Cast in Ruin (10 page)

There was one very, very long table. Broken in two, it would have served in the mess hall if it weren’t so very fine; it gleamed, and if the usual boredom-induced engravings were anywhere on its surface, they didn’t show at this distance. There were plates, glasses—three for each setting—and an enormous number of knives, forks, and spoons. There were even plates on top of the plates. What there wasn’t, at the moment, was food.

Severn cleared his throat, and Tara turned immediately toward him. Gone was the dispassionate and ancient defender; in her place was a slightly apprehensive woman of middling height. “Yes?”

“We’re underdressed for a meal of this formality.” It wasn’t even
dinner.
It was lunch. Probably late lunch, but still. Lunch.

“Oh. I could fix that,” she said, brightening up.

Over my dead body,
Kaylin thought.

“Why?”

Morse suppressed a laugh, mostly by coughing. “I’m on duty,” Kaylin replied.

“Why don’t you like formal clothing?”

Kaylin gave up. “It’s not me.”

“No, of course not—it’s clothing. You wear armor, yes? And the tabard where it’s appropriate? You wear things to sleep in and different shoes or boots depending on weather and terrain. None of these things are you.”

Morse was having an all-out coughing fit.

“Morse can explain it,” Kaylin said sweetly.

“Morse can’t,” was the flat reply. “I’ve asked her several times.”

Kaylin looked at Severn, who gave her the empty hands-up, indicating she was on her own. She grimaced. “Powerful people tend to dress in really fancy clothing. It’s supposed to make a statement.”

“About what?”

“Fancy clothing costs a
lot
of money. Most of us can’t afford to wear anything fancy
and
pay rent.”

“But you don’t have to pay to be clothed appropriately in
this
Tower,” Tara reasonably replied.

A very different snort came from the open doors; for one, it had smoke in it.

“Tiamaris, help!”

He chuckled. “It is my intention, in a future which might be far enough away that it won’t be a concern of yours, to entertain in the fief. Some of the people I hope to entertain will be of high standing in the Merchants’ Guild, among others; they expect to be treated as men of power, if not rank. This is therefore a necessary endeavor.”

“I won’t be here when you’re entertaining them,” Kaylin told Tara.

Tara nodded, but it was too much to hope it would be left there. “Why?”

“I don’t know enough about how to eat with powerful people.” Or speak with them, if it came to that, “and I’ve got so much to learn—”

“Lord Diarmat is teaching you, though,” was the response. “So you’ll have to learn anyway.”

Kaylin wilted and surrendered with as much grace as she ever did. “No fancy clothing,” she told the Tower’s Avatar, “but you can tell me which of the four dozen utensils I’m
supposed
to be using.”

Tiamaris joined them for dinner, and, to Kaylin’s surprise, he at least went through the motions of eating. She couldn’t recall ever seeing a Dragon eat before, and had often wondered what they ate when they did. He didn’t apparently
enjoy
the experience, but he made no complaints. He was not, however, focused on the food.

“Lord Sanabalis informed us that you’ve been seconded to his service for the near future.”

She nodded. Tara informed her politely that the large fork was not yet appropriate as she turned toward Tiamaris. “Is the border always that heavily contested?”

“Always?”

“Morse implied that it’s gotten worse since the Norannir moved in.” Kaylin snuck a glance at Morse, who had taken up a position by the far wall.

“Implied? That’s more subtle than Morse generally is.”

“Is it true?” Kaylin asked, leaving his accurate observation alone.

“It is.”

“Do you know why?”

“I have some suspicion, yes. Lord Sanabalis, however, is the better person to ask.”

“Meaning you won’t tell me.”

“Meaning his idle speculation in this case matches my own. We have, on the other hand, more serious difficulties.”

Kaylin, having seen the border skirmish, stilled.

“Tara,” Tiamaris added, “although it is not generally done in a more formal gathering, I believe at the moment our discussion requires a mirror.” He lifted a brow in Kaylin’s direction and added, “What are you doing with that fork?”

She lifted one right back. “Eating.”

“You are conveying food to your mouth, yes,” was the severe reply. “That is, however, not the way a fork is held.”

“Does it
matter?
”

If anyone had ever told Kaylin in her early days with the Hawks that a meeting of this seriousness could be delayed over instructions on how to hold a fork, she would have bet every coin in her possession against it. Tiamaris, however, would have lost her that bet, and then some.

“It must be nice to be rich enough that you worry about how you hold a fork to eat,” she muttered, “rather than how you get enough food to not starve.”

Tara, however, said, “Lord Sanabalis suggested that you eat with us while you’re working here. He said it would make your lessons with Lord Diarmat less difficult. For you.”

The thought of the head of the Imperial Guard instructing her on the use of utensils made all arguments wither. She practiced while Tara brought a mirror into the hall. Interestingly enough, she literally carried it; she didn’t just wave a hand or bend a thought and cause one to materialize in a useful position.

“I can’t,” Tara told her, although Kaylin hadn’t made the observation out loud. “Not with mirrors. I can with chairs or walls or some of the tables. Not all of them, though.”

“Why?”

Tara frowned. “Why?”

“Why can’t you? And why not the tables?”

“Well, this table,” she said, “is very large. I don’t believe it would survive the transition. But the mirrors are connected magically to external mirrors, and the connections are tenuous.”

“Connected how?”

“Magically,” the Avatar repeated. “The magic does not originate with the Tower.”

“It was tricky,” Tiamaris added, “to allow the mirror connection to breach the Tower defenses. Lord Sanabalis found it quite challenging.”

“Nightshade does it.”

“Indeed. I imagine he also found it challenging. I would be curious to know his point of connection to the external city.”

“You can probably ask him. I think it’s likely he’d answer.”

“Not without some cost on my part, and at the moment, we cannot afford that; there are, as I mentioned, difficulties in the fief.” He turned to the mirror, which Tara had placed in front of him. It was a standing oval, in shape and size very similar to the one in the Hawklord’s Tower, except that the stable, flat length of its base had been replaced by a platform with wheels.

Tara came to stand to the left of where he sat. He didn’t immediately invoke the mirror or its images, however. “You are aware that I am in the process of building a small force which would police the fief.”

She nodded.

“We are faced with a few difficulties. We have no citizens with any experience in that regard; some very few had parents whose experience with the Law was perhaps not one we wish to repeat. We also now have a large number of citizens who are not yet familiar with the style of law I wish to put into practice, and who further cannot speak either Elantran or Barrani.”

“You’re not going to write laws in High Barrani.”

“I fail to see why not; it has worked admirably for a force composed almost entirely of mortals for some hundreds of years.”

“Most of the people you’d be employing can’t
read
it.”

“Neither, if I recall correctly, could you.”

Morse snorted.

“The point I am attempting to make,” Tiamaris continued, “is that there is no such force in place at the moment. The investigations, such as they are, will have no support structures outside of the information Tara—or myself—can provide. Lord Sanabalis has offered his services should you require them; he will, however, be found along the border watch with the linguists. He was willing to see me hand the investigation to you in its entirety, however.”

“And you?”

“I concur. Your methods and your general lack of tact will not harm you; nor, at this moment in time, will it harm my own reputation.”

“What,” Kaylin asked, “are we investigating, exactly?”

“On the surface of things, a series of murders.”

“Murders.”

“You
are
familiar with the term?”

She heard Morse snicker and ignored it; if she didn’t it was going to be a long day. Or week. Or month. “It’s not generally in use in the fiefs,” was her clipped reply. “And frankly, when bodies are discovered, unless they’re of import to the fieflord’s authority, it’s not generally considered a problem.”

His eyes shaded instantly to an orange bronze. “That would be because your previous experience of the fiefs involved Lords who were notoriously underfocused. The people who have died are my citizens and my subjects. Mine. If I’m not of a mind to kill them myself, no one else will do so without repercussions.”

Now,
that
sounded like a Dragon. Kaylin frowned. “You’re versed in the practices of the Investigative branches of the Halls of Law—you’ve worked with the Hawks before.”

He nodded and rose. Glancing at the mirror he said—thankfully, in High Barrani—“Records.”

CHAPTER 8

The mirror, which had reflected the Dragon Lord’s image until he spoke the word, seemed to shatter; shards flew out from its surface. But Tiamaris didn’t move, and after the initial harsh crack, neither did the shards. He stepped back, gestured, and they began to coalesce—beyond the mirror’s surface. Kaylin, who’d seen her share of mirrors, had never seen one that did this; the only one that had come close in her experience had also then been put strictly
off
limits as dangerous.

Tiamaris was as expressive as Dragons usually were; he never looked snide, he never looked smug. Mostly he looked dispassionate or annoyed. There was, however, just the hint of a smile as he spoke to the mirror again.

“Map, Capstone.”

Kaylin frowned. Capstone was one of the longer roads in the fief. “Morse, isn’t that where—”

“Yeah. Great big one-off Shadow on your first day back in the fief.”

“Burned down the building? There, near Holdstock?”

Morse nodded.

“Is it part of the reconstruction?”

“It is part of the planned reconstruction,” Tiamaris replied. “But at the moment, rebuilding border towers and defenses are a priority. Capstone and Holdstock,” he continued, and the rather large and almost featureless lines of road coalesced into images that resembled the fief as it actually was. “The first body was discovered here.”

“That’s the burned-out building.”

“Actually, it’s the one to the side; Barren wasn’t concerned with containing fire.”

“Badly scorched?”

“That was one of the unusual things about the victim. No.”

She frowned. “So the person died there after the fire?”

He was silent.

“Records,” Kaylin said sharply. Tiamaris nodded to Tara, and the mirror rotated to face Kaylin. “Image of body discovered at 84 Capstone.”

“I should warn you,” Tiamaris said, “that Barren did not see fit to operate a morgue.”

“So you don’t have the bodies anywhere.”

“We do now, but if others died in a similar fashion during the encroachment under Barren’s reign, we have no records or information about their deaths beyond what Tara herself remembers—”

“My memories of that time are incomplete,” was the quiet reply. “My memories of the later period of Illien are likewise incomplete. My memories of Tiamaris, however, are not.”

“None of your memories contain anything relevant?”

Tara hesitated. “I am not certain,” she said at last.

The mirror had divulged the standing image of a young woman. She was clothed in a style that Kaylin didn’t recognize—and it
was
a style; it wasn’t the desperate hand-me-downs of most of Kaylin’s early life in Nightshade or Barren. For one, it wasn’t torn, and it seemed to fit the girl perfectly; it was a deep shade of blue, although the sleeves were edged in something that looked like dirt-covered gold thread. She’d apparently only had luck in dresses; her feet were bare; her hands were also bare of rings or any discoloration that might have indicated they’d once existed.

“Cause of death?” Kaylin asked softly. She approached the image that floated beyond the mirror’s surface and examined it. She could walk around the body; she didn’t try to touch it. But there was no blood on the dress, nothing that indicated fatal wounding; her neck was not mottled or bruised; her face was not marked. The back of her head did not look crushed, and she had none of the bloat that Kaylin associated with a drowning death; her fingernails were clean, and what Kaylin could see of her wrists appeared to be unbruised.

Tiamaris said, “We have no coroner. And no, before you ask, my expertise at dismemberment rarely involved careful examination of the dead.”

“Magic?”

Tiamaris glanced at Tara. Tara said, “I’m not certain.”

It wasn’t a no. “We’ll head that way first. Is the building structurally sound?”

“On the west side, yes. Which is where the body was found. There is, before you leave, more.”

“Who found the body?”

“A young boy; he was chasing a ball or a stone, against the wishes of the old woman who was serving as his guardian.”

“And word reached you?”

“Not directly,” Tiamaris replied, nodding at Tara.

“Where was the dress made?” Severn asked quietly, reminding everyone that he was still in the room.

“An interesting question,” Tiamaris replied. “Why do you ask?”

“The shade of blue is unusual; I’m not conversant with all our dyes, but it can’t be common.”

Morse was looking at the side of Severn’s head. Turning to Kaylin, she said, “Did he really come out of the fiefs?”

Kaylin nodded. “Same one that produced me.”

“Mirror: mark first victim,” Tiamaris said.

“Victim’s name?” Kaylin asked.

“She doesn’t appear to have had one,” was the reply.

“No one was willing to identify her?”

Tiamaris and Tara exchanged a glance. It was Tara who answered. “No one recognized her.”

In the fiefs, that was pretty common; no one knew
anything
that could get them in trouble. They forgot their own names, their homes, and their families if anyone they didn’t trust asked. “No one you asked?”

“No one who spoke of the incident at all,” was the calm reply. After a pause, she added, “I listened.”

Kaylin could see clearly why Sanabalis found her alarming. She grimaced. While it wouldn’t be the first time she’d marked a corpse as Victim Number something, it always irritated her. “How many victims in total?”

Tiamaris didn’t reply. Not directly. “Mirror,” he said. “Capstone and Enclave.”

The silent, standing corpse disintegrated into almost instant particles of light that shed color and shifted position. When they reintegrated, Kaylin was looking at a topographical map of Capstone and Enclave. It wasn’t one of the streets she’d frequented at Barren’s behest in her six months in Barren, but she was familiar with the intersection; among other things, it housed a well.

The map now centered
on
the well, and Kaylin looked away. “In the water?” she asked quietly.

“Very good, Private. There was a difficulty with the water itself, and it was brought—quickly—to my attention. The corpse was in the water.”

“Drowned?”

“That would be the reasonable assumption. It is not, for reasons which will be obvious, the correct one in my opinion. Mirror, second victim.”

Once again the three-dimensional image disintegrated, and light rippled out in concentric spheres, changing shape and color. When it finally stilled, Kaylin frowned. “Mirror,” she said, “second victim.”

The image didn’t change. She turned to Tara. “The mirror—”

“The mirror is relaying the correct information,” the Tower replied.

“But—but it’s the same woman.”

Severn began to walk around the standing-dead-simulacra. “It seems to be the same woman,” he told Kaylin, “but the
dress
has clearly been in the water for some small time.”

“It’s the same dress, too.”

Tiamaris nodded.

“Did you see this corpse?”

He nodded again.

“Did you see the first one?”

“Yes. The Lady was present and examined both of the bodies.”

“I don’t know how refined the Lady’s sense of smell is. I know Dragons are close to Leontines. Was there any way to distinguish them?”

Tiamaris lifted a hand. “Both were dead.”

“I’ll take that as an inconclusive. When the bodies were unclothed were there any identifying marks—birthmarks, old scars, missing teeth—that you could use to tell them apart?”

“Mirror. Victim one and victim two.”

Both women now appeared as standing—and naked—corpses. They were oriented in the same position, but their eyelids had been pulled up, and their mouths opened to reveal even rows of teeth. Kaylin had watched Red in the morgue; she’d seen her share of unclothed, and often partially disassembled, bodies. They often bothered new recruits; they’d never bothered Kaylin as much. The people were dead; they felt no shame, no pain, and no fear.

Neither did these women.

Both she and Severn walked around their fronts and backs, but they spent most of their time looking at the women’s teeth. Not only did both women have all of them, but the teeth themselves seemed, admittedly to their inexpert eye, to be the same set in each mouth.

“Notice any identifying marks on either?” Kaylin asked Severn, because she could find none. Severn shook his head. Almost everyone had some sort of blemish, freckle, birthmark, mole, or scar by these women’s ages. Neither woman appeared to have read that memo.

Morse watched, but said nothing.

“Tara, did anyone recognize this woman? The second victim?”

“No. But they were a great deal more upset because of where her body was found. There was some anger.”

“I bet.” Killing someone was frowned on. Killing someone and dumping their corpse into the well, however, was making your personal vendetta everyone else’s grief, and only the fieflord could get away with that for long. “I think we need to head down to Capstone.”

Tiamaris lifted a hand. “I have not yet made the extent of the difficulty clear.”

“There’s more?”

“There is, as you so elegantly put it, more.”

“Tell me.”

“There are five more victims.”

“Five?”

He nodded.

“Are they
all
the same woman?”

“Yes.”

Two hours later, all the mirror images had been examined; notes had been taken as Tiamaris talked. The first two deaths—if indeed the victims had died where they’d been found—had been on Capstone, but almost at opposite ends of the street. The other five had been spread across the fief.

“I understand why Sanabalis called this subtle,” Kaylin finally said. “There doesn’t seem to be
any
obvious cause of death. There weren’t, as far as we can tell, any encroachments of Shadow anywhere near the vicinity?”

“None,” Tara said. The single word was definitive because it could be; if she was certain, it was true.

“The first of the bodies was discovered after the Norannir arrived?”

“Yes.”

“But they haven’t been connected with the Norannir at all.”

“No. If there were obvious violence, obvious physical damage, it would be…difficult. But no.”

“And there’s no chance at all that this is somehow the
same
corpse and it’s just been moved around?”

“None. The Lady houses our de facto morgue at the moment. I did not feel it wise to contain the bodies within the heart of the Tower; she feels it is safe to house them in the spaces in which we entertain. There are, at present, seven bodies laid out. Magic has been used to both safeguard and preserve them, and if you wish to examine the actual—”

“I do.” She didn’t, but that was true of half the things her job required.

“Tiamaris, has anyone else gone missing?” Kaylin asked as they walked at a brisk clip down the wide halls.

“How, precisely, would we determine this?”

She cursed. In Leontine. There was no missing persons department in the fief. There was no official way of making reports, and even if there had been, no one would actually make them.

As if he could read her mind, he said, “Within the next two years, a full and official census will be taken, and the records that result will be housed in the Town Hall.”

“The
what?
”

Tiamaris raised a brow. “While I understand that human hearing is not as acute as one could desire, I believe you heard me.”

Kaylin turned to Morse. Morse offered a very fieflike shrug. He was the boss; she wasn’t arguing.

“We will also,” he added, “build a more martial hall which will house my police force. Neither project is viable at the moment, given the manpower being diverted to the interior border—but we are still left with this particular problem.”

“The first death occurred—or rather, was discovered—how long after the Norannir arrived?”

“A day.”

“Tiamaris, they’ve only been here for what, two days? Three?”

“Three.”

“So the rest of the bodies—”

“Yes. All of the seven have been discovered in the past two days.”

“Do you think you’ve missed any?”

“Possibly. The Lady judged it unwise to stir unrest in this regard, and a more thorough investigation would almost certainly cause unrest at this point.”

Kaylin snorted. “Morse?”

“I’ve asked a few questions in the right—or what used to be the right—places.” She shrugged. “So far, nothing—but it’s only been a day, and I’ve mostly been at the borders, same as the rest.”

Kaylin nodded. Tiamaris and Tara now stopped in front of a door that was as wide as any of the others in the Tower; it was less ornate. It, like the other doors, was completely free of door wards; it was also free of handle or knob. This wasn’t a problem for Tara, who merely nodded at it. It opened.

Going from a dining hall that the Imperial Palace might boast to a room with corpses lying across two of three large stone slabs—in a lower than normal temperature—was a little like arriving as a guest and being thrown into the dungeon. Straightening her shoulders, Kaylin took one short breath, expelled it, and headed toward the bodies.

Severn joined her. They were fully clothed, and at that, in the same dress; the dresses themselves had taken some damage, although most of it was cosmetic. “Nothing changed when you removed the dresses?”

Tara frowned. “No. Not noticeably.”

Severn cut a piece of cloth from the hem of one dress, marked it, and slid it into his pouch. He did this with the hem of each of the dresses. Kaylin clipped hair samples. “So, at the moment we have no clear idea if anyone else has disappeared.”

“Many people are missing; many died in the incursions. There is no system in place at the moment to account for them all.”

“Have you consulted the Norannir?”

Tiamaris raised a brow. “No. Why?”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to tie these deaths—if they are that—to the Norannir, but the timing seems suspicious.”

“The dead woman is—or was—human, a race that they’d not encountered before their arrival here.”