The Witness for the Dead

by Katherine Addison

  I waited, and he said, “We would hate for the Archprelate to gain an … inaccurate picture of matters here in Amalo.”

  “We are not in communication with the Archprelate,” I said blankly. “We have no reason to be.”

  “Oh come, Celehar,” said Vernezar, sounding almost annoyed. “There’s no need to pretend you don’t report to him.”

  “We don’t,” I said. “We do not expect the Archprelate to take an interest in our very mundane dealings.”

  He stared at me as if I’d told him I could hear fishes singing.

  I still had no way to prove a negative. I sighed and said, “We will not tell the Archprelate anything injurious.”

  “Thank you, Celehar,” said Vernezar, who now of course believed all the more firmly that I wrote reports for the Archprelate about the religious goings-on of Amalo.

  “Dach’othala,” I said, and was grateful to make my escape.

  * * *

  Lord Judiciar Erimar was given the case of Broset Sheveldar. It took him a week to read all the depositions, plus the statement from the lawyer Mer Sheveldar had hired (doubtless with the money he had inherited from his victims), and quite a crowd gathered in the Amal’theileian when he announced he was ready to pass judgment. I was there, and Ulzhavar, for once in his formal robes, Othalo Darnevin, Othala Bonshenar, and a number of other people whom I did not know and whose connection to the case, if any, I could not guess. Some of them might be family of the murdered women, for I saw the glint of Mer Urmenezh’s pince-nez near the back.

  Lord Erimar was an elven man in his sixties, very erect of carriage and needle-sharp of mind. He looked at all of us, his eyes lingering for a moment on Mer Sheveldar, who was attending shackled between two massive goblin Brothers, then said, “This case is quite unlike any other we have ever judged. We have read depositions from Witnesses for three women, each of them murdered with calonvar in the weeks or months following her marriage to this man, who has called himself Broset Sheveldar and Segevis Michezar and Croïs Avelonar and we doubt not other names besides. The statement presented by Mer Sheveldar’s lawyer notes that in each case there is no proof that Mer Sheveldar is the murderer, but either he is guilty or someone else is following him from name to name and marriage to marriage and poisoning his wives just when it is most advantageous to Mer Sheveldar that they die. We find this unlikely to the point of absurdity, and the Witness for Mer Sheveldar has been able to find no proof, not even a hint, that this story might be true. We find that Broset Sheveldar is guilty of murdering Livano Sheveldaran, Drachano Michezaran, and Inshiran Avelonaran and her unborn child Ulanu. Sentence will be pronounced tomorrow by Prince Orchenis.”

  But we all knew already what the sentence would be.

  Mer Urmenezh said to me afterwards, “He is truly an evil person.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We are sorry he was not what your sister thought him.”

  “She wanted it so badly to be true,” he said. “We are sure it was the same for the others.”

  “Except perhaps for the first Merrem Sheveldaran,” I said. “She might have known him—or thought she did.”

  “We only hope Inshiran did not know before she died,” said Mer Urmenezh. “That is the thought that wakes us at night.”

  It was unanswerable. Only Sheveldar knew, and he refused to admit his guilt. Never mind the three wives under three different names, all of whom had died in the same way; never mind the vial found when the Brotherhood searched Sheveldar’s room, a quarter full and the yellowed label reading CALONVAR. Never mind the deposition of the Witness for Min Chinevo Tavalin, his bride-to-be, which showed clearly the pattern testified to by the Witnesses for his victims. He put forward no explanation, not even of why, if his wives continued to die horribly, he had not quit marrying; he would not discuss any of the dead women. He merely insisted on his innocence and declared himself a martyr, although to what was never exactly clear.

  “But we wanted to thank you,” said Mer Urmenezh. “For you persevered when a dozen other men would have given up. And without your perseverance, Min Tavalin might already be married.”

  Depending on how fast he worked, Min Tavalin might already be dead. But I did not say so.

  I said, “It is our calling, Mer Urmenezh. You need not thank us.”

  “Nonsense,” said Mer Urmenezh. “In Inshiran’s memory, we must thank you.”

  That, too, was unanswerable. I bowed to him and said, “Then we accept your thanks.”

  He smiled and said, “Truly it is an accomplishment to have bested one so stubborn. Thank you, Othala Celehar.” He bowed to me, lower than I deserved, and left.

  This time, when a newspaperman caught me—Goronezh on his own—I had no hesitation in answering his questions. Mostly what he wanted to know were things such as, how had I found Min Urmenezhen, and had the bodies of the victims told me anything. Which, of course, they had not. He was also very interested in the name-magic that had found Broset Sheveldar, and even more interested in, and horrified by, the list of Sheveldar’s names. “How could he do such a thing?” he muttered.

  I was not sure if that was meant as a question. I said, “He does not acknowledge that he has done so, except to point out that it is not a crime.”

  “No,” Goronezh said, “because no one thought it necessary to make a law against it. What an insane thing to do!”

  “No more insane than murdering three wives,” I said.

  “No, we suppose not.” His ears twitched, their tiny peridot studs glinting in the sun from the tall windows. “Perhaps we should be grateful we do not understand.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, and Goronezh darted away to catch Ulzhavar, stiff in his formal robes. I could speak to Ulzhavar later, back in the autopsy room where we were both more comfortable.

  I went instead to talk to Anora.

  I found him in the catacombs beneath Ulvanensee, engaged in the endless task of arranging bones in revethmerai and making sure each had its correct name, as the prelates of the municipal cemeteries had been doing for thousands of years. I had followed his bright yarn clew through the windings of the catacombs, the owl-light illuminating the incised names of the long dead. The clew was somewhere between a sensible precaution and a dire necessity, for the catacombs were vast and the maps of them partial, difficult, and sometimes wrong. If one were to become lost, there was no guarantee that one would ever be found.

  “Is that thou, Thara?” Anora called when I could only just see the light of his lantern. “For I know of no one else who would come so far into the catacombs to find me.”

  I called back, “Yes, it is Thara.”

  Anora said, “The judiciar must have reached a decision, then.”

  “Yes. Sheveldar will be condemned to death tomorrow, for I cannot imagine Prince Orchenis making any other judgment.”

  “Art thou pleased?”

  It was an odd question. “I’m certainly pleased that the monied and unmarried women of Amalo will be safe from him.”

  “Ah,” said Anora, as I rounded the final corner and found him kneeling beside a row of empty revethmerai, carefully taking long bones out of a linen bag and putting them one at a time in the fifth one along. He’d completed four before I found him. “But art thou pleased with thine own part in the matter?”

  “I followed my calling,” I began, but Anora cut me off.

  “Thara,” he said sharply. “That isn’t what I asked.”

  It wasn’t.

  I said, “It’s ridiculous to feel guilty. The man is a murderer three times over.”

  “At least,” Anora agreed. “But thou feel’st guilt?”

  “Mer Urmenezh pointed out to me today that my stubbornness has gotten a man killed.”

  Anora sat back on his heels to look at me. “I would wager that is a very free interpretation of what he said.”

  “And Mer Sheveldar does not admit his guilt,” I said.

  “And thus thou’rt concerned,” Anora said.

  “I s
hould not be. I know he’s guilty.”

  “It is thy nature. Thou’rt conscientious to a fault.”

  “Thy praise is unstinting,” I said dryly.

  “Thou wilt worry thyself to flinders,” said Anora. “And thou needst not. No innocent man would change his name four times. Even the barbarians of the steppes only change their names once.”

  “He could not offer an explanation,” I said.

  “Of course not. What will they put on his headstone to keep him from rising before he comes to bone and dust?”

  “I suppose it will have to be all four names,” I said, though the idea seemed both ludicrous and utterly monstrous.

  “Only a monster would value his name so little,” Anora said in an eerie echo of my thoughts. “Wilt thou be comforted, Thara?”

  “Perhaps,” I said.

  “Well, what didst think of him? Dost think him innocent? Really?”

  “No,” I said without any need of pondering the question. “I think him guilty beyond a doubt. But—”

  “But?”

  “I will not grieve for him,” I said. “But there are other murderers I have grieved for and were they not also monsters?”

  Anora considered the question. “Art thou positing that all murderers are monsters?”

  “Are they not?”

  “The act is monstrous. But one may commit a monstrous act and not be a monster. Unless, like Mer Sheveldar, one allows oneself to be consumed.”

  I said nothing, and Anora continued, “If thou grievest not for Sheveldar, it does not make thee a monster, either. But in grieving for a murderer, thou art not grieving for the monstrous. Thou grievest for the man who failed to reject the monstrous act.”

  I had never asked Anora if he knew about Evru, so that I did not know if he knew how much meaning was in his words. But I felt a burden lifted that I hadn’t fully realized I was carrying. “That is a better way of thinking about it,” I said, and was glad the shadows kept him from reading my expression.

  He probably saw more than I wanted him to, anyway. “Come,” he said. “Enough talk of murderers. Come do thy duty as a prelate of Ulis and help me sort out these decent and virtuous bones.”

  “Gladly,” I said, and set my owl-light so that it would illuminate our task.

  * * *

  The next morning, my first petitioner was a familiar one. I rose, more than a little startled to see Min Alasho Duhalin again. She was accompanied by an older woman, both of them grim-faced. Min Duhalin said formally, “We bring a petition to the Witness for the Dead.”

  “What is your petition?” I said, that being the only allowable response.

  Min Duhalin’s ears were flat, and she would not meet my eyes. “Because of the forgery, our lawyers insist on following all the old forms for the reading of the will.”

  “Of course,” I said. The old forms, which had fallen out of fashion during the reign of Varevesena, stipulated that the testator have a Witness present to speak for him or her should the need arise.

  “You have already witnessed for our grandfather,” Min Duhalin continued doggedly, and I realized she was embarrassed as well as angry, “and Mer Ondormezh says that means legally you must witness for him again.”

  That was true, if intensely unfortunate in the circumstances.

  “Of course,” I said again, because I could say nothing else. “When is the reading to take place?”

  * * *

  That evening, I returned to the Duhaladeise compound. I was accustomed to being an unpopular guest—a Witness for the Dead rarely visited for congenial reasons—but the Duhalada actually drew back from me slightly, as if I were poisonous. I bowed politely and did not approach.

  The will was to be read in the receiving room, and as the old forms demanded, the entire family was present, including Nepevis Duhalar, standing between two elven men from the Vigilant Brotherhood. Prince Orchenis had not yet pronounced his sentence; therefore he remained in the Bereth, the jail in the Veren’malo where prisoners of good family were kept.

  The lawyer, Mer Ondormezh, was hunched with age, but his eyes were bright and sharp. He did not recoil from my presence, but said, “Oh good. We are glad you agreed to attend, othala.”

  “Our calling obliges us,” I said.

  “Ye-esss,” said Mer Ondormezh, “but not all prelates would see it that way. The House Duhalada offered you a considerable insult.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But that does not change our duty. And we admit to a natural curiosity.”

  That amused him. He said, “We are astonished to hear a prelate of Ulis admit to anything so ordinary as curiosity.”

  “We have as much as any man,” I said, “and we have come to have some stake in Mer Duhalar’s proper will.”

  “Nothing like a personal interest,” murmured Mer Ondormezh.

  His clerk distracted him then with a question, and I stepped back, not wanting anyone to think I was encroaching on Mer Ondormezh’s time. The Duhalada continued to skirt wide around me.

  It was only a few minutes later that Mer Ondormezh said, “Very well, merrai and merroi. Let us begin.”

  It took a long time to read a properly drawn-up will, and Mer Duhalar had had a number of very finicky arrangements about his real estate and his share of the company before we reached the question of the money. And then he became even more finicky. I was thinking that this will provided an unflattering but probably accurate portrait of Nepena Duhalar when Mer Ondormezh said, “And to our grandson, Tura Olora, child of our favorite child Daleno, we leave five thousand muranai.”

  The little susurrus of indrawn breath told me that I had not misheard. Tura Olora, the senior principal bass at the Vermilion Opera, was Mer Duhalar’s grandson. Also that my immediate conclusion was correct, and was the reason Mer Olora was not here. Daleno had almost certainly been illegitimate, and thus this bequest, phrased as it was, was a deliberate insult to Mer Duhalar’s legitimate Duhaladeise children.

  It was also a significant sum of money, more than an opera singer would make in a year, and I could not help wondering if Mer Olora had known of his grandfather’s bequest, and if he had known, who else had known? For this would make him a very tempting target to a money-hungry blackmailer like Min Shelsin.

  I wondered even more bleakly what secrets Mer Olora might have been keeping that Min Shelsin could have found.

  I barely heard the rest of the will—a series of increasingly small bequests to people whose names I did not recognize but who were probably servants—my mind racing as I reassembled the story with this new information.

  I had read of Mer Duhalar’s death in the newspapers two weeks before Min Shelsin was murdered; that was certainly enough time for her to approach Mer Olora in whatever manner she did so, to make an appointment in the Zheimela, to keep it, and to be killed. I thought of Mer Olora’s temper, of him shouting at Pel-Thenhior. I did not know if he could plan murder, but I did know he could be goaded to fury. And if the paper I had found in Min Shelsin’s pocket was Mer Olora’s secret, whatever it was, it was safe now.

  When the will-reading was finally over, I left the Duhalada to the several thorny problems Mer Duhalar’s death—and Mer Duhalar’s will—had caused them, and then, having taken the tram to the Amal’ostro, walked to the Vermilion Opera, running over this new truth, wondering if I was mistaken. This story required Min Shelsin to know something I was sure Mer Olora would not have told her—two things, actually: the fact that Mer Olora would inherit a substantial amount of money on his grandfather’s death and then the secret.

  Tonight was the premiere of Zhelsu. At least I knew exactly where to find Mer Olora, even if it would be several hours yet before I could talk to him.

  At the Opera, the ushers recognized me and let me into the dim, narrow hallway that ran behind all the boxes. Pel-Thenhior’s box, being the last before the hallway ended, was easy to find.

  I decided I would cause him greater disruption by knocking than not. I opened the door just w
ide enough to slip inside.

  Pel-Thenhior twisted around; when he saw me, he beckoned for me to come sit beside him.

  When I did, he leaned over and said very softly, “I’m glad you’re here, although you may not be.”

  “Why not?”

  “They haven’t decided what they think yet,” he said, then went back to his notes, leaving me to puzzle out his meaning.

  It didn’t take long. Unlike my first time here, the audience was stonily silent; everyone was focused on the stage in a way that was either flattering to Pel-Thenhior or alarming. I was afraid it was the latter.

  A few minutes later, while Zhelsu and Tebora were singing about their dream of escaping the manufactory, Pel-Thenhior leaned over again and said, “I owe Othoro my firstborn child. She’s holding the whole thing together.”

  Of course, I thought. The singers would be able to read the audience as well as Pel-Thenhior and I could. They would have discerned this ominous silence, so much worse than the half attention most of the audience had paid to The Siege of Tekharee. And Pel-Thenhior was right. Min Vakrezharad was singing superbly, almost daring her fellows to fail her. Thus far, apparently, no one had.

  It was nerve-racking to sit and watch the opera with that silent, judging audience. During the shocking duet between Zhelsu and her mother, in which her mother tells her she should sleep with the overseer and use his favor to her advantage, I realized my palms were clammy. Pel-Thenhior seemed not to notice at all, except that every so often he would look out over the audience, and his ears would lower another fraction of an inch.

  When the end of Zhelsu came, it came quickly. The overseer gets her alone and starts pressing his case again. It becomes clear that he will rape her if she doesn’t yield willingly. She backs away and away—and I remembered watching them rehearse this, how matter-of-fact and straightforward it had all seemed, nothing like the panic on Zhelsu’s face now, the increasing terror in her words—until he has her pinned against the catwalk, and then instead of submitting, she turns and jumps. There is a scream from off stage as the overseer stares in blank astonishment at the place where Zhelsu had been. And the curtain comes down.