“Captain Lorencz!”
Someone on the other side of the hall shouted an obscenity. I groaned and answered the door with my quilt wrapped around me.
The Watch constable snapped a salute.
“Sergeant Connas said there’s a hopscotch killing at Dockside Fifth Orphanage and do you want to help her investigate?”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling a surge of excitement. “Go ahead; I’ll meet her there.”
The orphanage was an unpleasant old building covered in dark, peeling paint. Its exposed wood was weathered and worm-eaten, and the stone steps leading up to its front door had been worn slick with age. The dirty streaks on its walls ran uninterrupted from its sagging roof to its uneven foundation, suggesting that the building’s shutters hadn’t been opened in years.
I slid off my balesteed and let it dissipate back across the Line. The constables directed me to the second floor. On my way up, I caught glimpses of an empty classroom, a dark kitchen, and a gloomy refectory.
The second floor had been converted into one large dormitory. Bunks circled the walls and rickety tables and chairs stood in the center of the room. Two kids to a bed was all that was allowed by city regulation, but here, just as in Ankham, the crumpled blankets and clothes suggested that children were usually crammed into each bunk as tightly as possible.
I could have done without the flashbacks the place was giving me.
Connas was sitting at a small desk by the door, writing. She looked up as I approached.
“A ‘hopscotch murder’?” I asked.
“As soon as I saw it, I figured you’d want to know.” She rubbed her eyes and pointed.
“Thanks. Second beer I owe you.” I lit a cigar to exorcise the poorhouse stench and looked around, haunted by memories. Up before dawn, morning prayers, gruel, hard labor, lunch, more work, lessons, evening prayers, supper, and bed. I hadn’t liked any of it, so as soon as I could get my hands on some matches I set a bed on fire and got myself thrown out. Dying in the streets had sounded better to me than rotting in a poorhouse.
My fire hadn’t killed anyone. Not that time.
I carefully approached the corpse in the center of the room. Sure enough, chalk marks were visible through the blood.
“Saw a hopscotch board with a dead cat in it the other day,” I said. “Reminded me of the bird you mentioned.”
Connas nodded. “And now we’ve got a dead man and a dead woman, too. Miss Bodenhammer, girls’ night warden.”
I discerned the Line. No breach, but the scars of a crossing stood out clearly.
“Someone’s been adjuring again. Just like last time. Is there a sentinel on staff? Are any of the orphans manifesting?”
She stood and vanished down the stairs. I kept looking at the corpse. A youngish woman, hair tied back, what looked like it might have been a typically matronly orphanage uniform before it was slashed and covered in blood. Another disembowelment, maybe faster than Hanks’, given the way she was sprawled.
A child couldn’t have done it, not without some kind of monstrous strength.
Sergeant Connas trudged back up the stairs.
“No sentinel on staff, but the prefect seems certain nobody’s manifesting. I guess they’re taught how to look for that. There’s chalk downstairs in the classroom; anybody could have taken some.”
“Have you already questioned the staff and children?”
“Just the prefect and house wardens who were here when it happened. They came up when they heard the girls screaming. I thought you might want to talk to the girls with me.”
“Sure.” I pulled up two more chairs and set them across from each other. I sat in one, next to Connas’s desk. The small seat was hard and uncomfortable. Almost made me nostalgic. “Let’s get started.”
The sergeant glanced at the body.
“You wouldn’t rather use the classroom?”
“Nope.” My conscience gave a little squirm and I quashed it. The girls who hadn’t killed her must have watched her die. Let them look at the body while they answered my questions. One of ’em would crack; they were only kids, after all.
Which was exactly the point, my conscience tried to protest, but I gave it a final kick, ground out my cigar, and lit a new one. Connas left to give orders to the constables and returned with the first of the poorhouse girls. The child wore an ugly public-issue nightgown and a thin knit shawl. I remembered hating both.
“Have a seat,” I said, pointing to the empty chair.
Twenty bunks, fifty-seven girls. I questioned each one, chainsmoking through the interviews, playing good-cop/bad-cop with yours truly on the bad-cop side. We let some of the girls go after a minute or two and grilled others ten minutes or more. We got plenty of sullen silences and a fair amount of lip. And eventually we got an idea of what had happened that evening and the name of the girl who’d done the summoning. We’d already talked to her once, but now we called her back again.
Arcelia was dark-haired and dark-skinned; small, slight, and nervous. The kind of kid who seemed to have been born a victim; who never gets a break from day one. Not from adults and not from other kids, either.
“So, why’d you kill her?” Connas asked without preamble. Arcelia stiffened and shook her head.
“I didn’t kill her!”
“You sent the killer after her. Right?” I asked, scowling. I couldn’t discern any sign of adjuration on her, even though she was old enough to manifest.
“Arcelia, was the dormitory warden hurting you in any way?” Connas asked. “Did you kill her in self-defense?”
The girl hunkered down, pulling her feet up on the chair and hugging her knees. Connas and I swapped glances. We didn’t usually have to question kids, and it looked like neither of us was very good at it.
“Arcelia? C’mon, help us out here,” I pleaded. “What did the warden do to you? We can help.”
The story came out, slowly and in pieces. Beaten by parents, thrown out to fend for herself, picked up by the constables, sent to the workhouse, picked on by the older, harder girls. Miss Bodenhammer had made Arcelia her pet victim, if we were to believe her story, humiliating her day after day until finally the girl had snapped.
“So, I drew the board,” she said, with a strange, vulnerable dignity.
“The hopscotch board,” Connas said. Arcelia nodded. “And then what?”
“And then I called Far.”
“Far….” I leaned forward. “Who’s Far?”
“He protects us. If you call him and tell him who to kill, he does.”
Connas opened her mouth but I gestured for silence. She sat back to listen.
“You call him with the hopscotch board.”
She nodded. “You gotta jump through to the end. Then you whistle until he shows up.”
“He just appears?”
“Uh-huh. And you have to thank him after.”
Shit. Shit, shit shit.
“Will Far kill anybody, if you ask?”
“No, only someone who hurts you. If you ask wrong, he’ll take you to hell.”
I ran a hand over my face, trying to make sense of it. Sentinels are called “whistleups” sometimes, but that’s just slang, like “beck.” To literally whistle up a killer … was it a transient or a sentinel? And how did it work?
“What does he look like?” I asked, at a loss. “Far?”
She hesitated, her expression changing as she remembered. Fear, maybe. Or awe.
“He’s one of us,” she said, softly. “And he has a really big knife.”
So, a sentinel; it had to be. Transients didn’t use tools, and nobody would call a transient “one of us.”
“When you whistle for him and he appears, does he show up at the door?” I pointed to the door of the room.
She scoffed. “No, of course not! It gets really light and he appears.”
Impossible. Absolutely impossible.
“What’s with the dead animals?” Connas asked. Arcelia frowned, looking like she didn’t quite understand. “Birds and cats on the boards?”
“Oh! Those are gifts. You gotta say thank you or he won’t come next time you call.”
“Hell.” I leaned back and stared at the girl. Connas stayed silent, but I saw the curiosity in her eyes. I wished I knew exactly what to tell her. “Arcelia, can anyone call Far? Could I call him?”
“Far only helps children,” she said, her voice flat. I discerned her again, hoping to catch a glimmer of manifestation, but there was nothing. My stomach churned.
If she was telling the truth, “Far” was responding to a call from someone who wasn’t a sentinel. And only one other being responded to the calls of non-sentinels: Yzyrchye, the Sovereign of Hell. Tegeus Droit’s former employer.
I lit another cigar, thinking hard and fast. They said Yzyrchye could change shape, but never that it pretended to be human. I needed more information.
“You must be pretty powerful to call someone that strong,” I said, looking at Arcelia again. “I’ll bet the rest of the girls were impressed.”
“They were scared.” She straightened up a little. “They started screaming really loud. I told them to shut up or else.”
I fought to keep my voice conversational.
“Was Miss Bodenhammer in the room? Was she scared, too?”
“Yeah, especially when I pointed at her and said to kill her.”
“How did Far kill her?”
“He stabbed her with his knife and dropped her on the board.”
We all turned and looked at the body again, sprawled over the chalk marks.
“He’s really strong and fast,” Arcelia continued with satisfaction. Then she grew serious. “Who told on me? I warned them not to tell.”
Nine years old, I thought, and she was already learning how important it was to tie up loose ends.
“What happened next?” I asked. “What did Far do?”
“I said thank you and he made another light and went away.”
“And he’s a kid like you?”
“No, he’s an adult.”
“But you said he’s ‘one of us’?”
She pointed to her arm. “He had a poorhouse badge right here on his coat, like we have to wear whenever we go out.”
“Uh … and when do you make a thank-you sacrifice?” I asked, at a loss.
“I don’t know.” Lines drew across her smooth brow as she considered it. “Maybe tomorrow?”
“I’m … really impressed, Arcelia.” That was one word for it, anyway. She nodded, accepting my admiration. “How do you know all this?”
She shrugged.
“Did you make it up yourself?”
“No….” she admitted. “Another girl taught me. She was nice, but she’s not here anymore.”
“I’d love to learn how to call Far. I’ve got lots of people need killing.” I tried on a friendly smile. “Could you tell me who taught you?”
She gave me a long, mistrustful look.
“Far doesn’t come for adults.”
“I could try, couldn’t I?”
A flicker of expression, quickly hidden behind another shrug. She turned her face away, done with us. Nine years old. She’d be dangerous when she got older.
I blew out a breath and called for the constable to take her back out. “Don’t let any of the children leave tonight,” I said. The constable looked at me like I was stating the obvious, which I guess I was, but I didn’t want that girl disappearing.
When we were alone again, Connas and I looked at each other a long moment.
“What’s going on?” she asked at last. “Is she manifesting?”
“I don’t think so.” I glumly tapped ash on the floor and told her what I thought, about transients and sentinels and Yzyrchye. Then we both sat quietly for a long time. I don’t know about her, but I was remembering my own childhood and thinking about how many people I’d have handed to Far if I’d had the option as a little girl.
“I think we need to talk to the prefect again,” I said at last.
The prefect came in, and I asked questions and got answers. Arcelia was mostly a loner, but she seemed to have made one close friend about a month ago, a girl named Milka Nevenek who’d been in and out of the poorhouse several times over the years, usually during the worst stretches of winter. The prefect hadn’t noticed any signs of sorcerous talent in her, but that didn’t mean anything. What was more interesting, to me, was that when Milka was around, she was the boss. The other girls vied for her attention and showered her with small favors and gifts, and last month, at least, Arcelia had been her favorite lackey.
I got a description and then dismissed the prefect.
“You think Milka was teaching kids how to call him?” Connas asked.
“Yeah.” I made a face. “I’ve gotta talk to my higher-ups at the Vigilance about this. He’s gotta be a sentinel who crossed the Line and went barking mad.”
“So what do we do now?” Connas covered a yawn and looked at me. “What am I supposed to write in my report?”
“Just the facts. No speculation.”
“I don’t get paid enough for a jurisdictional struggle with the Vigilance.”
“Don’t worry, that’s why I’m here. Go home. I’ll deal with the rest.”
“Thanks, Captain.”
The girl had confessed to murder, so I dropped her off at Bright Street, where she’d stay in a holding cell until they decided what to do with her. I was glad it wasn’t my call.