Black Brillion

by Matthew Hughes

  “When I go for him, get him with the slapper,” Baro grunted silently in his throat.

  Imbry gave the slightest of nods and folded his hands across his paunch.

  “You’ve forgotten the other witness,” Baro said aloud, meanwhile moving one foot slightly toward Kosmir and imperceptibly shifting his weight to his back foot.

  Kosmir gave him the eye flick again, but kept his focus on Raina Haj. That suited Baro. “The Rover Yaffak,” Baro said. “He was what you saw moving in the grass as you came down. And now he is watching and listening just out there.”

  Baro pointed to draw Kosmir’s attention, but the first officer only smiled. His head did not turn and the pistol did not waver.

  Very well, thought Baro, Plan B. Flix’s warning shot had left a patch of carbonized grass and heat-desiccated soil at his feet. He would drop and roll, scooping up a handful and throwing it at Kosmir’s face, then try for a kick at the man’s knee. It was all covered in the manual on unarmed combat against an armed malefactor. Baro had been mentally reviewing the diagram and wishing that he had at least once been shown the maneuver by a live, experienced instructor.

  To Imbry he grunted, “Count of three. One, two …”

  The grass behind Kosmir parted and Yaffak raced across the clearing, rising from a crouched run to crash into the man’s back. Kosmir went down, landing on all fours as the Rover caromed off and rolled away.

  Three, thought Baro as he threw himself at the first officer. Raina Haj stepped forward and aimed a kick at the hand that held the gun but Kosmir was already pushing himself back up. He got to his knees and fired an instant before Baro’s flying tackle caught him in the shoulder and threw him sideways.

  But Kosmir’s grip on the weapon’s controls was tight and the pistol continued its discharge, emitting a thin line of blindingly bright energy that sliced through the air like a sword of light.

  Raina Haj threw herself onto the arm that ended in the weapon while Baro used a move taught by the manual to put his weight on Kosmir’s torso. As the security officer reached for the hand that held the weapon, Luff Imbry knelt and applied the slapper to Kosmir’s grip. The pistol fell from the lifeless hand and its discharge ceased.

  “Roll him over,” Haj said and Baro and Imbry wrestled the first officer onto his belly so she could apply a holdtight. She pressed the control stud on the restraint and the device swiftly bound Kosmir’s wrists together and adhered them to the small of his back.

  Yaffak came and looked down at the prisoner. Seeing him bound and helpless was apparently enough for the Rover, because he growled a short syllable and turned away. He walked out into the grass, making an ululating sound. Far off, his team of shuggras rose from the grass and cantered toward him.

  “Thank you,” Haj said to Baro and Imbry. “That was well done.” She reholstered her pistol and tucked the other in her belt.

  Baro said nothing. He was looking down at Flix. She looked even smaller now.

  Haj knelt and slapped Pollus Ermatage’s face until the Fasfallian revived, then she said, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Not aboard the gig,” said Imbry. He had climbed into the flyer and was examining the controls. “Kosmir’s blast has severed the couplings to both the stern thrust and the attitude regulators.”

  “It won’t fly?” said Haj.

  “We could get some height and forward motion from the bow thrust, but without the regulators the gig would overturn unless it was perfectly balanced. The slightest change in the wind would see us all dropped on our heads.”

  Haj asked Bandar to speak to Yaffak, who was hitching the shuggras to the cart. “Ask him if he will carry us?” she said.

  “Where?”

  “Where the others went.”

  The Rover shook his head so that the pendulous ears flapped like small flags. “He will go west,” Bandar said.

  “May I ask a question?” Imbry said.

  The Rover turned to him and waited.

  Imbry pointed to Kosmir. “Why did you attack that man?”

  Yaffak indicated Baro. “For him,” Bandar translated.

  Baro said, “Why do you care about me?”

  “The dream. You helped him, freed him.” Bandar shook his head in disbelief but kept translating. “He recognized your scent.”

  “What held you?” Baro asked Yaffak.

  But Yaffak’s language lacked the words. “He doesn’t know,” said the historian. “It is something bad that came in a dream.”

  “Will you take me where the others went?”

  Yaffak signaled no. “He will not go east,” Bandar said, then looked bemused at the Rover’s next words. “He invites you to go west with him,” he told Baro. “You would hunt skippits, eat well.”

  “I have to follow the others,” Baro said.

  The Rover’s face was an image of unhappy resignation. He spoke and Bandar translated. “He will take you and the able-bodied passengers. He will take Kosmir although he thinks we should leave him for the woollyclaw and fand. He will not transport a dead body nor the ill ones.”

  When Yaffak indicated the lassitude sufferers, his nostrils closed tightly as if to keep any vestige of their scent out of him.

  Baro cut off Ule Gazz’s outburst before it could begin. “We must take them. They are sick.”

  Yaffak protested. Bandar said, “He says sick is when the stomach hurts and food comes up. These are not sick. They smell wrong.”

  Baro turned to Imbry and Raina Haj. “Do Rovers get the lassitude?” he asked.

  Imbry shrugged and Haj said, “I don’t know.”

  Bandar spread his hands. “I haven’t heard of it.”

  Baro asked Yaffak, “Did your pack smell like these sick people?”

  Yaffak spoke at length. Bandar said, “If I’m getting this right, his fellow Rovers smelled as Rovers ought to but didn’t act the way they should.” The small man put a question to the Rover but Yaffak could not find the words. “He noticed that they were acting improperly but it didn’t bother him until he awoke from the dream. Then he was frightened and ran away.

  “He does not want to encounter them again,” Bandar added. “From the little I know of Rover psychology, I think he has had a traumatic shock and will not willingly risk another.”

  Baro said, “Ask him if he will take us within sight of the nearest town. We will not ask him to meet his pack mates.”

  Yaffak said he would do it for Baro’s sake.

  “And we must take the sick.”

  The Rover was unhappy, but he agreed.

  They left Flix under a canopy in the gig and set off to the east. Baro gave up his seat to Raina Haj and sat on the floor with his back against the cart’s front wall. There was nowhere for Kosmir to sit, so he was stretched out facedown in the narrow space between the seats.

  When they were settled, Baro said to Haj, “I would like to have your guidance on our case.” He told her about what they knew of Gebbling and what Trig Helvic had revealed, Luff Imbry adding comments and embellishments.

  Raina Haj said, “As for why Gebbling is doing all of this, I cannot guess. The time to denude Helvic of his wealth was the moment after his daughter was briefly relieved of the affliction. At that point, he would have handed over his fortune for a box of anything he believed was black brillion. Instead, Gebbling has him pay for a pointless progress across the Swept.”

  “I see one possible explanation,” said Baro, “though I am reluctant to believe it.”

  “What?”

  “Gebbling is not pulling a confidence trick but has actually found black brillion. It cures the lassitude, and he intends a spectacular demonstration by healing all of these sufferers all at once. The world would throw fame and riches at his feet.”

  “There are three things wrong with your theory,” Imbry said. “First, Gebbling does not think in such terms. He grasps always for an immediate gain. Second, even if he was capable of such a scheme, he need only cure Erisme Helvic to be knee deep in wealth.�
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  “That is only two counterarguments,” Baro said. “What is your third?”

  “There is no such thing as black brillion.”

  “I agree with him,” said Haj.

  “Well, I do not,” said Ule Gazz. “Whatever Father Olwyn’s past may be, I believe that something has turned him onto the path of enlightenment.”

  “That would be a powerful something,” said Imbry. “I would have to see convincing evidence.”

  “My increased chuffe is evidence enough,” said Gazz. “But perhaps such qualities are beyond your appreciation.”

  “They must be,” said Imbry in a mild tone, “but look, there is the Monument and beyond it lies Victor. Soon we shall arrive and all shall be made plain.”

  Before them a gray line had appeared on the eastern horizon. As the shuggras raced the cart toward it, Yaffak flicking at their ears with his whip, the line thickened and rose until it became a wall of stone stretching from north to south as far as the eye could see.

  Even Baro had heard of the Monument, an enormous construct of stone that if viewed by someone standing on its center stretched from horizon to horizon in all directions. When seen from space—from which it was clearly visible—the Monument formed the silhouette of a helmeted man’s head in profile.

  It was widely believed that the original monument, built of fused blocks of stone to a height ten times that of a man, had portrayed an exact likeness of the military commander who had led the campaign to repulse an invasion, though the identities of both victor and vanquished were forgotten by all but a few eccentrics like Guth Bandar. So much time had passed since its building that the stone was worn to a fraction of its original height. In places sloping ramps had been ground into its edges so that it could be climbed by pedestrians and wheeled vehicles.

  They would traverse at the neck, the shortest crossing. The shuggras hauled them up a short ramp without slowing and they emerged onto a vast expanse of hard rock, flecked here and there with coarse grass and sagebrush that sprouted wherever sun and ice had cooperated to crack and craze the eroded surface. The tires of the cart, which had hissed through the long grass, now hummed on the weathered stone.

  As they made the transition from prairie to the Monument, the able-bodied passengers peered about them at the new landscape. But the new view was soon no less monotonous than the old and after a few minutes Ule Gazz took up the chant of ta-tumpa, ta-tey. A few beats later, Pollus Ermatage joined in, though with less conviction.

  “What of your case?” Baro said to Haj, indicating the bound and recumbent Mirov Kosmir.

  “A much simpler affair,” she said. She recounted how, over the past couple of years, three artists had suffered accidental deaths: Hella Obregon, Tik Gormaz, and Del Quantioc. All had already passed the zeniths of their careers and leveled off, but after they died the value of their works increased sharply.

  “Kosmir killed them?” asked Imbry.

  The first officer made a complaint from the floor but Raina Haj put a boot on the back of his head to quiet him. “The first one was almost certainly a chance mishap,” she said. “The second and third were almost certainly not.”

  She had been assigned to investigate the deaths and after family, lovers, and rivals had been cleared, she cast her net more widely. She noted the sharp increase in the value of the dead creatives’ works, although none had been First Circle before their demises.

  There was no central clearinghouse for art sales, and many transactions were private, not even involving agents or galleries. Purchasers did not have to confirm their identities; their funds spoke for them. It took more than a year to establish that a number of works by the second and third to die had been acquired, apparently by one individual, in the months before their deaths.

  “I know the work of Obregon, Gormaz, and Quantioc,” Imbry said. “Surely none of them was worth killing for the added value their deaths would confer upon their creations, even if they doubled in value. Quantioc was not much above a decorator.”

  “That is what I thought, at first,” Raina Haj replied, “but I had not reckoned with the paucity of human decency in Kosmir’s character. He lacked the funds to purchase First Circle works, so he began with those of lesser luminaries, buying, murdering, and selling merely to assemble a stake that would position him for—you’ll excuse the expression—a real killing.”

  Kosmir said something into the floorboards, but Haj’s boot heel applied further pressure to the back of his head and he desisted.

  “As first officer on the Orgulon, he was responsible for all cargo, which put him in a position to borrow from the landship’s accounts, so long as he put the embezzled funds back before the quarterly accounting. An audit has found that substantial amounts are missing.

  “He combined the sum of his profits, the diverted funds, and all that he could borrow—including some short-term funds from lenders whose collection methods can be painfully unorthodox—and bought one of Monlaurion’s major images: Sky Shout in Blue. It had actually declined in value a few percent in recent years.”

  “And then he planned to kill the imagist?” said Baro. “Surely the death of a major artist would attract more scrutiny than the others. He was at great risk.”

  Haj shook her head, the dark curls swaying in a way that stimulated Baro to thoughts that were not entirely professional.

  “He had a more subtle plan,” she said. “In studying Monlaurion, he had discovered the artist’s absolute devotion to Flix, an attachment that over the years had become more fatherly than amorous.”

  Kosmir was possessed of striking looks and a well-oiled tongue. He insinuated himself into Flix’s affections. Once a relationship of intimacy had been established, she confided in him: she feared that Monlaurion’s fading interest in his own career would ultimately lead him to remove himself to some bucolic corner, denying Flix the excitements and amusements in which she delighted.

  Kosmir convinced her to feign the lassitude. He added her and Monlaurion to the Orgulon’s passenger list. She was to be miraculously “cured,” and their return to Olkney would be bathed in a glare of public attention. Monlaurion’s career, Kosmir assured her, would be revived and she and Kosmir could continue to meet discreetly.

  “His true plan was even less savory. He intended to murder Monlaurion, as indeed he did, then pin the blame on Flix. She would then be so gripped by remorse that she would take her own life, leaving a convenient note.”

  She produced a small piece of paper from her pocket and unfolded it. “I could not live with him in rustic penury,” she quoted. “It is written in Flix’s hand and signed by her. It would pass for a dying declaration. In fact, it is the last line of a love letter to Kosmir. It was concealed in the spine of a book in his cabin. In his luggage was a belted robe that he had stolen during one of their trysts. He meant to strangle Flix in her cabin, then dress her in the robe and fake a suicide. That is why I wanted her safe in the brig or out on the Swept.”

  She spoke directly to Kosmir. “If I’d found this earlier, I could have convinced Flix to tell the truth. That would have saved her life.”

  Haj had interrogated Flix in her cabin, trying to convince the actress that Kosmir had killed Monlaurion and meant to do the same to her. But the actress genuinely believed the death was accidental. She and the imagist had argued on the dark foredeck until she had walked away. She had not seen Kosmir step from behind a windvane and push Monlaurion under the landship’s wheels.

  “So Flix knew she hadn’t killed Monlaurion,” said Baro, “but she also knew she was the likely suspect. To have confessed to faking both the lassitude and the miraculous cure would have thrown a cloud of seeming guilt over what to her was a blameless accident.”

  Haj signaled agreement. “When I tried to probe her relationship with Kosmir, she denied it. She truly believed he loved her—Montaurion’s years of devotion had convinced her that she was eminently lovable—and she was protecting him.

  “So was his captain, who cou
ld not believe that his first officer’s plausible exterior masked a monster. He would not allow me to arrest him and search his quarters. I had to wait until I had an opportunity to break into Kosmir’s cabin this morning while he was on duty.”

  With any other fellow agent, Baro would have had no hesitation in asking the question that now came to his mind. With Raina Haj it was more difficult, but he asked it nonetheless. “Was it not unlawful to break in after the captain forbade it?” he said.

  Kosmir had something to say about the subject as well, but Haj quieted him. To Baro she said, “I knew he was guilty and I knew the evidence would be there. Would you have him escape justice on a nicety?”

  “I would have to think about that,” Baro said.

  “Uh huh,” said Raina Haj. “In any case, now that I had the evidence, and having given Flix every opportunity to think, I brought the two of them together. I did not, I admit, expect Flix to produce an energy pistol.”

  “That was my fault,” said Baro.

  “Uh huh,” said Raina Haj. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “Be fair,” said Luff Imbry. “If you had confided in the boy, he could have been of help.”

  “That would not have been correct procedure,” Haj said.

  “Oh,” said Imbry, “so it’s exacting protocol some of the time and deft avoidance when convenient.”

  “I will not accept criticism from an auxiliary,” she said, “especially one who was recently on the other end of the Bureau’s lariat.”

  “You knew the boy was well connected,” said Imbry. “You were afraid that if you had to share credit for Kosmir’s capture your star might not gleam quite so brightly.”

  “Ridiculous!”

  Imbry shrugged, but Baro’s reading of Haj’s face told him there was truth in his partner’s accusation. When her violet eyes glanced at him then moved quickly away, they no longer seemed so enchanting.

  He also wondered anew if he was of the right material to be a Bureau agent. Would his father have bent the rules to rebalance an outcome? He did not want to think so, but his father had had a successful career in the Bureau and might by now have reached Commissioner’s rank, had he lived.