The Inquisitives [4] The Darkwood Mask

by Jeff LaSala

  Jotrem had not been permitted to inspect the crime scene himself until now, by dictate of the Civic Minister and his correspondence with the King’s Citadel of Breland. The Karrn was a veteran of the Last War, had likely seen bloodshed Soneste couldn’t imagine, but the sight of the slaughter in the ambassador’s chambers subdued him.

  As the older inquisitive took the opportunity to examine the scene, Soneste stood at the balcony again, this time looking out at the city in the grey cast of daylight. She looked across the gap between the Ebonspire and the adjacent tenement building—the killer’s point of access. Tallis had not flown by magic, according to Sergeant Bratta’s testimony. But he had jumped somehow.

  Anyone with sufficient gold could buy potions enough to possess the abilities this killer had: great strength and speed, the ability to leap amazing distances and land safely. Soneste thought of the victims’ wounds. Magic could seldom account for such skill and precision with a blade. Was Tallis that efficient?

  Soneste walked back inside. Jotrem emerged from the bedroom where the ambassador’s family had died, his face paler than usual.

  “Please finish here,” Soneste said to him quietly. “I’m going to visit the adjacent tower. I know you’ve been there, but I need to see it for myself.”

  Jotrem did not put up a fight. She told the Ministry wizard that when the older inquisitive was finished, the bodies could be moved. It was time to give them peace.

  Soneste stared up at ir’Daresh’s suite from the adjacent roof.

  In her hands she held a curious weapon. She’d found it in a shadowed corner of one of the tower’s stairwells. It resembled a warhammer, if sleightly smaller, with a head of heavy steel. At the other end of the haft, facing in the opposite direction of the hammer’s blunted side, was a long and curving piece of metal more akin to a military pick. The silvery head gleamed as if newly shined.

  The hooked hammer, it was called, a weapon of gnomish design. Usually they were crafted for the foot soldiers of Zilargo, but this one was sized for a human. A special commission—Tallis’s?

  There wasn’t a trace of blood on the sharp, curving tip of the pick’s head—only a dried, thin substance which might have been alchemical in nature. Such a weapon could probably have damaged the warforged on the balcony.

  Why did you leave this behind? she asked silently.

  Two levels beneath the Justice Ministry was a cell block where choice suspects were questioned before more permanent incarceration in one of Korth’s prisons. Within, two White Lions escorted Soneste and Jotrem into a chamber bisected by a wall of thick, magewrought iron bars.

  Within the cell, a warforged paced with anxious steps that reverberated loudly across the chamber. Upright and active now, he looked even larger and more imposing than he had before, inert on a balcony floor. Soneste cursed softly as she noted that most of the living construct’s damage remained and that blood still crusted his composite plating. The Karrns had only repaired him just enough to awaken him. Despite his obvious agitation, the warforged looked worn down.

  “I’m sorry you were not fully restored,” Soneste said as she walked up to the bars. “My name is Soneste Otänsin. I am here on behalf of the King’s Citadel to investigate the crime.” She displayed her papers but the smoldering blue crystal spheres that served as the warforged’s eyes paid them no mind. He advanced to the edge of the cage.

  “Why am I a prisoner?” he demanded, confusion evident even through his cavernous voice. “Where is Master ir’Daresh? Vestra and Renet? They are in danger!” The warforged slammed the buckler shield of his arm against the bars in frustration.

  The dissonant ringing hurt Soneste’s ears. Jotrem looked bored and unsurprised.

  Soneste frowned. Where is Master—?

  “Unholy Six!” she cursed, half turning to Jotrem and the White Lions. “He hasn’t even been told?”

  The older inquisitive shrugged.

  The warforged quieted then, clutching the bars with each hand. “Woman,” he said in a hollow, pleading tone. His body was perfectly still now. “What is there to be told? Whose blood is this?” He gestured one three-fingered hand at the brown stains that still crusted his body.

  “I …” Soneste looked to the leather folder in her hand, stalling. The report had listed the warforged as a piece of Brelish property, belonging to Gamnon ir’Daresh. To most Karrns, warforged were weapons of war, nothing more. It shouldn’t surprise her that he’d not been informed.

  She looked up into the construct’s eyes. Emotion could not be read in the cold metal of its standard, Cannith-issued faceplate, but from his voice she knew there was expectation. Worry. If the warforged was somehow involved in the murder, she would expect him to be calmer or feigning resignation. If this one had been disabled before the slaughter took place, there should be only confusion.

  “What is your name?”

  “Aegis,” he answered. “Please, tell me.”

  “Aegis, I am sorry that I must be the one to relay such … tragic news.” She imagined the workroom the warforged had probably awakened in an hour or so before, a Cannith artificer poised over him, armed soldiers standing nearby just in case. “Your master has been murdered. I am here to find his killer.”

  Aegis said nothing at first. Had he been a man, he might have gripped the bars with white knuckles, screamed with grief and rage. Instead he turned away from her and walked back to the center of the cell with great plodding steps. He’d been the ir’Daresh bodyguard. Protecting them had been his chosen duty, his vocation, and very likely his identity. She’d seen it before—warforged as devoted to their human commanders and comrades as if they were blood. Respect born from shared experiences, not instilled in them by the forges of House Cannith.

  “The children?” Aegis asked. “Lady Maril?”

  Soneste shut her eyes. This was not part of her job. She was an inquisitive, the one called in to follow the trail of killers, find kidnapped victims, reveal clues and treachery. She was not equipped to console mourners.

  Damn them. Damn Tallis or whoever did this.

  “I am sorry,” she said, using anger to steel herself. “Aegis, I am here to find justice for the ir’Daresh family. I am here to avenge them, and I need your help, to know what you know.”

  The construct turned sharply. “The half-elf intruder! He was masked.”

  Tallis was a half-elf? She looked at Jotrem, who nodded.

  “Half-elf, was it?” Jotrem repeated, a proud set to his jaw. “The warforged confirms what Sergeant Bratta and I have already told you, Miss Otänsin. Tallis was there. He is either the killer or the killer’s accomplice. You cannot doubt that.”

  Soneste ignored him, distracted by this new information. She looked to the construct, whose attention was fully upon her. “Yes, I need to know more about him and about your master. I need to know everything you can tell me.”

  Aegis advanced again on the bars. “I have failed in my duty!” he said. “Is this why I am caged?”

  Soneste looked to the White Lions at the door. “This warforged is to be released from custody. Ask the Civic Minister, if you must, but I will see it done!” She slipped the writ from its folder and held it before them. The two guards looked to Jotrem, uncertain.

  “Miss Otänsin,” the older inquisitive said. “The construct remains a suspect. It is not—”

  “I will take responsibility for him, and he will bear no weapons.” Soneste narrowed her eyes. “Will you not ‘cut these ministerial webs’ and demonstrate your usefulness?”

  Jotrem said nothing, but he nodded to the White Lions.

  Soneste turned to face the warforged again, cognizant of the Karrns watching her. “Aegis, we are in a foreign land, you and I. Not all facts are known to me yet, and the citizens of Karrnath do not see you as your master did, nor as I do. If you are released, you must go where I say and do what I ask.”

  “I will,” Aegis answered with clear fervor.

  “The warforged’s loyalties are uncertai
n,” Jotrem said coldly. “It is dangerous.”

  Aegis tapped his forehead, where a mystic sigil was engraved in the metal. All warforged possessed such symbols, or ghulra. Each one unique, the ghulra were a signature of their creation. “I was made to fight for Breland.” The warforged’s tone was solemn. “But after the war, I chose to serve Ambassador Gamnon ir’Daresh and his family. That is my loyalty.”

  Soneste nodded. “I will find your master’s killer.”

  “Then I will serve you now, Mistress. I failed my master, Lady Maril, Rennet. Vestra. I will help you bring them justice in whatever way I can, but I am a warrior, not an investigator. I will guard your life and do as you request.”

  “You will have that chance,” Soneste said, “but first I need you to tell me everything that you remember. Tell me about this masked man.”

  Aegis pointed one of his thick fingers through bars at the hooked hammer she’d tied to her haversack. “That is the weapon he used against me.”

  Soneste didn’t need to look to know Jotrem was smirking.

  Chapter

  ELEVEN

  Crossing Paths

  Mol, the 9th of Sypheros, 998 YK

  With the pretense of needing something from her room, Soneste returned to the Seventh Watch. She asked Aegis to accompany her while Jotrem waited in the lobby, then went up to her room, Tallis’s weapon in her hands.

  “Please bear with me, Aegis,” she said. “I am not merely biding time.”

  She calmed her mind, sat upon the floor, and laid her hands over the cold metal of the hooked hammer. The weapon—her one solid lead—had a story to tell, and she would do her utmost to learn it. Veshtalan had once attempted to teach her the ability to read the psychic impressions he claimed all people left on the things they touched. “If someone possessed an object long enough,” the kalashtar had said, “deep imprints would form, strong enough to be analyzed by a properly focused mind. Like yours, Soneste.”

  “Give me something that has meaning to you—for a moment only,” Veshtalan had said. As always, the kalashtar’s voice was soft, patient but demanding.

  Soneste had complied, slipping off the carved onyx talisman she wore around her neck. Veshtalan had grasped the smooth, flat stone, tracing the owl-shaped object with delicate fingers then closed his eyes. A soft hum had surrounded them both and the onyx talisman appeared to glisten in his hand. After several long minutes of concentration, the handsome kalashtar had opened his eyes and smiled back at her.

  “This stone was given to you by a human—your father?—when he was forty-one, a gift for his adolescent daughter, in apology for an event he’d been unable to attend.”

  “Boldrei’s Feast,” Soneste had said quietly.

  The kalashtar continued. “He’d purchased it from a shifter woman somewhere on his tour of duty. She was fifty-nine, a mother devoted to her family and willing to part with the semiprecious stone to feed her children in hard times. The shifter, in turn, had found the amulet in the pocket of a dead young human, not yet nineteen winters old. That boy’s father had given it to him only two days before on the day the boy had manifested the Mark of Making …”

  Soneste had been impressed by the kalashtar’s abilities, but she was skeptical by nature and knew he might have fabricated most of the information. Her father had given her the onyx carving when his duties in the field prevented him coming home for Boldrei’s Feast that year. There was no way Veshtalan could have known that without the use of his powers, but try as she might, she’d been unable to produce the same effect with other objects—though she’d never stopped trying. Her mentor had insisted that doubt, and a lack of desire to succeed, had failed her.

  As Soneste sat in perfect silence, she grasped Tallis’s weapon, closed her eyes, and tried her utmost to see it with her mind. Several minutes of mental exertion followed, giving her a headache instead of psychic insight. She maintained her focus, willing to learn more about the man who’d carried this very metal in his grasp. She wanted, needed, to know more! Just when she could hold her focus no longer, she had a brief moment’s image—not visual, not sensory at all, but somehow it felt more like a memory that wasn’t her own. She could envision the cold metal of the hammer pass from one pair of hands to another. Small, calloused hands—a gnome’s—passing the weapon over to larger, gnarled hands—a dwarf’s. Then again, a new hand grasping the hammer—long-fingered, delicate but strong. A half-elf’s—

  Soneste stopped, her body drenched in sweat from her efforts. She washed up and returned to Jotrem again. Aegis had spoken not a word during this time.

  “The Bluefist,” Jotrem had answered when she’d asked him where one might purchase dwarf-made weaponry in the city. “It set up shop immediately after the dwarf-lords of Mror declared their independence. They specialize in advanced arms, but they do not supply in bulk like many of the dwarf merchants. Even the Conqueror’s Host carries Bluefist blades. But hooked hammers are made by gnomes.”

  Soneste had shrugged. “Trust me. We need to go there.”

  The Bluefist of Mror was little more than a block of stone with residential flats stacked above it. The only ornamentation was its entrance, a threshold stylized to resemble a miniature dwarfgate of the Mror Holds. Above it, an iron plaque displayed a blue fisted gauntlet against a gray mountain. Just beneath, a Cannith seal was carved into a wooden placard and painted black, denoting the smithy as licensed by the dragonmarked house. After Soneste had read the old Chronicle articles, House Cannith, an omnipresent fixture of Khorvairian society, seemed more sinister.

  They took the steps to the heavy door of the armory, Jotrem leading the way. The older inquisitive carried the hooked hammer. Soneste glanced at it, imagining the invisible impressions locked away like treasures inside it. What else might she learn with that power? It was one worth mastering.

  She paused to see if anyone objected to the presence of Aegis, who followed several paces behind her. The people of Korth didn’t seem as hostile to him as some of the outspoken protestors in Sharn. In Korth, they didn’t seem to care about him one way or the other. The warforged was just a tool.

  One dwarf stood behind the counter, while another tended the weapons arrayed on the walls. Soneste saw maces, swords, polearms, and more exotic arms—all gleamed as though polished and newly forged. Some of them possessed a faint shimmer, suggestive of magical properties. There was a single door behind the counter. Soneste could hear the faint ring of the forge beyond.

  “Stay at the door,” she whispered to Aegis, who complied.

  She needed to talk to the dwarves, but there was one customer in front of her, a man wearing a bulky, hooded cloak with a missing arm. He was hardly the only maimed veteran Soneste had seen in this city—or back home. A naked broadsword lay on the counter between dwarf and customer.

  Jotrem moved forward to begin interrogating the dwarf, but Soneste held him back. “We can wait,” she said, irritated that the older inquisitive cared little for discretion.

  “The Lions have already been through here, sir,” answered the dwarf, responding to a question she hadn’t heard. “Twice. Now, tell me more about your son.”

  “He’s no Rekkenmark cadet,” the man grumbled bitterly. “Not so good with an honest blade.” His voice was raspy with age, yet curiously strong.

  “Something simpler than this would be best.” He tapped the handle of the sword dismissively with his only hand. Soneste noted the man’s palm was wrapped in loose bandages. The fingers were exposed, lacking the wrinkles she’d expect to see on an older man.

  The dwarf waited expectantly for his customer to go on, but the old man paused. He turned sleightly, peering beyond his hood as though realizing others waited behind him. His steely eyes met hers with a casual analysis, then darted to the hooked hammer in Jotrem’s hand and away again in a flash.

  The old man—whom she was certain was not old at all—turned back to the dwarf without a hint of duress. Soneste exchanged glances with Jotrem. Neither of them, t
rained inquisitives, had missed the man’s look. He nodded back and placed his hand upon the hilt of his sword.

  “Tallis!” he said, an edge of triumph in his voice.

  The hooded man spun in place and threw the sword he’d been discussing with the dwarf out in the air. It spun wildly at Jotrem, who took a step back and ducked as low as he was able to avoid the blade. The hooked hammer dropped to the floor as Soneste drew out her rapier.

  As Jotrem fumbled to regain his footing, the hooded man threw a small bag at the other Karrn. The shapeless object struck Jotrem at the waist, its surface rupturing into a mass of brown goo.

  “Good to see you again, Jotrem!” The suspect’s hood had fallen away, and a shock of black hair spilled out. His face was far younger than his posture had suggested. In addition, a second arm had appeared from beneath his bulky cloak.

  Everyone in the room exploded into motion.

  The shopkeepers produced weapons with astonishing speed, though from their shocked, angry expressions it was unclear whom they would favor in this struggle. Jotrem was unable to draw his sword, his arm held fast beneath the swiftly hardened glob that had swallowed his hand, hilt, and belt. Tallis’s eyes swept the room, searching for an escape plan. Soneste had expected him to fight—was his history not one of constant violence?—so she advanced with her sword leveled at him.

  “Surrender peacefully, Tal—”

  “Murderer!” another voice shouted, and Soneste felt herself being pushed aside as Aegis barreled past her. He was still unarmed, but he braced the buckler of his arm like a weapon.

  “Keeper!” Tallis swore then rolled himself backwards over the dwarves’ low counter. He landed lightly on his feet and stopped short before the stout shopkeeper who glared at him with a glowing mace in hand.

  “Not here, half-elf,” the dwarf warned.

  “I’ll settle up later!” Tallis said as he dodged past the dwarf just as Aegis reached the counter. Bolstered by his rage, the warforged crashed into the sturdy wood and reached in vain for his retreating quarry. Aegis’s arm shot out, preventing his massive, metal body from pitching over the counter entirely. The warforged was nowhere near as nimble as the Karrn.