Tasha, in her own mind, snorted. Dull pragmatism, was it, to put the bone-knives and justice both in the hands of a real, solid person? More rightly say that they were a bit odd, up in the far north in Marja. Wishy-washy ideas. Even Nanda could be a bit that way, on occasion.
Nuritov was right. Whatever force wielded those two knives was mortal.
‘So do we have any reason to think either of our two victims were killers?’ said Tasha shortly afterwards, as the inspector, with a curt word of thanks to the shopkeep, led the way outside. ‘I don’t hold with the notion of destiny, but I might have competition. And if the second knife is new, it might have been made from some victim of Timof Vak’s, despite his youth.’
‘Speculation,’ said the inspector. He held up a hand to forestall the objections that began to spill from Tasha’s lips. ‘But that, too, is a question that must be asked.’
Chapter Five
Konrad sat under a tree.
He had spent some little time attempting to determine — or to remember — what kind of tree it was. He did not know how long. Once, it had been possible to count time into little pieces and watch each one pass, the way he did now with a fall of the tree’s leaves. One — two — three — leaves went floating away upon the dry air, cast up one after another, and let fly. He had measured time that way, once, seconds drifting past one after another, turning into minutes and hours and dying away.
The tree. The tree was everything and nothing. Old, for its trunk and branches twisted and turned like logic, like supposed facts in a thorny case, convoluted and fathomless. Young, for the leaves — those airy, drifting leaves — were fresh and bright and vivid, though their colours changed with every glance Konrad bestowed upon them. Green. Indigo. Crimson. Rose. Fading, always, into the same dead, dull black, or featureless white, before vanishing altogether.
He had a seat under the logicless tree, a cold one made of nothing, but solid enough. It bore his weight as he sat there, at least, sat and threw leaves away and waited.
He was waiting. What for? He no longer knew. Nothing. Everything. Only faint, disjointed impressions penetrated the haze of his thoughts: the flash of brightness, followed by agony, and redness, and a sense of drowning. A face before him: one he knew, and loved, but who did not seem to love him. A darkness somewhere near at hand, and another love, and—
Nothing. He remembered less and less with every discarded leaf, as though he stripped himself of memory when he plucked leaves off the tree, and threw them carelessly into oblivion. Perhaps he did.
Eternity had crawled sluggishly past before a change occurred. A ripple came, like a hand plunged into cold water, and nothingness was gone for the present. A leaf, a pretty frilled-edged specimen he had been preparing to cast aloft, was plucked from his fingers.
‘You should not,’ said someone, without specifying what it was that Konrad should not.
Konrad looked, observing with scant interest the figure of another soul before him. Or… not a soul. A thing. Insubstantial and black and white and strange, not unlike Konrad himself, a solidity among the nothing.
It had a face. Konrad watched the face, and the lips moved.
‘Someone is looking for you,’ said the thing.
‘Looking,’ Konrad repeated. ‘For me.’
‘The Malykant, as was. Another one.’
The face, Konrad thought. He had seen it before. Forever ago, or only recently, or both. This face, and its attendant body (if such it could be called, being a construct of smoke and cruelty and absence) had appeared before him, and bowed, and had then torn him away into nothingness and — left him there. Here. Under this tree. ‘You,’ he said slowly. ‘The Gatekeeper.’
‘You remember. That is a good sign. I did not like to tell your friend, how little survives the — passing.’
‘My friend.’
‘Remarkable,’ said the Gatekeeper. ‘Someone wants the Malykant back.’
The Malykant. The word spoke to him with its own cadence, setting off an echo deep within. Malykant. He knew the word. Hated it? Loved it.
There was no deciding, not with the tree arching above him and the leaves all around. He took another one.
‘Stop that,’ said the Gatekeeper, and took it away from him. ‘Dead people. Have you no sense?’
Konrad said nothing.
‘Do you wish to be found?’ said the Gatekeeper.
The word friend touched him, too, and he almost remembered — a glimpse — paleness — anger?
Nanda, said something in his heart, and he sat up, blinking. ‘Is it Nanda?’
The Gatekeeper bent down and down, studying Konrad like a specimen of some remarkable and peculiar thing. ‘That, I think, was a clear memory,’ he said.
It was. Konrad remembered. Paleness: white face, ice-blonde hair, pale blue eyes. A twinkle of humour there, the quirk of her lips into a mischievous smile, a set look of anger. Warmth. ‘Nanda,’ he said again, clutching hard at the vision, before it could fade back into the soup of nothing in which he drifted. ‘Yes. I wish to be found.’
The Gatekeeper floated up to a great height, until his feet cleared the top of Konrad’s head. He hovered up there, a mass of smoke and shadow, looking down and down upon the felled Malykant before him. ‘I have a feeling,’ he said, ‘I am going to be in trouble for this.’
And he was gone.
Konrad remembered trouble, too. He had always been getting in trouble, for nothing was quite right with the way that he was. He felt too much — then too little — then, again, too much; he had too little conscience, or an excess of it; he performed his duty with unseemly zeal, or with a deplorable lack of enthusiasm. Whatever balance The Malykt, The Shandrigal and Diana between them had expected of him, he had perennially failed to strike it.
Perhaps someone else would do a better job.
Nanda.
He let the thoughts go, watched them fade into the nothing without regret. What did it matter now? He was dead. He would never have to care for, or worry about, or regret, anything ever again.
Yet somehow, he did. One thing, one face, one name. Nanda. He let those things go, too, but slowly, reluctantly, clinging onto them until the last possible second.
The leaves. He took another from a low-hanging bough, and put it in his mouth. It tasted… cold.
Ouch, said something, cross and prickly.
Konrad spat. Out of his mouth came the leaf — no, not a leaf. A wisp. Smokely and dark — pale — everything? Nothing.
Master, said the same voice, still cross, and the wispy, smokely thing stretched itself out. Stretched and stretched into a long, thin thing, with lambent eyes — everything — and a palpable chill, like a pint-sized winter. A serpent. Sort of.
The serpent-thing shook itself. Master! What are you doing up here?
Konrad stared.
Dead, said the snake crossly, the tip of its tail lashing. Dead, dead, dead.
‘You… like dead things,’ said Konrad, memories wafting up out of the soup again. ‘Ootapi?’
I love dead things, grinned the snake. But not a dead you! Master! What possessed you?
‘To what? Die?’ He frowned. ‘I can’t remember. Did I have a choice?’
You did some stupid things, said Ootapi, and with a sudden, darting movement, sank its fangs into Konrad’s — what? Soul? He had no body now, and neither did the snake, but the teeth penetrated anyway. Penetrated something.
Ouch.
‘That does not sound impossible,’ Konrad allowed. He remembered — vaguely — doing a great many foolish things. Nanda had often told him of them.
Nanda.
‘Is it true?’ he said. ‘Is Nanda coming?’
She is here, confirmed the snake. Somewhere.
She’d met the Gatekeeper. Did that mean… ‘Is she dead, too?’ Distress, faint but potent, shredded his befuddled serenity.
Not dead. Which means she is stupider than you. What a feat.
The snake bit again, and again, and Kon
rad found himself driven to his feet, and out from under the leafy tree.
Up, said Ootapi. Fool. The longer you sit here, the less of you will be left when Nanda arrives.
Konrad stumbled beyond the edge of the canopy, and stood blinking in a light that hurt his eyes. He could see nothing beyond the blaze of it, sense nothing. ‘But,’ he gulped. ‘Where are we going?’
We are going to meet Nanda. Or did you plan to let her do all the work?
***
‘Where did you get that?’ said Fros, eyes wide, her hand darting towards the exquisite bone knife Tasha had unwisely withdrawn from her pocket.
Tasha snatched it away. ‘Don’t touch it. It isn’t mine.’
‘Of course it’s not yours,’ said Fros, rolling her eyes. ‘They’re never yours. What do you think it will fetch?’
‘I didn’t steal it and I’m not selling it.’
‘What did you bring it here for, then?’
Why had she, in fact? She had wanted to tell her old friends about it. About her new role, her new life. Fros was her best friend, wasn’t she? Had been ever since she had arrived at Noster House five years ago, soon after Tasha. Shouldn’t she be the perfect confidante?
But Fros sat with her back half-turned to Tasha, ensconced on the divan before the fire, flicking her pale hair and glowering into the flames. Her lack of interest in the knife, or anything Tasha had done to procure it, could not be more obvious.
‘Better hide it,’ added Fros without turning her head. ‘Genri will have it if you don’t.’
Tasha restored the knife to her pocket. She had retained the smaller of the two, the larger remaining with Nuritov. She was supposed to be researching the thing, seeking more information as to who might have wielded it. Or what any of the knife’s strange history might have to do with the stolen eyes.
Instead, she’d come home, gone into her room on the fourth floor and shut the door. She had intended to copy the inspector’s trick of deep thinking, shutting herself away from distractions and bending all her mental powers upon the problems of the case until some new idea occurred to her.
She’d sat shivering and brooding for a whole hour, and nothing had occurred to her.
Some Malykant she made.
Tiring of this process, she’d ventured down into the girls’ parlour, hoping to find Fros at home. Which she was, garbed in a frilled gown she’d stolen out of somebody’s laundry and with her hair in ringlets. Waiting for Androniki, probably. She talked of little else, now.
Tasha turned to leave. She should have gone to Bakar House in the first place. It wasn’t the same without Konrad there, but it felt more… hers.
Idiot. It is not yours.
Bakar House would never be hers, Malykant or not. So if the home of her lamaeni years no longer felt like hers either, where could she now go?
Nuritov. She could consult him. Her new life had begun a year ago, when he’d adopted her into the police. Perhaps he would be willing to help her find somewhere to go.
Or maybe she could stop being feeble and solve the problem herself. Scowling, Tasha marched out of the parlour — and stopped just short of running full-tilt into Mother Genri, coming the other way.
‘Tasha,’ said Mother Genri, with her sweet smile. ‘How charming to have you among us.’
Carefully smoothing the scowl from her face, Tasha adopted a neutral expression. She could read the subtext to Genrietta’s words perfectly well. She had absented herself from the House a great deal in the past year, more and more every month. Mother Genri did not like it.
‘I’ve brought stuff,’ she said shortly, and emptied the contents of one of her pockets into Mother Genri’s waiting hands. A pair of gold rings fell into the broad, white palms, purloined from a dozy couple lingering too long in one of the pawn-brokers’ shops. A brooch, missing a jewel but the silver was still good. A handful of coins extracted from pockets and bags in one shop or another.
Mother Genri took her time in scrutinising this haul. She was young, or at least appeared to be, but then the lamaeni often did. Tasha had no notion how old she was; plenty old enough to have developed an expert eye for valuable trinkets. She wore her glossy brown hair in ringlets, like those Fros now affected, and her gowns were always first-rate.
‘Is this all?’ Mother Genri looked up. ‘This is a month’s worth, at best. And the brooch, Tasha, is inferior.’
Tasha took a deep breath. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow. No, tonight. You can keep the extra.’
‘Leaving.’ Mother Genri went still, her smile vanishing.
‘Any minute now.’
‘You cannot leave.’
‘Why not?’ Tasha drew herself up, cursing her diminutive height. Couldn’t Mother Genri have had the courtesy to wait until Tasha was fully grown before making lamaeni of her? She was stuck forever at five feet. Well, four feet, eleven inches and a bit — but who was counting?
‘I have not given you leave.’ The smile was back. Tasha had once been deeply affected by that smile, and Genrietta’s air of sweet, motherly concern. It was what had taken her off the streets and into the welcoming embrace — hah — of Noster House.
She saw through it, now.
‘I’ve paid my way for years,’ said Tasha firmly. ‘Often I’ve paid extra. I have stolen plenty of choice trinkets for you, and now I choose to go.’ Without giving Genri a chance to reply, Tasha pushed past her and into the hall. She hadn’t quite meant to leave yet — certainly not today — but now that she had said it, it felt right. Time to go.
‘Tasha,’ said Mother Genri, before she’d reached the stairs. The word rang out like a whiplash, halting Tasha in her tracks.
She turned.
Mother Genri stood, her hands full of Tasha’s stolen jewellery, looking after her young protégé with an air of tender melancholy. ‘You will be missed,’ she said, much more softly, and without the smile.
She seemed sincere. Maybe she was. Something tugged at Tasha’s cynical heart, and for a moment she weakened. Whatever her faults, Genri was the only mother Tasha had ever had.
But she knew better than to rely on Genri’s seemings. Without answering, save for a tip of her black cap, she turned away from the mistress of Noster House and launched herself at the stairs. Her few possessions awaited her in her garret chamber, and then — the future.
‘Nuritov,’ said Tasha, bustling into his office. A small something slipped from within the tightly-wound bundle of clothing in her arms, and fell clattering to the floor. ‘I hope you— oh. Don’t mind me.’
Two faces turned to look as she came in: Inspector Nuritov’s, registering mild surprise at her laden appearance, and an unfamiliar woman of middle age, the plump, respectable type with sober taste and a disdain, apparently, for ornament.
‘Tasha, this is Mrs. Yuriena, the daughter of Mr. Artemo.’
‘Ohh.’ Tasha dumped her bundle in a corner and approached the desk. ‘I am sorry for your loss,’ she remembered to say.
Mrs. Yuriena murmured a ‘Thank you,’ so quietly Tasha barely heard her. A swift look seemed to dismiss Tasha on the spot.
‘Tasha is a detective apprentice,’ said Nuritov. ‘She has been assisting me on the matter of your father’s death.’
This did not impress the woman much either, but she accepted it, returning her attention to Nuritov. ‘I had not seen him for more than twenty years,’ she said. ‘Still, when I saw the report in the evening paper I was — I felt more than I imagined possible.’ She did have the reddened-eye look of a woman suffering some emotion.
‘And why was it — if I may ask? — that you had lost contact with your father?’ said Nuritov.
She hesitated, and glanced, for some reason, at Tasha. ‘We had not been close since I was a child,’ she said. ‘Mother died when I was only seven years old, and father… did not take it well. Three years later he left Ekamet, to go travelling, he said. I was sent to school. After that I saw him only three more times. Once six years later, once when I was married, an
d the last time some twenty years ago.’
‘Travelling,’ said Nuritov, echoing Tasha’s thoughts. Her ears, too, had pricked up at the word. ‘Do you happen to know where it was that he went?’
‘Oh, everywhere. Some years in Kayesir, in Marja, in Balgrand. It is the only thing he ever talked of to me.’
He’d been in Marja. Interesting.
But something did not ring true, for his neighbours had described him as a potter. Perhaps he had given up travelling, somewhere in the twenty years since he had last seen his daughter, and settled down to the trade. But years of travel such as Mrs. Yuriena described cost money. Had he been conducting some kind of trade across these various countries, that had financed his journeys? He was more than a simple potter, that much was obvious.
The inspector’s next questions revolved around the same topic, but to no avail. Mrs. Yuriena, too poorly acquainted with her father to have any inkling as to how he lived, could not help.
And then she was leaving, rising from her chair, making some excuse about her husband, her children — when would her father’s remains be released for his funeral?
Nuritov stopped her before she had made it out of the door. ‘One more question, madam, if I may.’
She paused. ‘Yes?’
‘Your father was murdered. Do you know of anyone who might have held some kind of grudge against him?’
‘You mean, do I know who might have done it? No, Inspector, I don’t. I knew almost nothing of my father’s life.’
Away she went, taking Tasha’s hopes of a lead with her.
‘She wasn’t much use,’ she said, hurling herself into the chair Mrs. Yuriena had just vacated.
‘She did confirm the Marjan connection, though,’ said Nuritov.
‘True, for what that’s worth. You think he might have killed somebody up there, and someone’s taken revenge?’
‘I don’t yet know enough to form a coherent theory. It’s possible.’
Tasha nodded, thoughts awhirl. ‘Talked to Katya at all?’
The inspector’s brows rose. ‘Katya? Why?’
‘He seems to have lived a varied existence and we can’t get a grip on what kind of man he was. If he was Shandral, maybe Katya knows more. She noticed him enough to write to you about it.’
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