Joel Rosenberg - [D'Shai 01] - D'Shai

by Joel Rosenberg - [D'Shai 01]

  “I didn’t. Well, I didn’t last night. I don’t know how the killer got in.”

  I knew how I had gotten in, when I had searched the armory for proof that Refle had beaten me, but I couldn’t have done that last night—the branches would have been treacherously slippery in the rain; given that I couldn’t make it across terribly well when they were dry, I could hardly have done it last night.

  “I really didn’t do it, Gray Khuzud,” I said.

  His mouth tightened. “We don’t have time for that now, Kami Khuzud. Please, you must do it my way, you must do it my way, just this once.” He took a step forward, then caught himself and stepped back, slapping his hands back against the wall. “I’m too old to continue the line, the family; I need you to do it for me. Tell me.—What are you smiling about?”

  We sometimes have to live on what is unsaid, my father and I. And he had just left it unsaid.

  It didn’t matter whether or not Lord Toshtai believed me, or even if Gray Khuzud did—what mattered was that he believed that I hadn’t failed to check the equipment. He wouldn’t have made the offer if he thought I was responsible for Enki Duzun’s death.

  I held up a hand. “I can’t tell you, Father, because I didn’t do it. Just be patient; I have an idea.”

  “Tell me.”

  “No. I can’t. Leave it to me, Gray Khuzud. I will handle it all.” I could start by pleading my innocence, but that was only a start—most people accused of committing crimes claim to be innocent. But it was a start. “Go—and don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

  For just a moment, he smiled. I could tell that he didn’t believe me, but that didn’t matter, not for the moment. He knew that I hadn’t murdered Enki Duzun, and that was all that mattered.

  “Balance,” Gray Khuzud said, his voice hoarse. “Remember balance.”

  “Always.”

  My guard popped to his feet. Arefai, dressed in maroon and mauve, stalked down the hallway, one hand on the hilt of his sword, as though that would frighten me into telling the truth. I was already quite thoroughly frightened, and when you wet a river, all you can do is cause a flood.

  He looked at me for the longest time; I lowered my eyes and didn’t meet his gaze. Sometimes members of our beloved ruling class don’t like being stared at, and habits are hard to break.

  “This has hardly been of help in my courtship, Kami Khuzud,” he said, casually, but quite seriously. “It has probably delayed it for several months, at the very least. Quite irritating, don’t you know.”

  In one sense, I really shouldn’t have smiled at him, but it was all I could do not to laugh in his face. I mean, Enki Duzun had been murdered, and Refle had apparently been chopped to bits, and there I was in Toshtai’s dungeon awaiting either death or torture and death, and Arefai, a member of our beloved ruling class, was, as usual, expecting me to share his irritation because all this probably meant he was going to have to continue to prong away only at peasant, middle class, and bourgeois girls for an extra couple of months.

  Fair enough, I guess; after all, members of our beloved ruling class are taught only to care about themselves.

  Still, this was a bit much. I didn’t point that out to him, though.

  “Did you do it, Kami Khuzud?” he asked.

  “No, Lord,” I said.

  “I believe you,” he said, somberly. “And do you know why I believe you?”

  “No, Lord, I don’t.”

  “Because you smiled,” he said, reaching through the bars to pat my hand, like I was one of his dogs. Nice Kami Khuzud, I knew you didn’t bite. “Because of the way you smiled. Only someone who was both innocent and had perfect faith in the ultimate justice of the ruler of Den Oroshtai could smile so easily, so ... innocently, eh? Yes, innocently, I like that.

  “You may count on my support, Kami Khuzud. And while I’m not heir, I do have some influence around here. It is at the disposal of your innocence, Kami Khuzud.”

  “Thank you, Lord.” I bowed at his retreating back. At least there was one person of some authority in the castle who thought that I was innocent.

  Even though he was an idiot.

  * * *

  14

  Raising Kazuh

  THE NICE THING about being brought in front of Lord Toshtai was that they let me—made me, actually—wash and get dressed.

  You learn something new every day: that day I learned that fear isn’t any antidote for boredom and irritation. I had been getting both more bored and more irritated as the morning dragged on.

  He was waiting for me in the hall, the great hall in which we had been received at our arrival in Den Oroshtai, just a few days, a few ages before. I had been so much younger then.

  Lord Toshtai didn’t look any different than usual.

  Today, the fat man was arrayed in many-folded robes of a lustrous yellow silk, his hair combed back flat against his skull. The folds of his neck had been freshly powdered; his hands, scrubbed to that pink, almost a glow, that’s a proud possession of members of our beloved ruling class, lay folded neatly on his lap.

  At my approach, he sat back on his throne, watching my entrance with eyes that were neither cruel nor kind.

  The musicians played, and the guards sang as we walked:

  “The acrobat, Kami Khuzud, is brought be-fore Lord Toshtai;

  “Our Lord to dispense jus-tice and truth.

  “Fearless is the innocent,” (the guards tried for too tight a harmony on “innocent,” and it kept breaking),

  “Fearful the guilty,

  “Fearful the guilty,

  “Fearful the guilty.”

  I could have done without the last refrain, punctuated as it was by a heavy thrumming of the drum and low, almost surreptitiously threatening notes from the bassskin, the silverhorns oozing out a morose, cloudy melody, a listless arpeggio on the zivver allowing no trace of lightness to peek through.

  They were all waiting for me, across dunams of polished oak floor, the nobles spread out over the dais, the rest of the troupe to the right of it. Some of the juggling gear lay near Gray Khuzud’s feet; I gathered that the troupe had been honored by being allowed to entertain Toshtai and Orazhi while they waited for me to be hauled in front of them.

  Edelfaule was standing, Orazhi having taken his seat. I didn’t recognize one of the nobles on the platform, a younger man in a loose-cut tunic cut open across a naked chest almost to his waist, but from the cast of his shoulders and the way his eyes never fixed on one thing it seemed to me that he was likely Orazhi’s chief guard.

  But it was hard to concentrate on others when Toshtai sat there, even half the length of the room across from me. The sword lying across his lap wasn’t a miniature, not today.

  I didn’t know him well enough, I didn’t want to know him well enough to know if he felt that honor required that he dispatch a murderer himself. It would be hard to tell; what nobles consider honor can cause them to act in all sorts of unpredictable ways, and I’ve never wanted to bet anything on which way that pushes them.

  A horrible thought occurred to me. What if it was Toshtai himself who had killed Refle? He was a large man, and a fat man, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of killing Refle. All he would have to do would be to walk into Refle’s armory, and hack him to death, ordering any who saw him not to have seen him.

  I hadn’t thought I could be more scared, but I was wrong. By the Powers, if Toshtai had killed Refle, and was trying to have me blamed for it, I was a walking dead man.

  And not walking for long.

  The guards stopped me easily half the hall away from the dais, and from Lord Toshtai.

  The music lurched to a halting stop.

  “Kami Khuzud,” Lord Toshtai said, “it appears that the noble you blamed for your sister’s death has been murdered.” He waited for a long moment; I decided that he wanted a response.

  “Lord,” I said—and then grunted, as one of my guards elbowed me quite hard in the stomach.

  “You
r response, peasant, is not required unless asked,” he hissed.

  “And what have you to say to that, Kami Khuzud?” Toshtai asked, as though he hadn’t seen anything.

  “I only have to say that I don’t know anything about it. I didn’t kill Refle, err, Lord Refle, and I don’t know who did.” I started to gesture, but thought better of it. “I don’t know what else to tell you, Lord, except that whoever did it, however they did it, it wasn’t me. I ... understand that Lord Refle was killed with a sword, and I’ve never held a sword in my hands.”

  That wasn’t quite true. I had held a sword in my hands when I was prowling through Refle’s workshop, and I had borrowed Crosta Natthan’s for a moment, but this wasn’t the time to be a stickler for details.

  “That would be hard to prove,” Toshtai said.

  Dun Lidjun grunted.

  “Dun Lidjun?”

  “May I stand, Lord? If it please you? I think better on my feet.”

  “Very well.”

  Dun Lidjun rose slowly, and took a few steps toward me. “It may possible to see how good he is with a sword, Lord. Have the challenge sword fetched, and let him try to use it on me. I’ll be able to tell if he’s good enough. He wouldn’t have to be terribly good to have beaten Refle; Refle was largely a warrior of convenience.” Dun Lidjun half-drew his own sword and considered the edge. “Let us test this acrobat.”

  Leaning against the back wall, his arms crossed over his belly, Narantir snorted. “The trouble with that brilliant idea is that it doesn’t prove anything. The only way Lord Dun Lidjun could force somebody to defend himself properly would be to try to cut him, and what if Kami Khuzud is innocent?”

  Dun Lidjun started to say something, but Lord Toshtai cut him off. “Then, at least, he might have the honor of a warrior’s death. Bring the challenge sword.”

  Only twice before had I held a sword in my hands; I still didn’t much like the feel of it. The hilt was thinner than juggling knives are, less round than the bar of a trapeze—it just didn’t feel right. For one thing, it felt too light.

  Three of the guards, their swords drawn, stood between me and Lord Toshtai’s throne. That didn’t make any sense. Did they think I’d get past Dun Lidjun?

  I couldn’t think straight. None of this made sense. This wasn’t how an acrobat was supposed to die: a challenge sword in his hands, cut down by a kazuh swordsman. Ridiculous. Of old age, perhaps, or killed by a jealous husband or father, or by a fall from a trapeze, or a broken neck when doing a high dive-and-roll wrong.

  Over by the side of the room, Gray Khuzud picked up three juggling balls. He threw one in the air, and then another, working the three in a shower, and then a circle. Under the suspicious eyes of Toshtai’s guards, Fhilt took another three out of his pouch and joined him, the two of them working theirs independently, not trying exchanges.

  By the Powers, Gray Khuzud was good, even on a simple juggle. The balls seemed to dance around his fingers, moving smoothly, only occasionally nudged back into their swirl by his gentle fingers.

  I shrugged. When you don’t know what else to do, go back to basics, Gray Khuzud would say, and that’s what he was doing. But I doubt that he would find any wisdom or any help for me in a two-person juggle.

  Still, he was good, and Fhilt was almost as good.

  The lead silverhorn player took up a light melody, and the second horner followed soon, the bassskin and drummer joining in, the zivver finally chiming in, light on the scratchbox.

  Dun Lidjun and I squared off, him circling first to the right, then the left, me just holding the challenge sword out in front of me, hoping to block him.

  It was a situation that didn’t admit of a victory, not for me. Assuming—and it was an unlikely assumption, purely for the sake of argument—that I could defeat a kazuh swordsman, that would be evidence that I had lied about not being able to have killed Refle, and would be enough evidence for Toshtai to be comfortable in having me executed.

  So, assume that I didn’t try to beat Dun Lidjun: he surely would see that I wasn’t trying, and would take that as a confession.

  As he circled to my left, I tried to follow him.

  My eyes fastened on Dun Lidjun’s, and wouldn’t release. The old warrior’s eyes were slate gray, every bit as hostile and cold as the Open Sea in winter.

  He moved in and slashed, tentatively, at my neck. I got my sword in the way, somehow. Steel ringing on steel, I pushed his sword away as I retreated, Dun Lidjun in pursuit.

  The music picked up, the silverhorns dueling in staccato thrills that climbed up toward the limits of their range, the zivver player running through an arpeggio that was punctuated by a hard wrist on the scratchbox, the power of his music growing.

  Suddenly, almost in unison, they all raised kazuh.

  It started with my father, and then passed from him to Fhilt, Gray Khuzud’s kazuh touching off Fhilt’s, a lit torch touching off another one, sparks from both of their talents, their skills, their kazuh flaring brightly, raising the musicians’ kazuh perhaps involuntarily.

  The music was something alive now, writhing and hammering in the air, filling my ears and my head like strong drink, but clarifying, not clouding my thought. Raised and lifted by the blare of the silverhorns, supported and held by thrumming of the drum, the bright arpeggio and gutsy rattle of the zivver, my nerves steadied by ringing of the chimes and the deep, solid notes of the bassskin, I suddenly knew what to do, and how to do it.

  It was so simple:

  I shouted and lunged for Dun Lidjun, slashing at him hard, ever so swiftly, my sword twisting and moving like a striking snake.

  He didn’t seem to move much; perhaps he just twitched his shoulders and moved one foot back, but metal slid smoothly along my sword, and the challenge sword rang like a bell as it neatly lifted itself out of my hands, tumbling through the air and landing butt-first on the floor.

  Dun Lidjun stood, his sword held easily in front of him, its tip barely a handsbreadth from my throat. He was steady as a statue, the sword, even extended, unwavering in his hands.

  I had been afraid, and a distant part of me could feel my body still reacting to that fear: the pounding of my heart, the cold sweat that bathed my face and chest, the churning in the belly and bowels. But all of that was distant, unimportant: by the Powers I knew exactly what he would do before he did it. It was all as clear in front of me as a fine woodcarving: Dun Lidjun would lower his sword, and drop kazuh, and then he would smile.

  Dun Lidjun lowered his sword, and dropped kazuh, and the intense blankness left his face, replaced by a dim smile.

  The music swelled and rose around us. I could feel the musicians’ kazuh burn brightly, illuminating the room. I’ve always been sensitive to the fire of others’ kazuh.

  “He tried, Lord Toshtai,” the old man shouted, over the blare of the silverhorns. He sheathed his sword with an absentminded gesture. “I could see that he was trying as hard as he could. But he couldn’t have defeated any kind of trained swordsman; he’s just too clumsy at this.”

  “So? If he didn’t, then who did?”

  “A pretty puzzle, Father,” Arefai put in. “If you don’t think that Kami Khuzud did it, then why not get him to solve it for you? He is good at puzzles, I understand.”

  I deliberately didn’t look at Arefai, as I didn’t know whether I wanted to hide a glare or a smile of gratitude. Was this his idea of helping me? Yes, it was better than being hacked to death, but...

  Lord Orazhi considered his fingernails. “Or perhaps you should simply be done with it now, one way or another. I understand that the troupe is to leave shortly for Glen Derenai, among other places.”

  “True, Lord,” Toshtai said. “But since all of the troupe are suspected, they will have to stay here until the matter is disposed of.” Idly mirroring Orazhi, he examined his own fingernails for a moment, as though he had forgotten that he enjoyed acrobats. “We shall give Kami Khuzud three days to solve this puzzle.”

  “Natural
ly,” Narantir said, “the troupe will continue to perform for the three days.”

  Arefai eyed Narantir as though he had just loosened the drawstrings of his trousers, passed wind, left his eating sticks on his plate, or committed some other equally distasteful solecism.

  Narantir smiled at me. It would cost Toshtai nothing in particular to keep us here an extra two days.

  Toshtai caught the smile. “Since it amuses you so much, Nailed Weasel User of Magic, you shall assist Kami Khuzud in discovering who murdered my armorer.”

  “Of course.” Narantir bowed deeply. “I am delighted to be of help, Lord. May this one ask where your wisdom suggests we begin?”

  “That is up to the two of you, is it not? Were I you, I would begin with Refle’s armory, but it is your decision.” Lord Toshtai turned to me. “And, of course, it is your decision, as well, Kami Khuzud. You may feel free to pursue this ... inquiry wherever it leads. As long as the troupe performs on time each night.”

  I bowed. “Of course.”

  “You are dismissed, Kami Khuzud.”

  All of the troupe was passing the balls back and forth in a freeform juggle. I wished I could have stayed and watched, but I had been dismissed.

  I left the great hall to a fanfare of silverhorns, and a low mocking snarl from the bassskin.

  * * *

  15

  Sword Talk

  I STARTED WITH the armory, and the body.

  Crosta Natthan insisted on accompanying us, which didn’t bother me; I really wasn’t looking forward to pushing my way past the guards.

  On the way over he was able to tell me about his discovery of the body, which he insisted on doing in a tone of voice that made it perfectly clear that he thought I was asking purely for effect.

  The warrior guarding the door moved aside at Crosta Natthan’s scowl, and we slid in through the narrow opening.