The Eyes of the Huntress

by Niall Teasdale

  Araven’s ears darkened: a lurian’s version of blushing. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I was there. I’m still not sure how you have kept going on so little sleep.’

  ‘Pure talent and the ready availability of hot young lover.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Young?’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Eighty-five. Lurisar years.’

  ‘I would be a hundred and twenty-four.’ She grinned. ‘I finally got myself a toy boy.’

  ‘A “toy boy.” Your world has some colourful phrases. Age is not generally an issue for lurians. If you like someone, and they like you, you go for it. Not, I might add, that you look old.’

  ‘I’ve looked older.’ Anoa had tightened up a few things; Shil was quite sure her skin had tightened, removing her few wrinkles. The exercise in Veldro and then at the Retreat, and her life since had tightened up her body. She had gained muscle mass, and still managed to lose weight. Her abs were awesome! ‘A mediocre life does nothing for the ageing process.’

  ‘Finally!’ The word was spoken in Rolletic, the scothian common language. Shil glanced over to the ambassador’s table where the waitress was putting down a plate of food piled high with a rice-and-fish dish.

  ‘The ambassador is being particularly annoying tonight,’ Shil said.

  ‘Scothians are highly status-conscious.’ Araven replied. ‘Dvoda has managed to get to quite a prominent rank and considers himself above pretty much everyone. However, the resort made a mistake in giving him a scothian waitress. He’s going to consider her less than dirt.’

  Shil nodded. She knew that. Or she had before he had finished explaining it. ‘I wonder what he’d think of a scothian chef.’

  ‘Beneath him, but chefs can be respected. The one here is supposed to be remarkably good. It’s something of a surprise that they managed to lure him away from Scoth.’

  The ambassador was chomping his way through the fish dish with gusto. ‘Looks like he is good. Or the ambassador thinks so anyway. Maybe I should try that stuff.’

  ‘Still not quite up on our cuisine either? Most people find scothian food a little bland.’

  ‘Okay, recommend me something lurian.’

  ‘That I can do.’

  He was still deciding what they should eat when a loud clatter was followed by the sound of breaking glass, and they both looked around to see the scothian ambassador falling out of his chair. Staff rushed over, including the man’s waitress. There was a moment of confusion and then the yellow-skinned waitress reared back, her hand going to her mouth. ‘That doesn’t look good,’ Shil said, but Araven was already on his feet. Shil got up to follow, even though she was quite sure there was nothing she could do to help.

  She heard Araven’s voice over the noise of the suddenly excited restaurant. ‘Have you called a medic? Get one here now. They may be able to resuscitate.’ The man was dead? He had been stuffing his face no more than a minute or two before.

  Edging around the crowd, Shil got closer to the table, the food, and the ambassador. It was probably best that they kept the downed scothian out of sight of the other guests: his skin was a blotchy, orange-and-yellow patchwork and it looked swollen. His tongue was certainly swollen and sticking obscenely out of his mouth. If the rest of the tissues in his mouth had reacted the same way, he had probably asphyxiated. But then Shil’s olfactory sensors figured out what it was they were smelling with a little help from Italian restaurants: garlic. Probably not actually garlic, but the active ingredient of garlic which, Anoa supplied, was an organosulfur compound named allyl methyl sulphide.

  ‘Araven,’ Shil said. She got no immediate response and raised her voice. ‘Araven!’ He looked around, seeming surprised to find her standing beside the ambassador’s chair. ‘It’s anaphylactic shock. I doubt they’ll be able to treat him in time.’

  ‘How do you know?’ he asked and then frowned; he had forgotten who he was talking to.

  ‘It looks right, but there’s also the smell.’ She pointed at his food. ‘There’s an organosulfur compound in his food. Something related to allyl methyl sulphide or allicin. Scothians are highly allergic to them, and there is no way a scothian chef would use something which contained something like that in food. Your ambassador was poisoned.’

  Araven’s expression turned sour. ‘Well… I get practically no holiday, and when I do take one, I wind up with this?’

  ‘Funny,’ Shil replied. ‘I was thinking almost exactly the same thing.’

  ~~~

  Shil was not entirely expecting to see Araven walking into her lounge a few hours later. She was hoping, but not expecting. He had pushed down his annoyance, taken over the investigation, and summoned a forensic team from the Karvonay StarCorps field office, and it looked as though he would be a busy man for the next couple of days. Which probably meant there would be no more sex.

  ‘I’ve had the island locked down,’ he said as he headed for her drinks cabinet. ‘You were right about the food. Forensics confirmed an organosulfur chemical in it. They tried bringing him back, but there was too much tissue damage and his brain had been without oxygen for too long.’

  ‘Sorry. I guess your holiday has to end early.’

  He drained a glass of something and then poured two more glasses, carrying one over and settling beside her. ‘A corpsman is never entirely off duty.’

  ‘Especially when he’s a captain in Special Circumstances?’ That had come as something of a surprise. Araven had invoked his full authority in taking the case, which meant he had given his rank and position. Special Circumstances had a number of jobs within StarCorps. They did not actually handle diplomatic protection, but they did investigate crimes involving StarCorps personnel and diplomats, and that included ambassadors to StarCorps. There had been several Special Circumstances investigators with Commander Perimcon on Tholdaria. They were Internal Affairs combined with the FBI, and sometimes showed signs of being the CIA, MI6, and NSA rolled into one. They handled crimes committed on R-class worlds…

  ‘You noticed that, huh? I, uh, did a little research on you while I was grabbing clothes and a shower this morning.’

  ‘Oh you did, did you?’

  ‘I did. I was planning to put a rocket up someone’s ass for leaving you in Veldro for that long. They just sat on the report for… Well, never mind. You seem like you don’t hold any grudges over it, so…’

  ‘I think someone should be told to get their act together. If anyone else ends up in that position–’

  ‘They have. Are. Dromeli has become something of a clearing house for trafficked sentients in the last five years. That’s why they came up with the stupid law about trafficked people being declared illegal immigrants. It lets them ship them back to their home world with impunity, but… If they come from an R-class world, or an F or M for that matter, they say they can’t process them and they give the job to us. A lot of the people involved fall into that bracket, and the field office on Dromeli has been getting lax about handling them.’

  ‘Discover anything else of interest?’

  ‘Quite a lot, actually. Look, I don’t have the right to ask, and I don’t think I can pay you, but–’

  ‘Could I help find the ambassador’s killer?’

  ‘Yes.’ He turned to look at her with just a hint of desperation in his eyes. ‘The local office is not set up for a high-pressure investigation. I’m basically on my own here. They can handle getting the island’s teleport station disabled and enforcing flight restrictions, but they were barely up to handling the forensic tests. This is not the kind of place where StarCorps gets involved in murder investigations.’

  ‘Get them to leave the forensic equipment. Not saying we’ll need it, but I can work it if we do. At least as well as they can anyway.’

  ‘Already done. I was hoping you’d say that.’

  Shil smirked. ‘Pretty sure of yourself, Mister Captain Special Circumstances Tovar.’

  ‘I… get the feeling that you don’t do what you do e
ntirely for the money. I saw the report on Tholdaria. You could have walked away with even more money than you did if you had just killed Jandia Dakris and taken her body back to Tholdris.’

  ‘Yeah. True. As for my fee for this little job, I’m sure we can come to some sort of arrangement. Payment in kind, sort of thing. When are we starting?’

  ‘In the morning. I’ve arranged to interview all the guests and the staff who have started within the last two weeks. If this is some sort of professional hit, the assassin has to have come here since the ambassador’s holiday was arranged.’

  ‘That’s logical. If this was a political hit.’

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  Shil gave a shrug. ‘I think we should keep an open mind. There are lots of reasons for people to kill other people. Maybe we should sleep on it. And by “sleep,” I mean fuck.’

  ‘A down payment on your fee?’ He was grinning. That was a good sign, and certainly better than the disgruntled cop who had walked in.

  ‘I should warn you, my fees for contract work are pretty steep.’

  ‘And yet I somehow doubt I’m going to feel cheated.’

  19.3.632.

  The morning had been something of a bust. One of the newly hired staff had turned out to be an illegal immigrant, but that was a problem for the local authorities. The navidad had sat in the interview looking calm and collected, but Shil could smell the nervousness behind the cool exterior. He had looked good, right up until Araven’s query into his background had uncovered a StarCorps warrant for his arrest: he had stolen ten million units in negotiable bonds from an eccentric idiot who had kept all his money in paper form.

  No one else raised any flags, so they had informed the manager that they would be interviewing the longer-term staff in the afternoon, and then they had retired to Shil’s suite for lunch. Lunch had turned into sex; Araven was a little amused, but Shil felt like she was working off a decade or more of suppressed lust, and the lurian was not complaining.

  So, the afternoon was spent working through more of the staff, and nothing else pinged until the scothian chef walked in. The scent of nervousness was strong, but then he had prepared the food which had killed Ambassador Dvoda. He was a natural suspect. So natural, in fact, that both Araven and Shil had decided not to put him into the first list of interviewees. But he was worried, nervous, maybe more so than he should have been.

  ‘Merala Krotna,’ Araven said, reading from a tablet computer as the chef walked into the office the resort had provided for the interviews.

  ‘Yes,’ Krotna replied. He spoke Gadek Taved with an accent, and not exactly fluently. ‘I am Krotna.’ He straightened his back a little before adding, ‘Chef Krotna.’

  ‘Please have a seat, chef. I am Araven Tovar, Captain Tovar of StarCorps. This is Shil.’

  ‘I don’t have a fancy title,’ Shil said.

  ‘Shil is assisting me with this investigation.’ Shil was wearing her working outfit and did not look like an investigator. On the other hand, Araven seemed to be enjoying the view, and the sword strapped across her back had a suitably intimidating effect on some of the interviewees. ‘Obviously, we’re here to determine who murdered Ambassador Dvoda. You prepared the meal which killed him. It was dosed with a lethal quantity of an organosulfur compound. As I’m sure you’re aware, scothians are highly allergic to such chemicals.’

  ‘I don’t know that word,’ Krotna replied. ‘I–’

  Shil spoke a short phrase and the chef cut himself off, his eyes widening: generally, no one bothered learning Rolletic unless they were scothian.

  ‘Oh, I know this. This is what kill him? It is bad way to die. I would never put that in food for scothian.’

  ‘Unless you wanted him dead,’ Shil said flatly.

  ‘Why would I want Dvoda dead? I not know him. He… not interesting of me.’

  ‘Who else could have put the chemical into Ambassador Dvoda’s food?’ Araven asked.

  ‘Lots of people. Food prepared and placed for waitress. In open. Anyone could poison food. Waitress could poison food while walking to Dvoda. Waitress not like Dvoda.’ Which was true. The waitress had come through earlier and she had not exactly been unhappy about the ambassador’s sudden demise. She had described him as a stuck-up pig, except that she had done it in Rolletic. The main reason Shil had discounted her as a suspect was that she had got some of the sauce from the meal on her thumb while taking it to Dvoda’s table; she had got a chemical burn and had needed to be treated by the medics sent for Dvoda, though her life had not been in danger.

  ‘And you had never met Ambassador Dvoda before he came to the resort?’

  ‘Not meet him here. Dvoda too good to meet with staff.’ There was a spike of anger in the chef as he spoke, but that could easily have been a natural reaction to being snubbed. Still…

  ‘Cantarvey,’ Shil said silently.

  ‘Yes, Shil? How are the interviews going?’

  ‘Slowly. Listen, I need you to do a hunt through media records for a connection between Ambassador Yanoshki Dvoda and a chef named Merala Krotna. There can’t be an obvious connection, because someone in StarCorps would probably have found that by now. This is going to be something out of the ordinary, maybe from some time ago.’

  ‘Such a search is likely to take significant time, Shil.’

  ‘You’ve got something better to do?’

  ‘Actually, I had begun cataloguing T’ney D’nova’s pornographic video collection by species, gender mix, sexual orientation, and the three most prominent sexual positions employed. I should imagine I can put that aside to handle your search. I just meant that you should not expect swift results.’

  Shil watched as Araven let the chef go. ‘I think this is going to take a long time if we don’t get a lucky break, Cantarvey. Start looking, and we’ll keep on with the interviews.’

  ~~~

  Sitting down to dinner was something of a mixed experience. The food would be good and the company congenial, but there was a subtle cloud hanging over the resort as a whole, and they had nothing much to go on regarding the murder. Shil had been over Krotna’s workspace, room, and locker in the kitchen with the forensic systems, but nothing had come up as suspicious, or even interesting. If anything, everywhere was too clean, but lack of evidence was still lack of evidence. Shil’s gut feeling and her reading of the chef were not enough to convict him.

  ‘I’m not sure we’re going to crack this one,’ Shil said when their food was on the table. ‘I think Krotna’s our man, but I don’t have a motive or any physical evidence. Unless he screws up, he’s going to get away with it.’

  ‘And I won’t be able to keep the island locked down for much longer. If we’ve nothing by tomorrow night, I’ll have to let everyone go.’ Araven looked annoyed and frustrated. Maybe annoyed at being frustrated.

  ‘If it’s the chef, he’s an amateur. Amateurs make mistakes. We just have to figure out what his mistake was.’

  ‘We’ve looked and found nothing.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean there’s nothing to–’

  There was a crash from across the room and Shil was on her feet and moving before Araven had caught up with the need to move. He was quick, for a relatively normal humanoid, however. They were both walking purposefully toward the source of the sound before the woman who was seated at that table started to scream.

  ‘Tulin! Tulin!’ The woman was an armil, as was the man she was shouting at, but he was lying on the carpet, not moving. The woman dropped to her knees and began pawing at her partner until Shil stepped behind her and lifted her away so that Araven could check him out.

  ‘Let Captain Tovar work,’ Shil said in Amlic. ‘What happened? Ma’am, tell me what happened.’

  ‘We– He–’ The woman was in shock. She knew. She knew her partner was dead, but she was trying to not believe it. ‘We were eating. He looked sick. He started breathing hard, like he couldn’t get any air. H-his lips… Then he just fell over.’

  Shil
glanced down at the man. Araven was trying heart compressions to bring him back, but Shil thought he had little chance. The man’s lips were an odd shade; the dark colouration natural to armil was made darker by the blue tint of the tissue beneath. Shil turned her attention to the man’s plate; his last meal had been a salad and it took a second to pick out what was wrong. ‘Araven… You can’t help him like that. It’s cyanide poisoning.’ The woman let out a squeak; she was crying now, but she was holding herself together. ‘Keeping his heart going is not going to keep him alive.’

  Araven looked up, his hands still working the man’s chest. ‘You’re sure?’

  Shil switched to Luris. ‘It’s in the salad. You see the broad, dark-green leaves? Those are local and noted for being poisonous. There’s no way anyone would put them in food by accident.’

  ‘Has to be the same killer.’

  ‘Very probably.’ Shil looked around, seeing the horrified face of the scothian waitress nearby and switching to Rolletic. ‘You! Who prepared this man’s meal tonight?’

  ‘Chef Krotna,’ the woman said. ‘I-it’s a scothian dish. One of his specialities.’

  Araven stood as a medic appeared from behind him to start working – uselessly – on the victim. ‘I’m going to get Krotna locked up somewhere safe. We’ll talk to him once we’re sure what we’re talking to him about.’

  ~~~

  A fairly simple blood analysis had confirmed what Shil had suggested: Tulin Querin had been poisoned with cyanide. It would take a little more work to confirm that the leaves in the salad were the likely source, but a quick check of an online botanical database had confirmed that the plant had leaves the right shape and colour and was poisonous. Its local name translated as Cattlebane, because if cattle ate it, they died.

  Krotna had gone from nervous to angry. ‘I know that plant. I would not use it in food. Is there any in my workspace? No, there is not.’

  ‘Then how do you explain that two guests have died due to poisoned food,’ Araven asked, ‘and both had their meals prepared by you?’