The Fair Elaine: A Kethem Novel

by Dave Dickie

  I turned so I was facing the ship and waved over Gunter. Gunter was a forty five year old seaman who had never made it beyond the bottom rung. He had unkempt graying hair, several scars that ruined a lot of tattoos, and three missing teeth. “Gunter, I want you to give Lord Valont the thing you found on the deck after you came topside and found the bodies. He will reward you for it.”

  Gunter bowed and said grimacing, “Please, m’lord, I didn’t mean nothin’, it was just a nice dagger, much sharper than my old knife, I was just lookin’ for something better, you know?”

  Valont looked from him, to me, and then back to him again. “No need to worry citizen. Just show me the dagger. As Gur says, there will be a reward in it for you. Large enough to buy something nicer.” There was a sheath dangling below Gunter’s shirt, but the hilt of the dagger at his belt was hidden by the loose, coarse fabric of his shirt. Gunter slowly reached underneath the fabric and pulled out the dagger, then handed it to Valont. I could see Valont’s eyes widen. It was black, heavy, slightly curved. The handle was made of wood wrapped in leather with geometrical shapes in primary colors festooning it.

  “That’s a Ohulhug blade,” said Valont. I nodded. Valont was frozen for a second as it sunk in. He reached into a pocket and took out a thousand rimii note and handed it to Gunter. I don’t even think he knew what it was. He certainly didn’t see the sudden flash of pure, unadulterated greed in Gunter’s eyes as he grabbed the bill and started bowing and back peddling. I had the feeling the local bars were going to do a lot of additional business this evening. As I watched Valont, I could see the cogs turning in his head.

  Finally he said, “How? How did they get here? And… this doesn’t clear Maizon. He went with them. He could have been working with them. He spoke Ohulhug.”

  I sighed, reached down, and opened the package at my feet. It was a salt encrusted cloak with the Grafton glyph on it. “I did some scouting along the docks, my Lord. The easternmost dock was unoccupied at the time the Fair Elaine was pulling in. I believe that’s where they teleported from. I found this under the dock.” Under the east side docks were nothing but rocks constantly battered by waves. It was plausible that it had been there for a week without being spotted. “I believe if you search the waters around the area, you will find Maizon’s body. I don’t know why the Ohulhug took him and not the others, but it seems like he must have put up a fight that cost him his life.” I could think of a reason. Maizon knew Ohulhug and knew more about Nyquet and its scrying capabilities than anyone else. But I couldn’t say it without revealing I knew more than I should. Valont knew the details now, and I could see him putting it together in his head. I said, “I’m sorry. I know he was a friend.”

  Valont shook his head as if to clear it. “But how could they have reached here before the Fair Elaine? She’s a fast ship. The Ohulhug don’t have anything that can match her.”

  “I’ve checked, my Lord. The teleportal operators on the docks logged a group of people arriving from a northern Pranan City-State the day before the attack, and one leaving the evening it occurred. If they had invisibility, I am sure they could have had illusions spells as well to make them look human. I suspect if you check, there will be no record of visitors on the Pranan side.” Which would be true, since the logs had been forged by some Elvish spell I’d never seen before. Then there would be the convenient arrogance toward Pranan as well, a belief that you could smuggle an orc army through and they would be none the wiser.

  I’d used a memory alteration spell from the elves on Gunter with his permission. He had no qualms taking a thousand rimii that he now remembered getting by placing a lucky bet at one of the local gambling joints. And, of course, he remembered finding the Ohulhug dagger after the fight. It would hold up, with a truthsayer verifying it.

  With the additional thousand Rimii note Valont had given him, Gunter was a very happy man.

  The body was the one sticking point. It had been weighed down and dropped off the pier the prior evening. But a week in seawater did not look like a day in seawater if you knew what to look for. I just had to hope no one would examine the body that closely. I thought it would stick. A day in seawater, or a couple of days depending on how long it took to find it, would make it unpalatable enough for most people to avoid much poking and prodding. The only real risk here was Valont dragging me in front of a Magistrate with a truthsayer to verify my statements. But I’d given him everything he needed to clear the Hold’s name, something he could ride directly to the top. Valont seemed decent enough, but not an angel. I didn’t think he’d want to share the credit, and I didn’t think he’d want the story of Grafton Hold hiring me to do an independent investigation to get out.

  Valont was nodding quickly. He said, “Yes. Yes. It could have gone down that way. If the investigating Holds find Maizon’s body, that would be enough to allow us to help with the rest of the investigation. The dagger and the seaman’s testimony… with it, we can prove Grafton Hold was not to blame.” He stopped and looked at me. “You’ve done well, Gur. Whether I become the head of the Hold or not, I owe you a debt.”

  “You may not feel that way after you see the bill,” I laughed. “I had to spend most of the hundred thousand to dig all this out.”

  He shook his head. “It was worth it. It was worth it a dozen times over. Submit your bill or not, the money is yours.”

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Two weeks had passed. I hadn’t heard anything from Valont, but word was he had been confirmed as the Lord Holder for Grafton Hold, which normally took eight or more weeks, which probably meant that he’d clinched it by getting Grafton back into the game on the Fair Elaine business. There’d been no sign that the elves, the Sambhal temple or Ralin were suspected of wrongdoing. There was no sign that any of the circumstances around Leppol’s death had surfaced. I hadn’t heard anything about Ohulhug attacking Nyquet, but I didn’t know the timetable for it, and it would take a few days for the stories to make it to Bythe.

  Between the humans thinking the Ohulhug had double-crossed them, and the Ohulhug’s attack with an item they had paid for dearly failing in grand style, I had to think whatever nascent diplomatic relations between humans and orcs had sprouted were going in Hasamelis’ lock box for a while.

  It looked like I had gotten away with murder, treason, and a few other crimes. Many other crimes. It would have been a long list.

  At times it bothered me, and at times it didn’t. Killing Leppol… It was, in reality, as much self-defense as when I killed the assassins. Or killing Sariel, something that I still had nightmares about. But it didn’t feel that way. If felt premeditated. It felt cold.

  When I thought about the plan to sacrifice Nyquet to help Kethem build its mass production line for enchanted artifacts, it made me sick to my stomach, and those times I wanted Leppol’s body back so I could spit on the corpse. But there had been other Holders involved, and probably the entire high council. I doubted Leppol would try to do something like that without clearing it with them first. But… perhaps not, and the entire thing was so far above my pay grade I couldn’t find it in me to worry about it. Leppol had been personal. I didn’t feel the need to hunt down and visit unto the others involved what I’d done to him. Which was good, as I would have almost certainly died trying.

  I’d helped the elves, who might be protecting us from power we couldn’t handle, or could just be trying to maintain their position at the top of the food chain. But, had I told someone about their involvement, all it would have done was turn currently cordial diplomatic relations glacier cold. It wasn’t like the elves would turn over the primordial chaos to Kethem.

  I’d protected the Sambhal temple and Ralin. But the worst thing the temple had done was taking advantage of someone’s blind love. And maybe attempting to bring a god-demon to life. But the entire business made me wonder if Tessa was right. Maybe a demon would be a step up. Sariel had tried to kill me, but I believed Tessa, that Sariel had gone down that path on her own. I’d s
een it in Sariel’s eyes that first day, something in her past that had twister her inside. And Sariel had paid the price. Ralin was a different story, a cold blooded murderer regardless of what the reasons were, but I couldn’t expose him without exposing the temple, and the geas wouldn’t let me do that whether I wanted to or not. And there didn’t seem much point. He’d acted alone, he was dead, end of story.

  All of which left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Judge, jury, executioner, controlling inter-race relations with two different races, acting like I had the answers, the high moral ground. What happened to the truthfinder? When did I get in the business of manufacturing lies to create outcomes that I thought were the right ones?

  I ended up putting my father’s Hero of Kethem trophy away. Clearing the family name had not restored the Hold of my childhood or lifted me out of commoner status. But it had set me on the path to who I was and what I did these days, unravelling the knots of lies and self-deception that truthsayers couldn’t. I thought my father would have been proud of what I’d accomplished. I didn’t feel that way now. I felt like I needed to take a week long bath. But I suspected that no length of time, no matter how abrasive a soap I used, would remove the stain.

  So I did what I could to put it behind me. I drank too much. I visited the families of the dead sailors from the Fair Elaine and heard about the mysterious benefactor that had set up a standing payment into the Kydaos fund for them. I visited Daesal and burned the letters I’d given her to distribute if I disappeared. She said she hadn’t read them, as I’d asked, but you never know with Daesal. It wasn't a moral burden I wanted to put on her shoulders if I could avoid it. Then I visited a few more times just because. I stopped off to see Yimmy and his two new apprentices - Jonesy and his friend had apparently convinced Yimmy they would pull their weight - and watched them bicker with each other good-naturedly. It didn't heal the wound, but it helped slow down the bleeding.

  One day I returned to my apartment to find a message waiting, a small, square envelope in fancy off white paper with a light smell of sandalwood perfume clinging to it. I took it up to the apartment and careful opened it with a stiletto and dumped the contents on my still-fire-marred coffee table. There was a small four by six inch piece of parchment inside and a folded note on more standard writing paper. The parchment had landed face down. I flipped it over with the stiletto. On it was an invitation to the Sambhal temple for an evening of food, wine, and music with Tessa, and of course, the Sambhal chop on it. There was a note at the bottom that said to touch the word “accept” to accept or “decline” if I wasn’t able to attend.

  I unfolded the note with the dagger. I thought it was probably honest paper, but there wasn’t any point taking chances. Inside, in elegant, flowing script, was a message from Tessa. “Gur, I wanted to thank you for everything in my own way, with dinner, wine, and a quartet of our most accomplished musicians. And perhaps some quiet conversation about nothing in particular afterward. It would please me more than I can say if you would accept my invitation. You are a fascinating man and I would love the opportunity to do no more than get to know you better. Your friend, Tessa.”

  I’d done a little research. Tessa had been head of the temple for nine years. It typically took twenty or more to reach that point. And Sambhal temples did not take in anyone under the age of eighteen. Which would put Tessa in her late forties or early fifties. Eternal youth wasn’t possible by any method I knew, but it seemed looking young at least was part of the Sambhal package. Although Tessa was more timeless than young.

  “You are pretty fascinating yourself, lady,” I said out loud, and picked up the invitation.