Chương 6: Before Dusk

I was wandering the coemeterium, checking off the outgoing corpses, when Corso walked in, a bundle of cloth strips in his hand.

"Evenin' Ser," he said, grinning at me.

"Checking that you are not sending any live ones into the pit are you?"

"You never cease to amuse, Corso," I answered him drily. I watched him walk to a bench where three men were laid down, each with a sheet of paper affixed to their rough tunics. Corso was humming as he stooped over the first one.

"Isn't it ironic," he said, and pulled an ochre strip from the bundle in his hand and began tying it around the first man's ankle.

"They come in here all silk and jewels, or in dirty rags. Then we wash them and dress them in simple tunics, and all that separates them is the colour of their ankle cloth." I had thought of this myself, many times before. It was one of the things I liked the most about the Misericordia. Those days between our clients' entrance into our halls, and when they emerged at the other end. It equalised them all. For three days, they were ours, and they relinquished expensive clothes or a life of poverty.

"Until Amalia paints him to look presentable," I said. Corso looked down at the man with the ochre cloth.

"I don't think any amount of paint will fix that one." I snorted a laugh.

"Indeed, Corso. But at least he will get his nobleman's clothes back before he leaves us. On… Tuesday, is it?" Corso looked down and confirmed.

"Correct, Vale. Tuesday. He is going to stink up this place before then. Hah. The clean smelling beggars, and the stinky elite!" This also, I had considered. The corpses that we sent straight to the common pits had not yet begun their descent into decomposition, whereas the noble families had to send out invitations and engage halls, wringing everything they could from the occasion, leaving their dead bloated and crumbling while they arranged festivities to celebrate their sending off.

I watched Corso finish off the last two strips, both black, before asking him what was really on my mind.

"Corso. A question of law."

"God help us, when I am to become your solicitor. Go on, then. I charge by the minute, you should know."

"I am sure you do." I thought again, before taking the leap.

"A man dies with something hidden on him. Not in his coat. In him. Sewn under the skin, say. Whose is it?"

"The guild's, if he died on guild ground. You know that better than me, why do you ask?"

"That is what I keep being told."

"Well, there you are." He reached down for a strip that was coming loose, and tightened it.

"No. Wait. Sewn into him, you said. Under the skin?"

"Hypothetically."

"Mm. Then it is not his coat and not in his coat, Examiner. It is in the man. That is not property, that is part of the man himself, same as his teeth, same as that hip bone of old Fera's that the barber set with a copper pin. As far as I know, under the ius testamenti, you cannot inherit your uncle's teeth. Yet."

"Nobody claimed Fera's pin."

"Nobody could get at it without butchery, so it went into the ground with her." He tied the knot, bowed with a flourish and then held out his hand.

"That is my ruling. Two coppers, please."

"I will need you to do this job on contingency, Advocate Corso," I answered with a smile.

"How about, a tenth on success in the courts?"

"Agreed," he grinned back, and as he moved down the bench, checking the knots at their ankles, he told me about a mule that had kicked a rent-collector off the fish wharf that morning, and how the wharf had applauded. But by then I was not paying close attention, as my focus was mostly on Fera's pin. He was right, and he did not know how right he was. We had written that, documented it. And nobody had challenged our conclusions, which could in theory make it some kind of precedent.

Sinon Marchi came to my office the next morning, with the window open behind him so the light came over his shoulder onto my face. He began with the carter as I had expected.

"You corrected a watch finding yesterday," he said.

"Yes," I said.

"They were wrong."

"I… Yes, all right, Marek. Apoplexy. I have no reason to not believe you, only now we have word against word." He sat down uninvited.

"My word, after a thorough and careful examination and based on two decades of experience or thereabouts. Against the word of a watchman still pulling at the bristles on his chin to grow a beard." Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"I do not say you were wrong. Your findings hold. I spoke with Sister Amalia, and—""You did what?" I asked.

"I had to, Marek. My name ends up at the bottom of everything, and this one will be trouble. If it's any relief to you, the Sister strongly suggested I come straight to you the next time."

"I am your quaesitor, Messir," I reminded him, working to keep my temper down.

"You are, Marek," he answered me softly.

"Apoplexy it is." I looked at him, not responding, and met his eye. After a moment, he looked down, and his eyes travelled to find something new. That is when he saw the beggar's ledger, open on the desk, and his manner cooled.

"That one. The Silk Guild have named their hour. Dusk on black-day, tomorrow. They want the arcade quiet and they want his effects, and their factor has already sent word twice. My instruction to you is that the ledger closes before dusk. Today. Not at dusk. Before."

"It will be closed."

"Closed with exposure on it, as written." I did not answer that at once, and he watched me not answer it.

"You examined him," Sinon said.

"Did you find anything else on him? Wounds, or indications of foul play? Anything the guild should know of?"

"There is the matter of his teeth. Four of them, out of the lower jaw, all at once, cleanly taken only days before he died. I would like to know what a watch clerk makes of that." Sinon looked at me, his expression one of disappointment. But I could not tell if that disappointment was directed at me, or at himself.

"Teeth," he said.

"Old men lose teeth."

"Old men lose them one at a time, and then the bone closes over, the wounds scab and heal. This was done in a single sitting, by someone with an instrument and almost enough skill to use it, and recently."

"Then it was done before he died, and it did not kill him, and it is not mortuary business." He looked at me, expectantly. Something imploring in his eyes. He was my superior, but he had always respected my independent authority and mandate. Some days he pushed, some days he argued, but I knew that in the end, he would defer to my conclusion. Reluctantly, I acceded.

"Ser. Yes. Truth be told, I don't exactly know what killed him. I would like to keep looking." He was already shaking his head before I finished the sentence, but then he said simply.

"Do your job, Marek." And left it to me, to interpret that. Then he stood. At the door he stopped, and delivered his line again.

"If you find anything on that body, anything at all, you come to me before you write it down. You come to me directly. Is that plain?"

"Ser."

"Then we understand each other." We did not. I think.

Before leaving work, I again headed towards the coemeterium, and the old beggar. I told myself as I walked through the corridors that this was my mystery, and it was not fair to impose on Amalia and Corso during their working hours. This was my time, and I chose to spend it here, in the dark. On my way there, I noticed light flickering and approached. I had thought only Sinon Marchi was still here, finishing his books, but had forgotten about the new nightman.

Nello Barzi was there, sitting on a chair and day-dreaming. I stomped harder down as I approached him, to warn him of my presence, but still he nearly jumped out of his chair.

"Examiner! Erh, quaesitor I mean. Ser. You are here late! You are never here at night." Nello had joined us some months past, the nephew or somesuch of his predecessor.

"Bank the second brazier, it is eating coal," I said and gestured behind him. He turned, and dutifully he did as asked. A silence spread out, and I broke it.

"How are you finding your job here, Master Barzi?"

"It is very good, Ser," he answered, smiling up at me before looking down.

"It can get dull though. And very, very quiet."

"What do you do all night?" I asked. He pondered the question, for longer than what his eventual answer warranted.

"I sit here, mostly." He pondered some more.

"Sometimes, I hear sounds. Then I go and look, but it is never anything. I think there are rats?" The last was a question, and I gave him a nod.

"Almost certainly, and now that you mention it, I would appreciate it if you could walk rounds down into the coemeterium. Every morning we find bites taken out of the bodies there." From the look on his face, he was not enthused to visit the dead in the coemeterium, in the quiet darkness. And I added.

"It would be very helpful, Master Barzi." His narrow shoulders squared, and he gave me a nod.

"Absolutely, Ser. Yes, quaesitor, I will do that. Should I go now?"

"No," I hastened to answer.

"That is not needed. I am headed that way myself now, but if you can listen for when I leave, and then visit an hour or two after?" He nodded, and I was about to head off when I thought to ask. He had no legal training whatsoever, which turned out to matter.

"Master Barzi. A question."

"Yes?" He looked apprehensive, so I quickly continued.

"It is a strange question. Consider: A dead man has a thing hidden in him, under the skin of his arm, sewn in years ago. He has carried it all these years, on the inside. His effects go to the guild at dusk tomorrow, every button of them. Is the thing in his arm an effect? What do you say?" Nello frowned over it, his whole face working.

"No," he said, at once, with no difficulty at all.

"Why no?"

"Because it is in his arm, quaesitor. Inside it. We don't cut people open and hand out their insides when they die." Then he frowned, because something in it had caught up with him.

"Do we?"

"No, Master Barzi," I said, amused.

"We don't."

"So, what is it then?"

"I do not know. I think it is metal, and round, and he placed it there. Or someone did."

"Placed." He said the word again.

"So somebody cut him open on purpose and sewed him up around it, and he walked about with it for years."

"So it appears."

"Well. You have to know what it is, then." He looked at me with a strange expression. This was, to him, the most obvious thing in the world.

"Ser, you need to investigate! Is that not what you do?"

I sent him back to his braziers and went down to the coemeterium alone. The beggar lay where I had left him, washed and dressed in a rough tunic, the black strip knotted at his ankle. Tomorrow at first light the man's remains would be tipped into the pit, together with whatever was in his arm, and at dusk the guild's men would carry off a filthy coat with foreign silk sewn inside it. I stood over him a long while.

I drew the sheet back from his arm and set my fingers on the ridge, and it shifted its fraction and stopped, as before. I drew the sheet up again over him, to the chin. That is when I decided. Nello was right, and I had to know, and after first light tomorrow there would be nothing left to ask. I knew Sinon would work for another two hours, which left me time for dinner. I banked the lamp as I exited the Misericordia, took my cloak from the peg, and locked the door behind me.

The street was quiet, and I walked home.