Death's Executioner

by Charlotte E. English

  I would like to live, he whispered. For just a bit longer.

  And what, answered The Shandrigal, will you do with this time?

  Konrad’s reply was immediate.

  Everything.

  Nanda did weep, then, tears drowning her cheeks and trickling, cold and salty, into the hollow of her throat. Just exhaustion. She didn’t remember ever being even half so tired before, not in the whole course of her life.

  You are replaced, however, said The Shandrigal. As the Malykant.

  I… am? said Konrad.

  ‘That’s all in hand,’ said Nanda quickly.

  She felt Konrad’s attention fix upon her, sensed the questions he wanted to ask. The only word he managed to utter was: Who?

  Nanda swallowed the rest of her tears, and got to her feet. ‘How about I tell you later?’ she said. ‘I am not altogether sure you’re going to like the answer.’

  Chapter Nine

  Konrad stood for some time outside the front door of Bakar House, heedless of the sleet driving into his face, or the cold seeping into his bones. His hat was long gone, as was his coat — everything. He wore… there was no word for what he wore. A robe, maybe, of materials he had no names for either. The thing hung shapeless around him, puffed about by every breath of wind, so light it might as well have been woven of cobwebs. (Considering its provenance, it could have been). He ought to have perished from the cold by now, so garbed, but the peculiar little spirits Nanda kept company with knew their arts: the cobweb robe kept him warmer than it ought.

  Still, he dreamed of the huge, roaring fires he liked to have in his snug study, and in the parlour he’d so often sat in with Nan. He wanted — needed — food; his gut informed him he had ingested nothing in some time. (How long? How long? The mind shied away from the answer to that question, and especially from the reasons why). He wanted warm water and his own clothes and his own bed.

  But were they his own, anymore?

  ‘Are we going in?’ said Nanda behind him, mildly enough, but he caught the trace of strain behind the words. Irritation, perhaps, or merely exhaustion.

  Yes. He was not the only one who required comforts and care. Nanda had survived an ordeal greater still than his.

  He reached forth and — rang the doorbell.

  Gorev was not long in answering the summons. The door clanked as bolts drew back — the hour was late, drowned in darkness, poor Gorev ought to be in bed — and then swung open.

  A gasp.

  ‘Sir,’ said Konrad’s long-suffering butler. He looked, Konrad distantly noted, a little askew, for though fully dressed (why wasn’t he sleeping?), the perfect order of his grey hair and pristine, dark garments had come somewhat unstuck. ‘We thought—’ He took in Nanda’s presence, and paused. ‘We thought,’ he said again, ‘you weren’t…’

  Konrad managed a small smile. ‘I thought I wasn’t, too.’

  Gorev stared. The longer he stood staring, and failed to usher Konrad inside, the more Konrad’s stomach dropped.

  ‘Can we come in?’ he said at length. ‘Or— or is it not—’

  Gorev visibly shook himself, and pulled the door open wide. ‘Apologies, sir. I was only— please, come in. I’ll have the fires relit directly, and something sent to the parlour — you’ll be wanting baths, and— ah—’ His gaze lingered on Konrad’s odd garb, and then on Nanda’s apple-green gown, filthy from her trek through spiritlands and Deathlands alike.

  ‘Everything,’ Konrad confirmed, stepping inside. He paused a moment in the hall, savouring the various impressions that swamped him. Chief among them: relief, intense and bittersweet. They hadn’t yet given his house away. Gratitude, for Gorev’s welcome, and Nanda’s presence, and the mere fact that he breathed.

  Gorev had not yet left. Konrad caught a strange look crossing his face, as he glanced at his employer.

  ‘What is it?’ Konrad said patiently.

  More than one thing, in all likelihood. One was the fact that Nanda’s cool fingers rested securely in his own. He hadn’t let go of her since they had left The Shandrigal’s Temple, nor she of him. That was unusual enough.

  But Gorev had another oddity in mind. ‘We had heard that you were…’

  ‘Dead?’ supplied Konrad, when his butler seemed unable to produce the word. ‘I was, actually.’

  Gorev swallowed.

  ‘And I know it has happened before, but this time was different.’

  Everything was different. He felt changed all through, mixed up, someone else entirely, since The Shandral had melded his body with his soul, and turned him loose upon Ekamet once more.

  No, not entirely. The chill, deep darkness of The Malykt’s power: that was not gone. Konrad felt it still, a layer of ice around his heart, a coldness deep within. A dark, harsh power he still had the right to wield, if he wanted to.

  But the seed of The Shandrigal’s power, laid some time ago, a scant touch scarcely noticed by him then, had grown. Half his soul, he knew, was now given into Her hands, and he felt that touch deep inside himself. Indescribable, but if The Malykt was a coldness, The Shandrigal was a warmth. If the one was darkness, the other was light.

  Simplistic stuff. Konrad snorted at his own incapacity to define either of the Great Spirits’ influence over him. Groping blindly at nursery concepts, ignorant as a child…

  He’d wandered off into his own head again. Gorev was gone, and he came to himself just in time to see Nanda disappearing into their parlour. He hastened after her, hoping she hadn’t tried to speak to him, only to find him unresponsive. What a way to repay her — her — kindness? No. That word didn’t cover it either.

  Konrad abandoned words.

  A startled exclamation greeted his entry into the parlour, the chamber not shrouded in darkness as he’d expected but lit up, and a small fire already burning in the grate.

  It wasn’t Nanda who had spoken.

  ‘Tasha,’ he said, overwhelmed with emotion at the sight of her small, dark form bundled up in one of his high-backed chairs. He might never have seen her again, either, and infuriating as she was, she—

  Wait. She was the Tasha he’d always known, but not… quite… something else hung about her now, a whisper, a chill breeze—

  ‘Tasha?’ he repeated. ‘Tasha is the new Malykant?’

  ‘Is that so unlikely?’ Tasha snapped, drawing herself up. Her surprise at seeing Konrad was gone; she glared at him now, arms folded. ‘Someone had to mind the shop while you were gone. Why not me?’

  Konrad groped for words again, and came up empty. ‘Um.’

  ‘Thank you, Tasha,’ said Nanda softly, folding into a vacant chair with the limp grace of an utterly spent woman. ‘I’ve no doubt you and Alexander have done a fine job.’

  ‘We have, actually,’ muttered Tasha. ‘Two corpses, and while we haven’t caught the culprit yet we aren’t far off. How’s that for my first day at work?’

  Tasha nattered on, and Konrad’s mind slipped away from the flow of words like a wayward river. Tasha was the Malykant. He was replaced. The knowledge left him…hollow.

  But, no, that was not right either. The Malykt had not withdrawn His power from Konrad; it was still there.

  Master? he tried. Do You still wish me to— hunt for You?

  The Malykt did not reply in words. Konrad instead felt a rush of cold sweep over him, like drowning in ice-water. In the wake of it, he felt his weakened limbs strengthen, felt The Malykt’s grip tighten a fraction around his heart.

  All right, then.

  I will do my best, he promised.

  No, wait.

  We, he amended, for Tasha wore their Master’s mark still. We will do our best.

  ‘Can we eat, first?’ Konrad said, cutting off Tasha’s rambling tale of bone knives and blood. He couldn’t focus on the half of it, not with his body turning itself inside out with hunger, and his brain fogged with the need for sleep. Nanda must be in a similar state. ‘And sleep? In the morning, we will… um, be at your disposal, Tasha.’<
br />
  He caught himself at the end there, sensitive to the narrowing of her eyes, the way she’d begun to bristle. He couldn’t take this case off her, not when he’d left her and the inspector to handle it without him.

  She relaxed a fraction, mollified. ‘Wimp,’ she said. But she spoke with her own, prickly brand of affection, and Konrad smiled.

  The welcoming embrace of his own, dear bed engulfed him soon afterwards, and he lay with that same smile still on his face — for a time. But at the edges of his senses, there was Stev, and Kulu, and Hreejur, their shadows bound to him until the debts he and Nanda owed were paid, and the pacts broken. He could never entirely forget those presences, but they were worth the bearing, when it meant Nanda’s life.

  Laying one hand against Nanda’s warm back, Konrad closed his eyes, and resigned himself to a few nightmares.

  ‘Eyes,’ said Nanda the following morning — late the following morning, for she and Konrad both had slept like twin corpses laid out side-by-side. Neither had stirred until the serpents, impatient for activity, had twined their shivery selves around a throat apiece, and squeezed.

  What a way to wake up.

  ‘I am not sure,’ she continued, ‘that we’re on the right track with those.’ She drummed her fingers on the table-top, beside the empty plate which had, shortly before, been piled high with delectables. ‘Where did you pick up that little myth, Alex?’

  The inspector sat to her right, trying not to stare at either Nanda or Konrad, and succeeding so well he barely lifted his eyes from his own repast.

  Konrad sympathised. The tendency of Malykants to die messily over and over again was familiar enough to him, but not so much to Alexander. The total avoidance of Konrad’s gaze unnerved him a little, though. Was something wrong with his face? Had The Shandrigal put his soul in backwards?

  ‘Library book,’ said the inspector. ‘Death Rites and Rituals; I think that was it.’

  ‘It’s a tale I have heard before,’ Nanda allowed. ‘But only as a tale. I was also told that it’s nonsense, and if you were to ask the spirit-witches of the Bone Forest enclave they would probably tell you the same.’ She looked a little healthier this morning, to Konrad’s relief: less white, less drawn, and with some traces of her old life and vigour returning. Konrad wanted to send her back to bed, let her stay there in warmth and comfort and rest until she was well again. But he had no illusions about how well-received that suggestion was likely to be.

  ‘Oh,’ said the inspector, looking up at last, and with an expression of such crestfallen disappointment that Konrad’s heart, inexplicably, squeezed. He wanted Alexander to be happy, too. Everyone should be happy and well; life was fragile and brutal, and if only he could gather up all his precious few loved ones and keep them safe forever, he would.

  Well, taking another killer off the streets of Ekamet was one way to do that. Konrad retrieved his wandering thoughts yet again.

  ‘The book seemed reputable,’ Alexander was saying with a sigh.

  ‘It was probably written in good faith,’ Nanda said. ‘But information can become outdated, and stories can sometimes loom larger than they have any right to.’

  Tasha was smirking. Konrad decided not to ask why.

  ‘Why take the eyes, then?’ Tasha demanded. ‘Nobody does something that weird without good reason.’

  ‘Trophy,’ said Konrad.

  Tasha stared at him.

  Konrad cleared his throat. ‘Killers sometimes like to take… souvenirs.’

  ‘That’s revolting.’

  ‘Get used to it. It’s not even the worst example I’ve seen.’

  Tasha’s eyes widened. Whether with disgust or unholy glee, Konrad could not tell.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘We know that two men have died, stabbed through the heart with knives worked from bone. Both were divested of their eyes. Both were killed in their own homes, after returning from a journey into Marja. Both had travelled there in pursuit of some— unclean thing, which, as far as we know, they did not catch.’

  ‘We only have Timof Vak’s letter about that,’ said Alexander. ‘He might have caught up with the thing after he’d dispatched it, and never got a chance to report as much to the Order. And we have no idea what happened during Rodion Artemo’s journey.’

  ‘And we don’t know what it was they were chasing, either?’ Konrad said.

  Alexander looked at Nanda. ‘We were hoping to ask Nan about that.’

  Nanda met Alexander’s gaze, thoughtful, but for the moment she had nothing to add.

  ‘They might have found it, after all,’ said Konrad. ‘Or at least, got its attention. And it followed them home. Did my serpents rule on the manner of those deaths? Were they murdered by another mortal soul?’

  No, Master, said Eetapi from somewhere. We were busy with the small matter of your being dead.

  Right.

  ‘Whatever it was could have been both,’ Nanda said.

  ‘Both?’ Konrad prompted.

  ‘A mortal soul, bound up with something… other. Unclean, if you like.’

  ‘A possession?’

  Nanda shook her head. ‘More like a pact. The kind I make are really quite minor, all told. If you were reckless enough, strong enough, desperate, you might make the kind of pact which… well, nobody comes out of those with their soul intact. It’s said that such a pact ultimately destroys the soul, leaving nothing to enter the Deathlands after decease.’

  ‘So they’re rare,’ said Konrad slowly.

  ‘Extremely. They are banned across Marja and Assevan, of course, which is hardly necessary given how difficult it is to find a creature who’d bind itself to you, and you to it, in such a way. And few have a powerful enough motive to seek, or accept, such a bargain.’

  Konrad watched her face. ‘These Warders, of your Order. Are they — you — tasked with watching for such bargains?’

  ‘Our Order, Konrad.’ That beloved glint of mischief appeared in Nanda’s eye, for the first time in many days.

  He bowed his head. ‘Our Order.’

  ‘We are, among other things,’ said Nanda. ‘If Timof or Rodion caught a glimpse of any such thing, I can imagine that they might have followed after it. Such bargains are never formed for good purpose.’ She looked at the inspector. ‘The eyes… you did not have any reason to think they might have been burned, I suppose?’

  Alexander nodded. ‘We found remnants of burned wood at Mr. Artemo’s house, and he kept a coal fire.’

  Nanda said nothing more, but her eyes narrowed.

  ‘Nan,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘They might have been taken as a trophy,’ she said slowly. ‘But I begin to suspect that they were taken as… tribute. A pact-price. Harvested and ritually burned, as an offering to the creature with whom the pact was made. Every spirit demands payment.’

  Konrad knew that, to his own cost, now. Several of Nanda’s pacts now weighed upon his soul, sapping his energy until such time that the agreed price was paid. He felt it with every breath; and these were but minor spirits.

  ‘The bone-knives,’ he said. ‘Are they part of it, too?’

  Nanda shifted in her chair. ‘There are… ways and ways, to satisfy such a pact without giving of your own life. All of them despicable, I need hardly add. I have not heard of bone-knives turned to such purpose before, but— Konrad, is it not true that the use of a knife of bone in your case creates some kind of — of binding between two souls, the killer and their victim? So that the one may extract its vengeance from the other, until The Malykt decrees that the debt is paid.’

  ‘We prefer the term justice,’ said Konrad with a small smile. ‘But yes, you are right about that.’

  ‘So, then. Might not our killer have turned this to his own purpose?’

  ‘You mean,’ said Alexander softly, ‘that these knives might not be made from the bones of a human after all.’

  Nanda nodded. ‘The bone may have been from something… else, something not human. A creature now de
ad, but its spirit lingers — and it has pacted with a mortal man. These knives, then, are binding whatever remains of this creature to the souls of Rodion Artemo and poor Timof Vak.’

  Konrad shuddered inwardly. He had not forgotten his brief sojourn in the Deathlands, as one of the dead, however much he might dislike to think of it. How much worse might it have been, if he had been bound in slavery to such a creature as Nanda described? If the remnants of his soul were given in pact-price to so evil a thing, to be tormented, slowly drained away?

  ‘I wish it did not sound so plausible a theory,’ he said.

  ‘Me too,’ said Nanda, and straightened. ‘I regret, now, that we did not proceed upon this matter last night, for we must find your killer as soon as possible. He will not stop at two victims.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have been much use last night,’ Tasha said brutally. ‘You could hardly walk in a straight line.’

  Nanda conceded this point with a nod. ‘I would like to know how it was that either Rodion or Timof sensed this presence in Ekamet, or how they followed it.’

  ‘I would like to know what it was doing in Ekamet in the first place,’ said Konrad. ‘Or why it has come back.’

  Nanda’s gaze rested thoughtfully upon him. ‘It came back to dispose of the two who hunted it,’ she said. ‘That, I can imagine it might do.’

  ‘But how did it cross paths with either Artemo or Vak in the first place?’ said Konrad. ‘Could they sense it across half the city? That seems doubtful, or surely they would have found and disposed of it.’

  ‘If they could dispose of it,’ said Nanda. ‘They may not have understood what they were dealing with.’

  Alexander was frowning. ‘A fair question, Konrad,’ he said. ‘If they could not sense such a thing from any great distance, how did they come to its notice?’

  ‘That’s obvious,’ said Tasha. ‘It, or rather he, was someone they both knew.’

  Konrad blinked, and sat up. ‘That’s… not a bad thought, Tasha. Someone of their joint acquaintance — someone they’d known, perhaps, before this pact was made— although did not Vak’s letter claim he did not know the identity of the person or creature he hunted?’