Chương 22: Interlude: Collection

The dead woman had drowned in the Canale delle Monache, a small stream of water behind the Dyers' District with a name much more fanciful than was deserved. Sister Amalia set a folded cloth beneath her chin, took up her smallest knife and carefully began to scrape off the whisker of a moustache. When Sinon had asked her to prepare the woman, Amalia had been surprised.

The woman had arrived bundled on a cart, and after she had been washed and put in the coemeterium, Amalia had been expecting Nello to tie the black band around her ankle, place her to one side and wait for Sunday. But somehow her family had found the florins needed and paid the Chapel of San Sepolcro Vecchio for a proper funeral, and now she was wearing red and Amalia was preparing her for an open coffin.

The Sister found it comforting to, for once, spend her time on somebody much more like herself than the members of the rich families who normally paid to have their dead look good. She liked to work on somebody who had done honest work and lived a life down on the streets of Varenza, not up in the palaces on the hills.

Down where beggars and shoemakers and tailors and bowyers plied their trade together, their children running barefoot between houses in streets that would fill every evening with small benches and chairs pulled out from their houses. On these benches, the women and men of the street would gather. They would sit and gossip, and share the stories of their lives. Of their work and of their families. Marriages might be arranged, or interventions organised for a young man about to fall for someone entirely unsuitable.

Their talking would go on long into the night, forming the real soul of the ancient and decadent city of Varenza. After finishing with the moustache, Sister Amalia continued with the more gruesome part of today's job. Firming the cloth in place under the woman's chin, she reached into the mouth and worked her hooked needle first through the top of the mouth; then she pushed the tongue aside and hooked the bottom.

When the thread had looped up and down a couple of times she began to pull on the thread, forcing the mouth and jaw to shut. She didn't know exactly what had happened to the woman, and she wished Marek was here to help her find out. But somebody had been violent to her. So violent that the mouth had split from mouth to ear, her jaw hanging loose. And then she had been thrown into the stream, with no way of closing her mouth against the slow trickle. After affixing the jaw, Amalia opened her jar of skin cream.

It was her own mixture of some pig fat, some beeswax and a carefully calibrated dye to cover up wounds and blemishes. She had five jars for different skin tones. She chose the lightest one for this woman. She softly applied the paste along the line of the wound, and as if by magic she hid the horrendous sight from the world. She was good at her work, and soon she could not herself see where the wound had been. When she was done, the woman looked like she was only smiling.

Amalia had been assigned to the Misericordia from the Office of Recorded Mercies, commonly called the Almonry, for nearly nineteen years. Prior to that she had been assigned to The Custody, the branch of the Priory of the Seven Mercies which ran Varenza's hospitals for the poor. Now she was wondering if the time had finally come to ask the Mother Superior for another reassignment. Somewhere away from sickness and death.

Or perhaps she needed to do what she had avoided for years and throw herself into the politics and intrigue of the priory. Amalia had lost most of her trust in the Mother Superior long ago, and in these recent weeks something in the priory had shifted in a way that frightened Sister Amalia, and in only a few miserable days much of the good work of the Almonry had begun to unravel. But those were thoughts for another day, and she breathed in and cleared her mind.

She still liked these quiet moments, when it was just her and the dead one, but her other great joy had been working alongside Marek as his curiosity drew them into the mysteries of the dead. He had always been attentive to her suggestions, never been arrogant or used his superior position to override or bully her. And she had simply loved to solve mysteries together with him. And now he was gone. She stood up and walked around the dead woman, inspecting her work. She always did that.

Pull back and look from different angles and distances. Imagine herself as if she was one of the mourners surrounding the coffin, looking down at the face of somebody that they had… If perhaps they had not all loved her, then she had meant something to them. A last thread of meaning would attach to the dead during those moments, and she wanted the dead one to face those moments with dignity. The bell outside in the piazza rang eight times, and she sat on the bench under the window to wait.

It had only been two days now since the commotion that had seen Marek and Corso sent on their way. Only two days, yet everything had changed. Nello had now been promoted from nightwatchman to porter, but he was altogether too weak to do that job, and now every dead body was accompanied by strangers who carried them through the hallways of the Misericordia. She could hardly walk from her rooms to the coemeterium without meeting someone new, holding someone old. At least it was late now, and quiet.

She had mentally counted them off as they left, Nello last, and she knew that it was only Sinon left. She could leave now but did not want to see him. Her anger and disappointment at him were still simmering and their argument yesterday had gone too far. Now she waited. Once he left his office, locking his door with his new key, she would leave. Regardless, she liked having those minutes to herself, to be the last one out the door. Returning to the priory in the evening was like being thrown into a gaggle of geese.

When they had picked her from the orphanage to join the Almonry, she had been expecting a life of studies and quiet contemplation. Instead, what she arrived at was remarkably like the girls' dormitories at Mercy Halls. Nobody could gossip like nuns. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. Her thoughts were interrupted by heavy knocking from the front hall.

Sitting very still, she heard the door to Sinon's office open a moment later, and then his footsteps traced the way through the facerium, the entrance hall, and to the main entrance. This was followed by muted voices before footsteps retraced the way back to Sinon's office. Only now there were two sets of steps. Very quietly, Sister Amalia approached the opening in the door and looked out. Sinon was walking in front, and behind him was another man whom she had never seen before.

He was middle-aged, or perhaps even old, his hair all gone except for small growths of hair down his cheeks that met in a strange little beard. Shorter than Sinon, the man still walked with a sense of power that was almost visceral. And he was wearing something very strange. Red trousers with a black half-coat, both trimmed with gold filigree. Almost like a uniform, but one she had never seen before. And around his neck a heavy medallion.

She just managed to see the six-pointed star before the two men turned and disappeared down the hallway. Then she heard nothing for a heartbeat before voices made their way from Sinon's office. She remained by the door, very still, wondering why Sinon had not closed the door to his office like he always did.

"Here," she heard Sinon say. Then there were some scuffling noises.

"And it has remained here since the boy brought it?" the stranger asked. She heard a pause, then Sinon said something she could not hear.

"What? Out with it, Ser Marchi," the stranger said.

"It has been here, right here on or in this desk, except… Except for one night."

"What does that mean?" Sinon's voice grew quieter then, but she heard the word quaesitor somewhere in his response. Then she heard nothing, but she could feel a tension radiating through the Misericordia. The stranger said something, and his voice was so low no words could be heard, but its threat carried through the stone walls. Eventually Sinon continued.

"It is no big matter, Messir. It was only a night. I think they were curious, and they brought it straight back before dawn. Still they were both dismissed. You know that, it is what you ordered. I just… I just moved it up. Their actions gave me cause." The stranger's words were wound in tight knots.

"There was a timeline to that. We were not ready, and now we have to scramble. And the mask—" His voice was now both clipped and raised, and Amalia imagined Sinon taking a step back at its force.

"You were given clear instructions, and now—" The stranger stopped, and it was quiet again. When he next spoke, his voice rumbled with even more menace, this time mixing with… Amalia thought she detected apprehension. Fear for what the answer to the question might be.

"The man brought in from the arcade on the same day. I heard something… Something that concerns me."

"Messir," Sinon said, "we concluded with exposure, like you instructed. Black-tagged, and his body went into the pits on Sunday." A beat then, and Amalia heard a drawer open and close.

"Yes," Sinon said, "here it is. See here, exposure."

"I have seen the report already, Marchi. It was on my desk a bell after the Misericordia finally sent it. My question is why that took three days."

"Messir! That is what we do here. There is no way to hide a body from inspection, and you were clear that I could not include the quaesitor in your confidence. If I had tried to deny him, he would only have looked harder."

"I do not care, Marchi. That was your job, and you failed. Now we have… On record, Vale managed to make up some grand mystery. Extracted teeth. As if that is strange with a beggar. And tell me, second page, halfway down." A pause.

"Right there. What happened here?" Another small pause, then the stranger read and quoted words she had looked at herself two days ago." Unidentified male, intake of the fifth of Novembre. Foreign object detected beneath old scar tissue, lower left forearm, metallic, seated." A pause.

"What about it?" Sinon asked.

"Here is your signature with the same date. Why would you sign off on a report with that line added? A report that describes a level of scrutiny and investigation that I know to be far beyond what is normal. For a corpse that should have been tipped into the pits with no second look. That was your third clear instruction: that no official record make mention of the arm."

"It…" Another pause. And Sister Amalia knew what Sinon was thinking. She had been paying attention to how that report evolved over the three days it was active. She knew Marek had added that line after Sinon had signed it as completed. Sinon knew the same, and could share what he knew, pointing the stranger at Marek. Now she was curious which side Sinon would choose.

"Apologies, Messir," Sinon said eventually.

"That was an oversight. It was late; I was tired. And there was no way to erase the words without writing the whole page up again, and then Vale would ask. No record was made that anything was ever found, and from what I hear the arm was expertly stitched up, so I honestly did not think it important." A warmth flooded through Amalia, and she smiled.

"And now, the body is gone?" the stranger asked.

"Yes, as I said. Into the pits on Sunday."

"Before that, this Marek Vale investigated the scar on the man's forearm." It was a statement, not a question.

"He was always… Always curious. He would have. I think he felt that he had to."

"And his next action was to steal the mask, only to return it the same night."

"Well. Yes." Whatever Marek had found, the stranger was afraid of it. She needed to find Marek before he did.