The Stone in the Skull

by Elizabeth Bear

  The bear-dog reached out her brindled head and closed her teeth around the wrist that Mahadijia reached beneath his coat, as delicately as if she had meant to pick up an egg.

  Now he looked away from Hnarisha, first glancing at Syama and then, wide-eyed, up at Mrithuri on her dais.

  Mrithuri took a slow, deep breath and lowered her arms. She waited in silence for a few moments while the bearded vulture continued its hopeless quest for freedom, the sweeps of its red-stained wings sending gold powder swirling around her like a glittering storm. It returned to its perch and settled, flipping long pinions closed across its back, but its beak opened and it uttered a raucous, croaking complaint that echoed loudly beneath the amplifying vault.

  As for Mrithuri, she kept her peace for a few moments, until the captain and his men had closed the distance to the secretary and the ambassador. Then she spoke mildly. “Unless you wish to discuss tariffs, my lord ambassador, I’m afraid you will have to wait your turn. There is a murder inquest before us, and such matters of life and death must take precedence.”

  Mahadijia stared at her. Mrithuri stared back, glad for once of the heavy kohl and jeweled lashes that made her eyes seem huge and inscrutable. She breathed calmly—the crystalline blaze of the snakebite in her veins helped steady her, though it was ebbing already—and imagined the gaze of the Good Mother, with her beautiful heifer eyes.

  Beneath the chiming of the rain, like a distant drumbeat, thunder purred. Syama must have growled—very softly—or squeezed with her jaws, because Mahadijia broke the connection first, glancing down sharply at the bear-dog who held his wrist in her jaws.

  “Madam,” he said. “If you would call off your hound.”

  “Syama,” Mrithuri said. “Release the man.”

  Slowly, Syama opened her jaws. She stepped back—just a single pace—and did not sit down, but regarded her new enemy with a chary eye.

  Just as slowly, Mahadijia drew an empty hand from beneath his coat and let it fall open to his side.

  Mrithuri thought she could see Hnarisha’s held breath sigh out in relief from halfway across the audience hall. She kept her face stern, her gaze steady: he could show emotions that she could not. Thank the Good Daughter for the venom in her veins that kept her hands from shaking.

  “Sergeant,” she said to the man. “I believe this gentleman could use some refreshment. Would you see him to an antechamber? Secretary Hnarisha, please summon the petitioners in the untimely death? The night is burning.”

  Mahadijia bowed low enough for it to seem mocking. “Your Abundance,” he said. “I bear important messages from my raja, whose ports your ships must trade through. Surely you can spare me one small moment of your night?”

  She considered, calming herself with the peal of the rain, the mumble of thunder. “Perhaps … later.”

  Mahadijia’s expression as he was led away promised retribution. But some flicker of his mouth made Mrithuri think it likely that he was the sort of man who covered with his anger for fear.

  Mrithuri swallowed an uneasy sensation that she hadn’t won this round and turned her attention to the problem she actually could do something about tonight. She hoped that his continued interruptions were a manifestation of self-importance and disdain for her, some little foreign queen—and not a manifestation of some important news he wished to impart. She hoped her refusal to be hurried was a thwart to Anuraja’s plan, whatever that might be, and not a service to it.

  She shifted beneath her imperial gaud, uneasy. But no, surely, if it were anything but a power play, a device to make her seem weak, he could have found more appropriate ways to approach her?

  Perhaps.

  She waited until the ambassador was out of the room before she raised her voice again. “I am ready for the trial.”

  * * *

  The sister of the poisoned bookbinder was accusing his widow of murder by arsenic, though he was a wastrel and a drunk and neither wife nor sister had liked him. With a doctor’s evidence that the wife, too, showed signs of being poisoned—and the wife’s undisputed testimony that the bookbinder’s art made liberal use of antimony, lead, prussic acid, arsenic, and other horrors—Mrithuri managed to convince the two women to join forces, have the family well tested, and work together to provide for the dead man’s elderly parents and young children alike. It was a pretty night’s work, she thought, as she retired to the robing room and stood for Yavashuri while her maid of honor removed her mask and baubles.

  The burn of snakebite was long gone. She shook with hunger and thirst, for of course no sustenance could enter her body while she wore the mask. She wondered irritably where Chaeri was: the maid of the bedchamber should have been in attendance with some refreshment—tea and sweets, at least, to give her strength until the morning meal that ended her time of duty.

  Outside, the sky had dimmed as dawn overtook them. Though the rain still fell heavily, the day brought warmth, and the result was a steamy tropic heat that saturated and clung. The pleats in Mrithuri’s drape were long sagged now, the back of it stuck to her seat with sweat and humidity. She was delighted to shed the thing for a cotton tunic and trousers in a subtle print of brown on bone.

  Yavashuri was growing visibly more irritated with every moment that Chaeri did not arrive, which also soothed Mrithuri. If someone else was angry on her behalf, she did not feel so much need to be angry for herself. She actually found herself inhabiting a spirit of quiet peacefulness, despite her growling belly and the itch in her veins.

  It lasted until the door burst open, and Chaeri rushed in, disheveled and shrieking. Her drapes were torn, her hair down in frayed braids. A knife protruded from her fist like a bloody tongue, and red dripped and sprayed all down her.

  She doubled over, panting, both hands fisted around the knife hilt and the pommel pressed into her belly. As her knees struck the floor, she gasped, “I killed Mahadijia.”

  * * *

  The Laeish ambassador lay facedown in the hall, his court robes spread around him like dark wings. One hand reached outward, fingers folded under, a bloody drag-mark where the nails had clawed at marble tile and failed to score the stone. The other arm was under him. An overturned tray lay beside him, tea and shattered crockery contributing to the mess.

  Mrithuri, Yavashuri, Ata Akhimah, Hnarisha, and a selection of castle guards stood around the body. Syama leaned forward to sup great huffs of air through flaring nostrils. Mrithuri restrained her with a hand upon her shoulders.

  Chaeri was there as well, though she did not so much stand as recline against the chest of a guardsman, her face buried in his neck, his hair stirred by quiet sobs. The hall had been cleared of others, and guardsmen held the doors leading into the Hall of the Empty Throne and out to other areas of the palace.

  Ata Akhimah had relieved Chaeri of the knife, and held it wrapped in a length of silk to protect it from stray influences. Hnarisha turned to Chaeri, laid a hand against her shoulder, and said quietly, “Can you tell us what happened?”

  Chaeri’s sobs quieted a little. She struggled with her breath, got control, and said, “I tried to stop him. I tried to stop him. But he grabbed me and I spilled the rajni’s tea.”

  Ata Akhimah looked at Hnarisha. Hnarisha looked back.

  Yavashuri said, “Turn him over,” in a voice of quiet command.

  Two guardsmen moved forward. One took the dead ambassador by the shoulders. The other grabbed the cloth at his hips—a far less appetizing prospect, as Mahadijia had suffered the usual indignities of death—and on a count of four they heaved and turned. Blood-wet fabric left soak-marks on the tile as his jacket fell open.

  He was thoroughly dead. A knife sheath under his left arm lay empty, and Mrithuri could see at a glance that it would neatly accommodate the dagger Ata Akhimah had confiscated from Chaeri. She touched the head of the serpent-sheathed dagger coiled around her throat. She turned and stepped over to Chaeri, intentionally turning her back on Ata Akhimah as the Wizard crouched down to examine the cor
pse. She heard the chiming of bangles, and laid a hand gently on Chaeri’s shoulder. There was blood on her back as well as her front.

  Chaeri looked up, face streaked and eyes swollen. “I took his knife. He had it in his hand.” She picked ineffectually at the dried blood on her fingers. Her voice was thick, but less hysterical. She seemed to be mastering herself. “He grabbed me by the neck and swung the hilt at me. I bit him and got the knife away and then I stabbed him with it because he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t … he wouldn’t let me go.”

  She crumpled again, against the guardsman’s neck. Mrithuri sighed. Of all her household, it would have to be Chaeri.

  And yet, Chaeri had done well. Mrithuri would not have thought she would have it in her, to foil an assassin, if assassin he had been.

  “Put her to bed,” Mrithuri told the guardsman. “Give her a little poppy.” She held her hands a half-rod apart to indicate what she meant by a little.

  She watched as the guard led Chaeri away, then turned back to where Ata Akhimah and Hnarisha crouched beside the body. Yavashuri had somehow miraculously produced a fresh platter of tea and food. Mrithuri did not think she could tackle the latter while standing over a fresh corpse, but the tea was sweet, with milk, and she took the cup Yavashuri put in her hand. It had cloves and nutmeg in it, which helped to mask the reek.

  It also helped to steady the trembling of her hands. She cupped it before her as she watched the Wizard and the supposed-secretary work.

  “There’s the bite mark,” Ata Akhimah said, clinically. “And there’s green wax under his nails.”

  “Green?” Hnarisha said. “The colors of the Laeish seal are those of precious sapphires: blue and orange.”

  Those sapphires, which eroded from the rocks along the coast of the Arid Sea and sold for untold riches inland and overseas, were a chief source of Sarathai-lae’s wealth and influence.

  Yavashuri looked up from her teapot. “His personal color was green.”

  “Papercuts and ink on the hands,” Ata Akhimah said. “Nothing unexpected there.”

  “So,” Mrithuri mused aloud, “to whom was he writing personal letters?”

  “I won’t know until I open him, but from the angle of the wound I would say that Chaeri stabbed him under the ribcage and severed the great artery in the abdomen. Sheer bad luck for us: he would have died in moments, and no chance of questioning him.”

  “Wait,” said Hnarisha. “What’s this?” He held up a spindle of paper, folded several times. “Code.”

  “Diplomatic orders,” said Yavashuri, who had crossed to peer over his shoulder. “I’ve seen the hand and a similar code before.”

  A servant won past the guards at the end of the hall and approached her. She stepped aside for a whispered conversation, then turned back to Mrithuri. “The ambassador’s room has been searched, Rajni. There are papers freshly burned in the brazier, and either the Mahadijia or someone else has smoothed all the wax tablets that he might have been drafting letters on.”

  “Did they find a code key?” Hnarisha asked distractedly. Yavashuri generally handled intrigues within the house. Hnarisha generally handled those that stretched beyond. They were, however, accustomed to sharing duties and working in close support of one another.

  “They are still searching.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have thought Chaeri had it in her.”

  Hnarisha stood, holding his befouled hands out. Yavashuri unobtrusively handed him a towel soaked in vinegar and rose oil. As he wiped, he said, “This cannot be anything except a pretext for war.”

  Mrithuri sighed. She took the spindle of paper that Hnarisha handed her and frowned over it. Strings of nonsense filled the page.

  She sighed. “Find the code book. And find that missing letter, if you can.”

  7

  The Gage watched the veil cover the sky, darkening the night. The storm ebbed, leading to no net change in brightness. It didn’t matter to Druja, who bustled around waking people and animals in the thin rain and readying the caravan to move. The Dead Man had awakened him with news of the army’s arrival as soon as they finished their conversation in the wheelhouse. Druja had taken the news silently, scowling, before giving the Dead Man a brisk piece of his mind for not alerting him even sooner. Then Druja had cursed his own self for a soft-minded fool for deciding the caravan could rest here for a day, and immediately started rousing all and sundry and putting them to work packing up and harnessing.

  No one was spared the caravan master’s attentions: not even the murderously arrogant prince, who the Gage himself had been sent to roust and set to packing his considerable sprawl of creature comforts.

  Fortunately, the man was drunk in his hammock, and his servants were far more reasonable. So there would be no conflict there. At least not until he sobered up and found himself unexpectedly miles from where he had passed out. Then, the Gage expected, there might be a reckoning.

  The Gage flexed his metal fingers. With any luck, such a reckoning might result in the Song prince parting company with the caravan. That prospect, the Gage could actually look forward to a little.

  Before turning away for a hurried, worried consultation with a freshly arrived local youth whom the Gage did not know, Druja had also asked the Gage to alert the bride and her servants. Because he was made of metal, and presumably uninterested in the joys of the flesh, he was by custom considered the equivalent of a eunuch, and there was no social taboo to prevent him from entering even a noble lady’s boudoir. Even when that boudoir was constructed of no more than a few sheets of cloth strung on cords across the bow of an ice-ship’s hold. The noblewoman, unlike the prince, came and spoke to him herself, a veil across the lower part of her face, her dark eyes narrow with concern.

  The Gage had never paid much attention to the noblewoman before. Now he found himself studying the features not concealed by her veil. Her brows were dark and of medium width: her eyes wide, and a kind of chipped ambery hazel. Her forehead was youthful, unlined. The Gage thought she was probably pretty, unless the veil hid some terrible deformity. And she was certainly intelligent. She took in everything he had to tell her, unspeaking, staring into the mirror of his visage as if she were inspecting her own reflection.

  When he was done, she asked only one question. “Do you think they’re going to try to make us stay?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She nodded, slow and considering. He wished he could read her expression, but they both wore their own kinds of mask.

  She said, “Thank you.”

  * * *

  Raindrops pinged off the Gage’s polished dome as he crossed the caravanserai yard once more. His weight pressed the cobbles deeper into the mud underfoot. Men—not in livery, but with the unmistakable bearing of soldiers—skulked around the edges of the yard. The Gage counted them, as he had no doubt they were counting the caravan.

  He made his way to the lee of the lead ship, to a tent where Druja, Nizhvashiti, and the Dead Man were huddled over a map, and stood by the flaps so he would not drip on it. “Have they contacted us yet?”

  “No,” said Druja. His sun-spotted forefinger traced a line on the vellum. “But they will.”

  Nizhvashiti whistled through teeth. “The path of least conflict would be to remain, and do as we are instructed.” The Godmade’s tone made it plain that this was not to be interpreted as a serious suggestion.

  Without looking up, the Dead Man said, “It has always been my fate to die as a conscript in some lord’s war. But I would as soon it were not this lord nor this battle.” He looked up, and the Gage read his need to be moving toward their destination in the narrow gap below his head scarf and above his veil.

  Druja snorted. “He’ll press us all into service if he can. But I hired you lot on to guard this caravan and protect it from brigands. Even if those brigands are the whole gods-damned government, I expect that contract to be honored.”

  “We’d just as soon avoid impression as troops to the Boneless, now that you mention
it.” The Gage shook his head at the Dead Man. “And after all, we do have a package to deliver.”

  The Dead Man had schooled his expression, and now his face was as inscrutable behind his veil as had been the noblewoman’s. His voice, though, had a bantering tone. “Have you considered just walking through the stockade dragging all three boats behind you? It’s not like they could stop you. And if they rained down fire arrows, well. There’s all this cursed wet.”

  “If you can’t make a serious suggestion,” Druja said, “do me the small favor of holding your tongue. We can try to fight our way out if we have to. But I’d prefer some subtlety. Some subterfuge.”

  Someone was coming up behind the Gage. The bride-to-be, under an umbrella held by her maidservant, both of them picking their way across the cobbles in high wooden pattens. The Gage pretended not to notice her until she cleared her throat behind him.

  He stepped aside. She leaned around him to glance into the tent. She leaned back, then, and whispered for the Gage alone: “I might have an idea.”

  * * *

  The Gage returned from walking with the noblewoman to find Druja slapping that same local youth on the shoulder in a friendly but definitive send-off. The boy jogged off through splashing mud, spatters flying up his bare legs and dabbing the Gage’s once-shining hide. The Gage wished to sigh; the rain would soon enough wash it off again. And there was plenty more mud where that had come from.

  The caravan master wasn’t fond of the plan. Even less so when he heard it had come from a woman. But he seemed too distracted and concerned to fuss much, and he kept squinting at the sky as if the passage of time had suddenly become very important to him.

  “It will never work.” Druja turned away.

  “Do you have a better solution?”