Death's Executioner

by Charlotte E. English

  ‘I don’t think they have been harvesting eyes, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Are you sure? I wouldn’t put it past them.’

  ‘It’s more that I don’t think they need to. Their eyes, such as they are, See beyond the borders of life already, courtesy of The Malykt. They don’t need to borrow and bewitch someone else’s.’

  ‘True. But all this rubbish — rites and ritual burnings and Seeing beyond the borders — do you think this is it? Really?’

  ‘The language is somewhat dry and obscure, but my reading of it is this: we already knew that in some traditions, including among some Marjan communities, the idea of an unclean death prevails as much as it does in Assevan society. That being, an early death, someone hastened out of life before their time, and by the hand of another. But for all that shopkeeper’s words about destiny or whatever it was, it seems that there are rites to — detect traces of this. To see, as you say, whatever it is Eetapi and Ootapi are seeing when they look at a recently murdered corpse.’

  ‘That’s my understanding too,’ Tasha said. ‘But harvesting and empowering eyes? Really?’

  ‘The eyes of murdered corpses,’ said Nuritov. ‘There’s an odd kind of symmetry to it.’

  ‘A creepy kind of symmetry. So somebody killed our two gents because they’d killed some people themselves — Konrad-style — and then whoever did it took their eyes so they could use them to find the next crime?’

  ‘It fits, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It might, though Katya swears blind neither of them could possibly have killed anyone. But who are we dealing with, then? Some twisted kind of would-be Malykant, with no dead and deranged serpents to assist him?

  ‘And no mandate from the Great Spirits, either, is my guess,’ said Nuritov.

  ‘Great. A plain old serial killer, in other words, but one with delusions of grandeur and a knack for creepy Marjan death-rites.’

  ‘A fine challenge for your first job.’

  Tasha scowled. ‘Katya seemed really certain that these two couldn’t have killed anybody.’

  ‘She could be wrong. Why did Artemo and Vak go to Marja in the first place? They followed — something that felt wrong to them. Perhaps they… dispatched whomever it was, after Vak had sent his letter to the Order. Depending upon one’s perspective, that is murder.’

  ‘That’s a thought.’

  ‘Or possibly our serial killer was wrong.’

  ‘You mean… Artemo and Vak might have been wrongly identified as killers?’ Tasha thought about that, and went cold. ‘Spirits. Nuritov, do you think — you don’t think Konrad’s ever killed the wrong person?’

  Nuritov didn’t answer immediately. ‘I have total respect for his abilities,’ he finally said, which wasn’t at all the same thing as an emphatic no.

  ‘No one can be right all the time, can they?’ said Tasha faintly.

  ‘Let’s hope Konrad can.’

  ‘And me, too.’

  Nuritov looked gravely at her. ‘It is a serious responsibility.’

  Tasha swallowed. She had known it was, of course, when she volunteered herself to take it on. But somehow, that aspect of the role had not occurred to her before. Perhaps because Konrad always had such certainty about him, such a cool efficiency as he dispatched killer after killer that she hadn’t…

  Spirits above.

  ‘We are going to need Konrad back,’ she said.

  Nuritov didn’t disagree, but he said: ‘Now is not the time for a crisis of the confidence, Tasha. All right? We have work to do.’

  ‘Right. Yes.’ She sat up, dismissing her disquiet. She was starting to sound like Konrad in his maudlin moods, and that would never do. ‘How does this help us?’ she said, tapping the book before her.

  ‘It is pertinent information we didn’t have before.’

  ‘Yes, but how does it help us find our killer?’

  ‘Maybe it won’t. In fact,’ Nuritov tapped the bowl of his pipe absently against the topmost page, thinking. ‘In fact, there is a real possibility that our killer is already gone back to Marja. We may never find him.’

  ‘No! He has to be punished.’

  Nuritov raised his brows.

  ‘Well,’ Tasha persisted. ‘Isn’t that what we do here?’

  ‘Do you think anyone has ever felt that Konrad ought to be punished?’

  ‘Only if he was ever wrong.’

  ‘Oh? What about all the times he was right? Do you think no one has ever resented his actions, even when they were justified according to The Malykt’s law?’

  ‘You mean to warn me that widespread resentment lies in my future, too.’

  Nuritov shook his head. ‘Not precisely. But it’s worth remembering that Konrad had good reason to keep his identity secret.’

  ‘Fine, fine. I won’t barrel in like an idiot and give myself away.’

  That won her one of Nuritov’s rare smiles. ‘Won’t you?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ***

  Extracting Konrad from the city of souls proved easier than Nanda had feared, despite the Gatekeeper’s utter uselessness.

  ‘I cannot,’ he said, when Nanda turned to him for her passage out.

  ‘What? Why not?’

  He took a seat upon empty air, cross-legged, chin in hand. ‘Letting a living person in was transgression enough. I cannot also let a deceased soul out.’

  ‘He is not deceased,’ said Nanda quickly. ‘His body still lives.’

  ‘Oh? Then what is his spirit doing here?’

  ‘The two are temporarily sundered.’

  That irritating, head-tilting glance, curious and vaguely mocking, set Nanda grinding her teeth in frustration. ‘It is beyond your power to reunite the two. What, then, are you planning to do with this soul you’ve retrieved?’

  ‘Forgive me, but that is my business and can hardly be considered relevant to you.’

  The Gatekeeper grinned, showing too-pale teeth. ‘You will keep it, I suppose, like a pet.’

  Nanda folded her arms, and stared at him in silence.

  ‘The truth is,’ said the Gatekeeper conversationally, ‘what you ask is beyond my power. I can bring a soul in, but no part of my duty involves taking them out again.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Nanda, her heart sinking. That presented a problem. ‘Snakes?’ she called. ‘You do not have a solution, by any chance?’

  We do not, Eetapi confirmed.

  Through this discussion, Konrad stood quiet. Nanda might have appreciated a thought or two from him, supposing he had any, but his silence and docility was at least better than the tearful (and misguided) protests of shortly before.

  No use asking him. He, too, dealt in sending souls into The Malykt’s city, not in getting them out.

  She thought about how the Gatekeeper had opened a way in: a slash of his hand, a ragged tear opening up in the barriers between the Deathlands and the spiritlands — or the Deathlands and that featureless, fathomless in-between place she had first arrived in.

  And she thought about how she had contrived to step from the spiritlands into his deeper, higher, stranger plane in the first place.

  ‘I wonder if this would work,’ she said, taking out the knife her Mistress had blessed. It glimmered in the light, in a colour Nanda had never witnessed in it before: vivid green, like spring grass.

  The Gatekeeper recoiled.

  ‘Don’t you like it?’ said Nanda, letting the point drift in his direction.

  ‘It’s — anathema,’ said the Gatekeeper, keeping a close eye on it.

  ‘What I suspect you mean is simply that it’s potent. It could slice through you like butter, could it?’

  The Gatekeeper’s eyes narrowed. ‘The Shandrigal is not The Malykt’s enemy, you know. Why would Her weapons harm me?’

  ‘I wonder if it differentiates?’ Nanda said mildly. ‘It went through the malefic like butter.’

  ‘Malefic? What, are they returned?’

  ‘Just the one, for a bit. It’s gone n
ow.’

  The Gatekeeper was silent, visibly disquieted. His dark eyes moved from the knife to Nanda’s face and back, and he said nothing.

  ‘We need him,’ Nanda said, pointing the knife at Konrad. ‘To keep the malefic curse at bay. Our Malykant.’

  ‘There is always another Malykant,’ said the Gatekeeper.

  ‘Yes. Another new, traumatised, poorly trained and poorly supported Malykant. The world might like to keep the same one for a bit longer, this time. Who knows? Maybe we can have a world with no malefic, ever again, for always.’ And he’d have time, Nanda thought, to mentor his own replacement. Whoever finally took over from Konrad would do so from a position of knowledge, confidence and stability, with all the support from both Orders that Konrad (and his predecessors) always should have had.

  A woman could dream.

  ‘It is still beyond my power to free him,’ said the Gatekeeper.

  ‘I know. I was just hoping you might stand aside and play dumb while I do this.’ Nanda lifted her arm, and swept The Shandrigal’s knife through the air in a great, smooth arc, mimicking the Gatekeeper’s own gesture.

  A rift opened.

  The Gatekeeper folded his arms, mimicking Nanda’s own posture from shortly before. ‘You still owe me.’

  ‘I do. Don’t worry. You like company, no? I’m going to send the most colourful person I know up here.’

  She chose not to wait for a response, but turned at once to the serpents. ‘Eetapi, Ootapi. Get him through, will you?’

  The dread snakes went to work at once, binding Konrad’s soul to their own will. Under their influence, the vague look did not fade from his dead eyes but his limbs moved, and that was all she wanted at present. He walked inexorably towards the rift she had created in the fabric of the Deathlands, and vanished through.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said to the Gatekeeper, and bowed. ‘I am much obliged to you.’

  He gave her in response a crooked smile, and a dismissive wave of one insubstantial hand. ‘Give The Shandrigal my regards,’ he said. ‘Somehow I think She is no match for you.’

  Nanda smiled, too, in a small, secret way, and followed after Konrad.

  ‘Madam Inshova?’ she said in surprise, for awaiting her on the other side of her green-glittering rift was her Order superior, wearing a look of irritation.

  ‘Quickly,’ said Katya, though the word emerged more as a growl. ‘It will close on you, you know.’

  Nanda hastened her steps, keeping a close eye on what was left of Konrad. ‘I don’t— what are you doing here? Not that I am ungrateful, for I perceive you’ve been—’

  ‘Quickly,’ said Katya again. ‘Or did you want to finish this alone?’

  The fae had cleaned up Konrad’s mortal remains. Nanda had not expected that, but she experienced such a rush of gratitude upon seeing him — free of blood and bile, his skin clear, his flesh still plump and blooming and not desiccated in death — she could almost have kissed every single one of the slippery creatures.

  ‘He is sound enough,’ said Inkubal, upon enquiry. ‘His heart beats, his blood flows.’

  ‘And his injuries?’ They had, more oddly, discarded Konrad’s own clothing, and dressed him instead in some of their own garments. Perhaps his clothing had been too dirtied and insanitary, to leave in place. The replacement robe (woven, for all she could tell, from light and tears and dark dreams) shrouded his form too thoroughly for her to discern the state of his flesh beneath.

  ‘Healed,’ said Inkubal. He wore shadows of his own, primarily around his penetrating eyes; the tasks she had set him had wearied him. Wearied them all, no doubt.

  A heavy reckoning lay before her.

  ‘Good,’ said Nanda crisply, and took the one, small liberty of touching Konrad’s hair. He lived, but he was so cold.

  No time to waste.

  The fae had not tried to move him far. He lay still in the spiritlands, no longer prone in the pool of his own blood in which he’d fallen, but not far distant from it. He lay in cool, ice-touched grass, a canopy of withies laden with leaves arching above. The ethereal thing in some manner deterred the wind, for nothing stirred beneath it. Kulu sat at Konrad’s left ear, staring into his left eye with a fierce, unnerving level of concentration. Why his left eye was open, when the other was closed, Nanda did not know, but that Kulu bent all her small but potent powers upon Konrad’s being she did not doubt.

  At times, she had resented the price they demanded of her for her aid. Especially late at night, drowning in visions — their visions, glimpses of the lives they led and the deeds they’d committed, so alien to her simple way of life.

  Today, she grudged them none of it.

  What now? Eetapi demanded. She detected strain in the serpent’s words; holding Konrad bound took its toll on them, too.

  We cannot put him back in, said Ootapi.

  ‘I know,’ she murmured.

  Neither can you, he added, helpfully.

  ‘I know. Hush.’

  The Gatekeeper was right, the serpents were right: recombining the sundered halves of Konrad’s being, body and soul, lay beyond the power of any mortal. Only the Great Spirits had ever been able to do that.

  Well, then.

  Nanda took up the knife — no longer glowing green — for what she hoped would be the last time. The knife had dispatched a malefic, and carved a hole in the Deathlands; such power ought not to rest in the hands of a mortal, either, except at dire need. The first use that had been made of it surely counted. She must make the second and third count, too — and now it was time to turn its powers on herself.

  Gritting her teeth, Nanda carved a long, shallow cut down her own arm, elbow to wrist. Quickly swapping hands before blood loss could weaken them, she performed the same procedure upon her other arm. Her blood flowed, mingling with The Shandrigal’s verdant magics as it trickled in a slow stream over her fingers, and onto the ground.

  She had expected pain, but not agony. She fell to her knees, swallowing a cry, as agony flared and burned — and faded, taking with it everything in her that was unworthy of Her Mistress. Every lingering trace of the darkness she had lately fallen into, in her life at Konrad’s side.

  She let some of that blood fall into Konrad’s hair, onto his face. Pity, she thought with distant irrelevance. And they cleaned him up so nicely…

  After that, nothing remained but to pray.

  ‘Mistress,’ she said aloud. ‘I know I have become a nuisance with my — my failures and my requests and my need for favours, but nonetheless I have another such to ask of You.’ She swallowed, and breathed, aware abruptly of an infinite weariness. ‘It is one I’ve asked of You before and You have granted it before. Grant me this thing one more time. Bring Konrad Savast, the Malykant, servant of Your Brother The Malykt, back to life.’

  Something stirred at last in the lifeless air beneath the canopy: a faint breath of wind, a gentle current that told her The Shandrigal listened.

  ‘In return I offer You… well, my life in exchange, if You want it. Also Konrad’s, not in quite the same way. He is The Malykt’s creature, but I think he should be Yours, too. The Malykant serves both, doesn’t he? He punishes transgressions against The Malykt’s laws, and in so doing he defends and celebrates life. He has come to value his own life, at long last, thanks in part to Your interference and in part to mine. It’s too cruel that he should have to relinquish it now, and in such a cause. And it would be a cruelty to Your people, too, who’ve benefited from his work, and his predecessors’ work, for years — the malefic proved that — and —’ Breathless, Nanda stopped, swallowing down a wave of dizziness. ‘Bring him back. Please. Take him into Your service, as well as Your Brother’s.’

  Split him between Us? Her Mistress’s voice, thrumming deep in Nanda’s heart.

  ‘Why not?’ she said lightly. ‘Already that’s been the case, near enough.’

  Since the last time I knit body and spirit back together, and turned him loose upon Assevan.

 
‘Yes. And he’s been… better, since then. I’ve seen it.’

  Why has My Brother not already revived His own servant?

  Nanda, deprived of her small hope that The Shandrigal would not ask certain inconvenient questions, sighed. ‘Konrad has been the Malykant for nearly nine years now.’

  Then it is his time. The words were not encouraging, but the faint suggestion of a question lingered behind them. Nanda seized upon it.

  ‘It isn’t his time. It doesn’t have to be! He is good in the role, and not losing his wits, whatever Diana Valentina may say of it — what does she know? She hardly sees Konrad. I see him every day. He is not mad, he is not corrupt, and we need him.’ Tears gathered at the back of her eyes, tightening her throat, and Nanda paused for another steadying breath. Tired. She was just tired. ‘Please,’ she said.

  Why does it matter so much to you, Shandral? The voice was curious, mild, probing. Is it for Assevan you plead?

  ‘No.’ Nanda took a shaking breath. ‘I am not so unselfish. I want him for myself, too.’

  Nothing more was said, for a time, and Nanda used the interval to gather herself. She was conscious of her pact-bound fae, silent and cowed by The Shandrigal’s presence, making themselves small and invisible. Nanda did not blame them. The Great Spirit’s attention was no easy burden to bear.

  She was also conscious of Katya Inshova’s presence at the edge of the ethereal clearing, silent and watchful. So far, she had not chosen to interfere. Would she? Or did her mere presence here offer her tacit support to Nanda’s plea?

  What do you think? said The Shandrigal at last.

  The question was not directed at her, nor even to Katya. The Shandrigal spoke to Konrad himself, and Konrad felt the shift of Her attention, for he woke from whatever dreaming reverie he had lost himself in, his wavering spirt seeming suddenly more substantial, more present.

  I…

  Konrad’s voice was so distant, so thin, that Nanda’s heart quailed. Had he come back with her at all, or was it only a shadow? Did he linger still in the Deathlands, his mind and heart held there in spite of all her efforts?