Chapter 2 #3
“I am not biased against them at all!” she said, feigning offense. “I am merely biased against bastards. The gentry class just happens to brim over with folk of that particular breed.”
“Even when they are grieving fathers?”
“Oh, then they are even more dangerous, boy. A powerful, grieving father will do all manner of mad things to achieve the vengeance he desires! It was only by indulging in the unpleasant tactic of withholding his daughter’s corpse that we extracted any obedience at all.
” She cocked her head. “What did you make of his comment, though—that he was so very certain this was the first time his daughter had ever done such a thing? Do you think that is so, Din?”
I glanced about the interior of the Cat’s Eye Inn.
It was rather a shabby place: the fretvine walls had not been adequately trimmed, and bloomed with pale leaves in the corners.
I got the immediate sense that it was a tavern where the lodgers and porters all very carefully minded their own business—and I struggled to imagine any innocent reasons why a gentrygirl would wish to stay here, of all places.
“I think a father’s love, ma’am,” I said carefully, “is often blinding.”
Ana grinned. “Aptly put! Let’s speak to that damned innkeeper.”
The innkeeper was a nervous, doddering little woman named Ithia, who smelled very strongly of cabbage and kept offering us cups of watery tea as we spoke to her at her counter.
Before we had even introduced ourselves, she told us repeatedly that she knew nothing and could not understand what had happened.
It took some work to calm her and hear her story.
“The boy gave his name as Vineo Tibrum,” Ithia said, stammering, “and the girl gave hers as Bosa Muzin. I had no idea who they were, sir, none at all! They certainly had never stayed with me before! The boy arrived yesterday afternoon and took the room. The girl came at evening. I did not ask questions, madam—and sir—for that is not my station. My lodgers enjoy their privacy. But it was not until midnight that the boy came running out! He dashed right down the hall all dripping in blood and ran outside and began hollering madly! Then I…Well. I went to the room, and I…” She trailed off, too horrified to speak.
“Did you hear any screams?” I asked. “Any sound of a struggle?”
“No. No, not at all.”
“None?” I said.
“No, sir. None.”
“And how long were they in the room together?”
“Ahh—I would say about five hours, sir.”
Ana leaned forward. “This was the first time they had ever stayed in your establishment?”
“Yes, madam,” said Ithia.
“And they were in there for five hours?”
“Yes, madam.”
“And you had no idea who they were?”
“None at all, madam.”
“Nor that they were gentry children of the two dominant landowning families of this canton? You did not realize this, you say?”
A bead of sweat trickled down her brow. The aroma of cabbages intensified. “Well. No, madam.”
Ana turned away. “I shall sit while you deal with her.” Then she tottered blindly over to a chair.
Ithia watched Ana go, puzzled. I fixed the innkeeper with a smile that was polite but cold. “We have not viewed the room yet,” I said gently. “You are aware of this, yes?”
“Well. Yes? I saw you just come in.”
“Correct. But—once we are in that room, we are going to see many things. The girl was the prime daughter of a gentryclan. Such folk are often augmented in many ways. Do you comprehend this?”
“I…yes?”
“Very visible ways,” I said. “Ways that would likely mark them as gentry to anyone with a pair of working eyes. More, it is possible we may find signs of a familiarity between the boy and the girl. A familiarity that is very common to a boy and girl who stay in a room for five hours together. One that might indicate that this was, in fact, not the first time they stayed here.”
Ithia was now staring at me with very wide eyes.
“If this is discovered, Miss Ithia,” I said, “then it would indicate that you have lied to us. Lying to the Iudex is no small thing. So. I would suggest you reconsider some of your answers to these questions.”
“I…” she began.
She fell silent, thinking. I waited, watching the sweat wander down her brow.
“I wish to be protected,” she said softly.
“From?”
“The families, sir.”
“Why?”
“Well—the girl and boy, they paid me for my silence!” she whined.
She expected me to be shocked, but I gestured impatiently for her to go on.
“I was to say nothing of their meeting! They warned me if word got out I’d assisted them, their parents would bring hell down upon me!”
“How often were the two young people meeting here?”
“Once a month!” she said, now on the verge of tears. “Sometimes more! Always the same room, always the same false names!”
“For how long?”
“A year,” she moaned. “More or less.”
“Be specific,” I said sharply. “Look at your book, if you need.”
She did so, pawing through the pages. “Th-thirteen months. The first day was the…the eighth of Tavlesi.”
At that, I opened my engraver’s satchel, produced a small glass vial, uncorked it, and sniffed.
The aroma of lilacs suffused my nose. With this scent, I could better anchor all my memories of the investigation, from dates to names to distances and times, and summon them to repeat later when Ana demanded.
“Was the relationship consensual?” I asked.
“I know nothing of the relationship at all! I wished to keep everything a transaction. An exchange. Business!”
“You’re sure you heard nothing else?” I asked. “You didn’t hear Zansay Burav scream, for example?”
“No, sir.”
“And you saw nothing?”
“Nothing! Nothing save when I looked in the room, and then I fetched the custodi straightaway!”
“Which way to the room?”
She pointed down one passageway. “There’s a custodus stationed before it. The rest of them went running out to the jails, where I heard the two families are threatening to kill each other!”
I peered down the passage, which wound along the rounded walls of the building. A trail of prints stained the fretvine flooring there: bloody footprints, now quite dried. They ran the length of the hall like music notes scrawled upon a parchment.
“They won’t even let me clean up,” said Ithia piteously. “I’m sure I’ve lost all my business for the month. And I shall lose more, surely, if the Armentas and the Buravs really do go to war! The whole city, and canton—hell, the whole of the Empire shall fall to pieces if that happens!”
I thanked her and returned to Ana.
—
“So,” Ana purred as she took my arm. “Did I hear aright? It appears that the two were lovers, as we guessed?”
“So it seems, ma’am.”
“Mm. Two lovers, from two feuding gentryclans, meeting secretly under false names for their tryst!” She scoffed.
“How puerile. How derivative. I pray it is more deviant than it appears!” She paused.
“Still…I admit that though this murder appears straightforward, it is a trifle confusing to me, Din.”
“How so, ma’am?”
“Well. If I were to kill a girl in a room in a city, what I would not do is run outside bloodier than a butcher’s sweat rag and then scream to ensure every eye was put upon me! Anyone of sense would make a stealthier escape—a window, or a side door, or some better exit, off into the dark.”
“Perhaps it’s as Burav said, ma’am—there is a madness in the Armenta line.”
“Well, there’s madness and then there’s goddamn idiocy! But I note—our briefing did not contain any mention of the boy’s story of what happened, true?”
I consulted my memories, my eyes shimmering as I pulled the briefing from the depths of my mind.
“No, ma’am,” I said. “The boy has yet to speak, apparently.”
“Hum! And the innkeeper did not hear the girl scream?”
“She repeatedly claimed not, ma’am.”
“Nor do we have any witness who claimed to have heard any commotion?”
Again, I consulted my memories of the briefing and confirmed that was so.
“Then that, I grant,” she said, “is mildly intriguing. Let’s view the scene, then, and see if we can determine why the boy chose to pierce this girl with something besides his eager pri—”
I pulled her down the passageway.
A single custodus was stationed before the chamber door, dressed in the pale blue of his order and clad in a steel cap. He was shocked to see us, and as he unlocked the door he said, “I’d have thought you’d come with my princeps, ma’am! Yet right now, he and the rest of my peers are at—”
“Yes, yes, at the jail,” said Ana, yawning, “preventing either a lynching or a massacre. So we heard! I will assume they are doing a very good job. Please remain here while we view the room.”
The custodus bowed, then quickly stepped back—far enough, I noted, that he would not see into the room when we opened the door.
I turned the knob and pushed open the fretvine door.
The smell of blood and gore washed over me in a tremendous wave. I grimaced, prepared myself, and peered inside.
She lay upon the floor on her left side, one pale arm draped awkwardly behind her back.
She was wearing a mothsilk nightgown, one of terrifically expensive make.
The stain of blood had crawled up the fabric until it resembled a length of shore drawn upon a map.
I was faintly surprised the blood had not crawled any higher, for the pool of gore around her was so tremendous that it threatened to fill every crevice of the vined floor.
It was at that moment that I felt a profoundly strange sensation, one entirely new to me: something in my thoughts trembled.
Shifted. Like a larva turning over within an egg.
Then I heard a voice, speaking softly but clearly within the chambers of my mind—Not right.
I grunted softly, surprised and slightly pained. I had experienced many strange things as an imperial engraver—to be so cognitively altered meant your mind was no longer wholly your own—but I had never heard voices before.
Nor had I ever felt an impulse as abrupt and definite as the one that had washed through me: the incontestable sense that something in the room before me was not right, though I could not yet define what it was.