by A. C. Ellas
“Thank you,” Vrathis replied, mildly amused that he hadn’t needed to say anything. But then, he was known on sight, and he wasn’t known for showing up without good reason, so maybe it wasn’t all that surprising.
As Vrathis entered, Jethain looked up from the stack of parchment he was perusing. The prince waved him to a chair. “Have a seat and tell me why you’re here.”
“There’s been a murder,” Vrathis began. Halfway through his tale, Jethain interrupted him, bidding him to stop and sent for Captain Jisten.
“Are you sure that’s wise?” Vrathis asked. “All the evidence points to his lover.”
Jethain pursed his lips. “We’ll see. The captain needs to hear this no matter who the suspect is, especially since the victim lived here at the palace.”
Vrathis nodded, but he wondered. Had Jisten helped S’Rak procure the victim? That would explain how the lady had been smuggled out of the palace.
The lean captain didn’t take long to arrive. He glanced at Vrathis but appeared unsurprised to see his counterpart. Either his men had warned him or he’d been expecting the commander to show. Vrathis regarded him with suspicion. Jisten didn’t look well. He’d lost weight and was almost gaunt, unhealthily thin. There were dark circles under his eyes, which were bloodshot. His hair had been shorn, it appeared, and was only just starting to grow out, the ends barely reaching his shoulders. There had been rumors of trouble for the captain over the summer, and Vrathis was now willing to consider that those rumors had been accurate.
“Please, Commander, start from the beginning,” Jethain told him.
Vrathis did so, and this time, he was permitted to finish. He laid out the copies of the artist’s sketches, in all their graphic detail. He told them what Photas had discovered. He pointed to the sigil of the Lord of Night. “I want to question the envoy,” he concluded.
“Why the envoy? You think he did this?” Jisten asked.
“Yes, I do. He’s the most likely suspect, given the ritual nature of the killing and the involvement of powerful dark magic. How many dark servants are in the city?” Vrathis asked; his gaze level on Jisten. “I know there are more than just the envoy and his assistants.”
“At the moment, there are only the two. S’Rak and S’Ioli.”
“What of the demon? Does he not remain by the high priest?”
“Lord Scorth is at S’Rak’s side, yes, but he’s not a priest. The others have been out of the city for over a month. I suppose it’s possible they returned last night but unlikely. S’Rak would have said something.”
“You were with the envoy last night?” Vrathis asked this question pointedly. At the moment, Jisten was as much a suspect in his mind as S’Rak was. Although he didn’t think Jisten had wielded the blade, he had almost certainly helped in some manner.
“Only in the early evening, around dinnertime,” replied Jisten, his back stiff and expression stone. “He spoke of stargazing, some rare conjunction or some such, which I confess meant little to me. I will escort you to his suite.”
“Captain, I’ll escort the commander,” said Jethain smoothly. “I want you to verify that the other dark servants are still out of town.”
“Yes, sir,” Jisten replied, standing. He gave the prince a salute before striding out the door with an angry, rapid stride.
Jethain turned to him. “Can we keep these?” He indicated the drawings. When Vrathis nodded, he shuffled the drawings into a stack and placed them in a leather folder. “Let’s go get this over with.”
The envoy was housed in the palace’s “new” wing, itself almost five hundred years old, compared to the thousand or more years of age that the main palace boasted. Jethain and Vrathis walked in silence for a time, until they turned into the new wing. Jethain said, “The dark servants worship the night. If we’re lucky, they won’t have retired for the day yet.”
Vrathis only grunted. It was only a few hours past dawn.
Jethain stopped before a pair of double doors and pulled the bell rope. A moment later, a servant in grey and black opened the door and looked at them. “We need to speak with S’Rak,” Jethain told him immediately. “It’s urgent.”
“Come in, Your Highness, Commander. I’ll let his eminence know you’re here to see him.” The servant stepped back to allow them entry, closed the door behind them then whisked himself off into the depths of the suite.
“A very formal young man,” Vrathis observed.
“Tebber’s a good lad. The high priest freed him,” Jethain said casually. “He serves from choice now.”
Vrathis nodded, but he filed that away. The prince’s anti-slavery stance was well known on the streets. It made him very popular with the working poor who feared that they themselves would be collared or replaced by those who already were collared. They advanced perhaps halfway into the large, empty space of the reception chamber before the door at the other end opened and the high priest stepped through.
S’Rak approached them silently, his boots making no sound on the marble floor, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his robes and his hood up, shading his face. Runes were worked into the elaborate green and blackened-silver embroidery of the robes. Some of them matched the runes found on and around the body; others did not. The emerald-green sash around his waist turned the robes from something shapeless to something elegant, but Vrathis didn’t miss the hilts of the short swords poking out of the sash. The night stones in the pommels sparkled with a strange silver light, but that was the only decoration on the swords that he could see. They were functional weapons, not decorative ones.
As the high priest drew closer, Vrathis was struck yet again by the man’s appearance. His face had the perfection of symmetry one found in marble statues more than in living men, and his skin was pale enough to pass for one of those very statues. The only thing that detracted from the absolute perfection of feature was a large, faded but obvious, twisting scar than ran from temple to jaw on the right side of his face. The man managed to be handsome despite that scar.
The raised hood shaded the yellow-green eyes from the morning sunlight, which streamed through the eastern windows but didn’t at all conceal the glare the priest was leveling on them. The commander had heard that not only did the dark ones not like sunlight, it weakened them. Of course, the high priest had displayed a great deal of power since his arrival in Karpos City this past spring. Vrathis thought that if he was forced to arrest this priest, his odds of success might be much higher during the light of day than at night, but in neither case would it be easy.
The high priest stopped before them. He studied them both with a dispassionate expression. “What did you need of me, Your Highness?”
Prince Jethain did not give any indication of his thoughts as he said, “Commander Vrathis, this is the High Priest S’Rak. Your eminence, the commander came to me a short time ago with the gravest of news. There has been a murder in the city, and the watch has reason to suspect the involvement of dark servants.”
“A murder?” Rak raised an eyebrow. “Who has died, and why are we suspects?”
“The manner of the death leads us to suspect you,” Vrathis said bluntly. “In addition, we have at least two witnesses who saw a man dressed in black with the victim, and another witness who saw someone in black running from the scene. This person discovered the body and alerted the watch. I doubt this is all just a coincidence.” As he spoke, he pulled the sheaf of sketches from his case. The one he wanted was still on top. He held it out to the priest. “Do you recognize this symbol?”
Rak took the paper from the commander’s fingers and spread it open, looking at the simple symbol drawn on it. “Yes, of course I recognize it. This is the sigil of the Lord of Night.”
“Are you certain of that?” Vrathis asked. Victory was near. He could sense it.
The priest pulled the black link chain he wore around his neck out from beneath his robe. The necklace ended in a disk covered with small, black, faceted stones. Clear diamonds set among the bl
ack stones formed a symbol: a lightning bolt crossing a sword. The symbol was identical to the drawing the commander had shown him. “I am certain, Commander,” said Rak in a dry tone of voice.
Vrathis stifled his excitement. Instead of accusing the man, he offered the next piece of parchment. “How about this one?”
Rak took the paper and studied the symbol drawn upon it. “Hmm. This one I do not know, Commander.” He offered both papers back to the commander, who retrieved them and placed the entire sheaf back into their carrying case.
“The first symbol was found carved into the stomach of the victim,” said Vrathis.
“Interesting but meaningless, I think. The sigils of all the deities are known, after all. May I see the rest of what you brought?”
Vrathis shook his head. “No. We do not share the evidence we gather from the scene of a murder. That way, we increase our chances of catching the killer by the details he knows.” That is, the evidence isn’t shared with the main suspect.
“Then, you have already violated your own rules by showing me those two symbols. I recognized one of them. Does it not stand to reason that I might recognize others?”
“Perhaps you recognized both of them, Priest, and are only claiming to recognize the obvious one,” Vrathis all but snarled. “You can’t deny recognizing the sigil of your God without being caught in a lie. But the rest of the symbols... I think you know them very well indeed.”
Rak’s eyes narrowed. “Any sympathy I had for your problem is rapidly vanishing. If you are accusing me of this crime, just tell me. Whatever else you do, stop sniffing about for scraps that might lend credence to your beliefs.”
Commander Vrathis drew himself up. “I haven’t yet decided if I am going to accuse you or not, Priest. But the evidence points in your direction.”
“If you have real evidence that implicates me, I have some right to see it.” Rak tucked his hands back into the sleeves of his robe. “I have a right to know what I am being accused of. I am not in the habit of indiscriminately killing people. That you think otherwise... perturbs me.”
Commander Vrathis countered, “Does your religion not call for human sacrifice? Do not your people wear black in honor of the Dark Lord you all serve? Do you not carry weapons in the name of your Dark Lord?”
“Human sacrifice does have a role in the temple but only under specific circumstances, none of which have occurred. Even if the conditions warranted a sacrifice, both the priest performing the sacrifice and the person to be sacrificed would first have to undergo a three-night-long ceremony of cleansing and purification. The sacrificial volunteer must indicate not once, but many times, that they are willing to be sacrificed, and then, the sacrifice must occur upon the altar of night for it to be of any use at all.” Rak’s voice was clinical, almost monotone.
“And yes, we do wear black in honor of our Lord, just as the servants of Auranz wear the sun colors of cream and gold. Black is an easy shade to dye cloth in, and for that reason, it is commonly available. And yes, we do carry weapons in His name, but weapons are not difficult to come by either. Are there any other obvious questions that I can answer for you?”
Vrathis pounced. “Where were you last night?”
“Last night? I was performing the rites due my God. This is something that I do every night, Commander. I am a priest, after all.” Rak looked exasperated now.
The commander raised an eyebrow in skepticism. “You were praying all night long?”
“No, not all night,” Rak admitted. “Let me see. First rite is Fall of Night, which begins at sunset and lasts just under an hour. After that, we ate dinner with the court, since the king does seem to expect us to attend. After dinner, we came back here and continued our devotions to our Lord until the midnight service was concluded. At that point, we ate lunch, and then, we went up to the roof of the palace and did some astronomical studies until the hour before dawn, when we returned here to perform the final rite of Night’s Ending.”
“So from midnight on, no one can verify your location other than those sworn to you?”
“The Palace Guard might have seen us. Perhaps you should ask them about our habits. After all, they do always seem to be keeping an eye on us.”
“I might just do that.”
Rak asked in a sharp tone of voice, “Are you going to arrest me on the basis of a single sigil even though my whereabouts were known all night?”
“No, but I might arrest you on the basis of no believable alibi. You not only have wings, you have a dragon. Getting off the tower and into the city unseen is child’s play for a man with your resources.”
The high priests’ wings spread, the sunlight striking them and setting them afire in brilliant hues. Golden spars defined panels of a rich ruby red, sprinkled with amethyst diamonds all of which had a smaller sapphire diamond within. If the priest was a statue, his wings were true works of art worthy of the greatest of gemsmiths. “These are hardly subtle,” the priest said quietly. “I would have stood out beautifully against the pale stone of the palace. In addition, my dragon is not a small creature, and your watchtowers keep careful track of his flight even at night. Do you have any real evidence or just wild theories and conjecture?”
Vrathis felt himself grinding his teeth in frustration, a habit he was trying hard to break. He forced himself to stop and just glared at the insolent priest, unable to refute his observations.
“No? So be it. I am going to bed. I am certain that you can find the door without my help.” The priest spun and stalked out, his movements graceful despite his anger.
“Although I admit it’s possible that the envoy is the murderer, I think it unlikely,” said Jethain. “Therefore, we require that you have hard proof before arresting any of them. S’Rak is not only an envoy, but also a high priest. Even if his ways differ from ours, we would be fools not to respect his office—as the late, unlamented chancellor already learned. We don’t need another drought, either.”
As Vrathis scowled at the requirement, Jethain added, “In addition, I do believe that my father would be most upset if you arrested my half-brother without iron-clad proof.”
“It could have been one of his assistants,” suggested Vrathis, to be fair, though he was convinced that the ex-prince turned high priest was the culprit. Frankly, he doubted the assistants were able to raise the power he’d seen at play that morning. “I would like to question the guards who were on duty last night.”
Chapter Three: Dinner
Morning for the dark servants started in the late afternoon. Rak walked into the parlor shared by the two bedrooms of the suite. It was a decently large room with a pair of largish windows overlooking a garden. Desks were set below each window, along with shelving for books, scrolls and the various assorted nonsense that tended to accumulate. In the center, a seating area—two sofas, some chairs, a low table in the middle. The décor was what Rak thought of as Koilathan standard, bright greens and blues over cream and golden brown. White, the color of death, and black, the color of night, were not used.
Tebber, the young Lythadi-born servant that Rak had freed, greeted him with a steaming mug of café.
“Ah, thank you, Tebber,” Rak murmured once he’d taken that first sip of the creamy beverage. “Just the right amount of cream, too.” He glanced out the nearest window to confirm his internal time sense. There was still a good hour left before the sunset.
Tebber grinned, but the cheerful expression was short lived. “What are you going to do, sir?”
Rak frowned then shook his head. “I have not decided yet.”
“I’ll vouch for you if it becomes necessary,” Tebber offered.
“That is kind of you, but the watch will discount anything you say because you serve me. In their eyes, that makes you equally suspect.”
“But I’m local.” Tebber protested. “Even though I’m Lythadi by blood, I was raised here in the palace. Many of the watch know me. They don’t hold my barbarian origins against me.”
“Your nomadic ancestry could be an issue, but the problem, in the eyes of the watch at least, is that I freed you. They will assume that you are loyal to me because of that, loyal enough to lie.” Rak stepped over to his desk and rifled through the papers on it. Nothing important was pending, and the few invitations to parties were things he habitually ignored. The courtiers kept inviting him anyway, as if convinced that they’d wear down his resistance through sheer persistence.
Tebber sighed and nodded then went to the other side of the parlor to present Ioli with his own mug of café.
The younger priest nodded thanks as he first accepted then sipped from the mug. Ioli walked the rest of the way into the parlor, sat down on an overstuffed chair, set his mug down and raised his fingers to ask a question, “Did you sleep well, sir?”
Rak shook his head, “No, I did not sleep well. We have trouble, siflíon. A murder in the city and the watch thinks that we did it.” He told his assistant everything that the commander and the prince had told him, sparing no detail of either confrontation.
“What do you want to do?” Ioli signed.
Rak shrugged in frustration. He wasn’t a diplomat; he was the head of a fighting sect. He had been sent to Koilatha as an envoy purportedly to seek a trade alliance, but in reality, he had come to this sun kingdom because indications were that the crown prince, Jethain, was the prince mentioned in the Victory Prophecy. If any part of a prophecy was invalidated, the entire thing collapsed on itself and became useless, and so the Enemy, the Goddess of Chaos, had moved to destroy the prince before he became a player. Rak hadn’t been sent to negotiate anything; he’d been sent to protect the prince—at any cost. Because of this, the first thing he had to ask was, “Is the murder related to the attempts on the prince? Is the Enemy attacking us indirectly, hoping to remove us from play? What motivates the real killer? Hatred? Revenge? Chaos? We need information.”
“You should recall your guards,” Ioli suggested.
Rak’s personal guard, along with the Kephi priest, S’Tyll, had headed north a week prior. Their mission was to check on the Lofton Temple of Night then detour to the lands given to Jisten when the captain had been knighted for services to the crown. Additionally, they were to escort the healer, S’Liast, back to the capitol. They had all thought that with the death of the traitor, Chancellor Virien, and the defeat of the Lythadi invaders, they would have time to regroup. Rak had sent his entire guard force, all six of them, over the objections of his de facto guard captain, Sergeant Pikara. She still steadfastly refused to allow him to make her an officer and give her charge of his personal guard in an official capacity, because, as she put it, all his guard captains ended up with a serious case of dead.