Chapter 38
Constable Hopgood lived in a narrow house not far from my own apartments, on an island in the river.
There was little left of the island itself—it was encased in stone.
Stone streets, stone houses, stone walls.
It was picturesque, with an air of crowded community, but frequently flooded in the spring, and had thus been left to the lower middle-class.
The streets were unnervingly quiet as we went, save for the cry of gulls over the river. We saw only other lawmen and soldiers, and it was obvious from the short words the uniformed Hopgood exchanged with them that if I had been alone, I would have been forcibly removed from the streets.
“I need to understand,” I prompted in a stretch of privacy, unable to articulate a more pointed question. I had too many of them. “What happened to Mr. Stoke?”
“He turned up in Farfleet Hospital yesterday, on the west bank,” Hopgood said. “He had been unconscious in their care for several days, and reached out to me as soon as he awoke.”
I had Hieronymus with me, in a carpet bag for lack of the wicker cage I had never bought, and his irritated mews came through the patterned fabric as I processed this. “Then the body you found was not him, just made to look like him?”
“Yes. It was Lord Stillwell’s original messenger, his valet.
Mr. Wake threatened the man into hiding, whereupon he connected with Mr. Stoke, who’d also gone to ground.
Mr. Wake tracked down the pair of them. Mr. Stoke shot Mr. Wake, and Mr. Wake killed Stillwell’s man to save himself—Leeching, as we suspected.
Stoke saw an opportunity to falsify his death, and took it. ”
“But what good would that do, if Wake knew Mr. Stoke was not the man he killed?”
“Mr. Stoke was in no good condition himself. He was looking to buy days, hours even, and never expected the facade to hold up to scrutiny. He was not just hiding from Mr. Wake, you see, but the Guild. Anyhow, his wounds took their toll, and he was found and taken to Farfleet, unnamed and unconscious.”
I recalled Mr. Wake’s tale of running into Mr. Stoke as he fled a third, unknown party. “By the Guild, do you mean a Starlit mage, Everard Moran?”
“A Starlight, yes,” Hopgood affirmed.
Moran, who had learned of Stoke’s connection to the artifact through Lewis’s and my letters.
I scrubbed at my forehead, overwhelmed. In my carpet bag, Ronny mewed.
“I should let him finish the tale, miss,” Hopgood said. We had reached the riverbank, exposed and windy, and his guard visibly rose. “Let’s pick up our feet.”
I nodded, hurrying along at his side. The day was grey and dismal and the wind that buffeted us smelled of river, smoke, and rain. No one else was about save a military vehicle, prowling across an intersecting street.
Up ahead of us, an old military bastion blocked our view down the boardwalk, keeping its silent, stoic vigil over the city. Great clouds of gulls wheeled from its ramparts, their cries jarring in the general hush.
I eyed the gulls warily as we passed around the bastion and were granted full view of the riverbank once more.
Bodies hung from every lamppost down the grand, open boardwalk.
They swung, swollen-faced and limp—men and women, in skirts and trousers, booted and barefoot.
Gulls and other scavenging birds swarmed, shrieking and hopping backwards, exploding into disgruntled clouds as soldiers with a cart made their way unhurriedly along, cutting the corpses down.
“Stop, there!” It took several shouts of this before the words penetrated my skull. A group of four soldiers made to intercept Hopgood and I.
“Let me talk,” Hopgood muttered.
“Constable, who is this?” one of the soldiers asked. He was evidently an officer, from his bars and mannerism, and the way he looked at me made my sore muscles tense for flight.
Stretched out before us, the bodies of dead Entwined Affinates swung listlessly. Gulls swooped. A soldier hacked ineptly at a rope, making the corpse of a white-haired woman shudder.
“I am escorting this woman home, sir. Found her hiding in an alleyway,” Hopgood lied flawlessly.
“What is your name and why were you on the street?” the officer asked. From the way he searched my face, I sensed something more to the interrogation. Baffin’s people would be looking for me, after all.
From my carpet bag came a piteous mewling. “Mrs. Emmet Fowling, Dorothy Fowling,” I said, lying as easily as Hopgood, with an appropriate quaver and nervousness and shame. “My daughter’s cat. He went missing—she’s been beside herself, sir.”
“The city is at war, Mrs. Fowling. Would you rather your child had a mother or a cat?”
I looked down.
“I’ve spoken to her quite forcefully, Captain,” Hopgood assured with a confiding air. “She understands.”
The captain looked me over one last time, then frowned. “See her to her door.”
“I intend to.”
The soldiers moved on.
“You are an admirable liar,” I murmured to Hopgood as we carried on.
“Wish I didn’t have to be,” Hopgood muttered.
We crossed one of the bridges to the island and soon came to the constable’s house. My heart was in my throat by the time we mounted the stairs and he unlocked the door.
The house was hushed, save for the ticking of a clock.
“I sent my family out of the city soon as matters went south,” Hopgood told me, closing the door and locking it again behind us.
“And good you did.” A voice came from the parlor and there, through the door, I saw a familiar figure reclined on a worn sofa. He pushed himself more upright as I came in, his face soft and apologetic and saddened all at once. “Miss Fleet, my dear woman. I am so sorry.”
There were tears in my eyes as I sank down on a chair across from him. He looked terrible, face swollen and discolored with bruises, one leg heavily splinted. Bulging bandages betrayed other wounds beneath his loose clothing.
Ronny growled from inside his bag and I finally opened it, letting the cat leap out onto the rug, his hair on end, and shoot off into the shadows.
“I am so very glad… very glad that you are not dead,” I said, fumbling the words.
He laughed, and I laughed, and for an instant I could imagine us back in his office on a normal, mundane day.
“I owe you an explanation,” he said. “It will be thorough, I promise.”
Hopgood cleared his throat and excused himself, leaving Mr. Stoke and I alone with the skulking cat.
I looked at my employer expectantly, and the tale began.
Mr. Stoke began to speak. “In making my inquiries about Lord Stillwell’s artifact, I did, perhaps, a little more than due diligence.
Stillwell clearly did not want to attract attention to the matter, otherwise he would not have come to me, a has-been who owed him a debt. Someone he believed he could control.”
I frowned at Stoke’s description of himself, but he waved me off.
“I interviewed Professor Maddeson in the course of my research, and he was only too proud to inform me his work on Old Arasi and the Landsdown Trove was funded by Baffin. He agreed to compile some relevant information for me and sent it to my home address.”
“I found that,” I said. I felt as though something were bubbling up in the back of my throat, but it was no pleasant thing. My surprise and relief were fading, and beneath them, I was still frustrated and injured. It needed more than facts and a systematic explanation.
It needed to know why he left me alone.
There was a flicker of pride, and a little chagrin, in Mr. Stoke’s eyes. “I thought you might.”
“Why did you not warn me?” I asked. “The evening you sent me away. The night Wake attacked you, and you fled with the artifact.”
Mr. Stoke cleared his throat and tried to sit up a little more.
“At first, I believed involving you would do more harm than good. I believed your innocence was your best protection, and that Lord Stillwell would never stoop to threatening my secretary. I did not anticipate Mr. Wake’s intervention that night, nor his nature, nor the rapid involvement of the Guild.
It is no excuse, but matters escalated swiftly. ”
I waited for him to go on.
“Mr. Wake appeared that night, posing as Stillwell’s valet. I know—knew—Stillwell’s valet, however, and immediately realized something was amiss. I made the mistake of voicing my suspicion. We fought, and I was given reason to suspect he was a Silver—a Guild agent, I surmised—and feared for you.”
“You had realized I was Entwined,” I observed.
Mr. Stoke nodded. “Some months ago, though you hide it well.”
“Not well enough,” I said wearily.
He did not comment on that, but filled the silence with continued explanation.
“Now, at this juncture, I suspected the Guild to be puppeting Mr. Wake and making a play for the artifact, but I could not rule out that Stillwell had hired a Rogue mage to ensure my cooperation. And in light of what I had learned of Baffin’s interest in relics, like the artifact I then held—I realized turning over the item was about far more than money. I needed time, so I went into hiding.”
“Yet you still did not warn me,” I added, unable to swallow my bitterness.
“By the time I realized innocence would not protect you, I could not find you,” Mr. Stoke said. “I did try.”
I rubbed at my forehead. “I see. Mr. Hopgood has told me the rest, I believe. You found the valet, and Mr. Wake found the pair of you. As did a Starlight mage.”
Mr. Stoke watched my expression for a breath or two, evidently trying to read me.
“Yes. I encountered the Starlight mage when I attempted to return to my office for supplies. In fleeing him, I crossed paths with Wake again, and was saved only by that other mage’s approach.
The next time I saw Wake, however, I was not so lucky. Nor was the valet.”
I found myself nodding slowly. “Wake must not have wanted Moran to recognize him. They have a history.”
Mr. Stoke’s interest piqued. “Moran?”