Hour of the Octopus

by Joel Rosenberg

  At my gesture, Narantir pulled the brightly glowing gem from his pouch and set it in a tiny crevice near the juncture of stone walls and the huge slab of stone that was the cubicle’s ceiling.

  “Still bright,” he said.

  Tebol smiled, as though sharing a private wizards’ joke.

  I took the lantern down from the peg and turned to the body under the blanket. Idiotic idea, as though a dead person would need to be kept warm. I pulled down the blanket and looked into his dead face.

  Truth to tell, or at least truth to think, I’d never much cared for Minch. We had taken an instant dislike to each other, and I would not dress in white to mourn his death, but there was something pitiful in the way he lay stretched out on the slab, his eyes open and vacant, staring blindly at the ceiling, his sagging mouth unable to protest his being handled by the lower classes, his limp hands helpless to shoo away the flies that were gathering in the blood covering most of his chest and robes.

  “Well,” Demick said, as though he hadn’t a care, which was probably the case, “what are you learning from this examination, Historical Master Dan’Shir?” Once again, he brought a scented silk to his face, as though the smell of it could drive away the stink of death.

  “I’m not sure, Lord.” That sounded so much better than Not a wretched thing, Demick, and was probably somewhat safer.

  I held the lantern close to the shaft of the arrow. It would have been convenient to find that the paint on the three gold bands was running or tacky, which would have argued that it was an attempt to blame Arefai, but the paint was dry and smooth to my touch, which only goes to show that murderers aren’t concerned with Kami Dan’Shir’s convenience, something I would probably have surmised.

  The arrow had entered Minch’s chest cleanly, halfway between two ribs, which argued for either great bowman-ship or great luck. Then again, I can’t imagine that if an arrow struck a rib it would simply bounce off; most likely it would be deflected upward or downward into the chest in any case. A dan’shir can easily see things that won’t do any good.

  Minch’s hands were covered with sticky blood, but… “Narantir, would you get me a pail of water and some rags?”

  “Do I look like a servitor?”

  “No,” I said, “you look like a wizard who has been asked to aid my investigation.”

  With a snort, he gathered his robes about his bulk and left the room, leaving Tebol behind to hide a smile behind a hand. The thin wizard inhaled too sharply, then reached into his black leather wizard’s bag, pulling out a long stubby cone, about the size of a fist. “Have you an objection to me dealing with the stench, or do you like it this way?”

  “Please,” I said.

  Tebol produced a flame between two fingers, whether through magic or artifice I couldn’t say, and touched it to the end of the cone, which flared gratifyingly. Tebol pursed his thin lips and blew out the flame, leaving the end to smoulder. He waved his hands in the thin smoke, and almost instantly the horrid fecal reek vanished in a wave of patchouli, myrrh, orangitta, and pepper.

  “Law of Predisposition,” he said. “Incense is predisposed to overpower other smells, and with a little magical help, it does so ever so much better.” He grinned. “One school says that’s all you zuhrir users do when you raise kazuh—apply the Law of Predisposition.”

  Dun Lidjun seemed amused. “ ‘All’?” he asked. “That would be so little then?”

  I wasn’t sure how Tebol was going to take that, and was thinking of something distracting to say when Narantir returned, bearing a wooden pail and a pile of rags, which he set down on the slab next to Minch’s body.

  Demick and the two hulking warriors watched closely while I washed the blood from Minch’s arms. Minch’s fingers were stiff, but when I pried them open and washed the horrid pasty clots away, the palms were lacerated.

  Dun Lidjun bent his head over the palms. “I’ve seen that before,” he said, his eyes growing vague and distant, as though he was suddenly looking at something far away. “You see it in battle. Somebody takes an arrow through the chest or gut, and he tries to pull it loose, as though that will help, instead of tearing out more of your insides.” His voice was flat, passionless; Dun Lidjun would share his feelings only at his choice. “Nock point of an arrow’s usually fairly sharply cut, and if you manage to pry a bit of fletching partly loose, you can cut yourself on the sliver of quill.” If anything, his voice became more flat and colorless. “I once encountered the body of a good friend of mine, half an arrowshaft in his chest, his hands sprouting splinters like a porcupine.” He looked up at me. “I don’t see any use out of this, Kami Dan’Shir. We know Minch was killed by an arrow.”

  Demick’s smile was a degree short of insult. “So it would appear.”

  I nodded. “Yes, we do. But I’ve seen enough. I will need some assistance with more of this, at the hour of the snake, perhaps? Just after sundown; just before dinner, say?”

  “Verden Verdunt and I are, of course, at your disposal,” Demick said. “Where shall we meet you?”

  “In your chambers, across the courtyard, if that pleases you, Lord. I’ve something of an experiment to run.”

  “Oh?”

  Let him sweat, let him worry. Dun Lidjun was at my side, and while both Deren der Drumud and Verden Verdunt were huge men, if Demick ordered them into action, I would wager my life that the old warrior would leave the three of them in pieces on the floor.

  “Oh, yes, Lord Demick,” I said. “I’ll be inviting Lord Toshtai and Lord Orazhi to watch the experiment.”

  He smiled, confidently. “Then I am certain it will be very interesting for us all. In the interim, we will wish you a good day,” he said, letting Deren der Drumud precede him, and Verden Verdunt gently close the door behind him, leaving Dun Lidjun, me, and the two wizards alone with the body, and with the smells of patchouli, myrrh, orangitta, and pepper that washed the stink of death from my nose, if not my mind.

  I took a last look at the body. “Let’s go; we have some preparations to make.”

  Interlude:

  The Hour Of The Octopus

  The heat of the tub and the cold of the air were strong sensations, but ViKay preferred her sensations strong. The bathwater, hot enough to coddle an egg, absolutely reeked of honey, orange, and roses, with a slight overtone of vinegar: it was just the way ViKay liked it.

  Later, she would rinse off with plain cold water and then raw alcohol, and then dry herself off, so that only gentle hints of the scents would cling to her, but that was for later, to present the appearance of moderation. That appearance was her concession to others: for her, hot and strong was right.

  Just the right time of day for a bath, too: the hour of the octopus, when afternoon moved toward sunset, and when the breezes were strong enough to make the air above the huge oaken bathtub painfully cold.

  She reached out a fingernail lacquered the color of honey and tapped once, twice, three times at the small silver bell that hung from the edge of the tub; almost immediately, three serving girls waddled in, each bearing a pail of steaming water from the boiling kettle outside.

  Averting their eyes from her, each in turn smoothly poured the contents of her pail into the bathtub, then scurried out, as though afraid. They had cause.

  ViKay was not particularly harsh with her servitors, certainly not as a matter of practice. She never ordered any of them beaten for a moment of clumsiness, even including the time that ungainly Fren ver Dreben had spilled olive-grape soup all over one of her oldest and finest gowns. Accidents happened. One simply had to accept that a seamstress would occasionally stick you while pinning up some fabric; it was unavoidable that a dresser would, from time to time, let a grain or two of powder fall into the eye instead of on the lid; every so often, it was unavoidable that one’s intended would kill a meddlesome troublemaker. None would be commented upon; all would be forgiven.

  However, there were two matters that ViKay was adamant on.

  Gossip was the mi
nor one; gossip about her was forbidden. Her comings and goings were never, ever to be a matter of discussion. Servitors were simply to be sure that a proper breakfast awaited outside whichever room she was in, and if that meant leaving an extra breakfast here or there, so-be-it. They were to do it, but not talk about it. One maid of hers had, once, made that mistake; she was buried beneath a pigsty.

  The major matter was this: ViKay was not to be disturbed in the bath.

  ViKay bathed once every day, during the hour of the octopus. During the eight other hours, awake or asleep, she was at the disposal of her lord father, of the Scion, of the realm. All the hours of dressing and dining, of the play that was not play, of the smiling and bowing, of the giggling and pretending to be helplessly pursued… all that was theirs. Her very life was theirs, to be spent like a clipped copper if need be.

  So-be-it.

  But not her bath. This time was hers, to lie back and rest, to think, to plan, to simply be herself.

  She lay back and let herself sink below the water. That was something strange about ViKay: while she floated seemingly effortlessly through her day and life, she simply could not float in water. No matter how hard her teachers had tried to teach her to swim, she simply could not keep her head above water. There was simply no use for such a quality, and ViKay resented it. She had managed to yoke her pleasures and passions to the service of the Scion and of her lord father and of the realm, but there was no way that this small thing could be made useful.

  ViKay despised waste.

  She brought her face to the surface and inhaled the sweet air.

  Soon it would be time to end the pleasure of the bath. Kami Dan’Shir had scheduled a demonstration for the hour of the snake, and from what Lord Father had said about his last demonstration, that meant that he was prepared to expose the murderer. That it happened so quickly meant that whoever Kami Dan’Shir was prepared to accuse, it was not Arefai. Demick? Edelfaule? That tiresome Esterling, who mistook an evening of diversion for something weak and cloying? Kami Dan’Shir himself?

  It didn’t matter. Kami Dan’Shir would be in no rush to accuse Arefai, and therefore ViKay had no need to threaten the beautiful boy with what she would do were he not to clear her intended. That her confession would cost both their lives was irrelevant; he would know that she meant it, and that she would protect Arefai’s life and position with her own.

  Edelfaule was too cruel to be a proper lord of Den Oroshtai. Cruelty was unacceptable. The cold relentlessness of Lord Toshtai or of her lord father was something else; the harnessed, sophisticated brutality of a Demick or a Luchen was another. But simple cruelty was, at base, too simple.

  Arefai would have to be the next lord. Lovely boy, he was faithful and earnest and passionate, as well as indefatigable beyond what she would have thought possible, but he was not clever enough to rule.

  That was tolerable; that she could supply for him. That would, in time, become her way of serving the Scion and the realm. ViKay lived only to serve.

  All in time; timing was everything.

  She reached out her finger and tapped twice on the silver bell, then reached for a long-handled bath brush.

  The bristles were delightfully coarse.

  Chapter 15

  A demonstration, another demonstration, a demonstration, and other successes and failures.

  Promptly at the hour of the snake, Lord Demick received the four of us in his rooms as though he were welcoming us to Patrice itself.

  Which didn’t mean much. I suppose he welcomed Evan of Solway Dell with the same slight bow and open-armed gesture before removing his skin, patch by patch.

  Demick had been given a broad, low suite of rooms on the third floor, overlooking the gardens separating the two wings of the keep. The centerpiece of the living room, surrounded by a low rope to warn the unwary, was a marvelous Oledi woodshard sculpture of a warrior in full raiment, his arms crossed in front of his chest as though challenging a lesser warrior to draw first.

  I’ve always liked woodshard work, even after I learned the secret, such as it is. The original sculpture is done by the master sculptor in ice early on in the winter. During the following days, before the ice can melt, his apprentices, working night and day, glue thousands and thousands of tiny wooden slivers to each other on the surface of the ice sculpture, so that when the ice finally does melt, the shell remains, elegantly cupping the space that had been occupied by the ice. There are mundane and inelegant tricks in the process, like the necessity of inserting metal prongs to support melting pieces of ice that might break off and break through the delicate shell, but the principle is elegant: of the original work, nothing remains.

  This was a particularly fine example, where the subtle colors had been expertly combined to show a raised mahogany eyebrow here, a teak swordhilt there, letting color as well as shape convey the image of a warrior about to lunge into motion.

  Just outside the windows, a trio of bright green songbirds perched on a carving of a huge man’s extended finger. Beaks tilted back, they burbled a liquid harmony, while within, silent servitors wrapped in Patricien purple passed among the visitors, dispensing dew-beaded glasses of icy-cold crushed raspberries and flat crackers spread with truffled confit of duck.

  “I have laid on a Patricien repast,” Demick said, his face as calm as the surface of a still lake, “in honor of Kami Dan’Shir’s… experiment.” He gestured to a sideboard. “I have gone to some trouble, and hope it will be received with a portion of the gratitude that I have felt for the generosity and good grace my hosts have shown me here at Glen Derenai, as well as during my visits to Den Oroshtai.”

  Old Dun Lidjun bowed deeply, just shy of deeply enough for it to be a burlesque and insult, men straightened, the long wrapped bundle still under one arm.

  “May I have someone help you with your… package?” Demick asked, as though he hadn’t a concern in the world.

  “I thank you, but no,” Dun Lidjun said.

  Demick smiled and bowed him in, then greeted the two wizards and finally me.

  “You honor us with your presence, Kami, Historical Master Dan’Shir,” he said, in the same tone, I suppose, that he would have said, We’re awfully gracious to treat your bourgeois self as though you’re a person.

  “I am, of course, grateful,” I said, snagging a tall glass from one tray, and a cracker from another. The juice was sweet and fruity, the confit salty and heavy with garlic and sprinkled with thyme and orkan.

  Demick merely smiled blankly, then turned to greet the next visitor, while I headed for the sideboard. Being clever makes me hungry.

  Silver salvers held: small cubes of true Patricien ham, smoked according to a secret recipe half a thousand years old; tiny, coppery oysters that grow only in the mouth of the Demms, served on the half shell and topped with grated horseradish and lumpy begret; a small mountain of peeled hard-boiled quail eggs, each about the size of the first digit of my index finger, crowned with a peppery cream sauce; a platter of quartered honeyed apples, perhaps a trace of magic preventing them from browning in the air.

  I smiled. Normally it was the condemned man who was provided the handsome meal.

  Of course, there could be some sort of…

  I turned to Narantir, who was downing a handful of the quail eggs.

  “Well?” he said.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Well, indeed. If you were me, what question would you be asking?”

  “Any of a number,” he said, “but not the stupid one you’re thinking. Poison, hagh.” He shook his head. “If there was any poison, would I be doing this?” He bolted down another handful, then gave out a fragrant burp, then pointed at the salver of steamed turnip hearts. “Although I would caution against those,” he said, passing an amber amulet over one dish. He tucked the amulet back in his sleeve. “The Law of Appropriateness finds fault with the combination of honey and turnip, no matter what Patricien custom says.”

  I looked away. Demick was still at the door, now greetin
g Esterling. The trouble with Esterling, I decided, was that he was just too pretty: his nose and jawline too sharp, his features too regular and even.

  To my right, Dun Lidjun frowned. “He seems too self-assured, even for Demick.”

  I shrugged. “It’s just an experiment, a demonstration, Lord. Nothing of consequence.”

  “Spare me your lower-class shtoi sarcasm,” the old man said. “If you aren’t going to indulge me with an explanation, then keep quiet.”

  “Yes, Lord,” I said. I guess I’d been spending too much time around Dun Lidjun and was starting to take him for granted, because I heard myself saying: “Those of us in the lower classes live but to obey.”

  Just as the skin over my spine went all damp and clammy, he nodded gravely. “That is, of course, so.”

  I tried to let out my breath slowly. I guess not only the lower classes can talk in shtoi.

  Lords Orazhi and Toshtai arrived in company with Edelfaule and old Lady Estrer, and a scattering of other lords. Orazhi’s robes today were muted pastels in mild greens and reds, matching the dour expression on his face. Toshtai, on the other hand, was arrayed in robes of the brightest of yellows, belted across his lavish belly with a crimson sash. A noble is never without his sword, and Toshtai’s dagger was stuck through the sash.

  Arefai was the last to arrive, ViKay clinging to his arm as though she were frail and helpless. Lies come easily to our beloved ruling class.

  I made sure my smile was simply pleasant as they approached me. “A demonstration awaits, Kami Dan’Shir?”

  “More of an experiment, Lord Arefai.”

  He clasped my shoulder with a grip that was strong but not punishing. “I know that we can count on you,” he said.

  ViKay smiled at me. “I am sure of it, as well,” she said, her voice perhaps half a tone too husky for safety.