“What’s wrong?” he said, turning his chair slightly and pushing it closer to her.
She bit her lip. “I found a body in the room next to mine.”
The tiredness disappeared from his face to be replaced with animation, and Sham realized that it was depression as much as fatigue and pain that was bothering him. She wasn’t sure that the discovery of his half-brother’s body was going to help his melancholy much. Without a word he passed her on the way to the opening that led to the passageway.
“Kerim?” Her voice cracked with strain.
He stopped and looked at her inquiringly, Shamera bowed her head a brief moment before meeting his eyes. “It’s Lord Ven.”
She caught a flash of something in his eyes, before his expression flattened unreadably into that of a battle-hardened warrior. He nodded and continued through the passage door. Sham took a lighted candle from a nearby table, since she’d doused the magelight before entering Kerim’s chambers, and followed the Reeve.
She’d left the door to the room ajar and the stench had traveled into the passage. She brought the scented candle closer to her nose; it didn’t help. Kerim’s chair didn’t fit easily through the narrow doorway; the hubs left deep mars in the wood as he forced it through. He stopped just inside the opening.
“Hold your candle higher,” he said, the tone of his voice making it a request rather than an order.
Sham raised her hand and let the flickering light illuminate the room. She noticed the eerie shadows that jumped as the flame moved on the wick and was exceedingly grateful that she hadn’t found the body by candlelight. Kerim looked over the scene carefully before he moved forward, stopping again to look at the places where Sham’s feet had cracked the dried blood.
“Me,” she replied in answer to his unvoiced question. “There was no sign that anyone had been here before I came in.”
He nodded and circled the chair with its macabre occupant. She watched his face and knew that he noticed the pattern of the blood on the floor—the pool had been evenly distributed. Lord Ven had been killed standing and brought to the chair after he was dead, as evidenced by the trail of blood his heels had made. It was the large pool of blood that the Reeve would find most troubling. There was no disturbed area where a killer would have stood, absorbing blood that would otherwise have fallen on the floor, no bloody footprints where the killer had run away.
Sham pulled the white cloth off the table and held it so Kerim could see its pristine condition. “This was covering him when I came in.”
Kerim frowned and touched the cloth without taking it, rubbing it lightly between his fingers. He looked again at the stains on the floor and frowned.
“Someone went to a lot of work to make this murder look odd,” he commented; Shamera didn’t reply.
Finally he pushed himself over the stained floor and touched his half-brother’s face, tipping it up. Shamera’s candle revealed the high-carved cheekbones and the wide, straight nose that both men shared before he gently let the head fall back down.
Silently, Kerim wiped his hands on his thighs, not to clean them but as an outlet for his excess energy. Without looking at her, he spoke. “My brother has been dead for three or possibly four days. This room is cool, so it is hard to be certain.”
“Yes,” agreed Sham without inflection.
“I talked with him this morning.”
“He spoke to me an hour ago,” she replied evenly. “He said that he had something to tell me in private, but Dickon came to fetch me before I went with him.”
“The demon.” Kerim stared at the body without seeing it. There was belief in his tone.
“I think so,” she agreed.
“I thought that it could only take the form that was given to it by its summoner.” His voice was neutral once more: she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
Sham shrugged. “So I was told—apparently wrongly.”
“It could be anyone, then. Taking one person’s shape then another as it chooses.”
She shook her head helplessly. “I don’t know.”
“Come.” He spoke curtly as he wheeled out of the room, ignoring the grating sound of metal on wood as his chair caught the frame a second time. “Shut the panel behind you.”
Back in his room, she waited for him to speak. She had the feeling that he would be pacing if he could. Instead, chained to the chair, he shifted restlessly and stared into the fire.
Abruptly he wheeled back and around, so that he faced her directly. “Magic ... Could you do this? Take the form of someone else?”
Sham swallowed, not finding the Reeve’s impassive face reassuring. “No. Wizards, with very few exceptions, are not capable of doing that. Illusion, yes, but to maintain an illusion of a specific person well enough to fool people who know him, no. My master was once the greatest wizard in Southwood, fourth or fifth most powerful in the world; he could not have done this. Perhaps the Archmage could, but I doubt that he could do it for so long.”
“You think the demon can alter its form?”
“There may be another possibility,” said Sham slowly.
“Tell me.” It was not a request, and she shot him a nasty look.
“Please remember that, despite appearances to the contrary, I am not your mistress,” she snapped.
There was a touch of a smile warming Kerim’s eyes as he restated his order. “I beg you, Lady, please touch these unworthy ears with the alternative explanation.”
Sham rubbed her chin and sighed, murmuring as if to herself, “I suppose that’s good enough.” She cleared her throat and then resumed speaking. “I have never heard that the demons could change their appearance at will. Granted that demonology hasn’t a great part in a wizard’s education, but I would think that such an ability would have made it into the folktales.”
Kerim broke in softly, “Whatever it is that has worn my brother’s appearance sounds like him, moves like him, and uses the same idioms of speech. This morning I spoke to him concerning an incident in our childhood, and he added details I had forgotten.”
“There is always the possibility that the demon is capable of such a thing,” she said, “—but I hope not. The second possibility is not much better. The killer, be he demon or human, might have access to a rare golem—called a simulacrum.” Sham had been speaking Cybellian, but used the Southern words for golem and simulacrum as there was no Cybellian translation.
“What is a golem?” Kerim switched to Southern so smoothly, Sham wondered if he noticed.
“A golem is any nonliving thing animated by magic,” replied Sham in the same language. “Puppets are often used for such purposes as they are well suited to it, but anything will do.”
She glanced around the room and pointed at a hauberk that was carefully laid out on a table. For effect she said dramatically, “Ivek meharr votra, evahncey callenafiardren.”
The chainmail rustled, and the hauberk filled out as if there were a person inside the mail. With a discreet brush of Sham’s magic, it rose to stand on the end links. This hauberk wasn’t the one Kerim had worn the night of the Spirit Tide; its links were heavier, less likely to part under the force of a blow. Over the right shoulder the metal was a slightly different color where it had been repaired.
“Golems are largely useless for anything other than amusement now,” said Sham, making the mail shirt bow once, before it resettled itself on the table with a sound that might have been a sigh of relief. “It is too difficult to create one big or complex enough to do anything useful. For one thing, they don’t have a brain so the wizard has to direct every move.”
Kerim was still looking at the hauberk. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to wear that again.”
She grinned. “That’s what it’s made for. If you don’t use it, you’ll hurt its feelings.”
He gave her a black look, spoiling the effect with the twinkle of laughter in his eyes. “Back to the golem.”