Dreaming Death

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Mikael had spent the better part of an hour searching through wooden boxes that held files from years past. The Daujom generated a phenomenal amount of paper, all of which had to be stored away somewhere. An old box in one of the narrow storage rooms farther down the hall from the office divulged the files Mikael sought.

  The papers smelled old and musty, and he suspected mice had been in them. A tiny desiccated skeleton and a few tufts of moldering fur in the corner of the box confirmed that guess. It would be more prudent to store old files in the fortress below, where vermin never intruded. He made a mental note to suggest that to Dahar, although he couldn’t be the first person to have thought of that.

  Mikael sneezed, dust from the files getting up his nose. He patted more out of his hair and followed Dahar back to the main office with their prize. Somehow, despite looking through several boxes himself, Dahar had managed to stay completely clean, not a speck on his uniform or in his dark hair. Mikael suspected that he, on the other hand, looked like a reversed version of a chimney sweep. Swathes of white dust marked his black trousers and vest. He would have to sponge them off later. At least he’d removed his uniform jacket before digging among the files.

  Dahar still hadn’t found out about the aftereffects of Mikael’s last dream.

  That meant Kai hadn’t told his father. Deborah hadn’t mentioned it either. When Mikael had been Below for his sparring practice with Eli, the young man hadn’t said anything. That told Mikael that Deborah was keeping the information close for now, probably waiting until after she discussed it with the elders. He was living on borrowed time, then, waiting for the news to spread through the fortress like wildfire.

  Everything seemed to be at a standstill. He hoped they could find some evidence in these files that would definitively link the deaths in his dreams to the massacres. Or perhaps it would be better to find evidence that didn’t.

  As if in answer to his worries, when they got back to the main office of the Daujom, an ensign waited for them with a message from the colonel. Mikael set down the heavy file box on Kai’s desk, dusted off his vest and trousers, and donned his uniform jacket, grateful for the warmth.

  The note was terse to the point of being useless, asking that Mikael come down to the army headquarters later, but the ensign who carried it imparted more information. The army had found the second body that morning and identified the victim as one of their own.

  “Wait until after lunch to see Cerradine,” Dahar said. “Khader should be done with Kai by then, and he can go with you.”

  Mikael always found it amusing to hear the king being spoken of by his short name—Khader—rather than Khaderion. He supposed that as the king’s brother, Dahar had the right to do so. Some Anvarrid were prickly about that, though, as if not giving them their full title name was an insult. On the other hand, Dahar hated being called Daharion, and Mikael didn’t think that Kai would ever be comfortable being called Khandrasion.

  “I’ll wait for Kai, then,” Mikael said, unable to keep the resignation from his voice. He hated viewing his corpses, despite the fact that he’d dreamed those same deaths. It was too personal. He usually lost whatever meal he’d most recently eaten. There were buckets in the cold rooms in Below that Mikael suspected had never been needed there before he came along.

  Dahar clapped him on the shoulder as he walked by. He must have sensed Mikael’s trepidation. “I don’t like it either.”

  It’s different for me, Mikael thought. Dahar didn’t identify with the dead in the personal way he did. But there was a purpose to doing it. When he looked down at those bodies, memories he couldn’t recall before shook loose, giving him his first real clues about the killer. And if this was a case of murder by blood magic, particularly an instance that imitated the massacres, then they needed every bit of information that he had stored away from his dream.

  “I suppose the colonel will want me to bring these files,” Mikael said.

  Dahar folded his arms over his chest, scowling at the file box. “We need to go through them before turning them over. I trust Jon, but the Andersens might have put information in here that we don’t want the army to see.”

  The idea of hiding information from Cerradine rubbed Mikael the wrong way, but protecting the treaty between the Families and the Anvarrid was the Daujom’s primary function. “What exactly are we trying to find in here?”

  “Anything regarding the deaths of the murdered priests.” Dahar started dividing the papers into piles. “I don’t want these reviewed by anyone other than the three of us before we turn them over.”

  That meant he and Dahar would have to do the bulk of it since Kai was spending so much time with the king, if that was where he actually was. Mikael picked the tallest stack and carried it over to his own desk. Sighing, he sat down and began thumbing through the top file. He saw no point in eating lunch.

  • • •

  As Captain Kassannan pulled back the sheets from the table, he recounted for Shironne his failed attempt to get back in to see the corpse at the city morgue. This time he’d been blocked every step of the way. He managed to make the experience of being dragged from the morgue sound like an adventure, even though it had more likely been frustrating and time-consuming. “They think they can just deny it and that’ll make these killers go away?” she asked.

  “Hmm,” Cerradine said. “Sometimes that tactic works.”

  Shironne heard Kassannan settle somewhere away from them, probably to take notes again. The colonel led her to the table where the body lay. She removed one of her gloves and touched the dead man’s skin. He’d been dead only about a day and a half, she decided, definitely the victim in the last dream. “Nalyan Moradine,” Shironne told the colonel without hesitation, “but you already knew his name.”

  “Yes,” the colonel said.

  “How did you find the body?” she asked.

  “I borrowed several squads of soldiers and Aldassa had them search the riverside. Took all night, but a while before dawn, one of them tripped over the body.”

  Shironne grimaced. “That must have been an unpleasant experience.”

  “Yes. Fortunately, we identified the man easily enough. Moradine, that is, not the soldier who fell over him. Still had on his uniform trousers. That prevents the police taking him from us.”

  “Did you know the man?” she asked.

  “No,” the colonel said softly, sounding regretful anyway.

  Shironne touched the edge of a gaping wound in the chest, all blood from it washed carefully away. Kassannan would have done that. “Has someone come to identify him?”

  “His wife,” Kassannan said tightly.

  Shironne closed her mouth, reminding herself not to say anything insensitive. Several months before, it had been Captain Kassannan who’d stood there to identify his wife’s body. The colonel, however, had moved on. He stood directly behind her now, presumably looking over her shoulder. “Is this the same as the first?”

  She concentrated on that cut across the man’s chest. “Yes. The same type of blade made this cut, although I can’t assure you it was the same blade. Did you find a mark on his neck?” she asked Kassannan.

  Kassannan’s voice drifted toward her from several feet to her left. “Definitely poison, perhaps to keep the victim compliant.”

  Shironne caught a flash of surprise from the colonel, but he said nothing. She slid her fingers to the markings across the shoulders. “What does this word mean, do you think?”

  “Blood magic is often written in an older dialect,” the colonel said, “no longer a spoken language. Because of that, we don’t have anyone who can translate it precisely.”

  He might not know what the word meant, but it still carried a great significance to him. They weren’t telling her what that was, though, probably to keep from biasing her answers. She turned toward where she though
t he was standing, hoping to get a more direct impression of his reactions. “This word. This is why everyone’s in such a . . . bother over this, isn’t it? I don’t mean to sound like two murders isn’t a bother, sir, but this is different. Is that because it’s blood magic?”

  “Yes,” the colonel answered, without further explanation.

  Shironne kept her hand above the cuts, sorting out her impressions of blood and body to determine if there was anything distinctive about this body when compared to the last. There was dirt in the cuts, she realized and, after brief contemplation, asked, “Was the body found north of the reeds?”

  Kassannan’s attention sharpened.

  The colonel asked, “How did you know that?”

  “The dirt,” she said. “There’s dirt in some of the wounds, and the composition is very similar to a sample the captain had me study.”

  That surprised the colonel, who likely thought that her study of dirt had been time wasted. “I see. We know from the blood that he was killed there, near Miller’s Point. Did you sense that with the first victim?”

  She shook her head. “After a couple of days in the river, no. There was some silt from the bottom of the river, but any dirt from where he was killed was long gone.”

  “Aldassa’s still trying to figure out where the police officer was killed,” the colonel said with a breath. “And trying to figure out why the first one ended up in the river, but this one didn’t.”

  “The killers didn’t put him in the river,” she said, feeling sure of that.

  “The theory that Aldassa’s following,” the colonel said, “is that someone came across the body, realized they were dealing with blood magic, and dumped the body into the river to protect against recrimination . . . or a curse.”

  That made sense. Shironne held her hand on the body awhile longer, pushing her perception past the stiffness lingering in the muscles. She dug through the fading memories, asking the same things the young lieutenant had at the end: why he had died, why they took him and not some other, and why this way. He’d been afraid, confused. He’d had no chance, not with so many of them. And what of the man forced to watch? He hadn’t understood that. As she often did, Shironne found a sense of comfort at the end, the dead man’s realization that he wasn’t alone, that the Angel of Death was with him. She turned her attention back to the colonel and Kassannan. “He didn’t know why he died, sir, just like the other. Nor why he was chosen.”

  “I expected not.”

  “It’s a problem, isn’t it? That they took a police officer and now a soldier?”

  The colonel didn’t answer, but Shironne could tell she’d gotten that correct. There were far easier men to target than young and healthy ones.

  “In the first dream, I got a sense of someone watching. I think that someone—a man—was forced to witness this man’s murder. One of the things that Moradine didn’t understand.”

  “A witness?” the colonel repeated, perplexed.

  “Why would the killers bring a witness along?” Kassannan asked.

  Shironne chased that reflection for a time but couldn’t find any answer inscribed on the leaves of the soldier’s memories. “Moradine was drugged,” Shironne said, “so the memory was vague.”

  “Well, we’ve learned all we can just now,” the colonel said then. “Let Aldassa write down everything you can recall. That will give us something to go by. He may ask some questions as well.”

  “He always does.” She sighed.

  After a thorough washing of her hands, Shironne said her good-byes to the captain and headed back to the colonel’s office with him. The air was fresher outside, and she took a deep breath. She didn’t hear any men or horses nearby, just the colonel’s shortened stride sounding along with hers. She waited until they were halfway across the square before she asked her question. “You’ve seen something like this before, haven’t you, sir?”

  “Years ago,” he said, his reaction indicating resignation. “You would have been just a child then, so you won’t remember.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I’ll not say, so you won’t have to hide it from your mother.”

  Shironne paused midstride, almost falling over when the colonel kept going. “She would remember it, then?”

  “Yes. I don’t want her to worry,” he said firmly, “so don’t tell her.”

  The colonel never actually lied to her mother about anything he involved Shironne in, but she knew he hated for her mother to worry. She started walking again and the colonel resumed his measured steps. “Tell her what?”

  “Exactly,” he replied.

  “Did she take you to task about the police commissioner? I told her that wasn’t Kassannan’s fault.”

  Amusement fled through his mind, as it often did when she tried to pry. But whatever he’d discussed with her mother, it had left him pleased with himself. “Don’t concern yourself about it for now, Shironne. She wanted to talk about her plans. To visit the countryside, I mean.”

  “Oh,” she said, pausing as a breeze across her face startled her. “Anything else?”

  But the colonel refused to explain further about his conversation with her mother as they made their way back to the office, vexing her. Before he left her in Aldassa’s hands, though, he handed her a slim box. “A birthday present.”

  Through her gloves, the box told her very little. “My birthday was a month ago, sir.”

  “We’re late. Consider this a present from all of us.”

  Shironne found the opening of the box and pulled it apart, hoping nothing would slither out. She reached inside and grasped what felt like heavy fabric. She pulled off one of her worn gloves and fingered fine leather, feeling tanner’s chemicals, the tang of dye, and the touch of the hands of the maker.

  It took a moment to accustom herself to the feel of them. Very few hands had touched the gloves so far, making them easier for her skin to bear, but even new clothes had been touched by others, leaving behind bits of skin and dirt and oils. Clothes that had been worn by someone else took even more time to adapt to. She could always feel the other person about her, almost as if they touched her themselves.

  “What color are they?” She stripped off her old glove and held up one of the new ones, deciding it fit the left hand.

  “One pair is black, the other plain tan,” Aldassa answered.

  Two pairs? Shironne loosened the paper in the box and located a second pair that had no feel of dye about it. Those would be the tan ones. She grinned and slid the black glove onto her hand. She knew that dye well enough that she could quickly dismiss the feel of it from her senses. The glove fit perfectly, on which she commented.

  “Thank Aldassa’s wife for that,” the colonel said. “Liana suggested taking in an old pair you left behind a couple of months ago. The glover used them as a pattern.”

  Shironne sensed the colonel’s pleasure that they’d managed to surprise her. “Thank you so much,” she said. “And please tell everyone in the office I appreciate it.” She slid on the second black glove. “These are wonderful.”

  “I’m glad you like them. Kassannan mentioned that you didn’t have a chance to wash your hands before you put on your old pair.” She opened her mouth to comment, but the colonel continued, “I’ll leave you with Aldassa, then. He’ll see to it that you get home.” He swept out before she could thank him again.

  “Here, put this other pair in your pocket before we forget about them,” Aldassa suggested.

  “Will you thank your wife for me?” she begged, and Aldassa agreed, settling down across the desk from her. As a clothier’s assistant, his wife knew more about articles of clothing than Shironne could ever hope to understand. She folded the second pair of gloves carefully and placed them in her coat pocket.

  Aldassa questioned her for almost an hour, taking down everything she could recall
about the body missing from the city’s morgue. She was probably feeding him much of the same information they’d gotten from Kassannan, but different people always picked up different things. When Aldassa had exhausted all the logical avenues of questioning, he ordered a closed carriage brought around. Since Messine had accompanied Shironne’s mother back to the house, Ensign Pamini accompanied her again, settling across from her in the carriage and explaining that she was going to be coming to the house the next day to help Messine watch over them in Kirya Aldrine’s absence. The driver set them down in the back courtyard, away from the curious eyes of their neighbors. After Pamini made certain Shironne got up the back stairs to the kitchen, the carriage drove slowly away.

  Her mother and Perrin had gone on to the clothier’s, but Shironne found Melanna hiding in the kitchen. In the warmth of the flour-scented room, Melanna admired the new gloves dutifully, not sharing Shironne’s attachment to such items of apparel. She declared that they’d be very good for riding should they ever have riding horses again, a rare attempt at diplomacy on Melanna’s part. “I’ll bear that in mind, little brat,” Shironne said with a laugh. She hadn’t ridden a horse since she’d gone blind and doubted she would ever have that opportunity. “Now, go find that book we’re reading.”

  Melanna slipped away and returned a few minutes later with her lurid novel. She sat next to Shironne at the servants’ table, reading aloud, with Shironne supplying the occasional pronunciation or definition. They spent the next hour there, amusing Cook and the kitchen maids with the exploits of the handsome young Larossan hero and his heroine, who wailed with alarming frequency, much to Melanna’s disgust.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Mikael decided he must have the nonincriminating stack of files on the Farunas incident. He’d skimmed through a handful and seen nothing so far that hinted the Andersens had done anything worth lying about. Dahar left to eat lunch, so Mikael dragged one of the wooden chairs from its normal position over by the hearth and propped his feet up on it. He passed the noon hour that way, winnowing through a few more files.