Changes v(cc-3

by Mercedes Lackey

  He didn’t want to go into the next room. He didn’t want to see what was there.

  He didn’t have a choice.

  ::Wait—Mags—:: Nikolas’ mind-voice interrupted him.

  This room had a door between it and the next; Mags propped the candle in a little wax, pulled off his shirt and jerkin, took the shirt and wrapped it around his face, making sure to cover his mouth and nose, before putting the jerkin back on. Then he tried the door.

  ::Am I yer partner, or not?:: he asked fiercely, telling himself not to be sick.

  ::You are. But you don’t have to do this.::

  ::I’ll haveta do’t sometime. Ye knows thet. Fust time might’s well be now.::

  He sensed Nikolas’ resignation. ::I’ll send the Guard. When they take over from you, get out the same way you got in.::

  The door wasn’t locked, but it had been jammed shut. Not caring now about noise, he rammed it repeatedly with his shoulder, hearing something crack every time he did, as if he was breaking some sort of seal. Each time he did it, more of the stench puffed out around the frame. Finally the door gave, and he stumbled into the room.

  The candlelight flickered over a scene of grotesque, even macabre, horror.

  Even through his shirt the stench was appalling.

  The stench of four bloated bodies sprawled across the furniture in bizarre poses of ease, as if they were all relaxing. Their clothing wasn’t disarranged, there was no sign of a fight, no sign even that they had been carried in here. They looked exactly as if they had come here together to pass some time before bed.

  But they weren’t relaxing. They were dead.

  Dead, without a mark on them to show how they had died.

  Chapter 9

  The Guardsmen had sent some of their most experienced and hardened men, but even they had been overcome with nausea and had had to leave the building. Several had been violently ill. And the curious thing was—at least in Mags’ mind—there was not a man among them, himself included, who would not happily have seen these men hang. At the very least these “victims” had conspired to wipe out a stableful of Companions; they were spies, they had colluded in kidnapping a Healer Trainee and probably would have killed him when he was of no further use to them. But your head could tell you all that a thousand times, but your gut was going to react to the visceral stench in the time-honored fashion, and that was all there was to it.

  Someone dispensed mint-soaked scarves to wrap around their faces, and that helped. But after the initial group arrived and set up a line that no one would be allowed to cross, there was a wait for a Special Squad, a wait during which the Guard Captain insisted that no one could touch or move anything.

  Finally the Special Squad arrived, laden with bags and implements and lanterns, and the others dispersed to hold the curious outside an established perimeter, their faces reflecting their relief. Mags remained, partly out of curiosity and partly in case any of this new group wanted to ask him anything.

  They had stronger stomachs than he did, that was certain. For all that he could tell, the stench didn’t bother them at all. They examined the bodies in place, minutely; they confiscated every used dish and pot, then, after (finally!) having the bodies closed up into waterproof bags and transported on a cart somewhere, they allowed all the windows to be opened so that the place could air out. Mags was intensely grateful for the brisk breeze, and felt very sorry for anyone nearby who was downwind of the house.

  Two of the Special Squad combed over the room of death like misers searching for a lost gem while the rest accompanied the bodies and the confiscated objects back to wherever they were being taken. One of them actually was picking up small things and carefully bagging them, and when Mags finally gave in to his curiosity and came to see what he was doing, he saw to his surprise that the young Guardsman was picking up dead bugs.

  The fellow looked up and saw Mags staring at him in disbelief. “Didn’t you notice there weren’t any flies?” he pointed out, and held up a dead one.

  Mags blinked. “Ye mean, them flies is all dead?”

  “As dead as last year’s leaves,” the fellow replied. “And I will bet that is why there are no mice or rats here, either. It might have been poison in the food, but given all the dead insects, I suspect poison fumes or smoke of some sort.”

  “Ye kin do thet?” Mags gulped. That was altogether nasty. How could you guard against something like that? “Ye kin poison summun with stuff they breathe in?”

  “It’s not easy, and it’s rather difficult to get people to sit there and breathe the stuff, but, yes, it can be done. Of course, if you drug them first, it’s trivial, and judging by their relative positions, they were either drunk or drugged when they died.” The Guardsman went back to picking up bugs. “Whatever it was, it would have to work quickly. It might have been a poison in the food or drink, but that wouldn’t account for the dead bugs. We can test for most poisons, but not the sort that are inhaled, and the men who did this might have been trying to prevent anyone from finding out that these men were murdered rather than died by accident. I do think, however, that the room was sealed after they were dead, rather than before. Probably to keep the stink from leaking out and betraying whoever did this until they were ready to burn the house down.”

  “ ’Ow long’ve they bin dead?” he asked, a little repulsed, but a little fascinated by someone who would talk so matter-of-factly about grisly corpses.

  “More than a day, not more than two.” The reply was prompt. “It’s been warm, the room was sealed—normally bodies don’t bloat until the third day, but the room probably got rather hot during the day, and that would speed things up.”

  Mags relayed all this to Nikolas.

  ::Hmm. So it appears that they died before or about the same time as the guide,:: came the reply.

  ::Reckon so.:: And that begged the question—how long had these new killers been in Haven before they rid themselves of the first lot? And why? ::Ye’ve been askin’ ’bout strangers fer long?:: That was a good place to start.

  ::The Weasel is an established persona of mine, and he’s always bought and sold information,:: Nikolas said thoughtfully. ::But I have only been asking specifically about foreigners for a week.::

  It would have taken a few days for that particular piece of information to get around . . .

  The same thought must have occurred to Nikolas. ::Damn. By looking for them, I killed them. I wanted to catch them, not kill them.::

  That puzzled Mags—not that Nikolas was unhappy about these men being killed, but that he blamed himself. ::I’m purt sure ye didn’ toss poison i’ their fire, sir.::

  ::I might just as well have,:: Nikolas replied bleakly. ::If—::

  ::I’m purt sure they was gonna get kilt anyway, sir,:: Mags interrupted, as he watched these odd Guardsmen finish combing the room, then spread out to the rest of the house. ::Thet was how them others thet I was follerin’ was thinkin’ anyroad. Ye fail, ye die, leastwise, if this new lot gits sent t’clean up yer mess.:: He paused. ::Coulda jest been coincidence too. Or they coulda bin killt, an’ then these others heard ’bout you lookin’, an’ figgered t’ pass on that th’ fust ones’d got away an collect them some money at same time.::

  ::Maybe,:: Nikolas replied, then went silent.

  Well, Mags had done his best, and if Nikolas was going to brood about this, there wasn’t much he could do about it. All things considered, through, if he were a ruthless killer who could not only send searchers on the proverbial wild hare hunt and make some money at the same time? He’d do just that.

  That might have been why they decided to burn down the building with the bodies in it rather than just leaving them for someone to find. Having someone find the bodies of four people who were supposedly leaving the country at a brisk pace would certainly alert the authorities that there was someone else in town who not only had provided the misinformation but had probably done the murders in the first place.

  These Guardsmen fascinated him,
despite their grisly avocation. Obviously they expected to learn something from the things they were collecting, but what? He followed the bug collector up to the second story. The air was much better up here. He didn’t even need his mint-soaked scarf.

  There were plenty of lanterns up here as well, which gave him a very good look at the two Guardsmen who were left. They looked remarkably alike—not as if they were from the same family, exactly, but as if they had been picked precisely to be unmemorable. They both had hair and eyes of the same neutral brownish, faces that were neither round nor square, short nor long, both were of middling height and weight, neither had any distinguishing features. Rather like Nikolas in a way, although with Nikolas, a good deal of his ability to be “invisible” rested with his training.

  It seemed that the fellow Mags had been talking to wasn’t just a bug collector. When Mags got there, he was helping another man go through the dead folks’ belongings, and not just sort through them, but take them apart. Hems were opened on clothing, linings torn out, mattresses were cut open, any object was picked up, examined minutely for—

  What? Why were they poking and prodding, closing their eyes and running their fingertips over things?

  The bug-fellow opened his eyes to see Mags staring at him, perplexed. He cracked a very slight smile. “Secret compartments,” he said, without waiting for Mags to ask him the question. “And if you have Mindspeech, would you kindly tell Nikolas that if he eats himself up over this, I am going to drag him out of his bed later today and beat him senseless? That seems to be the only thing that gets through his thick skull.”

  The other man uttered a smothered chuckle.

  “But—how?” Mags asked. “How’re ye lookin’ fer stuff that’s s’posed t’be hid?”

  “Well, if we had found one, I could show you, but in general, we look for something that seems to be solid, or solidish, but is a little too light. That’s why we are weighing these things in our hands. We look for drawers or compartments that are too short. We close our eyes and use our fingers, hunting for concealed seams and test to see if what seem to be solid panels will actually move. Thus far, I am sorry to say, we have found nothing.”

  “This place has been cleaned,” the second man said, with an air of one pronouncing a judgment. “I don’t think we’ll find anything unless these lads thought they might be betrayed and hid something, or the killers made a mistake. I don’t think either is likely. That fire was cleverly and carefully set. The room was sealed to keep the stink from getting out too much; there’s pitch all around the doors and windows, and it would have set up around the front door once they closed and locked it. They didn’t need to break the seal to set the fire; you said they came in the back way. There would have been remains, but nothing that could have been identified, and anyone investigating would have seen four drunks in the front of the house, and what was left of the table in the kitchen, and figured a perfectly ordinary bunch of fools left a candle stuck to a table soaked in grease and were too drunk to notice when it set a fire. I don’t think anyone that thorough is likely to have been careless with his victims’ belongings.”

  “Me neither,” Mags said glumly. He explained more-or-less what he had picked up from the killers, and the second man nodded, as if not surprised.

  “I don’t know what we have here, exactly,” he said, closing his eyes and running his fingers over the back of a hairbrush. “Spies, I’ve seen before; caught one or two. Killers for country or for hire I’ve seen, though we usually don’t intercept those, the King’s bodyguards do. But I have not encountered anything like this. The first lot that came in—the ones that I believe you and your friends uncovered, Mags—were well trained to a point, but most of them were gentlemen trained as spies, not professional spies, and they were just not prepared for Valdemar. It was bad enough when one of their number went mad, but it got worse when that second madman popped up.”

  “Got no ideer where ’e come from,” Mags said ruefully. “ ’Tis like mebbe when ’e was s’posed t’be hangin’ ’bout th’ others, but whatever made th’ fust mad sent ’im mad too. An’ they didn’ know ’e was conkers till they got ’im t’ketch Bear so’s Bear c’d take care’a th’ mad’un, an’ then ’twas too late.”

  The second man shrugged. “That’s as good an explanation as any. Well, whoever sent them in the first place didn’t make the same mistake twice. They found out about Valdemar, they got people who could pass as natives, and gave orders that the mess be cleaned up as thoroughly as possible.” He paused as he put the unlit lamp he had been examining aside, after he had emptied it of oil so he could be sure there was nothing hidden in the bowl. “They planned. They took their time. They were absolutely methodical. They might not have arrived with exact orders but with the discretion to do whatever had to be done. I think—no, I am sure—they knew they were going to kill these four within moments of talking to them and realizing what a hash they’d made of things. They probably had been given contingency plans and a free rein when they left—wherever they came from. But these four never saw it coming. They thought they were passing the job on to a new team and that they could go home.”

  ::Ask him how he knows that,:: Nikolas said instantly.

  “Nikolas wants ter know how you knowed thet.” Mags waited, head tilted to one side, watching the two Guardsmen. “But I reckon ’tis thet.” He nodded at the empty pack that lay crumpled at the head of the bed.

  “You see—” said the first to the second. “That’s what Niko’s been waiting for. Not just Mindspeech. Not just someone clever and agile. There are Trainees by the dozen who have those qualifications. He’s been waiting for someone who can observe and think and not just assume things.”

  The second nodded. “You’re right,” he told Mags. “It was the empty pack. And do you know why?”

  “ ’Cause it don’t b’long there,” Mags said. “Pack should’a been stowed, prolly wi’ th’ others, outa th’ way. Who needs packs, iffen yer settled in? Iffen feller had it with ’im fer some reason, like ’e were keepin’ somethin’ needful in’t, it’d be at foot of bed, not th’ head, or off t’ side, mebbe i’ corner.” He thought of all the times he’d been briefly in the rooms of other Trainees, all the packs he’d seen. Always, empty ones were stowed on a shelf that was awkward to get to, anywhere out of the way. Always, if they held something the owner wanted to keep in them, they were at the foot of the bed, where they wouldn’t get kicked or tripped over.

  Never where that one was. Unless . . .

  “Reckon ’e were packin’ up,” Mags said thoughtfully. “Mebbe him an’ t’others cooked up a big meal t’git rid’a stuff that’d spoil. Thet’s when th’ others done ’em, after thet meal. Then they come up here an’ went through ev’thing, jest t’make sure. Prolly where they got thet book an’ stuff they sold Nikolas.”

  “Good,” said the second with satisfaction. “And that is why I am fairly certain they heard the Weasel was making inquiries after they did this, not before. Probably shortly after. They would have made several passes through this place, making sure that nothing was left behind. If they hadn’t heard that someone was asking about their victims, they would simply have left this as a mystery—four men, dying after a big meal in this neighborhood—the Guard would have written it off as accidental. Maybe some of the food had gone bad. Maybe they picked the wrong mushrooms. If we tested for poison, we wouldn’t have found anything. No one would have been called on to investigate, the men would have been buried in the Poor Grounds, and that would have been that. But then they heard that someone was snooping about, and they realized they were going to have to clean up a bit more thoroughly than they had first thought, because someone would be smart enough to put four dead bodies together with the fact that the Weasel was looking for information. So they planted the story that these men had left town and set the fire, figuring it would take some time before the Weasel found his buyer. By that time the fire here would have destroyed all signs that there was anything o
ther than four common laborers living here, and no one would associate what the Weasel wanted to know about with this place.”

  Mags turned all that over in his head, and nodded slowly. That made plenty of good, sound sense. ::Hope yer feelin’ unguilted,:: he told Nikolas.

  ::I would, if that were even a word,:: Nikolas retorted. But he sounded more like himself, and that pleased Mags no end.

  “Gods, I am never getting the stench out of this uniform,” the first muttered.

  “Toss it,” advised the second. “I can’t think of any good way to get it clean. It’s not as if they won’t give us more. It won’t be the first time I’ve tossed a uniform that reeked of death.”

  Swiftly, Mags put two and tow together. “You’re not Guard,” he said flatly.

  “Well... we wear the uniform. We get paid by the Quartermaster like everyone else.” The first man grinned at him.

  “D’ye work fer Nikolas, or t’other way round?” Mags was very interested to hear that answer.