The Witness for the Dead

by Katherine Addison

  I found it shocking myself. “How did she come to be buried in Ulchoranee?”

  “She stipulated it in her will,” said Merrem Trathonaran. “Mer Avelonar was angry about it, for of course it meant he had to pay for her burial. He and Ozeva had an argument about it.”

  “Mer Avelonar seems to be a miserly sort of man,” I said.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “My grandmother would have said he was a man to charge his own shadow for the right to stick to his heels.”

  The kettle sang, and Merrem Trathonaran was very busy for a couple of minutes with teapot and tea leaves and cups and saucers, and when she returned to the table, she had a plate of the hard Amaleise ginger biscuits, called venevetoi, that never seemed to go stale. She gave one to each of her sons.

  I had developed a weakness for venevetoi in my time living in Amalo. I took one while the tea steeped and asked, “Do you know where Mer Avelonar went?”

  “No, only that the funeral was at noon and he was gone by sundown.”

  “Noon?” I didn’t know why I was shocked. Mer Avelonar had already proved there was no depth to which he would not sink, and murder was far worse than skimping on the funeral arrangements.

  Merrem Trathonaran nodded, her eyes wide. “It was the cheapest funeral either Ozeva or I could ever remember seeing. Poor Merrem Avelonaran. She deserved better.”

  “Her family gave her proper burial,” I said.

  “Thank the goddesses,” she said, and obviously meant it.

  I asked a few other questions, but Merrem Trathonaran had told me all she knew. We drank cups of boronat, and I let her tell me about her family. Ozevis lost his shyness enough to chime in, and Panezhet fell asleep on his mother’s lap.

  * * *

  When I left, Merrem Trathonaran gave me the next pieces of information I needed: the name of the neighborhood cleric and where to find him.

  His name was Radora Husavar, and he lived and worked in the back rooms of his wife’s tea shop on Winter Street. He was elven, short-statured; judging by the thickness of his spectacle lenses, he was nearly as myopic as Anora.

  I explained myself again. “Her family is naturally anxious to learn whatever they can about how she died.”

  “Naturally,” agreed Husavar. “But I do not think you will want to give them many details of her death. In truth, othala, she suffered horribly, vomiting until there was nothing left in her stomach and then being racked with cramps. I tried every remedy I know.”

  “She was being murdered with calonvar,” I said.

  Behind their thick lenses, his eyes went wide. “Calonvar?”

  “Most likely by her husband.”

  “He was cold enough for it,” Husavar said grimly. “He never turned a hair the entire time—which of course he wouldn’t if he was the one causing it. I try neither to like nor dislike my patients and their families—as I’m sure will sound familiar to you, othala—but him I disliked very much. But there was nothing that made me suspicious.”

  “What did you think it was?”

  “She was pregnant. Some women, the early sickness just takes over their bodies and wrenches them and wrenches them until they die of it. Her symptoms matched that all too closely.” He sighed. “She was so worried about her baby that I’m not sure she ever really understood that she was in danger of dying herself. But Mer Avelonar cared about none of it.”

  “What was he like? Can you describe him?”

  “He was a young elven man, not much taller than I am. I did not notice his features particularly, although I think I would recognize him if I saw him again.”

  “That might be very important,” I said. “We believe this is not the only time he has murdered a wife.”

  “How dreadful,” said Husavar with obvious sincerity. “He kept to himself—she was much friendlier, even though she was dying. He seemed to resent every zashan he had to pay me. I don’t think he ever asked me what was wrong with her, or why I couldn’t help her, or any of the questions that a husband usually asks. I heard that he kept his funeral arrangements as cheap as possible, as well.”

  “That is my understanding,” I said. “And it seems likely that he murdered her for her money.”

  “Dreadful,” Husavar said.

  “Merrem Trathonaran told me that Merrem Avelonaran stipulated in her will that she be buried in Ulchoranee. Do you know why?”

  “I know they fought about it. He wanted to bury her in Ulvanensee, and she had a horror of it, while she wanted to be buried in her family’s cemetery, and he would not stand for the expense. She chose Ulchoranee as a compromise, and he was still unhappy about it.”

  “So she stipulated it. If she had a will, she must have gone to a lawyer. Do you know who that might be?”

  “I have no idea,” Husavar said apologetically. “I knew that she had a will, but nothing more than that.”

  “I suppose it was too much to hope for,” I said. “Thank you, othala, you have been very helpful. If we find this man, would you be willing to come confirm that he is the man you knew as Croïs Avelonar?”

  “Of course,” said Husavar. “I only regret I cannot do more to help. As I have regretted not being able to help Merrem Avelonaran. But without knowing it was calonvar, truly I do not think there is anything I could have done. Even if I had known … no, in that case I would have proceeded in a completely different manner, starting with demanding that the Brotherhood arrest him. I imagine her symptoms would have cleared up remarkably quickly after that.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think you are right.”

  * * *

  There was time in the afternoon for one more thing. I had promised Coralezh that I would make a pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of Csaivo for the people of Tanvero, and it had been nagging at me that I had not had time to do it. It had been my intention to make that pilgrimage after I delivered Osmer Thilmerezh’s letter, but that had become manifestly impossible.

  I could, however, do it now. From Ulchoranee to the Sanctuary was a suitable distance for a minor pilgrimage, and it was a lovely day. I followed Winter Street to Beryl Road, then walked north to Princess Havaro Square and west, through the bustle and clamor of the Greenmarket, and thus over to Bridge Street, where I kept to the Zulnicho tramline past the Marigold Rookeries, then cut east again, walking past the great bulk of the Chelim’opera, the largest opera house south of the Mich’maika, and following the curve of the road around until I came to the gates of the Sanctuary. There, rather than either going to the main building entrance or wandering in the gardens, I climbed the stairs that wound around the outside of the central building, stairs that had been mended and replaced and mended again and replaced again in a nearly constant process for longer than the Sanctuary had had written records—at least three thousand years. It was not a wide staircase, and the bannister was an obvious afterthought, probably no more than four or five hundred years old. I was grateful for it, as I was not fond of heights.

  The top of the central building did offer a stunning panorama of the Airmen’s Quarter—full of apartment buildings and warehouses and manufactories, the enormous domes of the Amal-Athamareise Airship Works visible to the south—and up to the wall of the Veren’malo. I did not approach the edge to look down at the Sanctuary gardens or the dark water of the Mich’maika. Instead, I followed the spiraling path laid out in white and black marble tiles to the center of the rooftop. There, as Coralezh had asked me to, I said prayers for the people of Tanvero, with particular reference to ghouls. Then I knelt and took a pilgrimage token from the recessed pit, a gilded elesth leaf. I put it carefully in an inside pocket and started back, with no little dread, toward the stairs. My only other option was to stay up here until I starved to death; moreover, I had a funeral to conduct.

  On my way home to change, I stopped by Estorezh’s and picked up my purchases from the day the Excellence of Umvino exploded. Estorezh himself, a tall, elderly elven man, was behind the counter. “I thought you had forgotten, othala,” he said mildly as h
e fetched the neat parcel of my new belongings.

  “No,” I said. “I’ve just been … busy.”

  “That yellow coat sold the first day I put it out.”

  “I’m not surprised,” I said. “It was of no use to me, but it was a fine coat.”

  He looked at me, sharp blue eyes under tufted white eyebrows. “Next time I get a black coat in, I’ll put it aside for you to look at.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” I said, surprised. “Thank you.”

  He brushed it aside with a flick of his ears. “You do a great service for our city. I can do a small service for you in return.”

  “Thank you,” I said again and left, so flustered that I almost forgot my parcel.

  * * *

  The Selimada lived in a part of the city I had visited only infrequently—north of the Old City toward the mountains—but the young man’s map was good. I reached the cemetery at the appropriate time.

  The family gathered around the gravesite ranged in age from three months to nearly ninety years. They were all somewhat shabby, but I recognized the air of intense and determined respectability from some of my own neighbors. Everyone was properly dressed in black, even the baby, and Merrem Selimaran, the new patriarch’s wife, had some onyx mourning beads wound in her hair. I was probably the most out of place thing in the entire scene.

  The family seemed pleased enough, however. After the Devotion of Fours had been performed, and the new patriarch and his brothers had filled in the grave, they invited me back to their house for the traditional vigil dinner. It still wasn’t as if I had anywhere else I was expected to be. Besides which, this hospitality wasn’t offered as lightly as that of the Orshaneisei; I knew I would offend them all if I refused. I accepted with gratitude.

  The vigil dinner wasn’t quite the same as a wake, although the two practices had much in common. Whereas a wake involved dancing and sometimes singing and was intended to help the dead person’s spirit find rest, the vigil dinner was simpler and quieter and had begun as a vigil to be sure the dead person didn’t rise as a ghoul. Unlike the people of Tanvero, the Selimada didn’t have to worry about that literally coming true—in that sense, the wakes held in other neighborhoods of Amalo and the vigil dinners were exactly the same. I thought some of the younger members of the Selimada might have preferred a wake, but the elderly aunts and uncles were very pleased. I got buttonholed by a pair of them—sisters, I thought, although I might easily have been wrong—who wanted to tell me how many Ulineise prelates these days didn’t even know what the Devotion of Fours was. It was in desperation that I turned the conversation to suspicious or surprising deaths.

  I couldn’t have chosen a better topic. I was still trapped between them, but now only as an audience, as they collectively went back through—as best I could tell—every funeral that either one of them had ever attended. I had learned early in my novitiate how to listen attentively to parishioners, no matter how much I longed to be doing something else, and that training was rewarded by a litany of deaths—illness, accident, childbirth, murder—but all of the murders they related were simple affairs: drunken brawls; a man who had beaten his wife to death found standing over her body, weeping; a woman who went mad and killed her infant. Nothing like Avelonar’s careful isolating of his victim, his subtle method of murder. I did not know whether I was disappointed or not.

  A little later, young Merrem Selimaran came by and rescued me, and a little after that, someone started to sing.

  * * *

  In the morning, back in my office, I thought owlishly that the Orshaneisei were right: I did need to do something about getting more sleep. With no petitioners, I dozed all morning, horrified at myself and knowing it would serve me right if someone walked in, but no one did.

  That afternoon I decided I could do no better than to track down the items Min Shelsin had pawned and see if they could tell me anything. I had taken the whole collection of tickets with me when Pel-Thenhior and I and all those stolen gowns had left Min Shelsin’s rented room, and I had organized them as best I could into a series of packets, each for a different pawn shop.

  They were all shops in Cemchelarna except for one ticket that belonged to a shop in the Zheimela. It was interesting proof that Min Shelsin had been in the Zheimela before the night she died, and I was sorely tempted to ignore the others and just go haring after that one. But I had learned to be wary of coincidences and that one seemed far too good to be true.

  I wanted to ask Pel-Thenhior to come with me, since he might at least recognize some of the pieces and possibly remember who gave them to her, but I remembered what he’d said about rehearsal beginning after lunch. I debated the matter while I ate and finally decided that I could do no harm by asking. Therefore, after lunch I went to the Vermilion Opera, that being the only place I knew to find him.

  Either he truly was there every day, or I was lucky, for I found him in the lobby, arguing with Mer Olora again. Relief lit up his face when he saw me, and he broke away from the disgruntled singer.

  “Othala Celehar!” Pel-Thenhior said, striding across the lobby to meet me. In a bare, uncarrying whisper, he added, “Please tell me you need me for something. Anything.”

  I wanted to laugh. I said, “I was hoping you might be able to visit some pawn shops with me this afternoon, to see if we can find Min Shelsin’s jewelry.”

  “Of course!” said Pel-Thenhior, his voice cordial but not nearly as effusive as his face. “Today is all costume fittings and memory practice, and Thoramis can take that as easily as I can. Just a moment!”

  He bounded away into the auditorium, and Mer Olora followed with a sour look at me.

  I waited, grateful not to have Mer Olora’s company, and Pel-Thenhior returned after a few minutes, shrugging into an overcoat. “Was that true or were you just taking pity on me?”

  “No, it was quite true,” I said.

  “Excellent,” said Pel-Thenhior. “Let us go forth, then, and investigate.”

  * * *

  I soon discovered I had been even wiser than I expected to bring Pel-Thenhior, for he was known and liked in all the pawn shops we visited in Cemchelarna, and no one objected or grumbled about bringing out the pawned items, even knowing we weren’t going to redeem them.

  Although all of the pawned jewelry was expensive, it varied widely in quality, from painfully ostentatious diamond rings (inscribed on their inner surface to my Arveneän, from her Milparnis) to a lovely, delicate choker necklace of faceted emeralds. Pel-Thenhior kept a tally of the prices in the flyleaf of the book he happened to have in his pocket, and when we reached the end of Cemchelarna’s Pawnbrokers’ Row, he said, “Where was all this money going? She had at least a year’s salary in pawn—maybe more, since I’m quite sure she did not get the value of some of those items—and we know it wasn’t on clothes or lodging.”

  I had several theories, but the most likely was the simplest. “Did Min Shelsin gamble?”

  “I have no idea,” Pel-Thenhior said. “She didn’t bring it to the Opera if she did, which was wise of her.”

  “You don’t approve of gambling?”

  Pel-Thenhior made a complicated face. “Well, I don’t see the point of it. But it causes bad feelings, and what exactly do you do if one of your tenors bankrupts the other between acts? So I don’t allow it in the Opera, but I can’t control what people do when they’re not there, and of course if she was gambling, she wouldn’t have told me.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Who might know? Min Balvedin and Min Nochenin? The clerks?”

  “I doubt it.” Pel-Thenhior thought for a moment. “She might have told Veralis. They didn’t like each other, but I know he does gamble.”

  “She might have told him or he might have seen her.”

  “Yes,” Pel-Thenhior said, and added sourly, “she must have worn those gowns somewhere.”

  I went through my packets of pawn tickets. We’d accounted for all of them except the one that had come from the Zheimela. I
said, “Are you willing to go farther afield?”

  “Of course! Where?”

  I showed him the ticket. “A pawn shop in the Zheimela.”

  Pel-Thenhior’s eyebrows shot up. “How intriguing,” he said. “I wonder if they remember her.”

  * * *

  As it turned out, they did.

  The proprietor was a young elven man, ferret-faced as elves often were. He lived in the back of his pawn shop, and stayed open from sundown to sunrise, providing his services to the gamblers who were preyed on by the nearby gambling houses, and he remembered Arveneän Shelsin distinctly.

  She had come in with an elven man, he said, both of them the worse for drink. He remembered her because of the eye-catching quality of her pledge and because she was so rude.

  “That sounds like Arveneän,” Pel-Thenhior said.

  She had unclasped a necklace, gleaming silver and sapphires, and pawned it, all the while flirting with the man who accompanied her. The pawnbroker brought out the necklace, which I thought rather gaudy, and said, almost apologetically, “She could have had a better price if she’d been paying attention.”

  “Do you remember anything about her companion?” I asked.

  “No, othala. I’m sorry. But”—he brightened—“I know they came from Tivalinee.” He nodded across the street.

  Tivalinee was a famous gambling house, patronized by the Ponichada and the Alchinada. “Play must be very steep,” said Pel-Thenhior, frowning.

  “Yes,” said the pawnbroker. “Most of my business comes from over there. They don’t accept pledges or stakes in kind.”

  “Too steep for Arveneän,” Pel-Thenhior said to me.

  “Maybe she was only there the once,” I said, though not very hopefully.

  “Maybe,” said Pel-Thenhior. “And maybe they let her walk into the trap before they sprang it.”