The Fair Elaine: A Kethem Novel

by Dave Dickie

  "No issue. I wanted to examine the personal effects from the incident on the Fair Elaine.” That drew his interest a little. Most of the time, when someone is setting up an appointment with a Magistrate, it’s for a trial.

  “Your name?” he asked. I gave it to him and sat on a bench, observing the people around me to pass the time. This was about as mixed a crowd as you would ever find in Bythe; rich, poor, Holder, non-Holder, merchants, sorcerers of varying degrees of skill, drunks. Anyone could pass through at one time or another. After a few minutes, the juror swung by to let me know Magistrate Langdon would see me in five minutes in his chambers. That was welcome news, in that I’d expected to spend several hours waiting, but it also meant that it was a hot topic. That or it was a slow day for the legal system.

  A few minutes later I was ushered through the courtroom by the thin juror. The courtroom was empty, and we moved through a doorway at the back to the small sitting room behind it where Langdon was waiting. I bowed. Langdon was sitting in a large armchair next to a bookcase with more reading material than I could go through in my lifetime. He was old, white haired and wrinkled, and I guessed he was in his eighties or nineties. He looked comfortable and relaxed, dressed in the black robes of the Magistrate, no other badge of office required. He stood and bowed back, fairly nimbly given his apparent age. “Citizen Driktend,” he said. “I’ve heard about you. The truthfinder.”

  I tried to look humble and replied “I hope what you’ve heard are positive things, Magistrate.”

  He shrugged. “Mixed. I suppose it depends on whether someone wants the truth to be told. But I must say I am a bit of a fan. The law is the law, and it is not always the truth, and it is not always fair. It is a framework that recognizes that there are always two sides to a story and tries to provide equal opportunity for either to win the day. But I like to think that, all things being equal, it strives to be just.” He cocked an eye at me. “I am curious. How exactly did you end up in this unique profession of yours?”

  That brought me up short. I tried to keep my face placid and said, “A personal situation, Magistrate, from my childhood. Not a very interesting story.” But he was looking at my hands and I realized I was unconsciously rubbing the copper bracelet on my right wrist. I put my hands down at my sides and tried to turn the Hold glyph etched into the metal away from him. Not that anyone would recognize that particular glyph these days, from a Hold that had ceased to exist more than a decade ago. That and I had added my own grooves to make it look more like decorative markings than a Hold glyph.

  He looked up at me with sharp, inquisitive eyes, but he must have read something in my expression because he didn’t probe further. He indicated I should sit in an armchair facing his, which I did. “So, what can I help you with, citizen?”

  "I would like to see the personal effects from the Fair Elaine incident, particularly the Holders.”

  He pursed his lips and put his fingers together, forming a little bridge between his hands. “I would say that it is an unusual request, but I understand it is your standard practice to look at every aspect of a case independently. You know there is no legal reason to allow it.”

  "I do. I also know there is no legal reason to deny it. I’m happy to have jurors present to make sure I do not tamper with anything.”

  He nodded. “And why should I offer you this opportunity?” Which was a tough question, because even Leppol’s authorization could not help me here.

  “Because there are ten families out there who deserve to know why they lost a parent,” I said.

  “Ahhhh,” he replied. “The sympathy card. Insufficient, I am afraid. Please, try again.”

  “Lord Holder-” I started to say, but he held up his hand.

  He said, “Less compelling than the families. I know you are working for someone, and I am sure they are powerful. But they have no sway here.”

  I thought for a moment. What did this man want? Then I realized he’d already told me. "Because I’ll tell you what really happened.”

  The old man grinned. “More compelling. In fact, I will say, sufficient. I expect you to hold to that.”

  "You have my word, Magistrate.”

  He said, “I assume you are working for Grafton Hold?”

  I nodded and replied “A good guess, Magistrate. How did you know?”

  He said, “How much do you know about the consortium that owns Bythe?”

  “The basics.” Which meant not much more than the fact that a bunch of Holds divided cities, docks, and other centers of commerce or military between themselves in some complicated legal structure I knew very little about.

  Langdon said, “The Licine Sedelitus is the master agreement that is used for every consortium. That is expanded with an agreement of terms containing specific details that are customized for each location. The one for Bythe has a section concerning crimes against the consortium, that is, a crime large enough to impact every owner.” I nodded to show I was following him. “This section specifically prohibits a Hold implicit in one of these crimes from participating in its investigation or prosecution. Members of the Hold must remain isolated from anything to do with it until the issue is concluded and punishment has been decided on.”

  “I see,” I said. “That’s why Grafton Hold can’t participate in the investigation. And the agreement of terms doesn’t prohibit them from using an outside individual from joining in the proceedings?”

  He shrugged. “It is a grey area. The agreement specifies Hold members must avoid interfering with the ongoing investigation, or even attempting to learn what has been discovered. I don’t think they were considering an outside investigation as a possibility when it was written. I have studied the law for many years, and no matter how iron clad people try to make it, there’s always room for interpretation.” He stood and said, “very good. I will have a juror take you to the storage room. The items are organized. Do not disturb that order. Do not modify or take anything. Is this clear?”

  I bowed again. “It is, Magistrate.”

  Langdon said, “Very good,” a second time and walked to the door. In the courtroom outside, the thin juror was still waiting. Langdon told him “Take citizen Driktend to the storage room. Retrieve the personal effects from those who died on the Fair Elaine. Ensure things are not tampered with and end up in the correct location when you are done. Is this clear?”

  The juror bowed. “Escort citizen Driktend to the evidence room. Let him examine the effects without altering them. Restore things to their original location. I understand, Magistrate.”

  The old man grinned and said, “You will go far, Teliner. On your way, tell Kierra to bring in the next group on the docket.”

  Teliner bowed again and replied “As you say, Magistrate.” He beckoned me, and we left the courtroom. He had a conversation with a short brunette, also wearing the juror’s peaked hat, and then led me to a side room. The side room opened into a short corridor, and that lead to a gigantic storeroom, twenty feet high, with shelves running the length of the room. Boxes were neatly stacked along the shelves, along with occasional larger items. There were tables between the shelves. We stopped at a small cabinet full of equally small drawers, and he pulled a few and searched through them until he found a card. “This way, citizen,” he said.

  A minute later, we were at a table next to shelves that looked no different from any of the rest, but he started pulling down boxes. Each one was labeled with a sequence of numbers and letters, and all of them had “Fair Elaine” and a few other notes on the side of the box. There were five of them. One of them seemed very heavy from the way Teliner grunted when he pulled it off the shelf. Once they were arranged on the table, Teliner waved to them. “Please, you may remove things from the boxes and examine them. Please do not open more than one box at a time. Replace things in the box when you are done, then you may open another one. I am only to observe.”

  I said, “Thank you. A question. Are these only the Holder’s personal effects?”


  He nodded. “Yes. The crew members had few possessions, and after examination, they had little value and no sorcerous residue. Those were returned to the next of kin. The Holders had more substantial items, things that might have enticed someone to murder and mayhem. They are being held until a ruling has been made, then they will be returned to the Holds.”

  I nodded and turned to the boxes. One jumped out at me. It had Maizon’s name on it. I pulled off the top and laid the contents out on the table. It wasn’t much, but then, there was no real reason for people to bring anything non-essential on a dangerous mission. There was a thick book on the history of the Orc-Human wars, a small frame with a sorcery imprinted shot of Maizon, his wife and his children, a few coins, and a small writing kit. There was a half written letter to his wife. I read it, but it was just sentimental reminiscing, clearly meant to pass the time since he would return to her at the same time as the letter. I picked up the imprint. Maizon was smiling. His wife was tall and more stately than attractive, but they looked happy and at ease with one another. Three children were doing their best to behave but I’d bet that lasted just long enough for the spell to set the image. They looked mischievous in the way that small children do when they are brought up properly, eager for small adventures but recognizing lines that were not to be crossed. Valont had been accurate. Maizon was a family man.

  I paged through the book, but it looked like nothing other than a very comprehensive history of the two hundred years of bloody warfare up and down the Pranan countryside, with the high orcs, the Ohulhug, and the low orcs on one side, and the humans… Pranan, Kethem, and in the last fifty years the Stangri, on the other. I stood the book on end and let it fall open to see if there was anything specific Maizon had focused on. It opened near the front, to a chapter on the first incursions from the orcs, where they had waged warfare for almost thirty years against Nyquet, one of the northernmost of the Pranan cities. By that time the Pranan cities already started to splinter into separate political entities. Even without aid, Nyquet had managed to beat the orc attacks off time and again, until the attackers finally just went around it to the east and west, driving down through Pranan until they were on the borders of Kethem. The orcs took a lesson from Nyquet and bypassed all the fortified cities on the Pranan plains and coast, leaving behind the seeds from which the Pranan city-states would grow after the orcs were driven back to the mountains. It had cost them. Leaving armed camps of enemies behind you invited constant attacks on your supply lines, skirmishes that slowed you down. But they had still pushed all the way through Pranan to the borders of Kethem when the Stangri invasion force had landed and the Orcs were suddenly in a two front war.

  None of it seemed relevant. Valont had said Maizon was a history buff. Maybe this was just light reading to pass the time on the voyage.

  Having done what I could, I put everything back in the box. I opened two more boxes and found standard personal effects, nothing strange or out of place. Then I opened Ralin’s. There were personal effects, but there was also a massive square stone block that seemed to be nothing but a block of granite. This had been the heavy box. I glanced at Teliner. I suspected what it was, but I didn’t have a way to check. Teliner glanced at the block. “Mana pool,” he said. “A massive one. Mostly drained, but it’s worth a substantial amount just because of the size of the pool. Although I wouldn’t want to be the one paying to recharge it.”

  Interesting. Ralin was a spell caster. What had his specialty been? What spell would you need to cast over and over again? Perhaps battle-sorcery? Then something clicked. Yimmy, talking about how the only way to cast compulsion on an entire crew would be someone with a large source of mana.

  Ralin had been the security guy.

  I frowned. What could have been so secret about this mission? The Lord Holder had kept it from his lead warden, his most trusted staff and his head of security. I had to assume the other Lord Holders had as well. And they had spent an inordinate amount to keep the crew from talking about where they’d been or what they’d seen. I’d never heard of anyone going to these lengths to protect information about any sorcerous artifact. Whatever this vial was, it had to be something pretty universe altering.

  There were two other things mixed in with his effects, a small bottle, mostly empty, but with a little clear liquid filling the bottom, and an envelope with a sealed flap tied down with string. I palmed the bottle and slid it into a pocket when Teliner wasn’t looking. I was pretty sure I knew what it was, but I wanted to keep it to myself for the moment and it wouldn’t be safe to leave it. Nerve poison from the triggerfish can be absorbed through the skin and it’s inevitably fatal. Not even a physicker could keep you alive. If I was right, it led back to the question of Ralin’s end game. It would be obvious he’d poisoned the other Holders. How did he expect to walk away from that? Even if he kept the vial with its scrying block so people couldn’t use spells to track him down, there were more brute force ways, and the Holds had virtually unlimited manpower to do it.

  I picked up the envelope and looked at it. It was a plain paper envelope, high quality, with no writing on it. I loosened the string and pulled out the single piece of paper that was inside. It was a four by six piece of parchment with the Sambhal glyph on it.

  Crap.

  I put it down carefully. I wasn’t sure how the entire “read the customer” thing worked when you handled a Sambhal invite. Was it just for the person the invitation had been given to? Did it take time to activate? Did you need to be in or near the temple for information to be available to the acolytes? I probably should have asked more questions when I’d been in the temple. For now, I’d just have to hope it hadn’t given anything away.

  I looked at the parchment, now sitting on the table. There was a name and a set of dates and times. Sariel’s name. There were twenty five dates spread two weeks apart from the beginning of the year and running to the end of the year. And now I had a connection between the event and the Sambhal temple, even if I didn’t understand it yet.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Nitheia temple was square and blindingly white, perhaps thirty feet tall, with a patio around the entire outside of the temple. The patio was covered by a roof about ten feet off the ground held up by tall, fluted columns. It had plaques in polished marble embedded in the walls with pithy statements about literature and the value of knowledge. A statue of Ipdohr, goddess of knowledge and the Nitheia religion stood on a raised dais in front, book in one hand, a set of scales in the other. Nitheia was the only religion who’s name differed from the god they worshiped. I’m sure there was a good reason for that even if I had no idea what it was. The front doors were wide double doors, and they were open to the public.

  A day had passed, and Daesal had sent me a small note via messenger service that she’d been through the Grafton Hold accounting books after “some resistance” … I was curious about that, but it would have to wait until we met again… and there were several hundred entries associated with the mission. Most of them had been fees associated with the fitting out of the Fair Elaine and the crew. Four had been succinct debits for significant sums around the same time, with little detail to explain what they were for. One had been to an artificer named Jared Pare, with a note that said, “large Mana pool.” One had been to an artificer named Morran Stall with no entry. Two had been to the Nitheia temple, one for fifty thousand rimii and one for five million rimii, which was the largest sum of money I’d ever seen moved in a single transaction. Like Daesal had said, it was time to follow the money, and so to the Nitheia temple I had come.

  I walked in the front door. There were a number of young, fresh faced acolytes in simple white robes inside. I’d been here a few times to do research. The system was simple. You tithed a “suggested” donation depending on the value of the documents you wanted to see, and the acolyte would take you to a small room, vanish for a few minutes, return with the books or scrolls you’d asked for, and wait outside the door for as long as you wanted
to study them. I was pretty sure they stayed there to keep people from absconding with the materials. I also understood the rooms had a teleport suppression spell on them. The tithe was substantial, and I think most of it was to cover the cost of the acolyte and the spells. There had to be a simpler way, but that wasn’t my issue to solve.

  More senior priests were in the back, sitting behind desks that faced out into the room. They had stripes on the sleeves of the robes, some in a single color, some in different colors. I knew the colors indicated areas of knowledge they had mastered, although I didn’t know specifically how it mapped out, while the number was an indication of where they stood in the temple hierarchy.

  I walked up to the priest with the most stripes, two a navy blue and one a sea green. He was mostly bald, with blue eyes, a mustache and a helpful expression. I bowed and held out the Grafton Hold papers with Leppol’s chop on it. Using it was a calculated risk. I didn’t have anything else that would give me leverage here. I just had to hope word of someone using Grafton Hold papers didn’t leak back to the other Holders.

  “Gur Driktend to see Tamil Durderson.” Tamil was an honorific. Like Tessa, Durderson was the head of the local temple. I could see the man hesitate. The head of the temple would be busy, and I wasn’t a Holder myself, but papers signed by the head of Grafton Hold had to be taken seriously.