It takes twenty minutes for an SDC telephone to open up – apparently some major construction work is going on upshore – and even longer for the on-call sergeant to get Captain Nadar on the phone.
‘What?’ says Nadar’s voice, not even bothering to try to be cordial. ‘What is it? Who is this?’
‘It’s General Mulaghesh. Listen, I realised something about those bodies yesterday.’
‘Oh.’ Nadar clears her throat, affecting a more formal tone. ‘Yes, General?’
‘We’d seen them before. Both of us had. That very day, as a matter of fact. We saw them before we ever went to that farmhouse.’
A long pause.
‘What?’ says Nadar, bewildered.
‘I made some copies of the sketches in Choudhry’s room,’ says Mulaghesh, flipping through her portfolio. ‘And in one corner was something I couldn’t make sense of. They looked like, like little chicken wings on kebab sticks or something like that. But that’s not what they were. It was a drawing of human bodies. Bodies mutilated just like the ones we saw yesterday!’
The Dreyling foreman on the phone next to her slowly turns to stare at her over his shoulder, bug-eyed.
‘What are you suggesting, General?’ says Nadar.
‘I’m suggesting that Sumitra Choudhry drew the murder scene we saw yesterday months before it actually happened. She predicted it, somehow!’
‘What? How could that be?’
‘I don’t know. But I know what I’m looking at.’
‘But Choudhry was mad . . . Couldn’t it just be a coincidence?’
‘I feel like drawing ritually mutilated torsos and then seeing ritually mutilated torsos is a pretty damned unlikely coincidence, even for a madwoman.’
The Dreyling foreman is now sweating heavily and stretching out his phone’s cord to its fullest extent as he inches away from her.
‘So what are you proposing?’ says Nadar.
‘You probably don’t have time for this, but I do,’ says Mulaghesh. ‘I want to ride up to where the first murder took place and check it out. If there’s a chance Choudhry was involved in this, we need to look into it.’
‘The first murder took place deep in disputed territory, General. It’s not safe.’
‘Neither am I. I can handle myself.’
‘I admire your confidence, General, but – if it turns out that you can’t?’
‘Well, you all are getting pretty handy at boxing up dead generals. I expect you could handle me in your sleep.’
Nadar sighs. ‘I’ll talk to Pandey and have him make preparations for you.’
‘Excellent,’ says Mulaghesh. ‘I appreciate your cooperation, Captain Nadar.’
‘Always happy to help, General,’ says Nadar, though she pauses just long enough to make it clear the reverse is true.
*
Later that day Mulaghesh – armed and provisioned in case she gets lost – sets out into the countryside, taking the same road they took yesterday, north of Fort Thinadeshi. But at one creek she makes a hard right toward the Tarsil Mountains, which swell up in the distance, forming a towering pink-and-green wall.
She consults the map again. The village she’s looking for is called Ghevalyev, deep in the woods along one of the many creeks in this area. Everything she sees is covered in damp, soft green moss – tree branches, stones, even the road itself. Eventually Mulaghesh wonders if she, too, would find herself covered in moss if she didn’t keep moving. But after a few miles the lumps of moss take on some more organized shapes, and she realises that underneath the greenery are walls, fences, and gates – civilisation, in other words.
She checks the map. ‘I must be here,’ she says, surprised. ‘Huh.’ She checks the rest of the original report, which Pandey included with the map. There’s not much on this first incident – they thought it was a clear and simple case of murder at the time, albeit a particularly gruesome example – but there is a note that the man found dead at the scene was the village charcoal maker.
She keeps riding until yurts and huts emerge from the firs ahead. A small boy of about eleven sits by the road, filthy and malnourished, surrounded by an absolute swarm of tiny goats. Both the boy and the goats stare at her with the same expression: curious but utterly lacking in intelligence.
Mulaghesh looks at him. ‘This Ghevalyev?’ she asks.
He stares at her, openmouthed. She can’t tell if he’s impressed or if his face just does that.
‘I understand there was a charcoal maker here until a few months ago,’ she says. ‘Know where he would be?’
The boy just stares at her. Then there’s a voice from the yurt behind him: ‘Vim, the only damned reason I asked you to be out there in the first place is to keep. The goats. Outside.’ There’s a frantic baaing, and a tiny goat scurries out the front flat of the yurt, springing away down the muddy road. ‘Now there’s shit all over the floor and it stole some of the turni—’
A big barrel-chested man exits the yurt and does a double take when he sees Mulaghesh sitting on her horse. ‘Oh,’ he says. She watches carefully as his eyes take in her weapons: carousel, rifling, and sword. His look is much too watchful for her liking. ‘How can I . . . uh, help you?’
Mulaghesh smiles widely. ‘Good morning,’ she says, her words ringing with forced cheer. ‘I’m General Turyin Mulaghesh of the Saypuri Military.’
‘A general?’ he says, surprised. ‘Here?’
‘Seems to be so.’
‘Oh. Well. My name is Drozhkin,’ says the man. ‘And this is Vim.’ He nudges the boy with the toe of his leather shoe. The boy, unsurprisingly, doesn’t react.
‘Good morning to both of you,’ she says. ‘I’m told there was a charcoal maker in this village once.’
‘Was and once are the right words to use,’ he says. ‘Mad bastard’s dead.’
‘Mad?’
‘Oh, yes. Mad as a hare in a collapsing tunnel. But most charcoal makers are. Part of the trade.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Why?’ he says, as if the question is absurd. ‘Because he had to spend days awake making sure the whole forest didn’t burn down. Poor bastard had to invent himself a one-legged stool to sit on. If he fell asleep then it’d tip and he’d fall on his ass. No surprise he murdered his wife. I’d go mad, too, if I had to stay awake that long.’
‘I suppose you’d be surprised if I told you we actually don’t think he murdered her anymore,’ says Mulaghesh.
‘ “We” being’ – his eyes trail over her uniform – ‘you.’ The word drips with many unspoken sentiments, chief among them: And why would we care what you think?
‘A family was killed southwest of here in nearly the same fashion. Four of them.’
‘A whole family?’ His face pales a little. ‘Zhurgut’s tears . . . What an abomination. So there is a killer, then?’
‘Did anyone actually see him kill his wife?’
‘No one wants to live next to a charcoal maker. But I heard a rumour Gozha said she saw . . . something. The night they died.’
‘Gozha?’
‘An old woman. Mushroom peddler. Also mad. Might be why she went to see Bohdan, so they could have something to talk about.’
Mulaghesh scribbles furiously. ‘And who’s Bohdan?’
‘Who? The charcoal maker, of course. Don’t you know anything?’
‘Apparently not,’ says Mulaghesh. ‘So Gozha says she saw something the night Bohdan the charcoal maker got killed. Is that about the cut of it?’
‘She didn’t say that,’ he says hastily. ‘I just heard she acted like she did. I don’t have anything to do with this business. I’m . . . I’m not even sure I should be answering your questions. I mean . . .’ He gestures to her. ‘Even this looks bad.’
‘Tell me where Bohdan and Gozha both live,’ she says, ‘and you won’t have any more to answer.’
*
After twenty more minutes of riding along forest lanes, the trees begin to thin out, replaced by stumps. It d
oesn’t take long to see why: up ahead is a filthy dirt clearing spotted with curious mounds of earth, almost like giant anthills or beehives, all reeking of cinder. Mulaghesh recognises them as charcoal kilns: they’d make a pyramid of wood, cover it with earth, then set the exposed tip alight, letting it slowly smoulder for days and days. And the maker would have to watch it carefully: if a log shifted the earth could collapse, allowing in too much air, and the pile of wood would go up in a flash – along with most of the forest, probably. A filthy, miserable way to make a living, she thinks to herself. But at least it’s a living . . .
She sees the living quarters up ahead, if it could even be called such: it’s a misshapen wooden box of a structure, set atop a long dirt hill. Mulaghesh gets the impression that the charcoal maker didn’t invest much effort in his home, as there was always a chance it could go up in flames. Perhaps it had burned down before, only to have him rebuild it.
Mulaghesh looks around the clearing. Then she ties up her horse, considers the angle of the home, and begins walking through the surrounding forest, trying to find the best angle where she can see both the front and the back of the house . . .
It doesn’t take long for her to find it: another blind, created from clippings from fir trees. These clippings have browned considerably by now, making it easier to spot, but when the blind was first made it would have been almost invisible – hence why the original investigation team never found it. That, and they didn’t know to look.
Mulaghesh shoves the branches away. Again, she sees that whoever made it cleared the forest floor of needles. Perhaps this mysterious observer, thinks Mulaghesh, possesses an unusually sensitive backside. She looks around for some sign or spoor and finds nothing. As she starts to withdraw she pauses, stoops, and looks again.
Carved into the trunk of a tree is an unusual sign, but a familiar one to her: the crude image of a sword with the hilt made of a severed hand.
‘The sword of Voortya,’ says Mulaghesh, touching it with two fingers.
She imagines this person, whoever they were, sitting behind this blind, carving this into the tree . . . She gets the impression that this was not an act of reverence but rather boredom, just something to occupy the time. Someone patient, then, waiting a long time for the right opportunity.
She walks back to the hut on the dirt mound. It has no door – it’s been torn off the hinges, somehow – so she walks in. It’s the same on the inside as it is on the outside: just a simple wooden box built of scrap wood. The floor is wood slats, the ceiling patched over with skins. At first Mulaghesh thinks the floor looks unusually dark, but then she realises it’s stained – the residue of the blood of Bohdan’s wife. To most people the stain would look unusually large, but Mulaghesh is quite aware that the human body possesses more blood than one would expect.
She looks around the depressing little shack. It’s bereft of almost anything personalised or pleasant. The bed is just a raised fretwork of sticks covered in furs and skins, the fireplace a teetering stack of bricks. Mulaghesh can’t imagine why someone would marry into such a life – but then, she knows not everyone has a choice.
As she walks around the shack she realises her footsteps sound oddly . . . hollow. She bounces up and down on the balls of her feet and listens to the creak and moan of the floorboards. Then she squats and peers through two slats of wood. It’s hard to tell, but it almost looks like there’s some kind of a space down there . . .
‘He built it to escape a fire,’ says a voice from the door.
Mulaghesh snaps up, hand on her carousel, and pauses at the sight of the old woman at the doorway. The old woman, to her credit, hardly flinches: she’s a brown, hard, wiry thing, like a human form carved from old, smoked wood. She’s dressed in ratty furs and skins, her eyes dark and hard and glittering.
‘Lady,’ says Mulaghesh, ‘I know there’s no door, but there’s still plenty of stuff to knock on.’
‘You’re from the army,’ says the old woman. It’s not a question. ‘An easterner.’
‘And you are?’
‘I am Gozha.’
‘Ah.’ Mulaghesh relaxes, but only a little. ‘How is it you came to be here, Gozha? I have you on my list to visit. I have some questions for you.’
‘Drozhkin came to me to beg forgiveness.’ She steps inside. ‘He felt he had slighted me by telling you what I saw. Betrayed a neighbour, I suppose. That man . . . Nothing goes in his head that doesn’t come out his mouth. I’m surprised his brains have stayed where they are.’
‘And what was it that you saw, ma’am?’
Gozha stands beside her, looking down at the stain on the floor. ‘He was not a bad man, Bohdan. Not smart, not lucky, but not bad.’
‘Is that so?’
‘He built the cellar down there to hide in case of a fire, in case the whole house went up. He even built a pipe out the side of the dirt mound so they’d have air.’ She looks at Mulaghesh. ‘He loved her, you see. Wanted to protect her. He always had the doctor out here, checking on her, just in case. He fretted so. But . . . he wasn’t smart – if she was hiding in the basement, and the house caught fire, why, she’d be trapped with it falling in on her . . . Not one for deep thinking, Bohdan.’
Mulaghesh stands up. ‘What happened here?’
‘Why? What does it matter to you?’
‘What’s happened here has happened elsewhere. And it could happen again.’
‘Again. What does it matter to you?’
‘They’re getting better at it, I think. The last one was worse than this. The next one will be worse still.’
‘Again. Still. What does it matter to you?’
‘Why wouldn’t this matter to me?’ says Mulaghesh.
‘Why? You are an easterner, a Saypuri. We are Voortyashtanis. To you we are no better than pigs or goats – yes?’
‘I’ve seen Voortyashtanis bleed and I’ve seen Saypuris bleed. It looks the same. I’d like to keep everyone’s blood right where it is as much as I can.’
‘Glib pleasantries,’ says Gozha. ‘The sort of thing a diplomat claims before cutting your throat and making off with your daughter.’
Mulaghesh looks her in the eye. ‘Do I look like a fucking diplomat?’
Gozha holds her gaze for a moment. She looks away. ‘I did not see the murders.’
‘Then what did you see?’
‘Very little.’ She looks out the window. ‘I was just over there, in the trees. It was dark, late at night, but the moon was bright. I was leading my pony through the woods nearby . . . She has a strong sense of smell, my little pony. And when she started acting up, I could tell what she smelled. I knew there was blood nearby.’ Gozha walks to the open door of the shack. ‘I came to the edge of the clearing to see, and I saw a woman standing there in the charcoal yard.’
‘Bohdan’s wife?’
Gozha shakes her head. ‘No. This woman was shorter. I think she was short. Perhaps I only had eyes for what was standing at the door of the house . . .’
‘Which was what?’
‘You’ll think I’m mad.’
‘I’ve seen mad things. You can believe me.’
Gozha tilts her head, thinking, and says in a dreamy voice, ‘I thought it was a scarecrow, at first. Not a real person, a real man. A picture of a man, arranged from . . . well. Made of things.’
‘Things?’
‘Yes, things. Scraps, it seemed. Spikes. Rags and thorns. A man made of thorns, six or seven feet tall, dark and faceless . . . And in his hands was a gleaming sword, silvery and bright. I didn’t think he was real until he turned around and walked back in the house.’
Silence.
Gozha turns around. ‘You don’t believe me. You think I’m mad. Of course you do.’
Mulaghesh thinks for a moment. ‘I don’t . . . Well. Hells. I don’t know what to believe. He was wearing a suit? A suit of rags and . . . and thorns?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t even know if he was a he. It was dark and hard to see. But he a
nd the woman just looked at each other, seeming to speak quietly, before he went back inside.’
‘Tell me about this woman.’
‘Like I said, she was short, and wore a dark cloak. Purple or green, perhaps. She had it pulled tight over her head. I couldn’t see her face or even her hands.’
A careful one, then, to hide so much of herself. ‘What happened after the man in the thorn suit walked back into the house?’
‘I had tied my pony up in the lane east of here. It began to whinny and whicker, frightened, and I worried the woman and the man of thorns would see me, so I snuck away. It wasn’t until two days later that I heard that Bohdan and his wife were found dead.’
‘And you don’t think Bohdan was in the thorn suit?’
‘Bohdan was like a lot of men around here, easterner – he is lucky if he ate as a child. He was not, shall I say, broad of beam.’
‘Which the man in the suit was.’
‘He cut a fearsome figure, that thing,’ says Gozha quietly. ‘Like something from a nightmare.’ She looks at Mulaghesh. ‘You think these people killed Bohdan and his wife?’
‘It seems likely, yes.’
‘Why? Why kill the charcoal maker of Ghevalyev? Who could possibly care about poor Bohdan?’
‘I think that’s the point,’ says Mulaghesh. ‘It’s easier to harm those considered unimportant – a charcoal maker and his wife, or a family on a farm, out in the middle of nowhere.’
‘But why do it at all?’
‘It sounds like . . . like some kind of ritual,’ says Mulaghesh. ‘A ceremony. The way the bodies are mutilated, the way the person doing it dresses. And someone watches, from a distance, needing to make sure it happens . . .’
‘Voortyashtanis have many ceremonies,’ says Gozha. ‘And surely they had more before the collapse, the Blink. But I never knew of this one.’
‘That’s not to say it didn’t exist,’ says Mulaghesh. ‘But what it’s meant to do is beyond me.’
Gozha begins to walk away. Then she stops at the door and says, ‘It feels strange to say this to an easterner. But I hope you catch these people.’ Her gaze sharpens. ‘We are not pigs or goats, General Mulaghesh.’
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