by Sam Sykes
Sorry, kid. I wish I hadn’t.
“All right, all right.” I waved a hand at Tessan. “Shut it down.”
I had no idea how magic worked beyond the fact that it annoyed me, so I had no idea if one could just “shut it down.” Tessan seemed happy enough to do it, though. He broke contact and the unnatural half-life fled from Gerowan’s corpse, leaving him in mostly peaceful repose once more.
“Satisfied?” Tessan asked.
“Not even a little,” I replied with a sigh. “But I suppose you’ve done all you can.” I stared at the corpse for a moment. “You can leave now.”
“Leave?” Tessan quirked a brow. “Leave you alone with the corpse?”
“Unless you want to stand around as I take a sketch for my superiors in Katapesh.” I shrugged. “I’m a bit of a slow artist, though, so it could take a while.”
“What on earth do you need a sketch for?”
“Have you never been to Katapesh, sir? Death is the only thing that releases a man from his debts, and then only if you’re damn sure he’s not coming back. My superiors will want evidence.”
“I was hired by the Amalien family to safeguard this man’s corpse and will not—”
“Norgorber’s nuts, man, I’m not going to spoon him.” I gestured over my shoulder. “Lady Sidara will be watching me like a hawk, if that soothes you any.”
Both he and I looked to Dalaris. She seemed to regain her composure enough to afford him a brief nod. He looked at me once more and I didn’t blink as I waited for his apathy to triumph over his suspicion.
It did in rather insultingly short order and he left the room, muttering something I might have taken offense to if I weren’t already pushing my luck here. I waited, counting the seconds until he had left, then quietly eased the door shut. I glanced at Dalaris.
“Keep a lookout,” I said.
“A what?” She blinked.
“A lookout.” I walked to the table holding Gerowan’s corpse. “Watch the door, listen, tell me if anyone’s coming. You know, like when you and your friends were sneaking wine from your mother’s cabinet.”
“I never did that!”
“Really?” I glanced over Gerowan. “Well, there’s nothing to it. It’s just three steps: keep an ear out, keep quiet…”
“And?”
“And…” I seized Gerowan’s funeral shroud in both hands. “Don’t scream at what I’m about to do.”
To her credit, she didn’t. But when she saw me hike his shroud up over his face, exposing his death-pale body below, I could tell that she wanted to. Hell, by the look on her face, I could tell she wanted to do a lot more than scream. To her credit, she didn’t do that, either.
“You said!” she settled on protesting. “You said you wouldn’t desecrate his corpse!”
“I implied I wouldn’t. I said I wouldn’t spoon with him, and I’m not.” I ran fingers over his body, hooked them under his side. “Besides, I’m not desecrating him. You’d know if I were.”
“Then what are you doing besides causing me to once again regret ever laying eyes upon you?”
I grunted, pushed, rolled Gerowan over with great difficulty. I was about to ask Dalaris for help, but thought better of it. I’d never been what you’d call particularly religious, but I was pretty sure that asking a widow to help someone strip her dead husband was some kind of sin I wasn’t ready to commit.
“Did he say anything else?” I asked. “The first time you spoke with his body? Anything different than what we just heard?”
“Not a word.” Dalaris approached the other side of the table, desiring at least to keep a close eye while I was messing with her husband’s carcass. “Was something he said amiss?”
“Not to him,” I replied. “He said centaurs came with fire and fear, and he’s right. He said they carried axes and swords, and they do. He said he was stabbed in the back…”
I looked down to the wound: below his right shoulder blade, a long, jagged cut where a blade had entered, pierced his heart, and exited with a minimum of fuss.
“And he was.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is this.” I pointed to the cut. “Look at it.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Then just listen. It’s just one cut, in and out. Clean.”
“It’s hardly clean,” Dalaris replied, blanching. “Look at it. It’s all … jagged, ugly. Someone stabbed him in a hurry.”
“No, someone stabbed him and then made it look like it was in a hurry.” I ran a finger just below the wound. “See here? The tearing came from a knife twisting.”
“How can you tell?”
I shot her a look that asked her to consider very carefully whether she wanted to know the answer to that question or not. She grimaced and, looking away, decided she did not.
“More than that, though,” I said, “this isn’t the work of someone in a battle, least of all a centaur. They’re efficient soldiers, but they’re not clean. If they had brought him down, they would have stabbed him a few more times just to make sure he wasn’t going to get back up.”
“So, he … wasn’t killed by centaurs?”
“You sound surprised.”
“I expected he had been killed on someone else’s orders,” Dalaris replied. “Not that he had been killed by someone else entirely.” She looked at me carefully. “You’re certain?”
“Not yet,” I replied. “I can be more certain, obviously.” I sniffed. “How far away was the caravan-rest he was killed at?”
“It’s a few miles out of town.”
“Can we get there before sundown?”
“If we hurry.”
“Best hope Harges watered the horses, then.” I turned to leave. I had made it to the door when I noticed she wasn’t following. “What?”
Dalaris blinked at me. She slowly looked to her husband’s corpse, lying on his belly, funeral shroud up around his face, ass in the air. Then back at me, expectantly.
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, fine. I’ll fix him. But for the record, it was you that said we had to hurry.”
4
Digging with Our Hands
Sem once said to me: “Cities are the beating heart of the nation, but caravans are the blood that it pushes through.”
Of course, right after that came: “It’s easier to cut out an artery than a heart, so that’s why we’re waiting on this road.”
Sem had a saying for everything. Not all of them were true, but both of those were. And they were sayings that thieves and nobles alike lived by.
Yanmass’s caravan-rests, as the name implied, were originally oases and clearings where mounts could be watered and inventories tallied. Eventually, bandits came to appreciate the appeal of a caravan that didn’t move. So merchants reached out to nobles, who fortified them. And eventually, nobles came to appreciate the same things that the bandits had.
Sem once said to me: “Honest thieves never need to fear death. The devils and demons will always take a noble first.”
I really did miss Sem sometimes.
Like right then.
“So, let me get this straight.” I pointed to the low-slung wall that stretched all around a dirt patch several hundred feet wide. “The centaurs came over the wall here?”
“So I’ve been told,” a voice said from behind me. “I was off chasing the first raiding party with the rest of them when the others came calling.”
“Huh. Did you happen to find out how many?” I asked.
“I’m told somewhere between three and fifty. The only ones that saw them were some feather-spined merchants who likely hid at the first sign of trouble. Good luck getting a real answer out of them.”
I glanced around the little dirt patch that had been given the name of First Solace. Like most caravan-rests, it wasn’t much more than a wall surrounding four large warehouses and a crude tavern. Still, it didn’t need to be much to serve its needs. Several wagons were parked here, with several more merchants busyi
ng themselves rubbing down their horses, pitching tents to spend the night, or haggling with tax collectors bearing Yanmass’s colors.
No sign of damage on any of the warehouses beyond a few superficial burn marks. None of the chaos and massacre that usually followed a bandit raid. The merchants looked more worried about the tax collectors than the possibility of another attack.
“Well, since this place is still standing, I’m going to guess it wasn’t fifty,” I said. “And given that they didn’t knock anything over, I’m guessing it couldn’t have been more than ten.”
“Why, madame, are you suggesting that our merchants might not have the most trustworthy memories?”
I shot a grin over my shoulder and received a grin in turn. The guardsman standing behind me was young—the tall, lean kind of young that came from humble beginnings and saw law enforcement as a means of dying with a greater legacy than a patch of manure to his name.
So I assumed, at least. I had just met the fellow.
“I’ll trust their memories when it comes to debts, nothing else.” I shot him a curious look. “What’d you say your name was, sir?”
“Sandan.” He hastily removed his helmet, letting black locks tumble as he offered a bow before me. “Sandan Klimes, madame.”
“Been a while since anyone doffed their hat for me, Sandan,” I replied with a grin.
“Aye, well, been a while since I met anyone worth doffing it for, madame.” He cracked that boyish grin at me again. “I don’t see many out here that aren’t money-grubbing merchants, let alone a nice Katapeshi girl like yourself.”
“And here I thought we all looked like Qadirans to Taldans,” I said, sounding a tad more impressed than I’d like.
“To most, I suppose. But I can tell. It’s the hair. Katapeshi always have such nice hair.”
It’s a short list of things that a man can do to impress me, and he had just ticked two of them. If I hadn’t been on the job, I’d probably have seen if he could get the other three.
But I am nothing if not a professional.
“You’ve got a talent for details, Sandan,” I said. “And your time in humoring my questions is appreciated. Can you tell me what the centaurs took?”
“Not much, madame.” He replaced his helmet. “They swept into a nearby warehouse and made off with some crates. Not many, though.” He scratched his chin. “They were already gone when we came back from chasing the others.”
“And how many were there in the first raiding party?”
“Hard to tell, madame.” He turned a baleful glare over the wall, like he was convinced they’d come back at any moment. “We’ve been having trouble with them for months now. They come running out of the nearby woods, fire on our caravans, then disappear once they’ve grabbed some loot.”
“But they’d never attacked a caravan-rest before?”
“Never,” Sandan said. “They move so fast, we couldn’t count how many were out there, shooting arrows over the walls and running out of range before we could fire back. We eventually mounted up and chased them, and that’s when the rangers moved in.”
I paused. “Rangers?”
“That’s what some of the other guards are saying. See, the first party came with spears and axes and such, typical sort of tribal warriors. The second party, though, they came with beasts.”
“What kind of beasts?”
“Wolves. A whole pack of them, I’m told. I think they were brought in to spook the remaining horses and prevent anyone from fleeing. The other guards said they were being driven by centaurs carrying bows. Wouldn’t be the first time they figured out how to do that.”
A lot of this sounded strange.
Not the centaurs attacking people; outside of a few eccentric horse-folk who preferred city life, your average centaur was as savage and unruly as your average bugbear, if more reclusive. But the way Sandan described them: hitting and running, fleeing to bait guards into chasing them, then coming in with wolves?
And all just to make off with a few crates and kill one noble?
I supposed it could have just been a case of them testing out a new raiding strategy, but that’d be one hell of a coincidence.
I believe I’ve made my position on coincidences quite clear.
“So, madame,” Sandan said, “you really think this’ll help you take care of the beastmen?”
I blinked, stared at him blankly for a moment.
Oh, damn it. What the hell kind of lie did I tell him to get him to talk? Think, Shy, think. What did I tell him I was? A grieving widow? No, he’d never buy that. A detective? That’s ridiculous. Adventurer?
“Well,” I said, “that bounty’s not going to collect itself.”
He nodded. I held my sigh of relief.
Adventurer. Always a safe bet. Some random person walking around asking questions about centaurs and murders, people get suspicious. But they’ll tell any maniac clad in armor and carrying sharp edges anything so long as he calls himself an adventurer.
“Sure I couldn’t talk you out of it?” he asked, grinning. “Killing centaurs is dangerous work.” He glanced my leathers over. “And, no offense, but you don’t look quite built for the job.”
“You’ve got your talents, I’ve got mine, sir,” I replied. “And one of them happens to be collecting money from dead nobles.”
At this, his face fell a little. “Ah, yeah. I heard about Lord Amalien. The dead one, that is. Bad luck for him. Better for his brother, I suppose.”
I felt a cold shiver through my body, the kind I only get when I’m about to get paid or stabbed.
“Oh?”
“Lord Amalien—er, that is, Alarin Amalien, the younger brother—usually comes to First Solace to check the inspections. He was held up that day, though. Gerowan came in his stead.”
Sandan, I could kiss you.
Hell, I just might have right then and there, if I didn’t know it would make him follow me around like a puppy for the rest of the day. After that elucidating bit of knowledge, I felt as though I’d have to be alone very soon.
“Well…” I rubbed the back of my neck and sighed. “His brother’s money’s not going to go bad. I suppose I could take some time before leaving.” I eyed Sandan. “What time’s your shift end?”
The boy nearly burst out of his armor, so bright did he light up at that question. I couldn’t help but let my grin grow a bit bigger as he fumbled over himself, trying to regain some semblance of composure.
“Er, ah, in about three hours, madame. If you’re free, I’d happily buy you a—”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” I said. “In three hours, I’ll tell you what you can buy me.”
“S-sure, madame!”
“And enough of this ‘madame’ business.” I winked. “Call me Abetta.”
“Abetta.” He tasted the name, found it sweet. “I’ll see you soon!”
I didn’t let my frown show until he had scurried back to whatever post he had to be watching.
I hated to do that to him, really. He was so nice and helpful. Didn’t hurt that he was handsome, but you can find a hundred pretty men as surely as you can find a hundred pretty knives and they’re all just as likely to hurt you. But that boy had something. His smile, I think. He had an honest smile.
Because he was an honest boy.
Which meant I couldn’t have him anywhere near me.
And so long as his mind was occupied with who he thought I was, he wouldn’t be paying attention to who I actually was. For the next three hours, he’d be in as much bliss as his imagination allowed. And in the next two, I’d be long gone.
I checked my belt, patted Whisper’s hilt to make sure he was there. With a tug on my gloves, I was off across the dirt patch that called itself a caravan-rest.
I had convinced Dalaris and her carriage to linger on the outskirts of the caravan-rest. Whoever was behind Gerowan’s death—and I was quickly forming ideas—it wouldn’t do for them to know that his widow was looking into it. Until I could
get something firmer than conjecture, I wanted to keep our investigation out of anyone’s notice.
Fortunately, that wasn’t hard to do in First Solace.
Every rogue from Katapesh to Molthune has an opinion on how best to be sneaky. Some recommend black leathers, some recommend coming out only at night, and so forth. But it’s always been my personal experience that your average fool is so wrapped up in his own life that he won’t even notice you if you simply don’t say anything.
And lest I sound too harsh on merchants, they were good for exactly that. Everyone here was far too busy haggling with other merchants, fretting over missing inventory, or screaming at tax collectors to notice a lone woman walking swiftly across the lot to the nearby warehouses.
It wasn’t hard to find which ones the centaurs had raided—two of them had nice, pristine bars on the door while the one in the middle had been smashed by a firm kick and was being held together by a chain with a padlock. Nothing I couldn’t pick, if I had the time. But somehow, I thought several dozen merchants would notice me getting near their money like that.
I disappeared into a small gap between the warehouses, edged my way through it to the rear. A small alley ran between First Solace’s wall and the warehouses—not quite enough space to maneuver guards through, but more than enough for my purposes.
I glanced up and saw a window set in the warehouse’s wall, high above. Well out of reach for your common burglar, but I hope by now we can all agree that I was far from common.
I paused, took in the distance between the wall and the window. It’d be close, but I thought I could make it. With another glance to make sure no one was around, I leapt onto the lip of the wall, then turned and leapt to the warehouse. One hand found the sill, the other worming fingers under the window’s lowest edge.
No lock that I could feel; they relied on good old reliable rust to keep it shut. And though it took a bit of unfashionable grunting, I managed to push the window open and haul myself up and over the sill.
My feet landed with a wooden thunk. I swayed precariously for a moment atop a stack of crates. The warehouse was simple and efficient in design: crates had been stacked around the edges, and a shelf had been built into the wall to bear the heavier burdens, a ladder resting against it nearby. Amid the drab dust and wood, the only color seen was the various merchant sigils painted upon the crates.
