Allies & Assassins

by Justin Somper

  There was no question that Silva had been a difficult and even disturbed individual, whose moods and mindset seemed to change as often as her clothes. One minute, she was squeezing Asta’s hand and telling her she was a true friend; the next, she was taking her own hand to Asta’s face—albeit, not without certain provocation. And it wasn’t only in relation to Asta that Silva had proved inconsistent. The same was true of the way she had talked about her complex relationship with Anders.

  Asta suspected that Silva’s ever-changing moods were the result of grief—exacerbated by her pregnancy on the one hand and the torment of Anders’s betrayal on the other. But who was the real Silva? Thinking it over, Asta concluded she was probably a rather vulnerable young woman, who had been dispatched to a foreign land to make a new life with a man who did not love her—or, at least, did not love her enough. Silva had been complicit in selling a royal fairy tale but, along the way, she too had come to believe in a fairy-tale ending, which had not come to pass.

  “Asta!” Her uncle’s voice cut sharply through her thoughts. “I asked you to make a note.”

  “I’m sorry,” Asta said, raising her eyes from Silva’s water-pale body.

  “You seem distracted,” Elias said, without looking at her.

  “It’s more difficult, isn’t it,” Asta observed, “when you know the person?”

  “You didn’t know her,” Elias said, prodding Silva’s exposed shoulder. “You sat with her for a few hours on the day her husband died. Please don’t overdramatize this or make out you knew her better than you did.”

  Uncle Elias was wrong. Asta had begun to know Silva far better than that. Her uncle could be so cold and clinical about people. She doubted she could ever be that way. Might that prove a barrier to her success as his apprentice?

  Now his eyes met hers. He stared at her impatiently. “Well?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I asked you to make another note,” he said, with a frustrated sigh.

  “I’m sorry,” Asta said, determining to become more businesslike. “What did you want me to write down?”

  “Bruises to both shoulders, consistent with her body being dragged downriver by the current.”

  Asta made the note. Looking up again, she saw Elias had now turned Silva’s head to her left side and seemed to be checking her scalp. Despite his gruffness with the living, she noted that he was very gentle as he cradled Silva’s skull, smoothing her flaxen hair first one way, then another.

  “Take a new note,” he instructed Asta. “There are four wounds in close proximity on the upper right section of her skull.”

  Asta obediently wrote down his observations. When she glanced up, what she saw made her gasp. Elias had reached for a measuring implement—a long needlelike object—and had inserted this into one of the wounds. “Top left wound is a one point eight,” he said, removing the measure then inserting it into the next lesion. “Top right measures one point five.” Once more, he withdrew the measure and then appeared to skewer Silva’s head a third time. Asta winced, as Elias announced, “Bottom left is one point seven.” Again, the measure was removed and reinserted. She was starting to feel really nauseous now. “And bottom right is one point six.” Elias set down the measuring needle. “Please make a sketch, showing clearly the positions of the four puncture wounds.”

  Asta moved around to where her uncle stood, and applied her pencil to a fresh page in her book. She started sketching deft strokes on the page, but soon found her hand was trembling. She really had to pull herself together. This was a rudimentary part of her job and she was failing at it. She tried again but, once more, her fingers shook.

  This time, the pencil fell through them and tumbled to the floor. The noise made Elias turn.

  “Hand me the notebook!” he said with a sigh. Asta did so, then reached down to retrieve the pencil and offered that to him too.

  “What could have made those marks?” she asked, trying hard to make up for her momentary weakness with an incisive question.

  Elias did not answer for a moment, intent on finishing the sketch to his satisfaction. Then, when his pencil-work was done, he spoke. “The body was dragged through treacherous waters. Any number of jagged rocks could have been responsible.”

  “But the stones in the riverbed are so smooth,” Asta thought out loud.

  Elias handed the notebook and pencil back to her. “Asta, there’s a reason the Captain of the Guard does not conduct postmortems and I do not investigate crime scenes. Try to remember you are apprentice to me, not Axel Blaxland, and apply your focus to the job at hand.”

  Asta frowned. “But surely we have a duty to explore all the possible scenarios that might have led to Silva’s death?”

  “Such as?” Elias rejoined.

  “Well, for instance, that she could have been murdered. Like I said before, the stones on the riverbed are typically very smooth.”

  Elias gazed at her questioningly. “You seem remarkably well-informed on this subject. How on earth can you speak with such authority?”

  Now they were getting somewhere. “I saw Silva by the river this morning,” Asta told him. “And, as I walked back along the riverbank, I was struck by how smooth the stones were…”

  “Never mind about the stones.” Elias stared at his niece. “What were you doing by the river in the first place? And why do you only tell me now that you saw Silva—what must have been only shortly before her death?”

  Asta felt herself flush. “I wanted to tell you, but I thought you might be angry.” Elias’s face was now also flushed but Asta continued. “Silva was upset when I left her, but I don’t believe she was suicidal. We were talking about Prince Anders’s murder…”

  Now Elias’s temper erupted. “First I catch you questioning the Huntsman, then I hear from the Cook that you have also subjected her to your wild theories and pontifications. Now you tell me that you were chasing after the Prince’s Consort! You have no right to talk to any of these people—no right at all, unless specifically instructed to do so by me.” His gray eyes, the perfect match for hers, narrowed. “And I recall expressly forbidding you from pursuing these ridiculous flights of fancy of yours.”

  “Yes, I know,” she argued, “but—”

  “No!” Elias raised his hand. “I’ve heard enough and I’ve seen enough here too.” The anger subsided from his voice as he continued in a more clinical, detached tone. “I am satisfied we may conclude that this death was a suicide, brought about by the unbearable grief of a young widow.”

  Asta shook her head, determined to make her uncle see her point of view. “I just don’t believe that. Shouldn’t we at least consider the other possibilities?”

  Elias gave a sharp shake of his head. “You said yourself that she was upset when you saw her.”

  “Yes,” Asta said, pausing before she continued. She knew what she was going to say next would probably only inflame him still further. Still, she had to tell him. “It is possible it was my own fault that she was upset.”

  Elias did not speak but his face was thunderous. Somehow, Asta was compelled to continue.

  “It all started when I gave her Prince Anders’s chain and she…”

  “You did what?” Elias roared. He looked across at her furiously. “That’s it. This arrangement is not working out,” he said. “I need you to leave.”

  “I’m sorry,” Asta said, realizing that yet again she had pushed her uncle too far. “But please let me stay and help you finish the post—”

  “You misunderstand me. I’m sending you back to the settlements.”

  They were the words she had always dreaded. He couldn’t send her away! Her cheeks burned and she felt fresh waves of nausea.

  “I would suggest you go upstairs and pack,” Elias told her. “You will leave first thing in the morning.”

  Asta stood on the riverbank above the shallow pool where Silva’s body had been recovered earlier that day. The Captain of the Guard’s team had marked the spot
with flagpoles, evidently to help inform their investigation. She noticed that none of Axel’s men seemed to be in evidence now.

  The pool was only a short walk from the charred remains of Prince Anders’s bathing house. The air, usually so fresh in such close proximity to the fjord, was acrid with the aftermath of the smoke. The pool of almost perfectly tranquil water was circled on three sides by boulders, which formed a natural dam.

  Asta looked across to a ridge of rocks, that divided the shallow pool from the fast-running rapids on the other side. The river roared and churned beyond, coursing around half-submerged boulders before dropping down through a series of treacherous rapids that would effortlessly tear a small boat to shreds—and do untold damage to human flesh and bones. Asta watched as the water at the edges of the main current lapped against the bank and washed into the tranquil pool, causing only the slightest movement among the silky weeds beneath its surface.

  Now she looked upstream, toward the wooden footbridge, which crossed the river at its narrowest point. This too was marked by the guards’ yellow flags. It was on this bridge that the key to Anders’s bathing house had been discovered. That was where they said Silva had jumped—or fallen—into the river below and embarked on her final, waterlogged journey.

  It was curious how one part of the river could remain so tranquil when, so close by, the current was so strong. Her ears were filled with the sounds of the water gushing and crashing. Spray from the heart of the rapids carried on the breeze and spattered her face. Wiping her face dry, Asta returned her attention to the flow of the river. She watched as a medium-sized branch carried along by the current, was sucked down by the hungry rapids on the other side of the rocks. The branch then hurtled down over the larger rocks on the other side. The power of the water forced it against the rocks and she watched it break into pieces, just as she knew it would.

  Asta stared back at the bridge, a thought forming in her head. She knew a body was heavier than a branch. Even so, wouldn’t Silva have been carried along with the current and been thrown against the boulders before being swept down into the swirling, hungry rapids? It just didn’t make sense, when you watched the flow of the water closely, that her body could have ended its journey there, in the placid graveyard of the shallow pool.

  Adrenaline suddenly surging through her, Asta walked back along the riverbank until she reached the bridge. She climbed up onto the wooden structure and looked back in the direction she had walked. She dropped her eyes to the rushing waters beneath her. There was something utterly mesmeric about them. Before she knew it, she had marched back to the bank, removed her shoes and set them down on the lush grass. Then she slid down the bank until her feet dipped into the frigid waters of the river.

  A voice inside her head told her to stop, that this was madness; but another voice urged her on. Keeping one hand stretched up to the lower planking of the bridge to help her balance, Asta felt the cold water seep into through her clothes, as she waded out. By the time the water level was at her waist, she could feel the current tugging at her legs, drawing them out from under her. She gasped at the icy kiss of the water against the back of her neck. Thinking of Silva jumping—or slipping—from the bridge, she made her decision. Letting go of the supporting struts of the bridge, she swam forward, toward the midpoint of the river, and was immediately carried away by the current.

  Although the water was very cold, the speed at which she traveled—and the thought of what she was about to discover—brought a certain exhilaration. Asta tested her theory by relaxing her body, allowing the undertow to carry her. Noting her course as her body was propelled towards the rapids, she knew now that there was no way Silva could have washed up in the shallow pool. Seeing the mist above the rapids ahead of her, satisfied, Asta began to swim over to the left bank of the river.

  At first, she thought she had made some headway, but then the current pulled her mercilessly back to the center of the river. She tried a second time but the same thing happened. Feeling a rising sense of panic, she gave it another try. Once more, the undertow proved too powerful. It kept propelling her down the right-hand side of the river, toward the rocks and the churning white water on their other side. Then, for a moment, she was pulled under the water, the icy water was forced down into her lungs as she tried to breathe. Kicking frantically upwards, as her face crested the surface once more, her body convulsed with coughing and she tried desperately to draw breath.

  “Hey!” She heard the cry from the riverbank, but she couldn’t turn. It took all her strength just to resist being pulled back under.

  With rising dread, she realized that the pace of her movement downstream was increasing all the time. She had known that this was a risky thing to do but now she was starting to fear the worst. As strong a swimmer as she might be, there was just no way she could overcome the strength of the current—it continued to sweep her along toward the white water and certain death on the rocks below.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The River

  THE CURRENT SEEMED TO GATHER PACE WITH every inch of the river. asta was temporarily blinded by white spray as she was sent hurtling toward the rocky channel that marked the beginning of the rapids. She felt completely out of control now, her legs and arms bumping against submerged boulders.

  Then everything seemed to happen in a blur of speed. She suddenly saw a figure propel itself from the riverbank onto the rocks that formed the boundary between the shallow pool and the rapids. It was the Huntsman, leaping from one boulder to another as though they were giant stepping stones. Her first instinct, at seeing Kal Jagger, was fear. She had a vision of him throwing this axes, with ruthless precision, at the birch trees and remembered too hi ominous words. ‘These weapons are not used on animals.” But now she realized he was attempting to rescue her.

  In one little movement, he slid down a boulder a little way in front of her until he was chest high in the water. Just in the nick of time! But now, surely, Kai had placed himself in the same path of danger?

  As Asta hurtled toward the same rock he was braced against, he reached out and caught her, pulling her to him and encircling her in his strong arms. The force of her body and the rush of water behind her pinned him against the boulder.

  “Don’t speak!” he cried. His usually strong voice was almost drowned out by the din of the waters coursing around them. “Just wait and do as I say!”

  She nodded, her heart racing with the fear she had somehow managed to contain until then.

  “I’m going to lift you up,” he told her after a moment or two. “Just onto the top of this boulder. Hold on to it and stay there, whatever it takes, until I get myself up again. All right?”

  “Yes!”

  “Ready?”

  She nodded again. As she did so, she felt herself being lifted up over him, two thirds of her body already free from the water. She reached out to the smooth surface of the rock, as he had instructed, working out the best way to gain purchase. He guided her knees onto his shoulders to aid her exit from the merciless current. She knew he would not be able to support her for long.

  “All right, you can let go!” she cried, feeling herself splayed on the rock.

  Kai let go, the force of the water pushing him back against the rock once more. Now he faced the harder challenge of getting himself out of the water. Looking round, Asta saw him take a breath, then allow the water to carry him the short but crucial distance to the next rock. It was a major gamble but it seemed to pay off as he reached it and managed to get a grip on it. Asta watched, her heart in her mouth, as he struggled to pull the rest of his body to safety. She wished she could help but she knew she was powerless to do so. She was exhausted, pummeled and frozen by the water.

  Asta watched as Kai’s muscled body rose from the water until he was able to pull himself up onto the rock; he must have found some kind of foothold. Asta let out a sigh of relief. Kai, however, remained utterly focused as he gathered his strength for a moment or two. Then he raised himself and jump
ed over onto the next rock—the one close to hers.

  “Can you stand up?” he asked her.

  She tried. She was unsteady on her feet and the surface of the stone was slick with water. As she began to wobble, Kai reached out a hand to help her. She took it gratefully. He then led her back, stone by stone, until they had removed themselves from the churning rapids.

  As they reached the ridge of stones above the shallow pool, Kai grabbed her and held her tightly. She was grateful—she found herself trembling.

  “What the hell were you doing out there?” he asked her.

  She barely had the strength left to speak. Still she managed to rasp, “I was in search of the truth.”

  Kai Jagger’s intense eyes bore into her own. He shook his head—but she could tell somehow that he wasn’t angry with her, merely bewildered by her actions. The Chief Huntsman, she realized now, had risked his life for her.

  “Thank you!” she said falteringly. Then she felt her body shaking uncontrollably from the cold, and her knees beginning to weaken.

  Once more, he caught her. She felt her body grow limp but Kai had taken enough rest to now support her weight. He carried her across the ridge of rocks toward the edge of the shallow pool.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s rest a minute. But we must get you home to dry out.”

  He set her down on the riverbank and sat down himself, his eyes locked on the rapids, that had so nearly consumed them both. They continued to spew and foam as if angry from having been denied another human sacrifice.

  The Huntsman raced over to his tethered horse and returned with a wolfskin, which he wrapped around Asta’s soaking, shivering body. Tiredly, her eyes fell to the shallow pool, tracing the surface of the clear water. The riverbed here was covered in weeds—gold, copper and emerald, like silken threads. The pattern they made called to mind the kind of fabric Silva might have chosen for a dress. Only now, Asta reflected sadly, there would be no more pretty dresses for Silva. She thought of the Prince’s Consort lying there, awaiting discovery. She must have looked rather beautiful in a way—her flaxen hair intermingling with the jewel-bright reeds, her eyes turned up towards the mountains, thinking perhaps of Woodlark.