Dreaming Death

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  “I wonder where they all are,” her mother said.

  “The colonel’s in his office. I think some of the others are there with him,” Shironne told her after a moment of concentration. She knew the colonel well enough to be able to sense his presence. She recognized Captain Kassannan and a couple of the ensigns past the unseen wall as well.

  Shironne located the bench near the door. She sat down, resigned to waiting. “The colonel asked me to come as soon as possible,” Shironne said. “He won’t leave us out here for long.”

  “I’ve never seen all of them gone like this.” Worry snuck past her mother’s guard, making Shironne’s spine tingle.

  “Something important must be going on, then.”

  Fortunately, the meeting in the colonel’s office ended not long after they arrived. Shironne heard the door open and the sound of feet coming and going. Chairs scraped against the floor. Varied reactions came from different members of the colonel’s staff as they spotted her sitting in the waiting area, some concerned by the bruise on her face. Most greeted her and her mother as they passed, although Shironne couldn’t identify all of them by voice.

  The sound of familiar brisk steps on the wood floor warned her of Lieutenant Aldassa’s approach. “Madam Anjir, Miss Anjir,” he said, “Colonel’s been expecting you.”

  Shironne detected some surprise on Aldassa’s part, so that wasn’t exactly true. She didn’t catch any concern in Aldassa’s words, though, other than his underlying preoccupation. Aldassa always seemed as if a thousand tasks awaited him.

  “Actually, I’d like to speak to the colonel for a moment,” her mother said. “Alone.”

  • • •

  Cerradine was surprised she’d come to into his office unaccompanied and dressed in colors. It stopped him in his tracks for a moment.

  She’d been so adamant about her mourning. Savelle Anjir generally tried not to put herself into any situation that could be misconstrued—a habit for her, born of years of avoiding censure. Had she decided to abandon her mourning after all?

  Then he saw the truth. She’s disguised as one of her maids. She still wore no jewelry other than her bracelet with its tiny silver bells. A sheer veil in a bronzy color covered her face, and she wore a dark orange tunic over black trousers—the trousers a servant would wear. If she’d walked through Army Square garbed in mourning white, it would have been remarked, but this allowed her to seem like Shironne’s escort. And Messine had surely been with them all along, keeping them safe.

  “Madam Anjir,” he said softly, waving Aldassa away. “Please sit down.”

  She settled gracefully into a chair after Aldassa left, tugging loose the scarf that had obscured her lovely face. She balled the scarf in her hands as if nervous, setting the bracelet on her wrist tinkling. Her brown eyes fixed on the side of his desk. She wore her dark hair swept up into a simple chignon at the nape of her neck. Of all the ways he’d seen her wear her hair, this was his favorite. He wondered, as always, if she knew that.

  Almost four years before, she’d brought her daughter to him to help with an investigation. She’d worn a light dusting of cosmetics and kept her face turned away from him but hadn’t been entirely successful in hiding the bruising on her cheek.

  That had begun his relationship with the woman’s husband. He considered a man beating his wife unacceptable, no matter what Larossan custom permitted. He’d had Anjir investigated and learned that among his other sins, Anjir practiced blackmail and larceny. Fortunately, Cerradine had possessed an excellent threat of his own to hold over Anjir—not that he’d ruin Anjir himself, but that he would inform Dahar of how his half sister had been treated. Anjir had immediately grasped the seriousness of that threat and moved out of the family home and into the house in the Old Town he kept for his mistress. Cerradine had never asked if Savelle Anjir suspected why her husband had left, but he did know from Shironne that their lives had been far better since.

  Savelle Anjir was a very proper woman, almost obsessively so, and therefore Cerradine had never even touched her. Despite working with Shironne for more than three years, he’d been inside the Anjir house only a few times, and those times he’d gone in the servants’ entrance in back. He’d never gone beyond the kitchen. Even so, he vividly recalled every conversation he’d had with this woman, and had some hope that she returned his regard for her.

  Her continued silence warned him she’d come to say something she didn’t want to. Cerradine sat down in the chair next to her, keeping his thoughts calm. He suspected she was about to take him to task for exposing Shironne to Faralis, and he was going to take it without argument or demur. He’d failed to protect Shironne and, ultimately, there was no excuse.

  “Before you ask,” Savelle began, “I haven’t dropped my mourning. No matter what you thought of him, he was my husband, and I will do as the world expects. It’s not a question of his worth, Colonel, but of my correctness.”

  “I understand,” he said, even if he didn’t agree. “You came here in disguise, a wise decision.”

  She nodded, twisting the scarf tighter. “I have to leave town tomorrow. A matter regarding my father’s estate. Shironne and her sisters will be in their governess’ care. Lieutenant Messine will stay behind at the house, although Lieutenant Aldrine insists on accompanying me.”

  Yes, the lieutenants had warned him that the trip was coming, Savelle’s effort to salvage what she could of her family’s monies. It wasn’t necessary. Dahar would forward to her any funds that she needed without question, but she apparently didn’t want to take the Royal House’s money. “How long will you be gone?”

  “Three days at best, but it could be a few longer than that. The girls should be fine with Messine to watch over them.”

  “I’d like to send Pamini over anyway, if you’d allow it. That way if Shironne needs to come to the headquarters and Messine with her, there will still be someone at the house.”

  Her jaw flexed, and he thought she was about to argue. Then she capitulated. “I am concerned that Faralis recognized my daughter, Colonel, so if you can spare someone, I won’t turn them away.”

  “Thank you. I will sleep better knowing there’s someone there. And that Aldrine is with you.”

  “She was very insistent.” Savelle shook her head. “I was rather hoping that Shironne wouldn’t be needed while I was gone. That no one would die.”

  “Would you prefer that we not involve her while you’re away?”

  “And keep her at the house like a bird in a cage? It would drive her to distraction to do nothing.”

  He couldn’t help laughing at her vexed tone. Savelle had pushed her daughter to be independent, to know her own mind and do as she wished. That didn’t mean she always liked what Shironne chose.

  “That’s not why I’m here, though,” she said. “You asked if there had been any correspondence sent to my husband after his death regarding his various . . . businesses. No, there hasn’t.”

  “Thank you. We’ve since decided that these murders likely aren’t related to him, but we prefer not to dismiss any lead.”

  One corner of Savelle’s mouth twisted upward. “And I thought it was an excuse to talk to me.”

  Her tone was almost playful, so he said, “I admit, I’ve been curious about your plans for your future, and for your daughters as well. Have you considered your brothers’ offer?”

  Savelle took a deep breath and launched into what sounded like a practiced speech. “I was married at fifteen to a man I didn’t know and quickly came to fear. But I am a widow now, no longer under my father’s control . . . or Tornin’s. Why would I give myself over to a new family who may turn around and force me to marry someone else I don’t want? I prefer my independence, both for myself and my daughters.”

  Cerradine shook his head. It had never once occurred to him that she would fear that. Never once. “I apologize for not gr
asping that concern, Madam Anjir, but your brothers would never try to force you into marriage. Or your daughters.”

  Her expression was guarded, as if she didn’t quite believe him.

  “I swear to you,” he said. “They would not dare.”

  “And if I chose to remarry? Perhaps to someone they don’t favor? A Larossan?”

  Cerradine did his best to smother the stab of jealousy that question brought forth. There was no possibility that she didn’t sense it anyway. Just as there was no possibility that she didn’t know of his interest in her. “Anvarrid women may do as they please. Their families may cajole and plead, but no law says they must obey.”

  Most Larossans had little concept of how the Anvarrid Houses ran, so he understood her doubts. She’d been raised Larossan and must think all peoples treated their women the same.

  “I see. If I wished to marry a Larossan man,” she said, “then I would prefer not to complicate things unnecessarily. I want to bring as spotless a reputation as possible into any new marriage, and the only way I can do that is to observe a proper period of mourning. And then, should a man wish it, he could properly court me.”

  It was surprising that she was considering remarriage, but it sounded more like a foregone conclusion, her marriage to this unknown Larossan man. He felt his jaw clench and made an effort to calm his thoughts. “I do understand that, Madam Anjir.”

  She reached across the short distance between them and laid her hand lightly on his, surprising him. “Do you? Do you understand why I’ve come?”

  He turned his hand and took hers in his own, and she allowed the familiarity, unable to withdraw her hand gracefully now. He regretted that he’d asked. He would rather not have learned that she had plans to marry. “I had no business asking into your choices, madam, other than my friendship with Dahar. I apologize.”

  For a moment she gazed at him as if surprised by his answer.

  Yes, he’d answered incorrectly again. It seemed unfair that she was a sensitive and thus could sense what he felt, while he couldn’t grasp what she sought at all. “What did you want me to say?”

  She licked her lips, as if nervous. “Perhaps,” she said, her voice trembling, “that if you were the sort of man who wished to court a woman in mourning, you would be willing to wait that long.”

  The weight that had seemed to crouch on his chest abruptly fled. Cerradine felt a smile creeping across his face. Savelle Anjir had, in a strictly hypothetical sense, asked him to court her once she’d completed her year of mourning. He set his other hand over hers. “I would be willing to wait that long.”

  Her eyes flitted down to his hands holding hers, and she blushed. It had likely taken all her nerve to pose that question. And since her relationships with men had been limited to Tornin Anjir, that made her leap of faith even more courageous.

  “I want to be clear about one thing,” he said, peering at her lowered face. “If I were courting a woman, I wouldn’t let any quibbles about a year of mourning deter me, particularly not when he was not a man worth her time.”

  Her lips pressed together in a vexed line. “You’re an officer,” she said firmly. “You’ll probably be a general one day. You need to consider how a wife’s reputation would reflect on you.”

  He didn’t argue. Reputation would always matter to Savelle. “I understand.”

  “But you don’t agree,” she said.

  He shook his head. “You know how I felt about him.”

  “Please . . . let me do this my way. The proper way.”

  “Whatever you want,” he said.

  She smiled ruefully then. “You almost mean that.”

  The hazard of speaking with a sensitive who knew him well—he couldn’t easily fool her. And rehashing this topic wouldn’t help. “Thank you.”

  “I must return home now,” she said then. “I must take Perrin to visit a seamstress, and need time to change clothes first.”

  He let her hand slip away, and she busied herself wrapping the sheer scarf about her head. He rose to accompany her, but she stopped with one hand on the door latch. “Why did you not think I was speaking of you?”

  He chased that question around in his mind for a moment and then grasped what she meant. “When you suggested you might marry a Larossan man? Because I’m not Larossan.”

  Her head tilted, expression now obscured by her veil. “But you are.”

  “Those of us raised by the Family, we are Family, no matter how we appear on the outside. Just as you are Larossan, rather than Anvarrid.”

  Her mouth opened, as if that explained something that had long puzzled her. “That’s why you use your Family name, isn’t it?”

  Very few people addressed him by that name. “Yes.”

  “Until the next time, then, Jon.”

  It surprised him how much he enjoyed hearing her say his name, and the tacit permission to use her name it conveyed. “I’ll hold that hope close, Savelle.”

  She slipped out of his office, drawing the scarf over her face as she went. Cerradine watched her go, mesmerized, as he had been since the first time he saw her.

  • • •

  Messine had left to talk to Aldassa about the case at hand, so Shironne sat abandoned on the bench next to Aldassa’s empty desk, waiting until the colonel was ready to speak with her. Her mother had already returned home, pleased with herself over something. It surprised Shironne that the colonel left her waiting so long, but he finally sent one of the ensigns out to fetch her back to his office.

  The ensign, a young girl with a deep voice, took Shironne’s hand and put it on her sleeve. Evidently she’d seen Aldassa or Messine do that before, and although Shironne didn’t need the help, she wasn’t going to turn it away. If nothing else, it would be rude.

  “What is your name?” Shironne asked as she walked at the young woman’s side.

  The question caught her escort off guard. “Uh . . . Ensign Pamini.”

  The ensign must have looked at her as she said that. That took her off course, forcing Shironne slightly to the right, and Shironne’s knee collided with wood—a bench in the hallway.

  Shironne drew in a pained breath as the young woman apologized. “It’s fine,” she managed. “I do that all the time.”

  Despite her assurances, the girl radiated guilt and worry. “I’m very sorry.”

  Shironne knew the benches were there, and if not for the ensign guiding her, she would never have hit one unless it had been moved. She shook her leg, trying to mitigate her knee’s anger. “It takes practice, Ensign. How old are you?”

  “I’m a twenty,” the young woman said.

  That was the age when they could leave the Family. “So you’re new here?”

  “Only a month,” she said. “I worked for the Daujom after yearchange but had to leave.”

  And thus still said things like yearchange when the rest of the world called it the New Year. “The Daujom?”

  “Shironne? Why don’t you come in here?” the colonel asked from not far away.

  Ensign Pamini set Shironne’s gloved hand on the doorframe. Shironne found the back of one of the chairs and sat, flipping her braid over her shoulder as she did so. She heard the colonel sit nearby. She could still smell him, wool and gun oil and a cologne she’d always liked. Her father had favored musk. “So, uh . . . there’s a body you want me to look at?”

  The colonel accepted her change of subject without demur. “We found the second corpse up near Miller’s Point early this morning. As it turns out, it was a good thing Captain Kassannan took you to examine that first body, as the police refused to let him look at it a second time. Word leaked out the body was cremated this morning.”

  Had she heard him wrong? “Can they do that? Um, I mean, burn the body before they find out who killed him?”

  The colonel laughed. “They’re denying the body
ever existed, and since the army had no business being there, we can hardly use as leverage the fact that Kassannan—and you—saw it.”

  No, a court would never believe that she’d seen anything. “Why would they hide it?”

  “A police officer killed in blood magic makes the police seem weak. And given that some people suspect that Faralis had something to do with the children sold into Pedraisi slavery, anything that reminds the public of the Pedraisi brings up the subject of his possible involvement in that.”

  The colonel had, tactfully, not mentioned that Shironne’s own father had been suspected of selling children. “Well, surely someone else saw the body, sir. What about the police officers, or the fishermen who pulled the body out of the river? Wouldn’t they say something?”

  He sighed, letting her sense the edge of his annoyance. “The fishermen who discovered the body can’t be found. Rumor says Faralis arrested them.”

  “Can you . . . um, get them out?”

  “Well, we’ll have to see,” he said, and she heard him rise. “I suggest we walk over to the hospital and look at our body. Perhaps I can tell you more then.”

  Shironne followed the colonel out of the office. He took her gloved hand, placed it on his arm, and led her out of the building into the sunshine. She could feel the sun on her face. “Why is this one in your morgue rather than the city’s?” she asked as they crossed the lawn in the square.

  “One, because we found him first. Two, we’ve identified him as army.”

  The killers had taken a police officer as their sacrifice first, and now a soldier? That seemed especially brazen to her. It could be a coincidence, but she doubted that.

  The colonel opened a door and Shironne smelled the morgue as they headed down the stairwell into the basement. The colonel opened the inner door and the familiar scent roiled forth, not nearly as pungent as the smell of the city’s morgue, thankfully. She pressed one gloved finger under her nose, trying to minimize the odor.

  Cerradine always insisted that the more information they collected about a death, the faster they could catch the killer. She hoped there was some insight she could offer.