Thirteen Stitches

Chapter Three: The Bearer

At 7:05 a.m., the noise at the front desk stopped all at once.

Ezra lifted his head from the wall of the holding cell. He hadn't slept. Through the bars he watched a small woman come down the corridor with an ivory-handled cane, her white hair cropped short and her black coat buttoned to the throat. She couldn't have been taller than five feet, yet two veteran officers with sixty years on the job between them stepped back against the wall to let her pass.

"That's Odile Fenn," one muttered. "Thought she retired."

"She did. Hasn't lost a case since 1979, though."

The retired solicitor stopped in front of Ezra's cell and studied him the way Abel studied a bolt of cloth, checking the weave for flaws.

"You have his jaw," she said. "Good. Sergeant, I'm Mr. Lockwood's counsel. I'll need a private room and his personal effects, including his clothing."

"Ma'am, property doesn't release until..."

"Until his attorney requests garments for a court appearance in less than two hours. I wrote that rule in 1983, Sergeant. I'm fairly confident about the wording."

Ten minutes later, Ezra sat in a windowless room with the gray coat spread across the table between them. Odile checked the door, then the wall clock. It read 7:18.

"How is he?" Ezra asked. "Nobody will tell me anything."

"Alive. I called the hospital on my way here. Critical, but alive." Her voice softened for exactly one sentence, then hardened again. "Now listen closely, because we don't have time for me to say anything twice."

She took a small pair of scissors from her bag and turned back the coat's lining at the hem. Ezra had worn this coat every winter for eleven years. He had mended its pockets and replaced its buttons, but he had never looked under the inner silk. Abel had sewn that lining himself and said it was never to be opened, and Ezra had thought it was sentiment.

It wasn't. Beneath the lining was a second layer, and sewn into it, edge to edge, were thirteen silk panels the size of a man's palm. Twelve carried embroidered crests. Ezra recognized some from engraved invitations and brass plaques outside buildings where he'd delivered suits. A ship's wheel. A pair of scales. A rearing horse. Beneath each crest was a signature stitched in gold thread, and each panel was fixed to the coat by a single gold cross-stitch at its upper corner.

"The Draycotts, the Castellanes, the Hallorans, the Varnes," Odile said. "The families who own Calder Bay."

"Why are their names inside my coat?"

"Because in 1986 they nearly lost everything." She sat, both hands folded on the cane. "There was a market collapse that year, and people still call it the Black Tide. Banks failed, ships rotted in the harbor, and half the founding families were days from ruin. Your grandfather dressed every one of them. He held something that saved them."

"What did he have?"

"That isn't mine to tell." She said it simply, and Ezra knew he wouldn't move her. "What matters is the price. Each patriarch signed a panel and swore one favor to the bearer of the Lockwood name. You call it by cutting that family's binding stitch." She touched a gold cross-stitch. "Once it's cut, they must grant the favor. It can never be refused."

"It's thread, Mrs. Fenn."

"It's thread, and it's thirteen sealed envelopes in my vault. Each holds one family's darkest secret. Any family that refuses a favor sees its envelope opened. Abel made sure every one of them knew it."

Ezra stared at the panels. Eight hours ago he had been a man who fixed hems in a dying quarter of the city. Now the most powerful families in Calder Bay owed him, if he could stay out of prison long enough to collect.

"Then they need me," he said slowly. "If they owe me, I'm safe."

"No." Odile's voice dropped. "There's one more rule, and it's the reason you were attacked last night. Abel never wanted this debt to outlive his family. If the last Lockwood dies, I must burn every envelope unopened, and every debt dies with him." She leaned forward. "The moment you stop breathing, thirteen of the richest families in this city go free."

The room felt suddenly cold. Ezra thought of the masked men in their handmade shoes, and of Pembroke and his property transfer. Take the coat or bury the man wearing it, and either way someone walked free.

His eyes went to the last panel in the bottom corner. It was smaller than the others and bore no crest at all, only a date stitched in thread so dark it was nearly black.

He knew that date. He had known it since he was nine years old, the night the apartment fire took his mother and father and left him standing barefoot in the street.

"Why is that here?" His voice didn't sound like his own. "That's the night they died. It has nothing to do with 1986."

Odile glanced at the clock. It read 8:02.

"I know what it is," she said quietly. "And you'll ask me again, I promise you. But in fifty-eight minutes you stand in front of a judge, and right now you have to choose."

Ezra forced his gaze away from the date and across the crests until it stopped on the pair of scales.

"The Varnes," he said. "They run the courts."

"A sound choice, with one complication." Odile's mouth thinned. "A favor must be asked of the family's head, in person, with the panel present. Ambrose Varne signed that panel. He suffered a stroke six months ago and hasn't spoken since."

"Then who do I ask?"

"He named a successor. I sent word to House Varne before I left my car." She rose, leaning on the cane. "The tailor's account is due. They know exactly what that means."

Quick, sharp footsteps sounded in the corridor, and the door swung open.

Isolde Varne stood on the threshold with a case file under her arm, already speaking. "Mrs. Fenn, I don't know what game you think you're..."

She stopped. Her eyes fell to the table, to the gray coat spread open and the silk panel bearing the scales, and to the name stitched beneath it in gold.

Ambrose Varne.

The file slipped from under her arm and hit the floor, and she didn't move to pick it up. The color drained from her face until she was as white as the silk.