Tales of Downfall and Rebirth

by S. M. Stirling

  Then light flared up, from a Tillman lamp raised high in the hand of one of the Montoyas.

  Everyone froze, even the people who were lifting stools or bottles over their heads; one man stood single-footed, with the other drawn back to deliver a really satisfying kick to a set of prostrate ribs. Heuradys was leaning back against the table, her nose dripping blood. The waitress named Shelly was lying at her feet, with a knife protruding from her back just beside her left shoulder blade. As they watched she gave one last twitch and went limp, and nobody who knew practical anatomy doubted for an instant what nine inches of razor-edged steel was going to do when it was put there. The young man who’d tried to punch Heuradys crawled forward, vomit still streaking his beard but tears running down into it.

  “Shelly!” he said, and began to sob, raw racking open-mouthed sounds. “Oh, Shelly, don’t be dead! Please!”

  Everyone was looking at the dagger; it was a double-edged weapon, nine inches in the blade. The d’Ath arms were engraved on one side of the bolster, the Lidless Eye of the PPA on the other, and a ring of rubies set into the silver pommel. It was, without question or doubt, the Associate dagger of one Heuradys d’Ath. Broken lead peacebonding wires dangled from the empty sheath on the belt looped over the back of her chair.

  “Police!” a harsh voice shouted from the doorway, and a whistle shrilled. “Nobody move!”

  One of the first out of the Hopping Toad must have gone straight for the authorities.

  * * *

  Oh, shit, Órlaith thought.

  Shelly’s self-defined boyfriend—he turned out to be called Tom Dayton—was sitting glaring murder at Heuradys, surrounded by his three former tablemates, tears still trickling down his somewhat cleaner face. Occasionally it would contort with overwhelming grief; she would have felt more sorry for him if he hadn’t been trying to pin a murder on her best friend.

  Could he have done it himself? she wondered. That’s real sorrow, but it wouldn’t be the first time a jealous man went insane. And he may have thought the former Shelly was his girlfriend, but I suspect she had a different view of the matter, so.

  The possibly-friends had tried to sidle out but the constables had at least listened to Órlaith long enough to put a stop to that; two of the blue-uniformed peace officers were standing at the door with their catchpoles making an X across it and more were at the kitchen doors, the rear entrance, and the stairs to the upper story of the tavern.

  Heuradys was holding a wet cloth full of ice to her nose. There was a constable right next to her, too, though she hadn’t been formally arrested or cuffed yet.

  And Police Chief Simon Terwen was stooping over the body, leaning on a chair to avoid stepping in the blood whose raw metallic stink filled the air, dictating technical-sounding details to an assistant who took them down in shorthand on a ring-bound pad. There was a modest pool of it around the dead girl’s head, but not the flood there would have been from a slit throat or cut-open belly. A photographer had taken a picture with a flash of magnesium powder as well as a sketch-artist dashing off several more; Corvallis had all the latest and best, including a ceremonial barrier of yellow linen ribbons to keep the curious out of a crime scene. He turned and looked at them, shrewd blue eyes in a lined face, clean-shaven and with short-cut white hair.

  Whoever had run for the police had probably mentioned Órlaith’s name; there must be a hundred people or even more in the Corvallis city police force, but its commander had shown up only minutes later. Everything was very quiet now, with the crackling of the fire in the hearth the loudest sound. She looked up and saw brightly interested black eyes peering through the balustrade of the staircase beside the hearth, and then a protesting juvenile yelp as the child was pulled away by one ear.

  “I don’t think we can rule out foul play,” the policeman said dryly, examining the angle of the knife.

  Heuradys made a gurgling sound. Behind her, Otter and Fox looked at each other. Órlaith turned her head and hissed to them:

  “No. I’m not in physical danger, so don’t even think about just rushing me out. The Ard Rí wouldn’t thank you for that.”

  Both bodyguards glanced at each other again; then Otter shrugged and they relaxed. The policeman—he’d been one even before the Change, though very junior—acknowledged the byplay with a flick of his eyes.

  “It’s not the first time I’ve found members of your families standing over a body scratching their heads,” he said. “Your grandfather Mike Havel, for one, Your Highness. That was just before the Protector’s War.”

  The Bear Lord, she thought; the first ruler of the Bearkillers. Her father’s father, though on the wrong side of the blanket.

  He turned his gaze to Heuradys. “As it happens, that was one your mother killed, Lady d’Ath.”

  Uh-oh, Órlaith thought.

  Tiphaine d’Ath had been an assassin for Sandra Arminger in her youth, and a duelist at home, before a military career conventional only by contrast. It wasn’t mentioned much these days, but part of that sneaking and throat-slitting had been done here in Corvallis, in the run-up to the Protector’s War—or the War of the Eye, as most people called it. As part of a set of intrigues by Sandra Arminger which nearly kept the city-state out of the coalition which stopped her dreadful husband from overrunning the whole Willamette.

  OK, if I absolutely have to, I could ask Da to issue a pardon . . .

  “I honor my lady my mother above all others, save of course my other parents and the Crown,” Heuradys said carefully. “However, I am not Baroness d’Ath.”

  “I’m aware of that,” he said. He glanced from her to the corpse. “Including aspects that make this less simple than it appears. Let’s get it straight.”

  Yes, let’s, by the Powers! Órlaith thought. Then: I need to get this settled. I need to get it settled quickly, if I can—before things drag through the Corvallan courts.

  Her parents wouldn’t interfere with the judicial process. The Great Charter of Montival forbade—the monarchs could hear an appeal from a death sentence, but they couldn’t intervene in ordinary criminal matters in any autonomous realm. Couldn’t, and wouldn’t try. Corvallis was one of the autonomous realms, a founding-member of the High Kingdom, not a Crownland where the High King appointed the judges.

  Not that Da would interfere there either.

  Terwen ran through the events as the various witnesses had recounted them, referring to his binder for details. Some of those were extremely fanciful.

  “Sword?” Heuradys said. “I’m supposed to have used a sword? What, and then stuck a knife in the wound?”

  “Eyewitness testimony,” the police chief said dryly. “I’ve heard a great deal of it, and it tends to have more to do with what people see in their heads than with their eyes. A hint, my lady: if you’re guilty, get an eyewitness. If you’re innocent, rely on circumstantial evidence. Now—”

  Eventually, after he’d summarized:

  “And that’s when you got that nose, Lady d’Ath?” he said.

  “Exactly,” Heuradys said. “Sort of an involuntary flying head-butt.”

  She pronounced it eggsacly, since her nose was swelling shut. Then she went on:

  “I saw the hands coming for my face and did a double-knife block.”

  She mimed it, putting her palms together like the Christian gesture of prayer and then turning both hands up and out, blocking with the bladed edges of her palms.

  “She ran her forehead right into my nose. And then I couldn’t see anything for a second, because my eyes teared up, and besides it was very dark when that gaslamp went out.”

  Most of those present nodded automatically. If you got a hard smack on the nose your eyes ran; that was uncontrollable reflex.

  “The impact knocked me backward against the table.”

  The furniture was plain but very sturdy, heavy planks spiked to thick uprigh
ts.

  “I could feel her falling; she grabbed at me and then gave a sort of jerk and fell away. Then the lamp came on. And she had my dagger in her back.”

  “You—” Tom Dayton began surging to his feet.

  “Shut up,” Terwen said without looking around, frowning.

  “You can’t talk to me that way! My father—”

  “Is a tenured member of the Economics Faculty,” the police chief said. “Words can’t express how much I don’t care, sonny. Do you think I mind if they retire me a year early?”

  He frowned again, looking at the dagger which was the only hard evidence.

  And he as much as said he discounts nearly everything except hard evidence, Órlaith thought. Wait a minute, he said that if you’re innocent you should rely on the circumstances. Think, woman, think the way you would if you’d just walked in on this and didn’t know anybody and hadn’t heard the names. Think the way you would if you were out hunting and looking for sign.

  She breathed deeply and cleared her mind; there was a trick to that. Mackenzie priestesses had taught her, and the monks of the Noble Eightfold Path at Chenrezi Monastery over the mountains when she and her parents stayed there on a State visit. Breathe, imagine a pool of calm water, close your eyes, let the breath out and all emotion with it. No attachment, be pure floating consciousness.

  They came open and she looked at the body as it was, without the overlay of speculation and her mind talking to itself.

  Heuradys took a deep breath of her own. Órlaith knew she was about to do something—probably to confess, to get her liege out of the hot water. She thought desperately, and then . . .

  “Silent Sentry Removal!” she burst out.

  Everyone looked at her. She went on hurriedly: “My aunt Ritva was giving us lessons. We were visiting her down at Stath Ingolf, in the new settlements in Westria.”

  A stath was what the Dúnedain Rangers called their steadings, and the Rangers did special operations in wartime. Her aunts Ritva and Mary had been legends at it in the Prophet’s War; they’d gone with her father on the Quest to Nantucket, too.

  “We asked her why she said she’d always used a garrote and not a knife, and she explained how difficult it is to stab someone in the heart from behind, not just the ribs, but the angles reaching across your body because the heart is on the left. And if you just cut their throats, it’s loud and messy. The kidney is better—”

  About a third of the hearers nodded unconsciously at that, too.

  “—but still not quiet unless you can control the mouth or throat too, and if you can do that you might as well strangle them.”

  Heuradys had been white-faced and focused within herself. Now she looked around at Órlaith, her mind visibly starting to work again.

  “Yes?” Terwen said politely.

  He’s not a warrior, Órlaith thought. But he’s probably seen a lot of dead bodies, sure and he has.

  “You ken . . .” she said, and mimed drawing a dagger.

  Then she slowly played out the ways you could stab someone in the heart from behind. The ones who knew what she was talking about looked on with keen interest. All the methods required the point approaching the target from an angle. Perfectly possible, with a long knife and if you were strong and quick, but the knife in the unfortunate Shelly’s body stood straight out at ninety degrees, thrust with the flat of the blade parallel to the ground.

  The only way an ordinary assailant could do that was with a backhand stab, and even then you’d have to be at exactly the right place.

  “And at the right height,” Órlaith went on. “Look, this girl, Shelly, she’s what, five-six? Something like that. Herry . . . Lady d’Ath . . . is my height pretty much, maybe an inch less. And the position isn’t right. Shelly ran right into her, headfirst. And Herry . . . Lady d’Ath . . . is very strong and quick, but to reach back, get the knife, then turn Shelly around, stab her without slanting the blade, and then turn her around again so she could fall flat on her face . . .”

  “Interesting,” Terwen said slowly.

  “Her prints will be on the knife!” Dayton blurted.

  “Of course they will be!” Heuradys snapped. “It’s my knife. I clean and wipe my sword and dagger every evening and touch the hilts a dozen times a day even if I don’t draw!”

  “So you think someone else grabbed the knife and stabbed Shelly Hiver in the back?” Terwen said.

  “Someone behind her to begin with. Someone who knows how to use a knife, and who’s quick-thinking enough to douse the light with beer . . . I hope nobody thinks Herry . . . Lady d’Ath . . . did that.”

  Tom Dayton started to go purple. Órlaith extended a hand.

  “Not him—he’s too tall anyway. There was just time to reach over, grab the knife, stab and let her fall before the lamplight came on. Someone about the same height as the girl. And—”

  A thought occurred to her. “Someone left-handed. Or using their left hand.”

  She looked at the cluster of young men beside Tom Dayton. One of them was a little under average height, though broad enough to be a bit squat, with big hands and long arms. His right hand was looking painfully swollen . . .

  “That’s the one!” Órlaith said. “He’s the one who groped Lady d’Ath, and she dislocated his thumb. Look for his prints on the knife!”

  The young man didn’t waste any time on protests of innocence; he just turned and dashed for the front door and the police there poised their catchpoles. His hand came out of his pocket and twitched as he did, and a blade gleamed—flick-knife, prompting a yell of warning from several people. Where he thought he was going at night with the city gates locked shut she didn’t know; she was too conscious of the warm flux of relief in her gut.

  Sionnach moved very quickly for such a big man; he picked up a globe-bellied wine flask from a table, hefted it and threw fast enough to make it blur through the shadows. It cracked into the man’s back, and he staggered with a cry of despair. The hesitation was just long enough. One of the officers at the door darted out her catchpole like a frog’s tongue striking, and the open-end of the Y-fork whacked home on his neck. The spring-loaded catch snapped closed, but the man grabbed the pole with his hand and rammed her into the wall beside the door. The other catchpole darted forward in the instant that took, and the constables both twisted to bring the choking pressure to bear.

  “Drop it!” the one he’d run into the wall wheezed. “Do it now!”

  After an instant the man went to his knees as the intolerable leverage of the long poles made his thick neck creak. His face turned dull purple, mouth moving in silent curses or snarls.

  “Drop it or we’ll snap your spine!” the constable snarled.

  He did a moment later, and several more closed in, nightsticks ready. One smacked him on the side of the head by way of precaution, while another grabbed his wrists and the third put the cuffs on—they were pre-Change and snicked home with reassuring solidity.

  “You have the right to remain silent, you backstabbing asshole, not that it’ll do you any good,” the first constable said as she loosened her catchpole. “You have the right to get your teeth kicked in back at the station if you give us any more trouble. You have the right to be hung by the neck until dead after a fair trial when the jury hears about this.”

  The man revived enough to start heaving and shouting as the constables dragged him out; the constable hammered the end of her catchpole into his back above the kidneys with evident satisfaction.

  “Told you,” she said. “C’mon, make more trouble, give me an excuse.”

  The whole thing faded into the rainy night as they pulled him out and four picked him up to throw him headfirst into the Black Maria, which was waiting with its horse standing droop-headed and drowsy and indifferent as the vehicle rocked on its springs. The door swung shut again.

  Terwen nodded to his t
echnician, who worked the dagger loose carefully by the ends of the guard and carried it over to a table where his instruments and magnifying glass were ready.

  “Nice smooth ivory, sir,” the young man said. “I should be able to lift a good set of latents from this.”

  Tom Dayton was sitting down again, looking stunned. He grimaced and wiped the back of his hand across his eyes as two more of the constables lifted Shelly Hiver’s body onto a stretcher and covered her face. Then he turned towards the Associate knight.

  “Sorry,” he said gruffly. “I, uh, I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Órlaith looked at her friend. Heuradys made a half-leg of acknowledgement, then took the man’s hand for a brief shake.

  “No offense,” she said briskly. “You were honor-bound to take your leman’s part. And when you saw my knife, that was a natural assumption to make.”

  He nodded, started to speak, then blinked and turned away to follow the body. Terwen stood aside, giving unspoken permission for the man to leave, then touched him on the shoulder.

  “Dayton, we’ll need you to make a statement. I’d think back on how you fell in with that crowd, if I were you. I don’t think they had your best interests at heart, and they weren’t just hanging around for free drinks, either.”

  Dayton shambled out. Two of the Montoya family came in and scattered buckets of sawdust on the floor; that would absorb most of the blood overnight. The rest would make a stain . . . but that would probably just be something to make an interesting story. Heuradys sat with a slight thump, exhaling a long breath and rubbing a hand across her forehead before she gave Órlaith a slight significant inclination of the head:

  Thanks and quick thinking!

  Órlaith raised a hand. Then she closed her eyes for a moment and made the sign of the Horns.

  Go in peace to the Summerlands, Shelly Hiver, she prayed sadly.

  Everyone died, but it was a shame to do it so young, and for such a reason.