Death's Executioner

by Charlotte E. English

  Perhaps they had, rather more than a year after his disappearance. Presumed him dead, most likely, or fled the city. But what if someone had known better? What if that person had been more interested in revenge than jewels? Might that person have tracked Zolin back to his new life, waited for him outside of Lady Lysak’s house, and followed him into the snow?

  Plausible enough. Thieves could have a complicated code of honour, sometimes, and would not treat gently with one who stole from their own comrades. But to go so far as to hack off his head? Was it too far-fetched?

  ‘Do we know anything about Shults’s particular associates, before he disappeared?’ Konrad asked. ‘Anybody he was close to, or often worked with?’

  ‘Actually, we do. Want to go meet them?’

  ‘Them? Who are they?’

  ‘The Yudashin. Shults was one of a group of four, thieves all. They used to pickpocket together, way back, and then took up burgling houses later on. One of the others is dead now, but two of them are still knocking around down here.’

  ‘Have you spoken to them?’

  Tasha shook her head. ‘Just spied on them a bit. Ugly customers, that’s for sure.’

  ‘You’ve been busy.’

  ‘Isn’t what you know, it’s who you know.’ Tasha grinned.

  ‘Remind me to draw on your underworld connections more often.’

  Tasha scoffed, but Konrad could tell she was pleased.

  ‘Were you a thief, too?’ Konrad said abruptly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Before you became, somehow, a police ward.’

  ‘I resent the suggestion.’

  ‘I’m sure you do. But is it true? When I sent you to look up Zolin’s thieving background, I didn’t expect quite this degree of success. And you’ve exhibited a talent for getting into places before.’

  Tasha looked Konrad over, her small, pale face a vision of disdain. ‘If you’ve finished being rude, we’d best be going. People to meet, murderers to catch.’

  Konrad smirked. ‘Do lead on.’

  Tasha took him to a drinking house, or so it appeared at first glance. The exterior proclaimed its calling as a public carousing establishment, from the sour mix of aromas emanating from the ill-fitted windows and the none-too-clean approach (stale beer blended with the sharp tinge of vomit), to the grubby sign swinging gently in the wind over the front door (announcing in lurid letters the name The Drunken Deer, or so Konrad thought; some part of the sign was too filthy to be easily deciphered).

  A solid kick from Tasha sent the door sailing open, and in she strode, hailing the publican with a jaunty wave. The place was even dirtier inside, though the thin, sickly light cast by a dismal array of lamps somewhat softened the effect, if only because the worst of it lay in shadow. The stench of old beer hit Konrad’s nose with an almost physical blow, attended by the sour aroma of old sweat. He tried not to breathe too deeply, wondering in some distant part of his mind when he had become so fine a gent as to object to such ordinary things — nay, to notice them at all. Time was, he’d been used to such places.

  Never mind that now. He was receiving some scrutiny from the drinkers, being as he was far too well-dressed for such a place. It struck Konrad that the looks of narrow-eyed suspicion he was receiving were too keen, too interested, and too uniform; were these ordinary drinkers?

  When the worn and wary publican permitted Tasha to lead Konrad straight through the taproom and up a creaking set of stairs at the back, he could answer his own questions on one or two points. No, this was not quite an ordinary drinking-house; probably it was owned by the gang Tasha had spoken of, the ones who had employed the man Bogdan Zolin had once been. And no, Tasha was no stranger to this grimy little world either. Whether she was a thief still, or whether this was a particularly sordid part of her past, Konrad could not be sure. But he made a resolution to speak with Alexander about it at his earliest opportunity. Was she a true police ward now, or was she — horrible thought — planted there by this very gang, many of whose members had doubtless been snatched up by Tasha’s new employers at one time or another?

  He thought not, or she would not have brought him here, where he could so easily guess at some part of her connections. But the idea, once begun, would not so easily slink away again.

  The stairs, creaking alarmingly as he rested his weight upon each step, went up one floor, then doubled back on themselves and ascended a second in the opposite direction. Konrad followed Tasha up both flights, keeping a wary eye out for hidden dangers or complications; it was a comfort to know that Ootapi skulked somewhere in the shadows, vigilant on Konrad’s behalf. He did not truly think that Tasha would lead him into difficulty, certainly not deliberately. But he was on the trail of a vicious murderer, and here he’d walked straight into a den of cutthroats and thieves.

  ‘Twelve?’ said Tasha, pausing before a door that stood slightly ajar. The stairs ended abruptly here, in a landing so narrow there was not room for him to stand abreast of Tasha.

  ‘Who is it?’ grunted a wheezing voice.

  ‘We spoke earlier. I’ve brought someone to talk to you.’

  The door swung slowly open — without, Konrad noted, visible means — and Tasha went in.

  The man Twelve, if that was his name, sat at a kind of counting desk near the sole window. Piles of coin sat in rows before him, though the desk’s surface was otherwise bare save for a grimy lamp. A cheerless room, with its stripped floorboards, peeling paint, and detritus littering the corners. But the inhabitants were not disposed to care for such, Konrad knew. Besides Twelve, three others occupied the room: two men lounging in rickety old chairs before that desk, and a woman, who had perched herself upon the narrow window-sill.

  Four pairs of eyes fixed upon Konrad with the same suspicion he had encountered below, only more intense. They had the look of ready violence about them, and Konrad experienced an unaccustomed flicker of fear. If they decided to turn nasty, four of them might be enough to overpower him — and Tasha, assuming she was inclined to assist. And if they killed him, well, this time he would probably die. Permanently.

  Peace, Malykant, he told himself. Remember that you are also a dangerous man. And he looked it, he knew, despite his fashionable garments and gentleman’s speech. Something of The Malykt clung to him, always, granting him a sense of menace.

  He permitted that part to strengthen, just a little. Let them think twice before they approached him.

  ‘This the nob you talked of?’ said Twelve to Tasha. He was a big man, running to fat as age encroached upon him, but still muscled. Bald, grey-bearded, steel-eyed and missing more than one tooth, he presented the appearance of a man few would lightly cross. Konrad wondered again about Zolin, or Shults as he’d then been. What had possessed him to play fast and loose with such people as these?

  ‘He ain’t so bad as most nobs,’ said Tasha by way of answer. Konrad was intrigued to note that her grammar had slipped, as rarely happened in his presence now. She had also exaggerated what was usually only a hint of lilting street-cant in her speech. Wily little sneak.

  ‘All nobs are bad news,’ said Twelve gruffly. ‘Ask yer questions, and be gone.’ This last was directed at Konrad.

  And Konrad wondered why Twelve had permitted Tasha to bring him here at all. Perhaps his being so obviously a “nob” or noble operated in his favour, in a sense, for no one of his station ever worked for the police. Did they?

  ‘I am grateful for an audience—’ Konrad began, for it never hurt to be polite.

  ‘Get on with it,’ growled Twelve.

  ‘I am interested in a man named Boryan Shults.’

  ‘Shults?’ spat Twelve. ‘That street-stain still breathing?’

  ‘I believe not,’ said Konrad.

  ‘Then he got what he deserved. What of him?’

  ‘Was he… known to you?’

  ‘Aye. Knew him since he was a snivelling tyke picking pockets for tuppence a go. Gave ‘im better, didn’t we? But did that stop him from bi
ting the hand as fed him? No. Got some big ideas in his head and wouldn’t listen to reason. Didn’t play fair. Made off with more’n his share and we never saw him again.’

  ‘Big ideas?’ said Konrad. ‘What kind of ideas?’

  Twelve waved a hand. ‘Sommat to do with nobs. Like you. Said what was we doing, grubbing for pennies when half the streets of the city’s paved in gold? Nobody’d go with him. We told him, you get mixed up with that lot — your lot—’ Twelve paused to give Konrad a disgusted stare ‘—and you’ll be sorry. Ain’t worth the risks.’

  Konrad doubted that this roomful of hard-eyed men and women were so cautious as all that. No doubt they had thieved from a “nob” or two in their time, and with impunity. But they’d been right, in essence, about Shults. To launch so brazen an assault on the very heart of the richest quarter was asking for trouble. And trouble had easily found Shults.

  ‘He hasn’t ever been back, I take it?’ said Konrad.

  ‘Never,’ said Twelve.

  ‘Once,’ said one of the other men. ‘Just once.’

  Twelve looked as surprised as Konrad. ‘What did he want?’ Konrad asked.

  ‘He paid me back.’ The corner of the man’s mouth turned up in a sardonic smile. ‘He’d made off wi’ some of my cash, back when he left. Showed up one night, said he was sorry for it, and paid me twice what he owed.’

  ‘And you forgave him?’

  ‘I got my money.’

  ‘Did he say anything else?’

  ‘That he’d be back wi’ more sometime. Planned t’ pay back every one of us, so he said.’

  Konrad blinked.

  ‘Fat chance of that now,’ growled Twelve.

  ‘Did any of you know what he was doing to get that money?’ Konrad asked. ‘Where he’d gone?’

  ‘Not as such,’ said Twelve. ‘What did it matter? We had our own business to take care of. Let him get himself hanged if he wanted.’

  Konrad studied the man’s face, but saw nothing that might indicate a lie.

  Not that this signified, necessarily. The man might be a brilliant liar.

  Still, he was disinclined to think so. For all Shults’s shady dealings with these people, there wasn’t much real anger in this room. Whatever his transgressions had been, they were not considered profound by Twelve and his men. Even if they lied about being unaware of his recent doings, had one of them been so enraged with their former comrade as to separate his head from his body, more than a year after his disappearance? It did not seem likely.

  Though he could, of course, be dealing with a whole room full of convincing liars.

  ‘I hardly know what to make of that,’ Konrad said to Tasha a short time later, when they had regained the street. ‘Were they sincere or not?’

  ‘About what?’ Tasha hunched her thin shoulders against the biting wind, and tightened her collar about her throat.

  ‘Everything. But especially about Shults. His scheme was very successful, after all, for quite some time. Surely it would appeal to a man like Twelve.’

  ‘A man like Twelve?’ Tasha echoed, grinning. ‘What kind of a man is that? He’s a respectable businessman. Owns a public house, you know.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘He isn’t that stupid,’ said Tasha. ‘Look where Shults ended.’

  ‘But was it Shults’s scheme that got him killed or some arrangement gone wrong with his old gang?’

  ‘I don’t think they killed him.’

  ‘I am not deeply attached to the theory either, but I do not know why. They could easily have done so.’

  ‘Could, and might. But for one thing, to kill Shults would be a waste of a talented man. Whatever his flaws, he was a brilliant thief. And for another, beheading’s not their style. A knife through the ribs would be more like it.’

  ‘I cannot disagree,’ said Konrad thoughtfully. ‘There is one other thing that’s bothering me, and that is: where did Shults get the money to transform himself into Zolin? To hear Twelve talk, he certainly made off with some money he was not entitled to, but if he’d fleeced them of the kinds of sums he would need for his masquerade, they would have been livid about it. And they weren’t.’

  ‘So he got some money from somewhere else,’ Tasha mused. ‘Like where?’

  ‘I don’t know. Another gang? You said there were two.’

  ‘Yes, but you can’t be in both, Konrad. You pick a side. Anybody messing around with a rival gang is likely to get a knife between the ribs sooner rather than later.’

  ‘All right. Then where? Where else might a street-thief get that kind of money?’

  ‘You ask me as if I might know.’

  ‘I think maybe you might.’

  Tasha shrugged this off. ‘If I did, I’d be rich myself.’

  Chapter Nine

  Once Konrad had made his way out of the stews, he proceeded immediately to Alexander’s office at the police headquarters, confident of finding the inspector still labouring over his papers.

  Which he was — with Nanda’s help.

  ‘Konrad!’ she said, jumping up at his entrance. ‘I went home but you were not there.’

  Home? Did she mean Bakar House? His home? He felt a moment’s glow at the idea, and then wondered at himself. ‘I was on a goose chase,’ he said. ‘With Tasha. We spoke to Zolin’s old street gang, but… I don’t know. They do not strike either of us as likely candidates.’ In a way, Konrad supposed, it was simply too easy to pin the crime on a pack of known thieves. Too obvious. And nothing about this murder had been straightforward.

  ‘I found Lady Lysak,’ said Nanda.

  Alexander, however, was not listening. ‘When you say Zolin’s old street gang…’

  ‘Man called Twelve. And some cronies.’

  Alexander sat up. ‘Twelve? You met Twelve?’

  ‘That’s what he called himself.’

  ‘I know. I know of Twelve, but no one actually sets eyes on the man, let alone talks— you did say you talked to him?’

  ‘Tasha’s doing,’ said Konrad, bemused.

  Alexander fixed Tasha with a gimlet gaze. ‘And just how did that come about?’

  Tasha, for once in her life, looked vaguely uncomfortable. Without fully meeting the inspector’s gaze, she said stoutly: ‘He owed me a favour.’

  ‘Owed you a—’

  ‘I,’ said Nanda more loudly, ‘found Lady Lysak.’

  Alexander took his eyes off Tasha, but with obvious reluctance. The lamaeni would have some awkward questions to answer later on, Konrad judged.

  Not really his business, however, and not the pressing concern at present. ‘You are a wonder, Nan,’ he said warmly. ‘Did she know anything?’

  ‘She gave me a list of other houses that have been robbed in the past few months.’

  Alexander promptly produced a hand-drawn map sketched over a sheet of paper. Glancing at it, Konrad recognised the general layout of Ekamet’s wealthiest quarter, including his own street, and Surnin Place. ‘Shall we add them?’ he invited.

  ‘What are these marks?’ Konrad asked, tracing a finger over some asterisks firmly marked in red ink.

  ‘Thefts among the elite, at houses Zolin was known to have attended as a guest.’

  ‘We found a stash,’ Tasha volunteered. ‘At Zolin’s house. Also his real name is Shults.’

  ‘You may want to have someone check the pawn shops around there,’ Konrad added. ‘He may have sold a few articles, as well.’

  Alexander produced a blank sheet of paper, which he pushed at Tasha. ‘Draw it for me,’ he ordered, and Tasha bent to the task of sketching out the cramped, narrow streets of the stews in which Shults’s house stood. ‘Also,’ added the inspector, ‘draw what you can remember of the items you found at the house. I’ll send some men over shortly but I need this information quickly.’

  ‘She also,’ said Nanda, ‘gave me a description of the person who left Zolin’s— Shults’s— head in her house. Tall man, pale and dark-haired. She could not say muc
h as to his clothes, for he wore a long, dark coat over all.’

  ‘So she did see it,’ said Konrad. The description itself was no case-breaker; many men in Assevan were pale and dark-haired, and he could not even make a guess as to this man’s station, without some further detail as to his mode of dress. But it helped.

  ‘Not exactly. She has spirit-companions, of a sort, who witnessed it.’

  ‘Spirit— then she’s a ghostspeaker?’

  ‘Not… exactly. No, I don’t think she is. Spirit witches have… other ways.’

  Konrad would have enquired further, but Nanda went on, relating a slew of details gleaned from Lady Lysak. Listening to Nanda, and watching as she and Alexander added more coloured marks to his map, Konrad began to feel a picture emerging.

  ‘Some pertinent questions,’ he said. ‘I want to know how Shults paid for his training, or found a suitable tutor either. Also, how did he choose these targets? How did he know which houses had the finest jewels? It is not always a simple case of the largest house, or the most ostensibly wealthy family.’

  ‘Another thing,’ said Alexander, still energetically working on his map, ‘why are most of his gains lying in a house in the stews? Why hasn’t he already sold them?’

  ‘He couldn’t move such articles as those at pawn shops,’ said Konrad. ‘Items of lesser value, like the gold ring, he could pawn, but not heirloom diamond necklaces. It must be obvious that they were stolen goods.’

  ‘And a lifelong thief like him would know that,’ said Nanda. ‘So, why this scheme? What was he planning to do with them?’

  ‘Twelve’s gang might be the answer to all of this,’ said Alexander. ‘They might know which houses to target, and how to sell such pieces.’

  ‘So their supposed feud with Shults was a fabrication?’ Konrad said. ‘That could be so, but how could they have arranged for him to so convincingly ape the elite? That’s something nobody could do merely by watching from the outside. Too many obscure rules, too many ways to go wrong. He would have needed… someone who was born into it.’

  ‘A former lordling, turned bad?’ suggested Alexander.