Chapter 23 #2
The hissing continued. As we waited, I summoned my memory of the painting of the Armenta children I’d seen in their mansion.
There had been the tall, grinning, arrogant Lyimo; next had been Sagma, arrayed in such glittering silks, and so keen of eye; behind her had stood Gevma, soft-faced and looking distinctly uncomfortable in his riding apparel; and last, of course, had been Castus, bedecked like a strutting pheasant—though his body, I knew, had been burned by the Orbiis after his sprouting.
Then, like a harp’s strings that had been wound too tightly, the vine cocoon began to unravel, splitting apart at the seam. Soon the top lid was free, and the Orbiis used a set of picks to pull it away.
Within sat a long, black stonewood casket, a vessel far less secure or airtight than the vine cocoon.
“Well,” said Tauri. “The lid hasn’t popped off and fungus hasn’t come pouring out. So! Let’s see what we have here…”
I helped lift the lid off the top. Instantly, we dropped it and recoiled in horror.
The top half of the casket was brimming with ancient, rotting fungal stalks, all stuffed into the corners and coiled into knots.
So great was their pile that they almost eclipsed the head of the corpse within, as if they were devouring his skull.
The rest of the boy’s body was remarkably intact, however—even his hands and fingernails didn’t show the usual signs of dehydration.
“By hell,” muttered Tauri. “Well! I think we can say our guess was correct—this young man was infected by the web. Sorry, dear chap,” he said softly to the boy, “there shall be no resurrection for you! Save that which is given to the trees and leaves and fauna of all this world, to be fed upon and turned into life anew. And isn’t that holy enough? ”
There was a short, mournful silence.
“We will cut away the stalks to burn, and then review the body properly,” said Tauri to me. “But first, let’s open Sagma’s next to see if she, too, was infected…”
They went through the procedure again, painting her cocoon, breaking it open, and lifting the lid.
Much like Gevma, Sagma’s coffin was swarming with dark, ancient fungal growths, though these had formed something of a halo about her head.
Her pale, delicate face surfaced from their coils in such a fashion that she looked like she suffered a nightmare as she slept and tossed and turned upon her pillow.
“Another victim of the web, then!” sighed Tauri. “We are two for three, then…it’s as we feared.”
I peered in for a closer look at her. Sagma, too, was remarkably preserved. She’d been a beautiful thing, a Tala girl in the full bloom of youth. Even in death, she had a look of spirited defiance to her. It made me think of Fotia immediately. No wonder Velona had taken an instant liking to her.
Yet as Tauri’s officers began to cut away the stalks from her skull, I noticed something odd.
“What’s that?” I said, pointing to Sagma’s neck.
Tauri looked closely. A thin, smooth stripe of purpled flesh ran about the dead girl’s neck, just below her jaw.
“It’s bruising,” said Tauri. “Commensurate with hanging. That is how she died, yes?”
I shook my head. “I’ve seen hanged bodies before. When they’re hanged, the rope does a great deal more damage than that. The width of the bruise, the abrasions to the skin—it is much larger, much worse.”
“Ohh. Why’ve you seen so many hangings, Kol?”
“I am Iudex. I am required to attend executions, to comprehend what I have done.”
“I…see,” said Tauri. “So. What are you suggesting?”
“That whatever choked the life from her, it was not a rope, I suppose. Something smoother, and smaller. I can’t imagine what—or not yet.”
“Is it relevant?”
“If it was a garrote,” I said, “and not a rope, then it’s very relevant indeed.”
We finally moved on to Lyimo. After another daubing of hissing fluid, the top of his cocoon was free, and we removed the lid of his casket.
Then we paused.
Whereas the other two had sported a great boiling of old, rotting stalks at the tops of their caskets, for Lyimo the showing was much, much reduced.
A bare few handful of stalks had wormed their way out of his skull, hardly more than a few smallspan long.
It made me think of a seed that had just tasted rain and put a few tiny, delicate leaves out to catch the sun.
“Hum!” said Tauri, intrigued. “This is…quite unexpected! This was the first victim killed, yes?”
“True, we think so. He was the first of the three to perish. Why is he so different?”
“I’m not sure!” said Tauri. He leaned close to the miserable bloom. “This host was definitely infested with the web…But I don’t think he was nearly as infected as the other two! He has had years to sprout, and managed only this?”
I studied the dead body, thinking. “They didn’t do it right, then?”
“Perhaps. You claim this was their first murder—so whoever killed him might have bungled it. My instinct says they struck before the fungus was fully matured. Didn’t have the practice yet, in a way. Is that useful to you, Kol?”
“It’s as you said, sir,” I murmured, studying the tiny stalk carefully. “Much can be read in the shiftings of small things.”
“We shall place these three into containment and have them taken back for full autopsy. However, we must strip them first and dispose of their clothing for a cursory examination. Can’t let anything hidden come in, you see. Would you like to look them over?”
Using a set of shears, the Orbiis removed the clothing of the dead where they lay in their tombs.
Unlike most Apoths I’d worked with, the officers didn’t seem at all accustomed to such work and needed much help with the bodies—especially with Lyimo Armenta, who had been a broad, strapping young thing.
I noted Tauri murmuring, “A waste!” as we attempted to turn over his body.
Though I found nothing unusual about Lyimo’s hands, feet, or face—save the fungus sprouting from behind his ear, of course—as we rolled him over, I cast a glance across his back and paused.
There, just beside his shoulder blade: a little bruise, and just beside that, a tiny perforation.
I leaned close. The bruise was about a half span wide, consistent with being struck by something small and rounded.
The perforation beside it was a slit about a half span long.
I probed it with my finger and confirmed that it was quite shallow: not a stab as much as a rough jab with something somewhat dull.
“This is…unusual,” I said softly.
“Is it?” said Tauri. “The fellow rode and drove cattle often. His shins and forearms are covered in tiny scars and such. A rough life writes itself upon the body—or so I’m told…”
It was as I gazed at the wound—this tiny, round bruise, and tiny, shallow cut—that I felt it.
My memories moved within me, trembling like a duckling in its egg, and whispered: Seen this before.
Suddenly the ring finger of my right hand began to ache.
I shook my hand out, then took a breath and parsed my memories—but I could not find what they had meant by that.
I was certain I had seen no such thing in this investigation.
In fact, all the wounds I’d seen had been terribly gruesome.
I found the situation quite frustrating: how could I remember without remembering?
“Shall we move on?” asked Tauri.
I muttered agreement and followed him to the next grave.
—
We studied both Gevma’s and Sagma’s bodies, and though Gevma’s old wound to the back of his head was quite unsettling, I found nothing else of interest about them.
The Orbiis then packed up the bodies in what Tauri had called “containment”—a set of complex, algaeoil bladders that puckered like a sphincter when touched with the proper oils—and we made ready to depart.
I relayed the news to Fotia and Trikao at the gates, though I kept my report short: the three were infected, as feared, and would be removed for further autopsy.
“What will we tell your sister?” Fotia asked Trikao.
Trikao’s mouth worked for a moment, unable to give voice to his thoughts. “I…I feel we can’t tell her this. Not yet, not until we know who the killer is! She’s convinced it’s the work of the ancients, and she’s so frail of health that I…I worry the shock could kill her.”
I shot Fotia a look, and after comforting Trikao for a moment longer she followed me back to the Orbiis cart. “Yes?” she said softly. “What is it?”
“Will you still do this task for Ana?” I whispered through my helm. “Questioning the servants and snooping about to learn more of Sagma’s death?”
“You want to try to talk me out of it now, of all times?”
“No. I want to give you something to look for.” I watched as the Orbiis loaded Sagma’s body into the cart.
“Sagma Armenta was not hanged with a rope. The bruising on her neck was very unusual. Too narrow, too smooth.” I held up my fingers to show the width of the contusion.
“It makes me think Ana was quite right to be suspicious.”
“So she could have…what, been choked to death and just arranged there, hanging?”
“I don’t know. But were I you, I would try to find out more—specifically about how she was found. I can confirm she was definitely infected with the web. But if she was truly found hanging by the neck, then the manner of how she was put there is greatly suspect to me.”
“I see. Did you find anything else?”
The sight of the flensing halls arose in my thoughts then: the reeking mireponds, and the mountain of bones swarming with vermin.
I felt an impulse to ask her of it: if she had known such a place existed, perhaps, and if she knew that such death and ruin occurred mere leagues from the grand, beautiful pastures of the Armentas.
Yet I knew the question was foolish. Of course she knew. How she had reconciled herself to it I could not imagine, but she certainly knew.
“Well?” Fotia said anxiously. “Did you?”
“No,” I said. “No. That is all.”
With a nod and a whisper of goodbye, Fotia paced back to Trikao, who had sat down on the ground, knees shaking.
—