The Ways of Khrem

by D. Nathan Hilliard

  “Well, I’m in it now. And my thinking is clear, Captain.”

  “It’s not your thinking that has me concerned, Mr. Cargill. It’s your judgment. What did you think you were doing in that plaza? You aren’t usually the risk-taking type.”

  “I was saving that man’s life, remember? I seem to recall you approving of that sort of behavior.”

  “Commendable,” he acknowledged, “but why weren’t you running right behind him? The Cargill I know would have been to the other end of Candlewalk Lane before that fellow had covered a block.”

  It’s always nice to know what your friends think of you.

  “And don’t look so wounded,” he continued. “Running would have been the smart thing to do. You look me in the eye and tell me that you wouldn’t have run if this matter didn’t involve your lady, Camber.”

  I looked firmly at the tub instead.

  “I didn’t think Maddy would hurt me,” I grated out. “I thought that maybe I could…well, talk to her.”

  “You thought that maybe you could ask her who the killer was and go after him yourself! You thought that chance was worth the risk of facing a dangerous entity that has killed forty-six men in the past sixteen years, and it damn near made you number forty-seven! Now tell me your judgment isn’t affected.”

  I had no answer. Instead, I stared helplessly into the cooling water of the tub, clenching my fists.

  “And now,” he continued, “only a few hours after getting up from what was very nearly your deathbed, here you are, ready to charge back out there. You can barely even walk. No, Mr. Cargill, you aren’t going to be leaving this room for at least another two days—even longer, if I’m not satisfied you aren’t going to do something stupid. On the other hand, if you are good, I will keep you informed and let you stay involved in this matter from your room. Can you live with that?”

  Considering the alternatives, I suppose I could…for now.

  “Very well, Captain,” I acquiesced. “We’ll do it your way.”

  “Outstanding,” he said with a bright smile as he rose and headed for the door.

  “Oh, Captain?” I called. “Please do me a couple of favors?”

  “Yes?” he stopped at the door, hand on the latch.

  “First, please stomp that spider by the bookcase there. Then, would you ask Heinryk if he knows, or could find out, how Longbow Lia got her name?”

  ***

  The next day passed agonizingly slow.

  I had Grabel carry my tub down to the sitting room, and there I soaked my feet while going through my books. Poole had arrived and reported the results of the ongoing investigation.

  Apparently, when I had been found on Candlewalk Lane, I still clutched the notes I had taken throughout the day. Not one to waste time, the Captain had immediately started following up on the leads I had developed. Of course, he hadn't given me that bit of information during his last visit. Now I had Poole filling me in on the results, which weren't very promising.

  "What about Agir the Butcher?" I asked. "He was known to be a customer of Maddy, Telestra and Lia."

  "He had travelled out of town for a big wedding party, and wasn't here during the last two killings," Poole replied. "He's got about a hundred witnesses to back up his story."

  Probably all related to him, too. But that aside, I knew Agir could pretty safely be crossed off the list.

  "Chappett the Toymaker? He had contact with all five of them, with them going to his house for some kind of ‘sessions’.”

  “That’s because he also had sessions with about fifteen to twenty others, too. He wanted to draw them and used them as models for dolls he designed. Easy money for them. He’s also in his early seventies now, which put him in his mid-fifties back then. Plus, he lost a leg in a carriage accident a couple of years before the killings. Top that off with the fact he’s about your size, and not in your shape, and… I just don’t see it.”

  So much for my two strongest candidates.

  “Although,” Poole continued, “when the Captain talked to this Chappett, he told him he had a scholar friend who was writing a book on the Cordwood Killer Murders, and Chappett said he thought he might still have the drawings he did back then around somewhere. He said you were welcome to them, if you wanted them for your book.”

  I knew I would be visiting the toymaker as soon as I could get outside the house.

  Leave it to the Captain to find a way to turn another dead end into something worthwhile. As hard as it came to me to admit it, I owed the Captain a debt of thanks. I wanted those drawings very badly.

  I still needed to recover, though.

  Whatever Maddy’s ghost had done to me, it still had me feeling like I had been run over by a cargo wagon.

  I grudgingly admitted to myself that Drayton had probably been right, and I had recklessly underestimated the risks of that encounter. If I had died in that plaza, Camber would have been none the better off. Yet, the fact that she had been there, and still in pain, haunted me.

  I now suspected she wasn’t the only one, but I couldn’t understand why.

  I growled in frustration and threw the book that lay in my lap on the floor. Poole looked at me reproachfully and returned the book to its shelf.

  The big kid had developed a greater respect for books than even I had. He still had my copy of Crewell’s Bestiary, which Heinryk had told me he kept securely locked in his chest at the Watch house when he wasn’t reading it in his bunk. The Captain had beamed at that knowledge, and proclaimed it as proof that I exerted a good influence on the team.

  “I know you want to get out of here, Mr. Cargill,” Poole said apologetically, “but the Captain’s orders are orders. He’s not doing this to torture you. He’s really a good guy.”

  “Bully for the Captain,” I sulked. “I hope he’s having more luck than I am. These books are useless. Nothing in them has anything in common with what happened.”

  I had very little in my personal library on the supernatural, and none of it shed any light on the events in the plaza. I had put out several inquiries through a couple of agents this morning for other books, but I didn’t hold out much hope.

  The ghost of Moonstone Maddy was apparently unique, maybe in more ways than one. While I had heard tales of vengeful spirits haunting others, and sometimes even killing a specific person, none of those stories included a ghost with a body count like Maddy’s.

  And none contained anything resembling the strange behavior of Maddy in that plaza.

  Maddy and Camber were involved, and now I felt pretty sure Lia was, as well.

  I really needed more information.

  The problem was that most of the pertinent information had disappeared over the course of the past seventeen years, and I was left with precious few avenues to explore. The Captain’s research into the old Watch logbooks had provided one potentially useful piece of information. They showed that the ghost only struck on the nights the Cordwood Killer made his original attacks, seventeen years ago.

  I suppose that could be useful to the Watch in helping avoid future deaths at the hands of the ghost, but it really didn’t get me any closer to discovering the identity of the women’s killer.

  And I still intended to find him.

  While Drayton had me stymied for now, he couldn’t hold me here forever. Finding the Cordwood Killer had become the central reason for my being, and I intended to do whatever it took to track him down. No matter what it cost or how long it took, I would bend every resource at my command into seeing that he and I finally met.

  Unlike the Captain, my scruples were result-oriented, and not the type to get in the way of using whatever means necessary to discover the truth. Especially not when it came to this.

  But for now, I would do it the Captain’s way.

  Chapter Six

  “People die, love does not. That is one of the agonies of loving. Love refuses to understand death.” —Karod the Poet

  The coach dropped me off at Stoneforest Square,
and then clattered back up the road.

  One hundred eleven years ago, the old Emerald Prince, Carog Estradian, decided to upgrade the large market square in his portion of the city. He filled it with four hundred columns and put a tiled roof on top. Strategic square holes in the ceiling high overhead let the daylight come down into the dimness below in widely spaced narrow shafts.

  The effect, coming out of one of Khrem’s tunnel-like streets, was like entering a vast cavern.

  Wagons from visiting caravans were pulled into spaces between the columns, creating a maze of carts, temporary merchant stalls, livestock pens, booths and tents. And the din was amazing. The air hummed with the sounds of music, bartering, animals braying and merchants loudly hawking their wares. The smells of cooking, spices, sweat, manure, hay and produce assaulted the nostrils.

  It was in this dim world that Camber and I stole our first fruit, picked our first pockets, received our first scars, and watched our first friend die. I kept my hand on my money pouch, alert for today’s version of my childhood self.

  After three days of further recovery—and good behavior—I was finally free to leave the house again. I had not truly regained my full strength, but I felt close enough to make a convincing show of it, and the Captain had started to focus on other matters, anyway.

  All the leads I had generated while disguised as a scribe had been pursued and discounted. The Captain worked hard on putting a good face on things, but without further leads, the investigation was grinding to a halt and growing cold—again. And with Maddy due to make an appearance in a couple of days, the watchman’s energies were now being diverted to figuring out ways to prevent her from taking another victim.

  That left me free to pursue my own devices.

  My first order of business was to visit that toymaker who had drawn pictures of Camber and the other victims so long ago. I prayed he was a good artist. The thought of seeing those faces again, even on paper, made my chest tight as I moved toward my destination.

  Since the Captain had chosen to maintain the fiction of me being a scribe in his interview with Chappett, I dressed once again in my costume of spectacles and robes.

  I made my way through the murky depths of the market to the far side of the square. Usually, I would have stopped at some of the stalls to see what new curiosities had arrived on the latest caravans, but today I stayed focused on my mission. The toymaker’s shop sat on a corner of the square and an alley.

  I started to remember it as I drew near.

  Keris, Camber and I used to always find some of the younger children in our little band with their noses pressed against the window. They would often protest when we herded them away from the carved wonders on display, and back to the loft of the old, abandoned warehouse we called home. Like I once told Camber, when I caught her sneaking back to look in the window herself, toys were for children who could afford childhoods.

  More than twenty years later, I prepared to step inside the toy store for the first time.

  The door was a heavy wooden affair, like the ones in all the other shops that opened onto the square. Instead of a sign, a simple hand-carved puppet hung over the door. Nothing had changed. With a surprising amount of trepidation, I knocked and pushed open the door.

  A bell rang as the door opened, and when I stepped inside I found myself in a well-lit shop with colorful toys crowded on the shelves within. Wooden soldiers stood at attention next to painted dolls in frilled dresses, while a line of rocking horses ran along under the bottom shelf. Another section of the wall was festooned with hanging string puppets of all types. The smell of paint, wood and lacquer permeated the entire place.

  “Coming! I’m coming!” a voice called from behind a beaded curtain filling the doorway behind the counter.

  An odd “step-thump step-thump” sound of footsteps approached, and the beads parted as Chappett the Toymaker limped into the room.

  Slightly smaller than an average-sized man, he had a shock of white hair and a thick white mustache. Despite being in his seventies, the eyes behind the spectacles were still sharp. He limped up to the counter and rested his elbows on the worn wooden surface.

  “Welcome, friend!” Chappett greeted. “Look around and choose what would please your little one the most. I have dolls for the girls, and heroes of all types for the boys. I have rocking horses, and little swords and crossbows to carry on them, and toy castles for them to defend! I have…”

  “Oh no, no…” I interrupted. “My friend, Captain Drayton, referred me to you, Mr. Chappett. He said you might have some drawings that would be of great interest to me.”

  “Ohhhhhh…” His eyes grew round and solemn, “Yes. Yes, of course. You must be the scribe the good Captain told me about. Mr…?”

  “Adelus the Scribe.” I bowed. “My master prefers to remain anonymous until after he has completed his work.”

  “Of course,” he replied. “Terrible thing, those poor women. I spent the entire afternoon yesterday searching through my old papers for those drawings.”

  “I would gladly compensate you for your trouble, Mr. Chappett,” I said, my obvious eagerness probably adding to the cost.

  “Whatever you think is fair. I’m afraid, though, that some of my old work was lost when part of the upstairs tenant’s roof collapsed in a storm a few years back, and water flowed down here into my work area. Fortunately, I found drawings featuring four of the five women you were looking for.”

  A hollow spot started to form in the pit of my stomach. I had gotten my hopes up, and now the fear of having them dashed gnawed at my guts.

  The toymaker limped back behind the beaded curtain, and then shortly returned with four stiffened leather tubes. Leaning them against the wall, he carefully cleared the counter of toys. Once a suitable space lay available, he reached back and grabbed the first tube.

  Uncapping the end, he gently drew forth a roll of slightly yellowed canvases.

  He carefully unrolled them onto the counter, revealing the top one to be a portrait of a slightly exotic looking woman I didn’t recognize. Her features looked to be vaguely like those of the desert countries to the east.

  “Shadowlark Lani,” the toymaker said somberly. “I remember she would sing sometimes when the session grew tiresome for her. Her talent was actually quite impressive.”

  Lifting the corner of the top canvas, I peeked at the ones underneath. They were mainly different full body poses, usually nude. Judging from most of the poses, the toymaker found her backside to be impressive as well. To be honest, I had to agree.

  He gently rolled the canvases back up and slid them into the tube. He leaned it back against the wall, and then peered through his spectacles at the writing on the other tubes. He selected one, uncapped it, and carefully slid out the rolled pictures.

  “Midnight Adell,” he said quietly, and unrolled the canvas.

  And there she was.

  The toymaker should have been an artist. He had caught Camber’s very essence on paper—those serious, intelligent eyes that looked so out of place on the face of a seventeen-year-old; the slight tightness of her features, hinting of both toughness and vulnerability. It showed the earnest practicality with which she faced the world, and the way she stayed so cautious when it came to luxuries like fancy and hope. And finally, there was that full mane of auburn hair that always threatened to obscure her features with the slightest tilt of her head.

  “I wish there was more I could tell you about her,” the toymaker murmured. “She didn’t say a great deal. She always seemed to be focused on what she was doing, and trying to do a good job of it.”

  Yep, that would be Camber. She approached any task with the same serious concentration on getting it right, whether picking a lock, tying a knot or finding an acceptable meeting ground between Keris’ impulsive genius and my cautious calculation.

  After all those years, my partnership with Keris hadn’t lasted a month after Camber left us. We parted amicably, and worked together again on many occa
sions in the future, but we both knew our partnership no longer worked.

  Even now, just seeing her face on paper made me realize I hadn’t yet appreciated all the things she had been.

  I gave no indication of my disappointment when he rolled the canvas back up and put it back in its tube. I had a role to play, and there was no reason Adelus the Scribe would show more interest in one portrait than another. Nothing in my features betrayed the fact that I intended to have that portrait behind glass and on my upstairs wall tonight.

  As he reached for another tube, I realized he was intentionally going down the list of women in the order they had died, showing their images one at a time.

  It struck me that this was the closest thing to a funeral any of them ever had. The only eulogy these women received had been the city criers running around and yelling out their names and the gruesome details of their deaths for all of Khrem’s morbid interest. They weren’t even allowed to be people in death, just characters in a grisly side show.

  “Longbow Lia,” he said respectfully as he unrolled her canvas.

  She had definitely been of Bardockian stock. Strong-featured, with brown hair in long braids. Even without anything else in the picture for scale, it was obvious she had been a tall, athletic woman. Judging from many of the poses, the artist had found her legs as admirable as I did.

  I reminded myself that the artist stood right in front of me.

  “She said she was going back to her homeland come springtime. She said if she managed to save up enough money, she would take a ship. If not, she would take the long way and walk around the Akartic. I don’t think she was exaggerating.”

  After another moment’s viewing, he gently returned the canvas to its container, and then reached for the last tube. I wondered which of the last two women it would be. I quietly grieved that he couldn’t have had all of their portraits, because I had already decided that each of them were going to get a frame and a place on one of my walls. It was the least they deserved.