~ David ~

“Sorry to call you in at a time like this.” David smiled at Lieutenant Baxendale as he bade her entry. Her ever-haggard face was particularly sullen today. Heavy bags grew fat beneath puffy eyes.

She tried a feeble smile. “I understand, sir. Due process and all.” Her lip quavered, so she bit hard on it. The flesh pinched beneath her teeth shone white. “Look, I know I haven’t been all there these last few weeks. It’s hit me hard, you know?” She’d been a passenger around the tower since David’s first day as Lord Constable. Most of the time she’d been shut away in her corner-office, a room that always seemed to be locked and from which a faint sobbing could occasionally be heard.

He nodded. “I know,” he said, softly.

Baxendale carried on. “At the time I was too hopped up on adrenaline to realise quite what was going on. It didn’t sink in until the funeral. I mean, I saw the body, but it didn’t really look like Captain Mannam. The way he’d broken on the ground—” She shuddered bodily.

David rushed forward, putting an arm around her back to keep her from taking a tumble. “Sit,” he said. “Have something to drink.”

He sent for Gracie, and she went scurrying to fetch something from the kitchens. She was good for that. Not for much else, mind. If the day ever came when they had to defend the Tower to a man, little Gracie would be the first to fall. Her scrapes of arms were built for errands, not holding weapons.

Lieutenant Baxendale had steadied herself a touch. She looked tired, shaky, but the quivering lip had stopped. “Don’t tell the others, sir,” she said. “They barely respect me as it is. The last thing I need is them thinking I’m weak.”

“Are you weak?”

She nodded. “Look at me, blubbering about my commanding officer. As if he’d do the same if I’d fallen.”

David shook his head. “Don’t be hard on yourself, Lieutenant—and that’s an order. It’s only natural to be upset. Mourn, for as long as you need to mourn. Build a shrine to Captain Mannam in your office, if you think it’ll help. But don’t convince yourself you’ve somehow failed, just because you felt something when a friend died.”

She smiled weakly, and he let her sit for a while, engaged in pointless small talk. She’d been close by Richie Mannam’s side for a good chunk of her life, all of her adulthood and then some. Of course she was going to take his death poorly.

Eventually, Gracie came back, balancing two steaming mugs of coffee on a vinyl tray. “Master Ellavon told me to tell you that if you want biscuits, you’ll have to check back in an hour. They’ve only just come out of the oven.”

“I think we’ll survive, thank-you, Gracie,” David said, and she trotted out of the room. He wondered what she did with her days. She was always on hand when he summoned her, but how often was that? Once a day, maybe twice? There was only so much time one could spend ferrying hot drinks and snacks around.

Lieutenant Baxendale reached for one of the mugs and pulled it in tight to her chest, nursing it with both hands. The rising steam seemed to paint the colour back onto her cheeks.

Time to get started, then. At the flip of a switch, the microphone he’d placed in the middle of his desk was engaged.

He flicked through the pages of a maroon binder on his desk. That was where Captain Mannam had kept his daily reports, filed religiously, and brimming with details. The tease it was, it stopped the day before his death. He’d never got a chance to complete that last write-up. “I’ve read Captain Mannam’s notes twice over,” he said, speaking slowly at first lest Lieutenant Baxendale be reduced to whimpering again. “He was a very thorough man.”

“That was his way,” Baxendale agreed. “His notes actually helped my case against Corporal Arfon. You know he’s in the Opteris House now? Some bullshit, that is. How come he gets to be elected to high office, while I’m lucky to still have a career? Anyone would think I was the one who was harassing him.”

“The Unity’s never been selective,” David nodded, causing Lieutenant Baxendale to harrumph. “I think back to the night Captain Mannam died, and he was up by the big lake. That’s a long way from here. An inquisitive mind would wonder what took him there. Unfortunately, his notes don’t offer anything by way of explanation.”

Baxendale shook her head. “They wouldn’t. The Captain always had me write them up for him over coffee when he got back to the office.” But this time he didn’t make it back to the office. David filled in the blanks. “We actually had a few reports of stuff up there. Lights and things. The odd horrible wailing. All filed with different constables, so you’d probably need to scour every bit of paper in this place to find all the reports. We put it down to silly stories, but apparently the General’s girl got a spook. He came to speak to Captain Mannam, and the next thing you know we’re all off to see what was going on up there.”

It all sounded very mysterious. Fanciful, even. David’s inclination would have been to dismiss it as risible, but Lieutenant Bennett had reported the same thing, up at Plateau Watch. Something was going on, clearly, even though it was almost certainly not the ghosts Lieutenant Bennett’s soldiers seemed to think it was. David made a note to look for some of these reports later on. For now, he let Lieutenant Baxendale carry on.

“He went all the way up to the lake, him and half a dozen men, to set up a camp and keep an eye out.”

“And you weren’t one of them?”

She shook her head. “I was down the bottom. There’s a bluff just alongside the river, easy to clamber up to, and it’s got a pretty clear view of up there. You were there. You saw it.”

David tapped on the microphone. “My memory doesn’t go in the case record. This recording does.”

Baxendale nodded. “He wanted me to watch out for anything unusual, so we could compare notes come the morning.”

“Just you?”

“No. There were ten of us in all, I think, including myself.”

“And did you see anything unusual?”

“Not a thing,” said Baxendale. “Least, not until Captain Mannam fell.”

David took a mouthful of scalding coffee, bouncing it around his mouth until it cooled to a bearable temperature, and burning his every taste bud to submission in the process.

“You should blow on it first, sir,” said Lieutenant Baxendale.

“Tell me who was with Captain Mannam. Any officers?”

Lieutenant Baxendale nodded. “That would be Corporal Rawlinson. Big bloke, fond of the vilsa leaf.”

“I know Corporal Rawlinson,” said David.

In fairness, Harry Rawlinson was a hard man to miss. Big was underselling the reality. Rawlinson was the stockiest man in the Constabulary, and a whisker off being the tallest as well. He was the sort who’d take a punch to the stomach without breaking stride, then hurl the culprit twelve feet across the room as though they were made of air. His teeth were stained crimson from the vilsa leaf, a habit he claimed to have picked up on the frontiers of Kelsiern. What he was doing on Kelsiern never came up in the conversation, but it was a famously lawless place. It probably wasn’t Constabulary work.

Before he received Corporal Rawlinson, David enlisted the help of the passing Beatrice Melly to bring in a heavy armchair from the nearest empty office, out of fear that the skimpy wooden one he normally used for his interviews would break under the weight.

Rawlinson arrived sweaty and with a bandaged cheek. A purple stain traced the extent of the wound beneath.

“I cut myself shaving,” said the bearded Corporal Rawlinson, by way of explaining the bandage. Shaving with a stiletto, by the looks of it. David had his suspicions about the truth of the matter. It was a poorly kept secret that certain among the soldiers had developed what they called the ‘knife game’, in essence an excuse to get very drunk and very wounded. If David were to have proof that Rawlinson played the game, he’d have to open a disciplinary. That wouldn’t endear him to his new charges. So he kept silent, and nodded along to Rawlinson’s excuse.

Corporal Rawlinson declined David’s offer of a hot drink. “Caffeine doesn’t play nice with the vilsa leaf,” he said, “and I’ve already been down to the hospital once with palpitations.”

What fine physical specimens I’ve inherited, thought David. As if to prove his point, the strong chair he’d brought in groaned and squealed as Corporal Rawlinson sat down.

“Tell me about the night Captain Mannam died,” said David, his voice even.

“It was bloody cold is what it was,” said Rawlinson. “And it had been sunny all day, so I didn’t bother with a warm coat or gloves anything. My hands were pink.”

“But you were up by the Lake with Captain Mannam?”

Rawlinson nodded an affirmation. “Watching for funny lights or something.”

“Which would explain why Mannam wasn’t carrying a torch on him. Is it possible that he got turned around and stumbled a little too far? I’d have thought a man like him would have better sense than to go so close to the edge, when the drop is so severe.”

“It’s not as easy as all that,” Rawlinson grunted. “The lake cuts quite close to the edge—it’s not much more than a couple of feet in some places—and it runs at least a mile in the other direction. Fact is, unless you want to lug a boat up there, the only way to get from one side to the other is to hug the edge.”

“So stick to one side.”

“That was the idea,” Rawlinson nodded. “The Captain wanted to make camp on the west shore, near to that funny church, so we wouldn’t waste time looking at the lights from there. Nobody told Wrack, though.”

“Wrack?” The name caught David’s ear.

“Aye, the reeve. The one who came to chew your ear off about his wife’s cook. Smug prick, always strutting around. He turned up an hour or so after sundown, wanted to talk to Captain Mannam. Of course, he went up the east side, so we had to go across to him.”

David nodded. “And who is the ‘we’ in this context?”

“The Captain and myself, and another. Colne. We went over to Wrack, left Giant in charge of the rest—good Matheld she needed the ego boost, frit little cub.”

Oliver Wrack often acted as an errand-boy for the Governor. He wasn’t a part of the Borrowood gang, and he never would be, but he so desperately seemed to want to be. It had actually taken David by surprise to see Wrack confronting him, rather than just meekly taking the Governor’s word at face-value. He could always be relied on to take Chris’ side, and pass messages on for Chris, normally. The assumption had to be made that he’d gone to see Captain Mannam on Chris’ instructions, though why Chris would suddenly feel the need to send an urgent message to the Lord Constable in the middle of the night was beyond David.

Still, maybe Corporal Rawlinson would have the answer. “What did Master Wrack want?”

Rawlinson shrugged. “I haven’t a clue. The Captain wanted to talk in private, so he made me and Colne hang back.”

Bugger.

“And how long were they talking for?”

“Again, I don’t really know. Twenty minutes at least. It started to get really windy, so I took myself back. The grass up there got really slippery, and I wasn’t exactly keen on a one-way ride to the bottom of the valley. Plus, it was fucking icy, and like I said I didn’t have my overcoat with me. I had respect for Captain Mannam, he was a good bloke, but there’s no way I was freezing to death for him.”

So Rawlinson was a waste of time, pretty much. David was glad to see the back of the Corporal, and the intact chair he left behind. It would have been a real ball-ache if he’d managed to exchange a broken chair for just the faintest sliver of useful information.

“Wrack seemed kind of nervous if you ask me,” said Colne, when David asked him. “Kept fidgeting.”

“Might that have been down to the coldness of the night?” David asked.

Colne shrugged. “It could have been. But if so, someone needs to teach the man how to warm himself up. That poncy hopping isn’t going to do shit.”

“Was he talking to Captain Mannam for long?”

“Half an hour, tops. And a good thing, too. Rawlinson fucked off halfway through, so I was just stood there on my own the whole time. Do you know how boring that is?”

A memory stirred. That bleak day on the Couldhaven moors, waiting outside a ramshackle old farmhouse for a superior officer who was too dead to come. Two hours David had waited in the yard, alone to his thoughts and the bleating of distant cattle.

“I was with Captain Mannam the whole time,” said Colne. “Wrack wandered off back to the treeline eventually, and Mannam just stood there on his own for a little bit.”

“And then?”

Colne shuffled in the chair. “It was raining pretty heavy at this point. You know what it’s like when it rains extra heavy. We could barely see more than five feet in front of us, and that was before you factor in all the squinting to keep the wind out.” Colne spat. A globule of bubbling saliva nestled on the corner of David’s desk, and there it stayed, watching him. He paid it no mind. Colne was still talking. “Mannam obviously saw some sense at this point, so he started to head back.”

“So you were with him when he fell?”

Colne shook his head. “Like I said, there was basically no visibility. One minute Mannam was right there behind me, the next he wasn’t. No idea what happened to him. I looked for a little bit, but I couldn’t see him. Course, by this point it was basically blowing a gale, and the lake’s so big it just makes everything stronger. I thought if I lost my balance I might get blown off the edge, so I checked right out of there. He’s always been slower than me, Mannam, so I just assumed he’d fallen behind. Wouldn’t have been the first time. He loved pushing us hard in exercises, but he never did so much as a jog unless he had to.”

David frowned. “And you didn’t hear anything of Captain Mannam, after you lost sight of him?”

“Not a peep. None of us up top knew something had happened till Lieutenant Baxendale turned up in the morning.”

Baxendale had mentioned the wind too. “It was a real bitter one,” she said. “Came out of nowhere, an hour or so after sundown. We tried to keep on the bluff for a bit, but the problem with being up on higher ground is there’s nothing to break the wind.”

“There’s the cliffs, surely?”

“True. Sergeant Poulton went to the cliffs. Anderson, too, and Onslow. Problem is, if you’re at the bottom of the cliffs you can’t see a thing at the top. If there were any lights, we’d miss them altogether. I thought perhaps I’d be able to see something from my tent—not as well as up on the bluff, sure, but better than nothing.”

“Did that work?” David asked.

Lieutenant Baxendale shook her head. “The moment I pulled the flap open, the tent stopped acting like a windbreak and started acting like a windsock. I know how to put the pegs in firm, but that was a wind like none I’ve come across before. For real, I thought there was a chance that the tent would get blown away, and me still in it.”

“What about when it died down?”

She nodded. “I started back towards the bluff as soon as the wind stopped.”

“And you saw nothing?”

“By then, there was nothing to see. Onslow met me halfway to the bluff, and she filled me in on everything.” She sniffed then, and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. A long strand of yellow snot rested there. “He didn’t fall. Not the Captain. He must have been pushed, or something.”

Pushed?

“Whatever happened, I’ll find the truth of it,” said David. He had no idea if he sounded reassuring or not, but he hoped he did. He hoped he sounded sincere.

It was late when he finished his questions, and a shroud of darkness had enveloped the valley. None after Colne had been of much use. Onslow said much the same as Lieutenant Baxendale, without some of the details. Rippen revealed that half of the soldiers up by the lake had sheltered from the cold with a good deck of cards, and hadn’t even realised that Captain Mannam had left the camp.

Rather than head straight for the narrow confines of his bunk on the Eia, David climbed the spiralling staircase at the heart of the tower. It was a calm night, the air still, and it was perfect weather for sitting on the balcony. Why the Lord Constable’s Tower needed a balcony was unclear, but whatever the reason, it was there. To not use it would be silly.

He rested his arms on the wooden fence that ringed the balcony and gazed out eastward. From this vantage, he could see it all. The wide street down to the Eia had still seen little use, and it was as tidy as the day the last slabs had been laid. Nobody walked the street tonight. A few nocturnal birds fluttered around the shrubbery that had been kept in place as decoration, and all else was still. Beyond, he could see the plaza, the heart of the town, brightly illuminated as always. People were there, many people, just sticks from this far away, the sounds of their voices long snuffed out.

It was easy to imagine the scene from up close. Young men and young women together, enjoying the night in each other’s company. David could well recall the smell of these raging hormones. It was the same on Opteris. The same on Jenaté, and Arvila, and Tol Manase. Pick a planet. It was a musky scent of desperation, and it made him sick.

But then, the desperation might have been his. He’d never shared the experience of young love. Sure, there was Freya Warlin’s girlish infatuation, and the week Petra Manelan had been doggedly pursuing him, but they didn’t count. David knew little of love, but it was supposed to be reciprocal. He was supposed to feel something for the girls who were going googly-eyed for him. That had never happened.

If only it could happen, just the once. Perhaps then he might be able to understand.

He sighed, a deep sigh, and looked up at the boundless heavens.

It was as a courtesy that he went to Oliver Wrack’s household, bright and early the following morning. He could have had Sergeant Poulton fetch Wrack to the Tower, and save himself the walk, but the man was a useful go-between and had a strange loyalty towards Chris. Those sorts were too useful to piss off.

The ground had frozen hard in the night. Frost painted the valley white, and any exposed hands red. It made the air seem heavier, more serene.

David didn’t go alone—that would be folly no matter how much Chris trusted Oliver Wrack. His complement of three, picked out with the help of Corporal Rawlinson, followed on behind him. People gave them a wide berth as they passed in the streets. One woman, a prostitute from Lilly Losada’s place, underdressed for the morning frost in a lace garter and silk cache-cœur and with a rouged face, bolted into a side street when she saw David coming, pulling on her overcoat as she went.

“Can we have a go on the whores, sir?” said Colne.

David didn’t dignify the remark with a response. Typical, though, that prostitutes had already made their home on Essegena. So much for the stringent selection criteria. It was as if the Unity actively wanted their soldiers to be distracted.

They were met at the gates of the Wrack household by a piece of private security. He was a pimply kid who needed a couple of years still to grow into his uniform, and yet he made to keep David out. “I’ve instructions not to let the Constabulary in,” he said. “If you don’t back off, I will have to shoot.” The kid gripped his rifle unconvincingly.

Colne and Hoult exchanged looks. “Brave for a pipsqueak,” said Hoult. “Don’t trip me up, Colne. I reckon I’d crush the poor kid if I fell on him.”

“The Corporal definitely would,” said Colne, and the rotund Corporal Rawlinson tensed.

David gave Colne and Hoult the most withering look he could. “Grow up,” he told them. Then, to the kid, he put on a kindly demeanour. “There’s no need for you to get into trouble. I just want a chat with your reeve.”

The kid shook his head. “I have orders.” But he sounded as though he was beginning to waver. The way he comported himself suggested to David that he wouldn’t actually have the nerve to follow through.

So he took a step forward. The kid gripped his gun a bit tighter, but didn’t aim it. David kept walking, until he was right up close to the kid, looming over him. A stroke of fortune that the lad on the gate hadn’t yet had his growth spurt. He wondered for a moment if he’d made a misjudgement, if the kid would prove braver than he’d seemed. But then the youngster dropped his rifle, let it slide out of gripless hands.

David nodded a thanks to the kid and walked on, unimpeded. The sound of boots on gravel behind him told him that the others had followed.

Then the kid cried out. “Lieutenant Sharp! Lieutenant!”

David cursed silently, as another soldier came running from the house. This was one was older, grey in places, with firm cheekbones. He didn’t flag, didn’t show any signs of having aged. This must have been Lieutenant Sharp. What was a lieutenant doing in private security? Did the man have no ambition? Someone of his rank should have been in a far more prestigious position.

“Sir, you said to call you if the Constabulary came back.” The kid’s insistence on crying to a superior earned him a punch in the ribs from Hoult. A bit harsh, David thought, but he couldn’t reprimand Hoult here. That would be to show weakness, and to throw away any chance of getting answers out of Oliver Wrack.

Lieutenant Sharp drew his own rifle. Unlike the kid, he didn’t seem to have any fear of the weapon. He aimed it directly at Hoult’s head, and Hoult baulked. “You attack my men again and I’ll blow your head off,” Sharp roared, “and consequences be damned.”

“Easy, Lieutenant.” This wasn’t supposed to be a big deal. David would have a hard time explaining to General Bradshaw that he’d caused a civil war to erupt in the grounds of a reeve’s house. “I just need to ask Master Wrack some questions.”

Sharp turned his attention to David. “I know you,” he said. “Captain Clifford. Master Wrack said you’d been promoted. He had no love for the old Lord Constable, but forgive me if I don’t think you’re any better. Coming here in the dead of night, stealing Mam Argent away. And then denying him the right to even see her in her cell. I can’t promise Master Wrack will want to speak to you.

“But I want to speak to him,” said David. “And I am Lord Constable, so he’d do well to receive me.”

Lieutenant Sharp sighed. “Then we can try. Not your men, though. They’ll have to wait outside the gates, I’m afraid, or the Lady will kick up a fuss.”

David frowned. “Does Lady Wrack have that much say?”

“She wants the Constabulary dead,” said Lieutenant Sharp. “So best not mention where you’re coming from.”

The house, nestled as it was in the folds of a gentle foothill, bore thrice the luxury of the tenements around it. Large trees with reaching canopies grew either side of it, stretching across to touch one another and roof the front grass, and above them rose the house like a gabled pagoda. It had four stories, each a touch narrower than the one beneath it, crested by a bell roof of storm-grey slate with a frame of brown timber.

A little blonde scrap was cleaning the hallway as they entered. She took one look at David, then became fixated on the patch of wall she’d already surely scrubbed to cleanliness. Sharp indicated a door across the hall. “Let me fetch Master Wrack. He’ll talk to you in there.” Sharp made his way up the stairs, leaving David alone with the blonde girl.

“This isn’t a trap for me, is it, girl?”

She shook her head and blushed furiously.

Shrugging, wondering where his judgement had gone, he walked through the door Sharp had indicated. The room beyond was empty altogether save for a handful of bulky death masks on the walls. Of all the odd things to collect...

For five minutes, there was no sound. This room had no hearth, and on a frosty day like this it was cold enough that David could see his breath. It was enough for him to start to wonder if Oliver Wrack was going to be joining him. Lieutenant Sharp must have known which parts of the house were warm and which were cold, and it wasn’t as if Wrack was immune to temperature. He’d be just as uncomfortable as David was.

But just as David was about to make his exit, the door opened.

“Lord Constable,” he said, with a broad smile. “How can I be of assistance? Has the Governor got another errand for me to run?”

David shook his head. “Official business, I’m afraid. I’m looking into the death of Lord Constable Mannam. Your name’s come up a few times in my inquiries—nothing to be worried about, I’m sure, but I do just need to clear up a few details. You understand, of course.”

Oliver Wrack had started his Unity career as an administrative clerk, before he’d been headhunted by Chris for a place in the Essegena colony. If anybody would appreciate the need to properly cross every ‘t’ it was him. He nodded. “I’m happy to help you out.”

“Excellent.” David smiled. “Now, I’m not going to waste your time or mine with questions we both know the answer to. You knew Lord Constable Mannam. You met him on at least one occasion. So I’ll cut to the chase: you were seen atop the cliffs on the night of Lord Constable Mannam’s fall. That’s corroborated by two witnesses.”

Oliver nodded. “I went to see the Lord Constable on the night of his death, that’s correct.”

“Why? It was the dead of night, a rainy day. Why would you feel the need to hike all the way up to the lake?”

“I had a message from the Governor. He sought me out and asked me to find Lord Constable Mannam as soon as I could. It just so happened that Mannam was up by the lake.”

“What message?” asked David. Oliver Wrack was Chris’ messenger boy of choice, that was true, but David was normally kept in the loop about messages. They all were. If Oliver Wrack had somehow become a closer friend to Chris than David was... he clenched his fists, forced himself to think of happier things. The Borrowood group were all he had. Chris was the only one he was close to. He would not accept that an outsider had replaced him.

Oliver Wrack shook his head, scratching his chin. “It was for Mannam’s ears only,” he said. “That was the Governor’s instruction.”

“We both know the Governor well,” said David. “Whatever the message was, I can hear it.”

Oliver shook his head again.

That made David cross. “Look,” he snarled, “you were the last person to see Lord Constable Mannam alive. And don’t act like you were sad to see the back of him, your Lieutenant Sharp’s disavowed me of that. Your wife wants to see the Constabulary dead, by your own Lieutenant’s testimony.”

“Yes, because you took away her cook,” David protested. “That was your decision. Mannam was already dead, it’s you she wants to kill.”

David seethed. “I could arrest you now, Wrack, and I will unless you justify the fact that you were speaking to Lord Constable Mannam just before he died.”

“I’ve told you,” said Oliver, firmly. “I was delivering a message from the Governor.”

“What message?”

“That was for Lord Constable Mannam to hear,” said Oliver. “Not you.”

His obstinacy was proving a difficult obstacle. David would be hard-pushed to arrest him, without backup. He could probably outmuscle Oliver, but the moment they left this room, he’d draw the attention of all of Wrack’s private security. There’s no way he could get the better of all of them. Oliver knew it too. There was a smug grin creeping onto his face.

And then an idea.

“What were the Governor’s instructions?” said David

“I’ve told you—” Oliver began, but David cut him off.

“Not the message. The instructions relating to the message. What did the Governor tell you? Exactly?”

Oliver paused for a second. “He told me to pass the message to the Lord Constable.”

David nodded, smiling. “I’m the Lord Constable,” he said. “So tell me what the message was.”

Oliver swallowed. Reluctantly, he spoke. “He wanted Mannam to search for a bottle. Apparently somebody had thrown one into the woods there, a glass bottle.”

“A glass bottle?” Chris had put Mannam on the case to look for the bottle David had lost? How had Chris even found out that David had thrown it?

Oliver nodded. “It’s important, apparently. It had the antidote in it.”

“Antidote?”

“For his wife.”