Instructed: to keep alive such standing inquiries as the client shall from time to time direct, and to advise upon their ripening. Ostrand and Sons, general retainer, entered nine years past
The woman came to Cadder Fen in October in a hired chaise that could not get within a mile of the church, and she walked the last of it in good boots that had never been in a fen before, and she was sixty-nine years old and she did not stop once.
Su’inn watched her come up the causeway from the church wall for about ten minutes.
That is Marren.
“I know.”
You do not know. You have never seen her.
“You have been looking at somebody coming up that path since she was a quarter of a mile off,” said Su’inn, “and you have not said one word, and I have known you for a year and a half.”
She got as far as the gate and stopped, and put a hand on the post, and stood there getting her breath in a way she was clearly furious about.
“I am not going to pretend,” she said. “I have not got the wind for it. You are the vessel.”
“I am Su’inn Ulmat.”
“Yes.” Marren looked at her. “I know what you are called. I have known for eleven months. I have a copy of a ward register from Kettle Ward and a copy of a chapter finding from the ninth of last year and a copy of an assessment made in a transfer house in the spring, and I did not get any of them honestly, and I am sixty-nine and I am not going to spend this afternoon being ashamed of it.”
Su’inn stood with her back against the wall.
“You are his.”
“I am his family,” said Marren. “That is a different word and I would like it used.”
She did not ask her in. She thought about it, briefly, out of nine years of habit about old women who have walked a mile, and then decided against it and stayed on the wall, and Marren stayed at the gate, and they had the whole of it out in the open with about twelve feet of wet grass between them.
“You moved my date.”
“Yes,” said Marren.
Su’inn had not expected it to be that quick and it took her a moment.
“You are not going to make me prove it.”
“You cannot prove it and I am not going to help you,” said Marren, “and I am also not going to stand at a gate and lie to a woman who is entitled to hear it. Both of those are true and I have had a year to arrange them.” She had her hand on the post. “Ask me the thing you actually want to ask. You have got about twenty minutes before I have to sit down.”
Su’inn, said Azaelis.
“Not yet.”
Marren’s head came up about half an inch.
“Is he saying something?”
“He has been saying something since you came round the bend and I am not letting him.” Su’inn kept her voice flat. “The inquiry. Twenty-one years old, lapsed at seven and renewed at fourteen by a woman who is dead, and renewed a third time three years ago by a party the firm would not name.”
“Yes.”
“Why.”
“Because there were eleven of them,” said Marren.
The fen was very quiet.
“There were eleven standing inquiries in four wards that had gone past their second renewal and had a decent chance of coming to something,” said Marren, “and they cost between four and eleven shillings each, and I have kept the whole eleven alive for nine years, and Ostrand advise me twice a year on which of them are ripening. That is the word in the retainer. Ripening.”
“You keep old murders alive.”
“I keep old inquiries alive. The murders happened without me.” Marren said it without any heat at all. “And I did not do it to catch you, madam, because I did not know you existed. I did it because a certified vessel comes out of a conviction, and a conviction comes out of an inquiry, and there are eleven months in a queue and my Azaelis has four months of body and no possible way to know that in advance.”
“That is.”
“I know what it is.”
“You have been farming.”
“Yes,” said Marren. “For nine years. Before that I did it badly and by luck, and by luck he nearly went into a girl with a bad heart because there was nothing in the province, and I sat in a room and listened to a man I have known my whole life work out whether to do it, and he was going to, and I could see him going to.” Her hand had not left the post. “So I stopped leaving it to luck. And I have not had one night’s difficulty about it, and I have had eleven months to find out whether that was going to change, and it has not.”
Su’inn stood against the wall.
“And when the inquiry ripened.”
“When it ripened I did nothing at all, because it does not need me. A ward register goes to a province, a province matches a name, a bench sits. That is all machinery and it runs on its own and I have never touched a piece of it.” Marren looked at her steadily. “The only thing I have ever done with my own hand, madam, is your date. There was a schedule and there was a line in it, and I sent a letter, and it moved eleven months.”
“Why.”
“Because he had four months and the queue would have given him nothing until the spring after, and by the spring after he would have been in a cart on a road somewhere with his hands gone.” Her voice did not change at all. “You would have hanged in June. I made it April. That is the whole of what I did and I would do it again tomorrow, and I want you to understand that I am not saying that to wound you.”
“You have taken eleven months off my life.”
“I have taken eleven months off your life,” said Marren, “and I have given about thirty years to a man who has been in my family for four generations, and I did the sum, and it came out, and I am aware that it came out because I was the one doing it.”
Su’inn, said Azaelis. Let me speak to her.
“No.”
She has walked a mile in a fen at sixty-nine.
“I am aware of what she has done.”
Su’inn. She is going to die in about four years and she has come here to be told something by me, and she is standing at a gate being told it by you, and every minute of this that she gets from your mouth instead of mine is a minute she is going to have for the rest of her life.
“Yes,” said Su’inn.
There was a silence.
Ah, said Azaelis.
“Yes.”
You are doing it on purpose.
“I am doing it on purpose.” She did not take her eyes off the woman at the gate. “She farmed eleven inquiries for nine years and moved a date with a letter and she has not had one night’s difficulty, and she has come here in a hired chaise to be forgiven by the only person in the world whose opinion she wants, and she is going to have to stand in a fen and get it secondhand from the woman she bought.”
That is cruel.
“It is extremely cruel,” said Su’inn, “and it is four minutes of my life a day, and I want you to notice that this is the first thing I have ever spent one of them on.”
Marren waited.
She stood at the gate with her hand on the post and she waited for perhaps two minutes without saying anything at all, and she did not fidget and she did not prompt and she did not ask what was being said, and Su’inn watched her do it and understood exactly where four generations of not reacting had come from, and hated that she understood it.
“Madam,” Marren said at last. “Is he angry with me?”
Su’inn stood on the wall.
She thought about a boy with a leg who would be tired at thirty. She thought about eleven inquiries in a drawer at a firm of attorneys, ripening. She thought about an old woman walking a causeway in good boots at sixty-nine because she wanted to be told something to her face.
She thought about eleven hundred hours, and about the fact that this would come out of them, and that there was no version of it that did not.
“I do not know,” she said. “Ask him.”
And she let go.