Becker said, "But holler at me before you go tomorrow. I don't want you going off alone."
"Oh, I won't. I will probably start out with Captain MacDonald and the Wats. And perhaps Miw-Sher will be with me, and probably Nadhari as well. It will be slow traveling with those wagons, though. I may have to strike out alone, perhaps even with your help, if I am to be of any use to the other cats before they die."
"Well, Kando said the cats in their Temple were the first ones to get sick. News of the others has been coming in slowly. Don't worry, Princess, you will be in time. I'm betting on it."
Thirteen
When Edu Kando decided to examine the body of the murder victim a second time, and much more closely, he realized his investigators had misidentified the corpse. The dead man was not Bulaybub.
His suspicions were triggered when the surgeon asked Kando to return to the infirmary, because he had found something he didn't believe belonged to the missing priest.
But what Kando noticed immediately was the state of the corpse's skin. What there was left of it was not decomposing normally. The stench of decomposition filled the room. Kando didn't mind the stench, associating it as he did with victor's spoils, which were most often enjoyed while the former defenders of a place rotted within sight of their newly enslaved families. It was a familiar and comforting odor for him. His enemies were dead and he was not, the stench always assured him.
What concerned him was that the legs, the oddly undamaged arms, and the back of this corpse had a leatheriness usually associated with the secretive members of the Aridimi priesthood, who all but mummified themselves while they still lived.
While Kando was pointing this out to the surgeon, the man brought forth a stone.
"I found it when I examined the neck wounds, Mulzar. Its size alone told me that this was not Bulaybub's amulet stone. And when I had washed the blood from it, I was shocked. See its fine golden color and the pale yellow pupil that shines in its midsection?"
Kando held up the stone and admired it. It was finer even than his own.
"You are indeed an observant man, Dinan. Bulaybub did not possess such a treasure as this."
What he did not say to the doctor was that he could guess who did.
Edu glanced down at the corpse, staring into the hole where the face had been, and tried to reconstruct from his memory the man who would have worn that stone. He'd have been little more than a boy when Kando had last seen him.
The top of the skull was intact. Most of the damage had been done to the soft tissue of the face. "Wash the blood from the skull where the midsection of the forehead might have been."
"The bone is splintered and cracked, Mulzar, and many pieces are missing."
"Still, there may be enough left for my purposes," Kando said.
When the woman with the washbasin had come and cleaned the bone until it shone, Kando said, "Aha!" and pointed to the indentation in a piece that had cracked off and embedded itself deeply in the tissue. "You see that little dent there? Who do you think would bear such a thing?"
"I - I don't know, Mulzar. Was the fracture not inflicted with the other wounds?"
"No, no. Can you not see? There is nothing fresh about this wound. I will tell you who might have such a mark, Dinan. One who has undergone initiation into the highest orders of the Aridimi priesthood."
"Ahh," the man said, staring from the wound to Kando and back again, still clearly puzzled.
"As part of their initiation, the skin of an Aridimi priest's forehead is opened, the bone scraped, and a holy stone is embedded there, for the skin to heal around, so that the priest's inner eye is always open thereafter."
"Hm," Dinan said.
"Barbaric, isn't it? Yes, I can see that you think so. The skin you see here on the body's extremities, as yet untouched by decay, is also a mark of that breed. Instead of keeping their bodily fluids flowing, these Aridimi holies purposely do without water almost up to the point of death, until they require less and less. Their skins are dried out almost as if they were salted. You see the result here."
"I do not think I would care to be quite that pious, Mulzar, if you will forgive my heresy."
Kando flashed one of his roguish grins. "Although I am the high priest, I find many of these old superstitious customs extreme and unnecessary. This poor fellow may have met death happily, since he went to such painful extremes in what he called a life. Let us turn him over and see if there is anything else that might help us identify him to his fellows, since we do not now know who he is, only that he is an Aridimi priest and not our good Brother Bulaybub."
As if they were equals, Kando helped Dinan turn the corpse to its side. There he saw the last of the proof he needed, the puckered scar from a spear wound on the man's right flank. There was no longer any doubt in Kando's mind. The corpse was all that remained of Fagad Haral sach Pilau, his steppe-brother, born among the Aridimis but captured by the nomadic warriors on the same campaign that netted Kando himself.
"Oh," the Mulzar said as if shocked.
"What is it, Mulzar?" Dinan asked.
"This man is well known to me -from my youth. He was close to me and was no doubt murdered on his way to see how he might be of service to me now that I am Mulzar. Poor Fagad!"
"Perhaps the Mulzar should allow me to finish the examination of his friend and prepare the body for its final journey to the stars. The Mulzar does not look well."
The Mulzar did not feel well. He felt angry and thwarted. When he first returned from his Federation training, Fagad was one of the few people besides Bulaybub who did not turn away from him. When he began winning battles and accumulating power, Kando recognized the strategic advantage of his brother's rare Aridimi heritage and sent him back to his native territory to insinuate himself into the priesthood and to learn the sect's most closely guarded secret, the knowledge of the sacred stones-how to use them best, where they came from, and how to acquire them.
Over the years, Fagad had sent infrequent messages of his progress, but Kando had counted on him as a secret resource, his most promising hope for a relatively easy conquest of the Aridimi stronghold.
And now here he lay upon this slab. Kando was sure Fagad must have been bringing him the intelligence he most desired; indeed, this was why he was killed. Fagad had no other reason to come to this city, except to seek him out once all the Aridimi secrets had been revealed to him. Had Bulaybub seen what attacked Fagad? The missing priest must have tried to protect him. But if so, where was Bulaybub, the second most valuable resource at Kando's command, and why was he missing?
Possibly the slayer of Fagad had also killed Bulaybub in the attack-but if so, again, where was Bulaybub s body? Where indeed?
Were the death of one of Edu's greatest resources and the disappearance of the other related? They had to be.
Kando turned to the physician and said, "What can we glean from all of this evidence, my learned Dinan?"
Dinan shrugged and looked at Kando's face for clues. It would not do for his version to be very different from the Mulzar's. "Why, that the beast - or the man with the help of a beast-who murdered your Aridimi friend made sure its ferocious attack destroyed all signs of the victim's station in life, Mulzar. Possibly the beast ate the evidence. After the attack, perhaps the beast carried off Brother Bulaybub for later consumption."
Kando nodded. "Even so, Dinan. Even so. Tell me, have you often in your long career encountered wounds such as these?"
Dinan considered. "As severe as these? Never. Nor any made with such apparent deliberation. But similar, yes. As you know, Lord, I am a Purin tribesman by birth, a man of the steppes. When my kin raided the Makavitians, as you also know, we often used stealth and traps. Solitary heroes among our people volunteered to pick off the leaders one at a time, or carry off the most desirable slaves in lieu of or preceding a direct frontal attack on a village. From time to time, one of these solitary fighters would be found in such a condition-that is, if he screamed where he could before he died. If he did not, and this was most often the case, his body was never found at all. But those few who screamed-they were less than a handful-have I laid out with these sorts of wounds, that seemed to be made by an impossibly large cat."