Chapter 24 #2
“So it seems,” said Tauri. “I’ve taken the safety measure of also testing all of Seriv’s custodi.
Thus far, all the peacekeepers appear uninfected!
My folk then moved on and began to test the wells of Lacanthim.
Carefully, of course, as we can’t afford a panic!
We’ve focused on all wells near any major water sources, to ensure that wherever it is, it can’t infect the rivers.
So far, they’ve found nothing. Yet Lacanthim has many wells, and many more remain.
How these folk are being poisoned so selectively is beyond me, I must admit. ”
“What a mess this is,” Ana hissed. “I will find these squirrelly bastards and see them rotting in the ground! And still I cannot see the goal of it, beyond the annihilation of these two families!” She let out a tiny sigh. “Let us see if there is a clue within. Lead me to the door, Din.”
I helped her totter toward the vault door, and she began inspecting it with her long, pale fingers, tapping at the boundaries of its plating, gently caressing each rivet and bolt with her index.
“I can’t recall the exact number of potential permutations you mentioned, Immunis,” said Tauri. “But I believe it was on the biggish end…”
“810,000,” said Ana.
“Yes,” said Tauri. “So. Very much biggish. How did you come upon this combination that you believe is correct? Is it some wordplay, a clever riposte to the claim that brilliance is forever fecund?”
“No,” said Ana. “The answer is actually very stupid. That is because most riddles are very stupid. It is damned impossible to predict all the ways people will miscommunicate their intents when giving you clues. Yet I spy Burilis’s intent now—as well as his intent to misdirect us.
” She touched one of the tumblers. “Having been given this prompting, the mind would ordinarily leap to a word, or a number. Is he referencing the name of a family member? An acronym? The date of his mother’s birth, or death?
An endless number of solutions present themselves. ”
“Yes,” said Tauri. “And?”
“And the only solution is to disregard this impulse!” said Ana. “Because the solution isn’t a word at all. Nor is it a number. It is a symbol. One we’ve all seen—but one we would not expect from Burilis Burav.”
She swiftly turned the tumblers about in their sockets, clicking and clattering.
As she did so, she quoted aloud: “…and he came upon the Vashem folk, who lived in the country of Alimar at this time. They had forgotten his edicts, and his decrees and proscriptions, and they lived wildly and wickedly, taking of his fruits and soiling his orchards. ‘We have made ourselves sacrosanct and inviolate,’ they said to him. ‘For we have swallowed your nectars and tasted of your drupe. Our ears are deaf to your words now.’ He wept to see their baseness, and he opened his mouth and sang to them from his deepest depths. All were overcome with his song, and a new fate was woven about their eyes. In this they found their penitence.”
Then she stopped and stepped back.
On the left point of the diamond, she had selected an O. The same on the right. But on the remaining two tumblers—the top and bottom points of the diamond—she had turned them both to 1s.
Yet I recalled: the 1s on these tumblers were different, she’d said. They did not look like the common digit 1. They were completely unadorned and resembled a simple stroke: |.
I realized instantly what she had made: the two spheres, separated by a vertical line—though in this case, the line was split in two.
My memories shook within me, and my eyes quaked and I found myself echoing Velona Armenta’s words: “It is the sign of Master Gaddar! The tree bearing fruit, for he was lord of all orchards!”
“Correct, Din,” said Ana. “The very same. It occurred to me as I read those dreadful religious tomes just this morning, full of the Daljen punishing the wickedness of man. Master Gaddar is quite heralded and admired in those ancient tales…” She caressed the steel face of the door.
“It’s very unusual, isn’t it? Why would Burav, who did not keep to that pantheon, pick such a thing?
But it is not the first time we’ve seen a Burav reference the symbol, true?
You, Din, found a drawing of Jalin Burav’s that had been set aside in his cottage.
It bore this same symbol in the corner. Yet why would Jalin also show a predilection for this symbol?
Unless, of course, he knew it held a special meaning in his household, and it weighed heavily upon his thoughts… ”
She grasped the handle and twisted it. With a loud clunk, it turned.
“…and that is why I know Jalin Burav is one of our killers,” she continued.
“He came to this place once. He opened the vault and found something. Something that led him to the forest, and a great secret—one that enabled him to kill without blade or blood.” She stepped back.
“I shall permit you two to do the honors…”
I looked to Tauri, who nodded, shaken. I took the handle of the vault, and with a great heave, I pulled the door open and peered inside.
—
On the other side of the door was not some treasury vault full of safes and chests containing jewels, or piles of talints.
Instead, it was something like a library, with countless shelves filled with books, many of them terribly old to the point of crumbling.
A set of glowing mai-lamps hung from the ceiling, and a desk was set below them, along with quills and ink and many parchments.
Next to this desk were several dozen pots of sotwine—and there at the back were many crates that looked to be stuffed full of yet more pots.
It seemed Burav had used this space as half library, half wine cellar.
At first I thought this explained the aroma—for the vault reeked quite powerfully of wine. Yet then I realized it smelled of worse things than that: vomit, and excrement, and urine.
Then my eye fell upon the body lying in the vault.
“Ahh,” I said. “There is someone in here.”
A silence.
“Wh…what?” said Tauri.
“What?” cried Ana. “There is?”
“Uh, yes,” I said, and entered the vault and walked to where they lay.
She was a Kurmini woman, her face pink and bloated, and her dress and stomach covered in vomit.
It was difficult to tell, but she looked middle-aged and was dressed much as a high servant might: a personal valet, or the housemaid, or someone’s personal attendant.
Though I wasn’t sure if she was alive or dead, the cause of the vomit and urine was obvious: some dozen pots of sotwine sat open and empty all about her.
Indeed, now that I got close to her, I realized her dress and hair had been soaked in the stuff and still had a purple stain to them.
“She’s been here this entire time?” said Tauri, peering over my shoulder. “Was she here during the fire?”
“Perhaps,” I said. “The walls are reinforced. Someone could survive in here, as you said when we first found the vault, sir. But maybe that explains why she looks so pink—the heat in here must have been imm—”
Then the woman gasped, sat up, and screamed.
I went staggering back, fumbling for the wall with one hand and my sword with the other. There was a flash of steel in her hand, and she cried out, “Back! Geb back! B-b…back!”
She blinked and squinted at us, brandishing a letter opener in what she hoped to be a threatening pose. She was so inebriated that the tip of the blade wandered back and forth like a pendulum.
“Stay back!” she slurred. “You…you s-stay back! Won’t…won’t geb me, too…”
Tauri and I gaped at her, unable to think of a single thing to say.
Ana cried out from the vault entrance: “Din? Who the hell is that?”
I consulted my memories, flickering through all the faces I’d seen here in Lacanthim. This person was not among them.
“I’ve…no idea,” I said honestly.
The woman groaned, then toppled over onto her back.