by Sarah Remy
Beaumont accepted the dismissal without argument. He sent the Kingsmen back toward Farrow’s tidy cottage with a wave, taking time to mop his face with the edge of his tunic before plodding back along the winding path.
“He’s a good man, but he prefers gate work to legwork,” Mal said. “Still, he had enough sense to send for me when it became apparent you were involved, lad. What’s happened here? What’s this about sidhe on Farrow’s land?”
“One,” reported Liam, staring straight ahead over Mal’s head. “Just the one’s all we saw. In the wheat. We chased it back onto Farrow’s land. It was a scrawny creature, my lord. I thought it was scavenging, stealing food.” He winced. “But then we found him—Farrow I mean, my lord—dead in his own cellar. Holder’s with him now. So I guess it wasn’t just the turkeys the barrowman wanted, after all.”
“We’ll see.” Mal turned slowly in place, scrutinizing the low hills, the pond, and the nearby trees before frowning at the cellar. He wore the leather of his office but seemed untouched by the wretched weather. Avani envied him; she could feel runnels of perspiration across her ribs.
“Cooling cant,” Mal said, catching her eye. “Handy in the summer, especially when one has a reputation to uphold. Remind me later, and I’ll show you the trick of it. Ready?”
“You first,” Avani said, matching his wry smile. “The steps look dangerously steep, I think.”
Mal was short enough he didn’t have to duck his head as he slipped beneath the building’s foundation stones. Liam caught at Avani’s sleeve before she could follow the magus underground.
“Jacob was here,” he said, frowning. “Earlier in the day. We saw him in the sky over the house only I didn’t think to make anything of it until later.”
“Jacob spends most of his time in these skies.” But Avani glanced reflexively upward, even as she reached for the raven and found him dozing in the throne room. His dreaming mind was closed to her, as it often was. For all that the bird was her jhi, he was still an animal, with an animal’s sometimes-cloudy inclinations. “Probably it means nothing.”
Liam expressed his disbelief with a snort but moved aside to let her pass. “It’s close down there,” he explained when she cocked a brow. “I’ll go and help search the fields, though I’m thinking the barrowman’s long gone on to ground.”
Avani agreed. There was no lingering trace of sidhe magic nearby. The vocent’s ring on its chain around her neck was reassuringly dormant.
“Be careful,” she warned. And, because it seemed he was growing into a man right before her eyes she said, “Come see me soon, ai? I miss your company.”
He bobbed his chin in acquiescence then took off in the direction of the pond, eating up the ground with his lanky stride. Puzzled, Avani watched his retreat before she let herself down the steps into Farrow’s cellar.
She smelled death before her eyes adjusted to the blaze of Mal’s mage-light. The air turned from warm to chill halfway down the stair. She cast about for magic but the change was only the result of a cannily crafted underbuilding. The blast of cold air might have been a relief if not for the stink of offal. Breathing shallowly through her mouth she took the last two steps as one and stood at Mal’s shoulder.
“Not sidhe,” the magus said. He sounded much too intrigued for Avani’s liking. “This is human work.”
“We saw the sidhe, m’lord.” A second man waited close at hand, the lantern in his fist muted by Mal’s brighter light. “Dripping blood on the crop. My dog chased it into the field.”
“I don’t doubt you. But whatever the creature was about, it wasn’t this.” Throwing the bulk of his cape over one shoulder, Mal bent low over the corpse.
The dead man lay as if in repose on a pile of blood-spattered furs. His summer-weight tunic and trews were stained red along his left side. He was blond and fit, not the sort of man one could easily overpower, but Avani saw from the purpling above his collarbone and around the long column of his throat that he had been strangled.
“His eyes and mouth are closed.” Reaching past Mal she gripped the corpse by one wrist, testing. “Cold and rigid.”
“The rigidity is the cellar’s doing,” Mal said. “He’s not been dead more than half a day. Help me turn him.”
Farrow was heavier than Avani guessed. Even after Holder set down his lantern and reluctantly added his muscle to the task, it took some doing to turn the corpse while still allowing the dead man some dignity. Inflexibility made the body awkward, and she was foolishly glad of the soft pelts once they’d rolled it facedown.
“Although I suppose he’s beyond caring,” she said sadly, “these are fine furs. A king’s ransom in that stack of beaver alone.”
“A terrible waste,” Mal muttered. Avani couldn’t guess whether he meant the trapper or the animals whose skins Farrow had taken. The magus sent his light to hovering below the corpse’s left shoulder blade. “Blood soaked through the back of his shirt, and down his trouser leg. This time our man didn’t leave his knife to stop up the flow.”
“This time?” Holder piped up.
Mal produced a pair of silver forceps from somewhere on his person. The tool was no longer than Avani’s middle finger, the pincers sharp. Where before he had used the forceps to flay Greta, now he used them to deftly pull the sodden folds of Farrow’s shirt sideways.
“There’s the incision in the cloth. Once more between the ribs to the heart, similar blade, indistinguishable method of execution. Once his muscles loosen we’ll see the puncture beneath his arm. Man’s work, as I predicted. The sidhe are not so elegant.” He straightened, and the forceps disappeared. “I’ll need the corpse sent immediately to my rooms in Wilhaiim for further examination.”
“You’re on your own when it comes to that, m’lord,” Holder said, relieved. “My wagon’s gone on already, full to bursting with the straw men.”
“Straw men?” Avani echoed, baffled, but Mal had already retreated back up the steps, taking his light with him, and Holder seemed disinclined to spend any more time in the cellar with murdered Farrow. The farmer hurried after Mal, leaving Avani alone in the dark, forcing her to conjure her own small light in order to keep the shadows back.
She was loath to leave the dead man alone. She saw no indication that his ghost endured and was glad of it. Farrow’s corpse—facedown in the poor fellow’s own blood—had no care for company. Still, she thought of field mice in the cellar walls and shuddered. Farrow’s wife would surely not like to hear her husband had been left alone where he’d been murdered.
For there was no doubt he’d been killed there in the cellar, of that Avani was certain. The blood spatter was conclusive.
She sent her light circling the body as she pondered Farrow’s last moments. The necklace of bruises on his throat and the back of his neck only confirmed that he—unlike the more delicate Greta—had been at first difficult to subdue. Strangulation, at least until he lost consciousness, and then a quick strike to the heart. Mal was not wrong: Farrow’s killer would have to be powerful to choke the life from such a vigorous man and then lay him out as if in peaceful sleep, soothing the marks of anguish from his face.
Strangulation, Avani thought, was not so different from drowning. She knew from experience a drowned corpse was not a peaceful corpse.
“He tossed Greta behind a pile of alley rubbish,” she mused. “But you—he takes time to arrange you for the longest sleep. Why?”
“Apologies, my lady, am I interrupting? Does Tenant Farrow have answers for us, then?”
Avani hadn’t heard the Kingsman approach. She nearly jumped out of her skin in surprise. Schooling her face to calmness, she turned just as he descended the last stair, candle in hand. She recognized the young man as one of the two who had ridden out with Captain Beaumont. He licked his lips as he glanced about the cellar, but held his ground.
“Ai, no.” She hid her amusement behind sympathy. “There’s no one here but you and me. Farrow’s spirit has gone on as it should, Goddess bl
ess, and I’ve no mind to call it back for the sake of making our job easier.”
The soldier visibly relaxed. “I’ve come to keep watch,” he explained, tapping the sword on his belt. “In case the barrowman comes back. The captain says I’m to tell you you’re free to ride on home, or wait as they search the fields and see about finding a cart for poor Farrow.”
“Have they found anything?” She didn’t bother correct the soldier’s assumption that sidhe had murdered Farrow. “The missing woman?”
“Nothing, yet.” The Kingsman straightened his shoulders as he frowned down at Farrow’s corpse. “But rest assured. Captain Beaumont may be fractious at times, but he’s a clever man. He won’t rest until we find her.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Avani snuffed her mage-light. “I’ll just go and see if Lord Malachi needs a hand.” She supposed he was nosing about the cottage for signs, or walking the crop with Liam and the others.
But the soldier’s brow wrinkled. “Nay, my lady. He’s gone on, ridden off in a brouhaha of spur and cape, without saying a word to anyone. Nearly rode straight over Holder’s dog and didn’t notice at all.” He cleared his throat. “I thought you realized.”
She tried Mal’s chambers first, then his laboratory. Both doors were tightly locked. Even as she knocked she knew the rooms beyond were deserted. His presence buzzed in the back of her skull, frenetic so as to make her jaw ache, and that was with her walls tightly shut against the beat of his magic. If she dropped her guard long enough to use that unreliable link to find him she worried he’d unknowingly wash back through her like a storm and leave her sundered.
She refused to be afraid but neither would she act the fool. She could not believe him dangerous, though she knew Roue had changed him. She would treat him cautiously but not with misgiving as the king had done, earning Mal’s wariness in return.
Thinking of Renault she took herself to the throne room. Mal was not there. Jacob was. He left his perch above the throne for her shoulder. His claws scored her salwar but did not pierce her skin. He tucked his head beneath the fall of her hair and used the curve of her ear to clean his beak.
“Menace,” she said. “What have you been up to?”
Renault stood alone in the oriel, looking out onto the bailey below.
“Keeping me company,” the king said. He turned from the windows, hands folded behind his back. “On a long and frustrating afternoon. Did you find barrowmen in the tanner’s fields?”
“Nay.” Perplexed, Avani climbed the dais to Renault’s side. “Hasn’t Mal been here?”
“I’ve been in audience. Roue and my shipmaster have only just left. They are in disagreement over the usefulness of cannons fore and aft.” Renault scratched his short beard. “Tell me.”
She’d spent much of the spring in conference with the king, contriving how best to defeat the Red Worm. Since Mal had returned she’d stepped out of role as Renault’s right hand. She resumed it now with a sense of foreboding.
“George Farrow is dead,” she said. “His wife is gone missing.” On her shoulder Jacob rattled his wing feathers. “It was murder, clearly so. He died in his cellar, stabbed through the heart.”
“Ill news.” Renault returned to his windows, leaving Avani to follow. The king did not appear as stricken as she’d felt when she’d first looked upon Farrow’s corpse. And why should he? She knew Wilhaiim’s king had more to concern himself over than one dead tenant. “But less so than sidhe running feral on my land. Was it his wife who did the deed?”
“I—no, Majesty.” Avani silenced Jacob’s guttural chuckle by pulling on his tail feathers. “Not unless she’s quite strong. Farrow was not a slight man. He was strangled first. Then the knife up through his ribs to his heart.”
Through the oriel she could see a crowd gathering in the bailey. Even near twilight the streets were uncomfortably warm; it was not usual for anyone to loiter long. Yet she counted fifteen people below on the pavement, and more coming quickly out of doors and around corners to join the group.
Renault’s stare grew hooded. “Belmas’s wife, the baroness, was a good friend to my mother, when they were girls, and also as they grew older. Greta deserved better.” He sighed. “One’s a tragedy, three begin to make a pattern. You are quite right. I should have heard this news from Mal, and immediately.”
“You were in audience, Majesty—”
“Closed doors have never stopped Malachi before,” retorted the king. “I had to hear word of sidhe in Wilhaiim’s wheat fields from my constable, and while she’s a fine soldier, Wythe—unlike Belmas—has never been a friend of the throne. She was, I’m sure, delighted to catch me unawares.”
“I don’t know where Mal is, Majesty,” Avani admitted, answering Renault’s unspoken query. “I hoped to find him here.”
Five Kingsmen joined the growing crowd below, ranging themselves on the ragged edges of the assemblage. Their swords were sheathed, their hands held loosely at their sides, their stance deliberately casual, but Avani knew they were watchful, attention focused on something at the center of the group. Avani pressed her nose against glass, but all she could make out were the tops of heads. Through the glass she could hear the rise and fall of voices.
“One of our priests,” Renault explained, “upon learning of my betrothal, has taken it into his head to pray for me, and for Wilhaiim. He entreats the one god’s forgiveness for fear we will all soon be smote by lightning, or worse, only because I’ve shown the temerity to accept a foreign wife.” Renault grimaced. “He started early this morning, and hasn’t lost steam yet. I appreciate his stamina, and although I can’t hear his chastisement with mine own ears, Brother Orat has been bringing me reports. By all accounts the man is quite a persuasive speaker. I’ve begun to think of him as my claviger, for the staff he leans upon as he berates me for a fool, but I believe his name is Tillion.”
A frisson of apprehension made Avani look quickly from the windows to the king. Jacob mumbled protest. “Your people may not love the Masterhealer as they do you, Majesty, but from what I’ve seen the one god is as much a part of their daily lives as eating and sleeping. Master Paul is right when he says they will not take kindly to the Rani. It’s easier to shun the unfamiliar than to work to understand it.”
“You’d know that, I suppose,” Renault conceded. “Understand this: if it were my choice, I’d take no wife at all. Kate has been in the ground not yet even a year. Nevertheless, the accord has been signed. A change is coming. I fear sooner rather than later my people will be glad of our new allies and their knowledge. I’ve runners in from the divide almost daily, and they all bring me the same news. There is much activity beyond the mountains. When they scale the highest ways and look down upon the desert, clouds of disturbed sand hang always in the air, obscuring the dunes. The desert is become hectic.”
“Preparing for war,” Avani said. “As Baldebert warned.”
“I cannot be sure,” replied Renault. “But I believe it so. It’s a long time coming. The desert lords have ignored their obligation to the throne since before I was born.” The smile he turned on Avani was shrewd. “I understand the temple still enjoys their regular tithing, however.”
Down in the bailey the number of heads had increased to nearly sixty. The Kingsmen, still outwardly calm, continued their silent vigil.
“Ai, order the priest back to the temple,” Avani said. “Before he does you damage.”
“Nay,” Renault refused. “I’ll not give our Masterhealer that satisfaction, nor let my people think I am afraid of one silver-tongued theist.”
A woman in spotless white livery met Avani outside the throne room.
“My lady,” she said, staring at Jacob with undisguised fascination. “A moment?”
From her uniform—feathered cap, embroidered, and silk sash—the woman was a nobleman’s valet. The simple sunburst design on her snowy tunic was known to Avani; she’d seen it recently in miniature form on the hilt of a delinquent blade.
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�House Belmas,” she said, surprised and wary both. “Yes, of course. Is my lord in need of another posset?” She’d delivered the baron a tea for his ague along with his curtains, but he’d insisted at the time that when it came to the ailments of the body he would only treat with healers.
The servant shook her head, making the feather in her cap dance and Jacob rock from foot to foot.
“Nay, my lady, it’s not that.” The valet doffed her cap, holding it between both hands as she essayed a small bow. “It’s only that he’s been waiting word on the baroness, and now he’s decided he’s bided long enough. He’s threatening to rise from bed. He sent me down to bring you to him, or he’ll come himself. Why, my lady, he can barely walk from bed to pisspot, never mind all the way to court.” She set her cap back on her head, twitching it nervously this way and that. “Please, will you come?”
“Of course,” answered Avani, although the dread that had followed her from the throne room felt heavy as the raven on her shoulders. “Lead the way.”
Baron Belmas held court in a suite of tower rooms overlooking the palace stables. The rooms were well furnished and lovingly tended by a small army of servants. The baron sat propped in a chair by the window, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and over his knees. Warm evening air, smelling of horses, rolled through the window and into the room. Even in the heat the baron, a skeleton of a man, shivered under his coverings.
“You do me honor, my lady,” Belmas said, although his dry tone suggested otherwise. “I had thought to come and find you myself. Tell me—” he leaned forward in his chair “—what have you learned from Greta’s corpse? Have I been cuckolded?”
Jacob took his cue from Avani’s huff of astonishment. The raven launched into the air, flapping his wings with more force than necessary as he circled Belmas’s bedchamber thrice. The breeze of his flight ruffled papers and sent beeswax candles tumbling off tables to the floor. A maidservant shrieked and the valet picked up a poker and waved it at the ceiling as if to ward the bird away from her master. Jacob, ignoring the fracas, circled the room a last time before escaping past the baron through the open window.