Dreaming Death

by J. Kathleen Cheney

“I’ve no idea, but by twelve . . . basic hand-to-hand combat, marksmanship, basic blade skills, history, grammar, arithmetic . . . all those skills would have had to be reasonably in line or the elders wouldn’t have accepted her.”

  “One of her yeargroup told me she came in better at everything already.”

  Eli shrugged. “I can beat her final history scores now.”

  Mikael expected no less. “I don’t doubt that, Eli.”

  • • •

  After cleaning up, Mikael walked down to the office. He unlocked the door, stepped inside, and drew the door closed behind him.

  Kai’s fist crashed into his nose. The force of the blow sent Mikael staggering, and the back of his head banged against the doorframe.

  Then Elisabet stood between them, her hands forcing Kai away from him. She spoke to Kai, saying something in her rusty voice not meant for Mikael’s ears, which were ringing anyway.

  Mikael cursed, catching blood from his nose in his hand. The file, he realized. Elisabet would have taken Kai to task over the missing file page out of concern that he’d filched it while Peder was on duty. And Kai liked nothing less than having Elisabet upset with him.

  Kai towered over him as if he still wanted to remove a limb or two. “Never go behind my back again.”

  “You would have lied to me,” Mikael mumbled. Kai would have, and without remorse if it served to protect Elisabet.

  Kai opened a drawer in his desk, pulled out a handful of file folders, and threw them on the floor at Mikael’s feet. “I think you wanted these,” he snapped before turning to leave the office.

  Elisabet shrugged almost sympathetically at Mikael before she followed, closing the door behind them.

  At least I’ve gotten Kai’s fit of temper over with, Mikael thought. Elisabet would have to endure it for the remainder of the day.

  Mikael sat down on the carpet next to his desk, dug a handkerchief out of his pocket, and leaned his head back against the desk with the handkerchief pressed to his nose. The back of his head throbbed in that position, but he wanted to get the bleeding stopped before it dripped on the entryway floorcloth. After a time he sat back against his desk, not wanting to stand up quite yet. The files lay near him on the floor, so he lifted one and thumbed through the pages.

  The file’s label proclaimed that it held a listing of bibliographic information about sources used to gather data about Farunas’ followers and their high priest—one Anjaya Ramanet—a government official of some status in that Southwestern Pentarchy of Pedrossa. Ramanet had been among the priests killed at the last site, and having lost their leader, the remaining priests fled back across the river into Pedrossa, where they would never be punished. The pages inside all seemed to be dry dates relating to the actions of those remaining priests, all members of the same clan, apparently. It wasn’t helpful, since they couldn’t know if the same priests had returned, or if others had merely decided to mimic them.

  The second file held the Andersens’ report about the “mysterious deaths” of the nine priests found shot at later sacrifice sites. He could see why Kai might have wanted to hold that back since the Andersens had probably fabricated that particular bit of massacre lore.

  A third file contained an eyewitness account of the raid on the final household attacked—one where two members of the household had escaped, a seven-year-old boy and his five-year-old brother. They told of the priests coming onto their land and capturing the family unawares. The invaders had tied them up and sacrificed them one at a time.

  Mikael read the account through twice, feeling sick to his stomach. The graphic narrative seemed too similar to his hazy dreams for coincidence.

  The two boys had survived only because something had scared the priests away. They escaped in the ensuing confusion. They recalled hearing gunshots but hadn’t seen any of the purported vigilantes. Three of the priests were found dead at that location, and that was the end of the massacres.

  Mikael’s nose had stopped bleeding. Sighing, he gathered the files, struggled up from the rug, and moved to his desk. A sheet of paper slipped out from between two of the files and fluttered to the floor. Mikael bent down and grabbed it, knowing what he held before he read it.

  Like most of the other paperwork, this was a copy of an original probably kept in the records office of the Andersen fortress. It listed the date of the first of the attacks, followed by names, and then the second and the third attacks. Mikael scanned the list, his head throbbing virulently now.

  As he’d expected, the very first attack had fallen on a household of a family named Lucas. They would never have suspected what the visitors to their farm wanted of them.

  The first name had a note next to it. Henrik Lucas (52?); missing. Mikael decided he might be a grandparent. The parents, both ages given as thirty-two, were listed as dead, and Joelle, their eleven-year-old daughter, as well. Mikael swallowed. Eleven-year-old Elisabet, missing; Sander and Sondre, both nine, dead; Lea, Maja, and a baby of three months, not named in the list, probably because it hadn’t been named yet. Seven children, all marked as dead save for one.

  Mikael slipped the paper into one of the files, trying to decide what to do with the information. He’d like to know where Elisabet was when the attack occurred. Most likely with her grandfather. The two had escaped somehow, fleeing across the country to reach Noikinos.

  She’d told him her parents had died in the massacres but hadn’t mentioned any brothers or sisters. To lose so many members of one’s family in one day must be a terrible thing.

  None of it seemed relevant to her relationship with Paal Endiren, though, save that Endiren had known of it. Mikael wanted to talk to Elisabet again, but getting past Kai would be difficult. While Kai had been pushing Elisabet away from him for the last two days, requesting other guards, now that he knew Mikael wanted to talk to her, he would keep her with him every moment just to be sure Mikael didn’t get her alone again. In any case, Mikael wasn’t certain what he could ask that would produce answers any different from last night’s.

  Dahar hadn’t shown up to the office yet, so Mikael wrote him a quick note, deciding he wanted to be away from anywhere Kai might appear. He wanted to think about what he’d read in peace.

  He decided to take the papers out to Aldassa at the headquarters. He might find a calm place there where he could rest his throbbing head. If nothing else, the walk would help clear his mind. Once there, Mikael handed over the last of the files along with the errant list of names. Aldassa found them disturbing. He claimed he’d never heard Elisabet mention brothers or sisters, much less a good number of them.

  Cerradine gave Mikael a startled glance as he walked into the main office. “Has Dahar sent you to take up permanent residence here, Mikael?” he asked. “Might as well join the army.”

  Mikael shook his head and winced at the flare of pain that sent purple lights spinning behind his eyes. The chunk of ice Aldassa sent an ensign to fetch from the hospital had kept the swelling down, but it still hurt. “I’m avoiding Kai, sir. I’ll head back in a few minutes. I suppose you should see this.”

  He handed the missing page to Cerradine, who read it with a furrowed brow, his dark eyes hard. “Is there a possibility that this is some other Elisabet Lucas?”

  “No, sir,” Mikael said. “She told me last night that her parents were killed in the massacres. That’s her family.”

  Aldassa took the paper and placed it in the file from which Kai had removed it. “Just read these today, sir,” he told the colonel.

  Mikael glanced at Aldassa and then away. The statement, while true, implied he’d merely overlooked the pages before. While Aldassa might choose not to bring Kai’s actions to the colonel’s attention, Mikael had no choice but to tell Dahar. He didn’t look forward to that.

  Cerradine retired to his office, leaving Mikael and Aldassa alone to discuss the other retrieved files. Thinking h
e’d avoided Dahar long enough, Mikael headed back shortly afterward. He wended his way through the city, avoiding the neighborhood through which he’d walked the previous afternoon. His head continued to throb, and Mikael stopped amid the crowd bustling along Cadij Street to rub at his temples.

  Someone touched him lightly on the back of his hand.

  His breath stopped in his throat, his heart pounding wildly in his ears, as if all of his dreams had been called back to the surface of his mind at once. The touch, icy and invasive, ended abruptly, leaving him shaken.

  Mikael pulled his hands away from his temples. Around him, people walked past on the sidewalk as if nothing had happened. Some spared him a mystified glance before they stepped out of his way. In the direction from which he’d come, others crowded the street, heading into the center of the city, where they could find their noontime meal. In the other direction, Mikael saw people’s backs as they walked away. He stepped back against the wall of a hotel, out of the way of the human traffic.

  He felt ill, the sort of hollow sickness one experienced after running the stairs for too long. It had seared down to his bones, that touch. Someone just tampered with my mind and didn’t expect to be caught at it.

  • • •

  Shironne sensed it from far away, Mikael Lee’s bone-deep horror. She didn’t know where he was, but she knew it was him. She could distinguish him now from everyone else.

  She curled up in her familiar coverlet. That morning’s fire had already gone cold. She tried to think calm in his direction as he had done before to her, and hoped that her good wishes counted for something.

  • • •

  “I come in here this morning to find you gone out,” Dahar snapped. “And then I get a note from my son, claiming that he will be in his rooms or with the king. No mention of how long, merely that he is unavailable to me.”

  Mikael almost laughed, the relief doing him good. Kai had found a way to protect Elisabet by the simple expedient of removing himself from the office and the investigation. If he locked himself in his rooms in the king’s household, she would sit and stew with him.

  Avoiding his father showed poor judgment, though; Dahar hated being ignored.

  “I think you need to know, sir,” Mikael finally inserted when Dahar finished venting his aggravation, “that Elisabet’s family died in the massacres fourteen years ago. Did you know that?”

  Dahar went still. “No.”

  “I think that has some bearing on Kai’s recent behavior. Kai . . .” Mikael stopped, uncertain exactly what word to use. “He held back part of the list of victims out of the files we turned over to Cerradine—the page that listed Elisabet’s family.”

  “How many?” Dahar asked quietly.

  “They listed a grandfather, I think, and parents and seven children, including a baby. The grandfather and Elisabet were reported as missing.”

  Dahar sat on the edge of his desk, a frown on his face. He picked up a compass and began swirling it in his hand. “I didn’t know. Six children, dead.”

  “It offers some explanation, sir, of why Kai has been so . . . uncooperative lately. He must have guessed and didn’t want it brought up in front of her.”

  “What he wants doesn’t matter,” Dahar snapped. “He withheld information, Mikael. He took information he knew you and I needed and put it beyond our reach.”

  “He left it in his desk drawer, sir,” Mikael pointed out. “I wouldn’t even have known it was missing, sir, if Lieutenant Aldassa weren’t so thorough with his paperwork.”

  After pacing in silence for a moment, Dahar sighed heavily. “Kai has duties here. I expect him to be at my disposal while my brother doesn’t need him. I’ll go up and flush him out later.”

  Mikael rubbed at his temples, the edge of his headache sharpening now that he stood still. “Yes, sir,” he said. He changed the subject, hoping to allay Dahar’s anger. “Can any of the Valarens pry into someone’s mind with a touch?”

  Dahar paused and then came back across the office to take a better look at Mikael. “Pry? Like Miss Anjir does? She’s the only one of whom I know.”

  “That’s not what I mean. She seems to pick up on what I’m thinking about at that moment. Can someone go in and dig through whatever they want?”

  Dahar considered that. “Not from anything I’ve ever heard. Are you all right?”

  “My head hurts.” Mikael rubbed his temples again. “I think someone touched me and . . . dug around. It felt like they actually stuck their hands in my head and searched through all the boxes of files.”

  “And your head still hurts?”

  “No, I’ve had this headache since this morning.”

  Dahar put a hand on Mikael’s shoulder, taking a good look at Mikael’s eyes. “Is it one of those headaches?”

  Mikael didn’t want to discuss his early-morning confrontation with Kai. “I hit my head against the wall,” he answered truthfully. “And I haven’t stopped to eat yet today.”

  An irritated Dahar sent him down to the mess with an order to get something in his stomach. Mikael did so and then headed straight for the infirmary.

  Mikael found Deborah attending to a ten who’d broken an arm, so he waited, watching her set the bone under the nervous eyes of the boy’s yeargroup sponsor. Once she’d finished, she joined him where he waited on one of the empty bunks.

  Through her research, she’d narrowed down the possible poisons the killers used, coming up with two. “The more common one is always fatal,” she said, “which makes me doubt it, because it generally acts too quickly. The other comes from the south but is unpredictable and expensive to obtain as well. A conotoxin.”

  Mikael had no idea what that word meant but didn’t need to. “Would it keep someone quiet?”

  “Highly variable in nature,” she said, “but paralysis is one of the symptoms, particularly around the mouth and the respiratory system, so it may.”

  Mikael ran a hand through his hair. “That must be the reason for using it, then.”

  When he described what he’d felt on the street that morning, she looked troubled. “Touch-sensitives can’t do that, dear. They’re limited to what passes through a person’s mind. That’s why we thought the girl should try when you’re actually dreaming. That’s when your dream is in your head.”

  “I had the distinct impression that the person who touched me sifted through at will, ma’am. It felt very . . . invasive. Not like Miss Anjir at all.”

  “You’re right. Touch-sensitives can’t do that,” she repeated firmly. “I’ve done a good deal of research on the colonel’s behalf, and they do have limits.”

  “Ma’am, I’m sure about this. Also, I don’t think he expected me to catch him at it.”

  “He?” she asked.

  “I don’t know why I think that. I guess I had the impression of someone tall.” He puzzled over that for a moment. “Oh, because he touched the back of my hand. He had to be tall enough to do that and not be noticed.”

  “You’re not all that tall, Mikael.” Deborah had him stand as he had been that morning, and reached out to touch the back of his hand. “About as tall as I am, then?” she asked.

  Mikael nodded. She walked back to her office and then came back a moment later with a book. She handed it to him with an apologetic shrug.

  “The Pentarch’s Menagerie?” The title, stamped in gold leaf on the leather spine, reeked of melodrama. The book smelled musty and crackled when he opened it. The lettering inside suggested an older printing machine, supported by a date more than eighty years past on the title page. Larossans told endless silly stories about the more mythical Pedraisi witches—the Desida, as they were properly called—and the rulers who’d long ago collected such people like trophies.

  “It attempts to be a historical overview,” Deborah told him.

  He glanced up at her, startled. �
�Historical? You mean there actually was a menagerie?”

  She gave him a disappointed look, mouth pursed. “You truly didn’t pay attention to your history, did you, dear? Most legends have a basis in fact. One of your own ancestors, Vanya Lee, was property of one of the northern pentarchs. Her daughter returned to Larossa and married back into the Lee Family. Some say there are still menageries in Pedrossa, but now they’re held by the wealthy rather than the politicians.”

  “Can any of these witches sift through someone’s mind?” Surely she wouldn’t ask him to read this if it wasn’t pertinent.

  “According to this, their talents are so varied that many of them defy classification. However, there is something in there about Mind Thieves.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “No, dear. Larossans do have a small amount of inherent sensitivity that runs in their bloodlines. As a culture, though, the Larossans don’t want to admit they are related to the Pedraisi, and particularly not to the Desida.” She gestured toward the book. “Just read through that section. And while you’re reading it, I want you to consider one question that I’ve had.”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “What passes through the mind of a corpse?”

  Mikael sat back, trying to work out the meaning of that cryptic question. Her evasiveness meant the topic was one of those she wasn’t supposed to discuss . . . not with him. What did these Pedraisi witches have to do with corpses and their minds? “I’ll do so, ma’am.”

  He only hoped he was clever enough to figure it out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Shironne held Mikael’s gloves in her hands, trying to pick up that tenuous thread of connection she’d felt earlier. She could sense him more clearly now, just as she could recognize her mother or her sisters at a distance. That was odd, because usually it took time to develop that familiarity. Everything simply seemed easier with him. Even as far away as the palace, she could feel him. He was agitated, thinking, and she had a strong feeling that his head hurt. But she couldn’t grasp exactly what was troubling him. She finally took the gloves and stashed them under her pillows, thinking that if Verinne came in she wouldn’t want to explain their presence.