Fly Up into the Night Air Read online

  FLY UP INTO THE NIGHT AIR

  by John Houser

  Copyright 2011 by John Houser

  Smashwords Edition

  All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-4657-3341-2

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  Harte

  The white-clad sister pointed. Harte followed her extended finger across the ward to a still form occupying one of the narrow cots. Tangled, chestnut hair draped the boy's shoulders. One bare arm trailed off the side of the cot, much as a fisherman's arm might trail off the side of his skiff on a hot summer day. From Harte's side of the ward, he looked quite peaceful resting sunlight from the narrow windows. Harte left the sister and walked over to the cot. From the closer vantage point, his peaceful fantasy quickly dissolved. Hair on the right side of the boy's face was matted to his head. Dried blood filled his ear. His right eye was black, and the whole right side of his face was swollen. Even with the damage, Harte could see the boy was beautiful. That skin has never felt a barber's blade.

  "You'll have to look under the blanket, if you really want to know what they did to him," the sister called from the other side of the ward. "Sister Grace was mad. That's why she sent for you."

  Harte realized with a start that he had been staring and tried to relax his expression into something closer to detachment. "She said his name is Raf?"

  "Yes," said the sister.

  "Raf, are you awake? Can you hear me?"

  Raf groaned and drew his bare arm under the blanket. "Get off" he mumbled, "It hurts. Get off!"

  Harte glanced around the ward to see if anyone was listening. Most of the patients were asleep or too wrapped in the drama of their own mortality to pay much attention. One young woman watched from under a matted sheath of black hair. Her chemise had slipped down to expose the swell of one breast. Harte looked away quickly.

  "Raf, they're gone now. Wake up. I need to ask you some questions."

  After a moment, Raf opened the eye that wasn't swollen shut.

  "I need to see what they did to you."

  "Why?" Raf whispered. "Who are you?"

  "My name is Harte Walford. I'm a presenter advocate. Do you know what that means?"

  "You send folks to gaol." Raf tried unsuccessfully to sit up. "I didn't do nothin'."

  "Steady. I'm not here to send you anywhere. I've come to find out what happened to you."

  "Wha d'you care?"

  "It's my duty. I must know what's happened to you, if I'm to do anything about it." Harte tried to lift up the blanket.

  "No! It's none a yer business. Leave off!"

  Harte looked over at the sister and shrugged. "I guess I've seen enough ..."

  The sister straightened up. "Have you?" She marched over to the boy and swept his blanket back before he could react. The boy's lean chest and rib cage were bruised as if he'd been kicked repeatedly. But it was the sight below that made Harte cringe. The boy's testicles were swollen to twice normal size. His penis was torn and crusted with dried blood. Harte examined the damage briefly before turning away as the blood drained slowly from his head to form a cold pool in his gut. He pulled up the blanket with shaking hands.

  The boy lay stiffly, hardly seeming to breathe at all.

  "What--" It came out high and raw. Harte cleared his throat and tried again. "What happened to you?"

  "Some toff beat me."

  "Why would he do that?"

  "I don't know," said the boy.

  "It looks as though you were kicked," said Harte, "by someone wearing hobnailed boots."

  "I guess he wasn't satisfied with the goods."

  Harte felt his face heat.

  "Hush! There'll be none of that kind of talk in here," said the sister.

  * * *

  "After that, the boy tired and closed his eyes. I asked him if he knew who had kicked him, but he would say nothing else." Harte continued the story for his friend Griff, as he hunched over a mug of ale at the Ragged Crow. "I really don't know why Sister Grace sent for me instead of the watch." Harte looked at Griff apologetically. "Your men would have been more suited to deal with this sort of incident than a presenter advocate, but I guess she thought my family might influence the council."

  As he told the story, Harte's eyes wandered over the battered features of his favorite tavern. The oak bar was nicked and dented from enthusiastic use--in sharp contrast with the faultless polish of the dining room table at Walford House. The journeymen who made up most of the noontime crowd in the Ragged Crow were still young, many close to Harte's age, but no longer apprentices; they were secure in their skills and earning enough for beer and bread. But for the most part, they were not yet masters in their guilds. Their easy laughter reflected confidence (and probably the lack of a master's cares).

  Griff's broad face was nearly expressionless as he listened. "She thinks the watch don't do enough for the ... poor. What exactly did Sister Grace ask of you, anyway?"

  "I didn't speak to her. I flew from the house this morning to avoid my father--he would surely think this case a waste of my time. Sister Magda took me to see the boy."

  "Will you be wanting any help?"

  "I'm going to go down to Dock Street to see if I can find any witnesses. I'd like you to come."

  Griff draped his face in something closer to its usual merry garb. "I suppose I'd better. Lord knows what might happen to you, if you go alone. Especially, in that get-up."

  "My thanks for your indulgence. You know that I must make a show when I'm working."

  "Must your sleeves be so ... extravagant?" Griff spread his arms and nearly knocked over his mug.

  "Do you think them excessive? It's the latest fashion. I don't suppose you're aware of it," said Harte, a little stiffly.

  "Fashion is not for the likes of me. I'm just a poor watchman."

  "And I'm just a poor lawyer."

  Griff finally loosed his smile. "Now, you're contradicting yourself."

  They walked out of the tavern and turned down the cobblestoned street towards the river.

  Stilian

  In the faint, pre-dawn light, his horse's diaphragm worked like a smithy's bellows, its nostrils flaring with each steaming breath. Stilian crouched awkwardly over the saddle, gripping the reins tightly, nearly losing his seat with every strike of the horse's hooves. He cursed as a wet branch, invisible in the near darkness, whipped his face from the side of the narrow lane. Finally, as the first rays of sunlight broke through the brown and gold leaves, he relaxed into the saddle and began gradually to slow his horse.

  He stretched and began to relax the blocking that he'd been maintaining for the past week. He drew a breath pungent with the smell of wet and decaying leaves, and shivered a little as the sweat from his frantic gallop dried on his skin. When his horse had cooled sufficiently, he brought it to a gradual stop. "Whoa Petar! Let's rest a moment, my friend. I haven't your enthusiasm for running." He slid off his horse and wrapped the reins around a tree branch near a patch of green grass, then pulled an ornate, folding writing desk from his saddle bag. Finding a seat on a fallen log, he set the desk across his knees and unfolded its wings. He carefully removed a small bottle of ink from its compartment and unstopped it. Then, taking a quill from another compartment, he began to write.

  Dear Hugh,

  I'm sorry I have been so slow to respond. What a trial this last trip has been. I am composing this letter to you on the old road that leads from Saddleback towards Long Field and then on to Walford's Crossing--the next stop on my circuit. It is one of those fall days when the air is so clear that everything looks unnatura
lly sharp; it looks as if you just opened a window you hadn't realized was closed. (Perhaps it's just my head clearing from the galling blasts my customers have been aiming at me for the past week.) I sometimes wonder what I hoped to accomplish in this profession. Sure, we bring murderers to justice now and then, but most cases are clear enough without the help of a judge veritor. The jealous husband or disappointed suitor who did the deed is almost always known to the community. The places circuit riders visit, after all, are small by definition--too small to have a permanent legal apparatus. I find few secrets in the farming villages and forest dells. I know with greater certainty when someone is lying, but rarely do I catch someone in a lie that is not transparent to most present.

  This last case was typical: a man was killed in a drunken fight with his chum over a woman. She was neither the man's wife nor his lover, mind you, but a pretty serving girl who was just flirting to raise her tips. Neither of the poor wretches involved actually meant to hurt anyone, but a knock on the head with a wine bottle will kill as quick as a sword, and one of them happened to find a bottle in his hand at just the wrong instant. They will both pay with their lives.

  What an grim banquet I was served: first, the survivor, whose remorse was not strong enough to keep him from attempting to lie to save his life. Everyone knew he was lying. Some would have let him get away with it. I did my duty. Then there was the victim's wife, who was as angry at her husband for flirting with the barmaid as she was angry at the idiot with the bottle. The worst of my meal was the victim's mother. The dead man was apparently her only son. She would have gone to the grave in his place if she could have. Her anguish left me sick to my stomach and with a head ringing like a blacksmith's anvil.

  Any magistrate could have handled the case, but as they say, "The judge must come, when the murder's done." I was so eager to leave this morning, I'm afraid I was only imagining the glow from the east when I shook awake the poor stable hand and got my cob, Petar. I would have left last night, but I dulled my senses with a bottle of the same vintage as the murder weapon and was not fit to ride. I wish I could find the truth without having to rub myself raw with it. Our canny ancestors must have been quite beaten down in the wars to have accepted such a limited role in society and one that is such a grind. On the other hand, I find the noise less painful in the smaller communities.

  I must be getting on. Yours in all states, clear and muddled,

  Stilian

  Harte

  Dock Street was the oldest part of Walford's Crossing. Heavy drays delivered vegetables here from the towns and villages of the eastern plains to be loaded into river boats for the trip down the Bug to the market at Bugport. On either side, there were stone warehouses, merchant's counting houses, taverns, brothels, and inns where boatmen stayed between trips. By day, it was populated with merchants in fancy dress, teamsters, dock hands, and river rats. At night, it was where men found drinking companions, bawds, or pretty boys for the night (or more likely groping hands and sucking mouths as for exactly as long as their coin lasted).

  "Where did they find him?" asked Griff.

  "Under the archway that leads into the courtyard at Trast and Son."

  "I know Trast and Son. It's across from the Red Rooster." Harte and Griff looked at one another sideways. Everyone knew the nickname for that notorious place. "It'll be hard to get anyone to admit to being there, much less to seeing anything, Harte."

  "I know, but we must try."

  "Where do you want to start?"

  They spent the next hour talking to anyone they could find to ask and getting nowhere. They examined the area where Raf was found, but despite a careful look, they found nothing but dirt and a few dark drops that could have been blood.

  Eventually, Griff straightened up, placed an a hand on his waist and twisted backward for a slow stretch. "This teat is dry, Harte. There's nobody about now that will know anything. We'll have to come back tonight, when the bawds and pretty boys are out."

  "So why have we been wasting our time?"

  Griff relaxed from his stretch and shrugged. "You're in charge."

  "You couldn't have said anything?"

  "It's your place to lead."

  "Aye, and you can't do a roundabout without crushing your partner's toes. Let's get something to eat. Isn't that place with the delightful rolls around the corner?"

  Harte and Griff parted ways after they finished lunch: crescents stuffed with onion, herbs, and savory pork. Griff headed back to Watch House, on Market Square. Harte went home to write some notes on what he'd found out from the morning's inquiries. Little enough.

  * * *

  Harte was seated in the library, when his father came in through the arched door from his study. Councilman Magistrate Gastir Walford was uncharacteristically crude. "I hear that you were sniffing around some little waif at that hovel operated by the Sisters of Mercy, this morning." Councilman Walford passed a hand over his trim, light brown hair, and blinked his hawk's eyes. "What were you doing there? You couldn't be thinking a boy like that's got the coin to pay for an investigation could you? Or the clout to get the council to pay for it? Why do you waste your time?"

  Harte wondered what had set his father off. "They beat the boy cruelly, Father. Somebody ought to look into it. And it's not like the council is rushing to assign me cases. I don't know why they appointed me, if they didn't think I was good enough to do any work for them."

  "You must build your reputation, boy." He spat the words out. "You don't do that by championing pretty boys or the Canny, with their minds in the gutter. They appointed you, because I told them too. I told them you would serve their interests, as I have. Is this some kind of joke, to show up your father?"

  Harte counted a row of leather-bound law texts before answering. "This doesn't concern you, Father. It's about justice for the boy. What do the Canny have to do with this? Did you hear something?"

  "Who is this boy? Justice is for those who have the coin to pay for it. The sooner you learn that, the better off you'll be." Harte's father pushed back his hair and sat down at the table, his hooded eyes scanning Harte's papers.

  Harte picked up his notes and left his father without speaking. He didn't believe that. He would never believe it. Harte ran up the stairs to the second floor, and through the door to his suite. Slamming the door, he flopped onto the couch in his sitting room. Somebody saw that boy get beaten. Tonight, he would find a witness.

  * * *

  Harte and Griff met outside the Ragged Crow at eleven bells and started down the hill towards Dock Street. Both were dressed in plain, dark clothes. But Harte's shirt was made from fine linen, and its sleeves still had the full cut of the latest fashion.

  "This time, do me a favor, Griff," said Harte. "Help me talk to these people."

  Griff imitated Harte's high-toned accent. "You know, they're not really my set."

  Harte ignored the taunt. "They're even less mine. You look as if you might visit Dock Street now and then."

  "You'd be surprised who goes down there. My rank can't afford that kind of fun. We have to sleep at night."

  Harte grinned. "You accuse mine of debauchery?" Harte feinted right and attempted a left jab. Griff stepped neatly aside, gripped Harte's wrist, yanked him off balance and twisted his arm up behind his back. "Ha! Try that with the watch."

  Harte struggled in vain, then relaxed. "I yield, I yield. I studied law, not wrestling!"

  "So you say. Are you sure it wasn't haberdashery?"

  "Leave off, about the clothes. I have a position to maintain."

  "Said the peacock to the swallow."

  "Swallow, my--" said Harte as they stepped onto Dock Street.

  "I'd be happy to swallow yours--" said a low-pitched voice from the shadows. A woman in a frayed shawl moved partially into the light. "--for a price. Is it a big one?"

  Griff smirked as Harte choked. "No, I don't think he's in the mood yet. Maybe later." He waved the woman off, and u
shered Harte down the cobbles. "Come on Harte, the Angry C--the Red Rooster's this way."

  * * *

  Harte followed Griff into the Red Rooster and paused. The room was low-ceilinged and dark. The plank floors were covered in damp sawdust. It smelled of sour beer and smoke weed. In one corner, a man was juggling a couple of apples in front of a table of rowdy young men. The men flipped coins into a pile. When they were done, someone tossed another apple to the juggler. Now three rotated over the table. The men tossed more coins, and the juggler caught another apple. The pile grew until beads of sweat popped on the juggler's brow. Finally, one too many apples sent the lot tumbling to the floor to shouts of laughter and groans from the gamblers. It looked like any other tavern, thought Harte in surprise, except that he could see no women in it. A harried troop of boys rushed from bar to table and back again, serving beer and plates of food to the men who occupied every table.

  Griff motioned to Harte and headed for the bar. Behind the bar, a big, middle-aged man with heavily muscled arms and thick wrists used a bucket to sluice spilled beer from the counter behind the bar. He looked at Griff and raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

  "Something I can get you?"

  "Two barley ales, please."

  Harte joined Griff at the bar and waited, while the barkeep poured the ale from a barrel that was chocked on the back counter. "Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?"

  "Who's asking?"

  "My name is Harte, and this is Griff. We're ... trying to help out a friend. There was a boy beaten across the street from here, last night."

  "Ain't nothing unusual in that."

  "He was left for dead, under the archway at Trast and Son. We're looking for anyone who saw anything."