Mortal Rites

by Melissa McShane

  Sienne rose when her friends did and followed Alaric down the dark hall to the entry chamber. Once outside, she said, “Were you serious?”

  Kalanath shrugged. “He is old and lonely, and I was taught to respect those who have passed through the years. And I do not often speak with people who have been to my country.”

  “Well, it’s nice of you, that’s all.”

  “And we learned some valuable information,” Alaric said, “namely that the next name on our list has a connection to Uriane Samretto as well as Penthea Lepporo. I don’t believe in coincidence.”

  “It may mean nothing, even if it is no coincidence,” Perrin said. “Necromancers may mostly work in solitude, but if they have a society, it will be of other necromancers. And I cannot believe there are so many of them that they do not know each other.”

  “Still, I’m eager to meet this Pauro Murtaviti, who we now know was alive at least five years ago.” Alaric slowed his steps to allow the others to catch up with him as he reached the end of the street. “Dianthe?”

  “South side,” Dianthe said. “Are these confusions still active?”

  “You’ve got at least another six hours before they wear off,” Sienne said.

  “Then let’s go.”

  The rain had diminished to heavy mist while they were in Samretto’s house, and Sienne pushed back the hood of her rain cape and let the mist build on her face and bead along her eyelashes and eyebrows. It was the kind of weather that encouraged you to stay inside with a good book, and part of her resented having to be out in it. But listening to Myles Samretto had piqued her curiosity. She wondered who this Paulo Murtaviti was, and what books had he bought from Uriane Samretto. If he had the answers they needed, he needed to be convinced to share those answers—and that might be difficult.

  Fioretti’s south side was older than the rest of the city, the original heart of Fioretti before the Fiorus rulers had taken power and moved much of the government’s offices nearer the newly constructed palace. Carissima Lane, like many of the streets in the south side, marked an ancient cow path along which houses had grown up. It meandered at random, taking unexpected turns and in one place doubling back on itself. “I would suspect a drunkard of laying out this route, did I not know differently,” Perrin said.

  “Lovely. There’s one,” Dianthe said.

  “One what?” asked Sienne.

  “One of the posters. No, don’t look!”

  “Why not?” Kalanath said, crossing the street to look at where several handbills and posters had been plastered to the side of a tavern. One of the larger ones had REWARD printed across the top in bold black letters, with 1000 LARI in smaller but more distinctive red lettering just below.

  “Oh, you’re right,” Sienne said. “That picture looks nothing like you.”

  “It’s so embarrassing. Like being caught with your trousers down.” Dianthe stood with her back to the poster, denying its existence.

  “It’s already been partly covered over by this announcement of some performing troupe coming to Fioretti in a week,” Alaric said. “Two more weeks, three at the outside, and it will all be forgotten.”

  “Can we just move on?” Dianthe said, her voice high and plaintive. Alaric put an arm around her shoulders and steered her up the street. Sienne cast one last look over her shoulder at the poster. She knew what it was like to be afraid of your past catching up with you, but she was certain her own troubles paled beside Dianthe’s. Wanted for murder. What a nightmare.

  Like in many old neighborhoods, house numbering was erratic on Carissima Lane. Number 34 was tucked between numbers 15 and 27. Alaric knocked at the door. “The kind of people who live in these places aren’t generally receptive to friendly strangers,” he told Perrin. “So we’re going to try unfriendly first.”

  Nobody answered the door. Alaric knocked a second time. Sienne looked up and down the street, which was virtually empty. She caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye, a few houses down, just the flutter of a curtain where someone had twitched it aside to look at them. She resisted the urge to smile and wave.

  Alaric let out a deep breath. “We’ll have to try again another time,” he said, half-turning away.

  The door opened. A middle-aged woman wearing a plain dress of maroon cotton and a white wraparound apron stood there, holding a scrub brush like a weapon. Her hair was covered by a scarf, but wisps of black escaped from it, softening the lines of her face. She took in the five people standing on her doorstep with wide eyes. To Sienne’s astonishment, tears began flowing down her face.

  “Thank Lisiel,” she said. “What took you so long?”

  6

  “Excuse me?” Alaric said.

  “I reported Pauro missing five days ago. Does the guard care so little about us ordinary citizens that they just ignore our pleas?” The woman lowered the brush and dashed away tears with her free hand. “Never mind. I’m just glad you’ve come.”

  “I’m sorry, mistress, but I think you’ve mistaken us for someone else,” Alaric said. “We’re not with the guard.”

  “Of course not. But—you mean to say the guard didn’t send you?” The tears returned. “Then there’s no hope for my husband.”

  “Are you Mistress Murtaviti?”

  The woman nodded.

  Alaric cleared his throat and shifted his weight. “We came because we wanted to speak with your husband, Pauro. I take it he’s missing?”

  She nodded again. “It’s been five days. I sent word to the guard, asking for help, and I hoped…I’m sorry to disappoint you. I wish I could tell you to return later, but I don’t—” Her tears turned into loud, uncomfortable sobs like someone choking.

  “Why did you think the guard sent us?” Sienne asked.

  The woman shook her head and swallowed another sob. “I asked them to contact a scrapper team who might be willing to go out looking for Pauro. It’s just the road between here and Tagliaveno, well-traveled, but there are always bandits.”

  “Are you sure he didn’t take ship? It’s faster,” Dianthe said.

  “Pauro hates ocean travel. It makes him violently ill.” She wiped her eyes again. “I don’t suppose…you are scrappers, yes?”

  “We are,” Alaric said, “but—”

  “I’m so sorry. Please, come in. Let me get you something hot to drink. Why did you want to speak to Pauro?” The woman stepped back and held the door open. Alaric caught Sienne’s eye. She shrugged, the barest hint of a gesture. Probably the woman wouldn’t be any more helpful than Myles Samretto, but it was worth the time to find out.

  The tiny entry chamber was whitewashed and felt colder than it was because of it. No furniture or artwork relieved its starkness, and all six of them crammed into it made Sienne feel unexpectedly claustrophobic. “This way,” the woman said, opening a door directly opposite the front door.

  The room beyond was much larger and better lit, with plenty of sofas and chairs that said the Murtavitis liked entertaining guests. Sienne admired the framed charcoal drawings covering one wall, all of them portrait studies of people’s faces. “These are very good,” she said.

  “They’re my husband’s. He’s fond of sketching likenesses. Please sit, I’ll bring coffee.”

  “Wait—” Alaric began, but the woman was already gone through a second door. “We don’t even know her name,” he added.

  “She’s going to ask us to hunt for her missing husband,” Dianthe said. “What should we tell her?”

  “Maybe we should find this man,” Kalanath said, “if he is the one who knows what we want.”

  “We’ll talk to the woman, and find out what she knows,” Alaric said. “Then, if it turns out we need Master Murtaviti’s knowledge, we’ll agree to find him.”

  “There are three other names on our list,” Sienne said, gazing at the portraits. “Maybe we should focus on finding them before we go haring off into the wilderness after someone who might just have taken the long way home.” One picture in p
articular intrigued her. It was of a man with strong cheekbones and a well-defined jaw. His eyes were deeply set under a heavy brow. The overall impression was of someone who refused to give up even when the whole world was against him.

  “Master Murtaviti has a connection to two people we know knew something about a binding ritual,” Alaric said. “He may be harder to find than the others, but I have a feeling his knowledge will prove useful. And we’d have to leave the city to talk to two people on our list anyway.”

  Murtaviti was good; the heavy-browed man’s eyes followed Sienne as she walked from one side of the portrait to another. “Good point. Though what do you think the odds are that Mistress Murtaviti knows anything about her husband’s avocation?”

  The door swung open. “Please, sit,” Mistress Murtaviti said. She bore a large silver tray in both hands, laden with a coffee pot, six cups, a small pitcher of cream and a bowl filled with lumps of sugar. “I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Bernea Murtaviti.” She set the tray on a low table at the center of a grouping of chairs and began pouring.

  “Alaric,” Alaric said. “This is Dianthe, Kalanath, Perrin, and Sienne.”

  “I’ll do my best to remember, but I feel so scattered lately, I can barely remember my own name.”

  Sienne accepted a steaming cup and poured a liberal amount of cream into it. “I’m sure this must be very difficult for you,” she said.

  “I just don’t understand it. This isn’t the first time he’s made this journey between Fioretti and Tagliaveno.” Bernea sat back in her chair with her own cup, but didn’t take a drink. “He sent a message when he left so I would know when to expect him, but he didn’t return on time, and he didn’t send any other messages. He always sends messages when he’s on the road. It’s an expense, I know, but I hate worrying.”

  “You said he didn’t like ocean travel. Is there some reason he didn’t use ferry or transport?” Alaric asked.

  “That really is a terrible expense. And, as I said, this journey is practically routine. I never thought…oh, by Lisiel, if it was bandits…” The tears began flowing again. Dianthe, sitting next to Bernea, put a comforting hand on the woman’s hand.

  “Was he traveling alone, or in a caravan?” Perrin asked. “Because a caravan might have any number of reasons to be delayed that have nothing to do with bandits.”

  “He was with a caravan.” Bernea wiped her eyes and blinked at Perrin. “You think it might have been that? Animals lamed, or a wagon foundered?”

  “It is entirely possible,” Perrin said. “And I believe I may be able to help. Averran granted me two scrying blessings this day, and I can attempt to discover Master Murtaviti’s location.”

  Bernea drew in a quick breath. “Would you? I can pay—anything you like—”

  “We’re interested in information,” Alaric said.

  “Information? What information?” Bernea sounded more alarmed than Sienne felt the question justified.

  “Let us discover Master Murtaviti’s location first, and then pose our questions,” Perrin said, shooting a warning glance at Alaric. Sienne guessed he was thinking they should put Bernea in their debt before asking uncomfortable questions about whether her husband was a practicing necromancer.

  “I will need a map,” Perrin said.

  “I have a few,” Bernea said. “I suppose you want one showing the area between here and Tagliaveno?”

  “You have it exactly,” Perrin said.

  Bernea rose and set her untouched cup on a nearby cabinet. “I’ll be right back.”

  The moment she was gone, Dianthe said, “Should we have pressed her for details first?”

  “She will be more receptive if she has some reassurance,” Perrin said.

  “I think she’s more nervous than she should be,” Sienne said. “She doesn’t like the idea of us asking questions about her husband.”

  “I noticed that, too,” Alaric said. “And did you notice the strange thing about the portraits?”

  “That none of them are smiling, and many have their eyes closed?” Kalanath said. “I did not know it was strange, because it is that your customs are different, but in Omeira it would be unnatural. It looks like a wall of the dead.”

  “They might just show a progression in his ability,” Sienne pointed out. “Portraits are hard, my artist sister Phebe says, because people can’t hold still like vases and fruit do. He might have started out needing his subjects not to smile, and maybe he wasn’t good at eyes at first.” But she thought of the heavy-browed man, and her theory felt flat.

  “Even so—”

  The door opened. “I found two that might work,” Bernea said, handing them to Perrin. Dianthe moved the coffee tray, and Perrin unrolled the maps and examined them.

  “This one,” he said, indicating a map that showed all of Rafellin. “It will not give us an exact location, but it will be sufficient to show us where he went astray.”

  And prove whether he’s still alive, Sienne thought but did not say aloud. Probably Bernea had had the same thought, and Sienne didn’t want to upset her.

  Perrin used three empty coffee cups and the cream jug to pin down the corners of the map. “Pray, step back, this is delicate work,” he said, and everyone took a step back from the table. “Is Pauro Murtaviti his full name?”

  “Yes.” Bernea gripped the skirt of her dress in both hands.

  Perrin reached into his belt pouch and brought out a charcoal pencil with a fine tip, which he set on the map. He removed his riffle of blessings from inside his vest and flipped through it until he found one with a dark blue smudge on the corner. Tearing it off, he took up the pencil and wrote the name PAURO MURTAVITI in neat, clear letters around the complex sigil burned into the rice paper. The pencil went back into the pouch, the blessings were tucked into his vest, and Perrin held the rice paper square in both hands over the map’s center.

  “O Lord Averran,” he muttered, “have patience in your crankiness, and grant me this blessing.”

  Blue flame consumed the paper, licking across Perrin’s fingers without provoking a reaction from him. More fire ignited at the corners of the map, spreading inward until the surface was a sheet of blue fire. Bernea cried out, and Dianthe put a restraining hand on her arm. “Just wait,” she murmured.

  The fire covering the map flickered and then went out, here and there. It left behind, not charred paper, but an unmarked surface that gleamed newer than it had been when Perrin laid it down. Finally, only one spot on the map still burned. The fire rose and thinned until it looked like a blue, flickering needle. The bottom of the needle touched the map, and Sienne finally smelled burning. Then the fire was gone, and scorched into the map was a bright blue dot.

  “Is that…where he is?” Bernea breathed.

  “Indeed,” Perrin said. The dot lay east and a little south of Fioretti, near the shore of the Jalenus Sea. “There are no landmarks nearby.”

  “But it’s on the highway between here and Tagliaveno,” Alaric said. “That suggests that something went wrong with the caravan.”

  “But he sent no messages. Wouldn’t he have sent a message if he knew he’d be delayed?” Bernea’s dress was twisted into a mass of wrinkles.

  “If no priest traveled with them, he could not have done so,” Perrin said. “Truly I think you have nothing to worry about.”

  “I suppose.” Bernea’s anxious gaze traveled from one of them to another. “I’d still like to be sure. Would you go? Find Pauro and bring him home? I can pay…it would mean so much to me…”

  Alaric alone among them didn’t meet her eyes. He was staring at the map. “I don’t see what good we could do,” he said. “He’ll probably return home in a few days, once the delay is over.”

  “But what if he’s ill, and that’s why he hasn’t returned? No caravan would wait on his illness. If he has to travel alone, Lisiel knows what might happen to him. Please. Find him and bring him home.”

  Alaric pursed his lips in thought. He tap
ped the blue spot. “We came to ask your husband some questions. Maybe you know the answers.”

  “But if you make the journey, you’ll be able to ask him yourself!” Bernea sounded pleased at this solution to both their problems.

  Alaric looked up and focused his pale blue eyes intently on her. “How long has your husband studied necromancy?”

  Bernea sucked in a sharp breath. “What—that’s ridiculous! Pauro’s no necromancer!”

  “I didn’t say he was. I said he studied necromancy. That’s not illegal. I just want to know how long.”

  Bernea’s eyes darted from Alaric to the portrait wall and back again. “Since before we were married. But it’s just theory! He’s interested in why necromancy works when it isn’t magic or blessings. If you try to claim otherwise, I’ll—”

  “Calm down, Mistress Murtaviti, we’re not interested in getting Pauro in trouble.” Alaric stood and wandered through the room, picking up a porcelain figure and setting it down again. “Master Murtaviti was in correspondence with a woman whose necromantic studies went beyond the theoretical. Again, we’re not accusing your husband of practicing necromancy, but these letters suggested Master Murtaviti had certain books in his possession that contained information relating to one of our jobs. We just want to look at the books.”

  Bernea stood. There were two spots of color high on her cheekbones. “Bring him back to me, and you can look at anything you like,” she said.

  “But surely—” Dianthe began.

  “No. I won’t let strangers into Pauro’s library. Besides, I don’t know anything about necromancy. I never paid attention when Pauro talked about it.” Bernea was breathing heavily. “He’ll be able to answer your questions better than I.”

  “All right,” Alaric said. “We’ll bring back your husband. Payment is fifty lari. Up front.”

  The color vanished, and Bernea’s eyes widened. “I don’t have that much.”

  “I’m sorry, that’s the standard rate for a journey of that length.” Alaric never looked away from her stunned expression. “We’ll return tomorrow—that should give you time to get the payment together.”