Justicar Jhee and the Cursed Abbey

by Trevol Swift

  “It’s not your fault, Justicar.”

  “Nevertheless, it is still my problem. Kanto tried to inform me about an issue important to him, Bax. I dismissed him. I should have listened. I should have made time. Come. We must hurry.”

  “Don’t be worried, Justicar. Mr. Kanto probably just went to the springs or to visit with the refugees.”

  “My hope is you’re right.”

  “Should we go back to the Corrections Hall?”

  “No, Mr. Pol is unlikely to return there so soon. Not since we are likely to be watching it. Pyrmo. She may have answers.”

  When they entered Pyrmo’s room, the former abbess was still slumped in her chair sleeping restlessly.

  Jhee stalked over. When she moved touched Pyrmo’s shoulder to wake her, she noticed Pyrmo’s yellowish pallor. Her skin cold and clammy. She shook and coughed.

  “What did you take?” Jhee fumbled in her sleeves for her elixir. She had used it all on Lady Bathsheba. “Bax, hand me the spare elixir.”

  Pyrmo collapsed against Jhee. Jhee flipped Pyrmo onto her back. Bax handed her the elixir vial, and she tipped it to Pyrmo’s lips. “Please, Bright Harmony and Mr. Pol.”

  Pyrmo coughed the elixir back out. “This life is just mist.”

  The abbess frothed at the mouth, shuddered, then stopped moving.

  “No!” Jhee hunched over Pyrmo’s lifeless body. “She was our last link.”

  Bax brushed her shoulder in reassurance. A flask weighted down a note on the lacquer side table: “Best not to leave a mess. You are shrewder and more resourceful than we gave you credit for.”

  Jhee examined the flask. It wasn’t the one Pyrmo drank from earlier or in the storehouse. “This is a different flask. She was murdered.”

  She found the servant’s door unlocked.

  “I locked it I swear, Justicar.”

  Jhee believed him. They made a quick search of the crypts. Its mists now made her uneasy. A ringing, a quiver of eagerness filled it now.

  Their urgency brought them to the mineral springs. Jhee’s heart skipped a beat. She carefully examined each. Thankfully, she found them empty with no trace of Kanto. She breathed a sigh of relief. Now, they still had to hurry.

  “Where else, Justicar?”

  “Where indeed? This wind-blasted abbey has so many twists and turns and nooks to it. Let’s limit his means off this rock then.”

  After Jhee and Bax alerted the licit boat captains, they rushed to the smugglers’ notch. The captain and her crew worked the deck as if in preparation to leave. Upon sight of Jhee, the captain worried her ear. “Magistrate, we were just securing our ship.”

  “No lies right now, captain. You’re clearly taking a lay out while the weather is passable. My husband is missing. Has he or anyone else approached you to book passage? You have seen no one unusual while you prepared?”

  “Nay.”

  “May I have leave to examine your holds?”

  “Now, wait one moment, magistrate. I reckon we’ve been more than accommodating—.”

  “As have I. No other authority has come to trouble you. If it were my intention, to change that I would have. I assure you my concern is larger than poaching or smuggling.” She and Bax did a quick search. They even ferreted out a few false panels and holds much to the captain’s chagrin. No trace of her husband. “Is the wine the only cargo you smuggle?”

  “Nay. We do a little fishing what to feed ourselves and our kin with. Well, and the items what you already knows about.”

  Jhee cornered the gang-affiliated crewman she identified her last visit. “What manner of fineries did you procure?”

  “All sorts. Caviar. Roe. Abalone. Forest Cologne. Sur Dale root and leaf. Jassar silks.”

  “Silks?”

  “Aye, mum.”

  “Was it always Prospectives who came to procure the items?”

  “No, mum. I weren’t always required to bring goods in. Times they needed me to send items out. Them times it were either a man or a lady what gave them to me.”

  “Would you recognize either if you saw them again?”

  “Aye, mum.”

  Jhee fished out Kanto’s sketchbook. She leafed through the sketches.

  “There, that be the man.”

  The crewman had stopped on the picture of Mr. Pol. Jhee continued to go through the images. “Her. She wore a cloak what kept her face hidden, but I recognize this symbol.”

  Rage threatened to consume Jhee. She resorted to counting and statute recitation to calm herself. Under the circumstances, she could not risk misusing her siren module on herself. “Captain, please, might you delay your departure in the chance I have need of you.”

  “Mum, we tarry for days at your say so while our family like t’starve and we sore miss ‘em.”

  “I know. I know. Please, a little longer.”

  “An hour or two maybe, but after that, we will leave.”

  “If it comes to that, ensure none but your crew are on board.”

  “Ye have my word on it.”

  As Jhee left, the captain seized the crew member by the scruff and clout them on the ears.

  Echoes at the Courtyard Shrine

  Every distorted noise in the distance became the most horrid cries. What was happening to Jhee’s rejected husband? What were those fiend folk doing to Kanto? Gentle souls like him and Mirrei would be mistreated by this world. The Makers put those like Jhee here to protect and keep them. She had failed. In her obsession with puzzles and the law, she had sore neglected both. Now Kanto had met an unknown fate because she could not spare him a few moments attention. She did not want him to die in fear and hurt thinking they had not cared. That he would not be missed. Shep’s mental health and Mirrei’s physical health had deteriorated. Kanto felt abandoned and unappreciated.

  She kept an idealized image of Miramar, Mirrei’s mother and her childhood friend, in mind. Of the complicated relationship between Jhee, Shep, and her. Of her standing defiant against the waves. Miramar had wished to sleep under the waves which held her loved ones and families remains. The same waves which had claimed their home atoll soon after.

  Jhee erred. It had been her responsibility to see her cohort safely to the capital as she had promised Kanto’s grandmamere and sworn in remembrance of Mirrei’s mamere. She had pledged to Kanto’s grand dame and Mirrei’s dame they would have the best she had to offer. She had meant monetarily. Yet, that turned out to be a pauper’s meal which had done nothing to nourish their essences.

  In her search, Jhee found herself at the courtyard shrine. She knelt and removed her headwear. She clasped her wrists. “First and Greatest Makers, I beg of you, please, let me find Kanto safe and unharmed. If you do, I promise to honor him and cherish him as I do Shep. I promise to respect his wishes and not take him for granted.”

  Jhee breathed in the breath of the salt and sea. She got the sense of being watched. The Forebears. Those in the waves and those in the sky gaze favorably upon us in the liminal realm until the time of our Remaking come.

  Of her spouses, Jhee understood Kanto the least. She and Shep were content to sit and enjoy each other’s company. She didn’t feel this pressure to do “something.” She and Mirrei could talk books or arcana. She and Kanto fought or walked on new crab shells around each other.

  What did Kanto get from their relationship other than the obvious? Jhee did not know what he saw when he looked at her. There was the core mechanism of it. Shep saw her with an old lover’s gaze, one born of youthful affection and years of bonding. Mirrei saw her with gratefulness or as a successful older woman to emulate.

  What did Kanto see when he looked at her? This woman he had been sold to. Sure, she and his grand dame had dressed it up in pretty words and a contract, with other particulars of the arrangement worked out by Shep, Kanto, and Kanto’s grand dame. But it involved an exchange of value for him, though not monetary. She had bought Kanto. And she planned to sell him again once they reached the capital. Older women passed
men and women as young and cultivated as him around like fine art.

  Kanto’s disappearance was the same as it was with those missing young men. We were so concerned with the death of the more prestigious individual, the fate and absence of the less prestigious nearly went unremarked and unnoticed. Another overlooked, passed over for more intriguing and immediate concerns. If some calamity befalls Kanto, I will never forgive myself.

  “He hears things. He’s very observant. Jhee, he’s smarter than you give him credit for,” Shep had said once.

  What did Kanto see or hear that sent him rushing out into the night? Jhee brought out Kanto’s sketchbook and conch. She cursed herself. She had predicated her search on Kanto’s foolhardiness. What she should have done was trusted his talents, namely his ear and his eye. To combat the sense of impropriety she felt viewing his drawings, she skipped past any which appeared to have been drawn before their arrival. She came upon a sketch of the household in the courtyard. The illustration depicted her with the flowing hair of waves and seaweed common to the Lady of the Isles imagery from back home. He had drawn himself in lightly as a cupbearer with Mirrei and Shep as her standard-bearers. Roughed in around them were the wall with the abbey’s sigil and the arches, pillars, and pedestals bearing several Makers’ marks and offerings.

  Jhee blessed him for his practicality and cleverness when she found a document entitled “Time Codes.” Inside it had recording names and times codes for audio snips he had found interesting. The last two notes read “Whisper Wall” and “Dead Zone.”

  She listened to a few recordings of the Prospectives telling the stories of how they had arrived at the abbey. They relayed tales of tiny, overloaded crafts capsizing; the sounds of the screams and then the eerie silence; the image of hands scrabbling for any piece of flotsam only to disappear under the waves to never resurface. Jhee’s chest only allowed shallow breaths. She imagined a calm shore to block out the images. She skipped ahead to the sea songs and shanties of the refugees at the camps. Waves and winds crashed in the background. She scrolled back to the Prospectives telling their stories. More waves and wind performed as undertones to their accounts.

  She rewound again. The Prospectives stories had all been captured inside the abbey either in the central hall or Prayer Hall as they undertook their duties. Where was the sound of waves and wind coming from?

  Jhee stared at his sketch of the courtyard. Then she looked at the direction where she had seen the strange occurrence. The wall with the abbey’s sigil. The bridge and the sword. So much had happened since she had arrived, she almost forgot about the mysterious sight she had seen her first night here. She examined Kanto’s sketch again. In his drawing, the bridge and the sword were joined upright with the sword pierced through the bridge. The same as they were on the entrance gates. The mark she saw now, and on the first night, the sword and the bridge were separated. The bridge was oriented up and down and the sword horizontal. The crenelations atop the wall were offset from each other with one double row then a single. The drawing showed only two rows. It could have been a fanciful interpretation like his sketch of their family. Yet, he had been painstakingly accurate and literal about every other architectural feature he had drawn since he got here.

  Lost Prospectives and whispers and music from within the walls. Walls more than two meters thick. Why build internal walls that thick? Jhee consulted her map.

  Jhee approached the sigil. It was not single emblem hung or carved on the wall as she had assumed, but two pieces. She placed a hand on the bridge and the sword then rotated it.

  “I have become something of a hermit.”

  “Sister Serra, the vizier, even the prioress, and Sister Elkanah consulted.”

  As Jhee turned, the sword and bridge rejoined. The wall reconfigured amidst a grinding of stone and dust. She rotated the emblem the opposite way. The masonry flowed aside to reveal a secret passageway. A slight breeze hit her face. From a few steps back, the wall appeared seamless except for the crenelations.

  “I’ve barely left my chambers.”

  “The vizier and I consulted.”

  Jhee took up her map and a glow torch. She passed through the opening.

  When Jhee pocketed the conchs, her hand brushed the handkerchief containing barnacles. “The second you’ve acquired...” She compared it to Elkanah’s ripped garment scrap. Similar, but not exact. She had gotten this one from Leigh’s belongings. Where had the second come from? The infirmary.

  The trick Kanto and Mirrei pulled with the pillows. “...none of our patients went missing.” According to Sister Zalver. And her questionable faculties. How closely had she checked?

  The opening led to a narrow corridor which ran alongside the principal axes. Jhee made her way along the passageway. Different colors and textures of stone composed the opposite sides of the passage. One side also displayed signs of weathering. The passage must have been added later. Every few minutes, she heard the sound of metal striking stone. As she got closer, the noises were preceded by a moist thud. Whack-shink-whack. Thud. Whack-shink-whack.

  The passageway opened onto a hexagonal room. Just inside the entrance, a mechanized puppet missing an arm and foot lay propped against the wall. Meanwhile, the noises continued ahead. A figure in a mask stood before a coral altar. Their arm raised to reveal a bloody cleaver which they brought down on a slab of meat on the platform.

  The masked figure doused the altar with rancid fluid from a black keg. She snatched up a cattle prod. Then with one swift motion set the table alight with godspark. Blue-green flames leaped into the sky. She removed her fanged, re-breather mask and apron which she threw onto the pyre. She spread her arms wide. The flames grew higher. She gestured in an upsweep. The fire consumed everything on the table and then vanished.

  Jhee moved up behind her. Munching and squishing noises began.

  “Nice trick. Since I doubt you discovered the secret of true making, I assume that leads to a waste chute. Am I in the presence of the Wave Witch, or should I say the Mist Abbess?” Jhee held her glow orb higher. “Or shall I call you vizier?”

  26 The Low Chamber

  The Low Spire

  Lady Bathsheba turned to Jhee. She smiled at Jhee with a blood-stained mouth, a half-chewed heart in her hands.

  “I have a flair for the dramatic. I do hope you were impressed.” She gulped down the last of the heart. “Now, his spirit will serve me in the realms to come. Lady Bathsheba will be fine. I must congratulate you on finding my little hobby chamber. A gallery of horrors of some sort. I arrogated it for more pleasurable pursuits.”

  “I’m not so sure if the men you abducted thought so.”

  “Seduced. I’d never take you for such a prude, Justicar. You’d be surprised how agreeable they found my company.”

  “You or the gifts you showered them with?”

  “Spoken with the contempt of finery and riches only capable by one who has never been without them. Rather than as achievements, comforts, you view my enticements as bribes. Luxuries these men could never hope to possess on their own. A glimpse of a life which under normal circumstances would never be theirs. Fine wines and delicacies. Delights they would have never tasted on their backwater, provincial isles. They were then more pliable and predisposed to the sorts of women they would meet in the larger towns. Once having learned some grace or refinement, they would be better able to make their way in the cities. It is a buyer’s market out there. Oh, to be there myself. It is very similar to the learning husband situation most were already accustomed to. It’s obvious you had similar plans for Bright Harmony. Was what I did so much different from you? Was it also not how you married him in the first place? I gave these boys opportunities they would not have otherwise had. I was really doing them a service as well as my clients in the city.”

  “Spoken with the arrogance and self-delusion of every predator I’ve ever dealt with.”

  “Please, Jhee, I’m quite a cut above those provincial villains in your stories. Basic
competence, let alone, dare I say it, genius, is a trait sorely lacking nowadays. Like Thaedra with her salon of great thinkers and talented students. The best and the brightest who drove each other to innovate and experiment. You yourself can attest to the insights we are still gleaning from their body of works. To be sure Thaedra was no Canon. I feel a kinship with her. You think Thaedra, surrounded by such young and vigorous company, did not succumb at least once or twice. I’m apt to think her salon was as much a dating pool as a place of study.”

  Lady Bathsheba bent by the puppet and deposited the recovered piece of the triptych or polyptych into a gilded metal and hardwood strongbox. The lady grinned and wiped her mouth with a silken, amethyst sash. A dark chunk fell from the altar with a wet smack: a partially charred hand. Jhee’s heart dropped to the great depths.

  “You fiend.” Jhee drew the elements and slammed Lady Bathsheba against the wall with a burst of air.

  Lady Bathsheba laughed and picked herself up off the floor. “You really must calm yourself.”

  The First Makers only knew what Jhee might have done if the altar were still ablaze. “Vizier Bathsheba of Toho and Wilobeia, by the power invested in me by the dual sovereigns of the Six Isles, I—”

  “Please, Justicar, let’s return to my chamber for some kolal before you finish your accusation.”

  Lady Bathsheba hitched up her skirts and walked past Jhee. Jhee opened her mouth to protest.

  “I assure you it will be a career-ending phrase for you, not me. Shall we return to my chamber? I need to refresh myself.”

  Jhee stared at the smoking, blood-stained altar. She had promised his grandam. His well-being had been her responsibility.

  “They say this place was built by an evil necromancer, a rival of Thaedra. I fell in love with the acoustics the moment I arrived. One of the few compelling traits this backwater boasts. Aside from the ghastly statues. Most remarkable. In the Corrections Hall, you must have seen some of the more salacious, sordid episodes in this place’s history. I’d say my activities barely rate in comparison.