Chapter Six — The Chain

She did not go back to the Brightwake the next day.

She was angry at Mariska Quill in a way she could not yet shape into procedure, and the anger was the kind of feeling Tessa had learned, over fourteen years, to set aside before doing any of the work that mattered. She set it aside. She returned to the precinct at the second bell of the morning. She picked up where she had left off, which was the second half of the forty-three.

She did not go back the next day either, or the day after. She told herself this was because Mariska had said come back without saying when. She told herself it was because the work of the forty-three was the work she had to be doing whether or not Mariska eventually taught her anything. Both of these were true. She also was not going back because she had not yet figured out what Mariska had meant by the kind of asking that does not have asking in it, and she was unwilling to come back to the cabin without an answer.

So she worked.

——— ◇ ———

She finished the second twelve interviews on Day Nine. None of the second twelve gave her what the first twelve had not — alibis that mostly held, a few that were thin in ways that warranted re-checking, no one who felt right. She wrote in the notebook that night:

What if it is older than two months.

She underlined the line.

——— ◇ ———

Day Ten she went down to the precinct archive — a low stone room beneath the back office, with shelves of case-folders in indexed boxes going back to the founding of the Lower City precinct in Year 318. The archivist was an older clerk named Emrick who had been on the Watch’s archival post for thirty years and who knew the contents of the boxes by feel. He looked up from his desk when Tessa came in.

“Officer.”

“Emrick. I want the unsolved Lower City killings. Female victims. As far back as you have.”

“How far.”

“Forty years. Fifty. As far back as you have.”

He looked at her for a moment.

“I know.”

“You will be here a while.”

“I will.”

He stood. He went to the shelves. He pulled, over the next twenty minutes, the relevant boxes — twelve of them, indexed by decade — and brought them to the long table by the window. He did not ask her why she wanted them. He left her to it.

——— ◇ ———

She started with the most recent decade. Year 380 — none of the kind she was looking for. Year 379 — a single Lower City killing of a woman, dock-yard altercation, perpetrator caught and tried within a week. Year 378 — none. Year 377 — none. Year 376 — none. Year 375 — none.

Year 374.

Year 374 had a folder she had never seen.

Five Lower City women, two months, the killer never identified, the case quietly closed when the killings stopped. She read the folder slowly. The investigating officer had been a sergeant of the Lower City precinct named Hertha Cole, who had retired four years ago and who Tessa had known by sight when Tessa was a private. The folder contained the five victim-cards, the initial scene reports, the interview list (long), the suspect list (twenty-eight names, none of which Tessa recognized), and a final memorandum from Hertha Cole to the Watch council recommending the case be set aside on grounds that the killings had stopped and the investigation had reached the limit of available method. The memorandum was dated four months after the last killing.

Tessa read the memorandum twice. Then she read it a third time.

The pattern of the killings was the pattern of the current killings. Lower City women. Bodies positioned face to wall, hands loose. No defensive marks. The killer had moved through the Lower City as if he had known it. The killer had, by Hertha Cole’s reading, learned the streets.

She wrote in the notebook:

Year 374. Hertha Cole. Five women. Killings stopped. Case set aside.

She read on.

——— ◇ ———

Year 373. None. Year 372. None. Year 371 through 367. None.

Year 366. Three women in the Lower City. Two months. The killer never identified. The case quietly closed when the killings stopped.

Year 365 through 359. None.

Year 358. Six women in the Lower City. Two months. The killer never identified. The case never closed — left open by the investigating officer of the time, who had retired without resolving it.

Tessa stopped reading at Year 358. She set the folder on the table. She put her hands on the folder. She did not move for some minutes.

Then she went to the long table where she kept the working notebook for the case and pulled out the small folded chart she had been keeping — the one she had drawn for Errin a week ago, of the killer’s movement pattern through the Lower City. She unfolded it. She set it next to the Year 374 file. She looked at the two of them side by side. She looked at the Year 366 file. She looked at the Year 358 file.

The pattern was the same.

——— ◇ ———

She got up. She went to the small reference shelf at the back of the archive where Emrick kept the Watch’s standing reference works — the catalog of Karath civic events by year. She took down the volume that covered Years 350 through 400. She brought it back to the table.

She looked up Year 374. She read the Karath civic record for that year.

Tidewater season, severe. Inner Sea harbour disruption. Two Lower City warehouses lost to the surge. The Compact-court closed for sixteen days. The Order of Vyn called extraordinary session.

Year 366. Tidewater season, severe.

Year 358. Tidewater season, severe.

She closed the volume. She set her hands flat on the table.

The Tidewater season she had been living through, for the last two months, was severe. The Compact-court had been closed for ten days at the start of it. Two warehouses had been lost to the surge in mid-Anchen. The Order of Vyn was in extraordinary session.

——— ◇ ———

She was still at the table when the eighth bell of the night-watch struck.

She had been at the table for ten hours. The single high window had gone dark. Emrick had brought her a candle at the sixth bell, and another at the seventh. The candle was low now and burning unevenly. She had not eaten. The folders were open on the table around her — the Year 374 folder, the Year 366 folder, the Year 358 folder, the small folded chart, the catalog of civic events. Her notebook lay open at the most recent page. The page had two lines of writing.

Year 374. Year 366. Year 358. Each one Tidewater-severe.

The pattern is older than my Watch.

The door of the archive opened. She did not look up. She knew the tread.

Errin came in. He stopped in the doorway. He looked at the folders. He looked at her. He came to the table. He sat down across from her without speaking. He looked at the open folders on the table for a long moment.

“Tessa.”

“I know.”

He read the Year 374 memorandum. He read the Year 366 case-summary. He looked at the Year 358 folder without opening it. He looked at the small folded chart. He looked at the catalog of civic events still open at the table’s edge.

“What kind of man,” he said.

“I do not know if it is a man.”

He looked at her. He did not move for a long moment. He did not laugh. He had been a Watch officer for twenty-three years and he did not laugh at her, and the fact that he did not laugh at her was the thing in the chapter she would later tell Mariska about.

“Tessa,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Tell me what the Driftborn told you.”

“He told me the killing pattern is wrong in a way the Watch cannot see.”

“That is what he told you.”

“That is what he told me.”

“And the voice-keeper of the Brightwake.”

“She refused to teach me. She told me to come back.”

“And you have not gone back.”

“I have not gone back.”

“Tessa.”

“Yes.”

“You will go back tomorrow.”

“I will go back tomorrow.”

He nodded once. He stood. He looked at the folders again. He looked at her.

“I will tell the Watch council in the morning,” he said, “that the case is being investigated under expanded methods. I do not need to be specific. I will tell them only that we are extending our scope of inquiry.”

“They will not like that.”

“They will not. They will allow it because of Petra. Petra was Watch. They will allow it for two weeks. After that we will have to give them something.”

“Yes.”

“Two weeks.”

“Two weeks.”

He left. The door of the archive closed behind him. She heard his tread go through the back office and out through the front of the precinct. She sat at the table for a few minutes longer with the folders open around her and the candle nearly out, and then she folded the chart and put the folders back the way Emrick liked them returned and took the volume of civic events back to the small reference shelf.

She wrote one more line in the notebook before she closed it.

Errin did not laugh.

She underlined the words once. She closed the notebook. She blew out the candle. She walked home through the late streets in the cold north wind. She did not feel the wind.

——— ◇ ———

End of Chapter Six.