Polk immediately shot forward, ignored a glass and took a bottle for himself. Enid the sphinx sat down to clumsily nurse a glass between big furry paws, sneezing as the bubbles tickled at her nose. Jus waved the wine away and contented himself with his awful tea.
Lord Charn swirled his wine inside a tiny thimble glass and began.
“We need to come out into the world. My daughter is the test. Faeries could be an instrument for good or bad. I suspect we might verge toward the bad. We’ve spent too long looking after our intrigues.” Lord Charn heaved a sigh then leaned toward the Justicar. “Intrigues have a way of excusing evil. Tarquil’s dead, and in my own house.”
Clambering over Enid’s head to fetch a glass of wine, Escalla shot another angry look at her father. “I told you, I didn’t kill the bugger!”
“But there’s evidence enough to slam you right into the hands of the Faerie Council.”
Jus leaned forward, listening. Polk leaned forward, thieving more wine. Sitting beside the Justicar, Lord Charn laid out the situation for his daughter’s companions.
“Lord Ushan’s valets came to Tarquil’s room to summon him. Tarquil was discovered dead, lying on the bed. There was an empty cup—looks like the man was poisoned. When the palace was searched, it was discovered that Escalla had gone. My wife’s maids knew that Escalla had arranged a secret tryst with Tarquil in his room.”
Jus stroked at the harsh stubble of his chin. Beside him, Cinders listened with pointed ears, his red eyes gleaming.
“No spies in Tarquil’s room saw anything?”
“His own alarm spells had been disabled. However, Escalla had apparently spent at least two days making sure that she would be unobserved. Scrying shields in place, careful blanking of spying spells… Her mother had a spy following her. Escalla knocked him out when he tried to follow her into Tarquil’s room.” The faerie lord leaned closer. “What’s more, Tarquil’s bodyguard saw Escalla sneaking into the room just before the body was discovered. He remembers that she seemed stealthy.”
Escalla remembered the bodyguard and gave a vicious curse. “He knew why I was supposed to be there!” Escalla leaped to the ground and paced in anger. “That bastard! I’ll—!”
“In good time.” Her father turned to the girl. “Did you see anything? Any evidence you can remember?”
Escalla planted her hands against her heart and squawked in indignation. “I didn’t do it!”
“That’s not going to be much of a defense.” Father glared at daughter. “You had motive. You had opportunity. You blanked out scrying spells and knocked out the spy who followed you, then you fled off into the wilderness to escape!”
Escalla sank into nervous anxiety, then suddenly shot up, filled with energy. “Ah! The slowglass! I hung the necklace from a door handle overlooking the bed!” Escalla smacked her fist into her palm. “Ha! There you go! It’ll show him alive and me leaving—everything you need to know!”
“Just what we need,” Lord Charn shrugged, “but no one reported seeing a necklace in the room. Still, we can search for it and see.”
“What about spells?” The Justicar’s meat and bread came from investigating injustices and crime. “Can you speak with the deceased?”
“No ghost is present. It must have already fled.”
The faerie lord rose to his feet and paced in agitation, his head level with Jus’ thigh.
Escalla sat irritably down by the fire and cursed. “Poop.”
“Poop indeed.” Lord Charn made a rock float over to serve as a chair for the girl, bringing her to sit between himself and the Justicar.
“Now listen. Your mother is going to use you as a sop to Clan Sable. They want a murderer, and by slinging you to them, she will be able to save her ambitions. Through sacrificing her own daughter, she shows that she is a true member of the court, and she will still have your sister to marry off to the Sable Clan.” Charn’s antennae slanted. Apparently there was no love lost between himself and his wife. “Your sister and mother have great plans. This is almost better for them than having you and Tarquil safely wed. Meanwhile, Clan Sable screams out murder and assassination, calling for our eternal barring from the Seelie Court.”
Jus thought upon the situation, his face its usual mask of sharp intelligence. “You want Escalla’s name cleared.”
“Of course I do! She’s my girl. My girl!” The resemblance between father and daughter in mind and spirit was certainly remarkable. “I let her go to the world because it was what’s best for her.”
“Ha!” Escalla gave a sour sniff. “Don’t talk rubbish! If you’d known I was skiving off in the first place, you would have stopped it. Mother must have given you hell.” The girl gave a sniff and sipped her tea “Probably took you a whole week to realize I was gone.”
“By failing to pay attention, I was obeying unconscious higher motives.” Lord Charn clearly shared a heritage of glibness with his daughter. “I knew it was right and proper that you take your place within the world.”
“Oh bosh!”
“Bosh yourself.” Charn dusted imaginary crumbs from his tunic. “Who was it that showed you where the dandelions grew in the first place?”
Miffed, Escalla sat cross-legged on her stone. “Fine! So I’m too incompetent even to run away from home by myself, and my own mother is conspiring to have me executed. Anything else?”
Speaking for the benefit of the ever-patient Justicar, Lord Charn refilled his glass.
“Lord Faen is with us. He is chief advisor to the Erlking and is in charge of the investigation. He will let us clear Escalla’s name if it can be done. If we show a love of justice, that will be better evidence of goodwill to the court than throwing a scapegoat to the dogs.” The anxious father glanced at Escalla, running his fingers through his hair. “Justicar, I know you have experience here. I am at a loss! As you love and value my daughter, please help us clear her name!”
Jus nodded slowly and thoughtfully. Rising from his seat, his vast bulk loomed like a giant above the faeries. “Is it possible for me to see the body and the murder site?”
“It can be arranged, but it must be now, before the faeries return to the palace from the first hunt!” Lord Charn rose quickly from his seat. “There is a gate at an archway high above, but we’ll have to run!”
Escalla, Polk, and Enid all rose together. Lord Charn looked at them in alarm.
“No! Escalla, stay hidden. This must be fast. If your mothers spies see visitors, she’ll follow you and strike. I’ll take the Justicar alone. If we’re not back here in an hour, then go wait for him in your spider bubble in the pond!”
Lord Charn kissed his daughter, gripped her shoulders, and then whirred up into the air, his wings sparkling. Behind him, the Justicar seated his sword in his belt. Cinders swept about him like a cloak, the hell hound’s grin gleaming as the creature was fastened in his rightful place. Following him to the cellar door, Escalla anxiously wrung her hands then came to hover in front of Jus face.
“Jus, I didn’t do it.”
He looked into her frightened green eyes for a long moment, then reached out to touch her cheek. “I know.”
He nodded, then turned and walked away. Once he was gone from the room, Escalla’s night seemed suddenly frightening.
* * *
The ruins of the keep yielded an arch, and the arch had long been overgrown with ivy. Lord Charn hovered nearby as Jus hauled his powerful frame up the sheer stonework toward the magic gate.
“There are gates everywhere, of course, sir Justicar. People just can’t see them. This forest is a nexus, a place where dozens of them congregate. It’s why we settled here in the first place.” The faerie lord plucked a sprig of fennel from his purse. “There! This should be the one!”
Hanging from a sheer stone wall thirty feet above the ground Jus paused while searching for a handhold.
“Fennel?”
“A key for the gate.” Charn put his other herbs away. “Each one is triggered by a different h
erb or token. A copper coin, a dandelion, splash of wine… You can trigger them by accident if you’re unlucky enough. That’s why mortals think the whole forest is haunted.”
As Jus reached the rough stone precipice below the ancient stone arch, Lord Charn gestured toward it with his herbs.
“This gate leads to the palace lands, but I don’t quite know where. Stay hidden until I can find Lord Faen, and we’ll bring you to the murder site.”
Jus nodded.
Lord Charn hovered before the door, then tapped the blank space of the archway with his sprig of dried fennel. The fennel flashed and disappeared. Suddenly the archway shimmered.
“Now!”
With a heave, Jus shoved himself upward. He stepped though into a soft gray light and found himself on all fours upon a fragrant forest floor. Illusions were transparent to Cinders’ eye. The dog sniffed and then hissed in Jus’ mind.
Trees is trees. Leaves is leaves. Flower bushes is illusion.
Jus chose the real concealment of the leaves over the illusory comforts of the bushes. An instant later, he lay in a drift of leaves, perfectly still and quite invisible with only Cinders’ black nose showing above the mulch. When Lord Charn appeared, he looked about in brief confusion, then shrugged and whirred off on his way.
Jus saw that he was lying amongst the plane trees—the gateways to universes of fire, flame, and antimatter. The faerie lands were no place to wander carelessly; one wrong turn might be your last.
Lord Nightshade returned long minutes later with another faerie at his side. Cinders sniffed the scent of them long before they arrived.
Escalla’s father. One other faerie, a male.
Jus heaved upward, shedding leaves like a leviathan shedding the ocean floor. Two faeries hovered nearby, impressed as the big man emerged from total invisibility. Jus brushed wet leaves from Cinders’ fur and looked levelly at Lord Charn and his guest.
The newcome faerie was slender and affected long gray hair and a wisp of a goatee. He sketched a bow as Lord Charn made the introductions.
“Justicar, you remember Lord Faen. My Lord Faen, the Justicar is something of a specialist. The elves of the Celadon trained him.”
The elegant, calm Lord Faen looked coolly at the Justicar. “What temples does he favor?”
The Justicar’s dark, dire voice seemed to fill the wood. “Justice flows from the heart, not from gods.”
Nodding noncommittally, Lord Faen turned in midair and said, “Come then. We have cleared all eyes away for a short time. We will show you what we can.”
Jus strode like a dark giant, the black hell hound skin wreathing him in shadow.
“You have interviewed everyone who might have been near the room at the time of death?”
“We did what we could. Truth spells are seen as an insult, and at the moment, insults are something we cannot afford.” Lord Faen flew pace by pace with the Justicar, detecting a kindred spirit in the mortal’s mind. “A certain amount of conspiracy has taken place. Maids and servants have contrived to be absent. There is only the bodyguard, who identified Escalla. Indeed, she left her dress in the murder room, and he could describe it to us exactly.”
“Escalla’s mother organized a tryst.”
“And might have reached the Sable clan guards and servants.” Faen ushered the way toward a balcony. “It is here. I’ll tell you nothing. Your own untainted impressions will carry better force.”
The palace had not been made with human scale in mind. Still, there were enough humanoid servants to require high ceilings and large doors. Jus carefully approached the balcony, eyeing a place where he could use a tree to leaver himself up and over the fragile-looking balustrade. He then knelt in the leaves below and let the hell hound go to work.
“Smell anything?”
Faeries. Cinders thoughtfully sifted scents. Male once walked here—two-three hours ago.
There were tracks consistent with a single faerie waking slowly below the balcony—probably the bodyguard. Since faeries could fly, tracking was hardly likely to reveal real clues. Jus looked carefully at the eaves and railings then heaved himself up the tree and onto the balcony.
The room had a wide window screened by curtains of silken gauze. The curtains had been thrown open and the room trampled by enthusiastic, clumsy investigators. Even so, there was much to see.
The body had been moved, but where it had lain, the bed was indented. The pillows and sheets seemed otherwise undisturbed. If Tarquil had come here to sleep, then he had lain down and found no time to toss and turn.
Beside the bed was a table that seemed a little like doll’s furniture. Jus knelt carefully on the carpet, going onto all fours to examine the half-sized furnishings. A wine bottle stood open beside a pair of glasses. One glass stood untouched and full, while the other seemed half empty. Jus sniffed the cup, and Cinders confirmed his suspicions.
Bad smells! Wine poisoned.
Holding the half-empty glass up to the light showed a faint oily film down one side. Poison had been trickled into the glass from an outside source.
The wine was poured carefully back into the bottle, and Jus surveyed the results. Nodding, he put the empty glasses aside, then cast carefully back and forth across the room.
No necklace hung from any doorknob. Various hands had wrenched open cupboards and curtains looking for would-be assassins. Yet a gleam came from the carpet, and when Jus bent down to examine it, he found the tiniest of tiny golden links—a piece of delicate chain from a necklace that had been broken clean through.
Cinders breathed a scent and shivered his long black tail. Escalla’s skin.
“Just so.”
The Justicar looked carefully at the door that led through the apartments and into the palace. He opened the door and looked into a passageway lined with brilliant animated murals. Searching the empty corridor with a long, hard glance, Jus turned away, returned into the room… and caught sight of a single black thread hanging from the doorjamb.
He trapped it, laid in in a folded paper, and put it in his pouch beside the golden link. Rising, Jus carefully dusted off his hands.
“Where have you put the body?”
“We are about to take it to the chapel.” Lord Faen swung open the door to the passageway and looked carefully out into the deserted palace. “We have lain him out in the drawing room down here until then. Come quickly.”
One man, one hell hound skin, and two faeries swept quietly out into the corridor. They moved three rooms down and edged into a room guarded by a faerie warrior. The warrior looked studiously away from the Justicar, ignoring his presence entirely but nodding to Lord Faen.
In the long, cool room beyond lay the body of the Cavalier Tarquil. The corpse seemed pathetically small, like a child sleeping in the grass. They had laid him on his back, with his hands out at an angle from his body. Jus knelt beside the corpse and removed its cover sheet, looking at the clothed body in professional, dispassionate chill.
“Is this how you always lay out a corpse?”
“No, but the body stiffened in death rigor, and we could not cross his hands decently upon his breast.”
Nodding, the Justicar inspected the body’s mouth. The lips were not inflamed, nor the inner mouth burned.
Jus opened the cavalier’s shirt and pulled up his inner clothes. The blood had pooled on the body’s belly side, leaving a purplish color, but it was already on the move again now that the body was laid out. Soon the corpse would be as pale as ash.
“How long ago did you find him?”
“One hour.”
“Lying on his face.” Jus levered the body over on its side and then began methodically to strip it naked. Shocked and reluctant, the two faerie lords half started forward before leaving the man to his work.
Jus inspected the corpse’s skin inch by minute inch, then looked beneath its nails and through its hair. Finally the big man sank back onto his heels, looming vast as an ogre as he nodded slowly in thought.
Jus
let out his breath and spoke. “He was poisoned, but not by wine.”
Lord Charn raised his brows in silence, but Lord Faen chose to speak. “Not by the wine?”
“No. Here on his scalp and hidden by his hair is a puncture wound.”
The faeries leaned in to see. The Justicar parted the black hair of the dead cavalier to show a small hole in the scalp, far broader than a needle puncture. It had oozed a clear fluid, and the hair strands beside it were silvered with a dried mucous or glue. Jus let the hell hounds nose nestle close to the puncture hole.
“Cinders?”
Cinders smells fish.
“Yes.” The Justicar sat back in cold triumph. “Cinders smells fish.”
The two faerie lords looked at him in silence, and the Justicar enlightened them.
“See the dried slime? It’s from a cone shell—a venomous mollusk that uses a puncturing tongue to kill. Instantly lethal. Small, concealable in the palm on anyone gloved and confident enough to use it. Even a faerie.”
Lord Faen scowled. “And where might a cone shell be found in a forest?”
“Nowhere. This is a kuo-toan assassination technique—right down to hiding the wound in the hairline.”
“You have encountered it before?”
“I’ve read about it.” The Justicar wiped his hands. “This is my profession. I am the Justicar.”
Sitting back on his haunches, the Justicar thoughtfully regarded the corpse. “Cone shells come from tropical reefs. This has been carried a long, long way with the intention to murder.” Jus stoked his chin, black stubble rasping in the quiet room. “The wine glasses were a decoy. When the wine was put back in the bottle, it made the bottle totally full. There was not even half a mouthful missing. It reached the stain line inside the bottle neck.”
Escalla’s father grinned a predatory grin, apparently extremely pleased to witness the Justicar at his work. “Yes, lad. Now what else was in that room? What didn’t other eyes see?”
Descent into the Depths of the Earth Page 11
