Murder In-Absentia

by Assaph Mehr

  Safe in the knowledge that we were far enough at the base of the cliffs that the sounds of the surf would drown any screaming, I still took out my dagger and pressed it to Philokrates’ neck before taking the gag off. “Scream and it will be your last.” I said. “I have some questions, and if you want to see the sun rise, you will answer them promptly. Am I understood?”

  He nodded, and I removed his gag.

  “I only have two questions really,” I said, “First, why did you send those men after me?”

  “So it was you,” he said with a slight note of surprise. “I wasn’t sure until now. I… We…” he started and stopped a few times. “I can’t discuss matters of the cabal with anyone who did not take the blood oath.”

  “Do try,” I said and drew my dagger along his shin, leaving behind it a glistening dark line. To his credit he drew breath sharply but did not scream.

  “You misunderstand,” he retorted, “I really cannot. The oath is not mere words, there is power in it. It binds us to secrecy and to Zymaxis’ will.”

  “I have been accepted by your cabal, you’ve seen it tonight. Zymaxis gave his approval. The rest is only formality. Now — why did you send the men after me?”

  “I can tell you as much as I told them,” he replied. “We have heard that there was a library of — shall we say eclectic and esoteric material — for sale in Ephemezica. Zymaxis commissioned me to acquire it, as I have procured similar material for him in the past. But by the time I got there it had been sold and shipped. I sent agents to track it. The agents finally reported that the contents were in Egretia and for sale, and when I enquired after it, I found out the scrolls we were interested in were not with the rest. I dispatched men to track those scrolls and retrieve them. My agents told me today only that they found the identity of the man who possessed them and promised I would have them tonight. When they told me the name Felix, I had completely forgotten about you until the meeting earlier. When you…” he stopped and paused. “Tonight at…” pause again, and I rested the point of my knife on his shin. “Let’s just say I was expecting you to bring some other than what you did.”

  “Good enough for now. Second question, how did you manage the ceremony on Caeso without notice?”

  A look of surprise crossed his face. “What? No! We… There was never…” He paused and shrugged. “I can’t talk about any of this.”

  “This blood oath of yours is really getting on my nerves,” I said. “Last chance to answer before I forcibly break its bonds. It will not be pleasant for you,” I gave him my most evil grin.

  “I doubt what’s in store for me is pleasant either way,” he replied stoically. “I know you will not leave me alive. If I thought my admission would buy me a quick death I would cooperate, but I really can’t.”

  “Come now,” I said. “I am not a cold-blooded killer. I have made a reputation for myself by keeping my word. And I do give you mine now, that should you tell me everything I need to know, I will do what I can to see you exiled rather than crucified. It may be so far from Egretia that you will have to go to the land of the Hyperboreans, but you will still have your life.”

  “Then kill me quickly then, because I will not be able to tell you anything,” he said sadly.

  “Borax, hold him tightly please.” I sheathed my dagger and then unscrewed its pommel and extracted the pouch of herbs. I selected one of the fine razors I keep in a special compartment along its sheath. “You see,” I talked while doing this, “I have analysed the herbs Zymaxis uses, I know his supplier, and I know about oaths too. This time I came prepared with antidotes in case he makes me drink anything again. Yet for one who claims the oath is already blood-binding, well… We’ll just have to get the antidote into your blood.”

  I sat on Philokrates’ feet as Borax came behind him and held his torso in a bear hug. I pulled up his tunic to reveal his muscular thighs. “This will hurt,” I said, and started to work with the razor. I drew the blade in intersecting lines along his skin, to form a sigil I knew.

  “Please, you don’t understand,” cried Philokrates, “I really don’t have any options. I would tell you all if I could.”

  “Oh, I do believe you,” I said. “This is why I am doing this now. You can prove me wrong by answering my question — how did you manage to do the ceremony on Caeso?” He only shook his head.

  “Very well, we shall have to proceed.” I tore a piece of his tunic, wrapped the seeds and herbs I had, and singed it with the torch. Starting my incantation now, I took the smouldering pack and started to rub it into the bloody sigil on his skin. I kept muttering the chant, ignoring the strangled cries from Philokrates, his twitching and spasming.

  When I deemed it enough, I repeated my question, still holding the smouldering pack to his cuts.

  “Stop this, man, please stop!” cried Philokrates. “I can feel it burning in my veins! I can’t speak, it hurts!”

  “Tell me how you did Caeso in!”

  “I can’t! I swear to you I can’t!” his spasms were increasing now, but Borax still held him tightly.

  I burst the burnt cloth and rubbed the hot seeds and burning herbs directly into his cuts. The sigil itself started to glow faintly, the blood now visibly pulsing in a bright red that had nothing to do with the moonlight. “Tell me about Caeso!”

  “We never — aargh! — we never touched him!” he spat and screamed, then his whole body convulsed and shook. A spasm in his leg threw me off and even Borax had difficulty to hold him down.

  Philokrates cried out wordlessly again, a scream of anguish. Blood started to trickle from his nose and ears, and his red-shot eyes looked like they were about to pop out.

  Which they then did, with a squishy plop, and hung by the strands of nerves on his cheeks. His next scream was cut short by a gushing of bloody vomit coming out of his mouth and nose. He jerked one last time and then just lay there, dead, with the sigil burning angrily on his thigh.

  Well, one thing I was certain of, as I looked at the dead body lying in a pool of blood and vomit at my feet. Whatever other precaution I might take, I absolutely must avoid the blood-oath.

  Chapter XXVI

  When I got up the next morning, I had no idea of the twists Fortuna had in store for me that day. Not having foreknowledge of things to come, I woke up late and ate lunch at home together with Borax, who slept in one of the unused rooms at my house.

  Last night, Borax and I walked back further than the entry by which we climbed down to the Cloaca Maxima, all the way to the major intersection of sewage lines under the Forum Egretium. We emerged covered in blood and human effluence, looking like the public slaves keeping the Cloaca free from blockages. I made a small offering at the temple of Cloacina, joining the line of sewage workers rather than that of the married men. I also bought us both a long wash at the Baths of Sestropius. By the time we made it home the eastern sky was beginning to pink.

  I started my business for the day rather predictably. I had three new names from the cabal meeting, one of whom I knew to be dead. Planning my options, I deemed the forum to be unproductive. The young incantator — Duronius — was too young to attract the attentions of the gossips yet, and Rabirius the freedman was not a public figure. The criminal element was out for the moment, less I stumble on those who were hired to get my head.

  I therefore decided to try Sosius again, as the most likely to advance my investigation. Philokrates proved a poor source of information, but from his assassins I knew he was after a scroll. No doubt this was the Rite of Pelegrinus I had retrieved from Ephemezica. I needed to know if the cabal managed to get their hands on any other such scrolls, and if Sosius had any information at all about Philokrates or what he was in the market for. I also wanted to find out how Philokrates found out about me as Sosius’ agent.

  When I ventured out that morning, I was accompanied by the ever watchful Borax. We stopped at his apartment so he could get a change of clothes — the tunic I gave him as replacement to the one he wore to the sewe
rs was far too tight for his size — and then made our way to the Basilica Antonia.

  I was in luck, Sosius was in. “Are you planning on going into the lanista business, or is there another reason for that large specimen that follows you?” Sosius asked as we settled down in his office.

  “It appears someone is really interested in the scrolls from Ephemezica, and in particular the ones I kept with me. Let’s say that I now have a deadly interest in your customer list.”

  Sosius paled. “I trust you are unharmed though? I assure you I had nothing to do with this.”

  “Oh, I trust you,” I said, “But someone did find out I hold the interesting bits from the collection. I need to determine everything you know about who and why.”

  It turned out that Sosius did receive some interest in the library I acquired for him in Ephemezica. The description of the man he gave me matched Philokrates. It seems like the inquiry came while I was on Kebros. Sosius did not attach a special meaning to the encounter, as the man did not express a specific curiosity about the esoteric material in the library. One of his assistants, trying to be helpful, had given Philokrates the master index to the collection as soon as they got the shipment from Baebius. It seemed an innocent move on his part, a way to earn some coins on the side by promising Philokrates a first selection of the contents before they were fully reviewed by Sosius. When Philokrates asked about the scrolls of magia, the assistant mentioned that he overheard Sosius and me talk about it.

  So while this confirmed what I knew, it unfortunately got me no further. I tried another tack, questioning Sosius and his assistant whether they knew how Philokrates had found out about the library in the first place, and if they have sold them any other esoteric material in the past. The assistant, now quite distraught at having been caught accepting bribes and causing his master embarrassment, tried his best to please us by digging through old sales records and questioning the other junior clerks mercilessly. It turned out that Philokrates made quiet enquiries after such items in the past. He trod carefully and bribed Sosius’ employees with some shrewd sense — he gave them just enough to make sure they would report the interesting scrolls to him, but not enough to make them worried that he was after the nefastum scientiam scrolls and report his overtures to Sosius or the Collegium Incantatorum.

  Going over the scrolls he managed to buy in the past, he was definitely interested in the unsavoury aspects of nefastum scientiam. This is of course highly regulated by the Collegium, and yet it has never stopped the black market from thriving. Sosius was a reputable dealer, and the scrolls he dealt with were borderline material, not enough to get him in real trouble. Well, not unless he thought he could get away with it.

  The material that Philokrates acquired from Sosius included treatises on the movement of stars, codices of translated terms and gods, and a dissertation of the nature of virgins. That last was of the magia vita kind, not the kind with Hellican drawings of what shepherds and shepherdesses do when they are not shepherding sheep.

  None of that information was controlled or forbidden, but with the assumption that they had other sources and taken together and with what I knew of the cabal, these scrolls could spell some very disturbing rites.

  * * *

  I made Sosius agree to let me burn the scroll with the Rite of Pelegrinus. Some would say that destroying knowledge is a horrible thing, a crime. They would argue that all knowledge has its place in the world, that natural philosophies — no matter how horrid — have their role in increasing our understanding of the world around us.

  Much as I dislike it, however, I am with the Collegium Incantatorum on this. If I left the scroll with Sosius it would eventually make its way to some other mentula who would attempt to perform the rite. If I surrendered the scroll to the Collegium, they would turn on me and start asking uncomfortable questions. And besides, as Caeso demonstrated, it would not really prevent some hapless idiot from attempting to perform the rite. And there was always the chance that my scroll contained the correct version, and that said hapless idiot might actually succeed. Not even the great Iovis Pater would protect us then.

  No, better burn the thing and be done with it.

  I made my way back to my house, wanting to be rid of the scroll as soon as possible. I wasn’t too worried about Dascha; as she demonstrated yesterday she was quite capable of dealing with those that persisted past her evil looks in gaining entry. Yet the thing weighed heavy in my mind, and I wanted to be free of it.

  Dascha took Borax with her to the kitchen. He looked worried at first, her smile with its crooked and missing teeth not instilling confidence, but she promised to bake him special garlic bread rolls — guaranteed to increase a man’s virility.

  Once back in my study, I took out the scrolls I kept from Sosius and set a heavy brazier burning. I read the scrolls again, my heart heavy with the task of destroying the centuries of knowledge enclosed in them. When I was sure I had learnt and understood as much as I could of the important aspects, there was no more delaying.

  I started by ripping the scrolls carefully into strips and bits. I tried to tear across words and symbols, destroying the ink lines as much as I could. Some of these old scroll were written much like stigmas are, with power in the ink itself.

  After a while I had a large pile of paper and parchment scraps on my desk. I started feeding them carefully into the brazier, not wishing for the same mistake Caeso made by leaving recognisable fragments behind. I gazed at the pieces of parchment crackling with strange colours, the smoke rising thickly. I decided to try an old augury trick. It was probably my least favourite subject in the Collegium — an irony, considering the profession I ended up in — but along the way I picked up other knowledge. There is power in signs and symbols, in patterns of natural phenomena. The power itself is usually easy to locate, yet even centuries worth of books and rules about its interpretation cannot make it anything less than a highly subjective art.

  And right now I was burning materials imbued with years of power, and the question on my mind was directly related to their content. I stared and stared into the flames, examining the way the fragments burst into flames and were consumed, tracing the patterns of smoke as it rose to the ceiling. And whether it was a real augury, or inhaling the smoke of the burnt ink, or my mind simply tricking me to see the things that I wanted to see, eventually I was transported…

  Walking through the dense wood I could hardly see the ground, for the faint moonlight did not penetrate the canopy of trees and a thick white mist was curling around my legs, obscuring roots. I tripped and fell, got up, walked on. Vague glimpses in rare breaks amidst branches offered me faint stars that were not enough to show me direction. Before me, around me, behind me, between the trees all I saw was the fog. I kept walking, avoiding branches and roots, drawn inexorably towards my unwanted destination.

  The clearing.

  I took careful steps across the moonlit grass, but when I reached the other end I saw it was not a clearing, rather the edge of the forest on the side of a mountain. As I walked around the boulders at the clearing’s edge, I found myself on a steep path, high up on the side of the mountain.

  I kept walking along the path, climbing up, going ever higher and following Caeso, who I knew to be ahead of me.

  I reached the very top, where the path levelled and passed in a narrow gap between two huge slabs of granite.

  It opened up to a wide ledge, overlooking the crater at the top of the mountain.

  A faint red-orange glow was coming from it, and I could see the silhouettes in front of the two people I followed here. One was Caeso I was sure, though I have never seen him alive. The other I had seen in life, only a long time ago. When she turned to glance back the silvery moonlight illuminated the high cheekbones, the clear skin and perfect eyes of my Helena.

  Only her skin was not clear and smooth, but marked with faint lines glowing in a blue and red.

  Just like Caeso’s torso.

  He grabbed her, and lift
ed her, and jumped, and I ran towards them, towards her outstretched hand reaching to me as the ground was crumbling under my feet, and we were all tumbling down to the fiery lake of Vulcanus, with the mountain collapsing in on us, and the hot air was singing my skin…

  I cursed and withdrew my hand from the brazier, immersing my singed fingers in a cup of cold water.

  So much for visions.

  * * *

  The vision, or perhaps just the smoke, left me with an incapacitating headache. I was debating with myself about the best course of action. While I was fairly certain of what had happened by now, Caeso being the chosen recipient of the Rite of Pelegrinus for the cabal, I still had no conclusive proof. I needed a way to entice a confession out of one of them — which, as last night’s confrontation with Philokrates demonstrated, would be hard to get.

  Being the recipient of the Rite, Caeso would have been granted tremendous power. Even without the training of an incantator, the sheer immensity of raw power at his fingertips would have made him the most powerful being alive. The price would have been a loss of humanity and sanity, although obviously he paid a much higher price for the attempt.

  Zymaxis had not chosen himself to be the recipient. He was probably aware of the risks involved. And yet he must have trusted in his ability to control Caeso after the ceremony was completed. To grant someone else such power, he must have possessed compelling means to bend him to his will.

  Means like the blood oath. Here again Philokrates demonstrated, in a very unfortunate way for him, just how much control was Zymaxis able to exert on the members of the cabal. They were not puppets, still imbued with some free will, but they did not possess full free choice for their actions.

  Assuming that Philokrates’ colleagues would be bound in a similar manner, and assuming that Zymaxis had made the choice for Caeso to receive the Rite of Pelegrinus, it seemed to me that the obvious way to both get a confession and deal with the cabal was to go after its head.