Exiled: Keeper of the City

by Peter Morwood

  “Doing all right?” Reswen said after a moment, looking around the single room. It looked more like a forgotten storage space than anything else. There were boxes everywhere, piled up, old trunks and chests with rusted fittings, the contents spilling out of them in places—mostly books.

  If Lorin had more than one tunic, Reswen had never seen him in it. Nor were there any of the rumored trappings of magic to be seen, no crystals or rods or bizarre stuffed beasts, no potions bubbling. It was all very odd.

  “Very well indeed,” said Lorin after a moment, and pushed the money to one side. He looked sidewise at Reswen. “How are the guests?”

  “News travels fast.”

  “Hnnh. Betting was five to one on an attack. I cleaned up.”

  Reswen’s whiskers went forward. “I thought you weren’t allowed to bet.”

  Lorin looked innocent, all big gray-green eyes as he reached out for a piece of parchment and turned it over and over, eyeing the brushstrokes on it. “Ah well, if someone else places a bet for me ... well.”

  “But you knew it wasn’t war. How?”

  “Do you really want me to tell you?”

  “Not particularly,” Reswen said. “Our guests are a problem at the moment.”

  Lorin looked at Reswen with not quite the usual casualness. “Oh?”

  Reswen recited the last part of the Easterners’ document for Lorin’s edification. When he was finished, Lorin looked at him with an expression composed of equal parts bemusement and suspicion. He said nothing.

  “Well?”

  Lorin shrugged. “The formula is very old,” he said, “but it’s usually a blessing. Harmless.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Reswen said. “Not in this case.”

  “Why not?” A pause. “You don’t trust them? Devious Easterners?”

  Reswen growled a little in his throat. “Don’t lump me with fools like Aratel. There’s just something about this that troubles me. I find it odd.”

  “Something else, as well,” Lorin said, and paused again, staring at the table. He started to push a piece of stray silver money off to one side, then said, quite casually, “Who has blue eyes?”

  Reswen stared at him.

  “Silver fur. Blue eyes. Very pretty.” Lorin pushed the silver piece away, then looked up. “She had quite an impact on you.”

  “That’s odd, too.”

  “Yes, it is,” Lorin said, and chuckled a little. Reswen squirmed a bit. This kind of thing was always the problem with dealing with Lorin: the irrationality of it—the way he could pick truths out of the air, seemingly without trying, without reason or judgment, as if he could see some part or aspect of the world that others couldn’t.

  Reswen shuffled his paws. “That doesn’t matter, for the moment. I’ll handle it. What I want to find out about is that stone-and-water business. I’m sure it’s more than some blessing, some nice formula for the gods to hear. Theirs, or ours. Find out. If you need money, it’s yours. Make the usual connection and take whatever you need.”

  “All right,” Lorin said. He got up and followed Reswen to the door.

  Reswen looked out right and left through the crack, fiddled with the catch, managed to get it open. “And keep this business quiet,” he said to Lorin.

  Lorin laughed at him, just a breath of nervous amusement. “You think I want this”—he tapped his head—“to wind up over the city gate?”

  “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

  “Oh, yes you would,” Lorin said, “if you had to. Go on. And Reswen?” His face went suddenly rather somber. “Mind the priest.”

  Reswen gratefully got out into clean hot daylight and set out for his office.

  The door slammed hurriedly behind him.

  RESWEN counted himself lucky that there was no need for him to be at the formal meeting. He spent the afternoon doing things that certainly should have interested him more: looking over the daily reports from the subconstabularies, for example.

  Some people had been surprised, when he had first been given the job, how much he relished what his predecessor had considered a burdensome bureaucratic chore. But to Reswen the reports were lifeblood: the real news of his city, not the sanitized stuff that one heard from criers or saw in broadsides, not the grudging reports that he had been given before by his superiors in the course of investigations, or that he had picked up via the rumor mill around the constabulary. Now that he was Policemaster, he was told the truth, all of it ... most of the time. Much of it was sordid, but that didn’t bother him. Burglaries, murders, mugging, bribes, gambling, their incidence and the patterns in which they moved and shifted—he looked at them all and by them knew what was going on in his city’s mind as surely as a mother knows from the twitch of her kit’s hindquarters which way it’s going to jump. Reswen spent a happy couple of hours amidst the paperwork, considering various arrests and failures to arrest, and decided that the criminal gangs on the west side of the city were getting out of hand again; there had been many too many robberies in the last week. Someone was trying to finance something major. The whole place would need a good cleaning out sometime quite soon ... but not right this minute. There were other things on his mind.

  Blue eyes—

  Damn.

  Reswen then called in Thailh to see how the Shambles murder investigation was going. Thailh was one of those self-starting types who (in Reswen’s opinion) did the best police work: a solid, stolid, slow-moving, careful officer who left nothing to chance and insisted on turning over every piece of evidence with his own paws, and going himself to find what others could not bring him. Only a few minutes after being’ sent for, Thailh came into Reswen’s office with a thick stack of parchments and a restrained look on his broad gray-striped face. Reswen sighed a little; there was apparently no real news. Thailh would have been grinning like a mrem with a fresh fish if he had even the slightest cause.

  They sat down together and went through the evidence again. No one knew who had been garroting the people down in the Shambles, a somewhat run-down part of town where the abattoirs had always been. Now there was only one slaughterhouse left there, buried in tenements and mean shops, but the place was earning its old name all over again. There were few new developments in the case, and the whole business was no less confusing now than it had been to start with. For one thing, the mrem who were dying were not being killed for money. One recent case had been a courtesan coming back from a late night out: the two claws’-weight of gold she had set out with were found on her body, untouched. Overlooked in haste? Thailh thought not, and Reswen agreed with him. Another killing had been of a sutler who had been out drinking with friends and had been walking home, again late, on the borders between the Shambles and the poor but respectable neighborhood where he lived. He had perhaps two coppers on him when he went home; those were left him, while his life was taken.

  “We have a crazy on our paws,” Thailh had said during their first conference on the case. Reswen had been inclined to agree with him, though he did so sourly, as there were enough crazy people loose in the poorer parts of town to fill Niau’s gaols seven times over. And one could hardly arrest them all, or (as some of the angrier and less rational of the citizens’ groups demanded) hunt them all down and spike them up over the gates. Even if crazymrem were not actively considered lucky in many circles, Reswen would have refused to even consider anything of the kind. It was inelegant to kill hundreds when killing one would solve the problem ... and it would be an admission of helplessness and inadequacy. Not to mention that it would simply be wrong.

  But all the same, something would have to be done soon. There was little the police could do at this point but wait for the killer to strike again ... while meantime the people down in the Shambles got more and more upset, and police patrols down there had to move in groups; the people they protected were becoming inclined to stone them when they saw them, and
one constable too cocky to patrol in company had had a knife put into him several nights before.

  “But at least we have this,” Thailh said, and with great satisfaction held up a plain cord of fine stuff, a sort of beaten rope-weave. There were no stains on it, but it needed none; it had been found around the neck of the last victim. The murderer had apparently been frightened in mid act by the sound of an approaching foot patrol. Reswen had been more than annoyed that his people had been so close to catching the reprobate and had then lost him, or her. But at least they had the garrote.

  “And where does that leave us?”

  “Further along than we were before,” Thailh said, “because now I know where it comes from.”

  Reswen looked up from the papers, mildly surprised.

  “Is that a help to us? I thought it was just rope.”

  “Ah, but it’s riot,” said Thailh, and at last his eyes gleamed a little with that fresh-fish look. “This is hardly something you’d just walk into a local shop and buy. See the braid in it? That’s lesh fiber, and the cord is draper’s cord. There are only two or three sources for it in the city; it’s difficult and expensive to make. And the two shops that make it sell only to the drapers’ trade. That narrows things down a bit.”

  “So you’re going to check all the people working for drapers—and the people working in those shops that make the cord.”

  “I’ve already started. Nothing significant yet, but I expect that to change.”

  “Very well. Keep me informed.”

  Thailh nodded and gathered up his parchments and tablets. Reswen glanced out the window, noting with some surprise that the sun was already quite low. “And Thailh? Do me a favor. Watch where you walk at night ... and don’t do it alone. This person may be crazy, but not stupid ... and an investigator could wind up with some of that around his neck.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “Good. Later, then.”

  Thailh bowed himself out, and Reswen stretched behind the desk, then fell to neatening up the piles of reports and stowing them away where they would come readily to hand over the next couple of days. Time to head home and freshen up for the formal reception for the Easterners. And then—

  Blue eyes, he thought on purpose, so that he wouldn’t think it inadvertently. Reswen was becoming angry ... and was becoming determined to get some answers.

  He got up and went out and down the stairs toward the street, purring an old Northern war chant.

  The reception was held in the Councillory, in the Hunt Room, probably the most splendid formal hall in all Niau. Exactly how long ago it was built, no one was certain, but it went back to the first building of the city, and had never been changed or refurbished. It echoed the black stone which was the primary material of the rest of the building, but here the somberness was all turned to splendor. The city’s first builders, it seemed, had decided that though the rest of the building might be spare and modest, it would contain at least one room that would completely astonish all comers. The architect had apparently been a mrem with a love of luxury and an unlimited budget.

  It was all done in the polished black stone that faced the Councillory, at least ‘as regarded the walls, but the floors were tiled in rough semiprecious stone—black onyx, black jade—with brass fittings between the stones, and here and ‘there a carved plaque of white marble with the city’s name-rune set in it in black inlay of onyx. The columns, a double row that ran the length of the room down its middle, from the massive doors to the throne dais, were also polished black marble, veined, but the veins were inlaid with gold and silver, and set here and there with gems where the normal cutting of the stone had originally revealed outcroppings of crystal. All this went up to a ceiling inlaid with gold and black patines; and below the ceiling, running right around the room, was a dado in old cream marble carved in hunting scenes. It was a hunt of the old gods, some of them so old their names were forgotten. Gemmed spears were brandished, arrows afire with gold were aimed, the quarry fell kicking; and the carving, in the old naturalistic style, was so real that when the room grew smoky from the braziers of spice burning between the black columns, you might stare at the carvings in the high dimness and wonder whether they moved a little, whether the old forgotten gods turned their heads a little, and smiled.

  Reswen, standing in the doorway now, looked down the room at the splendor of the guests milling about there, and had little interest, for this once, in the carving. The Easterners had turned out in their best, no mistaking it, and the Niauhu nobles invited to the reception had done the same, considering it their business to outshine the guests ... for the good of the city, of course. The torches, fixed to the pillars in holders resembling the hands and arms of mrem, glittered on gold and silver and rarer metals, glancing back smooth green gleams from breastplates of hammered shev, wine red ones from swordhilts or fillets of aretine. Jewels were all over the place, glittering against fur. Silks and velvets and point-laces beaded in seed diamond, tissues of all the precious metals, they brushed and swept away again in the haze-tangled light of the torches. Dancing was going on, a set piece in the Northern style; several couples moved toward and away from one another in swirls of rich fabric, stepping over the swords laid on the floor.

  Reswen smiled a bit as the crier came back from leading some late-arriving Easterner down the floor. “Evening, Tarkh,” he said. “How are the tips tonight?”

  Tarkh, the Councillory’s majordomo, sniffed softly.

  He was a tall lean mrem with cool green eyes and the shortest, plushiest blue-gray fur Reswen had ever seen; a mrem with an air about him that was far more aristocratic than most of the aristocrats he saw every day. “They tip too big,” said Tarkh scornfully, and then nodded to a footmrem waiting by the door, with a gong. The gong was struck, and everybody in the place quite understandably stopped talking, since talking was impossible over the crashing, hissing clamor of the thing. When the noise of it had died away sufficiently, Tarkh filled his lungs and cried, “The Honorable Reswen neh Kahhahlis-chir, Essh-vassheh ve Mhetlen, that is to say, Chief Constable and Policemaster of the City Niau—”

  Reswen started his walk down the hall, still smiling a bit, nodding to some of the nobles he knew, watching others’ reactions to him and to his interest. The reactions were, he realized quite happily, not merely reactions to his clothes. Not that he wasn’t well dressed. His best kit was impressive: chased breastplate and fittings all of polished red aretine or scarlet enamel and gold, a cloak of scarlet sendal, flowing out behind him like fire or blood from a wound; on the breastplate, the badges of his rank, various awards from the city for valour in battle or for aptitude at work, with the big gold-and-scarlet torque of his rank snug around his neck. Certainly there were a couple of hundred people here better dressed than he—not hard, considering the kind of money they had. But there was some small advantage, in any large group, of being the Chief of Police. Clothes, they knew, would not help them if they fell foul of you, and neither would money or power. Reswen walked down the hall, feeling on him the eyes of Easterners and city people alike, and enjoying it.

  Meanwhile there was another set of eyes he was very interested in being introduced to, formally.

  The Councillors were down at the throne dais end of the hall, mostly. Some of them were scattered around the room, but Mraal was there holding court with several of the others, including Aratel. Keeping him under his paw, Reswen thought, where he can’t get in trouble ... for Aratel looked surly. The Councillors were as splendidly dressed as anyone else, their own torques of office weighing them down as usual. Reswen smiled a bit more; his torque might be gold, but it was also hollow. There were Easterners with the Councillors’ group as well; others were scattered through the room, talking to the Niauhu guests.

  Reswen bowed and made the usual polite duties to the council members, and then said, “Sirs, perhaps someone would make me known to the notable guests?�
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  To Reswen’s mild surprise, Mraal said, “I’ll do that office. Master Hiriv, here is our Chief Constable, who makes the city safe for the people who live in it. Reswen-vassheh, the eminent Master-Priest Hiriv, who cares for the affairs of the grain-god Lakh in the Eastern cities.”

  “Reverence,” Reswen said, and bowed slightly with his paws covering his eyes, the usual greeting for a priest. “You’re very welcome,” he said, straightening. And to his surprise, this was a lie. Reswen was shocked to find such instant dislike for the mrem welling up inside him. Usually he tried to stop such reactions in himself when they occurred; they clouded the judgment. But this creature— As Reswen had noticed that morning in the courtyard at Haven, Hiriv was three times the size a mrem his age should have been, a bloated, orange-and-white-splotched mass of furry flab. Reswen would have been tempted to think him eunuched, except that in the Eastern priesthoods as well as the Western ones, priests had to be weaponed mrem. Now, just being fat is hardly enough excuse to dislike someone, Reswen was thinking. But at the same time the jolly expression that the priest wore—like that of a favorite uncle who would sneak the children bits of the best meat when they came to visit him—was nothing but cosmetic. Reswen could feel nothing at all behind it, and over time he had come to trust his feelings about these things. Now, come then. Even that isn’t reason enough; there are many people who wear faces for their own purposes, to keep themselves from fear or— But this was nothing of the kind. Reswen hated Hiriv, hated him on the spot. It was very embarrassing.

  And Lorin’s words came to him then: “Watch out for the priest—”

  Reswen held his face still by force. “Thank you, thank you,” said the jolly priest, and chuckled, and Reswen hated him worse than ever. Someone whose intentions Reswen distrusted so shouldn’t be able to wear such an expression. But whatever, Reswen thought, and applied as cheerful an expression to his own face. The priest’s presence here, with the most senior of the council gathered around him, made Reswen suspect strongly that he was a major source, if not the only source, of the troublesome document of this afternoon. “I hope you are enjoying our hospitality,” Reswen said, and hardly noted the answer, just made certain that he was answered with more benign platitudes while he glanced from councillor to councillor to assess their mood. Mraal was difficult to read, with his party face on, but Aratel was not bothering to hide his sulkiness, and the usually unruffiable Lawas and uncaring Harajh both looked somewhat unnerved for once. Oh, bad, very bad; they heard nothing in the meeting with the Easterners that relieved their minds one bit. I am going to be called up to the Arpekh’s House again in the morning, and my job is going to be no fun at all for the next few days....