Murder In-Absentia

by Assaph Mehr

  “Late last year something changed. He became morose, secluding himself for days on end. At first I thought this to be just another phase, as all his affairs of the heart were quick to pass, but soon his studies were affected. I arranged for him to travel to my brother on Kebros. I thought getting him away on a bit of sea air and travel to improve his health. My brother Publius Quinctius promised to look after him and get his mind off from what was troubling him. He has a big country estate as well as many businesses there, and we hoped to entice young Caeso out of his doldrums. I sent my friend’s son, Gnaeus Drusus, with him.

  “At first this seemed to have worked. My brother had written to me that life amongst the isles seemed to have done Caeso well, even if he was not interested in learning about the family business. They came back at the end of the shipping season, and resumed their studies.

  “However over winter his health seemed to deteriorate. He became pale and thin, wasting away. I called for the most renowned magisteri carneum, the best doctors money could buy, but he refused to see them and claimed that he needed no medicine.

  “I then decided to send him on a sea voyage again, this time for an extended period. However when I informed him of my decision yesterday, he became distraught. He absolutely refused. At first he argued that he simply could not be away from Egretia, that I was sending him into exile, ostracising him and might as well just execute him. When I persisted, he became hysterical, frantic. He started to abuse me in the most offensive language. I had my steward confine him to his room. We could hear him railing and wailing for a while, and then he seemed to calm down.”

  He stopped and took a deep breath, steeling himself. “My steward was closing the house at midnight as usual. Being fond of Caeso, he went into his rooms to check on him. He was not in his room, my steward thought he merely sneaked out to find food. He searched for him, and was about to call me when he saw Caeso come back from the street. He saw Caeso proceed to his room, and was satisfied that my son had regained his senses. However in the morning when he went to check on Caeso, he found him in his bed, dead, and upon his face a horrible grimace. His face… you will soon see that about him which made me question the circumstances of his death. If for no other reason than to please the shade of his mother my late wife, I would like to know how — and why — he died last night.”

  * * *

  We walked together, Corpio himself leading us with Typheus following behind me. We crossed the atrium, went through a short passage and entered a large open garden. We were headed towards the living and sleeping quarters, located at the back of the mansion. As we drew close, I glimpsed a loggia facing the ocean, with magnificent open vistas visible between the columns.

  “No one knows yet,” continued Corpio as we walked, “besides the three of us and my steward. We kept the door locked and ordered the staff away. After the initial shock, Typheus recalled stories about you and your… expertise in these matters.”

  We stopped before a closed room, and even from this side my skin tingled and I could smell that tell-tale odour. The door was guarded by a short, bald man with a harried look, which Corpio introduced as his steward. He nodded at the man, who unlatched the door and opened it. “See for yourself,” said Corpio. “We left everything as we found it.”

  I stepped into the room. The shutters were still closed, and morning light filtered through the cracks, its angled rays providing faint illumination. I could see a figure lying on a sumptuous sleeping couch and smell the voided bowels.

  I stepped closer. Caeso was on his back, body straight, kept taught and rigid by rigour mortis, his arms by his side and his backside lifted clear off the mattress. He appeared as if frozen in the middle of a spasm of pain. I looked at his face and the impression was made stronger. His eyes screwed shut, nostrils flared, mouth in a rictus with bared, clenched teeth. One could almost hear his teeth grinding in death.

  I have seen people die, some with terrifying spasms of pain. I have seen men die and their bodies left to freeze in a fixed position in rigour mortis. Yet never have I seen someone die and their body freeze in the middle of such a spasm.

  Under the smells of sweat, urine and faeces, was that acrid-sweet scent which meant I had a serious paying job ahead of me. I walked to the window and opened the shutters. I heard a stifled cry behind me. I turned back to examine the body. Caeso was about eighteen years of age, a handsome fellow. Shoulder length, honey coloured hair. Smooth skin, strong chin and cheekbones, long nose. A picture of health, were it not for the obviously painful death.

  I approached the bed and ran my finger lightly along Caeso’s forearm. I could feel the goose-bumps of his flesh, and the tingling that ran up my own skin became almost palpable. I knelt down beside him and with my hand tried to gently pry open his eyes. The muscles of his face were screwed tight, and refused to be moved. I tried the same with his mouth, but got no further. His teeth were clenched so tightly they showed hairline cracks.

  I drew back his light sleeping blanket and exposed his body. I heard the sharply drawn breaths behind me, and had trouble myself not to react. Caeso was a young man, with good physique. He was lying in front of us, naked, with body held rigid and raised off the mattress. But that was not what caused the gasps. On his chest above his heart was a livid, red-purple tattoo with outline of a seven point star. From it, spokes radiated along his ribs, enveloping his torso and keeping clear of his abdomen. I leaned closer and could see faint traces in blue that worked their way around the red lines, all of which extended down his sides and on to his pelvis and genitals, spiralling around his manhood.

  The acrid-sweet smell, the tingling touch, the tattoo — it was enough to confirm the general cause of death, but I needed more information and this was the only opportunity I would have to gather it. I drew my knife from inside my tunic and looked back Corpio. “May I?”

  He stared blankly at me.

  “I need to… extract some samples. I will open his mouth and his eyes as I need to look into them. This will not be pretty, but I will not disfigure him. I have to ascertain certain things, to be able to investigate his death.”

  He turned even whiter than before, covered his mouth with a kerchief and nodded faintly.

  “I may be able to reset his features,” I added to try and ease his pain. “You should be able to hold him on the customary bier without much sign of the way he died.”

  I turned back to the corpse. The easiest would be to break his jaw, however I had just promised his father to keep him presentable for a proper funeral. From my dagger’s sheath I pulled out a couple of very small and very thin blades that were stored in special pockets in the side of the hard leather. I ran my finger along his jaws towards his ears, feeling the bunched muscles. At the point below the ear where the muscles terminated and attached to the bone, I placed one of the small blades at a sharp upwards angle and stuck it gently with the hilt of my dagger. It slid in and I could feel the ligaments rolling under the skin. His face acquired a lop-sided expression, half relaxed and half in rictus, like a person who suffered a stroke and went mad. I repeated this on the other side, and his whole jaw became relaxed.

  I unscrewed the back of my dagger’s pommel, and extracted a tightly-wrapped parcel. I carefully unrolled it, and took out a thin, sharp sliver of light coloured wood from amongst the contents. I pricked my finger with it, and then chewed on its bloodied end.

  I braced myself against what I knew was coming, and moved so that my back would hide the corpse’s head from his father. I put my hands on his jaw with my thumbs pressing on his chin, as I forced his mouth open. I pulled the sliver of wood from between my teeth, and poked it as deep as I could down the throat, bloodied end first. A noxious cloud of foul-smelling, thin black vapour escaped his teeth. I shut my eyes and my held my breath leaning back to avoid getting it in my face. I heard retching and retreating feet behind me. There was no mistaking the boiling, bubbling, melting sounds and the foetid smell of putrefied flesh as the wooden chip blackened when
touching his oesophagus. I hastily moved closer to the window, and saw that the steward was gone, Typheus on knees in the garden, and Corpio leaning weakly in the doorway. Corpio was doing better than I expected, I must say.

  His jaw now slack, I retrieved my thin blades and set to work on his eyes. These would be harder to relax without leaving more visible marks. We always look to people’s eyes to connect with them, to feel their humanity. A person’s eyes tells you so much about them, without a word crossing the gulf between the two of you. We fall in love with a look. Poets far better than me have scribbled many a verse on the subject.

  But what awaited me behind Caeso’s eyelids when I finally lifted them up, was decidedly not human. At first all I could see was a yellowish ball. When I coaxed his eyes around to face the front, there was no trace of original irises, just a red hexagon lined in black. I let them roll back inward and let the eyelids to snap shut. Better that way.

  One last thing remained. I placed myself so the watchers would not see my next actions, as what I was about to do was nefas, sacrilege. I moved next to the corpse’s torso, and placed the tip of my dagger on his solar plexus. I cut the skin down along the line of the ribs, trying hard not to cut across any of the red and blue markings on his chest. I did the same on the other side, and ended up with a bloody red wedge on his abdomen pointing up at his sternum. I inserted the tip of my dagger under the skin at the top of the triangle and lifted it gently, then rolled the skin back to expose his inner organs. I set to work separating the layers of flesh and muscles. I reached inside, gingerly pushing my forearm half way to my elbow under his ribs, making my way down through moist innards and up past his lungs before I felt the calcified mass where his heart should have been. I withdrew it, yanking and cutting gently with the knife where it still connected to flesh and veins. I could feel its hard facets as I grasped it tightly. At last I stood up and held out my hand, the light from the window reflecting in the blood covering my arm. In my hand was what used to be Caeso’s heart and was now a large heart-shaped ruby.

  “It would pay for a lavish funeral if you could sell this,” I said, “but I doubt you would find a buyer. This is most definitely the product of necromancy.”

  Chapter II

  I walked lazily down the hill, thinking of my next move. As I was nearing the harbour, I became aware of the time by the pangs of hunger. I stopped as a roadside stall and bought a squid-on-a-stick, roasted with garlic and spices. Our city may be named after the regal birds that grace our shores, but our people march on squid.

  Back in Corpio’s study, after he had recovered sufficiently to walk there without aid, we shared a pitcher of unwatered wine, just the two of us. “But why?” he kept mumbling, “My beautiful boy, who would do such a thing?”

  “You know as well as I do that necromancy is illegal in Egretia, and indeed everywhere else across Nuremata,” I said. “This predates the founding of our city. To my knowledge the Collegium Incantatorum has managed to enforce this quite well, both internally and whenever we encountered it among the barbarians.”

  “Of course, of course. This just makes it all much more perplexing. Caeso had never shown any interest in the incantatores… Naturally I had him enrolled in the Collegium Mercatorum, as our family has been for ages. He was not a star student and I didn’t hold high hopes for him, but he had never shown an interest in the other collegia…” Corpio was rambling, gulping his unwatered wine at a rapid pace. I let him continue, grunting my sympathy to keep him going. “I tried to push him in the right direction, naturally, as any concerned father would. He never objected, though I could see his heart wasn’t in it. He was far more interested in attending plays and parties, even the street mimes interested him more… No head for numbers, that one, and never got used to the sea. His late mother and I indulged him, being our youngest, and once she passed away… Perhaps I was not as close to him as I thought I was, as I should have been. What is a father to do? If he would have voiced an interest in the other collegia and presented a good argument I would have let him go, I have my Marcus to look after the business when I am gone…”

  “Tell me about his friends,” I asked.

  “He attended the college with the son of my good friend Gnaeus Drusus Scaevola. Drusus filius still lives with his parents, not far from here. Caeso and he had known each other since they were little, as our families have always been close. Drusus is not even a year younger than Caeso… But that doesn’t matter any more, does it?” His eyes filled with tears.

  I remained silent as he dabbed at his eyes and sipped more wine. He took a deep breath before continuing. “Drusus will be able to tell you about his social and college life. He has been in the college for two years now, so was not such a freshmen that my Caeso would shun him. Drusus always looked up to him, you know.

  “Besides Drusus, I have heard him mention Gnaeus Porcius and Gaius Lutatius. I met them both briefly in the forum once, but I do not really know them or their families all that well. Respectable, albeit not in our circles. I am sure though, that they had visited Caeso in this house. I am often away sailing, both due to my business and to my duties as the Rhone of Fish, as you can imagine. Caeso was a good boy, still young. I only let him wear his manly toga the year before last. I held him back till the last moment, hoping to keep him a boy for as long as I could… But a boy he still was, and had entertained his friends with my best wine when I was gone. My steward will be able to tell you more, and Typheus too perhaps.

  “He would have had other… acquaintances… amongst the mimes and performers he liked so much, although of course I am not acquainted with any of them. Caeso was intelligent enough to know not to sully the ancient family name of the Quinctii Corpiones with too overt a relationship. A young man of our class may cavort and fornicate with the street trash as much as he likes, but never treat them as equals.” I could hear the steel in voice, see the flint in his eyes. Distraught though he may have been at the death of his son, he still came from an ancient family of senatorial status, and have risen to be elected a rhone.

  Deeming Corpio’s constitution sufficiently restored, I began to approach the less salient events leading to his son’s death. “How much do you know of Caeso’s last few days? I ask, because while not much is known about the actual workings of necromancy, sufficient information has filtered through the ages. The tale of Servilius Ahala from the days before our people founded Egretia is still taught to our aspiring incantatores as a tale of caution. Necromancy was a dark off-shoot of the magia vita by our reckoning. In all our encounters with its manifestations, it was an elaborate process, with lengthy ceremonies, many participants and arcane requirements. It was not something one dabbles in, and the signs are taught to our young incantatores so that should a necromancer arise again our whole state would unite against him.”

  I looked into Corpio’s eyes. “So please forgive me. I really need to know everything odd about your son, who had he met and where he had been in his last days.”

  “I was here, busy with the Contio of Rhones. With the winter now over, shipping has resumed. While I haven’t gone for any extended length of time this year, I did have quite a bit to oversee of both my private enterprise and in my official capacity. When I was home though, Caeso was always alone. He had been neglecting his studies, and had been looking ill as I mentioned, though by the end I had given up on the doctors. Not because I do not trust them, but because they agitated him even more and he would refuse to come out of his room and meet with them. I will instruct Typheus and my steward to answer your questions. You can have the run of the house, though I would remind you to remain discreet.”

  I sat up in my seat, gathering my toga. “One last question, Rhone, if you please. Why me? Surely you suspected the nature of his death. Why not contact the rhones of the Collegium Incantatorum?”

  “I thought that would be obvious. At the end of this year I will have to step down from the office of rhone, but that is not the end of my public career. I am in good stan
ding to be granted concessions to open sea routes around the Cape Massau. Surely you are aware of this through the forum gossip? A scandal such as this would spell the end of my political career, and the total collapse of my business. All of my family’s business, including my brother’s would collapse, as no one would trust us ever again. The name of the Quinctii Corpiones will be forever blackened, and the work I have done on the treaties from Massau to Urica would collapse.

  “I will not risk this! I will not have one of the mentulae in the Collegium Incantatorum hold this over my head, or even just blabber drunkenly to his mistress, only for the name of Egretia itself to be tarnished amongst all the nations around the Mare Saepiae!”

  He wilfully forced himself to recompose. He sat back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap, took a deep breath. “Your reputation precedes you, Felix the Fox. While some of your sordid history is known to me, so have you managed to rise from it on the back of your integrity and confidentiality. What I need now, from you, is absolute discreetness. I wish to know the circumstances of my son’s death, yes, but I do not wish to see my world collapse around me. Caeso was young and, as we clearly know, foolish. Yet I do not believe that in his heart he was rotten. Find out for me who did this to him, find him and deal with him and keep my name out of it, and I will see that you are well recompensed.”

  * * *

  I finished my squid and almost wiped my hands on the hem of my toga. Dascha would cluck her tongue at me, should I return it with fish sauce stains. After my mother passed away, she took it upon herself to care for my appearance and her values and aesthetics were just as conservative. I kept walking down to the harbour, stopping to wash my hands and take a drink from a public fountain.