Death's Executioner

by Charlotte E. English

  The foolish, or the spirit-sighted. Nanda walked with her eyes half-closed, relying on other, superior senses to warn her where to set her feet, and where lay obstacles to avoid. Here a hillock, scrubby with withered grass and hidden beneath drifting snow; there a sudden dip in the earth, deep enough to break an ankle in, lying meek and deadly beneath an ostensibly solid surface of ice and snow. Even she, sensitive though she was, did not venture lightly into the Bones at such a time.

  She only hoped her business might be completed in time for a return before sunset. The darkness threatened to overwhelm even her enhanced sight. The darkness, too, had an unsavoury effect on other things, other torments; she would do her best to return home in time.

  ‘I am going alone,’ she had said to Konrad perhaps an hour earlier, as she had rushed to don her deep-winter garments, and the stout boots that would carry her safely through the mire.

  ‘You cannot,’ he’d said, typical of him, as though he did not frequently disappear off on some venture without her, or anybody else either.

  ‘They will never let you in, and we do not have the time to waste in attempting to persuade them.’ She’d said this as she drew on her thick, wax-coated cloak and raised the hood, Konrad having trailed after her all the way to her home. ‘I need not be long. I only have to verify whether she’s there, and if so, speak with her.’

  ‘I want to speak with her, too!’ said Konrad, glowering under his dark brows.

  Nanda ignored the complaint. ‘I will try to persuade her to return home,’ she’d said indifferently as she marched out of the door, permitting it to close in Konrad’s face. ‘If I find her at all. Please lock up behind you.’

  She knew there was no escaping from Konrad if he was truly determined to follow her. He had those pesky Malykant’s abilities, like the one where he need only stretch out his legs and somehow the ground sailed away beneath his feet, allowing him to travel far too fast for a mortal man. Nanda could not match it. If he had chosen to employ that enviable art, she could in no wise outrun him.

  To her secret gratification, he had not. It wasn’t that she did not appreciate his company (usually), or that his solicitude for her safety did not sometimes warm her heart. She was not blessed with an overabundance of people who cared deeply for her well-being, after all. But she must be permitted the use of her own judgement, and the freedom to exercise it as she chose. Anything else would be less kindness and more oppression.

  She was grateful, then, that he had let her be, and taken himself off about his own business. He could not seriously imagine that she did not know, just as well as he did, how to traverse the Bones safely.

  If he imagined her unaware of the stealthy presence of Eetapi, however, whose dulcet spirit-shape drifted along the winds some small way behind her, he was a greater fool than she had thought.

  ‘Keep up, snakie,’ she called after some half-hour’s journey, delighting in the start of surprise she sensed from that sneaking creature.

  You observed me, came the ghost-snake’s slithering tones in her mind, laced with reproach.

  ‘I am not quite without perception.’ Or assistance, she privately added. If her own senses had not marked out Eetapi, other things wreathed about her that would.

  Eetapi digested that in silence, though she consented to stream up as far as Nanda’s elbow, and proceed in something that resembled companionship. Where do we go? said she after a time.

  ‘There is a settlement, somewhere out here,’ answered Nanda, her voice pitched low. Not that she was afraid of being overheard, or intercepted; they could expect to encounter no one, out here. But the soft hush of the snow-drenched forest pleased her; the way the thick blanket of white muffled sounds; the stillness. She did not wish to shatter it.

  No one could live out here, objected Eetapi. Save you and the Master.

  Eetapi referred to Konrad’s hut, raised on tall stilts to keep it out of the dreck and muck of the Bone Forest. Nanda had her own, meagre dwelling at some distance from Konrad’s, though she had ceased to make much use of it. Hers was a subterranean space sunk deep into the earth, tangled with thick, bone-white roots and smelling of mud. Privately, she admired Konrad’s solution a bit more.

  ‘No ordinary folk could live out here,’ Nanda said. ‘But these are…’

  Strange folk, offered Eetapi.

  ‘If you account the likes of me as strange.’

  I do, said the snake. And the Master likewise.

  ‘On the latter point I can have no argument. I have never known anyone stranger.’

  Eetapi seemed pleased with this reflection, her sickly ghost-glow brightening.

  Nanda fell silent, the better to concentrate on navigating the terrain. She knew that those who dwelt in the Bone Forest’s sole village deliberately complicated the approach, knowing that only those with spirit-sight like their own would be able to cross it. Nanda traversed every obstacle with gritted teeth, ducking beneath twisted, low-hanging boughs; jumping over pits dug into the earth and covered over with brittle sticks; envying all the while her uninvited companion’s easy passage, hovering as Eetapi did some way above the ground.

  ‘Who?’ came a harsh voice, splitting the silence.

  Nanda came to an immediate halt. She scanned the forest with eyes and other senses alike, but failed to detect signs that she had come upon her goal. Their camouflage improved. ‘My name is Irinanda Falenia,’ she said calmly. ‘I am of the spirit-folk. I come in search of a… friend.’

  Silence followed, but she felt the scrutiny to which she was subjected. Her skin crawled under it, but she held her ground, her chin high. She had every right to venture here, though she had never been a true member of their community.

  ‘Your name is not familiar to me,’ said the speaker. The voice was male, and accented; Nanda thought she detected the lilting tones of one of her own countrymen, speaking the language of Assevan as she did herself.

  ‘I am not surprised,’ she said shortly. ‘It is some years since I last paid a visit.’

  ‘And why do you do so now?’

  ‘I have told you. Someone I need to see is here. I think.’

  ‘You bring a bound soul with you.’ The words were dark with disapproval.

  I am not bound, hissed Eetapi in high indignation. I accompany this strange one of my own will.

  ‘Sort of,’ muttered Nanda. ‘Konrad made you come with me, did he not?’

  The Master does not make me do anything, the serpent sniffed. Though he tries, of course.

  Nanda hid a smile. Doubtless Konrad was under an alternative impression.

  ‘A soul-pact?’ said the invisible speaker, sharply.

  Silently, Nanda blessed Eetapi’s diverting presence. ‘A friend,’ said Nanda dryly. ‘If you remember such a concept.’

  ‘Of course I—’ The speaker broke off with a sound of annoyance.

  Then the soft creak of an opening door caught Nanda’s ears, a dry sound as of aged boughs stiffly moving. And a way opened up before her: two hoary old trees were slowly leaning away from one another, the tangle of their knotty branches unwinding, leaving a gap between.

  ‘You may enter,’ said the hidden one, curtly.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Nanda, gracious in victory, and proceeded on. A few careful steps carried her through the gate between the trees, which immediately began to creak and sway itself closed behind her.

  Immediately before her stood, she supposed, her grumpy interlocutor. Huge, taller than Konrad and broad, his bulk obscured her view of the spirit-witches’ settlement. Her surmise had been correct, judging from his colouring, for he was as ice-blonde as she herself, with the same snow-pale complexion. His eyes, though, were the clear grey of a winter sky. Their expression was… disgruntled.

  Nanda offered a curtsey, though only a small one. ‘Thank you for permitting me entry.’

  ‘Your business will not take long, I hope.’

  ‘Why? Am I interrupting something?’

  The man merely grunte
d. ‘Whom do you seek?’

  ‘Her name is… well, come to think of it I do not know her full name. She is addressed as Lady Lysak. She is an aristocrat of the city, but I believe her to be spirit-gifted. She has run away, and may be hiding here.’

  ‘If she has run away from something,’ said her unfriendly companion, ‘how am I to know it is not you she had fled from?’

  ‘You cannot, I suppose,’ said Nanda. ‘But perhaps you are familiar with Viktor Kirsanov also? It is on account of him that I am here.’

  ‘I know Viktor,’ said the man grudgingly. ‘He told you where to find your “friend”?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking. Look, I am aware you cannot trust me and I have no way of proving my sincerity. Only let me speak to Lady Lysak, if she is here. I need not get near her.’

  She is here, reported Eetapi. She listens.

  Nanda extended her other senses, intrigued. She received an impression of much crowded into a small space; thickly clustered trees grown far too close to one another, their woven boughs supporting huts made of living branches. These rude houses flowed along, tree to tree, scant withy-walls dividing one from the other. No ladders or steps ran down to the ground, though most of the dwellings were situated some way over her head.

  If her quarry was hidden in one such space, Nanda could not sense her. But she trusted Eetapi.

  ‘Lady Lysak?’ Nanda called. ‘Do not fear me. I am not here to harm you. But I must speak with you.’

  Silence. Nobody answered her, but the big man before her made no move to quiet her, either.

  ‘It is about Zolin,’ she continued. ‘No one suspects you of any involvement, if that is what you fear. But you may have vital information about him. I come to entreat you to share it with me.’

  ‘Why?’ came the question then, but it was the man who spoke, not Lysak.

  ‘Because the man known as Zolin has died, and someone is responsible for it. Some of those I care for are charged with uncovering the truth.’

  ‘You are much blessed with “friends”,’ retorted the man.

  ‘Yes. May I know your name? I find relations always proceed much more sensibly when the courtesies are observed.’

  ‘It is all right, Niklas,’ came another voice, female, from somewhere above. Then a slim, dark shape came tumbling down in a rush, landing on her feet. She turned to Nanda, and appraised her fellow spirit-witch with a keen gaze.

  Nanda returned the stare. This woman was an aristocrat, she reminded herself; far above Nanda in the social scale, a woman of wealth and importance. A woman of far greater worth than a mere apothecary, in the scheme of things. But she did not resemble such a woman now. She might be near Nanda’s own age, judging from the smoothness of her pale skin: a few years younger, perhaps. Her hair, bound down against the tearing winds, was dark, though not as black as Konrad’s; her eyes, cool in expression and dark blue, held a hint of something at odds with her composure. Fear? Wariness? She wore plain garb, wool and leather, drab in colour: nothing befitting a noblewoman. But, Nanda realised, she had spent a great deal of time out in the Bones. Probably these people had trained her spirit-gifts.

  ‘Viktor told you where to find me?’ said Lady Lysak.

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Nanda again.

  Her ladyship’s mouth quirked. A smile, suppressed? Or a twitch of annoyance? But then she held out her hand — gloveless — and smiled. ‘You may call me Rita,’ she said.

  Nanda grasped the outstretched hand firmly. ‘You may call me Nanda,’ she said, and a flood of impressions swamped her mind, temporarily obscuring everything that was Irinanda beneath them: for a few seconds, she was Rita Lysak, spirit-witch and noble.

  The human mind is a mess of tangled thoughts, facts, memories, dreams and ideas. Rarely is a person so obliging as to hold in their mind a complete and clear set of information about themselves, with which to answer every question Nanda may be desirous of learning the answer to. Rita was no different. Nanda caught glimpses of Zolin, smiling and at his ease, wearing the clothes he’d died in: Lady Lysak’s evening party. A snatch of anger, voices raised; lancing fear; then, confusingly, Niklas, the same man that stood before her, only a softer version of himself, his manner welcoming, loving, his features wreathed in smiles. A snug bed in a tree-bough aerie. Driving snow, alarmed passage through a cold grey morning—

  The hand was withdrawn.

  ‘You should tell him,’ said Lady Lysak.

  Nanda blinked, befuddled, her thoughts still focused upon what she had seen and sensed. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The dark man who wanders through your thoughts. You should tell him.’

  ‘Tell him… who? What?’

  ‘He has a right to know, perhaps.’

  Nanda gathered her wits with an effort. ‘You refer to—’

  ‘Konrad? That is his name?’

  ‘You are a Reader.’

  Lady Lysak — Rita — smiled. ‘Unusual to meet such another, isn’t it?’

  ‘But why did I not sense that—’

  ‘I do not often think of it. You take greater pride and pleasure in the ability than I, perhaps.’

  Perhaps she did. It had so often proved of use to Konrad and the inspector in their work; was it wrong to be proud of that?

  But… but Lady Lysak had Read her. She knew things that Nanda had not chosen to reveal to a living soul, not even those she loved best. And she had taken those things without thought, without permission…

  Nanda bristled. Yes, she had done the same to others, many times, but never just for the sake of it. Only if she had reason to believe they possessed information vital to the solving of a dark case; only if they withheld important information, and capriciously. So she told herself. It was different, was it not? And it was Lady Lysak who had held out her hand, Rita who had initiated the contact. Nanda would have contented herself with asking questions the polite way — unless her ladyship had proved stubborn.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Rita. ‘I shall not betray your secrets.’

  ‘You already have,’ said Nanda, her eye turning upon Niklas.

  He stared impassively back at her.

  ‘Niklas cares nothing for your secrets,’ said Rita with a smile. ‘In a good way. Well, shall you tell him? It is as wrong to hide important truths from those you love as it is to take them without their leave. You must know that.’

  ‘It is none of your business,’ Nanda snapped. ‘And I did not come here to be interrogated.’

  ‘No, you came here to interrogate. Very well, then. How may I help you? If you are minded to avenge Zolin, you are wasting your time. He did not deserve it.’

  ‘Everyone deserves justice.’

  ‘Perhaps. He was no shining light, however, whatever the papers might say. Do you imagine I know why he died? I do not.’

  ‘So you did know that he was dead.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How? Your servants said you left your house very early on the morning after his death. It had been nowhere reported, yet.’

  ‘But someone had ensured that I would know of it, by planting his head upon my mantel.’

  ‘So you saw that.’

  ‘Not with my own eyes. I have a… companion or two, like your friend there.’ Rita indicated a spot near Nanda’s elbow, occupied by nothing… visible. ‘They told me of it.’

  Nanda felt a flicker of excitement. ‘Then perhaps they also saw who placed it there?’

  ‘They did. It was no one known to me, but I can provide you with a description if you would like.’

  ‘I would be obliged to you. And if you will also tell me why you and Zolin were overheard in a blazing argument the night before, I shall be very grateful.’

  ‘He was a thief,’ said Lady Lysak bluntly. ‘We fought because I found him out, and confronted him about it.’

  ‘How did you find out?’

  Her ladyship scowled. ‘I paid attention. As did my spirit companions. He accepted almost every invitation that was
ever extended to him — provided they came from wealthy enough families. Those of mere modest wealth he scorned, even if by way of title or connection they were of greater status. Well, I was often a guest at those same gatherings, and I noticed two things. One, that Zolin frequently absented himself from the other guests for a short time, usually without being noticed by anyone but myself. He was clever about it. And two, the incidents of “losses” among the social elite have increased enormously in the past year. And what do you imagine I realised? That whenever lady-something-or-other had “lost” grandmama’s pearls, or great-uncle-Tomas’s jewel-encrusted pocket watch, Zolin had been one of the party. It was not so difficult to put those facts together.’

  Nanda frowned. ‘So many missing valuables? I heard of only one such theft, in the papers—’

  ‘Women of my station do not like their private affairs to be bandied about among the press,’ said Lady Lysak coldly. ‘I don’t suppose anyone ever does, but these women have the influence to suppress such reports — usually. And you can imagine why, I am sure. Who wants to advertise that their houses are not so inviolate as they are generally supposed to be? It is an open invitation to a daring thief.’

  Nanda nodded. ‘Very well, Zolin was stealing from his hosts. And what happened during the fight?’

  ‘I told him I had fathomed his secrets. I had not understood them all just yet; only that he stole. But he grew angry, and when I implied that others must be aware of his doings — indeed, his secrets — he grew agitated. I think, frightened. So I Read him. His head was full of things no aristocrat should know anything about. Rough-spoken people, paupers. The dockyards. Some menace he felt was chasing him, connected with those things.’

  ‘He wasn’t an aristocrat,’ said Nanda. ‘All a masquerade.’

  ‘That makes sense.’ Lady Lysak smiled faintly, a mirthless expression. ‘He wanted to know who I had told, who knew, where did I get my information. I did not answer these questions, of course.’