‘It’s the perfect way to get your attention. Pique your interest, make you angry, add a few layers of guilt, and you will go chasing down there at your earliest convenience.’
‘All right. Yes. I had worked that out for myself. But why do you imagine they want me to go chasing down there?’
‘If Druganin’s been blinking, he’s probably been talking, too.’
‘So?’
‘They know who killed him, and they can probably work out why.’
‘So they know who I am.’
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘What could they want with the Malykant?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Tasha, and added cheerily, ‘but you’re about to find out.’
‘How exciting.’
‘Do you know, I think it just might be.’
‘In all the wrong ways. Why don’t you help me not get myself killed, and fill in this map for me?’
‘Killed? I doubt that’s the plan.’ But she took up the pencil — which, to Konrad’s eyes, whirled by itself into the empty air — and began to sketch out an extensive network of passages, chambers and caves. The way she drew them, some appeared naturally formed while others had the neat proportions and squared corners of man-made rooms and corridors. The caves had probably been inhabited for generations. ‘It would be such a waste.’
‘Fitting retribution, however.’
‘Maybe. But you don’t believe that’s the reason either.’
Konrad wondered how she could tell. ‘I do not. I wonder if it has anything to do with Jakub Vasilescu?’
‘The corpse? But you dispatched him to your Master’s tender care, did not you?’
‘I did. Perhaps they want him back.’
‘Plausible. They aren’t to know you have no such power.’
‘I wonder what they think I can do.’
Tasha actually giggled. ‘You have heard the stories, I’m sure.’
‘The Malykant striding through the dark of the night, striking down wrongdoers with malevolent glee? Dark cloak billowing in an eerie wind, eyes aglow with fire and ice, The Malykt’s will blazing from every pore?’
‘All of which, you’ll allow, is the truth.’
‘If I had fire and ice in my eyes I think I would feel it.’
‘Maybe not that part.’
‘And as for malevolent glee—’
‘Don’t even try to deny it.’
Konrad fell into a slightly injured silence.
The door quietly opened as he was thus engaged, and Gorev, his butler, appeared. ‘A young gentleman to see you, sir,’ he said. ‘I understand it is a matter of some urgency.’
‘Show him in.’
Moments later, Konrad’s visitor all but ran into the room. His lanky frame, flyaway dark hair and prominent cheekbones looked familiar, though Konrad could not put a name to the face; an initiate of the Order, he thought. ‘My lord,’ gasped the boy, out of breath — from what, running?
‘I am no lord,’ said Konrad. ‘Sir will suffice.’
‘Sir,’ said the boy. ‘Miss Valentina requests your presence at the castle, right away.’
‘Which castle? The snowy one?’
‘Yes, sir. They’re talking. She said you would understand.’
‘Talk — right.’ Konrad was out of his chair and at the door in a matter of seconds, almost mowing the poor boy down in his haste. ‘Tash,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘You’re with me.’
‘Yes, sir, ’ came Tasha’s disembodied voice.
The initiate’s eyes widened, though whether it was the lack of visible company that troubled him, or the sarcasm Tasha imbued into the honorific, Konrad did not wait to find out.
Chapter Four
Diana Valentina stood in the great hall of the macabre snow castle, surrounded by underlings. Her relative youth — she was, Konrad thought, barely thirty — had not prevented her from rising to the very top of The Malykt’s Order, and no wonder. She was shrewd, highly intelligent, and had a razor-sharp focus Konrad envied. When she was around, things simply got done. Obstacles were of no moment whatsoever.
She did not turn to look as Konrad approached, but began speaking the moment he was within hearing. ‘We’ve been trying to draw them out,’ she told him. ‘I’ve brought all our best ghostspeakers down here, and they — well, for a while it seemed that nothing could do it. But then one of them spoke. That one.’ She pointed to Eino’s corpse.
‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing very coherent. Mostly apologies, though to whom I couldn’t say. He seemed upset. And that set the others off. For a while, they were all babbling at once.’
Babbling. The word was dismissive, and Konrad wanted to object. But he held his peace. These particular people were real to him because he had known them all in life, albeit briefly; to Diana, they were another day’s work. ‘Nobody said anything significant, or useful?’
‘It was hard to distinguish much in the hubbub. I don’t think they imparted any real information. Most of it was, I think, pleading or screaming or abject apologies. Except for this one.’ She pointed out Denis. ‘He spoke so low that I couldn’t discern a single word, but his manner was… different. He was in no way upset. I didn’t like his composure. It seemed wrong.’
It would at that. Konrad had cut down Denis at the height of the man’s powers, single-handedly destroying all his carefully-laid plans for the future. And he hadn’t been kind. He had made Denis Druganin suffer. Why wasn’t the severed spirit more disturbed? He’d been a man of near unnatural composure in life, this was true, but for him to carry that all the way to the grave and beyond was… chilling.
‘They’re silent now,’ Konrad pointed out. ‘What stopped them?’
Diana shrugged, and pushed a stray, dark curl out of her eyes. ‘I don’t know. Eino stopped talking, and one by one the rest of them did, too. Denis was the last one to speak, but even in the relative quiet we still couldn’t hear what he was saying. And though he seemed to be staring at us, I don’t think he was seeing us. I don’t know what he was seeing.’
Konrad stared upwards. If Druganin’s eyes had been open before, they were tight shut again now. All five corpses appeared to be, once again, thoroughly dead.
‘They are not asleep,’ came Tasha’s voice. ‘I think they can hear us. But they won’t talk to me.’
Diana looked about, brows raised. ‘Who is that?’
‘Tasha, this is Diana Valentina, head of His Lordship’s Order. Say hello.’
‘Ma’am,’ said Tasha, with, for her, a relative lack of irony.
‘Diana, Tasha’s attached to the Ekamet police. Inspector Nuritov lends her to me sometimes.’
‘Lends, ’ said Tasha in disgust. ‘Like I’m an old coat or something.’
‘Ghost?’ said Diana.
‘Lamaeni,’ Konrad supplied.
‘Ah. A pleasure, Tasha. It had not occurred to me to bring one of your kind along. What else can you discern about them?’
‘Little else. They—’
She was interrupted by a throaty whisper from Eino. It sounded, to Konrad’s horror, like his own name.
Eino spoke again, louder this time. Konrad. Konrad Savast.
Konrad took several steps nearer to the big man’s suspended corpse. ‘Yes, it is Konrad Savast. I am so sorry, Eino. I never thought you might still be in danger or I would have—’
Malykant, said Eino.
Konrad stared.
Konrad Savast, the Malykant. Malykant. Malykant. Malykant, said Eino, over and over, louder and louder.
The word was taken up by Lilli, then by Alina, and finally by Marko. Their eyes opened and they stared down at Konrad with glassy eyes, repeating his title in a susurrant wave of sound. Alina began to scream.
Some instinct turned Konrad in Denis Druganin’s direction. That man alone of the five remained silent, but he, too, stared at Konrad, with a more focused stare than the rest; he saw him.
Konrad did not at all like the smile that curved those cold, dea
d lips, nor the glow of smug satisfaction in his frozen stare.
‘Chilling,’ remarked Tasha from the empty air. ‘I would not like to be in your shoes today.’
‘I begin to wish I wasn’t, either,’ Konrad agreed, speaking lightly to disguise the feeling of chill apprehension turning his guts to ice. ‘They are far too excited to see me.’
‘At least someone’s excited to see you. So what if they are dead? You can’t have everything.’
‘How lucky I have you at hand to puncture my ego.’
‘Free of charge. Hang on. I shall go and question them.’
Konrad waited, eyes averted from the malevolent Druganin. The knowledge that his identity had somehow made a corpse’s day was bad enough; worse when it was that corpse. What might the child-murdering monster have in mind to do with the information?
Diana joined him. ‘Not good,’ she said laconically.
‘I’d say very bad.’
‘Any idea what they might want with you?’
‘None whatsoever. I am fairly sure none of them learned who I was when they were alive. Whether they had reason to suspect the Malykant was among the house guests… I cannot say, but I don’t think so. Denis Druganin, of course, learned my identity the painful way.’ Konrad pointed him out to Diana.
‘Mr. Pride-of-Place. I’d think he would look a bit less happy about it.’
‘A horrible thought occurs to me.’
‘Let’s hear it.’
‘I was there because Nanda — you remember Irinanda Falenia? The Shandrigal’s servant?’
Diana rolled her eyes. ‘We’ve been acquainted for years, Konrad.’
‘I— oh. Yes, of course you would be.’ It had not occurred to Konrad that the higher-ups among both Orders might be in regular contact, but it made sense. They might be in service to the Great Spirits of opposing ideals, but that didn’t make them opposed to one another. ‘Her mother’s an Oracle — I am sure you know that, too — and warned Nanda not to go to Divoro. Apparently she foresaw some part of the disasters that duly unfolded. Well, I wonder. Oracles are rare, but not that rare. What if Druganin consulted one, too? Or the coven?’
‘You mean what if they knew the Malykant was going to be there?’
‘That is my thought.’
‘Mm. But they did not know which guest it was.’
‘Perhaps those murders were committed to draw me out.’
‘So you duly killed Druganin, and now he knows who you are. They all do. And the coven?’
‘I can only assume he has told them. They strung him up here, after all. They probably got some words out of him first.’ Konrad sighed, and shoved his chilled hands into the pockets of his overcoat. ‘I should not have left his body there unattended. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that the coven might retrieve it.’
‘Probably it did,’ said Diana kindly. ‘But what of that? You couldn’t anticipate that they could make him talk.’
‘But I should have. I’d seen Jakub Vasilescu, after all. The truth is, I was… disordered.’ Upset, would be a fitter word. Not just by what Denis Druganin had done — the child’s dead, bruised face still haunted his thoughts sometimes — but by what he himself had done to Denis Druganin afterwards. All he’d wanted was to get away from Divoro, without delay.
He would pay for that, he feared.
Diana patted his arm. ‘Are you well, Konrad?’
‘Perfectly.’
She looked up into his face, a slight frown creasing her brow. He read concern, doubt and a faint irritation in her gaze. ‘That is a lie, is it not? You are not perfectly well. Konrad, if you need assistance you must tell me.’
‘I will.’
‘Your well-being is of paramount importance to the Order, and it is among my duties to take care of you.’
Only Diana could manage to make such a statement sound so impersonal. ‘I know I’m a prized asset,’ he said, rather sourly.
‘You are, and difficult to replace. I don’t want to have to train a new Malykant anytime soon, Konrad. I am not ready for that.’
‘I will be all right.’ He believed those words as he said them, but he did not add that it had become harder to do so. He missed the years of relative peace, when The Malykt had kept his heart frozen in ice. He’d felt so little. No torment, no guilt, no horror, no fear — save when his Master appeared. No joy or passion either, but the trade was a fair one. Damn Nanda’s meddling. Why could he not return to that blessed state?
He said none of this, only returning Diana’s searching look with a bland stare. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘But I am coming with you to Divoro.’
‘I would be glad of your company.’
Her brows shot up at that. ‘Stubbornly independent Konrad would be glad of my company? What fresh hell is this?’
That drew from him a reluctant smile. ‘Blame Nanda, perhaps. And the inspector, and even Tasha. I am growing positively sociable.’
He’d spoken in jest, but Diana did not smile. ‘I see that,’ she said. Mercifully, she abandoned her scrutiny of his face and returned her attention to the five inert forms packed into the snowy walls. They were silent again now, eyes closed, as though they had never spoken at all; but Konrad could almost fancy he still heard the word Malykant, Malykant echoed upon the wind. ‘We’ll bring them down this afternoon and take them for burial. Igor will collate whatever we’ve managed to get by way of transcripts, though I don’t hold out much hope that they’ll be any good. We go to Divoro in the morning.’
‘Diana.’ Konrad pointed, once again, to Druganin. ‘Cremation for that one, and be careful with him.’
Diana nodded. ‘Right.’
Divoro in the morning. Konrad left the snow castle with Tasha trailing somewhere behind, consumed with a sense of dread for what lay ahead. Foolish, he scolded himself. Was he not the Malykant, indeed? He was far from helpless. Had he not, with his serpents’ assistance, dispatched Jakub Vasilescu with consummate ease? Had he not disposed of Denis Druganin?
Only, he was beginning to feel a sense of growing unease about those two events, as well. Should it have been so easy to dismiss Jakub to his Master’s care? Where had the coven been then? Why had they not guarded their precious ancestor? Was it enough to assume that they’d had no idea he might be in danger? That explanation no longer seemed quite sufficient.
And if Druganin had known that the Malykant would be present at the house party, and had sought to attract his notice… all the worse. Konrad had been manipulated throughout — but to what end?
Foolish! Konrad cursed himself for an idiot, for what was he doing but indulging in useless fears? Paranoia, even! All was mere speculation; he had no concrete grounds to justify such imaginings.
Except only for the way those five slain corpses had whispered his title, over and over again, and the gleam of satisfaction in Denis’s dead eyes as he heard it.
Konrad shook his head to clear away such reflections. The carriage sailed smoothly back to Ekamet, a light-falling snow blurring the pale shapes of the trees that lined the road. He forced his thoughts into another train, and called up Nanda’s face for his mental perusal. If he must worry about anybody, he would worry instead about her. Not that she would thank him for it.
He wondered what had become of her these past hours, but was not left to wonder long. His driver brought him smartly to the door of the police headquarters of Ekamet, and upon making his way directly to Inspector Nuritov’s office he found Nanda inside, deep in conversation with Alexander. They both looked up as he went in.
‘Good to find you both here,’ he said with a smile of greeting.
If he had hoped that Nanda might be moved to reveal her purpose in haunting Inspector Nuritov’s office, he was, as always, destined for disappointment. But the smile Nanda directed at him was almost as good as a confidence.
He noticed a dark, dead shape lying against the rear wall, directly behind Alexander’s desk: Tasha’s body. She lay in sweet repose, her arms folded over h
er chest, her young face pale and tragic.
‘Hamming it up a bit, Tasha?’ he said.
The corpse grinned, and stood up. ‘No harm in having a little fun.’
Konrad related the recent developments at the snow castle, couching the news in the gentlest possible terms for Nanda’s sake. She did not appear unduly disturbed, though he detected a suppressed wince when he spoke of Eino’s apologies. ‘We go to Divoro in the morning,’ he finished.
‘I will be ready at seven,’ said Nanda.
Konrad opened his mouth.
‘Do not even think about arguing,’ she said, and he closed it again.
‘I, too, will come along,’ said Alexander.
Here at least Konrad could be permitted to argue. ‘It is out of your way, isn’t it? Surely the local police of the region can be prevailed upon to assist us.’
‘Would you rather have them along?’
‘No, I would far rather have you. But…’
Alexander waited, his pipe at his lips.
‘Enough friends have died,’ said Konrad.
‘I am not planning to make myself part of their number.’
‘Do you think the coven cares what your plans are?’
Alexander set down his pipe, and fixed Konrad with an uncharacteristically steely look. ‘I feel obliged to point out that I have been a police inspector for several years without yet coming to grief.’
‘Nuri— Alexander, I am not questioning your capability. But these are not your usual criminals. They are… something else. You have no defences against their brand of magic.’
‘And yet, I am still alive.’
The inspector’s calm logic rather defeated Konrad. Importunities he could withstand; the cool presentation of irrefutable facts posed more of a problem. As he strove to muster another argument, he became aware that Nanda was laughing at him.
‘Something amuses you?’ he said with dignity.
‘Poor Konrad,’ she said, her eyes sparkling with amusement. ‘I know it is out of the way of your regular experience, but is it so very, very difficult to have friends?’
Konrad struggled with himself, but the word ‘Yes,’ popped out anyway.
Nanda patted his hand. ‘We probably won’t die.’
Death's Avenger- The Malykant Mysteries, Volume 2 Page 35