‘A drink. Something to rid my tongue of dust. That doesn’t mean it has to be distilled.’
‘This is the finest spirit to come out of the Lowlands.’
‘Send it over to Jenkins in the barn. She’ll need warming up after the journey.’ Cora enjoyed the appalled look on his face. He kept the glass of Greynal for himself. ‘I’ll take a sinta juice,’ Cora said, then thought better of it when the glass arrived and she caught the smell, just like the barn. She’d make do with a smoke.
‘Tell me, Mr Tr’stanton, you own this place?’
‘Yes, but I can assure you I had nothing to do—’
‘Get many prisoner transports stopping for supper?’
Tr’stanton straightened his lapels. ‘From time to time. We are on the main road to the Steppes.’
‘A good road too,’ Cora said, and lit a bindleleaf. ‘Better than the roads in Fenest. With the Perlish controlling the Assembly, Perlanse has done well. What a surprise.’
‘Which realm wouldn’t take care of their own people?’ Tr’stanton said, as if Cora was a fool. Typical Perlish.
‘Those looking to stay in control of the Assembly for another term,’ she said. ‘Those who care about the whole Union, not just their own back yard.’
The Assembly was the seat of power in the Union. The realm that won an election took control of the Assembly and made decisions that affected all six realms of the Union, as well as the capital, Fenest. The person at the head of this power was the Chambers. Every realm had their own Chambers to represent them in Fenest, making them the most powerful people you could have the misfortune to come across. As if that wasn’t enough, the only other thing Cora knew about Tennworth apart from the name, apart from that she was a woman, was that Tennworth was very likely a Chambers. Of all the people to be chasing for murder…
The inn owner was jabbering on about the good works done by the current Perlish Assembly.
‘You won’t hold onto the Assembly after this election,’ Cora said, interrupting him, ‘given the grumblings I’ve heard about Perlish decisions these last five years.’ She puffed a big cloud of smoke across the table at him. ‘Might have helped if your Chambers spent some of the Union budget in other realms. Caskers keep telling me the River Stave needs dredging.’
‘If their storyteller did a good enough job to win this year, they can dredge it themselves,’ Tr’stanton said, coughing. ‘The Caskers have told their tale. The Lowlanders too. The Perlish ’tellers are next, I believe.’
‘The wheel turns,’ Cora said grimly.
Tr’stanton glanced behind him. ‘Can we get on with the business at hand? These people are costing me a fortune.’
‘Looks to me like business is good enough to bear it.’ She stubbed out the end of her bindleleaf against the untouched glass of sinta juice and enjoyed Tr’stanton’s grimace. ‘So good you don’t really need prisoner transports stopping here, do you? Might as well make them eat in the barn.’
Tr’stanton leaned back in his seat. ‘I don’t have a choice about the prisoners stopping here, though if I had my way they’d never darken my door. It’s bad for—’
‘Business, yes, I get the idea.’
‘The Commission doesn’t seem to care.’ He looked like he would say more but then wisely stopped himself. The Commission were the civil service in Fenest, and Cora’s employer. The Assembly made the decisions about life in the Union, and the Commission recorded every aspect of them in painful detail. ‘I do what I’m told and give the prisoner transports food to eat and somewhere to sleep,’ he said. ‘But the Commission have no rules about where that happens.’
‘That’s not like the Commission,’ Cora said, and something like a smile briefly appeared on Tr’stanton’s face. Wherever you found yourself in the Union of Realms, you found the Commission at work. Some days, Cora thought that was what united the different peoples. That and the election. Once every five years the Union held its breath for the few weeks the election lasted, during which each realm competed to win control of the Assembly. Control was by votes, and votes were won by the storytellers. Six realms, a teller for each – two for the Perlish duchies – sent to the capital Fenest to tell a tale and win their realm control over all the others. The Union was in the middle of an election now – another reason not to leave Fenest, and yet here she was.
‘Was there anything unusual about this prisoner transport in particular?’ Cora asked.
‘Not that I saw. The coach arrived around ten o’clock last night and the driver asked for room and board for herself, two constables and a prisoner. She’d stopped here before and knew the routine.’
‘You recognised her?’
‘Yes, but I couldn’t tell you her name.’ The inn owner sipped his Greynal. ‘I gave her the key to the barn and said the food would be brought over soon.’
‘And was it?’ Cora said.
‘As far as I know. I told the kitchen and let them get on with it.’
‘But you didn’t prepare and serve the food yourself.’
Tr’stanton put down his glass with a loud clunk. ‘I am the owner of this establishment, Detective. I manage people.’
Cora slid out from the booth. ‘I’ll need to talk to these managed people.’
Two
The plainness of the kitchen was a relief after the bright colours of the bar. Pale wooden counters hugged white sinks and black stoves, and, even though the knives and pans were gleaming, the light was more bearable. Or Cora’s tiredness was starting to dull everything.
She hoped the local constables arrived soon to interview the stranded travellers. Cora had enough to do with the kitchen staff. Of the six people now in the kitchen, three had been working the previous night when the prisoner transport arrived. Those three plus Tr’stanton and the cook were the only staff still there by that time, given the lateness. Right now, the cook was on a break, which gave Cora the chance to speak to the others individually about how the food had been prepared.
‘What food did you send to the barn?’ Cora asked one of the kitchen workers, a skinny lad with a lisp and a weak leg.
‘Soup and bread,’ the lad said.
‘Was it made special for them?’
‘It was the same as was served to the others, them in the dining room. Same pot.’
And no one else had been affected.
‘You didn’t see the cook add anything special to the soup that went to the barn?’ Cora asked. ‘No final touches?’
The lad laughed. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing. Cook don’t really do touches.’
‘What about drink?’ she said, trying not to lose her patience. ‘Did you take them anything from the bar?’
‘They said they had their own.’ The lad leaned against a counter top to ease the strain on his bad leg, which looked scrawnier than the other. ‘It was only the soup and bread we gave them. Elis took it out to the barn.’
The same story was told by the second kitchen worker: the food was made in the usual way, the cook had shouted as much as she always did. Someone had dropped a tray of cakes and earned a cuff round the ear from Tr’stanton. It was like any other night. Everything matched, including that the serving boy Elis had been the one to deliver the soup. When Cora looked around the kitchen for him, he was nowhere to be seen. She didn’t believe that was an accident.