The undercaptain shakes his head and asks, “What happened?”
“Didn’t you see?”
“You were talking to someone … and then there was something like a small chaos-bolt, and you got to him with your blade, and he turned to ashes. But then someone hit Mykel with chaos … I saw everything after that—Oestyn, Jhosef … and the heir.” Norstaan shivers.
The fact that the dead and vanished wizard had managed to cloud the minds of Norstaan and likely the rankers from First Squad is another chilling reminder to Lerial of just how complex the situation in Afrit was … and likely still is. “There were two chaos-mages. I never sensed the second one because the first was so strong he overshadowed the other. The second one was likely his assistant.”
“Jhosef … he wanted to use Mykel … didn’t he?”
“Like a puppet, a marionette,” Lerial confirmed.
“Who would ever have thought … a produce merchanter … a frigging produce merchanter…”
Strauxyn and several Afritan Guards hurry into the vast entry hall, where the fine particles of dust and ash are slowly settling.
“Ser?” asks the undercaptain, his eyes widening as he takes in the three bodies sprawled on the white and brown tiles and the few metal items and coins scattered amid the ashes that are all that remains of the two chaos-mages.
“Jhosef’s chaos-mage attacked. I stopped him, and when I did, his control over Oestyn and Mykel vanished. The moment Jhosef thought we’d be able to rescue Mykel, he ordered the other chaos-mage to kill everyone. We didn’t know there was a second mage. He started with Mykel, then me. I stopped him, too, but while I was doing that, Oestyn must have grabbed his father’s belt knife, and he stabbed his father so quickly and so deeply that no healer could have saved him, even if I’d wanted to. Then Oestyn slit his own throat.” Lerial knows that the first part of his explanation is not true. But what else could you have done? Or said? Besides, in a way the chaos-mage had attacked, with his insidiously and false projections.
“Oestyn slit his own throat?”
“He did,” Norstaan confirms. “He said he tried, that he was so sorry, and then he just … slashed his own neck. Overcaptain Lerial tried to stop the blood, but he couldn’t.”
After a long silence, Strauxyn clears his throat, once, and again, before he finally speaks. “Now what, ser?”
“We’ll stay here this evening,” replies Lerial. “I intend to make a thorough search and inventory of the entire estate. We also need to do what we can to prepare the heir’s body for return to Swartheld.” As well as deal with a few other matters. More than a few, Lerial fears.
LII
Two glasses later, Lerial surveys Jhosef’s personal study, with a pair of lancers standing guard in the doorway behind him. A windowed door that overlooks the lake to the east is flanked on each side by two wide windows, beyond which is a roofed terrace graced by a circular table and chairs. The table is covered with a brown-bordered linen cloth, tied down as indicated by the fact that the cloth does not move or flutter in the light breeze. The study floor is composed of the same glistening white and brown tiles that appear everywhere throughout the villa, although most of the study tiles are covered by a rich light brown carpet that has a border design of intertwined golden chains. The draperies, tied back with golden ropes, are of velvet the same shade as the rich brown of the carpet.
The north wall of the study consists of a fireplace flanked by goldenwood bookcases that extend only as high as the top of the fireplace mantel, a flat shelf that holds two small busts of Jhosef, one at each end. The entire mantel structure appears to have been sculpted out of a pale tan marble. The fire area is concealed by a decorative bronze screen featuring an image of the villa itself as seen from the east side of the lake. Each bookcase has four large shelves, but only the second shelf from the top contains books. The top of each bookcase and the other three shelves contain an assortment of ornate boxes, each one different from any other, and of a variety of materials and sizes, and include small golden boxes, oblong silver boxes, and even one formed of interlocking triangles of lapis lazuli.
The wide pedestal goldenwood desk set out from the south wall of the study has an inlaid border on the top that matches the carpet design. Bronze lamps on each side of the desktop have mirrors on the outer side, slightly tilted forward, presumably to focus the reflected light on the center of the desk to allow easier reading after dark. The chair pulled back from the desk is upholstered in the same padded brown leather as the two armchairs that face the fireplace.