by Dan Abnett
‘Froigre who?’
‘Lord Froigre of House Froigre.’
‘You knew him?’
‘Very well. I would count him as a friend. Well, how very miserable. Dead at eighty-two. That’s no age.’
‘Was he ill?’ Bequin asked.
‘No. Aen Froigre was, if anything, maddeningly robust and healthy. Not a scrap of augmetics about him. You know the sort.’ I made this remark pointedly. My career had not been kind to my body. I had been repaired, rebuilt, augmented and generally sewn back together more times than I cared to remember. I was a walking testimonial to Imperial medicae reconstruction surgery. Alizebeth, on the other hand, still looked like a woman in her prime, a beautiful woman at that, and only the barest minimum of juvenat work had preserved her so.
‘According to this, he died following a seizure at his home last night. His family is conducting thorough investigations, of course, but...’ I drummed my fingers on the tabletop.
‘Foul play?’
‘He was an influential man.’
‘Such men have enemies.’
‘And friends,’ I said. I handed her the communique. ‘That’s why his widow has requested my assistance.’
But for my friendship with Aen, I’d have turned the matter down. Alizebeth had only just arrived on Gudrun after an absence of almost eighteen months, and would be gone again in a week, so I had resolved to spend as much time with her as possible. The operational demands of the Distaff, based on Messina, kept her away from my side far more than I would have liked.
But this was important, and Lady Froigre’s plea too distraught to ignore. ‘I’ll come with you,’ Alizebeth suggested. ‘I feel like a jaunt in the country.’
She called for a staff car to be brought around from the stable block, and we were on our way in under an hour.
Felippe Gabon, one of Kircher’s security detail, acted as our driver. He guided the car up from Spaeton on a whisper of thrust, and laid in a course for Menizerre. Soon we were cruising south-west over the forest tracts and the verdant cultivated belt outside Dorsay, and leaving the Insume headland behind.
In the comfortable, climate-controlled rear cabin of the staff car, I told Alizebeth about Froigre.
‘There have been Froigres on Gudrun since the days of the first colonies. Their house is one of the Twenty-Six Venerables, that is to say one of the twenty-six original noble fiefs, and as such has an hereditary seat in the Upper Legislature of the planetary government. Other, newer houses have considerably more power and land these days, but nothing can quite eclipse the prestige of the Venerables. Houses like Froigre, Sangral, Meissian. And Glaw.’
She smiled impishly at my inclusion of that last name.
‘So... power, land, prestige... a honeytrap for rivals and enemies. Did your friend have any?’
I shrugged. I’d brought with me several data-slates Psullus had looked out for me from the library. They contained heraldic ledgers, family histories, biographies and memoirs. And very little that seemed pertinent.
‘House Froigre vied with House Athensae and House Brudish in the early years of Gudrun, but that’s literally ancient history. Besides, House Brudish became extinct after another feud with House Pariti eight hundred years ago. Aen’s grandfather famously clashed with Lord Sangral and the then Governor Lord Dougray over the introduction of Founding Levy in the one-nineties, but that was just political, though Dougray never forgave him, and later snubbed him by making Richtien chancellor. In recent times, House Froigre has been very much a quiet, solid, traditional seat in the Legislature. No feuds, that I know of. In fact, there hasn’t been an inter-house war on Gudrun for seven generations.
‘They all play nicely together, these days, do they?’ she asked.
‘Pretty much. One of the things I like about Gudrun is that it is so damned civilised.’
‘Too damned civilised,’ she admonished. ‘One day, Gregor, one day this place will lull you into such a deep sense of tranquil seclusion that you’ll be caught with your pants down.’
‘I hardly think so. It’s not complacency, before you jump down my throat. Gudrun – Spaeton House itself – is just a safe place. A sanctuary, given my line of work.’
‘Your friend’s still dead,’ she reminded me.
I sat back. ‘He liked to live well. Good food, fine wines. He could drink Nayl under the table.’
‘No!’
‘I’m not joking. Five years ago, at the wedding of Aen’s daughter. I was invited and I took Harlon along as... as I don’t know what, actually. You weren’t around, and I didn’t want to go alone. Harlon started bending his lordship’s ear with tales of bounty hunting, and the last I saw of them they were sprinting their way down their fourth bottle of anise at five in the morning. Aen was up at nine the next day to see his daughter off. Nayl was still asleep at nine the following day.’
She grinned. ‘So a life of great appetites may have just caught up with him?’
‘Perhaps. Though you’d think that would have shown up on the medicae mortus’ report.’
‘So you do suspect foul play?’
‘I can’t shake that idea.’
I was silent for a few minutes, and Alizebeth scrolled her way through several of the slates.
‘House Froigre’s main income was from mercantile dealings. They hold a twelve point stock in Brade ent Cie and a fifteen per cent share in Helican SubSid Shipping. What about trade rivals?’
‘We’d have to expand our scope off-planet. I suppose assassination is possible, but that’s a strange way to hit back at a trade rival. I’ll have to examine their records. If we can turn up signs of a clandestine trade fight, then maybe assassination is the answer.’
‘Your friend spoke out against the Ophidian Campaign.’
‘So did his father. Neither believed it was appropriate to divert funds and manpower into a war of reconquest in the subsector next door when there was so much to put in order on the home front.’
‘I was just wondering...’ she said.
‘Wonder away, but I think that’s a dead end. The Ophidian War’s long since over and done with, and I don’t think anyone cares what Aen thought about it.’
‘So have you got a theory?’
‘Only the obvious ones. None of them with any substantiating data. An internecine feud, targeting Aen from inside the family. A murder driven by some secret affair of the heart. A darker conspiracy that remains quite invisible for now. Or...’
‘Or?’
‘Too much good living, in which case we’ll be home before nightfall.’
Froigre Hall, the ancestral pile of the noble House Froigre, was a splendid stack of ivy-swathed ouslite and copper tiles overlooking the Vale of Fiegg, ten kilometres south of Menizerre. Water meadows sloped back from the river, becoming wildflower pastures that climbed through spinneys of larch and fintle to hem the magnificent planned gardens of the house; geometric designs of box-hedge, trim lawn, flowering beds and symmetrical ponds. Beyond the sandy drive, darkened woods came right down to skirt the back of the great hall, except for where a near-perfect sulleq lawn had been laid. Aen and I had spent several diverting afternoons there, playing against each other. A kilometre north of the house, the gnarled stone finger of the Folly rose from the ascending woods.
‘Where to put down, sir?’ Gabon asked over the intercom.
‘On the drive in front of the portico, if you’d be so kind.’
‘What’s been going on here?’ Alizebeth asked as we came in lower. She pointed. The lawn areas nearest to the hall were littered with scraps of rubbish – paper waste and glittery bits of foil. Some sections of grass were flat and yellow as if compressed and starved of light.
Tiny stones, whipped up by our downwash, ticked off the car’s body-work as we settled in to land.
‘Oh, my dear Gregor!’ Lady Freyl Froigre almost fell into my arms. I held her in a comforting embrace for a few patient moments as she sobbed against my chest.
‘Forgive me!�
�� she said suddenly, pulling away and dabbing her eyes with a black lace handkerchief. ‘This is all so very terrible. So very, very terrible.’
‘My deepest sympathies for your loss, lady,’ I said, feeling awkward.
A houseman, his arm banded in black, had led us into a stateroom off the main hall where Lady Froigre was waiting. The blinds were drawn, and mourning tapers had been lit, filling the air with a feeble light and a sickly perfume. Freyl Froigre was a stunning woman in her late sixties, her lush red hair, almost flame-pink it was so bright, pulled back and pinned down under a veil coiff of jet scamiscoire. Her grief-gown was slate epinchire, the sleeves ending in delicate interwoven gloves so that not one speck of her flesh was uncovered.
I introduced Alizebeth, who murmured her condolences, and Lady Froigre nodded. Then she suddenly looked flustered.
‘Oh, my. Where are my manners? I should have the staff bring refreshments for you and–’
‘Hush, lady,’ I said, taking her arm and walking her down the long room into the soft shade of the shutters. ‘You have enough on your mind. Grief is enough. Tell me what you know and I will do the rest.’
‘You’re a good man, sir. I knew I could trust you.’ She paused and waited while her current wracks subsided.
‘Aen died just before midnight last night. A seizure. It was quick, the physician said.’
‘What else did he say, lady?’
She drew a data-wand from her sleeve and handed it to me. ‘It’s all here.’ I plucked out my slate and plugged it in. The display lit up with the stored files.
Death by tremorous palpitations of the heart and mind. A dysfunction of the spirit. According the the medicae’s report, Aen Froigre had died because of a spasm in his anima.
‘This means...’ I paused, ‘...nothing. Who is your physician?’
‘Genorus Notil of Menizerre. He has been the family medicae since the time of Aen’s grandfather.’
‘His report is rather... non-specific, lady. Could I present the body for a further examination?’
‘I’ve already done that,’ she said softly. ‘The surgeon at Menizerre General who attended said the same. My husband died of terror.’
‘Terror?’
‘Yes, inquisitor. Now tell me that isn’t the work of the infernal powers?’ There had, she told me, been a celebration. A Grand Fete. Aen’s eldest son, Rinton, had returned home two weeks before, having mustered out of his service in the Imperial Guard. Rinton Froigre had been a captain in the 50th Gudrunite and seen six years’ service in the Ophidian Subsector. Such was his father’s delight on his return, a fete was called. A carnival feast. Travelling players from all around the canton had attended, along with troupes of musicians, acrobats, armies of stall holders, entertainers, and hundreds of folk from the town. That explained the litter and faded patches on the lawn. Tent pitches. The scars of marquees.
‘Had he any enemies?’ I asked, pacing the shuttered room.
‘None that I know of.’
‘I would like to review his correspondence. Diaries too, if he kept them.’
‘I’ll see. I don’t believe he kept a diary, but our rubricator will have a list of correspondence.’
On the top of the harpsichord was a framed portrait, a hololith of Aen Froigre, smiling.
I picked it up and studied it.
‘The last portrait of him,’ she said. ‘Taken at the fete. My last connection with him.’
‘Where did he die?’
‘The Folly,’ said Lady Froigre. ‘He died in the Folly.’
The woods were damp and dark. Boughs creaked in the late afternoon wind, and odd birdsong thrilled from the shadows.
The Folly was a stone drum capped by a slate needle. Inside, it was bare and terribly musty. Sand doves fluttered up in the roof spaces. Cobwebs glazed the bare windows.
‘This is where I found him,’ said a voice from behind me.
I turned. Rinton Froigre stooped in under the doorframe. He was a well-made boy of twenty-five, with his mother’s lush red hair. His eyes had a curious, hooded aspect.
‘Rinton.’
‘Sir,’ he bowed slightly.
‘Was he dead when you found him?’
‘No, inquisitor. He was laughing and talking. He liked to come up here. He loved the Folly. I came up to thank him for the fete that he had thrown in my honour. We were talking together when suddenly he went into convulsions. Just minutes later, before I could summon help, he was dead.’
I didn’t know Rinton Froigre well, though his service record was very respectable, and I knew his father had been proud of him. Aen had never mentioned any animosity from his son, but in any noble house there is always the spectre of succession to consider. Rinton had been alone with his father at the time of death. He was a seasoned soldier, undoubtedly no stranger to the act of killing.
I kept an open mind – literally. Even without any invasive mental probing, it is possible for a psionic of my ability to sense surface thoughts. There was no flavour of deceit about Rinton’s person, though I could feel carefully contained loss, and the tingle of trepidation. Small wonder, I considered. Uncommon are the citizens of the Imperium who do not register anxiety at being quizzed by an inquisitor of the Holy Ordos.
There was no point pressing him now. Rinton’s story might easily be put to the test with an auto-seance, during which psychometric techniques would simply reveal the truth of his father’s last moments to me.
Rinton walked me back to the Hall, and left me to my ponderings in Aen’s study. It was as he had left it, I was told.
The room was half–panelled, and lined for the most part with glazed shelves of neatly bound books and data-slates. Discreet glow-globes hovered around the edges of the room at head height, set to a low luminosity, and a selection of scroll-backed couches and over-stuffed chairs were arranged in front of the high-throated ceramic fireplace with its wood-burning fusion stove.
The desk, under the diamond-paned west windows, was a wide crescent of polished duralloy floated a metre off the carpet by passive suspensor pods. The desk was clean and bare.
I sat at it, depressing slightly the hydraulics of the writing chair – I was half a head taller than Aen Froigre. I studied the mirror-smooth, slightly raked surface of the desk. There was no sign of any control panel, but a gentle wave of my hand across it woke up heat-sensitive touch-plates engraved into the duralloy’s finish. I touched a few, but they needed Aen’s touch – probably a combination of palmprint and genekey – to unlock them.
That, or inquisition-grade software. I unpinned my Inquisitorial rosette, which I had been wearing on the sternum of my black leather coat, and slid open the signal port. Holding it low over the desk, I force fed the touch-plates with several magenta-level security override programs. It gave up the fight almost at once, opening systems without even the need for passwords.
Built into the stylish desk – an item of furniture that had clearly cost Aen a lot of money – was a fairly powerful cogitator, a vox-pict uplink, a message archive, two filing archives, and a master control for the simple, limited electronic systems built into the Hall. Separate pages of each file and message could be displayed as a facsimile on the blotter plate, and a touch of a finger turned them or put them away. Aen had destroyed all paper records.
I played with it for some time, but the most interesting thing I found was a log of invoices for services provided at the fete, and a list of the invitations. I copied both into my data-slate.
Alizebeth and Gabon arrived while I was busy with that. Alizebeth had been interviewing the household staff, and Gabon had been out, walking the grounds.
‘There were over nine hundred guests here, sir,’ he said, ‘and maybe another five hundred players, musicians, entertainers and carnival folk.’
‘Where from?’
‘Menizerre, mostly,’ he replied. ‘Local entertainers, a few troubadours and some street tumblers from the biweekly textile market. The biggest individual groups were Kalikin’
s Company, an acclaimed troupe of travelling actors, and Sunsable’s Touring Fair, who provided the games and rides and diversions.’
I nodded. Gabon was as thorough as usual. A short, spare man in his one-fifties with cropped black hair and a bushy moustache, he had been with the Dorsay Arbites for about seventy years before retiring into private service. He wore a simple, refined dark blue suit that had been ingeniously tailored to hide the fact that he was wearing a handgun in a shoulder rig.
‘What about you?’ I asked Alizebeth. She sat down on one of the couches.
‘Nothing scintillating. The staff seem genuinely shocked and upset at the death. They all react with outrage at the idea your friend might have had any enemies.’
‘It seems quite clear to me that he did have some,’ I said.
Alizebeth reached into the folds of her gown and fished out a small, hard object. She tossed it onto the desk top, and it landed with a tap.
There it extended four, multijointed limbs, and scurried across onto my palm.
I turned the wriggling poison-snooper over, and pressed the recessed stud on its belly. A little ball of hololithic energy coalesced above its head-mounted projector, and I read it as it slowly scrolled around on its axis. ‘Traces of lho, obscura and several other class two and three narcotics in the garden area and the staff quarters. Penshel seed traces found in the stable block. More lho, as well as listeria and E. coli in small amounts in the kitchen section... hmmm...’
Alizebeth shrugged. ‘The usual mix of recreational drugs one might expect, none in large quantities, and the kitchen’s as hygienic as anywhere. You’d probably get the same sort of readings from Spaeton House.’
‘Probably. Penshel seeds, they’re quite unusual.’
‘A very mild stimulant,’ said Gabon. ‘I didn’t know anyone still used that stuff. Time was, it was the drug of choice in the artists’ quarter of Dorsay, back when I was on the force. The seeds are dried, rolled and smoked in pipes. A little bohemian, an old man’s smoke.’
‘Most of the outdoor traces can be put down to the visiting entertainers,’ I mused, ‘plus a little off-duty pleasure from the staff or loose-living guests. What about the stable block? Are any of Froigre’s ostlers penshel smokers?’
