“What do you mean?”
“Kody sees himself as a champion of justice.” Lenoir could not help smirking as he said it. “He wants to subdue the evildoers of the world.”
“That sounds a little childish,” Zera observed coolly. Lenoir was not sure if she really meant it, but he was grateful to her for saying it.
“Maybe it is, but I cannot fault him for his ambitions. I used to share them, more or less. There was a time when I was obsessed with my career, to the point where I virtually forgot what it was to lead a life outside the Prefecture of Police.” He paused. It seemed like another life, long dead and largely unmourned. “I too questioned my superiors when they claimed a case was unsolvable. Back then, there was no such thing—not to me, at least. But that was before.”
“Before what?”
Lenoir was silent for a moment. How could he explain it? Before the betrayal. Before the broken promises, the shattered hopes, the incompetence and outright treachery of those who claimed to shepherd the New Order. “Before I saw justice for what it truly is,” he said finally.
“And what is that?”
“An artificial construct of the powerful, venal and infinitely elastic.”
Zera puffed out a breath. “That’s quite a dark view for a man in your profession, Inspector.”
“It is the truth, though I had to grow up a little before I saw it. I was in love with the law, back when I was young. I was in love with the idea that the law made everyone the same, no matter where they were born or whose blood was in their veins. I wanted to believe in the revolution. I wanted to believe that there was punishment for those who did wrong, no matter how much money they had or how many titles.”
“I think I see what you mean. Even I know that isn’t true.”
Lenoir drank his wine. It was not true, not in Serles and not in the Five Villages. No one thanked you for arresting a man like Lord Feine. It would embarrass too many powerful people—the lord mayor, whose wife was a particular friend of Lady Feine; the speaker of Parliament, Feine’s sometime hunting companion; the myriad of titled relatives who presided over the handsomer properties of the Five Villages. It would shock the sensibilities of the foolish commoners who thought there was something inherently better in the character of a nobleman. Besides, Feine would never remain imprisoned, not when he could buy off the magistrate, the jailer, the local news pamphlets. And once he was out, if he was bloody-minded (which the nobility so often were) he would come after Lenoir, looking for the satisfaction of squashing the insignificant police inspector who dared to smear his precious name. No, justice was not blind. She was a prostitute, for sale to the highest bidder.
“Once I realized the law could be bought,” he continued, “everything changed. I saw what a farce it was, a lot of playacting, everyone just going through the motions, especially where the rich and powerful were concerned. Gradually, I began to understand why. These ridiculous crimes of passion—it was not as though they were serial killers, after all. And you cannot bring back the dead, so what is the point of it, anyway? You will never bring such people to justice, and you cannot undo what they have done.”
Zera nodded sympathetically. “It’s true, unfortunately. There isn’t a punishment in the world that will bring back the dead.”
“And so . . .” Lenoir trailed off. He could not quite bring himself to say it, but he did not have to. Once again, he felt the coins in his hand, cold and heavy. The price of silence.
“And so you let the dead rest,” Zera said firmly, “and kept their secrets to yourself, and if you stayed quiet about what you couldn’t change, and did well by it, that is only human nature. You can’t torture yourself over it, Nicolas. You just grew up and saw the world for what it really is, that’s all.”
So Lenoir had told himself for years. When he woke in the morning and felt no sense of purpose, when he touched the dead flesh on his arm, as numb as his soul, when he drank himself into oblivion and saw the faces of the dead he had betrayed—every day of his life, Lenoir told himself that it was just the way of things, that no sensible man would have done other than he did. But he knew better.
And so did the green-eyed man.
CHAPTER 13
The ravens showed them the way to the camp. They circled and wheeled in the pallid sky, rustled and cawed from the branches that lined the road. By the time Kody and Lenoir were near enough to see the wood smoke rising from the clearing, the chorus of ravens was so loud that it drowned out the sound of their hoofbeats on the road. The choir of death, as they were known in scripture. Kody wasn’t much of a religious man, but it made him shudder all the same. Ravens could often be found in large numbers near Adali camps, since there was always a bounty of food to be had. The Adali weren’t accustomed to staying in one place for long, so sanitation wasn’t their strong suit. They let their refuse pile high near the campsite, attracting all sorts of scavengers. The presence of ravens near Adali camps was so common that the two had become inextricably associated with each other in folklore. And they wonder why everyone thinks of them as heathens and witches. Kody’s nose wrinkled at the smell that wandered out from the camp to meet them. It was a pungent blend of cooking fires, cattle, and rotting vegetables. No doubt there were other perfumes mixed in there too, but he didn’t care to think about them.
Reds and yellows began to appear through the trees off to their left, the first sign of the colorful Adali tents. Their bright hues blended into the surrounding woods surprisingly well during autumn and summer, but now that the leaves had fallen, they stood out like wildflowers after a forest fire. They were as out of place as the Adali themselves, who should long since have headed north for the winter in search of warmer climes. As the trees gave way to a clearing, the rest of the settlement came into view. It wasn’t especially large, probably home to no more than a hundred or so individuals. And they seemed to have only modest possessions, even by Adali standards. Aside from a clutch of about thirty skinny cattle grazing near a single wagon, the only livestock Kody could see was a handful of goats that competed with the ravens for the choicest pieces of garbage. The tents looked old and weather-beaten, and the children that emerged from them to watch the horsemen approach were scrawny.
Kody scanned the trees for signs that more cattle were about, but he couldn’t see any. No horses, no bleating of sheep. Could this really be all the livestock they had? If so, this clan would be awfully low down the food chain of Adali society. They’d be isolated, marginalized, even preyed upon. It was a depressing fact of Adali life that the weaker clans were at constant risk of attack, raided for cattle and slaves. Sometimes the raiders came from the south, from Braeland and beyond, but more often, they were Adali from rival clans. Young women and children were especially vulnerable, since they could be kept for wives and workers, or sold as prostitutes in the south. This clan should have moved back north weeks ago, but they obviously felt too exposed to roam among their own kind. Kody wondered if that would make them more likely to talk, or less.
A pair of dogs came bounding out of the camp to meet them, their excited barking announcing the arrival of visitors. “Do you think we’ll get anything out of them?” Kody asked quietly. The Adali were a secretive lot, especially when it came to police investigations.
“Hard to know.” Lenoir eyed the dogs warily as they loped alongside the horses. His stallion’s ears were pinned back, warning the dogs to keep their distance. “Sometimes they cooperate if they think it will avert suspicion from their kind. But in this case, since the dead man is Adali, I doubt they will be very helpful. The Adali are fiercely loyal to one another, and protective of their ways. If there is justice to be meted out, they prefer to do it themselves.”