The Fair Elaine: A Kethem Novel

by Dave Dickie

  She smiled and answered, “No.” But I knew the voice.

  “Impressive illusion,” I said.

  “Clients have very detailed requests from time to time. Illusion is the only way to meet their requirements if they ask for something very specific,” said Tessa. “And it would be noteworthy if the Chikal was letting someone in a side door personally. Pretending to be a novice seemed prudent.”

  I nodded. “Agreed, and I must say you look rather fetching.”

  She laughed a bit, which is what I was hoping for. Not that we would ever be friends, but what was about to happen would tie us together in a way that made me hope for something amiable at least. She took me through a few turns that ended up in a room that was very much like the entryway to the temple. “This is where people are normally met and guided to their table, room, or whatever tickles their fancy.” I wondered what that last bit covered, but she was already heading for another door. I followed, and after a few more turns, we hit a staircase. That led to the balcony over the dining area. Tessa lead me to one of the drapes. A brass plaque read “D-5.” She pulled back the drape. The room inside was exactly like the one I’d met Leppol in the first time. There was a bottle of wine and two glasses on the table, exactly as I’d asked.

  “Leppol’s favorite,” I asked, pointing at the bottle.

  “Of course,” said Tessa.

  She turned to move off, but I grabbed her arm. “Leppol’s ride back. You call it when he’s done?”

  She looked at me, and I thought I saw fear there, like she suspected what I was planning. She said, “Yes. It’s a private service, unconnected to his Hold or his people. He tries to be discrete.”

  I nodded and said, “Good. It needs to be available a half hour after he arrives. We will be done by then. You need to come get him, and you have to keep the room available for me. I’ll be staying a little longer. You should guide him directly to his carriage when we are finished.”

  She frowned and said, “His invitation will guide him to the exit and open it for him. He doesn’t need an escort, it’s old hat to him.”

  “He’ll need it this time,” I answered.

  She nodded, and I could see doubt in her eyes, but she said, “as you suggest. He will be here in a few minutes,” Then she turned and left. I filled the wine glasses, did what I’d come to do, and sat in a chair with my glass.

  The drape opened. My eyes were adjusted to the dark, his were not. Leppol was in the same full mask, floppy hat, and heavy, generic cloak he’d been in last time, designed to prevent anyone from seeing anything that could identify him. I could see him hesitate, realizing someone was in the room, someone who was not Kyung-chul. But he was a Holder, and therefore sure of himself. He entered and let the drape fall. I put my wine glass down, stood and bowed. “My Lord,” I said. “Good news. I have discovered the location of the vial. I hope you will still make good on that reward.” He drew back a bit, then thought about what I’d said, relaxed, and smiled. “Please,” I said, “have a seat. I apologize for meeting you this way, but I’ve been attacked and had to kill two people.” I left out Sariel, but he wouldn’t know about that. “There are many players in this game, and I wanted to make sure that what I have to tell you is only for your ears.”

  He paused, then took off the hat, mask and cloak and hung them from a hook. He looked at me with the same hard eyes, the same grim expression. “Gur. Amazing. I had not expected so much, so soon. And I assure you, the reward is yours.”

  He sat down and grabbed the glass of wine. “So, tell me, where is it?”

  I smiled. “Let me tell you how I found it first,” I said. “I don’t mean to be arrogant, but it’s a good tale.”

  He took a swig of his wine and waved it at me to continue.

  “The trickiest thing was that there were two different groups after it. One was…” I paused for a second, a shooting pain running down my spine. He took another swig of wine while I got myself under control. “One was internal.” More pain, but not quite as bad. The geas was doing its job, but one thing that had become clear to me was that geas sorcery works on what the person with the geas believed. If you thought you were giving away information that didn’t matter, the geas would cut you some slack. It was the reason Tessa had been able to tell me more detail about Sariel and Ralin’s relationship, because it didn’t matter much when the fact that they had one was the core of the temple’s involvement. Likewise, sharing this with Leppol was becoming more and more of a moot point.

  “Internal?” he said, looking angry. “You’re telling me one of the other Holds was responsible?”

  “One of the other Holds, no, my Lord. One of the Holders on the mission, yes. Or at least, they were trying to steal the vial.”

  His eyebrows came together and his mouth turned down. “Who?” he said, raising his glass to his lips and taking another sip.

  “Ralin,” I said. The pain was pretty bad, but I was expecting it. I might have flinched a bit, because he suddenly looked a little suspicious.

  Leppol said, “Ralin? Ralin? He’s nothing, he’s nobody. And he’s dead. You expect me to believe he stole the vial?”

  I shook my head. “No, my Lord. He tried and failed. But it did make it less obvious who had.”

  Leppol’s eyes were blazing. He said, “Gur, stop playing with me. If you know where the vial is, tell me now.”

  I looked him in the eye. “The vial of raw chaos?” I asked.

  The anger went down a notch. He sat back with his glass, took a sip, and said, “So. You know.”

  “Yes, my Lord, I do. And more. I know what you traded for it.”

  The anger had drained out of him, and his eyes were glacier cold. “Do you? I know you visited the Nitheia temple. I know you tricked that stupid bitch into telling you what we purchased from her. Congratulations, Gur, for ignoring my very pointed command to not go digging into the details of the mission.” He stopped, breathed in deeply, and looked around. He grabbed a napkin and wiped beads of sweat off his forehead, then continued. “But I can be kind. I will forgive you that, if you’ve truly determined the location of the vial.”

  “I thank my Lord, but I wasn’t talking about the object you traded. I was talking about the reason you traded it, what you were giving the Ohulhug.”

  That stopped him cold. He said, grimly, “And what was that?”

  “You were giving the Ohulhug an anti-scrying device so they can secretly move an army to attack Nyquet. The history books are full of the Ohulhug breaking against Nyquet’s forces time and again, despite vast numerical and logistical advantages. The only way Nyquet could have survived two hundred years of orc attacks was if they had a supreme tactical advantage. If they knew everything about how and when the orcs were going to attack. Maizon was a history buff, he knew all that, didn’t he? And he spoke Ohulhug.”

  Leppol wiped his face with the napkin again, then looked down at his hand and flexed his fingers. He looked back at me and said, “I underestimated you, Gur. I won’t do that again. But it works out in your favor this time. Clear Maizon’s name, you get that money. Just tell me where the vial is, you get the million rimii.”

  I leaned back and sipped my wine. “Really, my Lord? You’ve already tried to kill me once. Why would I believe this will be the end of it?” He looked at me. I could tell he was trying to decide if he should deny it. “Was it the Nitheia temple or the elves that made you decide I was stepping over the line? That you needed to cover your tracks?”

  I could see him come down on the side of playing it straight. He shrugged. “The Elvish embassy was the final straw. You couldn’t be looking for Maizon or the vial there. You were there to cut some kind of deal with them.” He was completely wrong, but I nodded as if in agreement. He smiled. “I knew it. But you hand me the vial, or just tell me where it is, all will be forgiven.”

  I shook my head and said, “No, Leppol, I don’t think so.” His face set in angry lines. Commoners did not address him by his name. “Nyquet has a
quarter of a million people. You were going to let the Ohulhug decimate them for the ability to flatten a few cities?”

  He gestured at me with his glass, still looking angry, but his voice was calm when he said, “I see I really have underestimated you badly. I admit it. But, you missed the mark on that one a bit. Casualty projections are around twenty percent of the population, not everyone. And we were not going to use the chaos that inelegantly. Not even the Ohulhug want to destroy the real estate they intend to own. No, some of our mages have found a way to convert small amounts of chaos into large mana pools. We can crank them out quickly, efficiently, mana pools big enough for a few dozen, maybe a hundred spells.” He leaned back in his chair. “It puts us on an even footing with the Elves. It makes us the dominant power in the region. It means the Ohulhug made a very bad deal, because at some point, we’ll take back whatever portions of Pranan they capture,”

  I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be telling me this if he had any intention of leaving me alive, but it didn’t matter. “Well, Leppol, sounds like an excellent plan as long as you don’t let the deaths of fifty thousand men, women and children, and the subjugation of the rest by a race that’s known to kill slaves on a whim, bother you. That’s not really something I can forgive. So, while I thank you for the offer, I’m afraid I have to decline it. I will help Valont, your warden, to find Maizon and clear his name, because I promised him I would. The raw chaos… well, that was a business arrangement between the two of us that you voided when you tried to have me killed.”

  Leppol was furious now. I could see it. He was also sweating profusely, breathing raggedly, and kept clenching and unclenching his fists. I’d kept his attention long enough at this point for the triggerfish toxin left over from Ralin that I’d put in his wine to take effect. “It is not too late to rectify that mistake,” he said, but he was glancing at his hands and frowning.

  "I believe it is, Leppol. You’ve been playing this so close to the chest that no one else really knows what’s going on, do they? You’ve been giving people orders, not telling them why, just what to do. I think your little secrets are going to die with you, my Lord,” and I made the “my Lord” sound as sarcastic as I could.

  He wasn’t looking angry any more, he was looking alarmed and then afraid. He said, “What have you done?”

  I smiled, not because I felt good about this, but because I didn’t want to let him know it bothered me. There are some crimes where a clean death is too light a punishment. “Poison, Leppol. In your wine.”

  He tried to stand up, but his nervous system was too impaired at this point for him to get out of his chair. He gasped, “Impossible. The temple doesn’t allow people to bring in anything dangerous.”

  I kept smiling even through the pain from the geas. I’m pretty sure if I didn’t know he would be dead within minutes it would have put me on the floor writhing in agony. As it was, I’ve been stabbed before, a few times. This was worse. But it was worth it. “Special dispensation from Tessa. I’m afraid she’s decided she doesn’t enjoy sharing her bed with you. Something about you being a pig, I think.”

  He was breathing very irregularly now, long periods of nothing and then a sudden great gasp of air. But he still managed to get out, “My people will find out and kill you and that bitch.” Then he stopped breathing altogether, but his eyes were still looking at me, the last of the oxygen in his blood sustaining him for a few more seconds.

  "Oh, I don’t know Leppol. Those Sambhal witches have their uses, don’t they? Really good at keeping secrets.” And I could see it reflected in the fury in his eyes. The temple had to be protected against any kind of spells that would even hint to someone what had happened here. Fear replaced the fury as his body started shutting down. After thirty seconds, his eyes went out of focus. After another minute, his body, held rigid by muscles that were no longer getting signals from his brain, relaxed and he slumped over. I waited another ten minutes to be sure, then put on his hat, mask, and cloak and stepped outside the room.

  Tessa was waiting outside, still illusion-ed up to look like a novice. She looked very carefully. “My Lord Holder?” she said quietly. But I could tell she already knew the answer.

  “He’s dead,” I said. I could see her doing the math. She was, worst case, an unwitting accomplice in the murder of a Lord Holder. But that was a crime that was punishable by death of not only the individual responsible, but their immediate family and anyone who, even without knowing the intent, had helped them in any way. And would probably shut down the temple as well. But I was going to muddy the track, and Leppol had probably not let anyone know where he was going. The temple itself would protect against any sorcerous attempts to determine what had happened, and it was unlikely she would be personally questioned even if someone did trace Leppol to the temple as part of an investigation. That, and that if the murder was traced to me, I was geas-ed up to prevent disclosing the temple’s involvement. Finally, she nodded, and I couldn’t tell if it was anger at putting her in a difficult situation or gratitude for killing Leppol in her eyes. I felt a little bad about leaving the body for her to take care of, but she had an entire staff at her disposal that were guaranteed to keep quiet about it.

  “This way,” she said, and without another word guided me through the temple to a different door than we had entered. “Your carriage is outside. It will take you to a way station where you change. Another carriage will take you to the Hold.” I nodded. That was good news. Leppol might have had a teleport or some other easy way to return directly to his Hold, but I thought it unlikely. Teleports can be traced and they’re expensive so they leave a money trail as well. Traveling by carriage was slower, but less expensive and made it easier to hide a night of secret trysting.

  I stepped through the door into the shop. It was an art shop, pictures and small sculptures lining the walls. I walked through it, exited the door to the street, and walked up to the carriage waiting there. The driver was very efficient, letting me in without a word, closing the door, and heading out. I’d also suspected that Leppol had things set up so he didn’t need to talk near the temple to prevent anyone from hearing and recognizing his voice. A few minutes later, we were at a small, nondescript building off a back alley not far from the temple. There were a few carriages there. It seemed Leppol was not the only one that used this place. I stepped out and paused for a minute. The driver politely waited, which meant Leppol hadn’t paid ahead of time. I handed him a fifty rimii note and waved him off when he tried to make change. He looked a little surprised, but not horribly so. Close enough to normal. As I walked away, he drove off. Another good sign. This was a double blind, with the two carriages having no knowledge of each other, preventing the one that took Leppol away in his normal clothes from knowing where he had come from.

  Inside the building there were eight doors off a central corridor. It seemed to be unoccupied, which was not surprising as people would only be here long enough to change. The first two rooms held outfits like the one I was wearing, the third expensive clothing and a cloak with a house seal on it, but it wasn’t Grafton’s. The fourth one was empty. The fifth one had Leppol’s clothes in it. At least, they were very fine and the cloak had a Grafton Glyph that shimmered and sparkled with some kind of magicked phosphorescence. I doubted Leppol would use the same changing station as anyone else from his Hold. I closed the door, took off the hat, cloak and mask and hung them on hooks, grabbed Leppol’s clothes and stuffed them in a bag, and triggered my safety teleport, which took me to a street corner about a mile from where I lived.

  Twenty minutes later I was in my apartment, and ten minutes after that I was feeding Leppol’s clothing into a fire in my fireplace. It was slow work, burning a bit at a time. I didn’t want anything left that could be identified or could be used for any kind of sorcerous reconstruction of events leading up to that moment. It gave me time to wonder. Not so much about whether I was really going to get away with murdering a head of state. I’d done my best and I thought it
would be good enough, but if it wasn’t there wasn’t much I could do about it. No, more about whether it had been the right thing to do.

  I’d killed before… actually just killed three other people within the past three days. But those had been self-defense, them or me, and you make those kind of decisions instinctively and you shrug afterwards and say it is what it is. You could argue it had been the same with Leppol, that if I hadn’t killed him, he would have killed me. But it was the first time I’d ever planned on killing someone. My first premeditated murder.

  I could have taken a different path, taken everything I knew to a Magistrate, counted on the separation of the High Council and the legal organization that defined the laws of the land and judged whether someone was guilty of violating them, even Holders. Would that have worked? When the stakes were equality, or perhaps superiority, over another race? When the guilty party was a member of the High Council, who ruled Kethem? When I wasn’t even sure that letting a Pranan City-State fall to orcs was even a crime?

  And if it hadn’t worked, if a Magistrate had decided for Leppol, would that make me wrong? What gave me the right to be judge, jury and executioner?