Chapter Ten — The Other Dark

The corridor of the holding-cell wing was lit by two lamps — one at the corner where the corridor turned, and one at the far end. The lamps had been turned low for the night. The corridor was cold. The smell of the holding-cells was the smell every Watch corridor had, and that Tessa had stopped noticing fourteen years ago.

Roe Carrick was in the third cell on the left.

He was awake. He was sitting on the wooden bench that ran along the cell’s back wall, with his coat over his shoulders and his hands folded in his lap. He had not been given anything to read. He looked up when Errin’s tread came down the corridor. He saw Errin and Tessa first. Then he saw Mariska behind them, with the small wooden box and the oiled-cloth bundle and the folded undyed linen against her chest. He stood.

He did not speak. He did not ask why a Driftborn voice-keeper had come to his cell at the third bell of the night-watch. He did not ask why the bundle. He did not ask why the linen. He looked at Mariska. Mariska looked at him.

“Roe Carrick,” Mariska said.

“Yes.”

“There is something wrong with you. We are going to try to remove it. The trying may not work. If it does not work it will go badly for you. If it does work it may also go badly for you. I am not going to tell you more than that. I am going to ask you whether you will allow it.”

Roe Carrick stood in the middle of the cell with his coat over his shoulders and his hands folded in front of him. He looked at Mariska. He looked at Tessa. He looked back at Mariska.

“How long has it been wrong with me.”

“A long time.”

“Yes,” he said.

He said it quietly. He said it the way a person says a thing they have known for years and have not had a name for and have now been given the name. He said it without surprise. No one in the cell moved.

“All right,” Roe Carrick said. “I will allow it.”

He sat back down on the bench.

——— ◇ ———

Mariska set the bundle and the box and the linen on the floor of the cell.

She unfolded the linen. She laid it out along the floor between Roe and the cell door, smoothing the corners. She opened the small wooden box. From it she took, in order, a stoppered glass vial, a small brass bell, a coil of thin grey cord, and a folded paper packet of something Tessa could not see clearly. She set them in a row along one edge of the linen.

She unwrapped the oiled-cloth bundle. Inside was a knife.

The knife was old. The blade was the length of Tessa’s hand and was made of a metal Tessa did not recognize. The handle was carved from a pale wood that had darkened at the grip with use. The blade was not bright. It was not dull. It was the colour of something that had been a colour without name or age. The blade did not catch the lamplight. Mariska set the knife at the centre of the linen.

She did not say what the knife was for. She did not say what the bell was for. She did not say what the cord was for or what was in the vial or what was in the packet. She set them out the way a Watch officer set out the contents of a case-folder before an interview, in the order in which they would be needed. Then she stood in the centre of the linen and faced Roe Carrick on the bench.

She began the recitation.

The cadence was the cadence she had used in the after-cabin. It was the long-rhythm Tessa had only ever heard at the Driftborn child-funeral on the harbour wall. The words were not in the long-cadence tongue. The words were in a tongue Tessa did not know — older, softer, with stops in places Tessa’s ear had no preparation for. The recitation went on. It was not rushed. It was not slow. It was the speed of a thing that had been done at this speed for centuries because no other speed was the speed it was done at.

Tessa stood at the cell door beside Errin and did not move. Errin’s hand was at his side. He was not gripping the bars. He was holding himself as he held himself when he was on a scene. He was here because Tessa had asked him to be here. He was bearing witness because witness was what she had asked of him.

Mariska reached for the brass bell. She rang it once. The sound was small and clear and stayed in the corridor for longer than the sound should have stayed.

She uncorked the glass vial. She poured a small thread of clear liquid onto the linen at her feet. The liquid did not pool. It went into the linen and was gone.

She took the knife.

She did not approach Roe with the knife. She held it loosely at her side and continued the recitation. The recitation was changing now. The cadence was the same. The stops were in the same places. But the words were being given a different weight — Tessa could not have said how. The cell air pressed thinly against her face.

The recitation reached a place Tessa heard, for the first time, that it had been moving toward. Mariska said three words in the long-cadence tongue Tessa knew the meaning of. Sever from this. She said them slowly. She said them to the air, not to Roe. She said them with her eyes on the knife in her hand.

Then she said them again.

Then she said them a third time.

——— ◇ ———

Roe Carrick made no sound.

His face did not contort. His body did not move. He sat on the bench with his hands folded in his lap and his coat over his shoulders, and his face did not change in any of the ways Tessa had been trained to look for. What changed was beneath the face. It was the way a person’s face changes when their posture changes underneath the face — a small unguardedness. Roe Carrick’s face had been carrying something. It was no longer carrying it.

He breathed once. He breathed again.

He opened his eyes.

He looked at Tessa.

“Where am I,” he said.

Mariska set the knife down on the linen. She crossed to the bench. She knelt beside Roe and put two fingers to his wrist. She held them there for some seconds. She put her hand against the side of his neck. She put her palm flat against his chest. She did this without hurry. Roe sat with her hand on his chest and looked at Tessa across the cell.

“He will live,” Mariska said quietly.

Tessa did not move. She had taken half a step forward without registering the step. She stopped. She stood at the cell door beside Errin with her hand at the bars and looked at the man on the bench, who was looking at her.

Mariska did not say it as a triumph. She said it the way she might have said a thing she did not understand and had not known to expect.

“I have read the records of two severances,” Mariska said. “Both hosts died. The host of the second severance lived for six hours. The host of the first did not wake. I do not know why this one is alive. I am not going to ask why.”

She stood. She picked up the knife. She wrapped it in the oiled cloth. She set the bell back in the box. She gathered the cord and the vial and the packet and folded the linen around them. Her hands were slow with the folding. She paused once with the linen half-folded and rested her palm on it for a breath before continuing. The recitation had taken something out of her.

Roe Carrick was still looking at Tessa.

“Officer.”

“Yes.”

“I do not remember being here.”

“No.”

“Have I done a thing.”

Tessa did not answer at once.

“You have not done a thing,” she said. “A thing has been done with you in it. The thing has been removed. You will not understand more of this than that. I am going to tell you only what you need to know to leave this cell tomorrow morning. We will not speak of the rest.”

Roe Carrick looked at her for a long moment. He nodded once.

“All right,” he said.

——— ◇ ———

In the corridor, with the cell door closed behind them, Mariska set down the box and the bundle and the folded linen on the stone floor. She put her back against the corridor wall. Her hands shook slightly. She had not let them shake in the cell.

“Voice-keeper,” Tessa said.

“Officer.”

“It is gone from him.”

“It is gone from him. The body is hollow where it was. He will not feel it as hollow. He will feel it as poor sleep he has at last slept through.”

“And it is in Karath.”

Mariska did not answer at once. She closed her eyes. She kept them closed for some seconds. Then she opened them and looked at Tessa.

“It is in Karath. Yes.”

“Without a host.”

“Without a host. For a time. It will find one.”

“How long.”

“Days. A week. I do not know. The records do not say. The Forelong is patient when it has time. It is less patient when the Tidewater is high.”

“And the Tidewater.”

“Has weeks yet to run.”

Tessa nodded. She had known. She had known since the after-cabin. The shape of what she was going to walk out of the precinct into this morning had been clear to her since the third bell of the night.

“Voice-keeper.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

Mariska looked at her. The corridor lamp was low at the corner behind her. Her face in the low light was the face of a woman in her seventy-eighth year who had performed an observance at the third bell of the night-watch. She had learned it from her keeper at twenty-two. She had not used it in fifty-six years.

“Officer Halder.”

“Yes.”

“Come and find me when the Tidewater closes.”

“I will.”

She did not say more.

Errin walked them out of the corridor, through the back office, and to the front of the precinct. The deck-mate of the Brightwake was waiting at the precinct door, because Mariska had instructed him to be waiting, although Tessa had not heard her give the instruction. He took the box, the bundle, and the linen from her without speaking. He gave her his arm. The two of them went out into the dawn.

——— ◇ ———

Tessa stood in the front of the precinct for a moment after they were gone. The desk-clerk on the morning watch did not speak to her. He had not spoken to her when she had come in with Mariska in the night. He did not speak to her now. Watch officers learned, by their second year, when not to speak.

She went back through the back office. She climbed the small stair to her desk in the corner where she kept her case-board. The seven cards she had pinned two months ago were still on the board. The eighth had gone up the morning of Day Nine. There were nine cards on the board now.

The ninth had gone up at the second bell of the morning by Errin’s hand, while she had been at Second Port. She had seen it on the board when she had come in with Mariska in the night and had not been able to stop and read it then. She read it now.

The ninth was a flower-seller named Tova Reln. Thirty-four. The body had been found by a baker’s apprentice at the first bell of the morning, in the back of the small open court behind the dye-house. The killing had been in the night between Day Twelve and Day Thirteen.

Tessa stood at the board and looked at the card. The killing had been in the night when the lamp in the window above Vellan Lane had gone out at the eleventh bell. Tessa had stood across the street for half an hour and the window had stayed dark. Tessa had walked home.

The lamp had been out because Roe had been gone. The Forelong had taken him out of the building by some way Tessa did not yet understand. It had taken him to the back of the small open court behind the dye-house and had killed Tova Reln there. It had brought him back. Tessa had not known.

She stood at the board for some minutes.

Then she went to her desk. She sat down. She took the notebook from the inside pocket of her Watch coat. She set it on the desk. She did not open it at once.

The first light of the morning was coming through the high windows of the back office. The rain had come up from the harbour with the dawn. It was tapping now against the glass of the windows in the small light way late-autumn rain tapped, before the heavier rain came. Tessa heard it without looking up.

She opened the notebook to the next blank page.

She wrote, in her own modified shorthand, the way she had written for fourteen years:

Liss Ardren. Forty-one. Twenty years at the seamstresses’ guild.

Tova Reln. Thirty-four. Sold flowers at the lower-Harborside market.

She did not write more. She did not write that the Forelong was loose in Karath. She did not write that the Tidewater had weeks yet to run. She did not write Roe Carrick’s name. She did not write anything about the cell or the knife or the linen or the bell.

She closed the notebook.

She rested her hand on the cover.

She kept it there for a moment longer than was strictly needed.

There was more work. There is always more work.

——— ◇ ———

End of Chapter Ten.

End of The Other Dark.