Map
The Swaying Audience
Abject Reveller, god of: loneliness, old age, fish
Affable Old Hand, god of: order, nostalgia, punctuality
Beguiled Picknicker, god of: festivals, incense, insect bites
Blind Devotee, god of: mothers, love, the sun
Bloated Professional, god of: wealth, debt, shined shoes
Calm Luminary, god of: peace, light, the forest
Courageous Rogue, god of: hunting, charity, thin swords
Curious Stowaway, god of: rites of passage, secrets, summer and the longest day
Deaf Relative, god of: hospitality
Delicate Tout, god of: herbs, prudence, drought
Engaged Matron, god of: childbirth
Exiled Washerwoman, god of: sanitation, rivers, obstacles
Faithful Companion, god of: marriage, loyalty, dancing
Filthy Builder, god of: clay, walls, buckets
Frail Beholder, god of: beauty, spectacles, masks
Generous Neighbour, god of: harvest, fertility, the first day of the month
Gilded Keeper, god of: justice, fairness, cages
Grateful Latecomer, god of: good fortune, spontaneity, autumn
Heckling Drunkard, god of: jokes, drink, fools
Honoured Bailiff, god of: thieves, the dark, bruises
Insolent Bore, god of: wind, bindleleaf, borders
Inspired Whisperer, god of: truth, wisdom, silk
Jittery Wit, god of: madness, lamps, volcanoes
Keen Musician, god of: destiny, wine, oil
Lazy Painter, god of: rain, noon, hair
Missing Lover, god of: forbidden love, youth, thunder
Moral Student, god of: the horizon, knowledge, mountains
Needled Critic, god of: criticism, bad weather, insincerity
Nodding Child, god of: sleep, dreams, innocence
Overdressed Liar, god of: butlers, beards, mischief
Overlooked Amateur, god of: jilted lovers, the wronged, apprentices
Pale Widow, god of: death and renewal, winter, burrowing animals, the moon
Penniless Poet, god of: song, poetry, money by nefarious means
Prized Dandy, god of: clothes, virility, bouquets
Querulous Weaver, god of: revenge, plots, pipes
Reformed Trumpeter, god of: earthquakes, the spoken word
Restless Patron, god of: employment, contracts and bonds, spring
Scandalous Dissenter, god of: protest, petition, dangerous animals
Senseless Brawler, god of: war, chequers, fire
Stalled Commoner, god of: home and hearth, decisions, crowds
The Mute, god of: Silence
Travelling Partner, god of: journeys, danger and misfortune, knives
Ugly Messenger, god of: pennysheets, handicrafts, dogs
Valiant Glutton, god of: cooking, trade, cattle
Vicious Beginner, god of: milk and nursing, midnight, ignorance
Weary Governess, god of: schooling, cats
Wide-eyed Inker, god of: tattoos, colour, sunsets
Withering Fishwife, god of: dusk, chastity, flooding
Yawning Hawker, god of: dawn, comfort, grain
Zealous Stitcher, god of: healing and mending
One
Detective Cora Gorderheim had heard many stories that started with death. Now, here was another, set in a barn in East Perlanse. Which of the Audience would hear this story’s end? The Mute? The Keeper? Or the Widow?
The sour air of the barn hit Cora as soon as she stepped inside. It caught the back of her throat. She swallowed and tasted sinta, but overripe: the point when the fruit had gone bad but there was still no sign on the skin. When it tricked the eater. She spat into the straw at her feet and went over to the bodies.
Four of them.
Only one was a stranger: an older woman in a driver’s long coat. She would’ve held the reins of the prisoner transport that drove this sad party here. Cora had passed the empty coach on her way into the barn.
Two of the dead were constables in uniform – veteran officers Cora recognised.
And the last body, the one Cora knew well. Or had thought she did.
The Casker, Finnuc Dawson.
He was lying a little way from the other three, closer to the door, face down in the straw with his legs stretched out behind him. Perhaps the Casker had realised what was happening and had tried to go for help. Or perhaps he was just trying to escape; that was more like him. Not that he would have got far anyway, what with the shackles at his ankles. It was a mercy she couldn’t see his face. Given the state of the others, it wouldn’t be pretty.
He’d been strong and handsome, and when he told a story there was a boyishness to his eyes. Now he was ruined. At the thought of it, Cora shuddered. But she forced herself to step around Finnuc’s body, glad to have him behind her, out of sight for the moment. She squatted next to the dead driver.
The woman was on her side in the straw. Cora took a handkerchief from her coat and gently pushed the woman’s hair from her face. Her lips were blistered, her cheeks dark purple and her eyes all but out of their sockets, the whites thick with red lines. Both these things told a story of forceful purging. And here was evidence of it, all down the woman’s coat and in the straw around her face: green liquid shot through with clots of blood. The poor woman looked to have brought up half her lungs along with whatever had poisoned her.
‘Widow welcome you, friend,’ Cora said, invoking a member of the Audience. But opening her own mouth was a mistake, given how the sour smell was much worse this near the corpse. She gagged, briefly imagined her own eyes being forced from her skull with the effort of retching, and stepped quickly away.
Something rolled against her foot. She used the handkerchief to free whatever it was from the straw. A bowl. A few spoons’ worth of orange liquid sloshed inside. A broth or soup most likely.
She checked the bodies of the constables and found a bowl beside each of them too, the same orange stains inside. The pair were lying together, the woman’s arm hanging over the chest of her male companion like a tale for the Devotee. But Cora thought it less romantic than that. The story here was that he’d shown signs first and she’d sought to help, then been taken ill herself and purged her insides all over him before they both choked to death, or their hearts gave out with the effort of breathing. Either way, the ending was the same. And all because of Finnuc Dawson.
There were voices outside the barn, raised voices, one of which Cora recognised as the capable tones of Constable Jenkins. She’d told Jenkins to keep everyone out, to give Cora a chance to see what stories the barn told before other people came in and started telling their own. From the noise, it didn’t sound like that was going too well.
A man barged in. He was tall and looked too thin for his frame. Way he was going, arms swinging this way and that, face red with rage, he’d be in the straw himself before too long.
‘Can’t you hurry up?’ he said. He wore a dark green jacket with a ridiculously tall collar that clipped his ears, and more buttons than was sensible. Feathers streamed from his lapels. Perlish fashions never ceased to be a mystery to Cora. ‘I’ve got a business to run!’ he said. He glanced behind him, then back to Cora. ‘And the customers are starting to notice.’
‘Given the smell, I’ve no doubt they are, Mr…’
‘Tr’stanton. Samuel Tr’stanton.’
Constable Jenkins slipped past him and into the barn, her blue jacket a sharp contrast against the yellow straw. Cora recognised the look on the young woman’s face: the blend of annoyance and professionalism, carefully managed, that made Jenkins such an asset. Her mouth was fixed in a line that hid her usually prominent teeth from view.