Hour of the Octopus

by Joel Rosenberg

  “That’s not important now,” I said with all the force available, the words coming out as a harsh whisper. “You said that there was no magic used in Minch’s room,” I said. “How about in Demick’s?”

  “Demick’s?”

  I nodded. “That was the part of it that bothered me. It wasn’t impossible that somebody could aim at the carrier of a lantern through the window screen. But how would Demick or whoever he had do it possibly know that Minch was hanging his lantern by himself? It could have been one of the castle servitors, warming his bedding for the night or laying out sleeping clothes.”

  Narantir shrugged. “Which would do as well, assuming that Demick’s purpose was to dishonor Arefai, no?”

  “No. Not if Demick didn’t know where Arefai was, too. If, say, Arefai was sitting with Lady Estrer and Lord Orazhi, the whole plan would fall through, and point an accusing finger toward Patrice and Demick. Demick had to know both where Arefai and Minch were and that Arefai was alone. For Arefai, a spy would do, perhaps— but for Minch? To be sure that it was he who was holding a lantern? How could a spy report quickly enough? Demick must have had another way.”

  “Of course.” Narantir spread his hands. “A direction spell. The sort dishonorable hunters use, except made specific. Not the most difficult application of the Law of Synechdoche; whole to part, and part to whole.”

  Tebol nodded, quickly. “A piece of skin perhaps, or— better—hair.” He turned to me. “Skin and blood change too quickly when they’re separated from their owner, but hair and nails remain the same.”

  He pulled down a book from a shelf and brought it over to a table. He muttered a quick cantrip and touched his finger to the tip of an unlit candle; it flared too brightly, casting dark shadows all around the room. “I haven’t done this sort of thing since I was an apprentice, but it should leave some effluence. Narantir?”

  The fat wizard, despite himself, had gotten interested. “It should reek of it.”

  Tebol grunted. “I don’t like sniffing around doorways, but… so-be-it.”

  I snorted. “I don’t know that it exactly calls for sniffing around doorways.”

  “If you don’t know, then shhh.”

  Tebol had brought out a rack of vials and set it on the workbench. Narantir took a small silver spoon and scooped out some white powder into a ceramic mortar. He added some of a red powder, and then a black one, carefully washing the spoon, then passing it through the flame instead of drying it.

  Narantir took something that looked like a many-spiked ball on a stick down from a shelf and whirled it around the mortar, muttering a quick cantrip. “Basic allergenics,” he said. “Come this way.”

  I held up a hand. “Now, wait one moment, if you please. The last time I helped out in an experiment, you turned me into a sword, and I didn’t like that much. It hurt. Are you telling me this won’t?”

  Narantir chuckled. “No, I’m promising it will hurt you, precisely as much as if you sniffed three kinds of pepper up your nose. But it’ll also make you so allergic to synechdochal directional magic that, well, you’ll itch uncontrollably for hours if you come in contact with any of it.”

  I held up a hand. “Then why don’t one of you take it?”

  “Because we’re wizards, you young idiot. No wizard is going to make himself allergic to magic.” He held out the vial. “And it does so call for sniffing around doorways. If that sort of spell was used in Lord Demick’s rooms, then all you need to do is take a hefty sniff of this, then sniff around the edge of his door, and you’ll know. Believe me, with hives the size of a plover’s egg all over your body, you’ll know.”

  He tossed the vial high into the air. Somebody who had spent years as a juggler couldn’t help but catch it.

  There were guards, of course, on at both ends of the floor where Lord Demick’s rooms were; members of our beloved ruling class always travel with their own, no matter how serious a safe conduct they travel under. It’s always possible that some other lord would like to complicate the issue by inserting an assassin or two, letting the local lord take the blame for a murder…

  Which, of course, was always a possibility for Minch. The only trouble was, it was pretty clear what the result was from Minch’s death, and who would benefit.

  The guards weren’t eager to let anybody in, since it was the hour of the lion, and his lordship had officially retired for the evening. But I was the Historical Master Dan’Shir, and Demick had volunteered to aid me in my investigation and had made it clear to both me and them that he would rather enjoy gloating some more, so they agreed to let me into the corridor and speak to his valet, after a quick search.

  Which, of course, immediately turned up the vial.

  The guard’s face was flat and expressionless. “I wouldn’t suppose this to be poison,” he said, holding it out toward me.

  I forced a laugh. “If it was,” I said, accepting it and pulling off the top, “would I do this?”

  I tilted back the vial and inhaled sharply.

  Chapter 16

  A nose full of pepper, a chat, a treat, a threat, and other delights and sorrows.

  It would be really nice if you could always count on wizards to lie about everything, but that would make life too easy.

  Whatever else was in there, I could feel the fire of red pepper, the heat of white pepper, and the burn of black pepper not only in my nostrils, but throughout my entire head. It felt like the front of my face was going to fall off and shatter on the floor. Which would have been a good trick, considering that the floor was covered with a deep red ankle-thick Pemish carpet.

  “Well, I suppose it isn’t poison,” the guard said. “Normally, at least in Patrice, we demonstrate that we know a substance not to be poison by putting a small sample of it in our mouths, not the whole lot of it up our nose.” He laughed as he rapped on the door three times, then twice, then three times again.

  Tears rolling down my cheeks, I nodded. “I thank you for the advice, Lord Warrior.”

  The door opened only about a headswidth, with a waft of thick, musty perfume, and a woman’s face peeked out. Her skin was the color of warm cream, her lips as red as fresh blood. I didn’t recognize her, although that wasn’t surprising; I wasn’t familiar with Lord Demick’s concubines.

  “What is it, dear Solan der Bereden?” she asked.

  “Kami Dan’Shir to see Lord Demick, if his lordship is up and around.”

  She teased him with a crooked smile, and for a moment caught her pink tongue in bone-white teeth. “Oh, he’s very much awake. I’ll see if he wishes to see the dan’shir.”

  The door closed, then opened a moment later, and she ushered me in.

  Lord Demick, a white silk robe tied loosely about him, rose from his cushions to greet me, gesturing at the other concubine to stay where she was, which was over by a rack of essences and a knee-height heating table. She was a lovely willowy blond woman dressed in some wisps of translucent silk belted tightly at her slim waist, her head tilted to one side, almond eyes watching me too steadily.

  “You might pour Kami Dan’Shir some essence, VedaNa,” he said. “Perhaps the Apricot Sunrise?” He gestured me to a seat on cushions near the window.

  “Plain water would be perfect, Lord Demick,” I said, trying to blink back tears. Someday, somehow, I will avenge myself on Narantir; every time he works magic when I’m around, I hurt.

  I don’t know how she did it; I guess either she had it ready for another purpose or perhaps there’s more kazuh to the art of concubine than is commonly acknowledged, but VedaNa had a cold mug of water in my hands before I was seated. I drained it in one long swallow. It helped a lot, although my nose still burned with a distant fire.

  I lowered the mug to see Demick smiling at me. “I take it you’re here to discuss the progress of our investigation,” he said.

  No, I’m here to see if you used magic to direct the arrow that killed Minch, I didn’t say. It would be worth a few hives to be able to prove that it
was Demick, or at least to cast enough blame in his direction to remove enough from Arefai to get my head off the block. The only trouble was that the itching that Narantir had promised me wasn’t coming on. Either this was some sort of wizard’s prank, or no such spell had been used around here.

  “I had an idea, Kami Dan’Shir,” he said. “Perhaps one even cleverer than your notion that I had my dear friend Minch killed.” His eyes never leaving mine, he held out a hand to receive a flask of warmed essence from the black-haired concubine.

  I bowed. “I am, of course, interested, Lord Demick.”

  He gestured at the doorway. “I notice that Minch was near the speaking tube when the cowardly murderer put an arrow through his screen and into him.” He scowled. “I’m afraid I must admit to being unfond of such things—we have no such in Patrice, I can assure you—but Lord Orazhi finds them useful. It occurs to me that it’s possible somebody called him to the speaking tube, at which time a waiting confederate fired the arrow.”

  That explanation posed a few problems, the best one of which was that one of the easier places for the confederate to shoot from was the room above Demick’s, which was easily available to Arefai.

  “Let’s experiment,” I started to say, then stopped myself. No, embarrassing Demick in private wasn’t likely to be a safe move. “I mean, there seems to me to be a basic problem with that, Lord.” I rose and walked to where the end of the speaking tube projected from the wall, Demick by my side. This speaking tube terminated in a sculpture of a horse’s head, again plugged by a carving of an apple. Personally, I would have found it more amusing had Lord Demick been forced to speak into the other end of a horse, but he probably didn’t use the speaking tube himself, anyway.

  “You’ll note,” I said, “that the tube is plugged from this end.” I pulled the plug and stuck my ear to the horse’s mouth.

  Far off in the distance I could hear a swishing, like that of a broom on stone. “Otherwise, it could be used by the servants to spy on our—on the occupants of the rooms.” Never mind that servants did—had to—do some spying on our beloved ruling class in order to anticipate their demands; the point still stood. The speaking tubes were a way of talking down, not up.

  I replaced the plug, and patted at the bronze sculpture. “With all respect, I doubt that it would be possible for anyone to have called Lord Minch to the speaking tube.” I shrugged. “Besides, that would make it a conspiracy to murder Minch, and not the act of just one person.”

  “Hmmm… we can’t have that.”

  No, we couldn’t. The notion that Arefai had finally lost his temper with Minch and killed him was one thing; that two or more from Den Oroshtai had conspired to commit a murder was beyond belief. Shaming of Lord Toshtai’s son would subtly shift power and influence to Demick; uncovering a shameful conspiracy between Den Oroshtai and Glen Derenai would force Toshtai and Orazhi into a direct conflict with Patrice, and far too many heads would fly.

  No. If Minch was so much trouble, Lord Toshtai would have had Dun Lidjun or somebody challenge him, not commit a stealthy murder. Nobody would believe Toshtai capable of tolerating a conspiracy to murder, which would mean that nobody would, in the long run, believe that Arefai had shamed himself by committing said murder.

  If I wasn’t in the middle of it, I would have found it funny: two enemies with the common purpose of seeing that their enmity not get out of hand.

  Perhaps Demick found the notion as amusing; his lips twisted. “Think on it, Kami Dan’Shir. I’m sure you’ll find a way to vex the murderer yet.”

  My nose still burning from the pepper, no trace of an itch anywhere on my body, I left and headed for bed, none the wiser and more than a little confused.

  She came to me that night, as I had in the back of my head wondered if she would. I opened an eye to see her slip in through the barely opened door—the door to my room squeaked if it was opened a fraction more; I wondered if she had all the squeaks in the keep memorized—and feel at the mouth of my own speaking tube before walking to my bedding and quickly dropping her robes to the floor before slipping under the thin blanket.

  She lay in my arms, warm and soft on the surface, hard and strong below. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she could have broken me with her legs wrapped about my hips; for a moment, it had felt as if she might.

  I sighed. “I would love to know why we’re doing this.”

  She laughed as she shifted position slightly so that I could kiss her behind the right ear. She smelled of rose and lemon. “For someone who comports himself with such… need, such urgency, you ask too many questions. I would have thought it obvious.” She rolled closer to me, her breast rubbing gently against my chest, one hand gently stroking my back near the base of my spine.

  “It isn’t. And I doubt that there’s only one reason.”

  “A way to persuade you, perhaps, to befriend Arefai. He needs you, and I hope that you’ll—”

  “Find a way to clear him of suspicion?” There was something perverse about discussing this with ViKay naked in my arms, but there was also something perverse in the first place about bedding the wife-to-be of the nearest thing I had to a friend in our beloved ruling class. I guess perversion doesn’t bother me.

  “I hope so.” I sighed. “Arefai didn’t do it. It’s not his way. To lop off Minch’s fool head in front of witnesses, sure; but to murder him in the dark? To lie in wait for him?”

  No, that wasn’t the way of somebody who would fish by having trout practically thrown to him. Forget matters of honor; our beloved ruling class has such a strange sense of honor that it can pull them in any direction. It was a matter of character and personality, and that just wasn’t in Arefai’s. He wasn’t the brightest fellow in the world, but he was direct and forthright, not skulking.

  “You had best hope so,” she said, her voice light and breezy in my ear. “With this cloth of misgivings wrapped so tightly around him, my father will surely put off the wedding until it is cleared.”

  She reached down and cupped my testicles in her palm. Well, “cupped” isn’t quite right. “Gripped” is better. She was not ungentle, but her grip was not unfirm, and I was not unapprehensive, nor uneager for her to let go. I was also not unmotionless, and had no intention of being unagreeable, or abandoning the unassertiveness of double negatives until she let go, something I was not unwilling for her to do at any moment.

  “Lady…”

  “And I will be the bride of Lord Arefai of Den Oroshtai, understood?” she said, a taste of iron and steel in her voice.

  I wasn’t disposed to argue, not with her hand there.

  “It would ruin my life were we not to marry,” she went on, “and I would find a ruined life easily dispensed with, as disposable as I would find the life of a dan’shir who would not or could not do his job, as easy as I would find it to pass a truth spell when I swore that the dan’shir, but a bourgeois, had me, over and over again, under the roof of my father.”

  She released my testicles and slipped both arms around my neck so quickly and sinuously that I was glad it was her arms and not her hands that were about my neck.

  “Now, rest for a short while, while you try to figure out who killed that horrible Minch, and how you’re going to clear my Arefai.” She laid her head gently on my chest.

  “Is there anything else you’d like me to think over, Lady?”

  “Oh, of course,” she said, body pressed closely to mine, her breath warm in my ear. “You must decide how you want me next, my Kami Dan’Shir.”

  I woke before dawn, alone, traces of honey-orange and roses along with more robust scents in my blankets. It was dark out, but it felt like the hour of the dragon, the hour when all good D’Shaians are safely asleep.

  An hour when Kami Dan’Shir gets to realize what an idiot he is, was, and will be. One more day before the scheduled wedding, and the only thing I knew was that Arefai had better not have done it and Demick hadn’t done it. But how was it done? Could the how tell me who? />
  I dressed, got my juggling sack, and went down to the grounds, nodding to an occasional guard. Nobody stopped me or tried to engage me in conversation. I didn’t quite blame them.

  Above the stars snickered, while below torches flickered. The gardens, green and red and orange and blue and yellow in the daytime, were black and gray in the dark, inky leaves hanging threateningly above.

  When in doubt, juggle.

  It’s not the beginning of wisdom; perhaps it does no good, but it can hardly do any harm. I found my concealed spot in the garden and took out three balls.

  Keep it simple. A simple shower. Catch left, throw right, catch right, throw left, catch left, throw right, catch right, throw left, and all the while forget about that extra ball in the air that’s looping down toward your throwing hand. All you have to do is handle one ball at a time, but you have to do it well, whether it’s the solid catch or the precise throw. Never toss it away just to get rid of it.

  Who can shoot through a paper screen?

  Ressi the All Seeing could have done it, but the Powers don’t involve themselves in the way of mortals, and even if it was one of them, I was not going to be able to present that as a workable solution. Wives who blamed an untimely pregnancy on Spennymore were traditionally flogged to death, as were shepherds who accused Evva Ugly Hands of causing a sheep shortfall. I didn’t know if dan’shirs were to be punished the same way, but I also didn’t know of anybody who had escaped punishment for anything by attributing it to a Power.

  Who benefited?

  Demick and Patrice, surely, and Demick’s Agami allies, benefited from the accusation. Not anyone loyal in Den Oroshtai or Glen Derenai, except perhaps Edelfaule? No, that didn’t make sense. Edelfaule was the older brother, in line to be lord. Unless, of course, Lord Toshtai passed him by to name his brother, but there was no hint of that.