“Yes, sir!” I said, popping up.
His gray-maned face appeared in the ladder hatch. “Damn. There’s no way I could fit down here…” He blinked, waved flies from his face, then narrowed his eyes. “And you’re down there with a dead fella, by the stink of it.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “This Suberek, I think. Man who owned the mill. He’s dead.”
“How?”
“Hole in his head, sir. Like someone drilled it.”
His eyes narrowed. “Hole in his head…Sanctum. That’s just like the other.”
I nodded, attempting to look solemn. “Aristan, yes. Ana told me about her.”
He squinted at me. “Strovi tells me you’re the one who put those bodies in the mud out there. That so?”
“Two should be the captain’s, sir. The others are…mine, I suppose, yes.”
His face went strangely shuttered. “Interesting…And he said you just remembered. Is that it?”
“Remembered my training. Yes, sir.”
“Interesting,” he said again. “Hmph. Then let’s get you out of there. Whole crew’s arriving now. They’ll be hollering for answers soon, no doubt.”
CHAPTER 22
| | |
“IT ALL BEGINS TO show,” said Uhad wearily, “a rather appalling pattern.”
I glanced about the room as we listened. All of the primary team was there, standing amid the shadowy machinery of the little mill: Uhad leaned gloomily at the head of the worktable, like a starving blue stork staring into a fishless creek; seated to his right was Ana, blindfolded and bent, her fingers probing the indentations and scars on the worktable surface; across from Ana sat Nusis, still pert and cheery and nodding even at this late hour, her red coat pressed and impeccable; and there at the back of the workshop, half-lost in the bunches of drying parchfern, stood Kalista, somehow glamorous and glittering despite all the gloom about her, her clay pipe clutched in her mouth. She seemed to very much resent being brought here: the courtesan dove sulking in its cage, perhaps.
“We can now safely conclude we are pursuing two killers, I think,” said Uhad. “One who kills with dappleglass, and one who kills with a spike to the skull. The dappleglass killer has apparently vanished, but this new one appears to still be about…and killing quite enthusiastically.” He paused, his face grim. “Yet before we speculate further, I would prefer a more experienced eye review this most recent body.” He turned to Nusis. “I believe as an Apoth, Immunis, you are somewhat used to the handling of cadavers…”
Nusis’s cheery smile vanished. She sighed, shrugged off her red Apoth’s coat, carefully folded it, and laid it on her chair. “I shall go see,” she said, then retreated into the reeking hallways.
“Won’t you need a lantern?” called Miljin after her.
“No,” said her voice in answer. “I can see perfectly well in the dark.”
There was a surprised silence. Then Miljin scoffed and shook his head. “Damn Apoths…”
“Are we sure that we have two killers?” asked Kalista. “The first person felled by this spike to the skull was Blas’s secretary, yes. And that seems likely related to Blas’s own horrid corruption, eliminating anyone who might know things they oughtn’t. But why Suberek? Why murder a simple fernpaper miller?”
“I cannot imagine,” confessed Uhad. “Unless Blas talked to this fernpaper miller…Yet that challenges the imagination.”
Ana cocked her head, grinning. “Or we are being too conservative in our estimation of ‘cleaning up’!”
All eyes slowly turned to her.
“What might you mean by that?” asked Uhad.
She shrugged. “Perhaps there is someone out there who does not want us finding out how or when or where any of these poisonings took place—for that would lead to yet more discoveries of corruption. If we assume that, and also assume Suberek provided fernpaper to help cover up the killings…well, then it would make very good sense to kill him!”
There was an uneasy silence.
“If that is so,” said Uhad, “we must find the destination of Suberek’s last delivery.”
“Agreed,” said Ana. “Din—before you join the search…” She held up a finger. “A word, please.”
I moved to her as the others started to dig through the mill. “Yes, ma’am?”
“I would like for you to take me to the stables, if only for a moment.”
I held out my arm. She grasped it and I led her outside.
* * *
—
THE BODIES WERE gone now. All that was left was mud, blood, and the handful of Legion officers standing at the wall.
Ana stopped in the middle of the yard, face still angled to me, pale and cadaverous in the moonlight. “How are you doing? Are you well?”
“I’m all right, ma’am,” I said.
“What? Absurd. People tried to kill you, and you apparently killed them instead. How could you possibly be all right?”
“It was all very fast,” I said quietly. “I didn’t think at all while it…while it happened.”
There was a short silence, broken only by the muttering of the Legionnaires just past the gate.
“Well, you aren’t limping,” she said tersely. “Your pulse in your arm is strong and steady. And you aren’t gasping for breath. So you’re not hurt.”
“I’d have told you if I was, ma’am.”
“Yes, but you’re the dutiful sort of stupid young man who would hide an injury out of honor,” she snapped. “And I wished to be sure.”
I looked at her, surprised at the anger in her voice. Her wiry fingers dug into my arm like she was trying to hold me still.
“Have I done something wrong, ma’am?” I asked.
“Miljin said you killed two and disabled one,” she said. “Is that correct?”
“Possibly. I…I didn’t stay to confirm,” I said stiffly.
“He also said Strovi claims you fought remarkably well. That you said you remembered how to fight. Is that correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Describe it,” she said sharply. “Describe how that felt.”
I did so, struggling to articulate the queer feeling of my muscles remembering the movements, and then moving me about through space like I were furniture being moved in a room.
She nodded when I finished. “And back in Daretana. The way you made tea for me—you did it the exact same way, every time. Right down to the turn of the pestle.”
“Pardon, ma’am?”
“And then later, when Uxos tried to kill me. You moved quickly and attacked him quickly. Practically without thinking at all.”
I said nothing.
“And then there is your lockpicking,” she said. “You do not remember how to do it, exactly. You simply remember the movements.”
“Have I done something wrong, ma’am?” I asked again.
“No. But you’ve done something interesting. And to be honest, of all the things I’d expected to find interesting here, Din, I had not thought you’d be among them. Nor had I wished you to be. Thank Sanctum they were only deserters! When I first heard you’d been attacked at Suberek’s, I…I thought…”
“Thought what?”
She shook her head. Even though she was blindfolded, I could see fear in her face—the first time I’d ever seen any fear in it at all.
“It’s nothing,” she said.
“Doesn’t seem to be nothing, ma’am.”
“Well, it is, damn it! And now that I think of it, you did do something wrong, Din! You should have checked the building completely before going down into that basement!”
“Why?” I said.
“Because you didn’t know if you were truly alone in the house!” she said. “There could have been someone else in there with you, and you might not have known! Another deserter or…or something worse. You need to be smarter, child. I don’t get on well without an assistant, and I damned sure don’t want to lose you now!” She poked me in the chest. “People have been killed in this city for knowing things they shouldn’t—like Suberek! And Aristan! Yet it is our job to know things. Act accordingly to make sure you aren’t cleaned up as well!”
“You think this new killer is foolish enough to come after an Iudex officer, ma’am?”
“Of course. Of course!”