Dreaming Death

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  The colonel cussed under his breath. “Where did they go?”

  “They turned here, but by the time I got here, they were gone. There’s no catching them now.”

  The colonel slapped a hand on Mikael’s shoulder. “I’ll get . . .”

  Mikael knew how that sentence usually went. It was usually, I’ll get Aldassa to, followed by whatever set of tasks needed to be done. Because Aldassa was Cerradine’s right hand, or had been.

  Face stiffly controlled, the colonel turned and headed back toward the temple.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  It wasn’t dawn yet, but the army hospital was awake. Captain Kassannan greeted them at the hospital doors, his expression grim. Word had already flown through the square that they’d brought another body. Drained, Mikael just watched as two of the hospital’s orderlies placed Aldassa’s body on a stretcher under the hospital’s lights.

  Cerradine left the body in Kassannan’s charge, going to break the news to Aldassa’s wife instead. Apparently she’d been awake most of the night, terrified when her husband didn’t return home after what should have been a simple errand, so she’d contacted Kassannan to see if he knew anything of her husband’s whereabouts. Kassannan already wore white ribbons on his sleeve—he’d been prepared for the worst.

  Once the body was out of the hay cart, Dahar headed back to the tavern with Synen’s son. He intended to retrieve Shironne, claiming that since he was the girl’s uncle, it would look better if she was in his company than in Mikael’s. Mikael didn’t argue. He had work to do here at the headquarters anyway.

  “Why David?” Kassannan asked Mikael as they walked down the stairs to the morgue. “You dreamed it, didn’t you?”

  Mikael started at the question. “Yes. A message, we think. We don’t know what it means, though. And Paal Endiren was involved. I saw him.”

  “In your dream?” Kassannan asked. “Or in real life?”

  “Both.”

  Kassannan unlocked the door to the morgue and helped his orderlies open the elevator. Mikael sat on one of the chairs near the wall, staying out of the way as they carried the stretcher into the morgue and placed Aldassa’s body on one of the tables.

  Kassannan carefully removed Aldassa’s boots and cut away his trousers. He’d known Aldassa far longer than Mikael had. They’d even fought on the same melee team, representing the army, when they were younger. This had to be almost as hard for Kassannan as it was for the colonel.

  “I don’t understand how Endiren could be involved in this,” Kassannan finally said.

  “I don’t either. He was forcibly dragged back into their coach, so I don’t think it was voluntary. He didn’t look right.” Mikael shifted uncomfortably, very aware of his still-damp trousers and vest. He should go back to the fortress and change, but he needed to go find whatever had provoked Aldassa’s trek to the fortress to question Elisabet. That had to be important. Mikael was sure he would know it when he saw it.

  The captain carefully surveyed the body, starting with the neck. Mikael already knew what he would find.

  “You smell bad, Mikael,” Kassannan commented.

  “I went into the river.”

  “Swallow any water?”

  “No. Yes, a bit.”

  “If it was Lower Town water, it’ll probably kill you.”

  That was almost a joke, although the water had been foul. “How do you stay so calm?”

  “This isn’t David Aldassa, Mikael. David’s gone. This . . . is evidence.”

  Mikael understood the idea, but he’d always had difficulty accepting it. “I can’t help thinking it was my fault.”

  “Yours?” Kassannan didn’t even look at him.

  “I’m fairly sure the killer found out about him from me,” Mikael admitted.

  “Every person who’s observed any part of the investigation will have seen David walking the banks of the river. He told me people crowded up on the river walk the other day.” Kassannan took a damp towel and began wiping residue from the river off the body. “You’re not responsible, Mikael.”

  “I should have figured it out. Supposedly, I have it all in my head.” Mikael stood up and went closer, looking over Aldassa’s still form. The captain had closed Aldassa’s eyes. “What will happen to his family?”

  Kassannan continued to work. “Liana will grieve. The girls will too. We’ll take care of them.”

  “You make it sound simple.”

  “Simple? It is.” Kassannan paused to look at him. “You cope, or you don’t. I know, Mikael.”

  Kassannan had lost his own wife several months before. Mikael had known Hanna Kassannan, although not well. He’d dreamed her death too. “Of course, Aron.”

  “Truthfully it isn’t that simple,” Kassannan amended. “Every person deals with death differently.”

  Mikael stood over Aldassa’s body with the now-familiar carvings running from shoulder to shoulder. This time, no matching ones marked his own shoulders. He didn’t feel sick either. He felt detached from this death, despite the fact that Aldassa had been a friend. Mikael wondered if he’d lost something in the exchange. “Do you think the colonel would mind if I went through the files in Aldassa’s desk?” he asked after a time.

  “Not as long as you don’t leave a stench behind.” Kassannan crossed back over to the counter running along the walls and carefully extracted a piece of paper from the sliced remains of Aldassa’s trousers. “I felt this when I cut these off. You might put it with the case papers.”

  Mikael opened the folded sheet of paper, trying not to tear the sodden page. The ink had smeared. He could make out very little, but he thought he saw the name Andersen. The paper itself looked familiar—one of the Andersen file pages, although from which specific file Mikael didn’t know.

  Sighing, he took one last glance at the body and left the morgue. He crossed the square to the administrative offices, breathing the chill morning air and feeling bone weary. A few soldiers greeted him solemnly, going on about their own errands. The chalkboard on which they tracked their betting on who might be the next possible victim had been wiped clean.

  Mikael went and sat at Aldassa’s desk. He closed his eyes, trying to draw on that bit of David Aldassa’s psyche that needed remembering. What had David wanted him to know? There was something here he needed to see, something Aldassa hadn’t shown Cerradine. Why?

  Opening his eyes, Mikael surveyed the tidy desk. Aldassa kept things meticulously organized, every file where it should be, reminding Mikael of Kai’s habits. Of course, if Kai wanted to hide something, he’d simply misfile it and then miraculously find it when needed later. Mikael wondered if Aldassa might not have done a similar thing.

  Mikael hunted for the files that Kai had held on to, the bundle in which he’d hidden the list of the victims. He located them in the back of the box that they’d handed over to Cerradine only days ago. The only thing missing was the Andersens’ spurious account of vigilantes tracking down the priests of Farunas.

  He pulled out the drawer in Aldassa’s desk where a neat alphabetical file held personnel records for different agents of the army’s intelligence corps. He spotted a file folder of a different type from all the others, one of the folders the Daujom used. It was filed under A, for Andersen.

  Mikael sat there and read as soldiers came and went in the hallway outside, and he realized the Andersens might not be liars after all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Shironne felt what seemed like the thousandth thing this morning, trying to identify what the infirmarians put in their different salves. This tin held one made with beeswax, almond oil, comfrey, and rosemary—and about twelve other herbs and oils she didn’t recognize. She could separate them from the others in her mind, only she’d never encountered them before and didn’t know their names. It was soothing on her skin, fortunately, with no impurities in it.<
br />
  It was Deborah’s transparent attempt to keep her mind busy, Shironne knew. To keep her from thinking about Lieutenant Aldassa’s death.

  “Mr. Lee has reached the palace,” she told Deborah when the elder approved her partial listing of the ingredients.

  “How can you tell?” Deborah’s voice sounded curious.

  “He just wanted me to know, so we wouldn’t worry.” Once she’d wiped off her fingers on a damp cloth, Shironne tugged at the high neck of the jacket she wore, unaccustomed to having something so close around her throat.

  “Ah,” Deborah said. “How very polite. You can undo the top hooks, dear.”

  She did so. “I don’t think he’s in a mood for politeness.”

  Deborah took the tin of salve away and held out another for her to touch. Shironne carefully grasped the new tin. “Someone else handled this last.”

  “Yes, Jakob did. One of the engineers burned his arm, and Jakob used this.”

  Shironne touched a finger to its surface, finding a slick substance. “I don’t know what that is, but it feels a bit like grease.”

  “It is a kind of grease, only purified.”

  Even purified, the texture still felt disgusting. “How . . . um, interesting.”

  “Clearly you think not, by your tone.”

  “I’m sorry ma’am. I’m distracted.”

  Mikael hadn’t slept, she realized. Acknowledged, his thoughts tumbled past her, weariness making him incoherent. He was well, although his throat ached, and he smelled, and they’d found Aldassa, and he felt like a traitor because he had to go looking for Elisabet now, and he’d seen Paal Endiren, which could only mean something bad and he wanted to sleep, and bathe, although the order should be the other way around because he would never go to his bed in all this filth.

  Shironne shook her head and forced Mikael’s thoughts back into their corner of her mind. “They’ve taken the lieutenant’s body back to the army hospital,” she told the doctor. “I should go help Captain Kassannan.”

  “No, dear,” the doctor said firmly. “Not until the colonel comes to take you home from the fortress himself. He’s trusting us to keep you safe.”

  Shironne heaved a sigh. She was tired of everyone trying to protect her.

  • • •

  The plumbing in the palace mimicked that found by the Anvarrid when they’d first come across Below, but the water in Above was never reliably hot.

  Mikael stood under the fall of lukewarm water, his forehead pressed against the chilly tiles. His throat felt sore. That wasn’t from his dream, as it had been all the other times. He thought he had the beginnings of a cold. His side still ached from a bruise Eli had dealt him what seemed a century ago, he had a new bruise forming around the knee he’d bashed against the paving stones, and he had Kai to thank for the lingering soreness along his cheekbone and across the back of his skull. He wanted to sleep, but he had no time for it.

  Pushing himself into action, Mikael scrubbed at his hands with a boar-bristle brush. He wanted to be certain he cleaned them well enough not to distress Shironne. This was, tradition said, the true reason behind the Family’s fastidiousness. Touch-sensitives always knew how dirty things truly were.

  He felt far better afterward, as he dressed in a clean uniform, arming himself as well. If the sentries inside the palace chose to be offended, he would deal with that later. He shoved his pistol into his sash and put a handful of spare cartridges in his jacket pocket. After slipping his knife into its sheath in the back of his sash, he belted on his sword, the first time he’d done so since coming back from Jannsen Province. Only then did he head downstairs for the infirmary, wanting to check in with Deborah before he hunted down Elisabet.

  Deborah expected him, he discovered. She tossed him a horehound candy as he walked through the doors. He didn’t have to ask how she knew his throat had begun to ache. Shironne sat on the edge of one of the infirmary beds, her feet not quite touching the floor. She wore a child’s brown uniform, which served exactly the purpose Deborah intended—to remind him of her age.

  At times, Shironne seemed so mature he forgot her status.

  Her face turned toward him, and he knew she’d picked up that thought. She bit her lower lip but didn’t say anything. Deborah must have lectured her about proper behavior for a child, or perhaps she merely reflected the doctor’s somberness today.

  “We found the body,” he told Deborah.

  She glanced up at him. She looked tired, his fault again. “Yes, I know. I’m sorry to hear it. Jon will be devastated. David’s like a son to him.”

  Mikael nodded, feeling the guilt rise again. “He went to see Aldassa’s wife already. He arrived back at his office before I left, but I didn’t get a chance to speak with him.”

  “Dahar has gone down there to help out.”

  Mikael shot a look at Shironne, catching the edge of her frustration, that odd flash of emotion that he knew wasn’t his. She wanted to be at the army headquarters too, he suspected. She placed a tin of unguent back on the cluttered table in front of her and wiped her hands on a towel, nodding as she did so.

  “What did you need, Mikael?” Deborah asked. “Other than to tell me what I already knew?”

  “I wanted to make certain you were all right,” he said aiming that toward Shironne. “Also, I’m looking for Elisabet.”

  Deborah cocked her head but didn’t ask him why. “Have you tried Kai’s quarters upstairs? He’s kept himself locked up for the better part of two days now.”

  Mikael had already tried there. He’d been very surprised to visit Kai’s apartment in the king’s household only to find Tova, not Elisabet, on guard duty. He couldn’t ask Tova where to find Elisabet without doing so in front of Kai, so Mikael had left as quickly as he could. His appearance there had likely only served to alarm Kai. “I’ve already checked there. Elisabet assigned her Second to watch him today. Elisabet’s not in her quarters either, ma’am.”

  Without answering, Deborah pointed past him. Mikael turned to see Elisabet striding through the doors of the infirmary. She stopped, and Mikael suddenly realized that Elisabet might not want to discuss her past in front of Deborah. “I need to talk with her,” Mikael said. “If you’ll excuse us, ma’am.”

  “Mikael,” Deborah said softly, “don’t make Kai’s mistake.”

  Kai’s mistake: trying to protect Elisabet when it wasn’t needed. Elisabet was the closest thing Deborah had to a child of her own. She’d been under Deborah’s care since she’d arrived at the fortress thirteen years ago. Mikael suspected Deborah knew Elisabet’s secret, even if she’d never officially been told. As things were, he didn’t think he had the right to feel betrayed.

  For a brief moment, Shironne’s bare fingers touched his hand. He thought apology at her, hoping that she’d not take his silence for unfriendliness. Then her fingers drew away from his, the brief moment of communion ended.

  Mikael glanced guiltily at Deborah. “I need to go.”

  “Where?” Deborah asked, her eyes flicking in Elisabet’s direction.

  “I’m not sure, ma’am.” Mikael turned and headed for the door, Elisabet preceding him.

  In the somber gray hallway outside the infirmary, Elisabet turned an emotionless gaze on Mikael. “Kai has been trying to force me away from your investigation. I need to know what’s happened.”

  Mikael hadn’t expected her to say that. He didn’t know why he’d expected some sort of denial, but then again, he’d underestimated Elisabet all along, hadn’t he? “Perhaps if we went up to the office,” he suggested, “we could—”

  “The third place Kai will look, after my quarters and yours.”

  Mikael chose the mess hall instead. He located a quiet nook on the western end of the hall, shadowed from the main mess. He needed to talk to her without interference.

  The scents of the impending l
unch service surrounded them. His stomach started protesting its emptiness but Mikael ignored it. Their business was more important than his unpredictable belly. He sat down, hand on his sword’s hilt to keep it out of his way. Across the small wooden table, Elisabet settled into a chair as silently she did everything. She wasn’t wearing her overcoat, but she did wear full uniform, hinting that she expected to leave the fortress.

  “I need to ask you some questions,” Mikael said. When she nodded, he continued. “What did you do after they killed your family?”

  “Lay on my back.”

  This was the curse of questioning people. Even if they didn’t lie, they often withheld information, either to protect themselves or to protect someone else. This was where having an ability like Miss Anjir’s would be terribly useful. He asked a clearer question. “Were you with your grandfather?”

  “Yes.”

  Well, that told him how they had escaped the massacre. “Did the two of you pursue the killers?”

  Her pale eyes stared down to the table. She didn’t answer.

  “Did your grandfather pursue the killers, Elisabet? Yes or no?”

  “Yes,” she said softly, her shoulders stiff.

  “The Andersens claimed they found the bodies of nine of the priests scattered along the way to the border, shot. They followed the trail of two people who were in turn following the priests. Was that you and your grandfather?”

  “Yes.”

  Mikael wished he could simply shake her until he got better answers out of her. “Did your grandfather shoot those men?”

  A hint of fear showed in her eyes, something Mikael didn’t think he’d ever seen. For a second he stared at her, trying to figure out what had prompted that fleeting expression and her outright evasion. “I’ve heard they killed David Aldassa,” she said rather than answering.

  She didn’t want to blacken her grandfather’s memory, he guessed. He would have to work back around to that question again to get a straight answer out of her. “Yes, last night,” he said. “He intended to come talk to you. You were his First, so I suspect he felt he owed it to you to warn you before he went to the colonel with these same questions.”