The Seer Read Free Page B

Ravenhill and Laeric Scoth. Ravenhill had no animosity toward Jesco, but he had grown increasingly incompetent over the years. Now fifty, he was a man who drowned the horrors of his work in ale and smelled suspiciously even now at mid-morning. His wife had left him recently, and he had fallen apart further in her absence. Stubble-cheeked, slumping, and slovenly with stains on his lapel, his oily, graying hair hung in lusterless locks from too long without washing.
    Scoth was his protégé and partner. Twenty years younger and unmarried, he cut a fine, straight-backed figure in his spotless uniform and trench coat. Even the wind skirted around him rather than muss his thick brown hair. He patronized the same brothel as Jesco, who had seen him once in the dining room with a male prostitute, and again in the back garden. Scoth hadn’t noticed Jesco on either occasion, and Jesco hadn’t waved. Everything about Scoth irritated Jesco. In fairness, everything about Jesco appeared to irritate Laeric Scoth. The first murder case they had worked together was a disaster, Scoth a newly minted detective absolutely certain that he knew who was responsible for the dead woman in the garden, and Jesco blasting his certainty to shreds with one touch of the woman’s skirt. Scoth had never forgiven him.
    Another street officer was posted to the far end of the alley, and that was one who loathed Jesco even more than Tokol did. She studiously looked away when she noticed Jesco observing her. He did not repeat his boisterous greeting, because now he could see the body.
    The man was naked and laying flat on his back, his arms raised over his head. Fair-haired, pale skinned, and with unnaturally light blue eyes, his natural pallor had been enhanced by death. His only color was in the smears of blood on his chest, and grains of dirt from the alley. The rest of him was ghostly white, even the slug of his tongue, which was visible in his gaping mouth. His head was tilted to the side and he stared unblinkingly at the filthy bricks.
    “There was a case I had,” Ravenhill mumbled, and the smell of spirits grew heavy around him. He weaved a little on his feet. “Young fellow got drunk and was leaping roofs. He fell into an alley and right onto a post dumped at an angle there. Speared him straight through the groin and he bled out in minutes.”
    The man before them was also relatively young, somewhere in his twenties. Scoth’s eyes were fixed to the body. He had always been resentful that his powers of observation flagged in the face of a seer’s abilities, and he did not acknowledge Jesco. Sinclair crouched down by the head, a kerchief pressed daintily to his nose and mouth.
    “I don’t think he was leaping roofs here,” Jesco said.
    “Is that your professional opinion?” Scoth asked acidly.
    “It is my unprofessional opinion,” Jesco said, “seeing as you haven’t supplied me with anything for my professional one.”
    He was a very strong seer, but he could not read from flesh. Ravenhill looked up to the buildings on either side like he was gauging them for distance. Someone going at a run could have leaped them, but the chances of a person getting drunk, wandering into Poisoners’ Lane, scaling a building, and disrobing to leap roofs was infinitesimal. The man had not gored himself upon a beam either. None of them were bloody over their heads, and the two deep punctures in his chest looked like the work of a blade.
    “We shouldn’t stay here long,” Ravenhill rumbled.
    “Then let’s do this swiftly,” Scoth said. “He was not murdered in this place. That much is clear. There isn’t enough blood. He was struck low elsewhere and dumped here sometime last night.”
    “How do you know it was last night?” Jesco asked. It was not to aggravate the detective but true curiosity. “You can’t conclude that by insect life or lack thereof in this place.”
    Aggravated anyway, Scoth did not look like he was going to answer. But then he