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Once was luck. Twice was coincidence. Thrice—
Thrice was a nickname in the paper. Thrice was odd looks from fellow prosecutors when they crossed in the hallway. Thrice, and Barok stared at the wall of his office, his next case file ignored on his desk and his glass of wine untouched.
A jury had declared Chalan Musgrave innocent, and within the week he had been crushed by a falling block at a construction site. Luke Strachan had been acquitted on a technicality, and a month afterward stumbled down the stairs of his flat. Now, only six days following the end of Ivy Winn’s trial, during which she had bribed the jury into a ‘not guilty’ verdict, she was run down by a carriage in the street.
Barok van Zieks did not consider himself a superstitious man. He had been educated as a prosecutor on the principles of logic and suspicion. He could not deem it fate. If people were dying in unusual circumstances, the natural conclusion was that something was killing them.
He considered the evidence as he would for any case that crossed his desk. The three decedents had been quite different, but for the fact that all three were the scum of the earth. To the best of his knowledge their paths had never crossed in life. All had been unjustly acquitted due to an intimidated jury or mysteriously missing evidence, and in each case he had been the prosecutor. He himself was, therefore, the obvious suspect.
But unless he had unknowingly taken up the habit of sleep-walking — sleep-murdering — he knew he could not be to blame. The evidence too supported his innocence: at the time of Musgrave’s death he had been at Lady Vester’s engagement party, Strachan perished while he was prosecuting another trial, and he was attending a lunch with Dr Wilson as Winn died. His alibis were quite irrefutable.
And still three souls were dead.
Perhaps in a twisted way it could be called justice, but he was more preoccupied with the method than the underlying moral philosophy.
A knock on the door interrupted Barok’s line of thought. He admitted his visitor, a detective delivering the autopsy report for his upcoming trial, and by the time he was alone again his thoughts were firmly on his actual work, and not at all concerned with how the newspaper had named him the Reaper of the Bailey.
On his way home he discovered not everyone forgot so quickly.
“Die, Reaper!” snarled a voice from the shadows, and the shape of a man flew at him from the black.
In the space between action and reaction, exhale and inhale, Barok almost sensed an ally at his back drawing a sword to protect him, as though Klint were still—
Foolish sentiment; he knew very well how alone he was. Foolish too that he had no blade to defend himself.
The man came at him with a knife and a vengeance, and even in a fight for his life Barok van Zieks thought only of Genshin Asogi: the man who had defended him in just such a dark alley, and the man who ran his brother through with a sword. It was Genshin Asogi’s knife he was blocking, it was Genshin Asogi’s nose shattering beneath the heel of his hand, it was Genshin Asogi who he left crumpled on the cobblestones of the alley.
—It was the ghost of Genshin Asogi he felt at his back, not his brother.
He closed his eyes, and opened them, and the man at his feet was a common criminal, one of the Crossmark gang. Of course. No one had tried to assassinate Barok on Klint’s merits for more than a year, and this man was no exception. No, he was here with a knife in the dark because Ivy Winn was dead, and there was no one to blame but—
The mantle of the Reaper settled on his shoulders, heavy and silent. He breathed shallowly beneath its weight and sent for the police.
Following this incident he began to carry his brother’s sword wherever he went.
Barok once more reviewed the files for the newest case Lord Stronghart had assigned to him. It was late at night — truthfully more morning than evening — and his office had grown cold, but he could not bring himself to stop. There was a queer feeling in his throat, like a shard of bone caught in his oesophagus, but he had not eaten for more hours than he cared to count and no matter how many times he swallowed it would not go away.
On what must have been his hundredth read of the same seven pages the words began to blur before his eyes, and he stared uncomprehending at the file for long enough that he fell into a sort of half-sleeping trance. When the clock tower on the building’s exterior chimed six he stirred, and went to seek an audience with Lord Stronghart.
“Lord van Zieks. What an unexpected pleasure. You have three minutes.”
He wasted no time. “I would like to be taken off the Fawns case.”
Lord Stronghart regarded him coolly. “On what grounds? I am not in the habit of letting junior prosecutors refuse cases with no cause.”
“I apologise for the overstep.” Barok bowed. “I believe I am ill-suited for the case. There are inconsistencies—”
“Do you doubt Scotland Yard’s judgement in making the arrest?”
“Certainly not.” Fawns’s guilt was all but assured; he had been seen leaving the scene with the murder weapon in his hands, and Barok’s investigation had yielded no convincing alternative. If there were some reasonable explanation, that would come to light in the trial. Besides, the duty of a Crown prosecutor was not to ascertain the guilty.
“Then explain.”
“There are — other factors to consider if I were to be involved as the prosecution.”
“Such as?”
He opened his mouth, but no words would come. His theory was only half-formed, and absurd even to his own mind; he could not present it to the Lord Chief Justice.
“Barok.”
He started at hearing his given name from Lord Stronghart’s lips. The man had called him that only once before, when Barok had come to him with an equally outrageous request—
“Yes, My Lord?”
“This wouldn’t be about that ridiculous title they’ve been calling you, would it?”
He was compelled to look away. It was no surprise that Stronghart had heard about it, he supposed.
Before he could formulate a response Stronghart laughed, a deep boom that sent birds scattering in the rafters. “Come now, Lord van Zieks. You cannot tell me you’re so vainglorious as to be swayed by the public’s opinion of you?”
“It isn’t that, My Lord.”
He was not lying. He did not particularly care what some overly imaginative journalists called him. No, it was the lack of a motive for Fawns to have killed Saxon. It was the discrepancy between the position of the fatal wound and the witness’s statement.
Above all else, it was the fact that he was capable of recognising a pattern.
There were holes in the case, and while he trusted Scotland Yard to have investigated to the best of their ability and the courts to determine the truth of the matter, at this time he was not himself convinced enough of Fawns’s guilt to, effectively, sentence him to death.
“Call it superstition, if you like. I simply do not wish to prosecute this case.”
He steeled himself and raised his eyes. Lord Stronghart was looking at his pocket watch, not at him. Barok’s shoulders relaxed a fraction.
Then Stronghart sighed. “Perhaps it was a mistake to allow you to prosecute Asogi.”
He stiffened again. “My Lord?”
“I fear you are in danger of becoming too personally invested in the outcomes of your trials. You are a Crown prosecutor. Your opinions on a case — your superstitions, if you like — are irrelevant in a courtroom. When a case is put before you, your duty is to acquire a guilty verdict.”
Barok swallowed hard. “I am capable of keeping my personal views out of the courtroom, My Lord.”
“Very well,” Lord Stronghart said at last, shutting his watch. “I’ll assign Prosecutor Holland to this case, but I expect you not to make a habit of refusing assignments.”
“I will not.” He bowed through the tangled relief and shame. “Thank you, My Lord.”
“Lord van Zieks.” Now he looked down at Barok, eyes ablaze. “I see great potential in you. I trust you will not prove me wrong.”
“I… I shall endeavour not to disappoint.”
Holland took the prosecution and won the case. Fawns was deemed guilty and summarily executed. The Reaper of the Bailey had nothing to do with it.
Certainly the coincidences that were so obvious to the public were not lost on Scotland Yard. Barok could not say it was a surprise when he entered the lobby of the Prosecutor’s Office one morning to find Tobias Gregson and Lord Stronghart both awaiting him.
“Mornin’, Lord van Zieks. Mind if we have a word?”
“Good morning, Lord Stronghart, Inspector.” Barok was very aware of the curious eyes of his colleagues on the interaction. “Am I to accompany you gentlemen somewhere, then?”
“Don’t get the wrong idea,” said Gregson. “Nothin’ official happening here. Just a friendly conversation, understand? But Ennis Langhorne was found dead last night.”
That was five, then.
“Perhaps your office might be suitable for this conversation,” Lord Stronghart suggested. “If you would, Lord van Zieks?”
“Of course, My Lord.” Barok suppressed his irritation and led the way to his office. He would have preferred to be discreetly summoned to the Yard directly over the indignity of a visible confrontation, informal though it may be.
Only once they were all well settled in his office did Gregson say, “We won’t be taking up too much of your time, Lord van Zieks. Only, there have been a few incidents with past defendants of yours, and we at the Yard have a duty to investigate the matter.”
“Precisely what are you saying, Inspector?”
He scowled. “Now, no need for the theatrics. No one is accusin’ you of anything.”
“While I have the greatest of respect for your methods, I would prefer if you were explicit about your purpose here today. I dislike working on implications alone.”
God help him, but he needed to hear it. He needed someone to admit that it was more than coincidence and public paranoia, this spectre shadowing him.
“Of course I’m talkin’ about the bloody Reaper of the Bailey,” said Gregson, and Barok bowed his head in acknowledgement.
“I am aware of what the papers have been calling me,” he said levelly.
“Let’s just cut right to the chase, yeah?” Gregson took a bite from a packet of chips he’d brought. “Where were you on the afternoon of 14th September last year?”
They proceeded through alibis apace. It was not difficult. Despite his general dislike of social engagements, calendars had aligned such that Barok had very reliable witnesses as to his location during each death.
“And you wouldn’t be hiring someone else to do this sort of work for you.”
“No.” That was almost a more repellent thought than that it was by his hand directly. He should like to think that if he wished someone dead, he would be honourable enough to commit the deed himself. “I would be happy to provide my ledgers as proof.”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary at this time.” Gregson looked at Lord Stronghart. “Satisfied?”
“That is up to you and Scotland Yard, Inspector.”
“Right.” Gregson scowled and took a furious bite of his chips. “We’ll do a formal investigation, just to tick all the boxes. But I’m convinced, Lord van Zieks.”
He did not sound happy about it. “I thank you,” Barok said, and wondered, not for the first time, whether the detective hated him.
“Got any idea who it is?”
Barok hesitated. His eyes slid almost without his mind’s leave to the portrait on the wall. He was not a superstitious man, and yet…
“Lord van Zieks?” prompted Lord Stronghart when the silence stretched too long.
“Pray forgive my discourtesy,” he murmured. “I know how this will sound…”
“Surely, my dear prosecutor,” Stronghart interrupted, “you are not about to suggest the gossip rags are correct, and the spirit of your elder brother — may his soul rest in peace — is slaughtering the wretches you let escape justice?”
“No — no, certainly not.” He did wonder — he had once wondered — but — surely Klint would never. No, he feared it was—
Genshin Asogi at his shoulder, blade drawn, face stone-calm as it had been throughout that whole horrible trial. Genshin Asogi, his bloodlust unsated by the lives he had already claimed, reenacting the ripped-out throats of the corrupt aristocracy with weapons far subtler than fang and sword.
“Never mind. A passing thought only. As I am aware of no decisive evidence, it would be remiss to cast blame.”
“Conscientious as ever, Lord van Zieks,” Lord Stronghart said. He leaned back in his chair. “Truthfully, the press is making too big a fuss about this. My opinion — if it is only a series of unrelated incidents, of course — is that this is a benefit to London. Our streets are far safer cleared of this garbage.”
Barok could voice no disagreement. Gregson only bit into his chips pensively, and said, “Well, we’ll stop botherin’ you now, Lord van Zieks.”
“Thank you for your work, Inspector.”
The detective left with a tip of his hat. Lord Stronghart followed, but stopped in the doorway. “Lord van Zieks.”
“Yes, My Lord?”
Stronghart regarded him with grave concern. “I had taken you for a strong man, but I see you have doubts about your role.”
“Pray forgive me,” he said hastily.
“No, no. You’re only a man, van Zieks.” Stony eyes fixed on his. “Can you bear this?”
“I hope so, My Lord,” Barok found himself saying.
Lord Stronghart did not look pleased. “Hope means very little in our line of work.” He turned to go, and threw over his shoulder, toneless, “Be certain.”
The parlour of the van Zieks ancestral manor was decorated in the Neoclassical style. Sleek pillars sent long shadows across furniture in muted tones. Above the mantel a family portrait looked down on all that occurred within the parlour walls.
Late in the evening, in the empty echoing silence, the last Lord van Zieks poured himself a chalice of wine and sat across from the portrait.
One year had passed since his brother’s death.
It was several minutes, the wine swirling undrunk in his glass, before Barok gathered the courage to lift his eyes to the portrait and look upon the faces of his family. In their expressions he could see only reproach.
Once, the van Zieks family had been regarded with respect. They were the pinnacle of society and an honour to the country. They were gone now, all of them, his grandparents, great-grandparents, his mother, his father, his brother, even his poor sister-in-law. Barok van Zieks was the last of the name, and — his grip tightened on his wine until the glass squeaked beneath his gloves — look what he had done to it.
He could almost see Klint standing before the mantel, casting a critical eye over all Barok had wrought since his death. Only one short year on, and to all London the van Zieks name was synonymous with dread and death. A monster, a phantom in the shadows: the Reaper of the Bailey.
There had been a time when all Barok wanted was to make his brother proud. He had hoped to do so at Klint’s side as a prosecutor, unerringly honourable, but now he understood how little such hopes meant. Now he wanted nothing so nebulous as honour or pride, but only to ensure no one else need see their older sibling bloodied and decaying, betrayed by one they trusted.
Klint was dead, his murderer as well, and this endeavour fell to Barok alone.
No, not alone. He had with him, not beside him but enshrouding him entirely, the Reaper.
Could he bear it?
He breathed slowly and deeply. The heady aroma of wine blotted out the scent of decay.
The van Zieks name may be tarnished, and his own life constantly endangered, but Lord Stronghart had been correct. The streets were far safer now than they had been before his pseudonym was coined. Violent crime was at a record low across London. Criminal organisations were unable to fill their ranks. It was even rumoured that one of London’s most notorious assassin guilds was on the verge of disbanding. The cause could not be denied: they feared the wrath of the Reaper.
Should he not be pleased? Was his family’s legacy, even his own life, worth more than the health and happiness of millions?
To become a prosecutor Barok had sworn an oath before the Queen that he would faithfully represent the law in order to uphold the peace of the British Empire. At the time he was sworn in the Professor still stalked the streets, casting doubt upon even Britain’s most distinguished institutions. Barok had seen in Klint’s devotion to finding the monster the true meaning of the oath. With that as his guide he had sworn his vow. Klint’s death had only redoubled his conviction. To this day that oath guided his every word in the courtroom.
But then why should the oath be limited to the courtroom?
What better representation of the law, what better upholding of the peace, than to be the face of Death, haunting those who might defy it? What a gift he had been given, to accomplish precisely what he wanted. What a deal with the devil, to accomplish it only through blood on his hands, and if it damned him…
And if it damned him?
Klint stared solemnly back at him, his face shadowed. Certainly he would know there were causes more important than personal salvation. Klint had been desecrated in death — autopsied, sliced open like a common criminal — and with that final sacrifice exposed the identity of the Professor.
Slowly Barok became aware of a dull pain in his palm. He looked down to find that the wineglass had shattered in his grip, the shards slicing into his hand, his glove deep red. He could not tell what was wine and what was blood.
Irrelevant, he supposed. His life was not his own. Had he not sworn it years ago? Blood, body, and mind belonged to Queen and country.
Yes, he would stand at the prosecutor’s bench. He would let the Reaper do its bloody work if his logic failed. He would bear the fear of all London and withstand the attempts on his life. If a Reaper was what it took to prevent another Professor, if it cost only his life and his family name and his soul, then the Reaper he would be.
He cast the shards of glass into the cold hearth, where they chimed and rang like the great bells of London. To Klint and to the portrait of his family, he said, “I pray you forgive me.”
He doubted they would, but it was of no consequence. Bound for Hell as he was, he would never again face them.
In many ways it was easier to be the Reaper than to be only Klint’s younger brother. Klint had been a legendary prosecutor and respected nobleman, and until this point Barok had felt himself a pretender, a pale imitation of his brother.
Now he became a walking nightmare in the courtroom, and outside its walls he refused to play the delicate social games of the nobility. Scotland Yard’s formal investigation had in no way convinced London of his noninvolvement in the series of deaths. If anything the rumours only grew worse, as in the public’s mind he had gone from a mortal murderer to some sort of phantom or demigod, able to snuff out life from afar.
So be it. He found some obscure satisfaction in crafting the persona of the Reaper to fit the legends. A dearth of sunshine had left him pale, and he added to his wardrobe a black cloak to complete the grim palette. In a show of flagrant disrespect for the court he poured wine for himself frequently, though he rarely drank of it — he could not risk being forced to defend his life while anywhere short of sober — preferring instead to perform absurd theatrics with the chalices. When bats took up lodging in the vaulted recesses of his office he did not discourage the infestation. For his mannerisms he drew on a childhood spent play-acting at contemptuous high nobility and began to condescend to defendants, witnesses, and the opposing counsel alike.
Truly he believed the charade melodramatic when taken together, but the public in and out of the courtroom did not find it so. There was something horrific about its efficacy. Defence attorneys — intelligent men and women, whom he had respected — were frightened to face him. Londoners crossed to the other side of the street when they noticed his approach. The defendant for one of his cases, an insidious assassin who’d slipped the hangman’s noose thrice already, was so shaken by learning the Reaper was to be the prosecutor that he turned white and babbled out a confession before Barok had said two words to him.
It was an appalling amount of power, granted by nothing but an epithet and a change in bearing, and along with it came an undeniable exhilaration. He smashed a bottle of wine and felt a dark thrill surge in his chest when the entire courtroom flinched. He willed his quickened pulse to slow, unable to face the echo of Klint lingering in his peripheral vision.
Still he received only accolades from Lord Stronghart, rather than what he deserved for the disgusting misuse of his position: the jaws of the Professor’s beast tearing out his throat.
No matter. So long as his heart, such as it was, continued to beat, he would play his part in the vast grinding machine that was justice.
Despite the fact that most rooms in the van Zieks manor had stood empty for more than a year, Barok had retained all the family’s servants. Perhaps his parents would have bemoaned the profligacy, but many had been part of the household since Barok’s childhood. It had seemed an act of cruelty to force them out of work.
One sweltering August evening he arrived home to a flurry of panicked activity, and discovered that the cruelty had been in their retention.
“What the devil is happening?” he demanded of the nearest maid, Marilda, and through tears and with regular interruptions from other maids, the cook, and eventually the police, the story came out.
Callan, the butler who had served the van Zieks family for nearly two decades, had answered the door to a stranger with the appearance of a nobleman asking after the Lord van Zieks. Upon Callan informing him that Barok was not at home, the stranger grew enraged and demanded to be let in to await his arrival. Callan had refused, and after a brief argument the stranger drew a pistol and shot him.
It had not been a clean shot. The bullet had gone through his stomach at a diagonal, and Callan — demonstrating incredible bravery even while in what must have been excruciating pain — had willpower enough to shut and bolt the door, barring the furious murderer from the manor.
The visitor, by the footmen’s description, had been an associate of the Reaper’s latest victim.
A quarter of an hour later Barok had arrived home, six minutes after Callan had bled out on the divan in the parlour.
“He didn’t want to be put there, my Lord,” Marilda quickly assured Barok. As though the furniture was his concern. “Mr Sullivan and Mr Tarnay carried him there, as they thought he might be more comfortable while awaiting a doctor, but he would never have allowed it if he — if he had—”
“No,” Barok said softly. “I quite understand.”
It should have been his own blood, not Callan’s, staining the divan, soaking into the antique rug. He had been naïve to pretend the walls of a manor were protection enough to cast off the Reaper’s mantle. He knew very well the types of people the victims of the Reaper and their ilk were. Anyone who stood between them and Barok — that was, anyone with whom he associated, no matter how incidentally — was in equal danger to Barok himself.
For his complacence a man under his aegis was dead.
The following morning, once Callan’s body had been remanded to the morgue and the Yard had completed what investigation they could, Barok gathered together all the servants of the household.
“I would like to offer my thanks for your years of service, and my deepest apologies for the events that occurred last night.” He cast his gaze across the ashen faces collected in the foyer. No doubt few of them had slept. “It has become clear to me that I must release all of you from employment. On the dining table you will each find an envelope containing an appropriate pension,” enough for each of them and their families to live on for some five years, “in recognition of your excellent work.”
Silence, and then a hesitant, “If I may, My Lord…” Marilda dipped into a curtsy. “I would prefer to stay on, if it’s all the same to you.”
There were murmurs of agreement across the room. Ludicrous. A colleague of theirs had been slaughtered and they wished to endanger their own lives in turn?
“It is not all the same to me.” Barok’s voice came out cold. His experience in court had not been for nothing: he found himself instinctively burying his incredulity beneath the stony facade of the Reaper. He redoubled the effect. What use did that demigod the Reaper have for servants? “This is not a test of your loyalty. This is not optional. You are all dismissed, effective immediately.”
There was still recalcitrance plain in several of their stares. Very well, then. He let his gaze harden, the Reaper closing in. “Anyone who remains on the manor grounds after sunset today will be considered trespassing and turned over to the police. I will handle your prosecution personally, and be assured, you do not wish to face me in court.”
If nothing else that convinced them. Stubbornness gave way to shock, and shock to fear. It was an oddly difficult thing to see from those he knew well, but the practice was welcome. Barok set his jaw and kept the mask of the Reaper steady on his face until sunset, when at last the manor was empty of any other living soul. Even the dead did not deign to speak with him, though Asogi lurked in every mirror and Klint around every corner.
He found no peace in the emptiness.
The attempted murders became routine. It was good Klint had taught Barok well with a blade, as had—
It was difficult in a life-or-death battle not to use every tool at one’s disposal. Still, whenever he noticed himself angling his blade in the Eastern fashion that he had been taught on summer afternoons some four or five years ago, he forced himself to square his feet and turn his stance back to an English form.
This was not without its dangers. One chill eve, with fog thick and nearly purple over London, three assailants appeared from the murk, armed to the teeth. Barok had incapacitated one, scared off a second, and was lining up a finishing stroke for the third when he realised his sword was aligned for a robe cut in the Nipponese style. He corrected himself sharply to a proper mandritti, and in the change lost a precious few degrees of coverage, through which his adversary’s blade slipped and cut a deep diagonal slash between his eyes.
Barok reeled back, lashed out blindly with his sword, sustained a second cut to the face, stumbled to the ground, and for an instant fully anticipated the mercy of death.
Before he felt a sword in his chest, a gunshot rang out. His opponent shouted and, as best Barok could see through the blood sheeting down his face, ran for it.
An elegant voice swore in a very inelegant collection of consonants. “I missed the bastard. I’m no good with guns. Lord van Zieks—”
Barok wiped blood from his eyes and squinted up at the vague shape of white and black. “You always were better with a scalpel, Dr Stevens.”
“It’s Dr Sithe now,” said Courtney, “but this is hardly the time, Lord van Zieks. Will he be back? No, stay down.”
He abandoned his attempt to rise and simply lay back at her direction. “Possibly, now that he’s seen that the Reaper can bleed.”
Dr Sithe was kneeling beside him, heedless of the blood and grime of the pavement, and bringing out bandages and ethanol. “The Reaper?” she echoed, sharp as a scalpel’s edge.
“Every one of London’s criminal underground would like to see me dead.” His tongue was looser than normal; he could only blame the blood loss. “He’s come much nearer than any others have managed.”
“You are not dying today, Lord van Zieks. The wound is likely to scar, but that ought to be the worst of it.” She wiped blood from his face, and he gritted his teeth against the bite of the ethanol. “I had taken you for a better swordsman than your display. One might be tempted to believe you were trying to die.”
“Pray tell, how can you be certain I wasn’t?”
She slid him a dubious sideways glance before returning her focus to obtaining and threading a needle. “You’re a fastidious man, Lord van Zieks. If you intended to end your life, you would find a method that would not leave a pitiful mess on some godforsaken back alley of London. Arsenic, perhaps.”
“That may prove difficult to source without raising questions,” he said drily. “An overdose of laudanum would be simpler.”
“Are you a penny dreadful character? Better a bite from a venomous snake.”
“And where am I to find an appropriately deadly snake in the middle of London? No, I might prefer simply to fall asleep in the bath.”
“At least have the dignity to die clothed, My Lord. Have you considered a noose?”
He recoiled at that, his head scraping against cobblestones, his wound stinging. “I am not guilty enough to be hanged.”
“No,” Dr Sithe agreed, perfectly cold. “Close your eyes and hold very still.”
It took twelve stitches before she was satisfied. Barok was of the opinion the wound could have made do with seven, but he was in no position to complain; a professional’s twelve was far better than his own blind seven might have been. He thanked her, and added, “I suppose it is my good luck that you were passing by.”
“Good luck indeed.” She snapped her medical case shut. “Do take greater caution in the future.”
“I did not realise you cared.” He had a professional enough working relationship with Dr Sithe, but even disregarding the Reaper’s aloof mask she kept him, perhaps everyone, at a cool arm’s length.
Rather than platitudes, she said, “Lord Stronghart would not thank me to let you bleed out in the street,” which Barok found refreshingly honest. “But if you ever do find yourself in need of arsenic, you know where to find me.”
“Thank you, Dr Sithe.”
“Good night, Lord van Zieks.”
The next morning it became clear that along with the stitches and the arsenic he had a third cause to thank her. The papers said nothing of his injury; instead the headlines were concerned with the Reaper’s newest victim, who had met his end due to a collapsing bridge over the Thames. Barok had a perfect alibi, as at that very same moment he was receiving stitches from Dr Courtney Sithe.
Rough wooden crates surrounded the stark grey-and-crimson that served as the centre of Barok’s latest case. The murder had been drawn out, and the scene was rather distasteful. If the defendant, Chancellor Aron Bell, was guilty, he was a crueller man than his disposition would suggest. The warehouse floor was streaked with patterns of blood implying a series of movements that Barok was in the midst of unravelling when a timid voice called from behind him.
“P-prosecutor?”
He blinked, and lost his place in his reconstruction. Annoyed, he whirled on the woman who dared interrupt him. “What?”
She flinched back, eyes wide in fear. He took in her well-made but dusty dress, the locks of hair coming loose and frazzled from her elaborate updo, and how she cringed back from him as though expecting Death himself to descend any moment.
More evenly, he said, “Pray forgive my discourtesy.” She might have been a witness. There was something familiar about her face, though she looked more well-to-do than those employees of the warehouse with whom he had already spoken. “What are you doing here?”
She visibly swallowed, gathered her courage, and said, “Prosecutor… Lord Reaper. My name is Rosalie Bell.”
She performed a fine curtsy as Barok felt his face tighten in dismay. “You are the defendant’s… wife?”
She curtsied again. “Aron is my older brother, Lord Reaper.”
Ah.
“I see,” he said. There was a cold, sharp sensation cutting through his chest, and his mouth was suddenly very dry.
“Please, My Lord,” she was trembling, but she met his eyes still with a determination that ached to witness, “have mercy on him.”
Lord, but she was young. Surely she could be no more than twenty-two, twenty-three.
Young, he thought, as though he at twenty-eight was so much older. And yet he had been her age or thereabouts when Klint—
He folded his arms across his chest, as though that would relieve the feeling of shattering glass where his heart should be, and fixed his gaze above Miss Bell’s head. “Madam, the truth will come out in the trial.”
“But if he is innocent…” A rustle of cloth. Barok looked down, and immediately regretted it. She had fallen to her knees, there upon the filthy warehouse floor, her hands clasped before her in supplication. “My Lord, he is the only family I have left. Our parents are both gone. Please, do not let him die.”
Numb, Barok could think of nothing but that she was going to dirty her dress.
“Miss Bell, this is unbecoming of you. If he is innocent, then he will be acquitted.”
“And then — and then will you spare him? If he is innocent?”
Frankly, it made no difference whether her brother was innocent or guilty. He was doomed, a lamb splayed upon an altar, a wheatstalk bending before the swing of the scythe. Both knew this.
He could not bear to look at her a moment longer. He turned his back, and saw the form of the Professor, accursed hound at his side, silhouetted against the grey warehouse wall. Miss Bell seemed a proud woman, and yet she grovelled before him in the hope it may save her brother. Had Barok the opportunity he would not have hesitated to beg on his knees before that monster Asogi to spare his own brother’s life.
Miss Bell might as well be pleading with the Professor’s ghost for all the good this conversation would do her. It was far too late in the proceedings to assign a new prosecutor to the case, even if Lord Stronghart wished to indulge another of Barok’s whims, and Barok had no control over the Reaper.
He tore his gaze from Asogi’s blank eyes and turned back to Rosalie Bell. “Your concern for your brother is noted. I assure you that I will treat him justly.”
The Reaper, however—
“Is this woman bothering you, Lord van Zieks?” At last the detective charged with overseeing the crime scene had deigned to notice the intruder.
“Not at all, Detective,” he said smoothly, and extended a hand to help Miss Bell to her feet.
She ignored it utterly, rising alone and curtsying to both Barok and the detective. “Please consider what I’ve said, Lord van Zieks.”
No doubt he would, at uncomfortable length. There was a faint buzzing in his ears. He watched Miss Bell leave the warehouse, and forced his breath to remain even.
He prayed Aron Bell was guilty.
Aron Bell was not guilty.
It was obvious an hour into the trial, but Barok held out on intimidation and technicalities for four. At last the opposing counsel, who proved himself a brave man even up against the Reaper of the Bailey, put an end to it and called upon the jury. The verdict was quick and unanimous, and Chancellor Bell was released into the embrace of his joyful younger sister.
Barok donned his cloak and walked home quite alone. He decided upon the longer route, the one which passed through Greenwich Park and, incidentally, a winding path of about an hour’s walk through the seedier parts of south London.
Remarkably, no enemies of the Reaper showed their faces that day.
Barok took a small dinner and went to bed, where he stared at the ceiling for several hours, entirely awake, his heart insisting on continuing to beat in his chest.
The next morning upon his reporting to the Prosecutor’s Office, a bailiff met him in the lobby.
“Your sword, Lord van Zieks. It seems you left it in the courthouse antechamber.”
“How foolish of me,” he said dully, and took the sword.
The news of Chancellor Aron Bell’s death was printed in the morning edition of the London News some two weeks later. Evidently he had contracted an unexplained fever and died in hospital within the day. The paper included a sketch of the man and his sister created by an artist immediately following his acquittal. Both of them were smiling in the picture, and now one of them was dead.
Barok had not been reading the news since that trial, but over lunch a colleague delivered a copy to him. He read the article through thrice, then abandoned what remained of his meal and returned to work. He finished the report he was working on within an hour, delivered it to the Lord Chief Justice’s office, then fastened his cloak tight around him and took a cab home far earlier than the proper end of his work day.
He made it as far as the entrance hall of the van Zieks manor before his legs gave out, and he crumpled to his hands and knees and vomited directly onto the pale marble floor.
He remained there for some time, shaking, convulsively heaving, the contents of his stomach spattering across the stone upon which generations of his proud family once walked.
When the Reaper had first struck, when he’d read in the paper that Musgrave had died in an accident at a construction site a mere few days after his acquittal, his first thought was a savage Good.
Immediately he had been ashamed of his response, but he could not deny even to himself that the thought had arisen. Now, entirely the Reaper in name if not action, could he truly blame whatever phantom actually wielded the scythe? Had he not, in his very thoughts, condoned, even commended its actions?
Fourteen men and women had been slain by the heartless Reaper, and for almost five years he had borne the title as though it was his own. In the eyes of the world it may as well have been his hand that struck them down.
He gagged and retched, hands clenching spasmodically into fists. The world? In his own eyes as well, for did he not know, each time he took the bench, what the outcome would be? Rosalie Bell had begged him for mercy, and still he had not been able to look her in the eyes and claim anything but that he would cut down her elder brother. One quick thrust, just a single opening remark in court, had been the fatal wound.
Asogi, that damned spectre, stood impassive before him, and now, equally guilty, Barok could summon up no hatred for him. The Professor had gotten his due; where was the iron mask and hangman’s noose for the Reaper? Acid burned in the back of his throat. He tasted blood. Fourteen lives he had let the Reaper claim, and he was certain of the guilt of twelve of them, perhaps eleven. Two or three innocent lives, in exchange for the safety of all London: could he bear it? How many mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, sisters and brothers must he effect the deaths of — must he murder — in the name of the greater good? Deified, demonised, reviled, venerated, the last of his name, the Reaper of the Bailey; beneath it all he was still nothing but a man.
His hair was matted to his face with sweat and bile stained his cloak by the time he finally forced himself to rise and seek out something with which to scrub the floor.
What a curse he had, the Reaper of the Bailey. What a gift.
Great gears spun on all sides of the Lord Chief Justice’s office, the clockwork upon which London and its justice ran. Barok stood opposite the man who had given him fair retribution for the life of his brother, the man to whom he owed more than any other living person, and said, “I intend to take a leave of absence.”
Lord Stronghart hardly looked at him, instead checking the time on his pocket watch. “Denied. You are an excellent prosecutor, and you have seen the benefits to the country resulting from your work. It would be irresponsible of you to stop now.”
From behind the prosecutor’s bench Barok had stared down both the worst of humanity and naïve innocents with equal stoicism. Now he folded his arms and faced Lord Stronghart with the same practised expression, braced for the oncoming storm.
“Respectfully, My Lord, this is not a request.”
Lord Stronghart closed his watch with a snap.
He glowered down at Barok, pressure heavy in the air. Barok kept his court face level over the shame twisting inside of him. Stronghart had risked so much to give him the opportunities he had; he would be well within his rights to be frustrated, furious even, to see his protégé now succumbing to weakness and cowardice.
The gears clacked once, twice. He waited for the torrent of rage, for Stronghart to demand that he stay or to curse his name — and perhaps that would be a blessing: the anger, the fight, something raw and burning and real in Barok’s life of chilly solitude.
But instead the storm broke. Stronghart’s face softened into something akin to sadness, and he reached out to clap Barok on the shoulder, familiarly, almost the same way Klint used to. Barok had to force himself not to flinch; unexpected contact usually prefaced an attempt on his life.
“Well, of course I cannot force you to carry on as a prosecutor, Lord van Zieks. If you must stop, then you must.”
The sudden shift, the giving of ground where he had expected a parry and riposte, left Barok off-balance. “I — I must, My Lord. My sincerest apologies for the suddenness of my decision.”
Lord Stronghart only shook his head. “Klint would be disappointed.”
Barok closed his eyes. “I know.”
He could imagine his brother, heartbroken, standing before him — or was that the face of Aron Bell? Dead and buried, the both of them, leaving behind grieving siblings; was there any difference?
“Your prosecutor’s badge, if you please.”
He opened his eyes to find Lord Stronghart extending his hand, expectant. Immediately he touched his badge — Klint’s badge. “But—”
“You understand why you cannot wear that as a retired prosecutor, I trust?” It might have been pity in Stronghart’s expression. “No need to fear, Lord van Zieks. I will hold on to it for you, so that if you ever decide to return to the prosecutor’s bench you may don it once more.”
“…Certainly.”
As indifferently as he could, as though it was not the very soul of his brother he was unfastening from his coat, Barok handed the badge over to Lord Stronghart.
“Thank you, Lord van Zieks.”
Barok gave a deep bow. His chest felt at once lighter and heavier. He did not look forward to what emotions may await him when he dropped his court façade — the façade of the Reaper, that was.
He averted his gaze from the space ahead of him where the memory of Klint stood. He did not wish to see the betrayal in his brother’s eyes.
Was this how Asogi had felt as he stabbed Klint through the heart?
“Objection!” His fist slammed into the table, cold wood, solid as steel. “The witness’s statement is a blatant lie.”
The defence counsel sneered. A gavel banged twice. The defendant laughed. He was already bleeding out, a wooden splinter through his chest. He was suffocating, his throat crushed by a loose waterpipe; his limbs had been trampled by a runaway horse; he spat up blood green-tinted by poison. Barok’s hands were red with it. His sword was dripping.
“Objection!” called the defence, but his client was already doomed, dying, dead. The courtroom a murder scene.
Barok clawed his way from the dream and caught his breath alone in his bedchamber.
He put little stock in dreams. As a single instance this would have no effect on him.
It was not a single instance.
It had become rare for Barok to sleep through to daybreak without waking from some horrific nightmare of death or another. Without the structure and pace of cases to delineate his time, the days blurred together into a muted fog. Consequently his nights grew ever more vivid, outpacing the waking world in colour and sensation. As months slipped by he feared he may be losing the tenuous grasp he had on the realm of the living.
Still he did not rescind his decision, for the simple reason that the only occupation worse than this would be continuing to prosecute.
Sometimes he thought of Courtney Sithe and her promised supply of arsenic.
He never approached her. He did not wish to give Genshin Asogi the satisfaction.
One afternoon as Barok walked along Fox Street there was a tug on his cloak. He whirled on his assailant, his sword halfway out of its sheath by the time he realised his presumed attacker must be about a metre tall to have pulled on his cloak from that angle.
“Iris, leave the nice man’s clothes alone!” yelped a voice from halfway down the block.
The small pink-haired girl let go of his cloak and crossed her arms. Barok released his grip on his sword hilt and turned to go.
“My most humble apologies — ah! Mr Reaper!” said that same, rather irritating voice. “What a fortunate happenstance.”
Barok had heard that particular obnoxious tone before. “Sholmes,” he acknowledged as the man himself caught up to his wayward — daughter, presumably, or perhaps an assistant of some ilk.
“Mr Reaper, might I beg just a moment of your time?”
“No.” He tugged his cloak closer around his shoulders to keep it safely out of the reach of any other children and resumed his brisk pace down the street.
The unfortunately long-legged Sholmes kept up with him with little trouble. “Really, it won’t take more than a quarter hour. I require your assistance.”
“Are you in need of an assassin, Mr Sholmes?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Then I fail to see what you imagine the Reaper of the Bailey might do for you.”
“A case, of course! I have come across quite the mystery, Mr Reaper, and I believe you are just the person to help me solve it.”
“Surely your young assistant provides all the help you need,” he said drily.
“Innocent lives are in danger, Lord van Zieks.”
“A matter for the police, then,” Barok deferred, but he could not claim to be wholly unaffected by how Sholmes’s voice had dropped into utter sincerity at that statement.
“And if the police are themselves the danger? Who else can then be trusted but the man who put Emmit Day behind bars and freed poor Geneva Robin from the grip of the Amethyst Brotherhood?”
Barok slowed, and then halted altogether. He recalled the case in question. He had, in fact, won that trial, earning a conviction for the corrupt inspector behind the Amethyst conspiracy. Very few people ever paid attention to the Reaper’s victories, when his losses and their macabre aftermaths were far more sensational.
“What exactly are you asking of me, Mr Sholmes?”
The detective laid out the situation over a café table. A young couple had received a series of blackmail letters from an unknown party. Sholmes had concluded someone at Scotland Yard was responsible, based on nothing more than the type of envelope, the colour of ink, and some inane reasoning. The basis was questionable, but the theory itself was not entirely nonsensical. To Barok’s mingled gratification and annoyance — the last thing he wished to do was to encourage the ‘consulting detective’ to accost him on the street in future — he recognised in the letters a particular misspelling of Wednesday that often featured in Constable Lem Keiler’s reports. Truthfully, the idea that Keiler was blackmailing members of the public to bolster his own arrest rate explained quite a lot about his behaviour.
“I’ll let Gregsy know,” said the oddly cheerful child, and off she ran. Barok frowned after her, and then at Sholmes, who grinned in return, the countenance of an utter lunatic.
“Pray tell, by that nickname does your esteemed assistant mean Inspector Tobias Gregson?”
“But of course, my dear Reaper,” returned Sholmes blithely. “They are friends, Gregson and Iris.”
“…Undoubtedly.” There was no reasoning with a madman. “Now are you quite satisfied?”
“But of course. You have my eternal gratitude, and, I am quite sure, that of Mr and Mrs Roan.”
Barok gave a short bow of acknowledgement and rose to leave. Sholmes, never content even to have the last word, asked to his back, “Will you be prosecuting Constable Keiler when he goes to trial?”
“No.”
“Why not? You are unquestionably the most qualified prosecutor in London for the task.”
“Excessive personal investment,” Barok said flatly. “Good day, Mr Sholmes.”
“Well, merely take a step back, my good fellow! Learn to let go, or you risk mistaking inkblots for a coded message!”
Strong words from a man who had just formed an entire theory around the colour of some ink. “Good day, Mr Sholmes,” he repeated, and walked away.
Mad the detective may be, but the interaction did stick in Barok’s mind. Sholmes had an irritating habit of never being fully wrong.
In the end he left London.
He spent a year at the seaside, far from the Old Bailey, far from the ghosts who judged his every step. The change jarred at first. He had become accustomed to the severe morality of the Reaper, and could not think except in its patterns.
He walked along the rocky shores of the English coast and found in the desolation of grey sky and sea and in the grim cries of birds a bleakness that felt like peace.
The climate was warmer. He did not need a cloak.
Slowly his mind shifted, tumbled like a stone in the waves. Some months breathing sea-salt air instead of smog, with the susurrus of water instead of the clatter of carriages, gave him clarity enough to consider that the Reaper was not some spectral force but a human working.
It was not an easy idea. He examined the concept from several directions, tentatively approaching it as he might a skittish horse.
He walked along blustery cliffsides where ancient trees bowed in the wind, and thought: human hands had deliberately murdered each of his acquitted defendants.
He watched birds wheel and caw against the vast cerulean dome of the sky, guided by instinct and inscrutable whim, and thought: some hunter had chosen him as their pointer and used him as their camouflage.
He took rambling trails through deep woods decked in autumn glory, flame orange and rust red crackling underfoot, and thought: he had two paths before him. He could disappoint Klint: stay in retirement, trusting the Reaper would stay their hand for as long as the field of victims lay fallow; or he could delight Asogi: return to the courts knowing the anonymous assassin would wield their scythe, and damn the consequences for any innocents caught in its arc.
He sat awhile atop a fallen tree, the bark covered with pale lichen, the inside hollowed for the homes of rodents, and thought: he could never satisfy the dead.
If the Reaper was human, the ghosts which had trailed him for years, the shape of Klint ever just ahead, of Asogi always at his back, were nothing but bitter sentiment. They should have been laid to rest eight years ago, at the conclusion of that trial and the following execution. To all the world they were gone, long decomposed, their souls moved on to other realms.
All the world but Barok van Zieks, that was, who for eight long years had carried them with him, as though they were all part and parcel of the title of Reaper.
He could not go on catering to the inkblot whims of the dead. It was time to cast off the shroud, to leave the past behind, to let the dead stay buried where they belonged.
So leave aside the ghosts, his slaughtered kin and executed foe, and the decision came to whether it would be juster to ensure those who escaped their sentence paid for their crimes, or to bar a killer from practising their art.
He returned through soft snowbanks to the cottage overlooking the merciless sea, his ears full of the crash and chirr of the endless waves, and thought: what did it matter? It was not his duty to determine justice.
Leave aside too the paralysing question of justice. There was a third path available. It seemed to lead over the edge of a precipice, but there was an honour in such an end.
The answer was quite simple. There was once more a murderer stalking the streets of London. As a Crown prosecutor it was his duty to bring the guilty party to trial and obtain his verdict.
The Reaper was merely human, and so could be caught. All that was necessary was a well-laid trap.
Barok was not a hunting man, but he knew the basics. To be effective a trap required bait.
Barok van Zieks strode back into Hell, in the form of the Lord Chief Justice’s office, some five years into his leave of absence.
“I want the McGilded case,” he said, and Lord Stronghart laughed.
“It’s yours,” he said, without evasion or flourishes. A balanced match of blades.
“Thank you.”
He could bear once more the mantle of the Reaper of the Bailey. Without hesitation, without remorse, without delusions of the dead. Magnus McGilded was guilty. Justice would find him: if not by judge and jury, then the executioner that was the Reaper.
And Barok, in turn, would find the Reaper.
How arrogant he had been to imagine the dead could stay dead.
When the trial began Lord Barok van Zieks, the Reaper of the Bailey, felt a chill down his spine as though his own buried corpse had been unearthed from the grave. It was no corrupt or cowed attorney facing him across the courtroom. Instead some fool of a Nipponese exchange student, like all his ghosts come back to haunt him, stood for the defence, and from that moment everything — everything — changed.