‘Sorry, Detective. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.’
Cora waved away the apology. She needed to talk to the barn owner anyway. Might as well get it over with. Useful to see his reaction to the horrors still lying in his barn, which didn’t seem to be much of a reaction, truth be told. His boots were closer to the dead driver’s head than Cora thought was right.
‘Well, Mr Tristanton,’ she said.
‘It’s Tr’stanton, without the i.’
‘Right, well, these folks aren’t going anywhere until I get a stitcher to look at them. Speaking of which – Jenkins?’
‘Stitcher’s been sent for, Detective, and some local constables. Don’t know how long they’ll take though. Nearest station’s a few miles off apparently.’
‘We’ll just have to wait then, won’t we?’ Cora said, and gave Tr’stanton an apologetic smile that was low on the apology, the kind loved by the Critic.
Tr’stanton’s face grew even redder and spit shone at the edges of his mouth. ‘On whose authority are you preventing me from earning an honest mark?’
She pulled out her badge and pushed it closer to his face than she needed to. ‘Detective Cora Gorderheim, from Bernswick.’
‘Bernswick?’
‘One of Fenest’s finest police divisions.’ Even with Cora making an effort, the words still came out as mocking.
It was hardly a surprise. Chief Inspector Sillian of Bernswick had been trying to stop Cora from getting to the heart of this case since the first body had turned up and started this story: Nicholas Ento, the murdered Wayward storyteller. All Cora’s hard work had led her to the killer, Finnuc Dawson, and she’d been the one to arrest him. Now, here was Finnuc lying dead in a barn in Perlanse. A murderer murdered. This would change things back at the station. The chief inspector would have to let Cora investigate this properly, because it couldn’t be a random killing. Someone had wanted Finnuc dead, and Cora was certain she knew who.
Tennworth.
Cora had the name, and the fact Tennworth was a woman, but not much more. Finnuc gave her that information before he was taken from the cell at the station, as good as admitting it was Tennworth who had ordered him to kill the Wayward storyteller. And, shortly after his confession, Finnuc was dead. Now, Cora had to find Tennworth before anyone else was killed.
‘Bernswick… Fenest… You’re a long way from home, Detective.’ There was caution in Tr’stanton’s voice now.
Cora put her badge away and moved further into the barn. Further from Finnuc. ‘Believe me, Perlanse isn’t where I wanted to find myself today.’
‘East Perlanse,’ Tr’stanton said. ‘You’re in the eastern duchy and I would ask that you acknowledge the rightful—’
‘There’s plenty of work waiting for me back in Fenest, Mr Tr’stanton. My job is to solve the crimes of the capital. Well, in one patch of it. I haven’t got time to wander the six realms of the Union. Isn’t that right, Constable?’
‘There is an election on,’ Jenkins said.
‘As if I don’t know about the election!’ Tr’stanton all but shouted. ‘We do get pennysheets out here, Detective. Life does go on outside the glorious capital.’
‘I’d say “death” is more the word for what’s happening in your barn,’ Cora said dryly.
Tr’stanton’s long arms were flailing again. ‘If Fenest keeps you so busy, Detective, why are you even standing in my barn?’
‘Because that man was a prisoner.’ Cora nodded in the direction of Finnuc. ‘My prisoner.’
‘The death of a prisoner is hardly a cause of regret,’ Tr’stanton said. He folded his arms, making the feathers crammed onto his lapels flutter. ‘One fewer mouth to feed on the Steppes. The Commission spends too much money on them as it is; we should string them up and be done with it. There’s been a lot of talk about it in the right-thinking pennysheets.’
‘Not the ’sheets I read,’ Cora said. ‘These others gone to the Widow here, they committed no crime. Their only job was to take the prisoner from the capital to the Steppes.’
Jenkins was staring at the pair of constables. She, too, had recognised them.
Cora leaned against one of the poles that supported the roof and reached into her coat for her bindleleaf tin. She’d been trying to give up smoking but recent events had been… challenging. After everything that had happened, smoking seemed the least of her problems.
Jenkins gave a low cough and nodded towards the straw-covered floor. With a deep sigh that was gruff with years of bindle-smoke, Cora put the tin away. Probably wasn’t a good idea to set fire to the barn, though it would make life a lot easier to burn the place to the ground, the bodies with it. Especially Finnuc’s. The smell was too bad to stay inside any longer anyway. She headed outside, to the courtyard, Tr’stanton tight on her heels.
‘Make sure no one else enters,’ she told Jenkins, and headed for the coaching inn that stood on the other side of the courtyard.
‘Where are you going?’ Tr’stanton said.
‘It was a long ride from Fenest,’ Cora said. ‘I could do with a drink.’
She pushed open the double doors that were a headache-bringing mess of coloured glass worked into the shapes of birds and flowers. The barroom beyond the doors was little better. Polished brass gleamed in the midday sun streaming through the tall windows, many of which had more coloured glass plates. The room was divided into spacious booths, each decked out in a different cloth that to her eye clashed with their neighbours, and with the fancy clothes of the Perlish travellers who sat in them. Her head swam. At least she’d be able to smoke in here. That might help.
The barroom was half full, and it was silent – the kind of fresh silence that she knew well. A detective walks into a bar… But it wasn’t her causing it today. The stinking bodies in the barn were responsible for that. She was the one who’d said the travellers couldn’t leave though. That was her doing.
Tr’stanton was at her elbow. ‘Nothing to worry about!’ he called to the huddles of concerned faces. ‘This matter will soon be dealt with.’
Angry murmurs suggested the stranded travellers thought this unlikely. While Tr’stanton commanded free drinks to soothe tempers, Cora sank into the nearest booth.
She was tired. After Finnuc had been taken from the Bernswick station she’d gone to the Dancing Oak to distract herself from all the things she didn’t want to think about, including the question of who Tennworth was, and how Cora was going to find her. Then, after a long night ringside in which she’d lost more of her pay than she liked to tally, the message had come: the prisoner transport had got into trouble on the road to the Northern Steppes. She and Jenkins had set off immediately. Even before Cora had stepped into the foul air of the barn she’d known what was waiting for her. That Finnuc would be dead. That didn’t make it any easier to see him lying there.
Tr’stanton thrust Cora a glass of something silvery: Greynal.
‘I don’t drink,’ she said.
Tr’stanton’s eyebrows shot up; they looked remarkably similar to the feathers he wore. ‘But you said you needed—’