Soneste had no answer for that-yet.
In the city morgue, Soneste examined the decapitated body of Gamnon ir’Daresh. His wounds were the same as those that had killed his family and servants-twin punctures of a long and strongly-thrust blade. The fact that he’d been thrown from the balcony so high up seemed to her as simple mockery, something to get people talking, but the theft of his head? There had to be more to that.
When she’d finished her exam, the undertaker touched an ice cold hand to hers. “This tragedy needn’t go unavenged, Miss Otänsin,” he said, his voice compassionate despite their grisly surroundings. “With your permission, we can speak with his retainers and ask them to describe precisely what happened to them.”
Necropolis of the Valiant. The Korth morgue. This undertaker worked for the Ministry of the Dead. He, or one of his associates, could employ magic to force one the Brelish corpses to answer specific questions placed to it. Soneste considered it.
Thuranne didn’t have to know if she consented to this. If the information the spell yielded was accurate, she could learn a lot about the massacre.
Even Jotrem looked expectantly at her.
It wouldn’t be the ambassador’s family she was talking to, only their mortal shells. What was the harm? She thought of the two dead White Lions, and how little their testimony had provided. Then she thought of how far she might fall if Lady ir’Daresh’s family heard about the spell.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, “but not at this time.”
Together Soneste and Jotrem went to the Ebonspire and searched the ambassador’s apartments. Workers from the Necropolis waited in the lobby, while a uniformed wizard from the Ministry of the Dead lingered nearby, awaiting Soneste’s approval for removal of the bodies. The wizard had renewed the magic that had seized the ambassador’s chambers with supernatural cold, but he had explained that he would allow it to fade when they were finished.
Jotrem had not been permitted to inspect the crime scene himself until now, by dictate of the Civic Minister and his correspondence with the King’s Citadel of Breland. The Karrn was a veteran of the Last War, had likely seen bloodshed Soneste couldn’t imagine, but the sight of the slaughter in the ambassador’s chambers subdued him.
As the older inquisitive took the opportunity to examine the scene, Soneste stood at the balcony again, this time looking out at the city in the grey cast of daylight. She looked across the gap between the Ebonspire and the adjacent tenement building-the killer’s point of access. Tallis had not flown by magic, according to Sergeant Bratta’s testimony. But he had jumped somehow.
Anyone with sufficient gold could buy potions enough to possess the abilities this killer had: great strength and speed, the ability to leap amazing distances and land safely. Soneste thought of the victims’ wounds. Magic could seldom account for such skill and precision with a blade. Was Tallis that efficient?
Soneste walked back inside. Jotrem emerged from the bedroom where the ambassador’s family had died, his face paler than usual.
“Please finish here,” Soneste said to him quietly. “I’m going to visit the adjacent tower. I know you’ve been there, but I need to see it for myself.”
Jotrem did not put up a fight. She told the Ministry wizard that when the older inquisitive was finished, the bodies could be moved. It was time to give them peace.
Soneste stared up at ir’Daresh’s suite from the adjacent roof.
In her hands she held a curious weapon. She’d found it in a shadowed corner of one of the tower’s stairwells. It resembled a warhammer, if sleightly smaller, with a head of heavy steel. At the other end of the haft, facing in the opposite direction of the hammer’s blunted side, was a long and curving piece of metal more akin to a military pick. The silvery head gleamed as if newly shined.
The hooked hammer, it was called, a weapon of gnomish design. Usually they were crafted for the foot soldiers of Zilargo, but this one was sized for a human. A special commission-Tallis’s?
There wasn’t a trace of blood on the sharp, curving tip of the pick’s head-only a dried, thin substance which might have been alchemical in nature. Such a weapon could probably have damaged the warforged on the balcony.
Why did you leave this behind? she asked silently.
Two levels beneath the Justice Ministry was a cell block where choice suspects were questioned before more permanent incarceration in one of Korth’s prisons. Within, two White Lions escorted Soneste and Jotrem into a chamber bisected by a wall of thick, magewrought iron bars.
Within the cell, a warforged paced with anxious steps that reverberated loudly across the chamber. Upright and active now, he looked even larger and more imposing than he had before, inert on a balcony floor. Soneste cursed softly as she noted that most of the living construct’s damage remained and that blood still crusted his composite plating. The Karrns had only repaired him just enough to awaken him. Despite his obvious agitation, the warforged looked worn down.
“I’m sorry you were not fully restored,” Soneste said as she walked up to the bars. “My name is Soneste Otänsin. I am here on behalf of the King’s Citadel to investigate the crime.” She displayed her papers but the smoldering blue crystal spheres that served as the warforged’s eyes paid them no mind. He advanced to the edge of the cage.
“Why am I a prisoner?” he demanded, confusion evident even through his cavernous voice. “Where is Master ir’Daresh? Vestra and Renet? They are in danger!” The warforged slammed the buckler shield of his arm against the bars in frustration.
The dissonant ringing hurt Soneste’s ears. Jotrem looked bored and unsurprised.
Soneste frowned. Where is Master-?
“Unholy Six!” she cursed, half turning to Jotrem and the White Lions. “He hasn’t even been told?”
The older inquisitive shrugged.
The warforged quieted then, clutching the bars with each hand. “Woman,” he said in a hollow, pleading tone. His body was perfectly still now. “What is there to be told? Whose blood is this?” He gestured one three-fingered hand at the brown stains that still crusted his body.
“I …” Soneste looked to the leather folder in her hand, stalling. The report had listed the warforged as a piece of Brelish property, belonging to Gamnon ir’Daresh. To most Karrns, warforged were weapons of war, nothing more. It shouldn’t surprise her that he’d not been informed.
She looked up into the construct’s eyes. Emotion could not be read in the cold metal of its standard, Cannith-issued faceplate, but from his voice she knew there was expectation. Worry. If the warforged was somehow involved in the murder, she would expect him to be calmer or feigning resignation. If this one had been disabled before the slaughter took place, there should be only confusion.
“What is your name?”
“Aegis,” he answered. “Please, tell me.”
“Aegis, I am sorry that I must be the one to relay such … tragic news.” She imagined the workroom the warforged had probably awakened in an hour or so before, a Cannith artificer poised over him, armed soldiers standing nearby just in case. “Your master has been murdered. I am here to find his killer.”
Aegis said nothing at first. Had he been a man, he might have gripped the bars with white knuckles, screamed with grief and rage. Instead he turned away from her and walked back to the center of the cell with great plodding steps. He’d been the ir’Daresh bodyguard. Protecting them had been his chosen duty, his vocation, and very likely his identity. She’d seen it before-warforged as devoted to their human commanders and comrades as if they were blood. Respect born from shared experiences, not instilled in them by the forges of House Cannith.
“The children?” Aegis asked. “Lady Maril?”
Soneste shut her eyes. This was not part of her job. She was an inquisitive, the one called in to follow the trail of killers, find kidnapped victims, reveal clues and treachery. She was not equipped to console mourners.