The bodyguard looked at him for a moment. "Good. The guard will let you out."
Then he was gone, and the door closed and was locked.
11. THE DOCTOR
The Guard Commander of Yvenir palace held a scented kerchief to his nose. Before him was a stone slab fitted with iron manacles, leg-irons and hide straps. None of these was required to restrain the current occupant of the slab, for spread upon it lay the limp body of the King's chief torturer, Nolieti, naked save for a small cloth draped over his genitals. Beside Guard Commander Polchiek stood Ralinge, chief torturer to Duke Quettil, and a young, grey-faced and sweating scribe sent by Guard Commander Adlain, who had taken personal command of the hunting party seeking the apprentice Unoure. These three were faced on the other side of the slab by Doctor Vosill, her assistant (that is, myself) and Doctor Skelim, personal physician to Duke Quettil.
The questioning chamber underneath the palace of Yvenir was relatively small and low-ceilinged. It smelled of a variety of unpleasant things, including Nolieti himself. It was not that the body had started to decay — the murder had happened only a couple of hours ago — but from the dirt and grime visible on the otherwise pale skin of the dead chief torturer it was obvious that he had not been the most personally hygienic of men. Guard Commander Polchiek watched a flea crawl out from beneath the cloth over the man's groin and start to travel up the slack curve of his stomach.
"Look," Doctor Skelim said, pointing at the tiny black shape moving over the mottled grey skin of the corpse. "Somebody's leaving the sinking ship."
"Looking for warmth," Doctor Vosill said, reaching quickly out to the insect. It disappeared an instant before her hand got there, jumping away. Polchiek looked amused, and I too wondered at the Doctor's naïveté. What was that proverb about there being only so many ways to catch a flea? But then the Doctor's fingers snapped closed in mid air, she inspected what she had there, nipped their tips more tightly together and then brushed the remains off on her hip. She looked up at Polchiek, whose face wore a surprised expression. "It might have jumped on one of us," she said.
A light-well above the slab had been opened for what was — to judge from the amount of dust and debris that rained down upon the unfortunate scribe sent to do the opening by Doctor Vosill — the first time in a long time.
A brace of floor-standing candelabra added their own light to the gruesome scene.
"May we proceed?" the Guard Commander of Yvenir asked in a rumbling voice. Polchiek was a big, tall man with a single great scar from grey hair line to chin. A fall while hunting the previous year had left him with a knee that could not bend. It was for this reason that Adlain and not he was in charge of the search for Unoure. "I have never enjoyed attending any sort of event down here."
"I don't imagine the subjects of those events did either," Doctor Vosill observed.
"Nor did they deserve to," Doctor Skelim said, one of his small hands playing nervously with his collar ruff as his gaze flicked round the barrel-vaulted walls and ceiling. "It is a cramped, oppressive sort of place, isn't it?" He glanced at the Guard Commander.
Polchiek nodded. 'Nolieti used to complain that there was barely room to swing a whip," he said. The grey-faced scribe began to make notes in a small slate-book. The fine point of the chalk made a scratching, squeaking noise on the stone.
Skelim snorted. "Well, he will swing no more of those. Is there any word on Unoure, Guard Commander??
"We know which way he went," Polchiek said. "The hunting party should pick him up before dark."
"Do you think he will be in one piece?" asked Doctor Vosill.
"Adlain is not unused to hunting in these woods, and my hounds are well trained. The youth may suffer a bite or two, but he'll be alive when he is delivered to Master Ralinge here," Polchiek said, glancing at the wide little barrel of a man standing at his side and staring with a sort of greedy fascination at the wound that had gone most of the way towards separating Nolieti's head from his shoulders. Ralinge looked slowly up at Polchiek when he heard his name mentioned, and smiled, showing a full set of teeth which he was proud to have removed from his victims and which he had used to replace his own diseased items. Polchiek made a rumbling, disapproving noise.
"Yes. Well, Unoure's fate is what concerns me here, gentlemen," Doctor Vosill said.
"Really, madam?" Polchiek said, keeping his kerchief at his mouth and nose. "What concern of yours is his fate?" He turned to Ralinge. "I believe his destiny now lies in the hands of those of us on this side of the table, Doctor. Or does the lad have a medical condition that may rob us of the chance to question him on the matter?"
"Unoure is unlikely to have been the murderer," the Doctor said.
Doctor Skelim made a derisory snorting noise. Polchiek looked up at the ceiling, which for him was not far away. Ralinge did not take his gaze off the wound.
"Really, Doctor?" Polchiek said, sounding bored. "And what brings you to that strange conclusion?"
"The man is dead," Skelim said angrily, waving one thin hand at the corpse. "Murdered in his own chamber. His assistant was seen running into the woods while the body was still oozing blood. His master used to beat him, and worse. Everybody knows that. Only a woman would not see the obvious in this."
"Oh, let the good lady doctor have her say," Polchiek said. "I for one am already quite fascinated."
"Doctor, indeed," muttered Skelim, looking away to one side.
The Doctor ignored her colleague and bent over to grip the ragged flaps of skin that had been Nolieti's neck. I found myself swallowing hard. "The wound was caused by a serrated instrument, probably a large knife," she said.
"Astonishing," Skelim said sarcastically.
"There was a single cut, from left to right," the Doctor said, teasing apart the flaps of skin near the corpse's left ear. I confess that her assistant was feeling a little queasy at this juncture, though — like the torturer Ralinge — I could not tear my gaze from the wound. "It severed all the major blood vessels, the larynx-"
"The what?" Skelim said.
"The larynx," the Doctor said patiently, pointing to the roughly slashed pipe inside Nolieti's neck. "The upper part of the wind-pipe."
"We call it the upper part of the wind-pipe here," Doctor Skelim told her with a sneer. "We have no need for foreign words. Quacks and the like tend to use them when they're trying to impress people with their spurious wisdom."
"But if we look deeper," the Doctor said, levering the corpse's head right back and lifting its shoulders partly off the surface of the slab. "Oelph. Would you put that block underneath the shoulders here?"
I picked a piece of wood shaped like a miniature executioner's block up off the floor and stuck it under the dead man's shoulders. I was feeling sick. "Hold his hair, would you, Oelph?" the Doctor said, forcing Nolietis head back still further. There was a glutinous sucking noise as the wound opened further. I took hold of Nolieti's sparse brown hair and looked away as I pulled on it.
"Looking deeper," the Doctor repeated, seemingly quite unaffected as she bent close over the tangle of multicoloured tissues and tubes that had been Nolieti's throat, "we can see that the murder weapon cut so deep it nicked the victim's upper spinal column, here, at the third cervical vertebra."
Doctor Skelim snorted derisively again, but from the corner of my eye I saw him leaning closer to the opened wound. A sudden retching sound came from the far side of the table as Guard Commander Adlain's scribe turned quickly away and doubled over by a drain, his slate-book clattering to the ground. I felt my own bile rising and tried to swallow it back.