Mystery!

by Chantelle Aimée Osman

  Whatever had happened, whatever reason the orc had for murdering her, no one deserved an end like that. There was nothing honorable about a stab in the back. But, perhaps, I was foisting ideas of human honor and saintly goodness onto the shoulders of Brother Krognak.

  “It would seem, based on the stab wound and the knife, that the attacker caught the abbess from behind, unawares.”

  “Brother Krognak was trusted by her. He brought her meals daily. Getting behind her and procuring a knife would be no difficulty.”

  “You’re correct, Brother Dominguez, but explain the mess at your feet.”

  I looked down and, just as Brother Krognak had said, he’d spilled the contents of her lunch tray. Soup stained the carpet, hunks of bread and cheese were scattered near the wall, the pot of tea had spilled and collected on the stone floor between the carpet and the wall.

  I thought for a moment and the answer came to me. “Were I to proclaim my innocence, I’d deliver the tray, stab the abbess, then remove it from the desk, drop it here, and then begin to make noise for others to hear.”

  “My thoughts exactly. If Brother Krognak did it, that is definitely what happened.”

  “If?”

  “There are still interviews to be completed and a motive to be discovered. Never settle into a conclusion before all the facts are in. What you described is one possibility, but surely not foregone.”

  “Yes, Sister Saint.”

  There was wisdom in her words and I bowed my head in deference.

  “It’s time we interview Sister Arellano, then, yes?”

  Together, we descended the stairs to the much more austere office of the vice. Like the abbess’ office, this one also had thick bookcases lined against the back wall and carpet on the floor. The bloody scene was lacking, though, and for that I was grateful.

  Sister Arellano sat on a chair opposite the abbot’s desk, with her back to us as we entered. The abbot sat at his own desk, tenting his fingers. When he noticed us darken the doorway, he stood and invited us in. “Enter, please. This is Sister Arellano, a recent initiate who has proved herself well and often works here in the high tower.”

  “If you don’t mind, Brother Abbot, may I ask her some questions privately?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said as he stood without hesitation. “I’ll go down and begin making arrangements for this evening’s memorial.”

  “Excellent. I hope the abbess has a beautiful send off. But please don’t venture too far, I’ll want to speak with you once Sister Arellano and I are finished.”

  “As you please, Sister Saint.”

  The abbot left us in his office.

  “Sister Arellano, I’m Sister Agatha, dispatched from the capital by the Sainted Mother. I was sent here to inspect the abbey and report. I didn’t expect this level of commotion.”

  “No, sister. None of us expected such a thing to happen.”

  “Tell me about the abbess.”

  “I didn’t know her well. She was a kind but firm leader.”

  “You worked here in the tower?”

  “I’m a recent initiate, and she’s been working on a particularly difficult manuscript. Our paths rarely crossed.”

  “And how did she treat Brother Krognak?” Sister Agatha inspected the abbot’s bookshelves as she listened, even inspecting for dust with a finger. Then she checked the sturdiness of the shelf.

  “She treated the orc with the same deference as all of her charges so far as I saw.”

  Sister Agatha turned back to Sister Arellano and folded her hands neatly behind her back. “So you can’t think of a reason why he might want to murder her?”

  “He’s an orc.”

  “Hmm,” Sister Agatha said. “Why don’t you tell me what you saw.”

  “Well, I heard first. The orc was screaming. So I ran up to see.”

  “You were nearby?”

  “Yes. Well, one floor below, in the study. The vice-abbot had sent me to fetch a few manuscripts he needed.”

  “You were the first one on the scene? Where was Brother Abbot?”

  “In here, I presume. I just assumed he hadn’t heard, he’s a bit deaf.”

  “I see. And what exactly did you see when you came into the room?”

  “The orc was attacking the abbess. He had blood all over him and he held the knife in his hands.”

  “And you saw him plunge this knife into her?”

  “No, but it was apparent he had.”

  “What was his demeanor?”

  “I don’t know. He was screaming. Who can tell with orcs?”

  “And then what did you do?”

  “I sounded the alarm and the vice-abbot and the rest dragged the orc down to the yard, where you found us.”

  “The vice-abbot heard you this time?”

  “Aye.”

  “Fascinating. Well, that will be all of my questions, Sister Arellano. Would you be so kind as to fetch Brother Abbot?”

  She bowed her head and left. Sister Agatha and were I alone once more.

  “If you were her, how and why would you have done it?”

  “She seems to have a prejudice toward orcs. Framing Brother Krognak could be an extension of that. Perhaps she was upset at the abbess that he’d been initiated. She could have known the meal schedule. She was known to the abbess so she could have gained easy entry, stabbed her, and then waited nearby while she waited for Brother Krognak to arrive.”

  “Very good. And how might she stand to benefit?”

  “Hmm,” I said, thinking. “Perhaps she’d curry favor with the new abbot by discovering this plot?”

  “Not much of a benefit, but perhaps all we have. Do you think you’d have come to that thought if you were convinced wholly of Brother Krognak’s guilt?”

  “Perhaps not, Sister Saint.”

  “Always keep your mind open to ideas, Brother Dominguez. Especially when it comes to questions of guilt. And when a murder is involved, never underestimate the motive.”

  “Yes, Sister Saint.” A question came to me, and I opened my mouth to ask, but stopped myself.

  “What is it, Brother Dominguez? There are no foolish questions or ideas when investigating a crime. Speaking it aloud helps.”

  “Well, it wasn’t about the case as much as you, Sister Saint. How did you learn these skills of…deduction and the intricacies of murder?”

  Sister Agatha chuckled. “It’s always been an interest, but there’s a reason they send an inspector to do inspections. I suppose I just have a knack for detail and the nature of mortal beings.”

  “I can see that.”

  Before she could respond further, the shuffling footsteps of the abbot could be heard climbing up the final stretch of stair. He appeared in the landing with a grim countenance.

  “Everything in order, Brother Abbot?” Sister Agatha asked.

  “Of course, of course,” he said, sweeping by us and taking a seat at his writing desk. “This whole dark business is enough to make one’s heart hurt.”

  “Indeed,” she replied. “But I have a few questions for you and then, hopefully, all of this dark business, as you say, can be behind us all.”

  “Anything in my power to do, I will.”

  Sister Agatha bade me sit in a chair on the side of the room, with a clear view of both of them. Once I was seated, she folded her hands behind her back and paced in front of the abbot’s desk. “What can you tell me about Brother Krognak.”

  “Well, he’s an orc. That might tell you enough about him.”

  “I can tell the basics from that. His skin is green, he has tusked teeth, but that tells me nothing of his personality, his demeanor. He seemed a gentle creature when I spoke to him, I was wondering of your opinion of his character.”

  “He was very quiet. I didn’t know him well.”

  “And what of his initiation? That must have been an auspicious occasion, given the work of the mission.”

  “Of course, there were celebrations…”

  “
Did anyone raise objections to his initiation?”

  “Well…I did, as a matter of fact. I believe in our effort to bring civilization to these savages, but we ought to do it at a distance, yes? Bringing one into our place of safety seemed to invite something like this to happen.”

  “I see.”

  “It felt, to me and others, like a misguided push to force unneeded diversity on our ranks.”

  “I imagine the abbess was the final arbiter of the decision?”

  “Yes. Ironic isn’t it? Her charity to the orcs put an end to her. I warned her.” He lowered his head and shook it. “I warned her.”

  Sister Agatha nodded her head, as if in agreement.

  Her silence was enough to make him nervous. Uncomfortable. “Well,” he stammered. “I hope this matter is sufficiently closed. As part of our proceedings to honor the abbess, we’ll allow the orc to meet his end.”

  “Before you do, there’s one last thing I’d like to do, it won’t take but a moment.”

  “Of course.”

  I stood, but Sister Agatha waved a hand to stop me. “No, please, Brother Dominguez, stay here and keep the abbot company. I’ll be back in just a moment.”

  “As you wish, Sister Saint.”

  She left the room. The abbot and I shared an uncomfortable silence. As of that morning, my plan had been to present myself to the head of the abbey and welcome my new assignment, but Sister Agatha—and the murder—had changed all of that.

  The abbot cleared his throat. “Have you been with Sister Agatha long…Brother Dominguez, was it?”

  “Indeed. No, not long. In fact, I’ve only been with her for a few days as a traveling companion.”

  “She seems very capable.”

  “That’s what I’m learning, Brother Abbot. How long have you been here in shadow of Mount Saint Edrador?”

  “Just a few years. I’m new to the missionary work of the abbey. I was initiated at the capital and served in the office of the Sainted Mother for a few years and then squired for shield maidens during the wars.”

  “I imagine you’ve seen some things.”

  “I have.”

  But it was I who was seeing things. It took everything I had to not react when the bookcase behind the abbot moved, as if on a hinge. I locked eyes with the abbot and pretended nothing was wrong.

  I was not good at intrigue.

  “Is there something wrong, Brother Dominguez?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  But something was wrong.

  Sister Agatha stepped out from behind his bookcase. Like a cat, she padded forward silently.

  “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” the abbot said to me.

  And that’s when Sister Agatha drew her shimmering sword. “Brother Abbot, by the power vested in me by the Sainted Mother, you are hereby under arrest for the murder of the abbess of Mount Saint Edrador.”

  The abbot turned in his chair, shocked.

  In that moment, I realized why Sister Agatha had placed me in the spot that she had. If I had been anywhere else in the room, he’d have been able to see her opening the bookshelf and coming for him.

  Now, her sword was at his throat.

  “Surely, you must be mistaken, Sister Saint,” he stuttered.

  “I thought I might have been. But the passageway confirms it. You’re the only one with motive, opportunity, and benefit.”

  “What?”

  “You hated Brother Krognak, a wise and worthy initiate in the order, for no reason other than the race of his birth. You hated the abbess for initiating him. Those are motive enough to make you a suspect. But after Sister Arellano said that you had sent her down for books, I realized that provided you an opportunity to slip up this secret staircase with no witnesses and place a knife in the back of your abbess. Naturally, with her gone, you would become the next abbot. Your benefit.”

  His face grew pale and his mouth slacked, “I don’t…uh…”

  “Do you deny the charges?”

  His eyes widened and he looked around the room as best he could. His eyes found me, a witness. “No,” he said quietly.

  “Brother Dominguez,” Sister Agatha said, “do you accept and witness this confession in the eyes of the saints?”

  “As my station allows, Sister Saint.”

  “Good. Now fetch the prioress. The proceedings tonight are going to have quite a change in cast. And have them release Brother Krognak.”

  That evening, a celebration of the life of the abbess was held and, for his treachery, the abbot was burned in a bonfire. Exactly how he intended to punish Brother Krognak for his false crime.

  Brother Krognak accepted his fair share of apologies from his fellow monks. His tender reaction at learning he had been cleared of the charges against him did my heart well. I worried about leaving him though, with these people who still might harbor prejudice against him, but he refused Sister Agatha’s offer to accompany her.

  He insisted on seeing the good in his fellow initiates at the abbey, and his faith bolstered mine.

  The bonfire raged and those who called the abbey of Mount Saint Edrador home surrounded it, but Sister Agatha and I stayed on the periphery.

  “That was a job well done, Brother Dominguez.”

  “Indeed, Sister Saint.”

  “No need to be so formal. Sister Agatha will do.”

  “Yes, Sister Agatha.”

  “You did well. You have a sharp mind.”

  “Well, school is a whetstone for a sharp mind and grinding against it is all I’ve done, sister.”

  Sister Agatha laughed. “If you’d rather accompany me in my inspections than stay here, I would approve. I think that might be a good fit for the both of us.”

  “I think you might be right, Sister.”

  “Good. We’ll leave on the morrow, back to the capital to make our report. In the meantime, let’s enjoy this victory.”

  “In the name of the saints,” I said.

  “In the name of the saints,” she agreed.

  Back to TOC

  Morning Star

  Nik Korpon

  Five Years Before The Rebellion’s Last Traitor

  The woman next to me ordered her third drink. She looked comfortable at this bar, or maybe she was just comfortable with misery. Her gnarled fingers worried an old necklace, likely an heirloom. She noticed me watching her. I immediately turned away, but she had seen her opening.

  “Funny how something as simple as a piece of wood can be so heavy,” she said, sighing on the last word, though I wasn’t sure if that was for her benefit or mine.

  “Is it ironwood?” I knew I shouldn’t have engaged but didn’t know what else to say.

  She shook her head dolefully. “My heart turned wooden years ago. This is all that’s left.”

  I put on my best sympathetic expression, trying not to roll my eyes, and waved to Emeríann for anther drink. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I told the woman without actually looking at her.

  “It was my grandfather’s, passed down to my father who passed it down to me.” She held it up. “I gave it to my son, Daniel,” she continued. “It’s the only thing I have left of him since he disappeared.”

  Even hearing the name Daniel made my skin burn, as if I was reliving my own personal catastrophe anew. I should’ve saved Donael. My chest tightened. “Sorry, what’s that?”

  She held the wood before my face. “Two months ago, I was cooking dinner. My son was in his room, reading. I’d run out of oil and ran to the corner store to grab more. When I came home, he was gone.”

  “So, nothing else was taken?”

  She shook her head.

  “Nothing to indicate someone had robbed you?”

  She shook her head.

  “No note from your son saying he’d gone somewhere, and nothing from any friend’s parents saying Daniel was missing?”

  “I’d called out to him, telling him I was going to the shops and would be right back. He said okay, because that’s all you can
get out of a fourteen-year-old.”

  Even though Donael was much younger, it was something they’d had in common.

  “And the police found nothing?”

  “They don’t care about people like us,” she said. “Someone took my report, but no one followed up. No one questioned the neighbors. We’re not well-off, we don’t work for the Tathadann. If we were rebels, at least they would pay attention to us, even if it was monitoring every action. To them, we don’t exist. My boy vanished into thin air and no one cares. How could you miss a boy with hair as red as his? It’s like his head is on fire. It’s impossible to miss.”

  “Did you ask the neighbors if anyone had seen anything suspicious?”

  She shrugged. “The neighbors don’t think highly of us.”

  “Why? Are they Tathadann?”

  “Well, yes,” she said, “but that’s not why. Daniel’s father is Carrick Kearney.”

  Carrick Kearney was a low-rent fence. He didn’t discriminate: any race, he’d buy from you; any price, he’d work with you; any product—whether organic or man-made—he’d sell it for you. I’d been siphoning off some of the memories I stole and selling them on the side for extra drinking money, but even I wouldn’t go near Carrick Kearney. Put bluntly, he was a piece of shit, and I wasn’t surprised in the least that the cops didn’t want to help him. Hell, they probably thought he stolen his own son and sold him off. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d trafficked in people.

  The cops, who were paid by and beholden to the Tathadann—the brutal party who ruled over Eitan City—wouldn’t do anything, but I sure as hell could. It would be my small form of rebellion, a way to undercut the Tathadann while still being forced to work for them. A way to right a wrong inflicted on this woman and her son.

  “You’re not actually going to do this, are you?” Emeríann said as she was wiping down the bar. The last patron had stumbled out thirty minutes earlier, leaving us alone.

  “You say that like you don’t know me.” I sipped at the remaining bourbon while staring at the address written on a napkin in arthritic cursive, the last known residence of Carrick Kearney, according to Siobhan, the old woman.