He and Zautzes' servant dragged the corpse out of the snow. "I don't recognize him," the servant said, gulping.
"I do." Rhavas sounded grimmer than ever. "He's one of the peasants who got here a jump ahead of the Khamorth. He was one of the men quarreling with the town militia just before the snowstorms started, too." Figuring out what had killed him wasn't hard, either, not with the left side of his head smashed in. He'd lain there for a while; his blood had frozen into ruby ice.
The servant turned away and was noisily sick in the snow. Steam rose from the vomit. The servant stuffed fresh, unfouled snow into his mouth and spat it out. He repeated that several times, then choked out, "Who would want to do such a horrible thing?"
"There are certain . . . obvious possibilities, shall we say?" Rhavas replied. "If this is the work of a militiaman—I don't say it is, but there we find one of those obvious possibilities—he has a great deal to answer for, not just for his own soul's sake but also for the danger in which he has placed Skopentzana."
"That'd be sweet, wouldn't it?" the servant said. "Just what we'd need, eh? Our own little civil war inside the city."
"Yes." Rhavas said no more. Really, the servant had said everything that needed saying. Videssians would fight among themselves.
"What are we going to do, very holy sir?" the servant asked, and then answered his own question before Rhavas could: "We ought to cover the body over with snow again, is what we ought to do. Then we could pretend the whole thing never happened, and nobody else in town would have any idea."
Reluctantly, Rhavas shook his head. "I'm afraid it wouldn't work. Someone will miss this fellow"—for the life of him, he couldn't come up with the peasant's name—"and then they'll find him, and then the trouble will start. And it will be worse if the peasants find him than it will if we go tell your master what happened and let him get after the killer."
"Get him after the militia, you mean," the servant said. Rhavas muttered something highly untheological under his breath. Militiamen were Skopentzana's main—no, Skopentzana's only—defenders right now. Could Zautzes afford to antagonize them?
On the other hand, could the eparch afford to ignore cold-blooded murder? Looking down at the red ice clinging to the dead man's head, Rhavas shivered. That was the right word, sure enough.
"Nothing good will come of this," the servant said mournfully. As mournfully, Rhavas reflected that Phos need not have granted the man the gift of prophecy to make that a very good guess.
They slogged across the square to the eparch's residence. Rhavas winced when he saw two militiamen in front of it instead of Ingeros or others from Zautzes' remaining handful of regulars. Ominously, they hadn't come out to see what the prelate and the servant were doing. Did they already know someone lay there dead? Did they know who? Had they put him there? Those were all good questions. Rhavas discovered he wasn't so sure he wanted the answers to any of them.
Zautzes gave him mulled wine spiced with cinnamon. Whatever reductions in the ration the eparch was contemplating, he himself still lived well. Before he could start talking about anything so mundane, Rhavas told him about the corpse in the snowbank.
The eparch made a noise down deep in his throat. It sounded as if it wanted to be a word but didn't know how. Then Zautzes gulped a gobletful of the hot wine. That done and downed, he did speak: "Why does the good god hate me so much that he gave me a city infested with idiots to govern? Can you tell me that, very holy sir?"
"Most honorable sir, I would call it a city stuffed with sinners," Rhavas replied. After a moment's thought, he added, "We may not be so very far apart after all, you and I."
"No. We may not," Zautzes said bitterly. "And much good may our concord do us, for it's all too likely to be the only concord in Skopentzana these days."
"What will you do?" Rhavas asked.
"Pray that his wife broke his head because she caught him buggering a goat," the eparch answered, which startled laughter not far from hysterical out of Rhavas. Zautzes went on, "Barring anything so, ah, convenient, I suppose I'll have to try and catch the whoreson who did do him in." He paused again, while his wits caught up with his mouth. "And if that whoreson's a militiaman, as he's only too likely to be . . . Well, isn't that just the loveliest mess you ever saw?"
"I thought so when I found the body," Rhavas said. "I was hoping you would tell me I was wrong." Something else occurred to him. "And the body was meant to be found, too. Otherwise, there are countless better places to hide it."
"You're full of good news today, aren't you?" Zautzes said.
"Do you want more?" Rhavas told him how indifferent his guardsmen were.
The eparch laughed a sour laugh. "Why am I not surprised?" He heaved his bulk up from behind his desk. "Well, those good-for-nothings won't be able to ignore it if I rub their noses in it. By Phaos, I'll make 'em sorry if they do!"
He lumbered out toward the front. He wasn't a tall man, but he was wide. Even with rationing in Skopentzana, he hadn't lost his protuberant belly. Following him—as Rhavas did—was like following a boulder rolling down a mountainside. But no boulder could have given the performance he did when he got outside. He shouted at the militiamen. He screamed at them. If they hadn't dodged smartly, he would have kicked them in the backside.
They all but dove into the snow to escape him. Rhavas noted that they didn't have to ask him where the body was. They knew, all right. They just hadn't cared till the eparch lit a fire under them.
For his part, Zautzes preened. Out there at the entrance to his residence, he strutted and swaggered. He was a frog having a very good time on his lily pad. And, unless Rhavas was vastly mistaken, he was doing his best not to think about all the unpleasant possibilities he'd outlined back in his study. The prelate had a hard time blaming him. Trouble would come all too soon. Why brood on it when it wasn't quite here?
His guards dragged the dead peasant through the snow back to the residence. It was hard work; neither of them looked happy when they got back. The peasant, of course, would have been even less delighted had he still been in any condition to express an opinion.
Glaring at the militiamen, Zautzes snapped, "Do you know who this poor lunk is?—was, I should say."
They both shook their heads. "Never seen him before, most honorable sir," one of them said. The other's head stopped going back and forth and started going up and down to show he hadn't seen the dead man before, either.
Zautzes' glare grew more menacing. "You're both lying. Skotos' ice"—he paused to spit—"I've seen him around. I just can't put a name to him. It's the same with the very holy sir here. Are you two deaf and blind? Wouldn't surprise me one bloody bit."
"He's a country clodhopper," one of the guards said sulkily—not the one who'd spoken before, but his partner. "Who gives a flying futter what his name was?"
That was too much for Rhavas. "He was a man. He was a Videssian. He was murdered, foully murdered," he thundered. The guards both blinked at his vehemence. Still full of rage, he went on, "One of your friends—or maybe one of you, for all I know—smashed in his skull. What sort of riots and bloodshed will that spawn in this city? At what time could we afford such trouble less?"
Both guards spoke together: "Wasn't us who done it."
"Who did?" Rhavas and Zautzes shouted the question at the same time. The militiamen shrugged identical shrugs.
"We'll get to the bottom of this with or without you—and Phos give you more mercy than you deserve if we find you're at the bottom of it," Zautzes snarled. He shouted for the servant who'd found the body with Rhavas. When the fellow came, the eparch said, "Go fetch Koubatzes the wizard. We'll see what he has to say about this sorry business."