I curse mightily and retrace my steps downstairs to the bar. Gavarax isn’t pleased.
“Four of them? All dead? The guards are going to love this.”
His eyes narrow.
“Did you kill them?”
“I’m not that quick with a sword these days.”
Gavarax glances at my belly. He can believe it. He sends a boy off with a message and I wait in the dingy tavern for the guards to arrive. I’m now in for what will undoubtedly be an uncomfortable interrogation. I’m going to have more than a few words to say to Lisutaris, Mistress of the Sky.
[Contents]
Chapter Four
Approximately nine hours after finding the bodies, I climb out of a horse-drawn landus, pay the driver, and head up the long, long pathway to Lisutaris’s villa. I’ve had six hours of questioning from the Civil Guard and two hours’ sleep, and I’m not in what you’d call a good mood. The sight of Lisutaris’s beautifully tended flower beds, trees and bushes doesn’t make things any better. People with this sort of money generally don’t find themselves on the wrong end of six hours’ hostile questioning by a series of Guards, each one dumb as an Orc and none of them looking like they’d mind knocking me around the room if I didn’t come up with some better answers. If Captain Rallee hadn’t appeared they probably would have. The Captain doesn’t like me, but he only uses violence against suspects in emergencies. The Guards don’t actually think I killed the four men in the Spiked Mace. Not Captain Rallee anyway, he knows me better, though some of his superiors think I’m capable of anything. Prefect Galwinius, head of the Guard in Twelve Seas, would like nothing better than to send me off to a slave galley. Rallee’s more sensible, but the problem is that I can never bring myself to tell the Guards too much about any case I’m working on. No matter how many times the Captain demanded that I tell him what I was doing in the Mace, I just wasn’t going to say that I was there looking for a pendant for Lisutaris. If I started identifying my clients every time I ran into trouble, I’d soon run out of clients.
Eventually Captain Rallee let me go, with the warning that he’d be down on me like a bad spell if I found myself in the vicinity of any more corpses on his beat. After assuring him that I’d endeavour to stay well clear of anyone dead, I took a hurried breakfast at the Avenging Axe and headed off to see Lisutaris. By the time I reach the front door—a very fancy affair, with a portal, engravings and gold fittings—I’m madder than a mad dragon and relishing the opportunity of batting some minion out of the way. Unfortunately the door is answered by a servant I’ve met several times previously, and she ushers me straight in.
“I’ll tell the Mistress you’re here,” she says, politely, and vanishes before I can think of a reason to fire off an angry retort.
I’m in a room overlooking the grounds at the back of the villa. Vast, extensive gardens. More trees, flowers, bushes and landscaped pathways than a man would know what to do with, plus private fish pools and an orchard which Lisutaris treats with sorcery to produce fresh fruit out of season. Last month she hosted a garden party for the city’s Elvish ambassadors. It was delightful. So I read anyway. There wasn’t any danger of me being invited.
The Mistress of the Sky drifts into the room. She’s smiling, slightly vacantly. Lisutaris always starts early with her water pipe.
“Thraxas. This is very quick work. Congratulations.”
“I don’t have the pendant.”
“You don’t?”
“No. But I have four dead bodies and an even closer acquaintance with the Civil Guard.”
I fill her in on yesterday’s events. She’s displeased to learn of my failure.
“So you don’t know who these men were?”
“I recognised one of them. Axaten. Petty thief, works the stadium, or used to before he got his throat cut. Might well be the person who stole the pendant. I didn’t know the other three and I don’t know who killed them. I was hoping you might tell me.”
Lisutaris looks blank.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you sent me to get back a jewel from a thief and I ended up in a slaughterhouse. Any idea why that might be?”
“No.”
“Do the words ‘I was on a beautiful golden ship’ mean anything to you?”
“No. Is it a quotation?”
“I don’t know. I never studied the great poets. But they were said to me by a dying man. I’ve seen plenty of dying men but no one ever used that particular phrase before.”
I look meaningfully at Lisutaris. She doesn’t like the meaning.
“Are you suggesting I may have withheld information from you?”
“Well, have you?”
Lisutaris rises from her chair.
“Thraxas. I appreciated your help during the election. But possibly our close contact at that time has left you with the erroneous impression that you’re free to come into my house and call me a liar. You are not.”
The Mistress of the Sky looks threatening. I tell her to calm down. She claps her hands and a servant enters carrying her thazis pipe on a tray.
“That’s calmer than I intended. Can’t you lay off that stuff for a single day?”
Lisutaris doesn’t deign to answer this. She makes me wait while she goes through the ritual of filling her pipe and lighting it. As she inhales for the first time, she rubs one gold-sandalled foot over the other, signifying pleasure, maybe.
“Surely there are any number of reasons why those men might have been killed? In a place like that?”
“True. Arguments among thieves can quickly turn murderous in Twelve Seas. But I don’t like it that they were killed while they just happened to be in possession of such a valuable item. You’re saying that no one knows what this jewel does, but the way it looks to me, someone does. Either the person who stole it, or whoever’s got it now. And that makes the whole thing a lot more difficult.”
“No one else could know the true value of that pendant.” Lisutaris is adamant. “Its use is known only to the King, his senior ministers and the head of the Sorcerers Guild.”
“Turai is corrupt from top to bottom. And there are a lot of people very well versed in digging out secrets, particularly when there’s a profit involved. How about your own household?”
“No one here knew of the pendant’s true purpose, apart from my secretary, who knows all my affairs and is entirely trustworthy.”
“I’d like to talk to her.”
Lisutaris shakes her head.
“You will not speak to my secretary. You may take it from me that she is not a suspect in this matter.”
Lisutaris draws deeply on the thazis pipe. It was bad enough losing the pendant to a petty thief. If it’s ended up in the hands of some gang who’ll sell it to the highest bidder she’s in big trouble, especially if the highest bidder turns out to be one of the Orcish nations. She pulls a slender cord that hangs by the door, summoning a servant.
“I will locate the jewel again and you must retrieve it immediately.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to bring someone else in? Palace security, for instance? Maybe it’s time to let the Consul know what’s happened.”
“If Kalius finds out about this he’ll be down on me like a bad spell. I’m not ready to be expelled from the city just yet.”
A servant arrives carrying a golden bowl of an inky-black liquid, kuriya. In this pool a good Sorcerer can often see versions of events both past and present. I’ve used it myself, with difficulty. These days I find it very hard to reach the required levels of concentration. Such is Lisutaris’s power that she requires no preparation. She simply flutters her hand over the liquid and a picture starts to form.