The tinker's name, Aldric discovered after three days of methodical inquiry, was Silas Mott. He had been a wanderer all his life, moving from village to village with his cart of pots and pans, repairing kettles and mending tinware. The records of the parish of St. Gile's noted his presence only once—a brief annotation in the margin of the 1802 register, marking him as a stranger who had lodged at the riverside inn on the night of the fishmonger's death. After that, he had vanished into the hinterlands, leaving no trace but the memory of a bent man with a sharp eye and a sharper tongue.
Aldric had employed a private inquiry agent, a discreet man named Thurston who had once been a constable and still maintained connections with the vagrants and peddlers who moved through the duchy. Thurston had returned two days later with news: Silas Mott was alive, or had been six months ago, and was living in a hospice for the destitute in the mountain village of Grimstone, some fifty miles from Verraine. He was old, dying, and had been heard to mutter strange things about a fishmonger and a stolen name.
The news landed like a stone in Aldric's chest. He had hoped the tinker was dead, had prayed for it, had offered silent invocations to whatever gods might listen. But the man lived, and he was talking, and if he was talking to the hospice nurses, he might soon be talking to the wrong people. Aldric could not afford to wait. He must go to Grimstone, must see Silas Mott for himself, and must ensure that the tinker's final confession was spoken only into the void.
He made his preparations in secret. He told Emile that he was travelling to the country estate of a nobleman to consult on a legal matter, and that he would be gone for three days. He packed a small valise with essentials, and he placed the vial of foxglove tincture in his waistcoat pocket—a precaution he hoped he would not need. His carriage would take him to the edge of the mountains, and from there, he would hire a local guide to lead him to Grimstone.
The journey was arduous. The road wound through dense forests and across rocky passes, the landscape growing more austere with each mile. By the time Aldric reached the foothills, the sun was setting behind the peaks, casting the world in hues of amber and violet. He dismissed his coachman and found a guide—a taciturn youth named Micah—who led him on foot through the last few miles of mountain track. They arrived at Grimstone after nightfall, the village no more than a cluster of stone cottages clinging to the side of a steep ravine.
The hospice was a low, whitewashed building at the edge of the village, its windows dark, its door worn by years of use. Aldric paid the guide and approached alone. He knocked, and a nun in a grey habit opened the door, her face etched with the weariness of a life spent tending the dying.
"Visiting hours are past, sir," she said. "But we have a room for travellers, if you need rest."
"I am here to see Silas Mott," Aldric replied, his voice steady. "I have been told he is a patient here. I am an old acquaintance, and I have come a long way to speak with him before he passes."
The nun hesitated, then nodded. "He is very weak, sir. He will not last the night, I think. But he has been asking for someone—a magistrate, he said. He has a confession to make, or so he claims. I will take you to him."
Aldric followed her through a narrow corridor, past small rooms where the sound of laboured breathing filtered through closed doors. The nun stopped at the last door and pushed it open, revealing a small chamber lit by a single candle. On the bed lay a figure so thin and wasted that Aldric almost did not recognise him as human. Silas Mott was a skeleton wrapped in yellowed skin, his eyes sunken, his hands curled like claws on the rough blanket.
"Silas," the nun said gently, "a visitor for you."
The old man's eyes, clouded but still sharp, turned toward Aldric. A long moment passed, and then a recognition flickered in those depths. "You," he whispered, his voice a dry rustle. "The boy from Cinderwharf. The magistrate."
Aldric stepped into the room, and the nun withdrew, closing the door behind her. He stood by the bed, looking down at the man who had watched him commit murder forty years ago. The man who had seen him emerge from the alley, his hands red, his eyes wild, and who had said nothing.
"Silas," Aldric said, his voice low. "I have come to hear your confession."
The old man laughed—a terrible, rattling sound. "My confession? You, of all people, come to hear my confession? You, who have spent a lifetime hiding your own sins? You are a bold one, I'll give you that."
Aldric leaned closer. "The nun said you were asking for a magistrate. You wanted to speak to someone. Here I am. Tell me what you know, and I will see that you are given a proper burial—a Christian burial, with a priest and a consecrated plot. That is more than you have now."
Silas Mott stared at him, and for a moment, his sunken eyes seemed to gleam with something like amusement. "You think I want a plot? A stone? What use are they to a man who has spent his life on the road, sleeping under hedges and dying in strange beds? No, my lord—I asked for a magistrate because I wanted to give you a gift."
"A gift?"
"The gift of absolution," the tinker said, his voice fading to a whisper. "I have kept your secret for forty years. I have carried it like a millstone around my neck. And now, at the end, I want to release it. I want you to know that I am not your enemy, and I never was. I am the only one who can save you, because I am the only one who knows the whole truth. And the whole truth is this: I saw you kill the fishmonger, and I saw you take his purse. But I also saw you weep, afterwards. I saw you kneel in the mud and sob like a child. You were not a monster that night. You were a boy who had done a monstrous thing, and you were horrified by what you had become."
Aldric felt the words hit him like blows. He had not wept. He had not knelt in the mud. He had been cold, calculating, his hands steady as he pulled the coat from the dead man's shoulders. But the tinker's memory, twisted by age and guilt, had turned the boy into something else—a figure of regret, of human frailty.
"You are lying," Aldric said, but his voice wavered.
"I am telling you what I saw," the tinker said. "And I am telling you this, so that you can forgive yourself. You have spent forty years building a fortress of justice to keep the truth at bay, but the walls are crumbling, and you know it. Let them fall, my lord. Confess. Not to the world, but to yourself. You will find no peace in the grave if you carry this secret to it."
Aldric stood frozen, his hand on the vial in his pocket. He had come to kill the tinker, to silence him forever. But the old man was already dying, already speaking his piece, and killing him now would accomplish nothing—would only add another ghost to the chorus that already haunted his nights.
He withdrew his hand from his pocket and sat down heavily on the chair by the bed. "Silas," he said, "I came here to end you. I came here with poison in my pocket. But I find that I cannot. Not because I am merciful, but because you have already done the thing I feared most—you have made me see myself clearly."
The tinker smiled, a thin, fragile curve of his lips. "Then I have done my work," he whispered. "Now go, my lord. Go back to Verraine and live the life you have built. But remember this: the dead do not forget, and neither do the living who carry their memory."
Aldric rose and walked to the door. He looked back at the old man, whose eyes were already closing, his breath shallow, his face at peace.
"Goodbye, Silas," Aldric said. "I hope you find the peace that I have never known."
He left the hospice and walked into the cold mountain night, the stars sharp and distant above him. He had not killed the tinker. He had not been forced to. But he had been given something he had not expected—a glimpse of himself as he might have been, had he chosen a different path.
He made his way back to Verraine in a daze, the words of the dying man echoing in his mind. He arrived at the Old Palace on the third morning, exhausted and hollow, and found Emile waiting for him with a pale, troubled face.
"My lord," the young clerk said, "you have a visitor. He has been waiting for two days. He insisted on seeing you personally."
Aldric felt a chill of dread. "Who is it?"
Emile hesitated, then said, "It is the King's Advocate's secretary. He has a sealed letter from the capital. He says—" He paused, swallowing hard. "He says the investigation into the death of Joseph Marchek has been reopened. A witness came forward, my lord. A dying man who sent a deposition to the Advocate."
Aldric's legs gave way, and he sank into a chair, his face as white as the winter frost. Silas Mott. The tinker. He had spoken, after all. He had spoken not to the magistrate, not in confession, but in a deposition that had been sent to the highest authority in the land.
The game was over. The walls had crumbled. And the dead, at last, had found their voice.
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