Cora had barely lifted the still-warm coffee pot when Hearst found her.
‘You didn’t hang around to enjoy the charms of the Eastern Duchy of Perlanse, Gorderheim?’ he said.
‘Not much time, not many charms.’
‘Ah.’
Her commanding officer was a foot shorter than her and slighter in build, but he made up for that with a presence. The constables jumped to attention as soon as he stepped into the briefing room. Unlike Cora, who wore plain clothes, Sergeant Hearst worked in uniform. But, just like Cora, his jacket was usually in need of a wash, not least because of the time he spent looking after the birds who lived on the station roof.
‘How bad?’ Hearst said.
‘All four dead. Poisoned.’
Hearst rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘You’d better pour me a cup.’
‘You look like you need something stronger, sir.’
‘So do you, Gorderheim. And you might be tempted to start proper drinking once the chief inspector hears the news.’
Cora swirled the coffee in her mug. ‘She’s here?’
‘No, she’s been tied up at the Assembly lately.’
‘Guess I have that conversation to look forward to, then.’
Hearst smiled grimly. ‘And in the meantime, we start looking for Tennworth.’
*
The trip to Perlanse had kept her awake far too long. Now the walls of the station were turning hazy. She needed some fresh air if she was going to achieve anything else that night.
She stopped on the station’s steps to roll a smoke, then leaned against the wall to ease the pain in her foot, which was throbbing again. She’d ask Pruett, the station’s stitcher, to have a look at it. The glass inside might be moving. She’d been told that might happen, back when her foot was first stitched, the night Ruth left. The stitcher who’d come to the house had done his best to pick the glass from Cora’s bloodied foot after she’d stood on the broken pane of her parents’ cabinet. Broken by Ruth stealing trading papers. Stitcher said if there was any glass left inside Cora’s foot then it could take a fancy for shifting, try to get out. It might take years, but there was a chance. Cora had been in too much pain to understand what he was saying at the time. She’d been frightened by the blood too, and by Ruth’s words before she slipped out of the window into the night: the whole place is rotten, right through the middle.
Now, outside Bernswick police station, after too many hours in the saddle and a daunting task ahead of her – was a Chambers truly involved in multiple murders? – she understood: nothing ever truly healed.
She took a drag on the bindleleaf. The street was busy. All the streets of Fenest were busy, until the election was over. She watched some harried-looking Fenestirans try to find their way through groups of Perlish who sauntered in their feathered finery, enjoying being looked at, thin blue smoke rising from their fancy cigarettes in fancier long-stemmed holders. Two Wayward rode on horseback, their many-pocketed cloaks pulled tight to their chins to keep out the evening’s chill. Just behind them, a woman in a dark dress had to dodge a pennysheet seller waving copies of the latest edition. Cora caught the seller’s voice – too high to be that of Marcus, her gruff informant, but just as determined to sell her ’sheets.
The pennysheet girl shoved one of the Perlish dandies into their companion and there was cursing, shouts of revenge loud enough to interest the Weaver. One of the Wayward horses started dancing about and the woman in the dark dress looked to be caught in the middle of it all. Cora was just about ready to go back inside the station when the woman in the dark dress came clear again. She turned, looked over to the station, and her gaze found Cora.
It was Ruth.
Five
There was pain in Cora’s fingers and she shook her hand to be rid of it. Her forgotten bindleleaf had burned down and singed her. When she looked back at the crowd, the woman in the dark dress had gone.
Cora was tired, that was what it was. Hadn’t slept right in days. No wonder she was seeing things. The woman could have been anyone, but she couldn’t have been Ruth.
Cora had told herself the same thing after she’d arrested Finnuc at Tennworth’s winery. The woman who’d been there with him and who had escaped in the old Commission coach had looked like her older sister. Or how Cora imagined her to look after all these years, when she’d allowed herself to think about Ruth. But since that glimpse in the winery, Cora had talked herself out it. Ruth wasn’t back in Fenest. Ruth was anywhere else. With the Audience, even. Did Cora care? Ruth had ruined everything when she stole their parents’ papers and gave the pennysheets the story of the Gorderheims embezzling Commission funds. Ruth had never even bothered to come back and witness the damage.
These thoughts were no help for anything. Cora went back inside. Maybe she’d get some work done, or maybe she’d bed down on an empty bench in the briefing room.
*
Bellowing in the corridor woke her the next morning.
‘One day until the Perlish story! Will it be tragedy? Will it be the funny the city needs? Find out in the first edition!’
‘You can save that roar for the street,’ Cora shouted back.
‘Morning, Detective,’ said a gruff figure, now looking down at Cora. ‘Rough night? Them fights at the Dancing Oak get the better of you again?’
Cora winced at the noise. Surely the girl was louder today than usual? Marcus: named on Drunkard’s Day and loud as the Brawler. A mean combination in the cut-throat world of pennysheet selling, and handy for other things too.
‘Bring the ’sheets into my office. I wanted a word with you anyway.’
A constable grinned at Marcus as they passed, and Marcus glowered back, stomping along in her worn boots, her bare toes poking out the end of one.
‘You’ll like these numbers, Detective,’ the girl said. ‘Eight to one on the Perlish story. The Daily Tales says it’s gonna be racy.’
‘Do you even know what that word means, Marcus?’
‘I know it don’t mean people dying, like in them other two stories.’
‘That would be something. Put the ’sheets on the floor,’ Cora said, once they were inside her office. She leaned against her desk. ‘Have you heard any talk about the new Wayward storyteller? Ento’s replacement?’
‘Not much, and I been listening. Really listening, Detective. You buying so many ’sheets off me.’
The girl looked around Cora’s filthy office, the few sticks of furniture covered with old pennysheets, pastry wrappers, and over-flowing ashtrays, in something like wonder: a bad sign. Cora would have to get one of the constables in. The office had reached its annual crisis point.
‘But there’s been something?’ she asked Marcus.
‘Only the last few days. Girl I know, sleeps at Beulah’s place like me – her cousin works the presses at The Spoke. Knows a hack there called Butterman. Do you know him, Detective?’
‘Sadly, yes.’
‘Well,’ Marcus rocked backwards on her tattered boot heels, ‘this cousin was at the ’sheet offices when Butterman comes in all excited. The cousin overheard him telling another hack that the new Wayward ’teller is from outside their realm.’