Worldsoul

Thirty-Four

“I can’t do anything before next Fourth Day,” the lampmender said when he opened the door. “If it’s urgent, it’ll have to wait.”

Mercy had been expecting a little old man, like Einstein in an apron, bristling with eccentricity. It just went to show that you shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Salt was large and lugubrious, with bloodhound jowls and a figure like a pear. He looked at her without expression.

“I didn’t come about a lamp,” Mercy told him.

The stare increased in intensity. “You’d better come in.”

Once inside, he sat her down in a leather armchair. The shop did, at least, ring true to type. It was crowded and, for a lampmender’s, surprisingly dark. Maybe they were like cobbler’s children, going unshod.

“My mother had your address in a box,” Mercy said.

“I’ve got a lot of customers.”

“I don’t think she would have kept it if she’d just been a customer,” Mercy said. She did not add that romance was unlikely to have been a consideration; regardless of Greya’s sexual inclinations, Salt was not an immediate candidate for a burning lifelong passion. But she did not want to hurt his feelings.

“What was your ma’s name?”

“Greya Fane.”

This did produce an effect. Salt’s chilly eyes, which resembled those of a cod, widened. “Oh!” he said.

“You obviously remember her.”

“I’ll say. The last time I saw Greya Fane, she was drenched to the skin, shivering fit to bust, and had just killed a man.”

“I see,” Mercy said, blankly.

“That was-what? Over forty years ago now. I was an apprentice at the time. This was my uncle’s shop. I knew Greya from up north; we’d both come down together from Aachven. Didn’t know one another well-different backgrounds. My family were woodcutters. Uncle broke out, wanted to make something of himself. Greya wanted to get away from the north and her family; I paid for her train ticket. Didn’t hear from her for several months, then one night, she turned up on the doorstep and said someone had attacked her. She’d killed him, apparently, though she never said how.”

“Did you call the authorities?”

Salt hesitated. “No. And I’ll tell you why. I felt us northerners ought to stick together a bit and I was… quite fond of Greya. I dried her clothes on the stove and gave her a day’s head start before I spoke to the Watch. But then, no body ever turned up. I did make some enquiries but no one missing, no one hurt… so I thought, forget it. And I did, pretty much until now. Funny, you don’t look a bit like her, and yet I can feel her in you. Otherwise I wouldn’t have told you all that. That, though,” he nodded in the direction of the ka, “that’s not hers.”

“No. Greya’s family were Wolfheads.”

“They were more than that. They were shamans. But for all that, they were good to the people around them.”

“If they were so great, why did Greya want to leave?”

“She wanted more. You know what girls are like. Wanted to see the bright lights.”

Mercy had the impression that there was something Salt wasn’t telling her. There was something else she wanted to know. “Have you ever heard of a woman named Mareritt?”