any of it. Then there was a new voice, a boy’s voice. That was strange. Zach tilted his head so his ear was against the wall, closing his eyes and concentrating on the boy’s voice. He didn’t seem to be speaking words, and his voice sounded strangely stifled. He was probably gagged too. Not with the others, then—a captive like himself. So he wasn’t alone here.
He listened for a long time, but he couldn’t make out what was going on. Then after a while something strange happened to the voices. The men—they all sounded like men—started chanting, or so it seemed to Zach. Their voices dropped into a low monotone, and they all uttered the same unfamiliar words. This went on for a minute or so, and Zach wondered if they might be praying. And then the boy cried out, a single word that Zach understood perfectly even through the gag.
“No!”
The boy started screaming. The chanting grew louder, and there came a strange, frantic thumping noise, maybe from the boy trying to escape. Then more screaming, the boy’s voice ripped open by terror. Somehow it was even scarier for being muted by the gag, as though it trapped the horror in the boy’s throat.
Zach wanted to cover his ears, but he couldn’t move his hands. He hunched up his shoulders, but it didn’t help. The screaming went on and on, it wouldn’t stop, and now sobbing, and Zach was sobbing too because he couldn’t shut it out. It filled him up, drowning his insides; it was all he could hear, he could even taste it in his mouth. And when finally the boy’s voice died away and the house fell silent, Zach was still sobbing, his body trembling like an aftershock.