by Jackson Lear
“Not that I heard of.”
“Is Lieutenant Gustali popular among the troops?”
“Yes.”
“If he wasn’t the son of the governor would he still be popular?”
I could see that Martius wished I hadn’t asked him that.
“Was there any tension between Gustali and the commander?”
Cassia huffed loudly behind her husband. Even she wished I hadn’t asked that question.
“Has there been any change between Gustali and the commander after this incident began?”
“Some.”
“How so?”
“Gustali seemed more agitated.”
“Was he nicer or angrier towards Artavian?”
“Angrier.”
“And he wasn’t angry before?”
“I think he was indifferent before.”
“What about Muro? How did he treat Artavian?”
“Like Artavian should’ve been court martialed.”
“What about the other lieutenants? Did they ever find out what this whole problem was?”
“I never heard anyone say what the problem was.”
I locked eyes with Martius, watching to see how he answered. “What do you think it was?”
Martius shook his head. “I can’t …”
“Sure you can.”
Cassia was desperate for me to know that she was scowling at me.
“He never said …”
“There must have been something,” I said. “What was it?”
Martius shook his head once more, sank the last of his ale, and went for another.
“No,” his wife whispered.
Martius returned with an empty cup. “I think he opened a letter to or from Lieutenant Gustali and read what was inside. I don’t know what was written.”
“Why do you think it was something in a letter?”
“Because all of the lieutenants stopped using Artavian to send or receive letters. They instead used Gabriella.”
“Is she another steward?”
“Yes.”
“Did she stay with you guys in the inn?”
“No. We needed someone to remain at camp to keep track of where everyone was. She was the one.”
“So all of the lieutenants stopped trusting Artavian with their correspondence?”
“All of them except for the commander.”
“What about for official military business?”
“They still used Artavian for that.”
“Right. You would think that if a steward deliberately opened a letter that he shouldn’t have, that would be grounds for dismissal, yes?”
“Very much so. He could’ve been executed for that.”
“So if the commander still trusted him then it’s unlikely that Artavian pried.”
Martius shrugged.
“So how come things improved between Artavian and Gustali?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes a problem between people just evaporates, you know? It no longer seems like a big deal.”
That one stung a little more than I cared to admit. “So things went smoothly until you reached Verseii. You and Artavian were staying in the same inn, yes?”
Martius nodded, slowly, like he was wondering how I would know that. “Yes.”
“How was he?”
“Nervous. The rest of us were in a fairly good mood. We were a few miles from home, our tour was at an end, and for the first time in months we had decent beds, decent drink, and decent food. Xander bought everyone a round. I offered mine to Artavian since he looked like he needed it the most.”
“Did he drink a lot?”
“Not usually. He nursed his drink more than anything. He had one cup of ale and that was it.”
“What about food?”
“Pork belly and potatoes in a stew. It was the only thing the inn had left.”
“How was it?”
“The potatoes were overdone. The pork tasted burnt. It was more of a thick goo than an actual stew. Still, not as bad as some of the army’s food.”
“So he ate quietly, drank quietly, and went to bed?”
“Yeah. He was probably the first one to leave the table and go upstairs.”
“He had a room to himself?”
“He was the senior-most aide, so yeah.”
“How were the other guests?”
“They left us alone.”
I did wonder if he might have remembered me bursting in there with Beriss. So far: no. “Was it busy?”
“Not especially. I saw maybe ten other people in the common room.”
“And did you book your rooms in advance at all?”
“No. We weren’t even sure if we were going to make it to Verseii that day at all. The road in was narrower than we expected. The carts kept slipping into the grass and getting stuck, holding us up.”
“How often had you seen Artavian drunk?”
“A couple of times. He’d drink quickly and then leave it at that, whereas most of the other guys go at a steady pace.”
“But at the inn he drank slowly.”
“Yeah, he did.”
“Have you ever seen him throw up?”
“That’s not really something I would’ve paid attention to.”
“Was he sick at all? Maybe a stomach ache?”
“No.”
“And you all ate the same food?”
“Yeah.”
“And drank the same ale.”
“Yeah.”
“Who found him?”
He gulped. “Me.”
“When?”
“In the morning. We were all getting ready and Artavian wasn’t answering the door. I got the innkeeper to unlock it. Even he had that look on his face, like we both knew that Artavian might be dead. I mean, we weren’t exactly quiet with all the banging.”
“Was the door barricaded at all?”
“No.”
“But it was locked?”
“A simple drop bar, really.”
“How did he look?”
“He looked dead.”
“On his back? Side? Arms out? Arms in? Covers kicked off? Any blood? Had he pissed himself? Crapped himself? Naked? Fully dressed? Was there a sword unsheathed nearby?”
Martius blinked at me quickly with my barrage of questioning and slowly answered. Artavian was found on his back. One hand across his chest, the other down by his side. The covers were half askew. One foot was sticking out, but nothing that would indicate a struggle had happened or that the guy had suffered a surprise fever. There was no blood, no urine, no feces. Bile, though. He had managed to cough some of it out but his mouth was full of the stuff. He was dressed in a sleeping tunic; a gray smock type of thing that allowed his skin to breathe easily in the heat. The rest of his clothes and gear were on the far side of the room.
“Was anything missing?”
“Not that I know of. As soon as I saw him I ran to tell the commander.”
“How did he respond?”
Martius looked away, sheepish. “I couldn’t find him.”
“Why not?”
“I believe he was with his wife.”
“General Kasera’s daughter?”
He nodded.
“Was she traveling with the commander?”
“No. She met up with him the night we reached Verseii.”
“What did you do when you couldn’t find the commander?”
“I alerted Sergeant Taylon and brought him to Artavian.”
“Not Sergeant Muro or Lieutenant Gustali?”
“Sergeant Taylon is who I’m supposed to go to if there is a problem.”
“Did you think Artavian’s death was suspicious?”
“Not at first, no.”
“What changed your mind?” I asked.
“Someone eventually found the commander. He came to check Artavian and he was asking a lot of the questions you’ve been asking.”
I tried to push Martius towards connecting all of the pieces together. Maybe he w
ould remember something significant. “Who handles the correspondence between the camp and, say, the governor?”
“It all comes through us, but if it’s specifically from the governor then Artavian would handle it.”
“The letters were all sealed?”
“The important ones were.”
“Were Gustali’s all sealed?”
“Yes. He has a stamp he uses. The family crest.”
“When the commander looked over Artavian did he raise any suspicions?”
“He asked how much Artavian had drunk. I told him a single ale.”
“So if the room was locked and Artavian died of what looked like an accidental choking on his own vomit, what made the commander so suspicious?”
“He asked us what Artavain ate and he checked it with the innkeeper.”
Even my own stomach started to curdle with that thought. “I don’t suppose you took a close look at Artavian’s vomit?”
He shook his head.
“Did the commander?”
Hesitantly, as though he was struggling to figure out how I could’ve known all of this while living in Torne, he nodded.
“And you got the impression that he thought it wasn’t an accidental death?”
“Yes, but … I don’t see how he could’ve been poisoned. We ate the same food and no one touched our drinks. If they did then they had a one in five chance of getting Artavian rather than anyone else.”
I had to hand it to Martius; he would make a fine captain of the city watch one day. Inquisitive, but not too much. Experienced, but not enough to trouble anyone above him. Insightful, but clueless at the same time.
Cassia seemed to have finally had enough. “It’s late, Martius, and dinner is cold.”
He turned, acknowledging her. “Sorry.”
Cassia looked my way. “Will we see you at the funeral?”
“Of course,” I said, lying through my teeth. There was no way I was going to give her the opportunity to point me out to anyone who could cause me problems.
“Good. Then we’ll see you with Artavian’s family.”
I nodded back at her. “Indeed you will. Good evening, ma’am. Thank you for the drink.” I turned to Martius. “Should anything happen, I think you can trust Lavarta’s wife. She has connections.”
Martius shook his head. “She’s just a junior councilor.”
“Even so, if her husband’s life is in danger then I’m sure she’ll be able to move mountains if she has to.”
Martius shrugged meekly, still in a daze after a long day.
I bid a final farewell to the pair. Cassia scowled as I left. I had the feeling their dinner was cold the moment Martius returned home since he had escorted Artavian’s body to the stables and gave a statement to the military police. I couldn’t help but feel a little unfortunate about the couple. After months away and dreaming of the perfect first night back, her husband was instead late, distraught that his friend was dead, and talking to a stranger in their home. Whatever romantic plans they had this time yesterday were shattered.
I left Martius and his wife in peace, giving them some time to enjoy what could be the last few hours of Martius’ life if Gustali was desperate to clean up after himself. And while I didn’t expect Martius to find himself at the mercy of an assassin, I did have enough experience with the need to clean up after yourself to know that Martius was a potential problem to the governor and his family. Martius had blabbed, not just to me but to the military police. The governor would certainly hear of it. To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if Martius was dead by this time tomorrow.
Chapter Eleven
I had two priorities in front of me. The first: find out if Lieutenant Gustali and his old man were dirty. The second: find somewhere to sleep.
The common thinking among my peers is that no one rises to the top of any industry without developing some kind of a dark side – imperial governors especially – but I wasn’t about to just accept Martius’ version of events as wholly true. Still, I was certain the governor had an assassin on his payroll. They might have used a different title for whoever it was; investigator, fixer, closer, infiltrator, but the end result would be one of three things: dead, scared into silence, or you have been so thoroughly ruined that even goat herders use you as the butt of all jokes.
The streets had swelled with soldiers. Some were lightly uniformed, free from their armor but there to capitalize on their hero status. Others were clearly blitzed already and crying out to the world that they have returned safe and sound, despite seeing nothing in the way of combat.
It gave me some time to consider the details of Artavian’s death. The thing about growing up with mercenaries who were often bored out of their minds and stupidly drunk is that we would start planning the perfect heist, the perfect jail break, or the perfect murder. The goal is to commit the act without anyone realizing that you were there. So, how do you murder someone in a way that no one suspects it being a murder?
Most of my former brothers would suggest poison, but they’re tricky. You have to sneak it into someone’s drink without them realizing it, and gauging the speed of it taking effect is often problematic. You want it slow enough so that the victim doesn’t realize anything is wrong until three days later when they draw their final breath, which has given you plenty of time to leave town, and no one can possibly figure out when the poison was delivered or who did it. Unfortunately, most poisons don’t work that slowly, so you kinda have to be in the same place as them when they croak. And people tend to thrash about a lot more than you’d expect, which puts your perfect plan at risk. Decent doctors will look for poisons and pin-prick holes. They will smell the victim’s urine and go through their bowels. If they’re feeling knife-happy they might even cut the body open and have a look at someone’s stomach. Either way they will likely discover the real cause of death, which fails the drunken exercise in the first place – namely: how do you kill someone and convince even an expert that it was natural causes?
One answer we came up with: you puke into a jug, sneak into someone’s room, and hold them down while you pour your own vomit into their mouth. They either swallow and regurgitate it back up themselves or they choke to death. Easy in theory, difficult in practice. No doctor will find a puncture wound or detect any poison. As far as they’re concerned the victim died from asphyxiation. But, in order to pull off something like that single-handedly, you had to be one hell of a trained professional. Something like seven enchanted binds would be needed to hold the victim in place, and those aren’t cheap. They usually appear as simple strips of silk, but when given a simple command they snap into some kind of shape or weight. One strip across the chest, one across the thighs, one each for the ankles and wrists, and one for the throat. If that’s what happened to Artavian then he would’ve been pinned to his bed. The moment he opened his mouth to cry out: in went a tankard of the killer’s bile. A hand would clamp over Artavian’s mouth and a couple of minutes later you had a dead aide-de-camp.
Disgusting? No doubt about it. I’d only ever heard of it happening once before, from one of the rare tales courtesy of the Captain. As far as theories went it was the one I was leaning towards until evidence pointed me in a better direction.
The night was still young in Torne, the velvet blue of the sky slowing shifting towards black. I kept an eye out for anyone who might be a member of a protection company. They seemed to follow the same kind of methodology in Verseii as they did in Erast so I was hoping for the same in Torne. And it’s not like Erast or Verseii had been the only cities I had ever spent time in. In all I had visited, there was a look-out near a window. In a low-risk or high-risk area that look-out would be one of the newest members of the company. The young ones needed to be broken in. They were also more willing to start a fight to the death in the hope that it would establish themselves in the eyes of their brothers in crime. The older ones? They watched over the mid-risk areas. Less chance of losing your life in some stupid fight.
&
nbsp; My first indicator would be a kid milling around on the street. They’d be bored senseless but trying to keep track of who was where and what was going on. The hardest ones to spot were those on the roof tops. They’d be able to cover a wider area, follow you around a corner and down a long street. Yet despite their best intentions and threats of obscene violence from their boss, one thing seemed to be true across every profession: people get lazy. Give them a routine for long enough and they can do it without paying attention, even if that job is to be a look-out. The ones on the roof will have a cushion or two with them so they can sit down and lean back. If caught they will lie their ass off and feign innocence. Given that the city was now swamped with revelry, I was likely to fit in among the crowd of trained killers looking for a good time.
I settled on a plan which would hopefully resolve ‘priority one’ in a single conversation: were the Gustalis dirty?
I strolled along the street, looking over each of the ladies carefully. I was after a particular type. Someone in her forties, maybe even fifties. Someone who knew an attractive life ten to twenty years ago. Someone with intelligence in those eyes. A linguist, perhaps. Kind. Yet the farther I walked and the more peculiar the calls beckoning me to come over, I came to realize I was looking for a white flamingo. So, I stopped, and offered a couple of coins to a young lady who rolled her eyes at how much money I was willing to part with.
“Tha’ won’t even cover a squeeze, creep.”
“I’m looking for directions. Nothing funny.” I rattled off the basic description of my white flamingo to the young one. She knotted her eyebrows the moment I asked for someone in their forties.
“Ya have a mother thing?” She shook her head in dismay, no doubt adding the quirks of out-of-towners to the list of customers who were just too weird to bother with. “What color hair?”
“I can’t remember. She used to work this area fifteen years ago.”
“An’ you can’t even remember what color hair she had?”
“That wasn’t the part of her I was focused on.”
“Fine, fine. What’d she look like?”
“Gorgeous.”
“We’re all gorgeous down here, hon. And come along with it, you’re holding me up.”
“Average height, good chest, good for a chat, straight teeth. Classy.”