The Witness for the Dead

by Katherine Addison

  Min Leverin’s blush was deepening by the second, but she said, “She made a bargain. She wouldn’t tell anyone about me, and I wouldn’t tell anyone when she took costumes home.”

  “Did you know she wasn’t bringing them back?”

  “Yes,” Min Leverin said wretchedly. “But I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to get D—my friend in trouble, and I couldn’t afford…”

  “I understand,” I said. “How long has this been going on?”

  “Two years,” she said.

  “What were you going to do when someone noticed?” Pel-Thenhior said. “You must have known it would happen eventually.”

  “I don’t know,” said Min Leverin. “Min Shelsin said it wouldn’t. She said there’s no inventory and nobody knows all the costumes down here. So I just…” She shrugged hopelessly. “Hoped.”

  “Did Min Shelsin come up with her ‘bargain’ immediately? Or did she have to think about what she was going to do?”

  Min Leverin frowned over that question for several moments. “She came to me the next day,” she said. “So I suppose she didn’t have to think very long.”

  “Blackmail would come naturally to Arveneän,” Pel-Thenhior said.

  “Did she ask your friend for anything?” I said. “Or just you?”

  “I don’t know,” Min Leverin said. “We haven’t … we haven’t really spoken since. But I don’t think my friend has anything Min Shelsin would have wanted.”

  “Thank you, Min Leverin,” I said. “You have been very helpful.”

  “You aren’t in trouble, Lalo,” Pel-Thenhior said. “And your friend isn’t in trouble, either. I’m not about to punish anyone for being in love.”

  Min Leverin put her face in her hands and sobbed.

  * * *

  As we walked back to the auditorium, I asked Pel-Thenhior, “Do you think she was blackmailing anyone else at the Opera?”

  “I’m afraid to speculate,” he said. “Certainly, we have proof that she wouldn’t balk at doing so if there was something she wanted.”

  “Not a question of whether she would, but of whether she could. I suppose then the question is whether anyone here had anything she wanted. Aside from the role you wouldn’t give her.”

  “She couldn’t blackmail her way into that,” Pel-Thenhior said. “No wonder it vexed her so.”

  I remembered my question about Min Shelsin’s salary, and Pel-Thenhior answered without hesitation, “Four thousand muranai a year. She was not the most highly paid of the singers, which galled her, but she was really senior principal in name only—just until Merrem Anshonaran can return from bearing her child.”

  “Is Min Vakrezharad now senior principal?”

  “Yes, although that won’t really count until we start rehearsing The Dream of the Empress Corivero. Until then, Toïno has the senior principal roles.”

  “And what do you do about the junior principal mid-soprano?”

  “Well, it can’t be Toïno,” he said with a grimace. “And Merrem Anshonaran can’t come back for at least another three months. We’ll have to hold auditions, and we’ll end up with three principal mid-sopranos where we only need two—although perhaps Amaö will be glad to have someone to share the weight.”

  “Min Vakrezharad won’t go back to the chorus?”

  “Not while I’m director here,” said Pel-Thenhior.

  In the auditorium, people were standing in small groups, some of them practicing harmonies, some of them gossiping. Pel-Thenhior called, “I need all principals on stage, please.” Several people on stage turned to face him like sunflowers; others emerged from the wings, all elven in coloring except Min Vakrezharad: four men and four women including Min Shelsin’s replacement. She looked nervous; the others merely seemed curious. Pel-Thenhior said, “Merrai and minnoi, if you would be so kind as to give Othala Celehar your cooperation. He is trying to find the person who murdered Arveneän.”

  Now they all looked nervous, which was normal. Few people had Pel-Thenhior’s self-assurance, to look a Witness in the face without flinching.

  “Do you want them one at a time or all at once?” said Pel-Thenhior.

  “One at a time,” I said, although I winced at the thought. But talking to people in a group allowed an individual to avoid saying anything, and with these singers I knew I could not afford it.

  I much preferred talking to dead people.

  Pel-Thenhior nodded and said, “We shall manage. Come up to the ticket office where there’s somewhere to sit and you can hear yourself think.”

  I spent the afternoon talking to singers, none of whom had liked Min Shelsin any better than Pel-Thenhior had, but none of whom wanted to admit it. Even Min Vakrezharad, who knew that I already knew of the animosity between her and Min Shelsin, was reluctant to speak frankly about her own feelings. Finally, I said, “I suspect you of nothing, Min Vakrezharad. I am merely trying to learn about Min Shelsin by learning how she affected the people around her.”

  She looked skeptical, but said, “It is not a secret that I did not like her, nor that she did not like me. Even when we were not in competition—for I never expected to become a principal, no matter how long I remained at the Opera—she acted as if I had threatened her.”

  “And she was very angry about Zhelsu.”

  “She was. Even though … it is not as if there are any other principal roles where I would be chosen before her. She could not bear that there should be any.” She stopped suddenly, looking horrified at herself.

  It was not uncommon for people to say more than they meant when talking to a Witness for the Dead. My teacher, Othala Pelovar, had said that it was because we were taught to listen, and that once you had learned to listen to the dead, the living posed no challenge. The elderly Witness for the Dead in Lohaiso said that anyone could achieve a similar result simply by keeping their mouth shut and letting people talk. I was never sure which I believed, but I had seen the effect over and over again. I had only had it done to me once since I first became a prelate of Ulis, and that had been by the emperor himself.

  I said, “I do not judge. I only seek the truth.”

  “The truth about Min Shelsin?”

  “The truth about her death. Why do you think someone would kill her? Not why someone might want to kill her, but why someone would actually do it?”

  Min Vakrezharad frowned, an alarming goblin scowl, but her face cleared as she caught the distinction I was making. “She … Arveneän liked secrets. She liked knowing things about other people, and it has always seemed to me that this is a very dangerous habit.”

  “True,” I said.

  “It was fairly harmless within the company—we all knew better than to confide in her—but I do wonder about her patrons and what one of them might have said to her that he then regretted.”

  The women also told me about Arveneän Shelsin’s patrons, in particular Osmer Coreshar, Osmer Elithar, and especially Osmer Ponichar, who had spent the most money on her and with whom she had had the loudest fights.

  “We all pretend not to hear,” said Min Lochareth, the senior alto, “but we all do hear. We can’t help it.” She had another suggestion for why someone might want Min Shelsin dead: “She was terribly expensive, you know. She always wanted more presents and more dinners at Hatharanee, and I don’t know that I ever saw a young man successfully extract himself until Arveneän was done with him.”

  “Was she so captivating?”

  “She was delicate,” said Min Lochareth, who was not, “and doe-eyed, and I saw the way they all looked at her and the way she looked at them. She was that captivating, and she didn’t like letting go of anything once she had hold of it. She was an awful person, othala, but even so, no one had any right to kill her.”

  Toïno Culainin, Min Shelsin’s luckless understudy, had probably observed her more closely than anyone, for she had to know her movements on stage as well as her singing part. She said, simply, “Min Shelsin did not notice me.”

  �
�But you noticed her.”

  “I memorized her,” said Min Culainin. “I can walk like her. I can gesture like her. But I cannot sing like her, although I do my best. Iäna will be holding auditions for a mid-soprano soon.”

  “A junior, correct?”

  “Yes. Othoro is the senior mid-soprano now, which Min Shelsin would hate. She disliked Othoro very much, because Othoro has the better voice. She disliked Voniän—our junior soprano—for the same reason. She saw herself in competition with everybody.”

  “That sounds a very fatiguing way to live.”

  “She seemed to thrive on it,” said Min Culainin. “Certainly, I never saw her tired or defeated. She lost fight after fight with Iäna, and it never seemed to discourage her in the slightest.”

  I thought of that appointment with the Marquess Parzhadel that she had not lived to keep. “Was that because of an indomitable nature or just bad judgment?”

  Min Culainin almost smiled. “Her judgment was very bad, to be sure. She never seemed aware that other people disliked her quite as intensely as she disliked them. And she was as greedy as a spoiled child.”

  “Would you say she had enemies among the company?”

  “Not enemies,” Min Culainin said, horrified.

  “You said she fought with Mer Pel-Thenhior.”

  “So does half the company, at one time or another,” she said.

  “But people disliked Min Shelsin. Who?”

  I had trapped her, though I felt no pride in it. “Cebris hated her,” she said after a long silence. “And Othoro—but how do you not dislike someone who dislikes you and makes no secret of it?”

  “I’m not judging anyone,” I said, “just trying to understand her connections with the people she saw and worked with every day.”

  “I don’t suppose any of us liked her,” Min Culainin said, and then put her hand over her mouth as if she could keep in the already escaped words.

  None of them, in other words, had any reason not to murder her, except Pel-Thenhior and Min Culainin herself. That was disheartening, both because it made my task as a Witness more difficult and because it was a sign of just how determined Arveneän Shelsin seemed to have been to destroy her own life.

  “Thank you, Min Culainin,” I said, and she could not hide her relief that I was letting her go.

  The men were not as helpful. Cebris Pershar, the senior tenor, was perfectly frank that he had despised Min Shelsin (as Merrem Matano had told me) and tried to know as little about her as possible; the other tenor, the man with “good” elven features, was twitchy with nerves and gave nothing but vague answers. The baritone seemed earnestly desirous of helping, but he knew as little as Mer Pershar. The bass was sullen and grumbling about losing rehearsal time. A thought struck me, and I asked him, “Do you think someone would kill Min Shelsin to sabotage Mer Pel-Thenhior’s opera?”

  I was expecting, No, of course not, and I did not get it. Mer Olora blinked, as if seriously considering the matter, and said slowly, “I don’t think so,” almost asking it as a question. “The only person in the company who hated it that much was Min Shelsin herself, but the question is the other opera houses. They know Pel-Thenhior’s come up with something new and scandalous, and they know that means their ticket sales will go down. You might inquire, othala, whether any of them is in particularly desperate financial straits.… Although there Arveneän is a strange choice. Her part simply isn’t that big.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know enough about opera.”

  He looked scandalized. “Well, you may take it from me that Arveneän’s death, while regrettable, is no serious impediment to the staging of Zhelsu. If it had been Othoro…”

  I noted, as I rode the tram home, what a common refrain that had been. Everyone at the Vermilion Opera seemed to think Othoro should have been the one murdered; I wondered for a moment if I should have warned her to be careful and then remembered that Min Shelsin had died in the Zheimela, which was about as far from the Vermilion Opera as one could get.

  And then I wondered if that was deliberate, if Min Shelsin had gone to the Zheimela because it was so far, in both the literal and the figurative sense, from the Opera. It occurred to me that if you wanted to meet someone and not have anyone else know about it—especially if you were an opera singer who lived in a boardinghouse and had no privacy—the Zheimela, say, for instance, the warren of the Canalman’s Dog, was exactly the place to go.

  But who in the world would Arveneän Shelsin want to meet with so much secrecy? That was a question that nothing so far had offered an answer to, and no amount of pondering could provide one.

  * * *

  The morning brought, just before noon, Mer Urmenezh, who looked as if he had slept no better than I. His sister Inshiran’s fate was enough to make anybody wakeful.

  “Mer Urmenezh,” I said, rising.

  “Othala,” he said, and remembered his manners enough to nod. He always reminded me of a toy clockwork heron one of my wealthy cousins had had, all bones and long legs, the resemblance helped by his long nose and weak chin and the round glinting lenses of his pince-nez. “Thank you for your letter. You have done so much for us already, but we have come to ask if you might do one more thing.”

  “Of course,” I said. “What can we do for you?”

  “We have ex … exhumed poor Inshiran and had a most uncomfortable conversation with the president of the collective of Ulchoranee, and we did as you suggested and petitioned for an autopsy and … and…”

  “Mer Urmenezh?”

  “The Sanctuary answered our petition much more swiftly than we expected. The autopsy is to be this afternoon.” His mouth worked for a moment, and then he blurted, “We wondered if you would represent the family.”

  “Me?” I said, involuntarily abrogating formality in my surprise.

  “We just…” And then he abrogated formality in turn. “I cannot watch them carve up my little sister. Othala, please. I am desperate.”

  “Of course,” I said, responding more to his pain than to his request; then I caught up with myself and added more rationally, “It is within the remit of our office, and we quite understand your reasons. Tell us when and where and we will be honored to represent the Urmenada.”

  And that was how I ended up attending Inshiran Urmenezhen’s autopsy.

  * * *

  The Sanctuary of Csaivo fronting the Mich’maika predated the city of Amalo by at least a thousand years. The elesth trees had grown gigantic the walls and walkways were covered with moss. The outer wall blocked the sounds of the Airmen’s Quarter and the canal traffic, so that it was truly a sanctuary. I had gone there often when I first came to Amalo and still walked there from time to time, when the jostling throngs of Amaleisei became too much.

  There was a novice waiting just inside the doors of the main building, goblin dark and elven thin. She bowed to me and said, “Are you Othala Celehar?”

  “I am.”

  “Then please follow me. Dach’othala Ulzhavar is waiting in the autopsy chamber.”

  “Do you see many autopsies here?” I asked, curious. I knew only that they performed them. My calling had not previously brought me to attend one.

  “One or two a week,” she said as we started down the stairs. She flashed me an apologetic smile. “Not everyone wants to go to a Witness for the Dead for their answers.”

  “There are many answers I cannot give,” I said.

  The lower floor of the Sanctuary was lit by gas globes. The massive stonework and the nearness of the canal made it cool and somewhat damp. The floor was tiled in mosaics of the sigils of healing, which mitigated the intimidating aspect of the ancient stones. The hallway led to a vaulted room with a colonnade of arches that were both lovely and utilitarian, as they made the open expanse possible, and with a gas globe on each pillar, there was a surprising amount of light—surprising until I looked up and saw the collector at the apex of the vault. In the middle of the room, beneath the collector, there w
as a slab-topped table, on which lay an object wrapped in a shroud. Standing beside the table was a middle-aged elven man in the green robes of a cleric of Csaivo, although I was insensibly heartened to see that beneath them, where he’d kilted the long skirts up to get them out of his way, he wore prosaic trousers and a worker’s heavy boots.

  He looked up at our approach and smiled. “You must be Othala Celehar. I am Csenaia Ulzhavar.”

  I bowed and said, “Thank you for letting me attend, dach’othala.”

  “About the lady on the slab. Can you tell me about her?”

  “She is Inshiran Urmenezhen, also known as Inshiran Avelonaran,” I said, and explained the story of seduction and betrayal. Ulzhavar listened carefully, frowning.

  “That is all very interesting,” he said when I had finished, “and I certainly understand why her family wants her autopsied at this late date. Normally, I would have to tell them that there’s most likely no point, but this young lady is well preserved. Remarkably so.”

  “Her brother is convinced she was murdered,” I said.

  “Well, let’s see if we can find out,” said Ulzhavar. “Denevis!”

  A novice came out of the colonnade at the far end of the vault, where I saw there was a row of massive chests of drawers against the wall. He was elven and probably fifteen or sixteen, nearly ready to be sent out as a junior cleric.

  He bowed to me. Ulzhavar said, “Denevis is my apprentice. He’ll be helping today so that you don’t have to … although I imagine you’re not very squeamish?”

  “No,” I said, answering his wry smile with my own. “I am not.”

  “Speaking of which, do you want to try her before we start?”

  “It’s been too long,” I said, but I did step up to the table and touch Inshiran’s forehead, noting that Ulzhavar was right: she was in remarkably good condition for a woman who had been buried for six months or more.

  As expected, there was nothing of the spirit left. I shook my head and stepped back.

  “Ah well,” said Ulzhavar. “It was worth trying. Denevis, you can get the cart now.”