The Mountains of Mourning b-5

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Dea looked the cloth-wrapped bundle over carefully, lifted it out, and set it on his tarp laid out on the ground in the bright sun. The instruments of his investigation were arrayed upon the plastic in precise order. He unwrapped the brightly-patterned cloths in their special folds; Harra crept up to retrieve them, straighten and fold them ready for re-use, then crept back.

  Miles fingered the handkerchief in his pocket, ready to hold over his mouth and nose, and went to watch over Dea's shoulder. Bad, but not too bad. He'd seen and smelled worse. Dea, filter-masked, spoke procedurals into his recorder, hovering in the air by his shoulder, and made his examination first by eye and gloved touch, then by scanner.

  "Here, my lord," said Dea, and motioned Miles closer. "Almost certainly the cause of death, though I'll run the toxin tests in a moment. Her neck was broken. See here on the scanner where the spinal cord was severed, then the bones twisted back into alignment."

  "Karal, Alex." Miles motioned them up to witness; they came reluctantly.

  "Could this have been accidental?" said Miles.

  "Very remotely possible. The re-alignment had to be deliberate, though."

  "Would it have taken long?"

  "Seconds only. Death was immediate."

  "How much physical strength was required? A big man's or…"

  "Oh, not much at all. Any adult could have done it, easily."

  "Any sufficiently motivated adult." Miles's stomach churned at the mental picture Dea's words conjured up. The little fuzzy head would easily fit under a man's hand. The twist, the muffled cartilaginous crack — if there was one thing Miles knew by heart, it was the exact tactile sensation of breaking bone, oh yes.

  "Motivation," said Dea, "is not my department." He paused. "I might note, a careful external examination could have found this. Mine did. An experienced layman" — his eye fell cool on Karal — "paying attention to what he was doing, should not have missed it."

  Miles too stared at Karal, waiting.

  "Overlain," hissed Harra. Her voice was ragged with scorn.

  "M'lord," said Karal carefully, "it's true I suspected the possibility."

  Suspected, hell. You knew.

  "But I felt — and still feel, strongly" — his eye flashed a wary defiance — "that only more grief would come from a fuss. There was nothing I could do to help the baby at that point. My duties are to the living."

  "So are mine, Speaker Karal. As, for example, my duty to the next small Imperial subject in mortal danger from those who should be his or her protectors, for the grave fault of being" — Miles flashed an edged smile — "physically different. In Count Vorkosigan's view this is not just a case. This is a test case, fulcrum of a thousand cases. Fuss…" he hissed the sibilant; Harra rocked to the rhythm of his voice, "you haven't begun to see fuss yet."

  Karal subsided as if folded.

  There followed an hour of messiness yielding mainly negative data: no other bones were broken, the infant's lungs were clear, her gut and bloodstream free of toxins except those of natural decomposition. Her brain held no secret tumors. The defect for which she had died did not extend to spina bifida, Dea reported. Fairly simple plastic surgery would indeed have corrected the cat's mouth, could she somehow have won access to it. Miles wondered what comfort this confirmation was to Harra. Cold, at best.

  Dea put his puzzle back together, and Harra re-wrapped the tiny body in intricate, meaningful folds. Dea cleaned his tools and placed them in their cases and washed his hands and arms and face thoroughly in the stream, for rather a longer time than needed for just hygiene Miles thought, while the gorilla re-buried the box.

  Harra made a little bowl in the dirt atop the grave and piled in some twigs and bark scraps and a sawed-off strand of her lank hair.

  Miles, caught short, felt in his pockets. "I have no offering on me that will burn," he said apologetically.

  Harra glanced up, surprised at even the implied offer. "No matter, m'lord." Her little pile of scraps flared briefly and went out, like her infant Raina's life.

  But it does matter, thought Miles.

  Peace to you, small lady, after our rude invasions. I will give you a better sacrifice, I swear by my word as Vorkosigan. And the smoke of that burning will rise and be seen from one end of these mountains to the other.

  Miles charged Karal and Alex straightly with producing Lem Csurik, and gave Harra Csurik a ride home up behind him on Fat Ninny. Pym accompanied them.

  They passed a few scattered cabins on the way. At one a couple of grubby children playing in the yard loped alongside the horses, giggling and making hex signs at Miles, egging each other on to bolder displays, until their mother spotted them and ran out and hustled them indoors with a fearful look over her shoulder. In a weird way it was almost relaxing to Miles, the welcome he'd expected, not like Karal's and Alex's strained, self-conscious, careful not-noticing. Raina's life would not have been an easy one.

  Harra's cabin was at the head of a long draw, just before it narrowed into a ravine. It seemed very quiet and isolated, in the dappled shade.

  "Are you sure you wouldn't rather go stay with your mother?" asked Miles dubiously.

  Harra shook her head. She slid down off Ninny, and Miles and Pym dismounted and followed her in.

  The cabin was of standard design, a single room with a fieldstone fireplace and a wide roofed front porch. Water apparently came from the rivulet in the ravine. Pym held up a hand and entered first behind Harra, his hand on his stunner. If Lem Csurik had run, might he have run home first? Pym had been making scanner checks of perfectly innocent clumps of bushes all the way here.

  The cabin was deserted. Although not long deserted: it did not have the lingering, dusty silence one would expect of eight days mournful disoccupation. The remains of a few hasty meals sat on the sink board. The bed was slept-in, rumpled and unmade. A few man's garments were scattered about. Automatically Harra began to move about the room, straightening it up, reasserting her presence, her existence, her worth. If she could not control the events of her life, at least she might control one small room.

  The one untouched item was a cradle that sat beside the bed, little blankets neatly folded. Harra had fled for Vorkosigan Surleau just a few hours after the burial.

  Miles wandered about the room, checking the view from the windows. "Will you show me where you went to get your brillberries, Harra?"

  She led them up the ravine; Miles timed the hike. Pym divided his attention unhappily between the brush and Miles, alert to catch any bone-breaking stumble. After flinching away from about three aborted protective grabs Miles was ready to tell him to go climb a tree. Still, there was a certain understandable self-interest at work here; if Miles broke a leg it would be Pym who'd be stuck with carrying him out.

  The brillberry patch was nearly a kilometer up the ravine. Miles plucked a few seedy red berries and ate them absently, looking around, while Harra and Pym waited respectfully. Afternoon sun slanted through green and brown leaves, but the bottom of the ravine was already gray and cool with premature twilight. The brillberry vines clung to the rocks and hung down invitingly, luring one to risk one's neck reaching. Miles resisted their weedy temptations, not being all that fond of brillberries. "If someone called out from your cabin, you couldn't hear them up here, could you?" remarked Miles.

  "No, m'lord."

  "About how long did you spend picking?"

  "About" — Harra shrugged — "a basketful."

  The woman didn't own a chrono. "An hour, say. And a twenty-minute climb each way. About a two-hour time window, that morning. Your cabin was not locked?"

  "Just a latch, m'lord."

  "Hm."

  Method, motive, and opportunity, the district magistrate's Procedural had emphasized. Damn. The method was established, and almost anybody could have used it. The opportunity angle, it appeared, was just as bad. Anyone at all could have walked up to that cabin, done the deed, and departed, unseen and unheard. It was much too late for an aura detector t
o be of use, tracing the shining ghosts of movements in and out of that room, even if Miles had brought one.

  Facts, hah. They were back to motive, the murky workings of men's minds. Anybody's guess.

  Miles had, as per the instructions in the district magistrate's Procedural, been striving to keep an open mind about the accused, but it was getting harder and harder to resist Harra's assertions. She'd been proved right about everything so far.

  They left Harra re-installed in her little home, going through the motions of order and the normal routine of life as if they could somehow re-create it, like an act of sympathetic magic.

  "Are you sure you'll be all right?" Miles asked, gathering Fat Ninny's reins and settling himself in the saddle. "I can't help but think that if your husband's in the area, he could show up here. You say nothing's been taken, so it's unlikely he's been here and gone before we arrived. Do you want someone to stay with you?"

  "No, m'lord." She hugged her broom, on the porch. "I'd like to be alone for a while."

  "Well… all right. I'll, ah, send you a message if anything important happens."

  "Thank you, m'lord." Her tone was unpressing; she really did want to be left alone. Miles took the hint.

  At a wide place in the trail back to Speaker Karal's, Pym and Miles rode stirrup to stirrup. Pym was still painfully on the alert for boogies in the bushes.

  "My lord, may I suggest that your next logical step be to draft all the able-bodied men in the community for a hunt for this Csurik? Beyond doubt, you've established that the infanticide was a murder."

  Interesting turn of phrase, Miles thought dryly. Even Pym doesn't find it redundant. Oh, my poor Barrayar. "It seems reasonable at first glance, Sergeant Pym, but has it occurred to you that half the able-bodied men in this community are probably relatives of Lem Csurik's?"

  "It might have a psychological effect. Create enough disruption, and perhaps someone would turn him in just to get it over with."

  "Hm, possibly. Assuming he hasn't already left the area. He could have been halfway to the coast before we were done at the autopsy."

  "Only if he had access to transport." Pym glanced at the empty sky.

  "For all we know one of his sub-cousins had a rickety lightflyer in a shed somewhere. But… he's never been out of Silvy Vale. I'm not sure he'd know how to run, where to go. Well, if he has left the district it's a problem for Imperial Civil Security, and I'm off the hook." Happy thought. "But — one of the things that bothers me, a lot, are the inconsistencies in the picture I'm getting of our chief suspect. Have you noticed them?"

  "Can't say as I have, m'lord."

  "Hm. Where did Karal take you, by the way, to arrest this guy?"

  "To a wild area, rough scrub and gullies. Half a dozen men were out searching for Harra. They'd just called off their search and were on their way back when we met up with them. By which I concluded our arrival was no surprise."

  "Had Csurik actually been there, and fled, or was Karal just ring-leading you in a circle?"

  "I think he'd actually been there, m'lord. The men claimed not, but as you point out they were relatives, and besides, they did not, ah, lie well. They were tense. Karal may begrudge you his cooperation, but I don't think he'll quite dare disobey your direct orders. He is a twenty-year man, after all."

  Like Pym himself, Miles thought. Count Vorkosigan's personal guard was legally limited to a ceremonial twenty men, but given his political position their function included very practical security. Pym was typical of their number, a decorated veteran of the Imperial Service who had retired to this elite private force. It was not Pym's fault that when he had joined he had stepped into a dead man's shoes, replacing the late Sergeant Bothari. Did anyone in the universe besides himself miss the deadly and difficult Bothari? Miles wondered sadly.

  "I'd like to question Karal under fast-penta," said Miles morosely. "He displays every sign of being a man who knows where the body's buried."

  "Why don't you, then?" asked Pym logically.

  "I may come to that. There is, however, a certain unavoidable degradation in a fast-penta interrogation. If the man's loyal it may not be in our best long-range interest to shame him publicly."

  "It wouldn't be in public."

  "No, but he would remember being turned into a drooling idiot. I need… more information."

  Pym glanced back over his shoulder. "I thought you had all the information, by now."

  "I have facts. Physical facts. A great big pile of — meaningless, useless facts." Miles brooded. "If I have to fast-penta every backbeyonder in Silvy Vale to get to the bottom of this, I will. But it's not an elegant solution."

  "It's not an elegant problem, m'lord," said Pym dryly.

  They returned to find Speaker Karal's wife back and in full possession of her home. She was running in frantic circles, chopping, beating, kneading, stoking, and flying upstairs to change the bedding on the three pallets, driving her three sons before her to fetch and run and carry. Dr. Dea, bemused, was following her about trying to slow her down, explaining that they had brought their own tent and food, thank you, and that her hospitality was not required. This produced a most indignant response from Ma Karal.

  "My lord's own son come to my house, and I to turn him out in the fields like his horse! I'd be ashamed!" And she returned to her work.

  "She seems rather distraught," said Dea, looking over his shoulder.

  Miles took him by the elbow and propelled him out onto the porch. "Just get out of her way, Doctor. We're doomed to be Entertained. It's an obligation on both sides. The polite thing to do is sort of pretend we're not here till she's ready for us."

  Dea lowered his voice. "It might be better, in light of the circumstances, if we were to eat only our packaged food."

  The chatter of a chopping knife, and a scent of herbs and onions, wafted enticingly through the open window. "Oh, I would imagine anything out of the common pot would be all right, wouldn't you?" said Miles. "If anything really worries you, you can whisk it off and check it, I suppose, but — discreetly, eh? We don't want to insult anyone."

  They settled themselves in the homemade wooden chairs, and were promptly served tea again by a boy draftee of ten, Karal's youngest. He had apparently already received private instructions in manners from one or the other of his parents, for his response to Miles's deformities was the same flickering covert not-noticing as the adults, not quite as smoothly carried off.

  "Will you be sleeping in my bed, m'lord?" he asked. "Ma says we got to sleep on the porch."

  "Well, whatever your Ma says, goes," said Miles. "Ah… do you like sleeping on the porch?"

  "Naw. Last time, Zed kicked me and I rolled off in the dark."

  "Oh. Well, perhaps, if we're to displace you, you would care to sleep in our tent by way of trade."

  The boy's eyes widened. "Really?"

  "Certainly. Why not?"

  "Wait'll I tell Zed!" He danced down the steps and shot away around the side of the house. "Zed, hey, Zed…!"

  "I suppose," said Dea, "we can fumigate it, later…"

  Miles's lips twitched. "They're no grubbier than you were at the same age, surely. Or than I was. When I was permitted." The late afternoon was warm. Miles took off his green tunic and hung it on the back of his chair, and unbuttoned the round collar of his cream shirt.

  Dea's brows rose. "Are we keeping shopman's hours, then, m'lord, on this investigation? Calling it quits for the day?"

  "Not exactly." Miles sipped tea thoughtfully, gazing out across the yard. The trees and treetops fell away down to the bottom of this feeder valley. Mixed scrub climbed the other side of the slope. A crested fold, then the long flanks of a backbone mountain, beyond, rose high and harsh to a summit still flecked with dwindling dirty patches of snow.

  "There's still a murderer loose out there somewhere," Dea pointed out helpfully.

  "You sound like Pym." Pym, Miles noted, had finished with their horses and was taking his scanner for another walk. "I'm
waiting."

  "What for?"

  "Not sure. The piece of information that will make sense of all this. Look, there's only two possibilities. Csurik's either innocent or he's guilty. If he's guilty, he's not going to turn himself in. He'll certainly involve his relations, hiding and helping him. I can call in reinforcements by com link from Imperial Civil Security in Hassadar, if I want to. Any time. Twenty men, plus equipment, here by aircar in a couple of hours. Create a circus. Brutal, ugly, disruptive, exciting — could be quite popular. A manhunt, with blood at the end.

  "Of course, there's also the possibility that Csurik's innocent, but scared. In which case…"

  "Yes?"

  "In which case, there's still a murderer out there." Miles drank more tea. "I merely note, if you want to catch something, running after it isn't always the best way."

  Dea cleared his throat and drank his tea too.

  "In the meantime, I have another duty to carry out. I'm here to be seen. If your scientific spirit is yearning for something to do to while away the hours, try keeping count of the number of Vor-watchers that turn up tonight."

  Miles's predicted parade began almost immediately. It was mainly women, at first, bearing gifts as to a funeral. In the absence of a com link system Miles wasn't sure by what telepathy they managed to communicate with each other, but they brought covered dishes of food, flowers, extra bedding, and offers of assistance. They were all introduced to Miles with nervous curtseys, but seldom lingered to chat; apparently a look was all their curiosity desired. Ma Karal was polite, but made it clear that she had the situation well in hand, and set their culinary offerings well back of her own.

  Some of the women had children in tow. Most of these were sent to play in the woods in back, but a small party of whispering boys sneaked back around the cabin to peek up over the rim of the porch at Miles. Miles had obligingly remained on the porch with Dea, remarking that it was a better view, without saying for whom. For a few moments Miles pretended not to notice his audience, restraining Pym with a hand signal from running them off. Yes, look well, look your fill, thought Miles. What you see is what you 're going to get, for the rest of your lives or at any rate mine. Get used to it…. Then he caught Zed Karal's whisper, as self-appointed tour guide to his cohort — "That big one's the one that's come to kill Lem Csurik!"