The Witness for the Dead

by Katherine Addison

  The silence held for a long moment while I found my hands clenching. Then someone in the auditorium started clapping, and as other people joined in—I heard one shout of “Genius!”—I thought maybe we had skirted the storm. Then a voice yelled, “This is an outrage!” and the entire theater erupted in pandemonium.

  Pel-Thenhior said something obscene and heartfelt in Barizhin, then grabbed my wrist and shouted over the rising din, “Come with me! Right now!”

  I perforce followed his iron grip on my wrist as he dragged me through the backstage door, turning to bolt it behind us as he yelled at the stagehands, “Don’t open the curtain!”

  The singers were clustered on stage. The still-increasing chaos in the auditorium was audible, though muffled by the curtain. Min Vakrezharad, a little disheveled from her leap onto the stack of mattresses, called to Pel-Thenhior, “What should we do?”

  “Go change,” said Pel-Thenhior. “But I think you’re safer backstage than trying to leave. I could be wrong.”

  “How comforting,” Mer Olora said dryly.

  Pel-Thenhior shrugged, although his ears were still too flat for it to come off as casual. “It’s a riot, Tura. I can’t predict what it’s going to do.” At that, several of the chorus made protesting cries, and Min Rasabin said, “Are they really rioting?”

  “Oh yes,” said Pel-Thenhior. “I am going to have a very unpleasant discussion with the Marquess about the cost of repairs. Assuming, of course, that I live ’til morning.”

  “Iäna!” protested Min Vakrezharad.

  “At least half of the people out there are howling for my head, Othoro. I don’t intend to present it to them, but if they find me…” His voice trailed off and his shoulders hunched for a moment.

  “Well, I’m going to get out of this awful costume,” Min Rasabin said practically.

  “I have to go warn Wardrobe,” Pel-Thenhior said. “Othala Celehar, do you want to come with me, or do you want to take your chances with leaving the theater?”

  I needed to talk to Tura Olora, who had already vanished into the backstage darkness. But I wanted to talk to Pel-Thenhior first. “All right,” I said.

  He went swiftly through the maze. I followed, trying to make some sort of mental map, but I was soon hopelessly turned around again.

  In the Wardrobe Department, we found that they were already alarmed. The stagehands were spreading the word, too.

  “I think you’re safe here, Ulsheän,” he said to the wardrobe master, who was close to panicking. “But don’t try to leave until someone comes and tells you it’s safe.” He smiled at her and said, “I’m sure you have ways to occupy your time.”

  That made her laugh, although it was a choked, hiccupping sound. “I’m sure we do,” she said.

  Outside the Wardrobe Department’s double doors, I stopped Pel-Thenhior and said, “I need to talk to you.”

  “Of course,” he said, puzzled but willing. “About what?”

  “Did you know Mer Olora is Duhaladeise on his mother’s side?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said, still puzzled. “Tura makes no secret of it.”

  “Did you know his grandfather was going to leave him five thousand muranai?”

  “… No,” he said, frowning, “but what of it?”

  “Mer Olora’s grandfather died two weeks before Min Shelsin was murdered.”

  Pel-Thenhior was no fool. He made the connection quickly. “You don’t think Tura…”

  I said, “I think I have to find out.”

  * * *

  We found Mer Olora alone in the cramped dressing room shared by the male principals. He had removed the mask-like maquillage that the singers wore in performance and was in the middle of taking off his costume.

  “Iäna,” he said.

  “Tura,” said Pel-Thenhior. “Othala Celehar needs to talk to you.”

  “Othala,” Mer Olora said, politely enough although he was beginning to frown. “How can I help you?”

  I said, “I was at the reading of Mer Nepena Duhalar’s will this evening,” and watched with no pleasure as his face changed and his ears flattened. “Did you know of his bequest to you?”

  “Yes, but I don’t see—”

  “Did anyone else know?”

  “No!” But he was lying.

  “Did Min Shelsin know?”

  “I certainly didn’t tell her,” he said.

  “That’s not the same thing. Did she know?”

  He exhaled a hard, slow breath and said, “You can’t prove anything. No judiciar in the city will listen to you.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, “but the Amal’othala will.” I was bluffing; the Amal’othala was no more likely to listen to my story, with all its holes, than any of the city judiciary. But Mer Olora had just told me I was right. You can’t prove anything was very different from I didn’t kill her.

  Mer Olora had continued changing while we spoke and was now, in trousers and shirtsleeves, buttoning his waistcoat. He was still in stocking feet; Pel-Thenhior and I were both caught completely off guard when he said, “You’ll have to excuse me a moment,” and bolted out of the room’s back door. After a stunned second, we ran after him.

  Pel-Thenhior said, “I don’t know where he’s going. There’s no way out back here, even if he wanted to take his chances with the rioters.”

  Mer Olora clearly had a destination in mind, though, for we could not catch him. He neither slowed nor hesitated nor ran into any dead ends. When we found a narrow open door and could hear feet on the treads of a twisting spiral of stairs, Pel-Thenhior gasped, “The roof!”

  If we could have climbed those stairs faster, we would have. But Mer Olora stayed ahead of us all the way to the top and out onto the roof. By the time we caught up to him, he was already standing on the parapet.

  “Tura, no,” Pel-Thenhior said imploringly.

  “I don’t know how she knew,” Mer Olora said. “I only ever told Veralis and Shulethis, one night when we’d all drunk too much. I swore them to secrecy. But she found out. I know she stole the letter because she told me so, the brass-faced bitch. I made the mistake of sleeping with her once, and she used the opportunity all too well.”

  “Mer Olora,” I said, “please step down.”

  He continued as if he hadn’t heard me. “Meeting at the Canalman’s Dog was her idea. An intrigue,” he said bitterly. “As if we were characters in a novel. She showed me the letter and said I could have it back for a thousand muranai.”

  “Oh no,” said Pel-Thenhior, though he might not have been aware he said it out loud.

  “It wasn’t the money,” Mer Olora said earnestly. “It was knowing that even after she gave the letter back—if she really did—she would still have me under her thumb. The letter contained my … my lover’s name.” His voice broke. “I would never be free of her smirks and knowing looks, and she would always have the means to make me pay again. She would always be a threat to … to my lover.”

  “So you killed her,” I said.

  “It was the only way out. The only way to keep my lover safe. And that’s why I have to do this.”

  He stepped sideways off the roof.

  “Blessed goddess,” Pel-Thenhior half sobbed as we both ran to the parapet. Looking down, I saw Tura Olora’s broken body and around it a widening circle of stillness as the rioting opera-goers realized what had happened. The members of the Brotherhood trying to restore peace were suddenly successful.

  “I have to get down there,” I said to Pel-Thenhior. He looked at me blankly, as if my words made no sense to him. I said, “My duty lies with the dead.”

  “Of course,” said Pel-Thenhior. Then he blinked and seemed to come back to himself. “Yes, of course. This way, othala. We can take a different way down.” He winced at the double meaning. “That is, there’s an easier set of stairs.”

  I followed him, as I had been doing all evening, and we descended by a staircase around a square lightwell. At the bottom, Pel-Thenhior had no difficulty in le
ading me to the front of the Opera and Mer Olora’s corpse.

  The watchman standing guard was glad to see me. “Othala! We don’t know if he fell or jumped, but his neck’s broken, either way—along with most of the rest of him.”

  I went down on one knee beside the body and began saying the prayer of compassion for the dead. This part, ironically, was easy. It was everything else that was hard.

  * * *

  The newspapermen—Goronezh, Thurizar, and Vicenalar—found me at some hour between midnight and dawn as I emerged from Ulvanensee, where I had gone with Tura Olora’s corpse. The municipal cemetery of the Veren’malo was much smaller than Ulvanensee and had no room—hadn’t had room for new burials for fifty years, so hopelessly behind were they in transferring their charges to the catacombs. Anora was rightfully asleep, but Vidrezhen, the prelate assigned night duty, was calm and competent, and I was feeling as if at least I had gotten one thing done correctly when I heard Goronezh calling, “Othala Celehar!”

  I wanted, very badly, to turn on my heel and go back into Ulvanensee—and lock the gate behind me as well—but I knew they would just wait until I emerged again.

  “Good morning, Mer Goronezh,” I said, and tried not to say it tiredly. “What may we do for you?”

  “Is it true that Mer Olora committed suicide?” Goronezh asked.

  Vicenalar, right behind him, said, “Is it true he jumped off the Vermilion Opera?”

  Thurizar, coming around to my other side, said, “Do you know why he did it?”

  I did know, of course, and as the Witness for Arveneän Shelsin, I would tell Azhanharad the whole ugly tangle of the truth later that morning, but while my calling forbade lying, it did not require me to cause unnecessary pain. Telling the newspapermen would shout Tura Olora’s shame to the entire city, and neither the Duhalada, the Olorada, nor the Vermilion Opera would be made better thereby. I could not deny the suicide—even if I’d wanted to try, no one was going to believe he’d accidentally gone all the way up to the roof—but I could say, truthfully, “His reason died with him,” for Pel-Thenhior and I had agreed it should. Azhanharad would record the matter in the Brotherhood’s record book, but that book was kept strictly secret. I wasn’t even supposed to know it existed.

  “Come now, othala,” Thurizar said reproachfully. “You must have some idea.”

  “His reason died with him,” I said again. “We regret, but we cannot tell you anything more.”

  “You are a sore trial to a newspaperman, othala,” said Goronezh.

  “We do not know about you gentlemen,” I said, “but we would like to be in bed before dawn. Good night.”

  They would probably have preferred to shake the truth out of me, but they let me go.

  * * *

  Tura Olora was buried in the great municipal cemetery in the Airmen’s Quarter, just as his victim had been. None of his Duhaladeise cousins attended the funeral, nor any Olorada. The mourners consisted of me and Iäna Pel-Thenhior, who looked as if he was not sure he was doing the right thing.

  Once Olora was safely buried and his headstone blessed—for suicides are the most likely to turn ghoul—I said to Pel-Thenhior, “May I buy you a cup of tea?”

  “No,” he said, and dragged a smile out from somewhere. “But I will gladly go have tea with you.”

  We went to the Chrysanthemum, which was the teahouse Anora favored, and settled with a pot of eladriät. Pel-Thenhior scrubbed both hands up his face and said, “Thank the goddesses that’s over.”

  “You did the right thing in coming,” I said.

  “Did I? He was a murderer. He murdered one of my singers. Two of them, if we call suicide self-murder.”

  “He was a man under intolerable stress,” I said. “He did what he thought he had to do to keep his secret—and his lover—safe.”

  “Well, he succeeded in that. I’ve sorted through all his papers and I don’t have the least idea.”

  “Someone highly placed and vulnerable to scandal, at a guess.”

  “Yes. And I admit, I don’t want to know. Tura died to keep this secret. It feels wrong to try to uncover it—but that reminds me. I was going to tell you I know how Arveneän found out about the money.”

  “Oh?”

  “She was blackmailing Veralis.”

  “Yes, for secrets,” I said. “He told me that.”

  “He told her about Tura’s money. He said he was desperate to keep her quiet, and he didn’t think she could do any harm with it. I didn’t ask him what his secret is, and I’m trying not to learn any more. It makes me angry, and being angry is pointless because Arveneän is dead. And there’s no way to fix the damage she did.”

  “No,” I said, “but at least it is at an end.”

  “I suppose,” he said, although he sounded doubtful. “And meanwhile I’ve got to find a new principal bass and a new principal mid-soprano. Toïno is doing her best, but she really doesn’t have enough voice. Hathet is doing his best, but he really was the junior bass. This is only his second year with us.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments, drinking eladriät. Then Pel-Thenhior said, “You are welcome to share my box any time you want to.”

  “That is very kind of you.”

  “You needn’t sound so surprised. I enjoy your company, and I hate the thought that your last memory of the Opera should be Tura’s death.”

  “All right,” I said, and decided there was no point in mentioning the nightmares I’d been having. “I would like that.”

  “Good,” said Pel-Thenhior, and finally managed a real smile. “Now let me bore you to tears by telling you about my new opera.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My profoundest thanks go to my Patreon patrons: Laura Bailey, H. E. Wolf, P. Keelan, Garret Reece, D Franklin, Lorna Toolis, Liz Novaski, Jennifer G. Tifft, Lindsay Kleinman, Sarah Ervine, Kate Diamond, Bill Ruppert, Sharis Ingram, Elizabeth Woodley, Gretchen Schultz, Jennifer Lundy, Gordon Tisher, Danielle Beliveau, Hilary Kraus, Clifton Royston, Andrew Lin, Mary and Mikey Reppy, Kris Ashley, Jeff Frane, Paige Morgan, Kitty Marschall, Eleanor Skinner, Sylvia Sotomayor, ScottKF, Sasha Lydon, Erin Lytle, Margaret Johnston, Hannah Albert, Katee V, pCiaran, Laura E. Price, E.S.H., Ruthanna and Sarah Emrys, Katie Jones, Simone Brick, Megan Prime, Danielle B, Brianna Smart, Asia Wolf, Amy Miller, Caryn Cameron, and Liza Furr.

  Thanks also go to my editor, Beth Meacham, my copy editor, Christina MacDonald, and the production team at Tor, who do amazing work.

  BY KATHERINE ADDISON

  The Goblin Emperor

  The Angel of the Crows

  The Witness for the Dead

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Katherine Addison’s short fiction has been selected by The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and The Year’s Best Science Fiction. Her novel The Goblin Emperor won a Locus Award. As Sarah Monette, she is the author of the Doctrine of Labyrinths series and coauthor, with Elizabeth Bear, of the Iskryne series. She lives near Madison, Wisconsin. You can sign up for email updates here.

  Thank you for buying this

  Tom Doherty Associates ebook.

  To receive special offers, bonus content,

  and info on new releases and other great reads,

  sign up for our newsletters.

  Or visit us online at

  us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

  For email updates on the author, click here.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Begin Reading

  Acknowledgments

  By Katherine Addison

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE WITNESS FOR THE DEAD

  Copyright © 2021 by Sarah Monette

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Nekro

 
A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

  120 Broadway

  New York, NY 10271

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Names: Addison, Katherine, author.

  Title: The witness for the dead / Katherine Addison.

  Description: First edition. | New York: TOR, a Tom Doherty Associates Book, 2021.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021008738 (print) | LCCN 2021008739 (ebook) | ISBN 9780765387424 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780765387448 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC PS3601.D4655 W58 2021 (print) | LCC PS3601.D4655 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021008738

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021008739

  eISBN 9780765387448

  Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  First Edition: 2021