by Hilari Bell
She snatched up her hat and hurried to the balcony door. Pressing her own face to the glass, she watched the maid cross the open lawn and enter the trees. The moment she did so, Arisa was out the door and scrambling down the wet vines. Even if Katrin looked back, the rain and darkness were enough to hide Arisa from view.
The grass squished under her boots as she crossed the lawn, though her coat and hat kept her relatively dry. Whatever Katrin was up to, it must be urgent to bring her out so early, on a night as miserable as this.
Arisa hesitated at the tree where her tavern clothes were hidden, but Katrin might not go to the tavern. And if she did Arisa couldn’t risk being seen by her, even in disguise. Her maid knew what she looked like, dressed in any kind of clothes, better than her mother did.
The path to the wall was familiar now. Arisa climbed it and looked up the street toward the tavern. No Katrin. Startled, she looked the other way and saw the dark cloaked form walk down the street and turn the corner. She was still headed toward the sea, but going that way would add several blocks to her journey… if she was going to the tavern at all!
Could she be going to meet with her employer? The Falcon’s enemy?
Arisa dropped off the wall and raced after her maid. In this residential neighborhood there weren’t many people out. Arisa had to stay so far back that she lost sight of Katrin several times, when the rain came down harder, but she didn’t dare draw nearer because Katrin kept looking back. Arisa had leaped to flatten herself against the nearest wall the first time Katrin stopped walking. In the darkness more than a block away, that was enough to render her invisible. By the time they’d reached the more crowded streets of the business district, the maid had become less wary.
It soon became clear that Katrin wasn’t going to the tavern, for while she kept moving toward the sea, she also consistently turned north, and the tavern was south of the palace. They’d arrived at an area Arisa thought was mostly populated by fishmongers and grocers, and the crowd was thinning again. Katrin turned and went down a dark alley between a warehouse and a fenced area that smelled like a brewer’s yard.
Remembering what she’d discovered the last time her maid had turned into an alley, Arisa’s heart pounded with anticipation as she ran forward and peered in. She was just in time to see Katrin whisk around a corner. Arisa hesitated. The alley was darker than the street, where scattered gate lamps and candlelit windows produced some illumination. But if Arisa didn’t follow, she’d lose her.
She crept into the alley, moving slowly. If she kicked something that clattered, or tripped, Katrin might hear her. Her boots were soaked now, her feet numb with cold. It was so dark she ran one hand along the brick wall to keep from missing the opening, but when she reached it she saw that she needn’t have bothered. The alley opened into an empty lot behind the brewer’s yard—empty except for several piles of broken barrels and casks. The brick wall was replaced by a cheaper wooden fence out of sight of the street, and several lanterns in the yard cast feeble stripes of light through its slats. The sprung wood of the shattered kegs looked like broken bones in the dim glow. But where was Katrin?
Arisa stared around. She couldn’t see another exit from the lot. There was almost certainly a gate in the fence, but even more certainly the brewer kept it locked. Unless the brewer was a member of the tavern conspiracy? But why make Katrin come through the back gate on a night like this? For their meeting at the tavern, Stu had let the conspirators in through the front door. Could someone else be coming up behind Arisa right now?
She looked back down the alley and saw no one. Of course, the shadows in that alley could have concealed a full squadron of guards. She listened. No sound from either direction. She crept into the vacant lot. She had rounded the first woodpile and was looking for the gate, so she almost tripped when she stepped on something squashy that rolled a bit under her foot.
She looked down. A dainty woman’s shoe, with a foot still in it. Her eyes swept up the skirted legs and stopped at the dagger lodged in Katrin’s back. Blood seeped slowly into the fabric around it.
CHAPTER 10
The Nine of Fires: untimely death.
A death before its time, whether through illness, accident, or murder.
Arisa made a choked sound and fell to her knees beside her maid. Once glance at the dagger told her she didn’t dare try to pull it out— too near, far too near the heart. If Katrin wasn’t dead already, she would be soon. Arisa touched the woman’s neck, searching for a pulse. Her skin was still warm but there was no pulse she could feel.
Let her not be dead, not be dead…
She pressed her fingers harder into the yielding flesh and felt nothing. But she was still warm! Surely there was a chance…
She was still warm. And Arisa had seen no exit from the yard.
She shot to her feet and ran before she was aware of making the decision to move. Out of the lot, slipping on the wet cobbles as she rounded the corner. Sheer terror of what might happen if she fell kept her on her feet. Did she hear something behind her? It would have to be loud to make itself heard over the thundering beat of her own heart.
Arisa raced down the alley faster than she’d ever run in her life. When she reached the street, she started to scream.
There weren’t many people around, not nearly the huge crowd she wanted. Of the scant handful on the street, two turned and walked away when she started screaming, but several others hurried toward her. Within moments a woman’s plump arm was around her shoulders, and two men peered at her from under dripping hat brims.
Arisa didn’t realize she was still screaming till the woman slapped her.
“… to tell us!” she snapped. “We can’t help you if you don’t tell us what’s wrong.”
“Sorry,” Arisa choked, pressing her hands to her face. Sammel would be ashamed if he could see her now—he’d taught her better than to have hysterics in an emergency. “Katrin. A woman. In the lot behind the brewer’s yard. She’s been stabbed and I think she’s dead and he may still be there!”
“Stabbed!” one of the men exclaimed. He looked at the other man, who shrugged.
“I suppose we’d better check it out.” But his glance into the alley’s dark mouth was reluctant.
“Don’t leave me!” Arisa was embarrassed to hear her voice rise once more, and struggled for calm. “He might still be there.”
All three citizens exchanged glances over Arisa’s head, and her cold cheeks heated.
“I know how it sounds, but I’m not making this up! There’s a woman, stabbed, in that lot. She may be dead. She might be dying right now!”
Another two men had come out of nearby buildings in time to hear this, and with five people around her Arisa’s panic began to subside. She started to shake, and the woman’s arm tightened around her shoulder.
“You could have been dreaming, couldn’t you?” she asked gently.
I wish I was.
“No,” said Arisa. “Check it out.”
It took them several minutes’ discussion, and another man had added himself to the group by the time they concluded that they should investigate.
Then there was further delay, while two of them went to fetch lanterns. Arisa stood and shivered. Katrin had been dead. She was almost sure of it. She didn’t like the maid, but the thought of her dying, while these fools dithered, was intolerable.
On the other hand, wild horses couldn’t have dragged her back into that alley alone. Wisdom or cowardice? Both? Arisa shivered.
By the time they finally went to determine the truth of her story, Arisa knew the killer would be gone. It seemed like so much time had passed that she half-expected Katrin’s body to have vanished as well. But no, the woman’s rain-soaked form still lay behind the woodpile, just as Arisa had left it. The bloodstain surrounding the knife hadn’t spread much, she noted. And looking at the knife’s position now, surrounded by lamplight and horrified citizens, she knew it had lodged in the maid’s heart.
Arisa
’s stomach rolled and she looked away. She had seen her mother shoot Pettibone a few months ago, but it was different when you found the body. Different when it was someone you knew. She hadn’t liked Katrin, but she hadn’t wanted this.
At least Katrin would have died within moments of the blow. She’d almost certainly been dead when Arisa found her. All staying with her would have accomplished was to put Arisa in danger as well, for she’d been only a minute behind her maid. The killer must have been there. Watching her.
Her shudder was so convulsive that the plump woman gave her a worried look and held her tighter. One man went running for the city guard, and another went for a healer, though he didn’t bother to run.
It wasn’t easy to strike the heart on the first blow like that. When Sammel had taught Arisa knife work, he’d showed her the spot and the right angle, then draped an old straw-stuffed coat over a scarecrow and had her practice the blow over and over. Even when she could consistently strike the right place, he’d warned her that it was even odds that she’d hit a rib and the knife would be deflected.
This killer was either very well trained or very lucky. Either way, it shouldn’t matter to her, Arisa told herself fiercely. He’d seen her, yes, but he knew she hadn’t seen him. His job had been to kill Katrin, and he’d accomplished it. No need for him to come after anyone else. No need for her to fear…
Why had he wanted to kill Katrin?
One of the guardsmen asked her that, eventually. By the time the guardsmen had arrived, the brewer had been summoned to open his doors and rake up the fires, so they could wait warm and out of the rain.
On arrival the brewer had found his front door unlocked, and a back window unshuttered. Several men had gone to look at the fence and found bits of fresh mud. They’d cleverly concluded that the killer had escaped by climbing the fence, going through the brewery, and out the front door after they’d all gone into the alley.
He’d have watched them through the front windows, Arisa thought, timing his escape. Cool. Professional. Who could command a professional assassin and would want Katrin dead? Katrin had been working for her mother’s enemy, and if his orders had been to make the Falcon’s daughter look bad, then Katrin had succeeded. So he had no reason to want her dead. The members of the conspiracy might be willing to kill, though it was hard to believe it of Master Mimms. Master Darian, on the other hand, might well know how to hire an assassin—but Katrin had been on their side! The Falcon was Katrin’s primary victim, but she could have fired the maid if she’d wanted to be rid of her. If the authorities had learned about the conspiracy, they would send the guard to arrest them, not assassins. Assuming, of course, that the conspiracy was against Justice Holis. Arisa had assumed that when she’d seen Master Darian, but she didn’t really know what they were up to. Or that they were up to anything. Or why anyone at all would want to kill a ladies’ maid.
It was far too nebulous to explain to the wet, unhappy-looking city guardsman who took her statement.
“They say you found the body, Mistress…”
“Benison,” Arisa told him. “Arisa Benison.”
His brows rose. “Any relation to lord commander Benison?”
“Her daughter. And the woman is… was my maid, Katrin. I don’t know her last name.”
She hadn’t bothered to learn it. How could anyone expect to gain her servant’s loyalty if she didn’t take the trouble to learn the servant’s name? Did Katrin have a family who’d grieve for her? Or who depended on her salary, as the Falcon had suggested? How strange to feel guilt, even something close to grief, for a woman she’d so disliked.
No one should die like that, whether Arisa had liked her or not.
“We’ll find out her name,” said the guardsman. “And a lot more, before we’re done with this. What were the two of you doing here?”
He thought Katrin had accompanied her here, and for a moment Arisa was tempted to let him go on thinking that—but lying to the guard wouldn’t help them find the killer.
“I saw her sneaking out of the palace, earlier this evening,” Arisa said. “I wanted to see where she was going, so I followed her.”
The guardsman’s brows rose.
Arisa once more considered telling him about the tavern, but all she really knew was that she’d seen Master Darian go into the building. Once. It was a public tavern. He might just have gone in for a drink, or to get out of the rain. No, it hadn’t been raining then. This long, dreary storm had started that night. And besides, Katrin had been working with the conspiracy. Telling the guard what she suspected would only confuse the issue. If they started their investigation without preconceptions, they might uncover something that Arisa didn’t already know. How could she find out what they learned?
She’d been silent too long.
“Why did you follow her?” the guardsman asked. “If you wanted to get her in trouble, you could have told the master of household she was slipping out.”
Arisa glanced away from the contempt in his eyes. “I did want to get her in trouble,” she admitted. “But not like this! And you know nothing about it, so stop looking like that. She may be dead, but that didn’t make her a nice person when she was alive. Not nice to me, anyway.”
Why hadn’t Katrin been nicer to her? It was foolish to antagonize your employer, and Arisa had been willing to cooperate with her maid in the beginning. Well, cooperate within reason.
“All right,” said the guard. “You wanted to get her in trouble, so you followed her. Then what?”
Arisa related the rest of the night’s events just as they’d occurred. And hours later, her brain numb with the need for sleep, she told her mother the exact same story.
“That was… small of you, Ris,” said the Falcon coldly.
Given the incandescent fury that had greeted Arisa when the city guard brought her home in the middle of the night, cold was an improvement. Still, heat flooded Arisa’s cheeks. Her motives tonight hadn’t been petty, but she had planned to get Katrin into trouble the first time she’d followed her. It felt uglier, now that she was dead.
“You don’t know what it was like,” she told her mother. “And I only wanted to get her fired—or just away from me. It’s not my fault she was killed!”
“It isn’t?” the Falcon asked softly.
Arisa’s jaw dropped. “You don’t mean that! You couldn’t possibly think I’d… I’d… Over a quarrel about corsets?”
“No,” said the Falcon. “I know that you know how, but… No, of course not.”
But she had thought it. She’d asked the question seriously, whatever she said now. Arisa’s heart ached.
The Falcon looked away. “I’m sorry, Ris. That was uncalled for. But everyone knows you’ve been quarreling, and Master Giles told the whole court how good you are with a sword. I just hope no one else thinks you might have done it.”
If anyone else thought she’d murdered her maid, they didn’t show it the next day. Arisa slept late, and then went to her lessons. By the time she had to dress for court there was a new maid to attend her, a plump middle-aged woman who spoke in a murmur and hardly ever met her eyes.
She must have refused to take over Katrin’s room, however, for no light appeared under the door that night. The guards would have searched it, Arisa knew, but having searched it herself, she also knew what they’d have found—nothing. If she wanted to learn more she’d have to return to the tavern. But not that night. She was tired, and her heart ached. Let Katrin’s friends learn of her death in peace.
The next day Arisa followed her usual schedule, setting off for the tavern at the usual time. It was just nerves that made her think she heard an echo of footsteps behind her. The sound of the rain would have kept her from hearing it even if someone were following her, and as often as she spun around, she saw no one suspicious. Nerves, she told herself firmly.
The tavern was open for business, though the lines on Stu’s face looked deeper when he opened the door. It was Baylee who told Arisa th
at her cousin, Katrin, had been murdered two nights ago.
“I’m so sorry!” Arisa had no trouble sounding shocked. Katrin had been the Mimms’ niece? Had her visit to the tavern been an innocent family visit after all? On the same night that Master Darian had been there? No, that was too great a coincidence. Wasn’t it?
It would have been horribly rude, and out of character, to ask questions about a family member’s murder, so Arisa resolved simply to listen and see what she could learn.
The Mimms were quieter than usual, and if they talked about Katrin’s death, they did so when Arisa wasn’t there. However, several nights later Master Mimms began complaining to his customers about the summary firing of the palace guard, who had served the realm so loyally and were now begging in the streets and sleeping on benches in the One God’s church. Arisa didn’t know for certain, but all the guardsmen she’d seen had been young fit men—she doubted many had been reduced to begging.
“Last week your pa was talking about the regent’s woman, all dressed up in jewels and silk,” she told Baylee when they found themselves working together over a tub of dirty dishes. “How’d he know such a thing? I mean, none of the customers here are going to the palace for tea, are they now?”
“He got news like that from my cousin Katrin, the one who was killed,” Baylee told her sadly. “She was dresser to a fine court lady. Lived in the palace herself! She told us all manner of things.”
Arisa could just imagine it. She winced.
“We’ll miss her,” Baylee went on. “We—my family—have been in service to the palace for generations. I might be working there myself, if Pa hadn’t inherited the tavern. Now he’s saying it’s too dangerous for any daughter of his to go into the royal service, but that’s nonsense. It wasn’t in the palace she was killed.”
“Who killed her?” Arisa asked. It was natural to ask that now.