Refle’s body hadn’t been removed. A carpet of flies lay thick on the corpse, leaving only for moments as we fanned at them. The room stank, even though the windows were open and two censers sent clouds of thick patchouli and pungent meryhm into the air.
I raised an eyebrow. “Is there any reason that thing is still here?”
Crosta Natthan sniffed into his handkerchief. “I didn’t know whether or not Lord Toshtai wanted to see it, or have it seen.”
I couldn’t look away, even though I tried. Refle had been cut dozens of times, a sword slashing across his face and torso, some cuts opening his shoulder and hip to white bone. Any ten of the cuts would have killed him instantly.
I tried to turn to the wizard, but the body drew my eyes. “Can you determine which sword made all the cuts?”
“Magically?” he asked.
“Yes, magically. Can you?”
“Easily, given the sword,” Narantir said.
Given the sword. That was the problem. It couldn’t be that easy, could it? All I would have to do was line up all the swordsmen in the castle, and have Narantir test their swords against—
“Relevance or Pathos?” he asked.
“Eh?”
“I can apply either. Or Contagion, for that matter.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Contagion: things that interact intimately still interact at a distance. A sword killing somebody is about as intimate as there is. Turn around.”
I forced myself to look away from the corpse, at the fat magician’s outstretched hand, pointing quite directly at a bloody sword in the corner of the room, flies thick on its surface.
“Relevance, Pathos, Contagion—any of the three is going to tell me that that’s the sword that killed him.” He walked over to the sword and squatted over it. I joined him. I didn’t want to look at Refle again.
So much for the easy way. Unless ... “Is there any way to know whose sword that was?”
“Quite easily,” Crosta Natthan said, kneeling next to us. “Look at the tang.”
“Ah.” Narantir nodded. He produced a small knife—from his sleeve? by magic? I don’t know—and slashed at the silk bands covering the hilt. “One only need look at the tang,” he said, pulling at the hilt, and grunting. “But we’ll need a tool to take it apart.”
I took the hilt in my hands and pulled. It stuck, but an acrobat, even a clumsy one, has strong hands; I pulled harder, and the two wooden halves parted easily. “Or perhaps not,” I said.
There was one marking on the tang, a blocky Old Shai pictogram.
“Yes, you are very strong.” Crosta Natthan shrugged. “But it is of no use. That is Refle’s mark; all it means is that he made the blade. There’s no testing marks, no attestations, no indication of who he made it for.” The old servitor indicated a rack of swords on the wall. “It was probably one of those.”
Narantir took the sword from me and wrapped it in a blanket.
Well, as Gray Khuzud would say, albeit in a different context, when you don’t know exactly how to do something, go back to first principles.
What did I want? I wanted to know who killed Refle.
Well, what would it take to kill him? It appeared to have taken a sword. I had the sword. So, it was somebody who was good with a sword—the dozens of cuts all over him indicated that whoever it was had been very good with a sword.
Inside of me, something relaxed.
It had to be somebody good with a sword, and that left out Gray Khuzud. Unless, of course, there was something tricky. What if whoever it was had, say, hit Refle across the back of the head with a truncheon, knocking him unconscious, and then hacked at him with a sword?
I knelt and examined the sword that Refle still clutched in death. The fingers of his right hand were tight around it; I tried to pry them loose, but it felt too strange: they were colder than fingers had any business being.
“What do you think you’re doing, Kami Khuzud?” Crosta Natthan more accused than asked.
I thought a tough response was called for. “Refle won’t mind. Not now. Help me with this, Narantir.”
Between the two of us, we were able to pry Refle’s fingers open. I rose, his blade in my hand. It was bloody, like the other, but not spattered all over—it had lain in a pool of Refle’s blood, that was all.
It was quite thoroughly nicked and scratched, none of the nicks or scratches rusty. It was not credible that the castle’s armorer had left his own personal weapon in this state of repair; it had been bashed up in the fight, by a swordsman good enough to kill Refle without suffering a wound himself, but who hadn’t been able to dispatch him with a single blow.
“Do you still want me to examine the other sword?” Narantir asked. “To find out if it cut him?”
“Find out whatever you can—can you do Pathos?” I admit it—I’d seen little magic, and had never seen an application of the Law of Pathos. More important, though, I wanted to know just how tricky things were here.
Narantir shrugged. “Possibly. But Relevance will tell you easily if this caused those cuts—”
“Did those cuts kill him, though?”
The wizard scowled. “Yes, they did,” he said. “At least, he was alive when he started getting cut—see how much he bled? See how far that gout of blood must have splashed? If you cut into a dead body, it doesn’t bleed much, because the heart doesn’t pump. The blood just oozes out.” The wizard smiled idly. “I have cut into more than a few dead bodies in my time.”
“Then you won’t mind doing another one. See if this sword killed him, and see if there’s any other damage.”
The wizard rolled his eyes up. “Diagnostic tests on a dead body are a waste of time, Kami Khuzud. He is dead. What does it matter what else is wrong with him?”
“Do it anyways.”
“No.”
Crosta Natthan cleared his throat.
I looked his way inquiringly; he shook his head. He was toying with the bolt and lock. It was good D’Shaian lockwork: brass and bronze, hand-pounded, handworked, smooth-working. We D’Shai have our flaws, but we are the best craftsmen that there are.
There was too much to it all.
“The door was locked?” I asked.
Crosta Natthan nodded, tapping at his chest. “I had to use my master key to get in.”
“How many keys are there that fit this lock?”
“Four,” he said. “Lord Refle’s key, Arigan the locksmith’s duplicate and Lord Toshtai’s and my master keys.” He tapped at his breast. “Lord Toshtai’s and my keys are always with us; the locksmith’s copies are stored in Lord Toshtai’s quarters, under guard.”
While some locks have a handle on the inside, it is done other ways; most locks have keyholes on both sides, enabling the key to work from both sides. That is, not only is somebody with a key the only person who can lock the door, but he can lock it from either side, or lock it open. Assuming Refle had his own key on his person, nobody could have come through the door without using one of the other three.
Refle still had a knife in a sheath on his belt. I knelt beside the gory mess, pulled it from the sheath, and considered the blade. I’d been expecting it to be scratched; knives weren’t intended to be shoved into mounting brackets. But it wasn’t. He had, of course, repaired any damage to his knife.
Narantir shook his head. “Most of you think magic can do anything—if he did kill your sister, I’m sure he got rid of it.”
Refle’s pouch was at his waist. That would be next. I reached for it, and—
“What are you doing?”
“Investigating, Lord Crosta Natthan.”
“You may not do that.”
“Lord Toshtai disagrees, Lord Crosta Natthan.”
I’d had enough of looking at the body, though. I took two blankets from the wardrobe and covered the body with one, before spreading the others and dumping the pouch onto the soft wool. Members of our beloved ruling class are generally buried with some of their valuables,
some dried food and the like, supposedly to prepare them for their next life. Peasants are just reborn from the dust and dirt; they claim that we will come back pure and re-refined. Personally, I’m doubtful.
And how did you know that there were blankets in the wardrobe, Kami Khuzud?
I looked from Crosta Natthan to Narantir. They were both too busy eying the scattered possessions, but I’d have to be more careful.
There wasn’t much in his pouch: a few coins, a few gems: a piece of cerulean tourmaline, a lovely malachite marble, two dimong-cut pieces of chrysoberyl with the fire of the sun in their hearts—
“For decorative hilts,” Narantir said, joining me, “I would suppose.”
—a small, wedge-shaped piece of metal—
“And what’s this?” he asked.
I shrugged. “My guess is that’s a slice of a sword—see how the edge had been filed here? I’m not sure why an armorer would want a cross-section of a sword, but I guess that’s what it is.”
—a bone fingering-piece, polished by fingertips and hand-oils to a dull yellowy sheen—
“That is quite a nice piece,” Crosta Natthan said, getting interested, despite himself.
—and a single key, brass, with a wooden bow.
I tested the key in the lock. It fit perfectly: the half-moon bolt slid out with a quiet snick.
“You said that the door was locked, Lord Crosta Natthan?”
“Yes, that’s what I said, and that’s what it was. And I also said that there are only four keys that will fit the lock: Lord Toshtai’s lord’s key, mine, and the two keys that were made for the lock.”
Then how did the killer get out? Through the window.
No. The killer wasn’t Gray Khuzud, not because it couldn’t be Gray Khuzud, but because it mustn’t be Gray Khuzud.
But the branch wasn’t the only way one could get out of the armory, even if the door was locked. It was possible, I knew from experience, to slip a rope around a beam and lower oneself down, and then to draw the rope back.
I went to the place where I had done just that, and looked at the beam. There were light scratches on the surface of the polished wood, but they could have been here from the time when I had snuck in.
Narantir tapped at them. “Yes. A rope, perhaps?”
“Perhaps.” My rope at least.
Still, it would be worthwhile checking the ground below the window.
“What are you all doing in here? This is my brother’s—” Felkoi stood in the doorway. “And with him lying here, dead? Get out.” His hand was on the hilt of his sword, but I knew he wouldn’t draw it.
Narantir nodded, not in agreement, but more in greeting. “Lord Felkoi,” he said. “Lord Toshtai—”
“We were just leaving,” I said. “Lord Crosta Natthan, if you would, please have the body and that sword brought down to Narantir’s workshop.”
“The dungeon is the traditional place,” he said, with something of a sniff.
“I won’t have Refle lie in the same place as my sister,” I said.
Felkoi stared at me for the longest time, but then he bowed his head.
He knew.
“Interestingly enough,” Narantir said, “one of Lord Orazhi’s guards reports having heard an argument floating up from these rooms last night. He seems to think it was you and Refle.”
Felkoi snorted. “Then why is my head not rolling about the floor, murderer that I am?”
“Because he saw you leaving after, heading out into the rain, and he later saw Refle alive,” Narantir said, “when Refle returned to the armory.”
I guess I must have looked surprised; the wizard grinned at me, and then shrugged. “This asking questions you have been doing is addictive; while you were relaxing in the cells, I did some of it.”
Felkoi had been a devotee of the troupe’s performances; I guess that was why I didn’t suspect him of having collaborated with his brother. You could see it in his face, as he watched the show. He could have killed him, although over what, it would be hard to guess.
Because of Enki Duzun? One noble killing another over the murder of a peasant girl?
Hardly.
I watched his face very carefully, though, as I said to Narantir, “Let us go take a look at the ground beneath the window.”
All I saw was puzzlement. There was more than enough of that to go around.
Below the window, the mossy floor of the flowerbeds was not merely wet, but oozed water at a touch. If I looked very closely, very carefully, I thought I could make out where my own feet had depressed the dry beds days before. Anybody stepping down into the moss since the rain would have gone in to their ankles. Of course, down wasn’t the only way out. A kazuh acrobat—only a kazuh acrobat—could have leaped from the windowsill and caught a branch that was treacherous when dry and would be almost impossible when slick with rain.
Almost impossible.
Absolutely impossible for any lesser human. Balance is the Way of the Acrobat; nobody but a kazuh acrobat could have that kind of balance, to land safely on that branch.
Fhilt perhaps. Fhilt couldn’t raise kazuh easily, and he was every bit as unfamiliar with a sword as I was, as Gray Khuzud was. It couldn’t have been Gray Khuzud, it couldn’t have been Fhilt, it couldn’t have been Sala or Large Egda or any of us.
Nothing made sense.
Fine. Forget for the moment how the killer had gotten in—how had he gotten out? Refle locked the door behind him, it seemed, and I didn’t see any way that the killer could have locked the door behind him and snuck the key into Refle’s pouch.
No, it still didn’t make sense. How did the key come back to the armory?
“Kami Khuzud?”
I turned. Narantir had the sword tucked under his arm. He gestured at the two servitors who were grunting with the weight of the planks supporting Refle’s body. “You wanted to see the Pathos?”
“Yes.”
Narantir’s preparations took us through the end of the hour of the ox, and well into the octopus; I managed to grab a quick meal—but well outside of his workshop in the former dungeon of the old donjon. I had caught a glimpse of some of his work in progress, and insisted that he throw a cover over it before I came back in.
Finally, though, he called me back in. Over by one wall, Refle’s body lay under a sheet.
“The body is covered, and I will be ready to start momentarily,” he said. He waved me to the side of the room, while he busied himself at his desk. He moved quickly, efficiently, and he bound the sword, still hiltless, to a manheight stand in the center of the room, lit only by a single, shrouded lamp. A large cone, suspended by almost invisible wires from the overhead beams, hung near the tang, the small end of it near the sword, the large end near me.
I didn’t like looking at it, so I turned to examine the fist-sized models on the desk near me: horse, ox, octopus, bear, lion, and tiny bellows.
The lion looked like it had been whittled with an axe. “Is it safe to touch these things?”
Narantir’s back was to me, as he worked with some piece of apparatus. He didn’t turn around.
“My models? Well, yes and no.” He grunted as he shoved something into place. “Yes, it’s safe, as long as I don’t rig up the lens set and take the model from its case, because there’s no power in them. No, it’s not safe, because I’ve gone to a lot of trouble with the lot of them, and if you damage them, I’ll be very unhappy with you.”
“Lens set and models?”
“Yes, yes, Kami Khuzud, lens set and models. It’s how I do the lights above the castle, the show for arriving troupes. I have a model of Folesly Hill in a case, carved from rock from Folesly Hill.”
He grunted again. “This grommet is giving me more trouble than—ah, got it. As I was saying, I have a model of the mountain, made from rock from inside the hill. I use a lens to project a very small image of the models against the wall, and apply a simple animation spell to the image. Then, by the Law of Proportion—the greater is to t
he lesser as the greater is to the lesser, eh?—I have images that are as much larger than the little ones as the hill is larger than the model. Simple, no?”
He turned. The wizard’s face was sweat-slick and ashen, and small plasters covered his hands. He took a long pull from a mottled-glass mug as he leaned up against the wall. “I’m almost ready. I just need a human subject. You’ll do, I suppose.” He tugged at my sleeve. “Out of those clothes, if you please.”
I shook my head. While I had appreciated Narantir fixing my broken bones, I hadn’t enjoyed his needling, and had no intentions of putting myself in his hands. “I don’t think that I—”
“Oh, don’t be so silly, Kami Khuzud. Pathos is just a variation of a basic similarity spell. Like functions as like, eh? It won’t hurt. Have you ever heard a sword say ouch?”
I shrugged. “Well, no.”
“See? Off with the clothes, then.” He made a hurry-up gesture. “Let me help.”
Over my vague protestations, he pulled the tunic over my head, and tossed it in the corner, while I doffed my pantaloons and shoes.
He picked up a small paintbrush and scribbled a few runes across my chest, the paint—I hoped it was paint; it was the color and consistency of pus—cold and foul-smelling. With a smaller paintbrush he scribbled some of the same ones on the sword, over the blood.
That took a lot more time than it looked like it should have. He kept moving more and more slowly, but not like he was lazy. I had the feeling that the paintbrush was growing heavier, and heavier, or that maybe time itself was pulling down on his arm.
But finally he stood back, and uttered a few triumphant syllables, and the paint on my chest flashed into a cold flame—
—the paint across my blade, across my self, flashed into a cold flame. I couldn’t move, although for a moment I felt softer, from point to tang. My back straightened painfully, my bloodied edge went all crooked and weak, while my arms jammed themselves down by my side, locking themselves into place, right along my break. My knees locked and tried to bend themselves backwards, and my diaphragm froze.
Joel Rosenberg - [D'Shai 01] - D'Shai Page 19
