The Corpse Thieves

by Charlotte E. English

Confidently though she spoke, Konrad knew that her testimony alone would not be enough to save Dubin. She was an acknowledged friend of his, a close friend. She had been travelling with him when he committed the crime. No third party could possibly accept her account as unbiased.

  But it meant much to Konrad. He knew she would not lie to him, not even to save Dubin. If she truly suspected that her friend had knowingly, willingly, committed such a crime, she would not try to cover for him. Her principles were too unbending for that.

  It was a shame that The Malykt was unlikely to accept such an argument.

  ‘What of the knife?’ he murmured.

  That brought Dubin’s attention upon him at last, and the young man’s face darkened. ‘Savast?’

  Konrad nodded politely, unsure what to say of his presence there.

  Dubin did not appear to know what to say either, but his joy at seeing Konrad was not profound. He stared at Konrad’s face for a time, searching, perhaps, for some clue as to his intentions in accompanying Nanda. Finding none, he looked away. ‘I am glad Nan has someone with her at this time,’ he muttered, a little ungraciously, but the sentiment seemed sincere.

  ‘No memory of the knife at all,’ Nanda replied, letting the brief exchange pass. ‘Not a one. Judging from his memories alone, I would have said there was no knife.’

  ‘In point of fact,’ murmured Nuritov for Konrad’s ears alone, ‘Witness reports all agreed about the knife, but we never found it. Or the sword either.’

  That little oddity brought a frown to Konrad’s face. Both weapons had gone missing?

  ‘I do not carry weapons,’ said Dubin. ‘Not ever. If I had ever wished to kill, I possess much more expedient means.’

  This was news to Konrad. ‘How so?’

  Dubin looked down at the grey clothes he wore, and sighed. ‘I cannot show you now, but if you inspect my old clothes — wherever they are — you will find three cloth pouches sewn into the seams. They are there for self-defence. If ever I was threatened as I went about my business, or if somebody accompanying me was in danger, they were my recourse. They each contain a virulent poison which, if thrown, will cause successively greater discomfort and inconvenience to an assailant. The first would cause partial, if significant, loss of sight. The second would burn the lungs if inhaled, leading to the kind of coughing one does not lightly suffer through. If these two proved insufficient and my need was great enough, the third would cause death.’ His jaw tightened and his eyes grew wintry in expression. ‘I have never had reason to even think about using that third one, but believe me: if I had wanted Kovalev dead, that is how I would have accomplished it. A knife? How clumsy, how dangerous, how unsure a weapon! It is the last thing I would have chosen.’

  Konrad was surprised to hear mild, meek Danil Dubin so coolly outline his preparations for violence at need, though a small part of him was impressed. He ruthlessly suppressed that part.

  The argument was persuasive. Dubin was a poison trader; what else would he choose, by way of a weapon? His story could easily be verified. Nuritov looked electrified, and would, no doubt, ensure that a search of Dubin’s clothing would be conducted the moment they returned to ground level.

  Where, then, had the knife come from? How had he come to be carrying it at all? How had he known to reach for it when presented with an opportunity to kill Kovalev, if he had not known that he had it, and was much more inclined to reach for his poison packets?

  Konrad thought of Sokol, and the sword he had used in his attempt upon the life of Radinka Nartovich. A sword was a strange weapon for a silk merchant to carry, too.

  ‘Dubin,’ said Konrad. ‘If you had to find an explanation for what has happened to you, what would you conclude?’

  ‘There is none.’ Dubin returned Konrad’s stare with a look of impatient resentment.

  ‘Think.’

  Dubin withdrew to the back of his cell and sat down on the bare bench there, his manacles clanking. He sagged against the wall and stared at Konrad from beneath lowered lids. His attitude was suggestive of despair, but Konrad suspected that he was thinking deeply. Nuritov and Nanda stayed quiet, the former watching Dubin with an air of mild fascination blended with sympathy, the latter staring after him with naked concern.

  ‘It would be difficult,’ said Dubin at length.

  ‘Undoubtedly.’

  ‘Perepin’s Arrow. It is a rare poison, usually prepared for inhalation. It is mesmeric, sometimes used in low doses as an aid to hypnosis. Combine a careful dose of that with something like amberleaf, which can cause loss of memory in sufficiently high doses…’ He tailed off, shaking his head. ‘It would be difficult,’ he said again. ‘To administer both poisons to the same target in precisely the right doses to have the desired effect, and without detection, would be virtually impossible. And then, they would not produce all of my… actions unaided. Perepin’s Arrow prepares the way, but the intervention of a powerfully skilled hypnotist would still be required to implant the desired suggestions in my mind, and strongly enough to compel me to act upon them. Especially when those suggestions run so contrary to my nature.’

  Too many drawbacks. Besides, why Dubin? Why Kovalev? Why would anybody go to such lengths to compel a man like Dubin to slay a rival, if the process was so delicate, so likely to result in failure? Surely there were easier ways to dispose of a Kovalev undetected. Konrad could think of three or four off the top of his head.

  Still, Dubin’s train of thought was interesting, and he may have hit upon some part of the truth, if not the whole. ‘Is there any way to detect whether Perepin’s Arrow or amberleaf have been used?’ He was familiar with both poisons himself, as poison collecting was one of his stranger hobbies. But he could not pretend to equal Dubin’s expertise.

  ‘Not really. A little coughing, perhaps, in the case of the Arrow. The amberleaf is ingested. Its milder effects include confusion and dizziness, neither of which I remember experiencing. But I might, of course, have forgotten all that as well as the rest.’

  Konrad looked to Nanda, wordlessly asking her the question: had Dubin been coughing?

  She understood, and shook her head.

  Nuritov had been silent, letting Nanda work and Konrad question. But at last he spoke up. ‘Mr. Dubin. How did you know Mr. Kovalev?’

  ‘In my youth,’ replied Dubin (which struck Konrad as absurd, considering the man could not be much more than five-and-twenty), ‘There was a girl. Inna. Kovalev and I both courted her for a time, though she would have neither of us. I thought him a fool and disliked him very much, of course. Since then I have occasionally passed him in the street or encountered him in a shop, or some such. We both forgot Inna long ago, I believe, and our exchanges were brief but civil enough. That is the extent of my acquaintance with him.’

  A bland story. Nanda would say, later, whether or not his professed feelings about Kovalev matched anything she had drawn from his memories or thoughts. For now, he had nothing further to ask.

  Neither did Nuritov or Nanda, so they soon took leave of Dubin. Nanda lingered over the task long, clearly reluctant to abandon him to the cold solitude of his cell. He was equally unhappy to see her go, and Konrad averted his eyes from their anguished leave-taking.

  He waited with Nuritov a few feet away, their backs discreetly turned.

  ‘What do you think?’ murmured Nuritov.

  ‘I think him sincere.’

  Nuritov nodded agreement. ‘Somehow, the notion that he could be compelled to commit such a crime against his will and without his recollection seems less far-fetched than the notion that such a man could behave so by his own will, and with so little reason.’

  ‘I have known him some little time. I do not think he has it in him.’

  Nanda joined them, her face drawn and too pale. Konrad felt an impulse to take her hand, touch her, anything that might comfort her. But having witnessed her hand-holding with Dubin the gesture struck him as misplaced, and he did nothing, only signalling sympathy with his eyes w
hen she glanced at him.

  This she ignored. ‘Sokol?’ she prompted.

  Nuritov led the way.

  Sokol proved to be a rotund man in his forties, with greying hair and the kind of face that had probably been fixed in cheerful lines until recent events. He watched his visitors’ approach with anxious intensity, and hope flared in his eyes.

  ‘Is it over?’ he said. ‘Am I to be freed?’

  ‘Ah… not yet,’ said Nuritov. ‘This is Miss Falenia and Mr. Savast, associates with the police. They are here to assist with the investigation.’

  Sokol’s face fell, and he shrank away from his cell door. ‘More questions! I have answered your questions, over and over, and here I still am.’

  ‘Miss Falenia is a Reader,’ said Nuritov. ‘That means that she is able to access your thoughts and memories in a limited way, if permitted to touch you. She will be able to verify some parts of your story.’

  This was an interesting test, for a man truly innocent ought to jump at the prospect. A guilty man would find a reason to refuse, for Nanda would surely see that he lied.

  Sokol all but threw himself at the bars and thrust a hand towards Nanda. ‘Read, then, and you will know I speak the truth.’

  Nanda took his hand, and spent her usual minute or two in quiet concentration. When she opened her eyes, she released Sokol’s hand with a reassuring smile.

  ‘Much the same,’ she said, meaning much the same as Dubin. ‘He and Miss Nartovich were engaged in a civil conversation about the state of the silk markets. The next thing he remembers, he was in custody. He certainly has no memory of trying to harm Miss Nartovich. Or of any kind of weapon, knife or sword.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Sokol looked ready to cry.

  Konrad hoped the poor man had not concluded that Nanda’s testimony exonerated him. Many assumed that if one had no memory of an action or event, then one could not have committed or experienced it. In fact, the mind and the memory were far trickier than that, as Dubin’s theory suggested. There were ways to interfere with memory. And then, the mind sometimes interfered with itself, and opted not to remember things it had far rather forget…

  ‘You do not own a sword?’ Nuritov enquired.

  Sokol shook his head, growing frustrated. ‘I have said this over and over. I have never owned a sword! Why would I? I am a family man, and a peaceful man. I could have no use for such a weapon. I own a small dagger, which I keep with me sometimes when I am abroad, for there are dangers on the road. That is all. I do not know how to use a sword.’

  Which, Konrad noted, was an interesting point of potential enquiry. A sword was a specific kind of weapon. It was not like using a knife. Dubin might never have picked up a knife in his life, but a simple blade like that was not hard to employ if one’s intention was merely to stab blindly at a target. A sword, though, required more precision, more skill. Particularly since the newspaper report had spoken of an attempted decapitation. To take someone’s head off with a sword was no small task, and usually required a conveniently stationary target. Konrad assumed that Nuritov had checked into the merchant’s activities already. If there was any evidence that he knew how to wield a sword, the inspector would have mentioned it.

  ‘Did you have the dagger with you at the time?’ asked Konrad.

  Nuritov nodded at once, so presumably the weapon had been found among Sokol’s clothing. So far, so good for the confirmation of his story.

  The tale so far put him in line with Dubin. He had his own, preferred, familiar weapon to hand; why use a sword?

  ‘And Miss Nartovich?’ Konrad asked.

  ‘An old friend. A rival, sometimes. We have disagreed on occasion, but never seriously. We have even helped each other once in a while, when one of us struggled. I would never harm her, or she me.’

  Nanda nodded. ‘The look on Nartovich’s face, in Mr. Sokol’s memory. It is of utter shock. I cannot think that she had ever anticipated such violence from him.’

  That could be checked when he spoke with Miss Nartovich, but Konrad trusted Nanda’s assessment.

  So. Konrad was satisfied, for the present, that neither man appeared to be guilty of their crimes in intent. He was not altogether satisfied that lack of memory equated to lack of action, for it was distantly possible that both had repressed such horrific, violent memories. But it was a shaky surmise, and the weapons were the problem with that theory. It simply made no sense, that both men should choose weapons unfamiliar to them for so grave a purpose.

  In Konrad’s not inconsiderable experience, when a person set out to commit a murder, they typically did so with two primary aims: One, to succeed in their goal. Two, to escape without being detected or caught. Controlling the outcome of the endeavour was deeply important, and that meant sticking as much as possible to ideas and methods that made the perpetrator feel comfortable, powerful and unassailable. Picking a weapon one has no familiarity with and no affinity for was the kind of mistake made only by the stupid, and Konrad did not think either Sokol or Dubin merited that word.

  So, then: something else was behind the two incidents. Or perhaps someone. Dubin’s theory merited investigation, for if neither the silk merchant nor the poison trader had planned these murders, then who had? And if they had only been physically responsible for carrying them out, who had been pulling their strings?

  Chapter Four

  The serpents had been quiet for a whole day. Too quiet.

  They soon made up for it.

  Master, shrieked Ootapi in Konrad’s mind, in the very small hours of the morning. Konrad had been dreaming, splayed across his bed in sumptuous comfort. The serpent’s splintered-ice voice interrupted a vision of pleasant strangeness in which he and Nanda sat on the floor of his hut-on-stilts out in the Bones, filling bottles with coloured liquids.

  He opened his eyes. What?!

  Someone is dead! carolled the snake.

  You arrive bearing joyous news, as always.

  Ootapi beamed in his mind, as delighted as a child given a bag of sweets. Thank you, Master.

  Eetapi and Ootapi had yet to fully grasp the intricacies of sarcasm. Konrad did not trouble himself to explain.

  What are the circumstances of this death? Given Ootapi’s desperation for a nice murder case to keep Konrad occupied, he felt a faint hope that his faithful serpent may have encountered a natural death and enthusiastically exaggerated its significance. It was cold out there and warm in bed, and it could not be much past two in the morning.

  Deaths! Ootapi proclaimed. Two! Out in the Bones.

  Two people together might have come to grief out in the Bone Forest in heavy snow, but Konrad would certainly have to investigate. He heaved a great, reluctant sigh and threw off the blankets.

  Butchered like pigs, added Ootapi.

  All right, then. That is not something to sound so delighted about, Ootapi, Konrad tried, knowing it was futile.

  There is so much blood! Eetapi chimed. Pretty red snow!

  Bones! chirped Ootapi. Bones in the Bones!

  Was it any wonder he was so often dejected, when such creatures were his regular companions? Konrad hurried to get dressed, trying unsuccessfully to ignore his ghost servants’ appalling glee.

  I wonder, he mused as he retrieved his waxed great-coat, whether the Master would permit me to trade the two of you in for some less bloodthirsty alternatives?

  There followed a ringing silence.

  Bloodthirsty, Ootapi finally repeated in a thoughtful tone. Is that wrong?

  Konrad made for the door. Never mind. We go! Keep up!

  Eetapi had not exaggerated about the blood.

  The serpents led Konrad through the north gate of Ekamet and into the snow-laden Bone Forest. The bodies were not very far in, barely two minutes from the gate. They were… in a poor state.

  The first was a youngish man with pale hair, the second a woman perhaps twenty years older. Their garments hinted at a life of moderate prosperity. They had probably got down from the stagecoach momen
ts before, Konrad judged, and were on their way into the city when they were attacked.

  The young man’s head was half-severed, his neck split open by a sharp blade. Much of the blood that stained the surrounding snow was probably his. Both he and his companion had been stabbed repeatedly, bloodied wounds covering their torsos, limbs and even their faces.

  Konrad looked at them for a long time, struggling with an uncharacteristic desire to turn away, let someone else deal with it. The two still, half-frozen bodies awoke unusual pity in him, and an even more unusual distaste. He thought he had grown used to such spectacles over the years.

  He smothered such feelings with an effort, and forced himself to focus. The bodies had been there for some time, he judged, for they were severely frost-bitten and partially covered in snow. Probably a few hours, perhaps a little more. No sign remained of any other passersby; the snow had filled in any footprints their killer might have left, and Konrad saw nothing else of use or interest.

  His favourite knife was tucked into his coat. He withdrew it and leant over the body nearest to him, the woman. It was his duty to take a bone of hers, usually a rib bone, with which he would mete out justice to her killer. He felt curiously reluctant to proceed. Those poor, battered folk had suffered enough such indignities, and besides… there was an odd, macabre peacefulness about their inert shapes, resting among the softly falling snow. The Bone Forest was silent, eerily so, all sound muffled by the snow, and Konrad felt that to introduce more violence to the scene would be to somehow defile it.

  Such strange, twisted thoughts. He shook them off and bent to his task, setting the knife to the woman’s torso.

  Master.

  Konrad jumped, Ootapi’s voice slicing through the silence like a whipcrack. What?

  There is a person.

  Sweet Malykt, another body? Konrad did not feel he could face another such torn-up carcass. Where? he replied and straightened up, feeling about three centuries old.

  He felt a wordless summons beckoning away to his right. He trudged that way, knife in hand, trying to steel himself for another horrific scene.