Mulaghesh looks at him. “This Ghevalyev?” she asks.
He stares at her, openmouthed. She can’t tell if he’s impressed or if his face just does that.
“I understand there was a charcoal maker here until a few months ago,” she says. “Know where he would be?”
The boy just stares at her. Then there’s a voice from the yurt behind him: “Vim, the only damned reason I asked you to be out there in the first place is to keep. The goats. Outside.” There’s a frantic baa-ing, and a tiny goat scurries out the front flat of the yurt, springing away down the muddy road. “Now there’s shit all over the floor and it stole some of the turni—”
A big barrel-chested man exits the yurt and does a double take when he sees Mulaghesh sitting on her horse. “Oh,” he says. She watches carefully as his eyes take in her weapons: carousel, rifling, and sword. His look is much too watchful for her liking. “How can I…uh, help you?”
Mulaghesh smiles widely. “Good morning,” she says, her words ringing with forced cheer. “I’m General Turyin Mulaghesh of the Saypuri Military.”
“A general?” he says, surprised. “Here?”
“Seems to be so.”
“Oh. Well. My name is Drozhkin,” says the man. “And this is Vim.” He nudges the boy with the toe of his leather shoe. The boy, unsurprisingly, doesn’t react.
“Good morning to both of you,” she says. “I’m told there was a charcoal maker in this village once.”
“Was and once are the right words to use,” he says. “Mad bastard’s dead.”
“Mad?”
“Oh, yes. Mad as a hare in a collapsing tunnel. But most charcoal makers are. Part of the trade.”
“Why’s that?”
“Why?” he says, as if the question is absurd. “Because he had to spend days awake making sure the whole forest didn’t burn down. Poor bastard had to invent himself a one-legged stool to sit on. If he fell asleep then it’d tip and he’d fall on his ass. No surprise he murdered his wife. I’d go mad, too, if I had to stay awake that long.”
“I suppose you’d be surprised if I told you we actually don’t think he murdered her anymore,” says Mulaghesh.
“?‘We’ being”—his eyes trail over her uniform—“you.” The word drips with many unspoken sentiments, chief among them: And why would we care what you think?
“A family was killed southwest of here in nearly the same fashion. Four of them.”
“A whole family?” His face pales a little. “Zhurgut’s tears…What an abomination. So there is a killer, then?”
“Did anyone actually see him kill his wife?”
“No one wants to live next to a charcoal maker. But I heard a rumor Gozha said she saw…something. The night they died.”
“Gozha?”
“An old woman. Mushroom peddler. Also mad. Might be why she went to see Bohdan, so they could have something to talk about.”
Mulaghesh scribbles furiously. “And who’s Bohdan?”
“Who? The charcoal maker, of course. Don’t you know anything?”
“Apparently not,” says Mulaghesh. “So Gozha says she saw something the night Bohdan the charcoal maker got killed. Is that about the cut of it?”
“She didn’t say that,” he says hastily. “I just heard she acted like she did. I don’t have anything to do with this business. I’m…I’m not even sure I should be answering your questions. I mean…” He gestures to her. “Even this looks bad.”
“Tell me where Bohdan and Gozha both live,” she says, “and you won’t have any more to answer.”
***
After twenty more minutes of riding along forest lanes, the trees begin to thin out, replaced by stumps. It doesn’t take long to see why: up ahead is a filthy dirt clearing spotted with curious mounds of earth, almost like giant anthills or beehives, all reeking of cinder. Mulaghesh recognizes them as charcoal kilns: they’d make a pyramid of wood, cover it with earth, then set the exposed tip alight, letting it slowly smolder for days and days. And the maker would have to watch it carefully: if a log shifted the earth could collapse, allowing in too much air, and the pile of wood would go up in a flash—along with most of the forest, probably. A filthy, miserable way to make a living, she thinks to herself. But at least it’s a living….
She sees the living quarters up ahead, if it could even be called such: it’s a misshapen wooden box of a structure, set atop a long dirt hill. Mulaghesh gets the impression that the charcoal maker didn’t invest much effort in his home, as there was always a chance it could go up in flames. Perhaps it had burned down before, only to have him rebuild it.
Mulaghesh looks around the clearing. Then she ties up her horse, considers the angle of the home, and begins walking through the surrounding forest, trying to find the best angle where she can see both the front and the back of the house….
It doesn’t take long for her to find it: another blind, created from clippings from fir trees. These clippings have browned considerably by now, making it easier to spot, but when the blind was first made it would have been almost invisible—hence why the original investigation team never found it. That, and they didn’t know to look.
Mulaghesh shoves the branches away. Again, she sees that whoever made it cleared the forest floor of needles. Perhaps this mysterious observer, thinks Mulaghesh, possesses an unusually sensitive backside. She looks around for some sign or spoor and finds nothing. As she starts to withdraw she pauses, stoops, and looks again.
Carved into the trunk of a tree is an unusual sign, but a familiar one to her: the crude image of a sword with the hilt made of a severed hand.
“The sword of Voortya,” says Mulaghesh, touching it with two fingers.
She imagines this person, whoever they were, sitting behind this blind, carving this into the tree….She gets the impression that this was not an act of reverence but rather boredom, just something to occupy the time. Someone patient, then, waiting a long time for the right opportunity.
She walks back to the hut on the dirt mound. It has no door—it’s been torn off the hinges, somehow—so she walks in. It’s the same on the inside as it is on the outside: just a simple wooden box built of scrap wood. The floor is wood slats, the ceiling patched over with skins. At first Mulaghesh thinks the floor looks unusually dark, but then she realizes it’s stained—the residue of the blood of Bohdan’s wife. To most people the stain would look unusually large, but Mulaghesh is quite aware that the human body possesses more blood than one would expect.