Chương 1: The Body Under the Arcade

The boy from the Silk Guild arrived before I had managed my first cup of tea, out of breath and jumbling his words.

"Hold up there," Corso said. He was the day porter, and we had arrived at the same time.

"What do you want? Speak clearly, boy."

"Ser," the boy breathed with quick and shallow breaths. I could hear the rasping which meant he should have been in bed, not running messages through the cold morning air.

"Sorry, Ser, but they want him moved before the factor's barge docks." His words were quick and staccato, and it took me a moment to decipher them. The boy could not have been more than twelve, and the guild's blue-and-gold knot sat pinned crooked to his cap. I am not fond of work that arrives before my morning tea, and some mischievous part of me kept him waiting for my answer. Soon his eyes travelled around the room, avoiding me, and finally settled on the brazier I was standing next to.

I kept my silence, waiting for the boy to speak.

"They say… They say to get him before third bell." A cascade of words again, before he added, more slowly and more quietly: "He says — he says it more firmly than that." This time, his eyes met mine, briefly.

"I expect they do. Come here, boy." I made room for him to warm his hands next to mine.

"Close to the brazier, catch your breath and warm yourself." His entrance had brought a chill into the entrance hall. It was the first true cold of the year, but it had arrived later than normal. For the past few weeks I had been enjoying the last days of autumn warmth. But now winter had announced its impending arrival with night chills and river fogs. As I did every year when the cold season arrived, it became my habit, in between tasks, to stand by this brazier and warm my hands. Cold fingers miss things.

Twenty-two years at the Misericordia and eighteen of those as its chief quaesitor had taught me that much.

"Tell me about him," I asked. It was many years since I had stopped rushing just because someone had florins or an inflated belief in their own importance.

"The factor?" The boy looked up, confused, his hands closer to the coals than mine were.

"No. The dead one."

"Oh." His eyes fell back to the coals. A shiver started in his hands and worked its way through him before he answered.

"Old. Cold. Poor." Old. Cold. Poor. Add a few decades to my own tally and the words might serve for me. Not yet. I sighed and gave the boy a nod.

"All right, boy. Tell them we'll come directly." The boy froze for a moment, his eyes looking up at me, for longer this time. Then he fled, relieved, as people fled the Misericordia if they were allowed to leave it; and I turned my hands over the brazier one more time, and went to find Corso. It was only later that day I recognised the pause for what it was; I had given him a request, and he had given me an opportunity to pay him for his services.

"Third one this month," Corso said, as we carried the bier towards the arcade. We could have sent for a cart, but the arcade was nearby and Corso was the porter, broad as a door and cheerful about it. Right now that cheer grated on my mood, and the grating brought me lower still.

"Under the arcade, again. You'd think they'd put a bench out and let a man die sitting down. That would at least be more civilised."

"They had a bench. They removed it when people kept sitting on it."

"Ah." The Silk Guild's arcade ran along the eastern side of the Merchants' Square, pale columns and freshly swept stone, a banner with the Silk Guild's design hanging blue and smug in the morning light. The piazza wore all the hallmarks of the nobility that claimed this area of the city: rust-red terracotta rooftiles, shutters thrown back on tall ochre facades, a fountain working away at the centre. It was flashy and spoke of florins much more expressively than the quiet streets of the palace hills.

Carts of produce and dyed cloth shouldered past one another beneath the carved guild crests, and somewhere a money-changer's scales could be heard counting coins. Across the square, porters carried a barred expedition chest into one of the lesser auction rooms. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The body lay beneath the third column, folded in on itself: knees drawn, one arm folded under the head, the coat pulled up as far as it would go, with glassy eyes staring back at me. His beard was grey. My eyes lingered a moment. The beard had been trimmed evenly beneath the jaw, and recently. Someone had paid a barber to tend this man before he died. Two guild functionaries stood watching at a distance. Something about their posture told me they considered the task beneath them. Something unpleasant to endure.

The elder of the two had the blue knot and a fur collar and an expression of long-suffering patience, as if the corpse were a personal inconvenience arranged by enemies of his House.

"You're the Misericordia," he said. Not a question, and not really inviting introductions with names. A statement that served to put us in our place, to give us our instructions and to impart urgent impatience. An efficient man, this functionary.

"Quaesitor Marek Vale. This is Corso." Our names, whether you wanted them or not.

"Well. There he is," the younger one said, unnecessarily gesturing at the body.

"The factor's visitor will dock within the hour. I don't need to tell you—""No, you do not." I could have drawn both this exchange of words and our work here out, I knew, and on most days perhaps I would. Tell me to hurry, and I will slow down. Tell me to slow down, and I will hurry. But today I wanted to be out of there. Some days, my mood finds a floor, and then creeps along that floor until it finds and fills all the nooks and crannies. Today every sight and every comment dug me deeper.

The younger one was staring at the paving stones near the body with genuine distress.

"Is he — did he leak on the—" I knelt down, touched the back of his hand. Then I rolled him gently over to see underneath.

"No," I said, letting him fall back to his original position.

"No scrubbing needed." The brazier's warmth leaked out of my palms into the corpse while my hands looked him over. No obvious wounds, and well caught in the rigor of death. He had been here for a while already.

"The stones are clean. You may tell the factor his arcade is unharmed, and that next time we would appreciate it if he arranges for the corpse to be transported directly to the Misericordia." He looked at me with a glimmer of surprise that I was making a demand, and I saw he was about to respond so I continued.

"It will be quicker, and this man has been here all night, it seems. Cluttering up the arcade." I do not think I managed to hide the sarcasm in my last statement, and the flatness of his response confirmed my suspicions.

"We'll want the report," the elder functionary said, already turning away.

"If there's anything on him, he died here. A full report, Misericordia, itemised. The guild doesn't want trouble over — whatever this is. But we want what is ours. I expect the report by dusk's bell tomorrow." I nodded, not trusting my mouth, and watched his departing back. My left hand came to rest gently on the old man's cold shoulder, and I stood there a moment.

Sinon was waiting at the receiving door with his ledger already open, which was strange. Normally he would have waited for us to carry the corpse to the inspection slab, then asked me to join him for the initial report in his office. That is where he kept the book, set the schedules, answered the guild's letters. This door is where the dead came in. Something was amiss here, and I caught the scent of politics, and I was glad Sinon was attending.

He had been in the job for thirteen years, and from where I stood he appeared to have a good grip on the many bureaucrats clamouring for our attention or to impose their will. His family connections did not hurt either. What sat badly with me was the ledger in his hands, where he had already begun the entry. I could see it clearly from where I stood, a line of writing in Sinon's hand. The lines above were all in my hand, with Sinon's signature on their right.

"Report," he said. On another day I might have added some observations, but my mind was on other things and I was cold, and I gave my report, summarised for brevity. Then I added, my eyes on the line in the book, "Cause of death not yet known."

"Male, elderly, found beneath the Silk Guild arcade," Sinon recited back, writing as he spoke.

"No name. No claim." Then he looked directly at me, his pen now still, as if he had already written this down.

"Cause of death—" a glance at the body, the way you glance at weather, then back at me in challenge, "exposure." Ah. There it is.

"I haven't examined him."

"Have you found a wound?" He looked up, mildly.

"Not yet. That is what the examination is for."

"Then exposure," Sinon stated.

"Process him fast, Vale. The guild's lodged a complaint about the courtesy of the square, if you can believe it, and the Nine don't want paperwork travelling uphill. The Silks have also made their point that he was found on their territory."

"Well, if they wanted to protect their square's sensitive courtesies," I said, "they could have organised for him to be sent here, instead of having me and Corso spend our morning collecting a corpse." He looked like he had not heard me, his eyes elsewhere. Eventually, he spoke.

"And if you find a wound, or other indications that this is something other than Varenza claiming another one with her winters, come to me directly, will you? Before you write it down? But regardless, the three days start now. We are backed up at least two weeks by now."

"Three days," I said, not finding it in me to argue this now. Corso had been listening, and added, "and his three days will be up just in time for black-day. And something tells me this one will be a black."

"Unless someone claims him," Sinon mused, and one corner of his mouth lifted, briefly. He closed the book, fastened the pen to its cover with a small leather strap, and left.