The Witness for the Dead

by Katherine Addison

  Then, one day, she had met a man.

  She came home excited as her brother had never seen her, and her conversation was full of this Croïs Avelonar and what he said and thought for a week. Then, without warning or discussion, she quit her job and eloped, leaving behind a letter that explained nothing, apologized for nothing, and almost seemed to have been written by a stranger.

  Mer Urmenezh and his two other sisters (their parents being deceased) assumed sorrowfully that that was the last they would ever hear from Inshiran. But barely six months later, Inshiran wrote to announce her pregnancy. The Urmenada were elated, for they had thought it most likely that none of them would ever marry, being—as Mer Urmenezh said wryly—a family of recluses. Inshiran’s child might be their only chance for the family to reach another generation.

  They wrote back, assuring Inshiran of her welcome in their house—in fact begging her to visit—but the next thing they received was a brief, brusque letter from Avelonar telling them that Inshiran was dead and buried in the Airmen’s Quarter, and that was that.

  Except.

  Mer Urmenezh was tormented by the timing. Inshiran had just gotten pregnant, she had gotten back in touch with her family—and Mer Urmenezh was convinced, from certain phrases in her letter, that Avelonar had forbidden her to write to them—and then she died. Avelonar did not give a cause of death, nor any kind of explanation; he did not invite them to the funeral (which apparently had already happened by the time he wrote). The letter was so unlike that of a grieving widower that Mer Urmenezh had become convinced that he was in fact Inshiran’s murderer.

  One of his sisters, he admitted, thought he was deranged.

  But Mer Urmenezh had come to me because, if nothing else, he wanted to find Inshiran’s body. After that one letter, there had been no further communications from Avelonar, and letters to him had been returned marked UNKNOWN.

  I was puzzled by another thing. “Did your sister have any money of her own? Something that would tempt a man like Mer Avelonar into marriage?”

  Mer Urmenezh nodded grimly. “Our mother’s father—for she was an only child—chose to leave his money to her oldest daughter rather than to her family. Inshiran received a monthly allotment, most of which she contributed to the household, but the money remained under her control.”

  “And thus when she left, you lost that income.”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened to the money at her death?”

  “We have no idea. We do not know if she made a will.”

  “We shall have to find out. It also might help you locate Mer Avelonar. If anything was left to him, the lawyers must have some means of communicating with him.”

  “You are wise, othala.”

  “Merely practiced,” I said. “His behavior throughout has been that of a man who wants something other than a wife from his marriage.”

  “He has behaved vilely,” said Mer Urmenezh.

  “Yes. But our question is, where would he have had her buried?”

  “Wherever was cheapest,” Mer Urmenezh said bitterly.

  “Certainly that seems like a good way to start,” I said, and thus I had begun with the poorest cemeteries in the Airmen’s Quarter and had worked my way slowly through them.

  I had been sure when I reached Ulvanensee, the municipal cemetery, that I would find her there, for municipal burial was cheap. But in their enormous, centuries-old ledgers, where they kept all the names of the dead, Anora and his prelates had no record of burial for anyone named Inshiran, and I wandered the entire width and breadth of the cemetery and did not find a headstone for her. She had not been dead long enough to have been moved to the catacombs, for which I was thankful. At that point, finding her would have been impossible.

  But, no, she was not there. She was in Ulchoranee, where Avelonar must have been sure no one would ever think to look for her.

  I felt considerable satisfaction to have proved him wrong.

  * * *

  I spent the first part of the morning in my cold office writing a letter to Mer Urmenezh, informing him of my findings and giving him what advice I could on how to proceed. It was a grim task, but I felt that I had at least performed the duties of my office to the best of my ability. I told him that he should speak to the clerics at the Sanctuary of Csaivo about an autopsy. They might or might not be able to find evidence of murder this long after death—it would depend on how Avelonar had killed her, if he had, and how the body had decayed. But it was necessary that they look.

  I had no suggestions about finding Avelonar.

  Halfway through the morning, Iäna Pel-Thenhior appeared in the doorway. He was dressed with great elegance, this time in dark green with emerald chip earrings.

  I felt intensely shabby, but I set aside my pen and paper and said, “How may we help you, Mer Pel-Thenhior?”

  He bowed, echoing my formality, and said, “We have come to petition you to witness for the death of Arveneän Shelsin. And again, to offer our help.”

  I got up gratefully and said, “Then let us go examine her room.”

  * * *

  Walking across the Abandoned Bridge with Pel-Thenhior was a different experience. He seemed to know all the performers and street philosophers and most of the barrow-men. We actually stopped for several minutes while he haggled with one of them over a book, a squat duodecimo volume the approximate size of a half-brick. Pel-Thenhior apologized when he came back, but he was too pleased with his purchase for me to be irritated.

  “It’s The Complete Operas of Pel-Teramed,” he said, as if that would explain everything. Then he laughed and said, “I beg your pardon. Pel-Teramed was a southern Barizheise dramatist who lived about two hundred years ago. There was a fad for his operas in the elven cities when my grandfather on the Thenhior side was a boy, so that there are volumes of his operas floating around the great book—” He paused, searching for a word. “—the great secondhand book market that exists piecemeal across Amalo, one shop here, another barrow there. But it has taken a long time for the Complete Operas to circulate to me. Sadly, it’s scripts only, or we’d need a barrow of our own.”

  “Do you intend to perform one of his operas at the Vermilion Opera?”

  “I doubt it,” he said cheerfully. “They’re bloodthirsty old things and full of people swearing revenge over their beloveds’ literal corpses. But now that I own it, I can see if perhaps I can adapt something for a more modern sensibility. Or just enjoy them and the memory of my grandfather telling me the plots when I was little. That’s probably what made me want to write scripts as well as music, come to think of it. Because otherwise I’d be stuck writing music for other people’s stories.”

  “Do you still perform?”

  “I can,” he said, “but I’ll never make a principal singer, and in any event I’m temperamentally better suited to telling everyone else what to do.” He grinned, inviting me to enjoy the joke at his own expense, and I was surprised to find myself laughing.

  “You don’t laugh enough, othala,” said Pel-Thenhior. “Is it the nature of your calling?”

  “Not all prelates of Ulis are gloomy by temperament,” I said.

  “But you are?”

  I hesitated, Evru so present in my mind that for a moment I could not speak, and Pel-Thenhior said, “I beg your pardon. I should not have asked that question.”

  “It is a good question,” I said, “but I do not know the answer to it.”

  His brows drew together, but he said nothing.

  I said, picking my way through a morass of truth, “I have been grieving for a long time for someone who was very dear to me. And it is only recently that I have been shown that my calling did not die with them. I suppose I simply got out of the habit.”

  “That is very sad,” said Pel-Thenhior.

  I shrugged uneasily. “It is in the past.”

  “Is it? I think I would argue otherwise, but I do not mean to make you uncomfortable. Let us talk of other things. I mostly talk abou
t opera, which is very boring of me, so you should pick the topic.”

  “I have no gift for conversation,” I said truthfully.

  “That’s just because you haven’t had the right partners. Are you happy here in Amalo or do you miss the court?”

  “I hated the court,” I said.

  Pel-Thenhior’s eyebrows went up. “You are frank. Why did you hate it? Most people dream of going to the Untheileneise Court.”

  “I was there on charity,” I said. “Charity grudgingly given and grudgingly accepted. And being a member of my cousin Csoru’s household would sour anyone on court life.”

  He eyed me sidelong. “Rumor has it that you have spoken with the emperor.”

  “I have.”

  “What is he like? All we get are the lithographs of the coronation, and they don’t do justice to anyone.”

  “He is about your height and very thin. His skin is darker than yours and his eyes are very pale. In feature, he rather takes after his father.” I thought for a moment about how to describe Edrehasivar VII. “He is soft-spoken, patient, honorable.”

  “Will he be a good emperor, do you think?”

  “Yes,” I said with conviction. “He is now and he will continue to be.”

  The house on North Petunia Street was as I had left it, venerable lady on the porch and all. “Othala!” she said. “You are back and you have brought a friend.”

  “Min Nadin,” I said, “this is Iäna Pel-Thenhior, who worked with Min Shelsin at the Vermilion Opera. Mer Pel-Thenhior, this is Min Rhadeän Nadin.”

  Pel-Thenhior made a formal bow, which pleased Min Nadin greatly. She said, “You must be here about the closet. Vinsu is at her wits’ end.”

  “The closet?” said Pel-Thenhior.

  “Min Shelsin’s closet is remarkable,” I said.

  “Go in,” said Min Nadin. “Vinsu will only be relieved to see you.”

  “I am agog,” said Pel-Thenhior, and followed me into the house.

  Merrem Nadaran emerged from the back, her hands covered in flour, and said, “Oh, othala, you’ve come back!” Whereas with Min Nadin it had been a greeting, with Merrem Nadaran it was plainly a cry for help. “What am I to do with all those clothes?”

  “I have brought someone from the Vermilion Opera,” I said, feeling doubly fortunate that Pel-Thenhior was with me, “who may be able to help. This is Iäna Pel-Thenhior. Mer Pel-Thenhior, this is Merrem Vinsu Nadaran.”

  “Oh dear, and me all over flour. Please go up! I can’t leave my baking.” She vanished again.

  “I am even more agog,” said Pel-Thenhior.

  We climbed the stairs and found Min Shelsin’s room. The door was open and it looked as if Merrem Nadaran was starting to clean out Min Shelsin’s things. I crossed the room and opened the closet.

  After a moment, Pel-Thenhior said, “I understand Merrem Nadaran’s despair.”

  The great swirl of color seemed even brighter than I remembered. I said, “I thought perhaps Min Shelsin was borrowing her costumes from the theater.”

  “‘Borrowing’ is a very kind word, othala, but unfortunately imprecise. ‘Borrowing without permission’ would be closer. ‘Stealing’ would be closer still.”

  “I was afraid that might be the case.”

  “I am surprised and a little dismayed that no one ever said anything to me. Here’s Ishoru’s dress from Emperor Edretantivar.” He pulled an opulent pearl-white gown off the bar and all but threw it at me. “This is the dress the chorus wore in The Cavaliers of Zhaö five years ago. Anmura give me strength, here’s the Second Maiden from The Castle of Shorivee and the Eldest Rose from The Dream of the Empress Corivero. I wonder if she was planning to bring it back for our production this autumn.”

  “There’s another bar behind that one,” I said.

  Pel-Thenhior made a noise of fury and disappeared into the closet. I laid my armful of finery carefully on the bed.

  “She wasn’t even in Calistrana!” Pel-Thenhior shouted from the depths of the closet. “This is one of Amaö’s costumes. The wardrobe staff is going to have hysterics, joy or fury I don’t know which.”

  “Are they all stolen gowns?”

  “Only the expensive ones,” Pel-Thenhior said sourly.

  “How could she steal so many costumes and not have anyone notice?”

  “If you’d seen the Opera’s wardrobe, you wouldn’t ask that question. Osreian have mercy on us, is there another bar behind this one? This closet is like a dragon’s cave.” A pause full of rustling noises. “Yes, but there’s nothing stolen on it. Thank goodness. I’m not sure my heart could have taken it.” More rustling and Pel-Thenhior emerged from the closet, his braids awry and dust on his coat. “The problem is how I get all of these costumes back to the Opera. Arveneän clearly stole them just by wearing them home—someone must have known she was doing it, and I rather want to talk to that someone about what they were thinking—but I’m going to have to hire a carter. There’s just too many of them to carry without dragging them through the muck of the streets.”

  “Is there anything else we should look for that she might have stolen—or anything that the Opera can use? You said she had no family, and Merrem Nadaran clearly wants none of it.”

  “Gloves,” Pel-Thenhior said promptly. “We go through gloves at a pace you would not believe—and that’s with mending them until there’s simply nothing left to set a stitch in.” After a moment’s reflection, he added, “Also petticoats in good repair. I am very pleased with the idea of Arveneän somehow paying the Opera back for this monstrous theft.”

  “Restitution,” I said.

  He laughed. “I suppose.”

  “No, I’m quite serious. As a Witness for the Dead, it is part of my duties to see that the dead both give and receive restitution.” I started opening drawers, but was stopped almost immediately by a flock of pawn tickets like sleeping moths. “I think I know where all her jewelry went.”

  Pel-Thenhior came to see. “Oh dear,” he said. “Well, that’s beyond our reach.”

  “Yes,” I said grimly. “But perhaps the pawnbrokers will at least let me match the tickets.”

  “Do you need to?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Which means yes.”

  * * *

  We scavenged through Arveneän Shelsin’s room that morning, piling everything that belonged or might be of use to the Vermilion Opera on the bed. Merrem Nadaran was only too pleased to have the proportions of her headache diminished. Aside from the gowns, like the plumage of unimaginable birds, we took gloves, handkerchiefs, petticoats, combs and tashin sticks (many of which were also the property of the Vermilion Opera, recognizable by the tiny letters VO scratched into them with the point of a needle), silk stockings, and shoes.

  As we worked, Pel-Thenhior told me more about Min Shelsin in bits and pieces. He talked about her voice, which he said was “excellent but not incomparable. She talked about the Amal’opera, but she could never have been a principal there, and she knew it. And Arveneän loved being a principal. I don’t think she would ever have forgiven me for giving Zhelsu to Othoro.”

  “The Opera must have another principal mid-soprano,” I said. “It would have been in the papers if you were regularly casting a goblin woman.”

  “Wouldn’t it, though?” Pel-Thenhior said. “Merrem Anshonaran is away to have her first child. She stayed absolutely as late as she could. We will welcome her back.”

  “Not like Min Shelsin?”

  “Not in the least.”

  A little later, he said, “All singers are gossips—and I frankly include myself in that—but Arveneän enjoyed telling people things that would hurt them. She loved starting fights, although she hated being in fights herself.”

  “She preferred causing trouble unseen,” I said, thinking of one of my parishioners in Aveio.

  “Not a bad way of putting it,” said Pel-Thenhior, carefully bringing out from the closet’s second bar a midnight-blue dress made of velvet and layer aft
er layer of gauze dyed to match. “She hated to be seen for what she was, which was probably why she valued those two little clerks so greatly. They would always think the best of her and she needed that.” He laid the blue dress across the bed and stood staring at it absently. “This is a costume from The Masque of the Night Empress, which we performed to celebrate Prince Orchenis’s wedding. Just before the crash of the Wisdom of Choharo. And Arveneän stole it.”

  “It is a beautiful gown,” I said.

  “I don’t know why I’m surprised,” Pel-Thenhior said. “If she’d had any decency, she wouldn’t have been stealing from the Opera to start with.”

  “She might not have meant it to be stealing,” I said, a little hesitantly, for I was not sure if I believed my own argument.

  “You didn’t know Arveneän. This is thousands of muranai’s worth of costumes, and I guarantee she had no intention of ever returning any of them. She never let go of anything. Not a grudge, not a zashan. She was like a lamprey eel, and to tell you a horrible truth, I am not sorry that she is dead.”

  “Are you not afraid I will use that truth against you?”

  He stopped and considered me for a moment, then said, “No. You are honest and you serve Ulis faithfully. If you were merely looking for a convenient person to blame, you wouldn’t have made it as far as the Vermilion Opera in the first place.”

  “You are wagering rather a lot on your reading of my character.”

  “It isn’t a wager,” said Pel-Thenhior.

  * * *

  When we had the contents of Min Shelsin’s room organized into things the Vermilion Opera could use and things it couldn’t, Pel-Thenhior left to hire a carter. I went downstairs to talk to Min Nadin.

  It was not difficult to get her started talking, and I soon had another portrait of Arveneän Shelsin. This one was a good lodger: quiet, polite, always paid the rent on time. But she wasn’t friendly with anyone, not the other lodgers, not Merrem Nadaran, not Min Nadin herself. “And we tried,” she said, “but Min Shelsin wasn’t interested. The only thing you could ever get her to talk about was opera, and then she wouldn’t stop.”