The Fair Elaine: A Kethem Novel

by Dave Dickie

  Two junior acolytes at the front door wearing the traditional wolf pelt, head still attached as a hood that sat over their heads, didn’t even ask a question, just stood aside and pulled the doors open as we went in. The main entrance was large, also done in black, and had large hanging dishes with fires burning in them, along with torches in wall sconces. The walls were decorated with murals of famous battles. At least, I assumed they were famous battles. They all involved a lot of people dying in combat from swords and sorcery, at least. Here and there was a framed and mounted weapon, from daggers to flails. It was about as subtle as a broken bottle at a bar fight. Inside, a slightly older, slightly more obese Uncle Wolf came to meet us, grey beard and hair blending into the wolf head hood in a very disturbing fashion. “May I help you?” he asked.

  Daesal looked down her nose at him. “The bodies from the Fair Elaine. I need to see them.”

  The priest looked a little taken aback. “May I ask why?”

  Daesal glanced down at her Holder’s ring, glanced back up at the man, eyes wide, and said with incredulity in her voice “Are… are you questioning me? Me?” I could never understand how Daesal seemed so clueless in normal conversation but could play parts like this to a T.

  The priest blanched. “No, mistress Holder. My apologies, it is just an... unusual request.” Which was somewhat true. I was sure the team of Holders investigating the incident had done the same thing, but they would have had a magistrate and jurors with them to verify that anything they found was real evidence and not something they had tampered with.

  “Lead me to them,” said Daesal, sounding a bit grim.

  “This way, mistress Holder, please follow me,” said the priest, looking like he was about to keel over. I gave him a sympathetic glance and a roll of the eyes. These privileged mucky muck Holders, what could you do?

  The priest led us through a few doors connected by dark corridors. The final corridor had a curtain on the right and left sides. “Crew members are to the right. There are family members in there at the moment. The Holders are to the left,” said the priest. It was typical for commoners and Holders to be in separate rooms.

  “Holders first,” said Daesal, and the priest led us through the curtains on the left. It was a fairly large room, perhaps eighty feet long by twenty wide, dimly lit by wall sconces that were designed to look like torches but had the steady, non-flickering light of a glow disk. Along the far wall was a set of ten raised platforms, long, thin marble tops resting on smaller stone blocks that held them four feet off the floor. Four of the platforms were occupied with the bodies of the dead, dressed in death shrouds of muslin or linen, I couldn’t tell from the entrance. The room had an Elementalist cold rune and the bodies had preservation spells, but you could still smell death in the air. There was another curtain covered door on the far right wall, which I knew lead to the mortuary room, smaller than this one, with seats and a raised dais in front for final ceremonies before the body was disintegrated. The Elementalist rune made the room chilly, and our breath puffed out in white clouds when we breathed out.

  Daesal approached the first body. He’d been sandy haired, clean shaven, five and a half feet tall, and solid muscle when he’d been alive. I knew from descriptions I’d been given that this was Nemoh Burth of Coslander Hold. The one who was a master swordsman. He looked pretty relaxed in death, but then, most corpses did. The death shroud had an unusually high collar. It was, I assumed, meant to hide the man’s cut throat. Daesal stood over him, staring down. I was pretty sure she was sniffing, but I couldn’t tell from behind her. Without turning, she said, “Leave us, Uncle Wolf.”

  The priest was still looking pale, but he replied “I ask for my ladies’ forgiveness, but by law no one is allowed to be with the dead without a priest present.” The law could be a convenient safety valve for a commoner telling a Holder you can’t do as they ask.

  Daesal shrugged, still looking down at the body. “As you wish.” She took the arm of the dead man, and with a little effort … preservation spells did not prevent rigor mortis … pulled it up. She licked the back of the dead man’s hand.

  There was a gurgling sound from the priest. I looked at him. His eyes were bulging. I said, “Perhaps the other side of the curtain would be sufficiently close to meet the legal requirements?” He nodded rapidly and headed for the door. He’d gone from pallid to slightly green. I wasn’t surprised when I heard rapidly disappearing footsteps from the other side of the curtain. There’s the law, and there’s not puking on the floor of your temple.

  Daesal dropped the arm. “Interesting,” she said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “He’s been poisoned. Triggerfish toxin. He was dying before he was killed.”

  Well, that added a new twist to an already confusing case. “The rest of them?” I asked.

  She went methodically between the other three bodies and licked the backs of hands. She pointed at two of them. “Those two as well. This one is not,” she said. The body she was pointing at was a six foot man with a goatee and a hooked nose. He was a little obese and looked out of shape. Ralin Ellison, Telburn Hold. The only minor Holder in the bunch. Triggerfish toxin attacked the nervous system and was a fast acting poison. It had to have been administered just before they were pulling in. Ralin seemed like the obvious candidate for the culprit, but then why was he dead? A double cross? But if he was working with someone who was going to attack the ship anyway, what was the point in poisoning the other Holders? And, back to the regularly scheduled question, what happened to Maizon? Was he part of it, or had he been trying to prevent it and gotten killed playing the hero? But if he had… where was the body?

  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get two and two to add up to four. “Anything else?” I asked. She pointed back to Ralin. “That one was suffering from gout. He drank too heavily.” She pointed at the only woman, who had to be Hayley Ramsey from Nolan Hold. “She did not bathe often enough.”

  I chuckled. “She was the only woman on a ship full of men, and I doubt the Fair Elaine had separate bathing quarters for women.” And then I realized that the bodies had undoubtedly been cleaned up by the Kydaos priests. Which made me wonder again where Daesal’s keen senses came from. Maybe she wasn’t completely human, a half breed or something, but if so, no non-human racial characteristics were obvious.

  "Ok, let’s check out the crew. No licking the bodies, please, at least if there are mourners in the room.” She nodded her agreement, and we moved to the room on the other side of the corridor. It was a mirror image of the room we had just left, but there were eight slabs occupied on this side. Uncle Wolf… a different Uncle Wolf from the one that aided us… stood somberly just inside the doorway. Five of the dead had small groups of people around them, mostly women and children, most weeping. Commoner tradition was for immediate family to visit the body each day for the seven days Uncle Wolf presented them. Friends and more distant relatives visited more sporadically, depending on how close they were to the deceased. Holder tradition was a ceremony on the third or fourth day in the mortuary room, attended by the family, friends, and members of the Hold that wanted to attend. The length of the ceremony depended on how important the person was. Gold Rings would take a full eight hours. Copper Rings, an hour. Then the Holders would disperse, given they had important Holder things to attend too.

  Daesal started her slow olfactory examination of the bodies, mourners reducing themselves to silent sobs when she went by. The people glanced between Daesal’s ring and her face, unsure why a Holder would be in the room examining the bodies of their loved ones.

  I stopped to talk to one of the mourners, a woman, while Daesal continued her inspection. The woman was middle aged, five foot three, with curly brown hair that was just starting to show a bit of grey here and there. Two small children stood next to her, a boy, perhaps eight, and a girl, around six. The woman was dressed in what I’m sure were her finest clothes, a knee length woolen tunic, stockings, blocky peasant shoe
s, and a coif covering much of her head. They were not very fine. Sailors were a step up from farmers, but not that large a step up. With very few exceptions, any non-military vessel larger than a small fishing boat was owned by the Holds. The crew members were generally hired hands, although on the large merchants the captain and first mate were occasionally Holders.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said to her. I’m sure she’d heard the same from many people over the past few days, but sometimes there’s not much else you can say.

  She looked over the body on the marble table, a short man with a bushy beard. If he had tattoos, they were covered by the death shroud. “Thank you. He was a good man. He was at sea as much as he was at home, like all this lot, but he always brought home his pay, didn’t spend it in the bars like a lot of them did. And he loved our children, carved things for them when he was out at sea, always had something for them when he came into port.”

  The children stared at me with wide eyes, quiet, scared. Scared of what had happened, scared because their mother was being stoic but had that tinge of desperation that hits when the first shock of loss passes and you start to wonder, “What now?” Middle aged with kids, probably a seamstress or maid working on a pittance. Not many prospects to find a new husband or to make sufficient income to make ends meet. The Holds and temples would offer some help, soup kitchens and the like, but they were notoriously unreliable. I looked around and saw the same expressions on the other family’s faces, the scent of desperation clinging to all of them.

  Daesal finished her sweep and came back to me, nodded to let me know she was done. I went over to Uncle Wolf. “There’s a collection for the families?” I asked quietly.

  He nodded. “See Uncle Wolf in the main hall,” he said. “And thank you,” he added. He looked at the families sorrowfully. “The temple will match anything you contribute.”

  On the way out, we stopped to talk to one of the priests in the main hall. Even older than the grey haired one we’d first met, he had a serious paunch but he carried it well. He had a casual air about him but he moved in quick, precise movements and his eyes were constantly roving, looking for trouble. There was a war hammer attached to his belt that had to weigh twenty pounds, but if it hindered his movement I couldn’t tell. I wouldn’t want to get in a fight with the guy.

  He looked at Daesal, since she was a Holder, and she pointed to me. He turned to me and said, “Yes, my son?”

  “Donations for the families of the Fair Elaine murders. You are collecting?”

  He nodded. “Any Uncle Wolf in the main hall will accept donations. I’m happy to assist you.” I handed him my last ten thousand rimii chit. That was one expense I wasn’t going to be able to write off, but it was the only thing I had other than spending money. He glanced at it, looked back at me. “Most generous. The temple will match this. Do you want your name associated with the donation?”

  I shook my head. “No. Distribute it among them as you see fit.”

  Daesal surprised me by pulling off her necklace, semi-precious stones worn smooth and wrapped in thin gold wire, strung together into a chaotic but beautiful strand of disparate colors, and handing it to the priest. I’d guess it would run five, six thousand at least. “As with this,” she said.

  I actually think I saw a small tear in the corner of Uncle Wolf’s eye. “Thank you both. These people will need this desperately. I bless you in the name of Kydaos, and should you ever be the one in need, know that the temple and fate will both stand with you.”

  I’m not sure I believe in fate, or that what goes around comes around, but sometimes it does, and doing someone a kindness is its own reward. We both thanked the priest and walked out of the temple. Outside, Daesal took the ring off her finger and slipped it into a pocket. “Anything unusual with the sailors?” I asked.

  She frowned. “The weapons that caused their wounds. They were… different. I think it was the same with the Holders, I just didn’t notice because of the poison.”

  “Could you be a little more explicit?” I asked.

  She looked confused, then finally said, “No. There is a taste to iron, it stays in the blood. This did not taste of metal. Or at least a common metal. It tasted … odd.”

  I wondered if she’d licked the bodies when I wasn’t looking.

  “There was dried blood on one of the pedestals,” she said. “I scraped some off with a fingernail while examining the body and tasted it,” she said, as if reading my thoughts. “What is next?” she asked before I could respond, which might have been a good thing.

  I thought for a second, then said, “I need a key to this puzzle. The pieces just don’t fit into a coherent story. So we look for more information, see if a pattern emerges. I think the next steps are the Magistrate who’s holding the personal items from the dead Holders, and more digging to find out what this mystery mission was and what Telburn Hold, or at least their man, had to do with it.”

  Daesal nodded. “That is sensible,” she said. “What can I do?”

  I never really understood what Daesal got out of helping me out. I didn’t pay her, and she seemed well enough off that even if I did it wouldn’t matter to her. But this was one time I wasn’t going to test the edge on a free sword. "I don’t think you can help with the Magistrate.” The legal system was the one aspect of Kethem society that the Holders had no influence over. “The mission… well, frankly, the only people that seem to know anything are the crewmen, and they appear to be magicked up enough that they can’t talk about it. You could poke at Ralin, see what he did for Telburn Hold, but I’m thinking finding out what the mission was might answer the question of why he was involved. Given no one is talking, the next best thing is to find out what these guys took with them to exchange for this vial. Grafton Hold had to be the center point for funding the mission. I think we look at the books and see if there’s anything strange in the way of purchases. The books are open to any Holder who asks, since they handle the common pools from the Major Holds. I’m thinking you can do that while I talk to the Magistrate.”

  Daesal nodded. “The gold leads to the dragon. See where the money went. I can do that,” she said.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Magistrate was several miles from the dock. It was late enough in the day that Daesal and I decided to pursue our separate activities on the morrow, so we took a carriage to her place to drop her off, and then to my place, where I paid the carriage man and included a big tip. I was feeling generous that day, not because I was making time and a half on the Grafton job, but because the scene at the Kydaos temple reminded me that there were a lot of people that weren’t.

  My bed is a giant four post pearl inlaid mahogany monstrosity with a canopy. Someone had told me once that the purpose of the canopy was to keep vermin living in the walls and ceiling from dropping down on unsuspecting sleepers. In this day and age, there are enchanters that specialize in pest removal. But it was a reminder of my childhood and I liked looking up at the canvas, remembered when I was a child, pretending I was in a tent visiting the Tawhiem outback, looking for mythical beasts. It was one of the few things I’d managed to track down and recover, one of the few links to my parents and my past.

  I thought about the families in the Kydaos temple. They only represented the half of the crew whose bodies had been recovered. The total was more than likely double the number I saw. The money Daesal and I donated would help, but it cost five hundred rimii a month for shelter and food. Multiple that by ten or twelve families, and fifteen thousand would disappear very quickly. Still, there was a practical limit to what I could do for them.

  I ran over the facts in my head again, but they didn’t make any more sense than they had when I’d first heard them. Somewhere in the middle of running by things again and again, I fell into a restless sleep where women and children with sad, pleading eyes slowly faded away to nothing.

  The next morning I had a fast breakfast and headed out to the plaza. The typical morning crowd was milling about, a
nd it didn’t take long to spot the bright yellow vest of a telemage. They were moderately capable enchanters that had memorized teleport and had a set of teleport locks throughout the city. It’s expensive, eighty rimii a port, but it’s fast. I used one to port onto the northwest corner of Fall Square, made my way across the small park that occupied it, and crossed the street to the courthouse. Inside there were benches, lightly occupied, and a long desk with a set of jurors looking through papers unenthusiastically. Jurors served as the administrative staff for the Magistrate and as the “contra lege” and “de lege lat” teams in an actual trial, assigned more or less at random, for or against the plaintiff. I walked up to one, a tall, thin man with a juror’s peaked hat. “I’m looking for the Magistrate,” I said.

  “Magistrate Langdon is in session,” he replied. “I can take a note. If he can fit you into the schedule, He’ll tell me once he’s out and I can give you a slot. What’s the issue?”