by karlov, matt
Maybe I’ll ask him before he dies.
A mention of his own name pulled Arandras’s attention back to Bannard. “Arandras solved it, in the end. The inscription is — well, in short, each word is a combination of Valdori and Yanisinian elements. Translated, it says, ‘Here lies the Emperor’s first legion. May its spirits rest undisturbed until the end of time.’”
“First legion?” repeated a plump woman with a stubbled red-brown scalp and a bandage covering one ear. That must be the sorcerer who botched the unbinding. Halli. “There’s more than one, then.”
“Maybe,” Bannard said. “Or maybe the golems are the first legion, as opposed to all the other, regular legions. Again, we don’t know.”
“Where is Arandras?” Fas said, scanning the room. “There you are. Why don’t you come up here and show these fine people the urn?”
Every head in the room turned to Arandras. Oh, wonderful. Swallowing his reluctance, he made his way to the front.
“Arandras Kanthesi,” Fas said, with a wave of his hand as if he had personally conjured Arandras into being. “Former Quill linguist, and the man we have to thank for bringing this puzzle to our attention.” He gave Arandras an expectant look.
With an inward grimace, Arandras reached into his pouch and held up the urn. Seems like all I do here is show this thing off to one Quill or another. A glorified pedestal, that’s me.
“Good, good,” Fas said. “With the team expanding, we’ll need to make the urn more widely available. Arandras will supervise its use whenever he’s present, of course. At other times, we’ll find someone else to take charge of it. Narvi, perhaps —”
“No,” Arandras said. Oh, no, you don’t, you sneaky bastard. “The urn stays with me.”
Fas’s chuckle seemed pitched not at Arandras, but at the watching Quill. “But you see how many of us are now committed to helping you solve this riddle. Some of these people will be working late into the night, and others will start each day before the dawn. You can’t possibly be present the entire time.”
“No, I can’t,” Arandras said. “And neither can the urn.”
Fas assumed a regretful frown. “Well. We’ll discuss this later.” He gestured his dismissal to the assembled Quill. “Enough talk,” he said. “Go to work.”
The Quill dispersed, some leaving the room as others re-formed into smaller groups and began murmured conversations. Narvi caught Arandras’s eye on his way out, but the look he cast was beyond Arandras’s ability to decipher. Fas hung back, sitting on a vacated stool and busying himself with some papers.
“What in the hells was that?” Arandras said, glowering at the top of Fas’s balding head. “I told you how this was going to work. I retain custody of the urn at all times. No exceptions.”
“Which was fine as long as this was a three-man project,” Fas said, not looking up. “It’s grown somewhat larger than that now, wouldn’t you say?”
“Doesn’t matter. Our agreement stands.”
Fas set the papers down and stood. On his feet, he was at least a head taller than Arandras. “I’ve been very patient with you, Arandras,” Fas said, his thumb tapping apparently unconsciously against his thigh. “I took up your problem based on nothing but Narvi’s good word for you. I gave you food and lodging. I’ve tolerated your little eccentricities.” He gave a slight sigh. “The only way this works is if everyone’s prepared to do their part for the whole. You used to work for us, so I know you understood that once. But I’m starting to wonder if, somewhere along the way, you’ve forgotten it.”
More like seen through it. There was no whole, not really; only men like Fas. Arandras took a deep breath. “I remain very happy to cooperate with your scholars and sorcerers, Damasus, just as when I arrived. But I will retain custody of the urn. At all times.”
Fas shook his large head regretfully. “You disappoint me, Arandras,” he said. “It seems Narvi misjudged you. Blinded by past friendship, I suppose.” He sighed. “Well. Despite your intransigence, we’re still prepared to honour our agreement. We are not so unprincipled as you seem to imagine. But if you’re not prepared to trust us with the urn, I imagine you can’t be very comfortable sleeping under our roof, or eating our food. Perhaps you’d like to find other lodgings for the rest of your stay in Anstice.”
“Perhaps I would,” Arandras snapped. Honour our agreement, my arse. The Gatherer himself couldn’t peel you away from this now.
“Your friend, too, I imagine.”
“Of course.”
“Well,” Fas said again. “I wish you a productive day.” He began gathering his papers. “The Quill is not your enemy, Arandras. Not unless you make it so.”
But Arandras was neither the Quill’s enemy nor its friend. He was simply himself. Our relationship is what you make it, Damasus. Everything else is just words.
•
Six days after the meeting of the Woodtraders Guild’s masters, Kieffe’s body remained in Phemia’s chill-chest. Eilwen had no idea what was taking Caralange’s sorcerer so long, nor which master was paying for the precious hours of chill-chest time. Ten days of continuous use was typically enough to drain the spell dry, rendering the chest inert until a Quill sorcerer could be brought in, at significant cost, to refresh the binding. We might need two sorcerers this time. One to replenish the binding, and a second to clean the damn box of any leftover corpse bits.
There’d been a small memorial service for Kieffe the previous day. Laris had brought in a house priest from the Pantheon to perform the rites customarily reserved for cases where the body had been destroyed. Eilwen had gone along, not so much to pay her respects as to see who else might be there. Unfortunately, Laris seemed to have instructed her entire department to attend, many of whom were eager to ask Eilwen how the investigation was proceeding. The tedious rounds of small talk and polite non-answers left her with little opportunity to scan the gathering for unlikely attendees. At one point she caught a glimpse of Vorace across the room talking with Phemia and Soll, but as far as she could tell, neither Havilah nor Caralange had attended.
The image of the cannon barrel nestled in wood shavings haunted her thoughts. In her shock at the discovery of the weapons in Qulah’s warehouse, she’d failed to determine how many there were, or how many were yet to come. Enough to make it impossible for Qulah to fulfil the order out of existing stock, even back in Tan Tahis. How many is that? The Tahisi merchant had mentioned shot and powder as well, but had said nothing about gun carriages, leaving Eilwen to wonder if the cannons were to be fixed in place, or perhaps used to arm ships. Then again, there was probably nothing special about a gun carriage. If a Woodtrader couldn’t arrange the construction of some timber carriages this side of the Sea of Storms, they weren’t trying very hard.
The possibility of a separate transaction to procure carriages invited its own line of investigation, albeit one with a familiar problem: the difficulty of getting her hands on any of the records. Havilah’s reports, detailed as they were in many respects, simply didn’t have the kind of information she needed. But there was no way to demand the relevant records without the masters hearing about it, at which point the information she sought would likely be excised — unless someone decided it would be less trouble to simply have her removed.
She sat on the edge of her desk, her heels raising hollow thuds as they drummed against the varnished eucalyptus panel. And then there’s the coinage. The notion of paying in Tahisi coin for even one consignment of cannons was improbable, to say the least. It wasn’t as though the Woodtraders kept reserves of Jervian talents and Kharjik bezants and Tahisi minza for contingencies like this. Even if the Guild wanted to make the exchange, Eilwen doubted the local money-changers would be able to offer the quantities required. In a southern port city like Spyridon or Damara, maybe. Not here.
Unless, of course, the ultimate purchaser was someone with special access to Tahisi currency — perhaps even someone who had been born in Tan Tahis. Someone like Havilah.
; No, it doesn’t make any sense. Gods, none of this makes sense. What possible use could anyone in the Guild have for a warehouse full of cannons?
A series of loud knocks broke her train of thought. She grimaced, resenting the interruption. “Not now,” she called. “Come back later.”
There was a pause, then the knocking resumed, softer this time but more insistent. “Open, please,” came a muffled voice she recognised as belonging to Ufeus. “You need to hear this.”
Oh, for the gods’ sake. “Fine,” she muttered, marching over and yanking the door open. Ufeus stood in the corridor, Brielle hovering behind him. “What is it?”
Ufeus glanced over her shoulder. “We should talk inside.”
Eilwen took a deep breath. Of course we should. “Fine.”
“It’s Dallin,” Brielle said as soon as the door closed. “He’s dead.”
Eilwen shook her head, trying to recall the name. “Who?”
“Dallin Nourt. You remember. Our man at the Exadius company.”
Oh. Shit. She looked from Brielle to Ufeus and back again. “Dead.”
They nodded.
Eilwen hesitated. “And, uh… not by us?”
“What? No!” Ufeus glared at her as if she had personally accused him of the man’s murder.
“Well, not us us, anyway,” Brielle muttered.
“Who, then?”
Ufeus stared over her shoulder in stony silence, refusing to meet her gaze, so Eilwen looked to Brielle.
“We don’t know,” Brielle said. “Apparently a Kharjik perfumer noticed him coughing up blood in an alley just north of the river. The perfumer sent his boy for a Quill fleshbinder, but they obviously couldn’t help.”
“All right. I’m going to have to take this to Havilah.” She’d been hoping to put off speaking to Havilah until she’d figured out what to say about her visit to Qulah’s, but news of a contact’s death couldn’t wait. “Do we know anything else?”
Brielle shook her head. Ufeus continued to stare at the wall behind her as if she hadn’t spoken.
“Very well. Thank you, Brielle. Ufeus, a moment.”
Brielle padded out, closing the door softly behind her. Eilwen sat behind her desk, stretching her bad leg. “All right, Ufeus,” she said. “Let’s have it. What’s your problem?”
Ufeus blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“You heard me. What’s your problem?”
Confusion flickered in Ufeus’s eyes. He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again.
“I mean it,” Eilwen said. “Tell me what’s bugging you. This is your big chance to say what you really think.”
“As you say.” Ufeus pressed his lips together. “If you must know, I don’t appreciate seeing you in that position. My position.”
“Yeah. Life’s not fair. But Havilah’s the boss, and we both do what he says. What else?”
Ufeus narrowed his eyes. His jaw worked, but he said nothing.
“Come on. You’re a grown man. I’d expect petty resentment from children, but not you. What else?”
Colour bloomed in Ufeus’s face. “Fine,” he snapped. “What in the hells are you doing here? You come in with no idea how this place works. You blunder about, ignoring my advice and burning one of our contacts. Then he gets killed, and you have the effrontery to ask if I arranged it! Me! That life is on you, Eilwen! And why is it I’m still doing everything I was doing before? What are you doing with your time, aside from hobnobbing with the masters? Tell me, Eilwen, what exactly are you good for?”
The onslaught of words piled against her like a breaking wave, the impact no less shocking for the fact that she had goaded Ufeus into them. Eilwen gripped the edge of the desk, her knuckles white. Ufeus glared through slitted eyes, his breath short. She closed her eyes and tried to gather her thoughts.
“You’re right,” she said at last. “I ignored your advice, and I shouldn’t have. You’re also right that I haven’t truly taken on any of the work you’ve been doing. That was the plan, but it hasn’t turned out that way.” She fell silent.
Ufeus raised his eyebrows. “That’s it?”
Eilwen hesitated. Don’t involve Ufeus, Havilah had told her. But he was involved. All of them were, whether they liked it or not. “That’s all I can say,” she said at last. “If you want to know more, you’ll have to ask Havilah yourself. And he probably won’t tell you either.”
He scowled. “That’s bullshit.”
“No. It’s not.” She stood. “I’m not going to thank you for doing your job. I’m going to expect you to keep doing it. Seems we both know that you’ll do it better than I could anyway.” She lowered her voice. “But one day soon I may ask you to do more, for the sake of the Guild. That will earn you thanks. And not just from me.”
“Really.”
“Really.” She gestured toward the door. “That’ll be all.”
The scowl on Ufeus’s face lingered, but without intensity, as though it remained only because he didn’t know what to replace it with. At the door he turned back. “What do you mean, for the sake of the Guild?”
Eilwen waved her hand in a shooing gesture. “Goodbye, Ufeus.”
He left, and Eilwen sagged back into her chair. What exactly am I good for? Damn good question. She was floundering, that was the truth of it. The investigation was a giant cloud of fog, and she was lost in its centre. Any ground she thought solid invariably turned spongy beneath her feet. She needed an anchor, some fixed reference point with which to take new bearings. She needed time to sort through her confusion, time to work out exactly what she knew and what she merely suspected.
But first she needed to go and see Havilah.
•
Havilah took the news more calmly than Eilwen expected. “Well,” he said. “It’s probably not surprising, all things considered.”
“But if they know Dallin talked to us, then they know we’re onto them.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” He eyed her contemplatively. “If you’re worried about yourself or Brielle, there’s no need. If they thought you were enough of a threat, they’d have done you at the same time.”
“Thank you,” Eilwen said. “That’s very reassuring.”
“There’d be no point, anyway. Not unless they knew who you’d told about it.”
“Yeah, unless they just wanted to make a statement,” Eilwen said, but her words lacked conviction. Whoever was running the operation seemed to be doing as much as they could to avoid making statements. “Brielle said a Quill fleshbinder was there when he died. I’ll see if I can track them down, find out what they saw —”
“Which will tell you what, exactly?” Havilah said, his mild tone pulling the sting from the interruption.
Eilwen blinked in surprise. “Well, I don’t know. I thought we were kind of interested in who might have killed him.”
“So we are. But this is not about chasing down every possible lead in the hope of striking it lucky. This is about getting the most information with the least possible exposure.” Havilah spread his hands. “If this conspiracy goes as high in the Guild as it seems, we’re only going to get one shot at taking it down. Give ourselves away too early and we won’t even get that. So, yes, there’s a remote chance the Kharjik perfumer said something to the Quill fleshbinder which would give us a clue as to who had Dallin killed. But there’s a much higher chance that you asking that question will put you in line for the same treatment.”
“I thought you just told me I didn’t need to worry about that.”
“Neither you do,” Havilah said. “So long as you don’t alter the equation by turning yourself into a threat.”
“So, what then?” Eilwen said, trying and failing to keep the nettled tone from her voice. “We just sit here and do nothing?”
“We wait. We watch. We use caution.”
Yeah, right up until we cautiously watch Vorace get killed. Or is that what you want? Is it you, after all? She put her hand to her lips, not trusting her face to conceal her tho
ughts.
Havilah passed a sheet of paper across the desk. “Read this.”
Eilwen picked it up. “Kieffe’s autopsy. Finally.”
“Orom found evidence of bluespine in the man’s heart, or so he says. I don’t know how much you can really tell from a week-old corpse, even with sorcery, but there it is.”
“Bluespine,” Eilwen repeated. “A Tahisi poison.”
Havilah met her gaze. “That’s right.”
She nodded. “You mentioned it at the masters meeting, if I remember rightly.”
“I did.”
“An odd coincidence.”
Havilah made no response. He seemed relaxed, but there was something in his posture now — an awareness, perhaps — that hadn’t been there before.
She moistened her lips. “It seems our killer may have a link with Tan Tahis.”
He folded his hands on the desk. “Is there something you want to ask me, Eilwen?”
“Are you… Is it…” She coughed, angry at her treacherous tongue, and all at once the anger swallowed her nerves. “Did you kill them?” she demanded. “Are you playing me, Havilah?”
“No.” He held her eyes, his regard neither aggressive nor defensive, but an offer to look and be satisfied. His expression was calm, assured, and guileless.
At last, she looked away.
“Talk to me, Eilwen,” he said gently. “Tell me what’s going on.”
She bowed her head. “I went to Qulah’s,” she said.
“The Emporium.”
“Yes,” Eilwen said. “Kieffe had been there. The first part of his order is waiting for him in the warehouse right now.” She drew a long, unsteady breath. “It’s cannons, Havilah. Qulah has boxes of Tahisi cannon barrels just waiting for Kieffe to pay for them, with more on the way. A lot more.”
For a fleeting moment, Havilah’s calm expression slipped. “Cannons. You’re sure?”
“I saw them myself. And there’s more,” Eilwen said, suddenly desperate to lay everything out. “Kieffe was going to pay using Tahisi coin. Or he was thinking about it, anyway. It sounded like he hadn’t decided.” She buried her hands in her hair. “Where does someone here get enough Tahisi currency to lay siege to a city?”