Tasaio tossed his helm to a hovering slave, then spent the interval in coiled impatience. ‘You have not been efficient,’ he observed to Incomo, but fortunately he was in haste to inspect the corpses, and made no further comment. He strode the length of a painted corridor, shoved past a bowing guard, and whipped aside a screen.
The stench of corrupted flesh wafted with the breeze of his motion. Tasaio was unfazed. Apparently nerveless in the presence of horrors, he entered the bed suite and knelt to examine the dirt-streaked lumpish forms of what had once been five men.
Incomo lingered outside the door. Engaged in a silent struggle to control the heaving of his stomach, he watched his master finger the remains with long, inquisitive fingers. Tasaio ran his hand along an indentation in the neck of one body, barely a hair’s breadth below where the head had been severed. ‘This man was strangled,’ he muttered. ‘This is the work of a tong assassin.’ He examined the last body and discovered a tiny cloth fragment embroidered with a red flower, hidden in the corpse’s robe. ‘Hamoi!’ He arose, showing his anger as he spun to address Incomo. ‘After my gifts of metal, I should own that tong!’
The Minwanabi First Adviser interpreted his master’s glare as a warning. He bowed in instant obeisance. ‘Lord, your gifts were copious.’
‘This should not have happened!’ Tasaio said in ice-cold rage. ‘Send a messenger at once. I would have the Tong Master before my dais to explain himself.’
Incomo sank lower. ‘Your will, my Lord.’
He could not move his old knees fast enough to avoid the shove of Tasaio’s elbow as the master shouldered through the doorway.
‘Send this carrion back to the lime pit, then send word to my wife,’ the Lord barked at the nearest servant in earshot. ‘Tell her I wish a bath to remove the stink of rot from my flesh.’
Incomo reached his feet and considered the idea a sound one. He reflected soulfully on the little slave girl, and the delicious massage of her sponge, but the day’s upheavals were not over.
From his tub, Tasaio summoned in an endless succession of servants for interrogation. Many admitted to having seen the tong assassin who had come to commit the murders; a Patrol Leader even confessed to allowing the assassin entry through one of the checkpoints in the hills at the border of the estate.
The man’s explanation for allowing the murderer passage was inherently logical. ‘All soldiers know that my Lord purchased the tong’s loyalty. The man came openly to the checkpoint, stating he was on my Lord’s business, and showing a document.’
Tasaio heard this with narrowed eyes and tight lips. He motioned to Incomo in the negative, and sadly the First Adviser instructed the house scribe to write the warrior’s name on the list for immediate execution. The soldier would be dead before Tasaio was dry from his bath.
The Lady Incarna continued mechanically to sponge her husband’s back, but her cheeks were wax-white, and she looked sick around the eyes. Like a puppet on strings she soaped the lean muscular shoulders of the Lord of the Minwanabi over and over, until Tasaio tired of her attentions and snapped suddenly to his feet. Incarna dropped her sponge with a splash into the bath water and snatched back with a startled cry.
‘Silence, woman!’ Tasaio jerked his wet head, and towel slaves flew to attend him.
The guild messenger could not have chosen a worse moment for arrival, nor could the servant who scratched at the doorway to announce the man’s presence in the foyer, awaiting the master’s attendance.
In no mood to hurry, but impatient with his dresser nonetheless, Tasaio snatched the lightweight but heavily embroidered robe from his body servant. He flipped it over his shoulders, held-out his hand for his shell-decorated belt, then accepted the black-lacquered sheaths of his sword and dagger newly threaded on a soft needra-hide baldric. A slave laced on his sandals, and he finished his dressing with a light, padded jacket sewn with bone rings that offered the same protection as light armour without being as cumbersome.
‘Send the messenger to me in ,my personal armoury,’ he instructed his runner. Then he motioned for Incomo to follow and strode out, leaving his wife to oversee the slaves in the bath chamber as if her standing were no higher than an overseer’s.