Death's Avenger- The Malykant Mysteries, Volume 2

by Charlotte E. English

  a smoker of pipes

  another bachelor (unconfirmed)

  and

  Vidar Pajari, brother of Greta

  Eetapi and Ootapi

  as

  deadly ghost snakes

  a pair of devoted siblings

  master spies

  and

  bloodthirsty, troublesome wretches (no particular role)

  as well as

  sundry other persons, either of note or not

  Chapter One

  Three days after the end of the Solstice holiday (days which had, most blissfully, been spent tucked up in bed with a new book), Konrad stood in the hallway of Bakar House, adding the final accoutrements to his outdoor outfit in preparation for encountering the blistering cold of a mid-winter’s morning. He had not left the house in days, which was good because it meant that no one in Assevan had been murdered since Solstice. It was bad because he felt as fresh as an aged pair of socks, and approximately as lively. A brisk walk out into the Bones would serve him well; it was high time he paid a visit to his beloved (if neglected) hut-on-stilts.

  Hat and gloves donned, collar buttoned up over his throat, serpent-headed stick duly retrieved, Konrad made for the front door. Hand outstretched, he grasped the doorknob and yanked open the door, taking a deep breath in preparation to receive a lungful of searingly cold, exquisitely fresh air.

  Nanda stood on the other side of the door.

  ‘Nan!’ said Konrad, jumping so violently he almost dropped his stick. ‘How nice to—’

  ‘Ah, excellent!’ Nanda beamed delightedly. ‘How prompt! I’m so pleased.’

  ‘Prompt?’ Konrad echoed in bewilderment. Nanda was not only wrapped up against the cold; she was swaddled in enough layers to encounter a winter twice as bitter. She was not well, that he knew, and he was pleased to see that she was taking care of herself. But since she had most likely taken a cab to his door, was it strictly necessary to pad herself out to quite such an advanced degree?

  What’s more, she was unusually well equipped for a social visit, for a pair of aged but neat travelling cases sat on either side of her booted feet, apparently just set down.

  ‘Has Alexander arrived yet? And Tasha?’ Nanda peeked past him into the house, her pale brow furrowing. ‘Have you left your luggage inside? Do have Gorev bring it out. The carriage will be here any moment.’

  ‘Tasha?’ Konrad looked behind himself, as if expecting to see Tasha and the Inspector standing behind him after all — or perhaps the luggage Nanda spoke of, obligingly materialising all by itself. Nothing. ‘I haven’t seen th—’ He began, but stopped, because here came the Inspector strolling up behind Nanda, his ward Tasha bustling along in his wake. Both were as warmly dressed as Nanda and as well prepared to travel, bearing bags and cases well swollen with supplies.

  The obvious conclusion to all of these assorted hints filtered, at last, through to Konrad’s sluggish brain. ‘Are we going somewhere?’

  Nanda merely looked at him, struck speechless, her face registering a mixture of exasperation and mild disgust with which Konrad was sadly familiar. ‘Are we… you mean to tell me you did not receive my communication?’

  ‘Was it sent by pigeon?’ Konrad enquired. ‘Your messenger is sadly incompetent, for I have received nothing.’

  With a look of acute annoyance, Nanda withdrew a dainty pocket-watch from somewhere and consulted it. ‘Then you have seven minutes to pack. Do hurry up!’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘It’s all in my note.’

  ‘Which I have not received.’

  ‘That can hardly be considered my fault, can it?’

  ‘Where,’ Konrad said with exaggerated patience, ‘are we going?’

  ‘A house party. In Divoro! Charming town, but quite fifty miles north at least, and it is perishingly cold so do wrap up well. And bring everything. Suitable evening attire as well, Konrad. There will be dinners.’

  Konrad began to feel that he might not have left his bed after all. He had only dreamed that he had. ‘A house party,’ he repeated. ‘In Divoro.’ He looked at Nuritov and Tasha, both of whom he liked and respected but neither of whom could be described as typical guests at a house party. Nor could Nanda, in all fairness. ‘Just what kind of a party is this?’

  ‘No time for questions! I will explain in the carriage, if I must. Konrad, if you do not pack your things at once I will pack them for you.’

  Konrad cast an appealing look at Inspector Nuritov, whose eyes conveyed do not ask me I have no idea, and an equally plaintive look at Tasha, who shrugged.

  ‘Konrad!’ bellowed Nanda. ‘Go!’

  Konrad bowed to inevitability, and went.

  ‘It is hosted by Eino Holt,’ said Nanda happily, once all four were ensconced in the promised carriage and rattling their way out of the north gate of Ekamet. ‘An old friend of my mother’s. Charming man, you will love him. And Kati Vinter will be there — a thousand years old if she’s a day, but livelier than the four of us put together, I swear. Marko Bekk! And if we are lucky, Lilli Lahti! I have not seen her in years! I could not pass up the invitation. We are to be there for two, perhaps three days.’

  None of this speech cast any light whatsoever upon Nanda’s reasons for hauling Konrad along to Eino Holt’s house party. Perhaps she simply wished for his company, which would be gratifying, but why had she insisted upon Alexander Nuritov’s presence besides? And Tasha’s? Was it merely her customary kindness of heart? They made an odd company of fellows for days of idleness at the house of an eccentric gentleman (he must be eccentric, Konrad knew; those who held house parties in isolated mansions always were, and the more eclectic the guests, the madder the host).

  Konrad could not ask such an insensitive question aloud, of course, and Nanda chose to ignore his pointed questioning looks with smiling serenity. At length he abandoned the endeavour, resolved to squeeze her for information at his earliest opportunity, and devoted himself to dozing through the journey.

  Only once along the way did he venture to question her, and on a different topic. He tried to sound casual as he said: ‘Travelling long distances is so tiring, isn’t it?’

  Nanda’s response was only a mildly suspicious stare.

  ‘And staying away from home, so very—’

  ‘Konrad.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You are working your way around to casting aspersions upon my fitness to travel. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘Am I perchance displaying an Interesting Pallor?’

  ‘No more interesting than usua—’

  ‘Does a sheen of perspiration glisten upon my fevered brow?’

  ‘No no, you look perfectly—’

  ‘I tottered into the carriage, perhaps, too weak and frail to move far unassisted.’

  Konrad sighed. ‘Point taken.’

  Nanda directed her gaze out of the window. ‘When I appear infirm or in distress, then you may assist me, and with my gratitude. Until then, please do not fuss.’

  Konrad made no response, uncertain what to say. He had only recently learned of Nanda’s illness, and still had no real idea as to what it consisted of. She did appear hale to him, but how long would that remain true?

  He worried for her, but he could not express it without receiving a faceful of irritable discontent. Knowing Nanda as he did, he suspected that she resented his solicitude because she was worried for herself, too. But she would never admit it.

  If all he could do was stay nearby in case she needed him, well… he could do that. If that meant suffering himself to be hauled over fifty miles or more of frozen, uneven roads to some distant town and spending days hobnobbing with strangers, so be it.

  But when at last they turned in at the gate of a great house and rattled up the carriage-way, and he twisted his travel-stiff neck to look up at the place in which he would be spending the next few days of his life, he began, distantly, to reconsider.

  For it was the strangest
house he had ever seen, without contest. More of a castle than a house in size, it was situated atop the slope of a considerable hill, and the structure loomed over the road like some mythical beast temporarily paused. It was a mess of turrets and towers with spiralling domes and tall spires, built all out of reddish stone and painted in at least six other colours. It was the architectural dream of a madman, and Konrad felt a stirring of faint foreboding somewhere within.

  But that was silly. Just because the house was strange, did not mean that anything unusual was likely to occur within. Nanda knew the owner, and at least a few of the party’s projected guests. He was merely being paranoid.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Interesting place,’ murmured Nuritov, his gaze fixed on the peculiar house with the same wide-eyed surprise that Konrad felt himself.

  ‘I don’t want to go in it,’ Tasha pronounced, and sat back with a frown.

  ‘It is even stranger inside,’ said Nanda brightly.

  ‘Wonderful,’ Konrad muttered.

  ‘Eino bought it about two years ago,’ she continued. ‘It used to belong to an Assevan family, name of Vasilescu.’

  ‘Why did they sell it?’

  ‘They didn’t.’

  Konrad raised an eyebrow.

  ‘They were all murdered, about ten years ago. The house stood empty until Eino took it on.’

  This disclosure was greeted with a thunderous silence, until Nanda broke it with a peal of laughter. ‘Only joking. They went bankrupt.’

  Nuritov was generous enough to greet Nanda’s sally with a polite chuckle, though he looked a trifle pale. Konrad merely rolled his eyes and sank back in his seat. He agreed with Tasha: he did not really want to go inside, whether or not Nanda’s chilling story was true.

  But he was the Malykant. If he did not shrink from facing down the vilest of murderers, he would not shrink from a mere house.

  As the carriage came to a stop outside the vast, heavy wooden front door, a trio of neatly-uniformed footmen spilled forth and came to meet them. The carriage doors were opened and the luggage taken down and carried inside with impressive efficiency, and Konrad stood breathing the cold, crisp air and staring up at the house in silence. The late afternoon sun limned the turrets in wan, winter sunlight in a display of serene beauty which did… nothing whatsoever to reassure him.

  Nanda swept up to the door, chin high, looking every inch a noblewoman. Konrad stumbled after her, feeling out of his depth and curiously out of place.

  Master, said Eetapi in his mind, startling him, for she and her brother had maintained an unbroken silence for the past twelve hours or so.

  Yes?

  Pull yourself together.

  Sage advice, if a trifle bluntly put. Doing his best to follow it, Konrad lifted his chin to a sharp ninety-degree angle and strode forth like the dauntless man he was.

  On the other side of the enormous front door there proved to be an equally vast hallway, all tiled in coloured mosaics. In the centre of this stood a towering giant of a man with a trimmed black beard, bright black eyes and clothes as plain as the house around him was colourful.

  ‘Our host, I presume?’ murmured Konrad.

  Nanda’s idea of an answer was to proclaim: ‘Eino!’ in ringing tones, and to envelop the giant in an embrace.

  Konrad stood by, observing this while trying not to seem to and wondering what one had to do to merit a hug from Nanda.

  ‘My friends,’ she said, stepping back from the giant, and made gracious introduction of Konrad, Nuritov and Tasha. Eino Holt welcomed all three with a twinkling congeniality which made Konrad feel a tiny bit better about everything.

  But then Eino looked long at Konrad and said, apparently to Nanda: ‘An excellent choice, my dear. He will make a fine Diederik.’

  Konrad blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Nanda trod on his foot. ‘Won’t he, though? He’s positively dying to get started. Aren’t you, Konrad?’

  ‘Yes…?’ said Konrad.

  Eino beamed hugely. ‘And Vidar, lovely! Not quite the right colouring, but it will pass. As for your little Synnove, charming! Very clever, my dear.’

  He looked from Nuritov to Tasha as he spoke, and a horrible suspicion dawned in Konrad’s mind.

  Nuritov wandered closer. ‘Do you have any idea what is meant by any of this?’ he whispered.

  Konrad gritted his teeth. ‘I believe we are here for a theatrical party.’

  Nuritov blinked and said with woolly comprehension: ‘Oh.’

  ‘A theatrical party,’ said Konrad a little later, ‘is a conceit sometimes adopted by the so-called elite, when they grow bored of every other conceivable leisure activity and develop a desire to torture each other instead.’

  He was surrounded by several more of those conceits as he spoke, for he had been shown to a spectacularly luxurious room on the second floor by one of Eino Holt’s many maids. The girl had been dressed in an immaculate, dark blue dress with a cap that covered up her hair. Konrad had passed by another two such maids on the way up the house’s grand, carpeted staircases, and found he could not tell any of them apart. They appeared to be identical.

  The room was large enough to accommodate at least ten people in comfort. A gigantic four-poster bed dominated the centre, draped in crimson velvet curtains, and the rest of the furniture was at least a couple of centuries old to Konrad’s eye — all exquisitely well-kept, and polished to a mirror shine. The windows were fantasies: long and light, composed of hundreds of tiny panes of glass. Some of the glass was coloured, casting shimmering rainbow hues over the cool, pale marble floor of the room.

  It was all spectacularly overdone.

  Nuritov had been given a rather more modest chamber, in keeping with his apparent status compared to Konrad’s. Absurd, considering that Konrad came from poverty; a fact of which nobody else (save Nanda) was aware, but which Konrad could not forget. The inspector had found his way to Konrad’s room pretty swiftly, and now stood marvelling at the exquisite stained glass.

  ‘So-called elite?’ Nuritov echoed. He looked Konrad over with an air of faint bemusement. ‘Are you not among them?’

  Konrad paused to consider his reply. Once only an occasional colleague, Inspector Nuritov had graduated, by slow degrees, to something of a friend, and he was one of the very few who knew that Mr. Konrad Savast of Bakar House, gentleman of fortune, was also the Malykant. But he knew nothing of Konrad’s background, and upon reflection, Konrad found that he was not yet inclined to alter that circumstance. Secrets were comfortable. Secrets were safety.

  ‘I am,’ he said. ‘But I cannot altogether overlook our absurdities as a class. Theatricals! To act professionally is irrevocably lowering, and such a person could never be considered respectable. But to act out some triviality of a play in the privacy of one’s own castle, that is a different matter altogether! To make a prime cake of oneself for the amusement of one’s friends is in no way inappropriate.’

  Nuritov sat awkwardly upon a darkwood chair which was, in all probability, worth more than his yearly salary as a police inspector. He looked like he knew it, too. In his plain, dark coat and soberly-cut waistcoat and trousers, he looked out of place in the ridiculously sumptuous room. He was a common songbird let loose in an exotic paradise.

  Konrad, meanwhile, looked all too perfectly at home. His clothes were of exquisitely fine cloth and embroidered silk, his dark hair arranged to perfection by a valet. He felt like a painted imposter.

  But such was his life, and as it held far more comforts and advantages than embarrassments or drawbacks, it behoved him to appreciate more than he condemned it. So he swallowed the rest of his complaints and said instead: ‘Where have they put Tasha?’

  ‘She has the room next to mine, but I have no idea where she has gone.’

  The serpents had gone quiet again, too. This might mean they were behaving themselves impeccably, or it might mean that they had wandered off to make mischief in some other part of the castle. The latter wa
s more likely.

  Nanda had been given a room that was the equal of his own for splendour. Considering that she was only a working apothecary and not a noblewoman, that said a great deal about the heights of the esteem in which Eino Holt held her.

  Konrad was not sure how to feel about that.

  Nuritov wanted to say something, but apparently did not know how to begin. He opened his mouth, shifted restlessly in his seat and shut it again without uttering a syllable.

  Konrad maintained his silence, and tried to look encouraging.

  ‘Irinanda did not… happen to mention why she brought us here, did she?’ Nuritov developed an apologetic look and added, ‘I refer to myself of course, and Tasha. Miss Falenia needs no special reason to invite you to such an event, but the rest of us? I am at a loss.’

  ‘As am I. If you are under the impression that Nanda is in the habit of confiding in me, I must relieve you of it at once. A confidence from Nanda tends to arrive with the sudden impact of a hurricane, and approximately as often.’

  Nuritov accepted this with his usual placid equanimity, an attitude which Konrad sometimes envied. ‘No doubt we will soon find out.’

  No doubt. Nanda at her most mysterious tended to make Konrad just a trifle nervous, so he hoped he would not have to wait long.

  Nor did he, in the end.

  Konrad and Nuritov were not suffered long to linger above-stairs alone, for tea was served in the drawing-room. Upon presenting themselves, they discovered that the rest of the company was already collected, and a motley assortment of folk they did make. Konrad observed Holt’s guests with keen interest as Nanda took it upon herself to ply him with tea, together with far more in the way of cakes and pastries than he could possibly expect to eat. He had noticed that she appeared to enjoy feeding him, and did not choose to interrupt her solicitude.

  ‘Are you trying to fatten me?’ The plate she handed to him towered with delicacies; they actually teetered, and threatened to topple onto the floor.

  ‘Perhaps I have overdone it,’ she conceded, fixing the offending plate with a swift, narrow-eyed look. She snatched it back, unloaded half of its contents and returned it to him with a dazzling smile. ‘Better?’