Shadowrun - [Earthdawn 05] - Shroud of Madness

by Carl Sargent, Marc Gascoigne (v0. 9) (epub)

  Cassian was late for his meeting. He spent a good hour washing his hair repeatedly to get the reek of burned flesh out of it. Then it felt dry and tight, so he decided to apply a light scented oil. Fastidious at the best of times, he became obsessed with removing every last trace of the night's befouling from his body. His clothes he'd already ordered burned.

  When he finally joined Ilfaralek, the man was obviously irritated at Cassian's tardiness, but with several hours still to go before the dawn, he bit back his annoyance. Cassian then proceeded with a carefully edited account of events in the Undercity, not wanting to give away the fact that Jerenn had provided the information that led him there. The spymaster was sharp enough to spot the omission.

  "I cannot say who gave me the information," Cassian said regretfully. "I came upon it during my enquiries. I have not yet completed them."

  Ilfaralek did not insist, but sat fidgeting with his hands, thinking from the facts to possible conclusions.

  "I've been collared by Crotias more than once," he told Cassian, "and she thinks there's some plot to sabotage the city. Depending on exactly what that useless wizard finds down there, I'd say her suspicions were right."

  "Indeed, we must await Harrishaz's findings," Cassian said cautiously.

  "It makes sense," Ilfaralek insisted. "House Carinci's stone-importing business attacked. The city loses both its best architect and the wizard vitally concerned with building barriers and wards into key buildings. Corruption within the House of Works has been uncovered. This is clearly a pattern."

  "Those facts would seem to fit the theory," Cassian agreed.

  "So who's involved?" Ilfaralek thought long and hard. "The tunnels were being built by Undercity people. But those ruffians could hardly have done away with Daralec and his son, Dragold, and the others. They had help from within the city—or were allied with someone in it."

  "The city—you mean the Theran Quarter?"

  "Of course. What exists outside our walls is for the most part so dilapidated and home to such rabble that it barely merits inclusion. But yes, I mean the Theran Quarter of Vivane."

  "The idea of help does seem plausible," Cassian agreed.

  "Not just plausible, it's probable," Ilfaralek retorted. "But who would want to help those vermin overrun the Quarter? It just doesn't make sense."

  "My thoughts exactly," Cassian said. He was happy to let Ilfaralek voice his speculations aloud and to keep his own cards close to his chest. Then the man looked thunderstruck.

  "Unless, of course, there was no such intention."

  "What do you mean?" Cassian was genuinely puzzled.

  "Think about it. Security within the Theran Quarter is obviously heavy, especially prior to Kypros's feast. Building a tunnel into the Quarter and then breaking out in the midst of the feast would cause a major nuisance, but the culprits would never succeed in taking over the Quarter."

  "Agreed."

  "So the goal cannot have been an insurrection in the Theran Quarter."

  "That seems logical," the elf agreed. He was beginning to see where the line of reasoning was headed.

  "Given that, two possibilities come to mind. First, the conspirators want to create a major embarrassment for Kypros. Since his guests will include visiting nobles from several other Imperial cities of note, he would lose a great deal of face. The tale would be all over the Empire within weeks."

  "And First Governor Kanidris would be sure to hear of it much sooner than that," Cassian put in.

  "Indeed. But that goal alone would hardly explain all the murders. It explains the tunneling, but nothing else."

  "And so the second goal is?"

  "There is clearly magic at work in those tunnels. An insurrection allied with magic could inflict significant structural damage on the Theran enclave. A lot of important buildings could be harmed, damaged. Especially if there are tunnels built directly underneath them or close by them. We'll have to wait for the details, but that's a strong possibility."

  "And the reason someone would want to do that—" Cassian began.

  "—is because there would be so much money and prestige at stake in rebuilding the bloody things," Ilfaralek said. "The contracts would be worth a virtual fortune."

  "I see," Cassian said thoughtfully. "Then it becomes a matter of who would get those contacts and moneys."

  "That's what puzzles me," Ilfaralek said. "With Daralec gone, his end of the work would go to a relative within House Carinci. After all, Carinci controls the rights to stone-importing. But who that will be must be decided by a House conclave and no one can be certain of the outcome of that—not judging by what I know of them—and I'm where I am because I do know them. There's no obvious candidate."

  "Not only that, but House Carinci is going to lose face over the corruption business with Mordain," Cassian observed.

  "Yes, that too. Whichever Carinci noble is behind it is taking a big chance."

  "Unless, of course, the stone-importing rights are not to be retained by Carinci," Cassian said carefully. He couldn't deny Ilfaralek this information. The man had, after all, recently saved him from being hacked to death, and besides, the truth would come to light soon enough anyway.

  Ilfaralek looked at him sharply. "What do you mean?"

  "Daralec left a commercial will with a close relative," Cassian informed him, "though I have little doubt a copy has been retained elsewhere—more than one, in all likelihood."

  "There's no such document in the House of Records."

  "It was sworn out there with a suitable noble witness," Cassian continued.

  "By the Passions," Ilfaralek said, looking genuinely startled. "So, who gets the business? And who is the witness?"

  "Patracheus witnessed the document," Cassian said slowly. The spymaster looked as if he'd been struck with a hammer. "And Tarlanth is the inheritor of the business."

  "Tarlanth!" Ilfaralek groaned, slapping one hand to his brow in a gesture that would have seemed theatrical if not for the genuinely explosive nature of the revelation. "Haughrald is Tarlanth's pet architect and engineer. He's taken over almost all of Dragold's commissions. How very, very convenient for Tarlanth."

  "His wife is an elementalist," Cassian observed casually.

  "So she is, so she is. . .well, I never," said Ilfaralek, lapsing into vernacular. "So she can bring the house down—or a whole lot of buildings, rather—and Tarlanth has the whole show to himself. Bring in the stone, hire, feed, clothe, and commission the laborers, design everything, build it all and get paid at every stage. Make sure Daralec and Mordain are totally disgraced and Houses Carinci and Thaloss will not have the political strength to oppose Tarlanth.

  "Cassian, my dear fellow," Ilfaralek said, with a sudden change of tone, sounding genuinely concerned, "this puts you in a rather difficult position."

  "Tarlanth and House Medari may be my hosts, but I am a praetor in part because such considerations do not influence me," the elf said a little stiffly. "Be that as it may, perhaps it would be more seemly if I found a place to stay other than the Rose Villa."

  "Maybe not," Ilfaralek said slowly. "I think I can have an Imperial warrant drawn up after I've presented the facts and our suspicions to Kypros in my meeting with him. Tarlanth may not have his property much longer."

  "Nothing's proven," Cassian reminded him.

  "Of course not. But Kypros has powers of confiscation pending enquiry. Of course, he could only use them under extreme circumstances. But if we do have a nest of tunnels built into and under the Theran Quarter, that would certainly amount to extreme circumstances. I shan't act at once, obviously. It's for Kypros to make the final decision."

  "Surely there must already be some points of access," Cassian protested.

  "Yes, and that's exactly the point." Ilfaralek grinned, rubbing his hands with real satisfaction. "Anyone merely wanting to get in and out can do it, more or less, anyway.

  I know most of the routes and I have them watched. No one cares about the odd two-legged rat sn
eaking in to illegally buy or sell trinkets worth a copper or two at the markets. But to build new tunnels, now that has to be for another purpose, does it not?

  "I would be prepared to bet you the price of an ounce of opara, Cassian, that whoever recruited those Undercity wretches was intending to use them as no more than a decoy or as slave labor. They'd have been told that the goal was to get into the Quarter and take it over. That was just a story to get them working down there, to build those tunnels for the one purpose existing ones would not serve—to undermine structural foundations and allow a sudden magical strike to collapse enough of the Quarter to make rebuilding it very, very profitable. And Tarlanth would make money at any and every stage of that operation.

  "By the heavens, Cassian, if Kypros were sufficiently disgraced, Tarlanth might be in position to become Overgovernor. If not the next one, surely the one after— and having dragged one down, another would not present too much of a problem, would it?"

  Ilfaralek sat back, delighted with himself.

  "But Daralec and Tarlanth had quite a complex relationship," Cassian said, again trying to sort out details for himself. "They appeared to be rivals in public, yet cooperated in private."

  "Daralec would hardly have made out a will in Tarlanth's favor otherwise."

  "So why the public enmity? Or coolness at least?"

  "I shouldn't think you'd need that pointed out for you, my dear praetor." Ilfaralek's tone suggested that he was suppressing a strong urge to finger-wagging. "They did not cooperate. They communicated; that's different. Messengers simply traveled from one to the other now and again."

  "Yes, I've learned of that," Cassian said, recalling his conversation with Daralec's servant.

  "Blackmail. It must have been. Tarlanth got wind of the way Daralec and Mordain were conspiring to defraud the city. One of the first things you did when you got here was to take a close look at the scene of Daralec's 'accident'. That was no accident. He committed suicide."

  "Killed himself because of a man to whom he was handing over his business?" Cassian said doubtfully.

  "Yes. At least that way his son would keep the family house, property, and wealth. Otherwise, if the full extent of the disgrace were known—and we're getting some more details from Mordain now—the House conclave might confiscate the family's possessions. Not to mention avoiding the disgrace to House Carinci if Daralec simply died and Tarlanth quietly got what he wanted. By the Passions, Cassian, Daralec's wife is of /r-House Medari."

  "That much would seem to make sense," Cassian agreed, remembering how unexpected Karlanta's rapid departure from the city had been and how both Tarlanth and his wife had accompanied her. "But just how did Tarlanth find out about Mordain and Daralec? I mean, no one seems to have suspected their connivances at all. That seems extraordinary."

  Ilfaralek pondered that for a moment and then turned distinctly pale. He pulled the glass stopper from a decanter of fine brandy on the table before them, filled a glass to an indecently high level, and proceeded to drain most of it.

  "Patracheus. Patracheus is the one man intelligent enough to have known. No—more than that. He's so smart that it could surely not have been kept from him. And who is the witness to Daralec's will?"

  "Ah," Cassian said slowly, drawing the syllable out to an inordinate length.

  "Which leaves Tarlanth to pick up all the commercial commissions, with you-know-who handing them out. The alternative is the destruction of the reputations of House Carinci and Thaloss, which will leave Medari supreme in Vivane anyway. You will doubtless have noticed, Cassian, that of those killed and exposed in Vivane, not one has been of House Medari."

  "I have indeed just realized that," the elf said dryly. "However, one thing does trouble me, one point of detail."

  "Which is what?"

  "Schavian's children."

  "Oh, that," Ilfaralek said off-handedly. "Killed themselves, of course. An incestuous relationship, by all accounts. What do they have to do with anything?"

  Well, quite, Cassian thought, keeping his thoughts to himself for the moment. Except for two things. First, it was true that all of Vivane's noble Houses except Medari had suffered deaths—but the twins had been the only loss to House Zanjan. A symmetry was lost if they were not viewed as part of the pattern. And Cassian did not like non-symmetrical patterns.

  Second, there was the fact that those two elves were killed with the same poison used to kill Crielle, unless he was much mistaken. Cassian had studied poisons for many years, for they were, after all, a standard feature of House treacheries when matters got out of control. The venom that took the twins' lives was a rare and distinctive Indrisan poison, extracted from the fangs of a yellow- and copper-striped snake no longer than a man's forearm.

  Then, of course, he had, barely more than an hour ago, found a flask of just this poison in the alcove room within the Undercity tunnels beneath the Rat Circus. No, Cassian was not at all sure he could dismiss those murdered elves so easily.

  But what could they possibly have to do with the scheming and plotting that permeated the commercial life of this city?

  26

  Ilfaralek yawned and held up a hand in apology. "It grows late, Cassian. I think we should go to see Kypros together tomorrow, if that meets with your approval."

  "I would be grateful," Cassian admitted. "It can be a little, well, tricky dealing with an Overgovernor, and doing it together might make it somewhat easier."

  "We should present a common front," Ilfaralek said. "Not that we want to force any conclusions upon him, but if we appear at odds over anything of substance he will not think so well of us."

  "Agreed. For myself, I find nothing in your reasoning with which I disagree." But then, Cassian thought quietly, I do know one or two things you do not, after all.

  "Kypros may not be terribly pleased with our report," Ilfaralek reflected. "House Carinci will come out of this better than the others because they will appear to be victims. Admiral Tularch is of Carinci, of course, and Kypros is not exactly enamored of her."

  "I see," Cassian smiled, forewarned of this by Andreax's notes. The wily Overgovernor of Vivane was known to wish to promote one of his own sycophants to Tularch's position as provincial admiral and was always looking out for any chance to discredit her.

  "There's also the problem of Patracheus," Ilfaralek mused. "Like Kypros, he is of House Thaloss. Kypros has always regarded him favorably. His favorite saying is that while everyone else brings him problems, Patracheus offers solutions."

  "Perhaps we might tactfully suggest that Patracheus's witnessing of Daralec's will was merely a matter of protocol," Cassian suggested rather lamely.

  "It won't wash, but if we gloss over it quickly we can doubtless keep from making Kypros bristle too much," the other man mused. "Oh, come on! We might have saved Kypros from being undermined—in the most literal sense—at his own birthday parade. If he isn't grateful to us for that, he's not going to respond to tact, reason, or diplomacy anyway."

  There was a loud knock at the door and then Harrishaz was admitted. Bags were already forming under the wizard's eyes, and at the sight of them Cassian realized the birds were beginning to sing outside. It was much later than he'd thought. The wizard took one look at the elf and glanced meaningfully at Ilfaralek.

  "Don't worry, Harrishaz. The praetor is the one who alerted us to this menace, after,all. Speak freely."

  "The tunnel network is fairly extensive, akarenti. There are several locations where magic has been used to obscure portals to other tunnels, quite skillfully. We have rounded up perhaps a dozen Undercity people in the tunnels. It appears that each of them knew of only a small area of the whole complex. They refer to a woman, Arlyna, who was the mastermind for it all. They also refer to a wizard named Nighthand"—he sniffed derisively— "although none of them claim to have seen this individual. We've turned them over to the ghareez."

  Cassian barely smiled at the mention of the expert windlings who would be present secretivel
y in Vivane as in any other Imperial city, though virtually never seen. The ghareez were skilled and knowledgeable in the study of the body's workings, and small hands allied to exquisitely crafted instruments of torture could inflict a maximum of pain with a minimum of damage to other parts of the body. Relatively few outside the hierarchies of the Empire even knew of their existence, and most people no doubt imagined that the torture dungeons of Imperial prisons were stocked with brutal trolls ready and eager to tear bodies apart on racks or the hook-frames still used for public executions in some provinces. Those who were unfortunate enough to find themselves given over bound and helpless into the hands of the ghareez never returned to tell others of their fate.

  "Very good," Ilfaralek said as Harrishaz handed over a preliminary sketch of what had been uncovered so far. He whistled through his teeth, a most untypical expression, as he displayed the map briefly for Cassian to take in the superficial details.

  "The planning and the excavations must have been going on for some little time," he mused. "Well, take some rest, Harrishaz. Have Alkatur roused to continue the work and get to your bed. You've done well."

  "Thank you, akarenti," the man beamed with an oily smirk. "I will see to it myself that he is wakened."

  "I'm sure you will," Ilfaralek said knowingly as the wizard trooped off. "Blasted wizards," he half-whispered to Cassian. "They squabble like five-year-olds from morning 'til night.

  "Now, where were we?"

  "About to get some sleep ourselves," Cassian said. "We have an Overgovernor to see before many more hours have elapsed."

  "Indeed," Ilfaralek replied, stretching and stifling another yawn. He poured himself a generous brandy to assist the process of falling asleep.

  "I'd like to look in on Jerenn," Cassian said, and Ilfaralek told the elf where to find him.

  Using the key he'd been given to unlock the door, Cassian found the room nearly dark. A small lamp was flickering low now, its supply of oil almost wholly consumed. The boy lay on the bed, snoring loudly, a silk gown covering him. Approaching him quietly, Cassian could smell the last of the wine in the flask dumped unceremoniously by the bedside. He smiled as he looked down at the recumbent figure.