Litany of Winter

Severin woke with his mouth dry and his left side stitched tight beneath a fresh bandage.

For several seconds he stared at a white ceiling and tried to work out why breathing hurt. Then he moved his left leg. Pain answered in his knee, and the warehouse came back to him.

The worker came back first, along with the memory of the rib going through his belly. Then came the one-eyed bastard pressing cloth into the wound while the place burned around them.

He turned his head. Daylight came through a tall window on the far wall, gray and thin through dirty glass. He lay in a narrow iron bed with a screen pulled halfway around it. Someone had changed him into a hospital shirt. His own clothes were nowhere in sight.

A nurse noticed his eyes open and crossed the ward before he could call her. ”Sir, don’t try to sit up.”

Severin checked the fresh bandage around his middle. ”Did they fix me?”

”You were very lucky. The surgeon repaired most of the damage.”

”I see.” He settled back against the pillow. ”Sorry for the trouble. Seems I find plenty of it.”

She did not seem amused. ”You lost a great deal of blood. Please stay lying down until the doctor clears you.”

He pulled his right hand from beneath the blanket and flexed it. His fingers still answered slowly.

”Miss, where’s the constable?”

The nurse glanced toward the end of the ward. ”Waiting.”

They let Severin drink a little water first. Half an hour later, a porter rolled his bed into a smaller room with green walls and a coal grate. One window overlooked a brick courtyard. Two men were waiting beside a table.

One was the constable from the ambulance. The other wore a brown suit with a narrow black tie and had a notebook open in front of him. He was out of uniform and didn’t smile.

The constable took the chair nearest Severin’s bed. ”Feeling better, lad?”

”You could say that.”

The man in brown dipped his pen. ”Start with your full name.”

Severin exhaled. ”Severin Hale.”

”Date of birth?”

”January twenty-fifth, Year Thirty-Eight.”

”Address?”

Severin paused. ”Don’t have one. I move around.”

The man wrote something down. ”Any relatives we can contact?”

”None.”

”Permanent employment or military service?”

”No. I take whatever work I can find.”

”And the freight yard?”

”Just the shift.”

”No permanent position?”

Severin shook his head. He already disliked where this was going.

The constable leaned forward. ”Tell us exactly what happened that night at the yard.”

Severin did. At first it was easy. He told them about the shift, Pike offering extra silver, the other men leaving and the watchman at the gate. He had stayed because the pay was better and because twelve crates had been set apart inside the warehouse.

The man in brown interrupted him. ”Why were they set apart?”

”No idea.”

”You didn’t care to ask?”

”I did. No one cared to answer.”

Severin carried on until he reached the hooded stranger. ”One man came in after midnight. He wore a black hooded coat. One eye was blind. The other was blue, and he spoke Aethermerian with an Imperial accent.”

The man in brown kept writing. ”How did he enter the warehouse?”

”I don’t know. He was already inside when I saw him.”

”Name?”

”Didn’t exactly have time to ask. I was trying to keep him away from the cargo.”

”And you tried to stop him?”

”Yes. He beat the hell out of me.”

”Any weapons?”

”He had a short sword, but he didn’t draw it when we fought. He hit me in the head with the pommel.”

The man in brown looked at the constable, then back at Severin. ”A sword?”

”Yes.”

”Were you armed?”

”I had a small pocketknife.”

The constable looked at him. ”So you attacked him.”

Severin exhaled. ”I thought he was a thief.”

”What happened after that?” the man in brown asked.

”He started opening the crates and taking samples from them. Then he began burning the cargo.”

Severin described what he had seen as best he could. He remembered glass jars and powders. Some of the crates held wrapped bundles that did not look like anything meant for a normal freight manifest, along with pieces of bone and preserved flesh. Something dark floated in liquid. Violet marks had been hidden beneath the ordinary markings on the crate sides.

The constable stopped him there. ”Violet marks?”

”Yeah. They lit up when the fire started.”

”What were they?”

”I have no idea. They weren’t any letters or numbers I know.”

The man in the brown suit said, ”We recovered broken jars and some chemical residue. There were fragments of bone among the damaged containers.”

Severin pushed his head deeper into the pillow. ”Good. Now you know I’m not making this up.”

”We found unusual cargo in the warehouse.”

”There you go.”

The constable said, ”That doesn’t explain what happened. Continue.”

Severin continued. He described the worker stepping out of the smoke while chanting, then the arm splitting open as white bone forced through the flesh until it became a blade.

The man in brown looked up from the page.

”You said you wanted the truth,” Severin said.

”We need you to be precise.”

”I am being precise. He grew a bloody weapon out of his arm.”

”This happened in front of you?”

”Yes. I saw his ribs changing too, and there was something wrong along his back.”

Severin kept going, describing the stranger’s fight with the worker and the marks across his hand.

The constable looked up. ”You said there was a discharge?”

”I don’t know how else to put it. Lightning.”

The man in brown stopped writing.

Severin exhaled sharply through his nose. ”I knew you’d do that.”

”Do what?”

”Look at me like I’m a lunatic.”

”Carry on,” the man in brown said. ”Where did the lightning come from?”

”His hand. The marks lit up, and then it came out of his palm.”

”And he used it against the worker?”

”Yes. Kept using it until he nearly ruined the hand.”

”What do you mean?”

”I saw him struggling with it after a while. His fingers were shaking, and by the end he could barely hold anything.”

That got the man in brown writing again. ”Did you help this hooded man?”

”Yeah. Tried to.”

”Why would you help a man who attacked you and tried to steal the cargo?”

”Didn’t have much choice. The worker was fucking mad and trying to kill both of us.”

”What did you do?”

”He threw me a dagger from his belt, and I put it into the worker’s throat. That’s when I got hit.”

”How?”

”One of his ribs had grown long enough to reach me. Went straight through my left side.”

The constable stared at him. ”Lad, do you actually expect us to believe that?”

Severin shut his eyes for a moment. ”No,” he muttered.

”Carry on.”

”After that, the one-eyed man finally killed him and came over to me. He gave me some bitter medicine and packed the wound. Once he’d done that, he burned what was left of the freight.”

”So he deliberately burned the evidence?” the constable asked.

”I suppose. He said the stuff was dangerous.”

”Did you help him with the fire?”

”No. I couldn’t even stand.”

”Then where did he go? The fire brigade says no other man came out.”

”Beats me. Maybe he got out the same way he got in.”

The constable sat back while the man in brown closed his notebook halfway. ”You do understand how ridiculous this story sounds?”

”I do, but that doesn’t make it a lie. You saw the body.”

The constable glanced at the man in brown before answering. ”The coroner has finished his preliminary examination.”

”And?”

”He found abnormal bone growths, but he can’t say when they formed.”

Severin stared at him. ”So what, you think he was born like that?”

”It could be a deformity. The medical staff will examine the body again.”

”A deformity? When did you last see a man born with bloody bone swords sticking out of him?”

”That’s for the coroner to decide.”

The man in brown opened his notebook again. ”We still have nothing that proves the one-eyed man was there, and nothing at the warehouse supports your lightning story.”

”How is that my fault? The brigade drenched the place, so maybe they washed something away.”

”Unlikely.”

The next questions had less to do with the warehouse. They asked where Severin had worked before and who had recommended him for the yard. They wanted to know who knew he would be alone and whether he owed anyone money. Then they asked if he had ever moved stolen freight. When they asked if he knew men who had, he refused to answer.

The man in brown asked about Arthur Rooney.

Severin looked straight at him. ”What about him?”

”You know him?”

”Yes.”

”What about George Mallory, Edwin Moss and Samuel Fletcher? Those names mean anything to you?”

Severin looked at the constable. ”You’ve been busy. Yeah, I know them, so what?”

”Are you part of their gang?”

Severin gave a short laugh. ”Gang? They’re my mates.”

”Have these mates of yours stolen freight before?”

”You can ask them yourself.”

”We will,” the constable said.

Severin shifted in the bed before remembering the stitches. Pain pulled along his left side and stopped him halfway.

The constable noticed. ”Easy now.”

”Don’t start pretending you care.”

”I’d rather not give the surgeon more work.”

The man in brown waited until Severin settled again. ”You have no fixed address or permanent employment, and no family who can account for you. Then there are the men you associate with.”

Severin said nothing.

”You were alone in a warehouse containing valuable freight when it was destroyed by a suspicious fire. There’s also a dead man and nobody who can confirm your version of what happened.”

”Yes. None of it was my doing.”

The investigator continued. ”At the moment, we’re considering whether several men may have been involved in the theft.”

”What fucking theft? Who burns cargo they’re trying to steal?”

”We can’t say how much of the freight was missing before the fire. We also have to consider whether it was started deliberately to make the loss look accidental.”

Severin stared at him. ”You’ve got to be kidding me. Find the one-eyed man and ask him to vouch for what I told you.”

”We’ve circulated the description you gave us. He’ll be questioned if we find him.”

The man in brown looked at him. ”That includes the possibility that he was your accomplice.”

”For the last time, he wasn’t my fucking accomplice.”

The constable’s hand came up before Severin could push himself upright. ”Stay down.”

Severin ignored him. The stitched wound seized under the bandage, and a wave of dizziness forced him flat again. For a few seconds he could not focus on either man.

When his sight steadied, the brown-suited man was watching him without sympathy. ”We’ll speak again after the surgeon clears you.”

”I gave you my story. I’ve got nothing else to say.”

The man in brown closed his notebook and stood. ”That wouldn’t be very smart.”

When the constable rose as well, Severin looked at him. ”Am I still being detained?”

”For now.”

”What for?”

”Arson and destruction of freight. We’re also considering theft and possible involvement in the death.”

Severin laughed once. He wanted to fucking shout instead, but the movement already pulled at the stitches in his side.

The man in brown put on his coat. ”We’ll also find the others involved and question them.”

”They weren’t involved.”

The man turned toward the door.

Severin lifted his head from the pillow. ”Leave my mates out of this.”

The investigator glanced back. ”Then give us something more believable.”

The door shut behind both men. Severin lay still, one hand over the bandage, listening to their footsteps fade down the corridor. Four of his mates were now in a police notebook because he had tried to explain what happened.