Dragon Precinct (3 page)

Nodding sagely, Torin said, “Agreed. Brightblade had dinner at the castle with the Lord and Lady many times—Osric was an old friend of his. They’ll both want this one closed quickly and efficiently, and neither one will want the Brotherhood involved.”

“Not that they’ll have a choice if he died by magical means.” Danthres snarled.

Torin spoke in as grave a voice as Danthres had ever heard the usually jovial lieutenant use. “We need to take this one slowly and carefully. Even if there is no magic, Osric and the Lord and Lady will be breathing down our necks.”

Danthres shook her head. “I’ve never even heard of this idiot before today, and he’s already giving me a headache. Boneen’ll handle the peel-back if he ever deigns to arrive and we can take it from there.” One of the M.E.’s main functions—and the main reason why Danthres was willing to put up with having to deal with a mage on a daily basis—was to cast an Inanimate Residue Spell. Everyone called it a “peel-back” because it could, according to the explanation Boneen’s predecessor had given Danthres when she first signed up for the Guard, “read the psychic resonances on inanimate objects.” Translated into Common, it showed the spellcaster what happened to those objects in the recent past. This was handy when investigating a crime. “Meantime, let’s talk to who we need to talk to.” To the guard, she said, “Don’t let anyone other than Lieutenant ban Wyvald, myself, or the M.E. in here, am I understood?”

“Aye, ma’am.”

Olaf gave them the use of a storage room in which to question witnesses. Danthres found it adequate, though not as well suited to the task as the interview rooms back at the castle. Too bad that transporting everyone they needed to talk to back there was impractical.

The first person they spoke to was the cleaning woman who found the body. Her cheeks were still puffy from crying, she broke into sobs every third sentence, and she would periodically ask what kind of world they lived in when great heroes like Gan Brightblade died, but eventually Danthres, with Torin’s help, was able to get out of her that she went to Room 12 first in the hopes of getting a look at Brightblade, opened the locked door with her key—yes, she was sure it was locked, the door clicked when she put in the skeleton key—and entered to find the body on the floor. Torin asked if she knocked first, and, blushing, the woman admitted that she didn’t, hoping to catch Brightblade in some kind of state of undress. That was followed by another sobbing jag and yet another query as to the kind of world they lived in. Once they got past that again, the woman said that she just stood in the threshold screaming for who-knew-how-long, until one of the other cleaning women took her down to the kitchen.

Another cleaning woman verified her account, saying that she didn’t move from the threshold for almost a full minute, “ ’fore I was able to be gettin’ her ass down the stairs” while Olaf called the Guard. That cleaning woman also pointed out that Brightblade’s corpse seemed to have more lines on his face and more gray hair than he had had the night before, though she allowed as how that might have simply been the difference between seeing him in sunlight, as opposed to the dimmer illumination of the previous evening.

Talking to Olaf confirmed Danthres’s worst fears: Brightblade had checked in the previous morning alongside an elf, a dwarf, a human priest, a barbarian from the north (“I had to be giving him the room in the far corner so stink my inn he doesn’t”) and two halflings.

Torin looked at Danthres. “Our heroic quest.”

Olaf shrugged. “I do not know if they are questing, but I do know that they acted like old friends. Dinner they had together, yes, and laugh a lot they did. They even handle gawkers with goodness. Ate and drank, they did, all the night long.”

Danthres looked at Torin. “We’re going to need to talk to them.”

The time-chimes sounded ten, and Boneen still hadn’t shown up, even though it was now two hours since he sent the mage-bird. (“It must have been a particularly good dream,” Torin commented.) Torin suggested that they split the interviews with the rest of Brightblade’s party. Olaf gave Torin use of the kitchen, leaving Danthres to remain in the storage room. Since elves tended to view half-breeds as inferiors beneath their notice, dwarves generally hated anyone with any elven blood, and Danthres had the more sensitive nose, Torin took the elf, dwarf, and barbarian, leaving Danthres with the priest and the two halflings.

She decided to take the priest first. The man who entered the storage room introduced himself in a soft voice as Brother Genero of Velessa. Having spent some time in Treemark, which had the highest concentration of Temisans in Flingaria, Danthres recognized Genero instantly as a priest of that goddess. He wore the trademark bright red robe, had grown the traditional long, braided chin-beard (but no mustache), and had shaved his head aside from one circle of hair on the crown, tied into a topknot. The robe was ankle-length, and quite battered. It looked to her like it hadn’t been cleaned in over a month—which tracked with the travel time from Velessa to Cliff’s End on horseback. Under the robes, Danthres could see leather armor, which surprised her. She also noted that he walked with his hand angled at his left hip, as if he was expecting a scabbard to be there. This meant he often traveled armed and that he was right-handed.

An armed and armored priest. Interesting.

As he sat down on one of Olaf’s wobbly wooden chairs, Genero offered the blessings of Temisa on the Cliff’s End Castle Guard, to which Danthres grunted indifferently. Although both sides of her heritage had numerous religious traditions, Danthres had not been raised in any of them during her childhood in Sorlin; that sort of thing didn’t go on there, particularly when she was a girl. What she’d seen since departing that place—both before and after getting involved with law enforcement in Cliff’s End—led her to think that the gods were capricious at best.

“It’s such a tragic waste,” Genero said, looking down at the floor. “I have to admit, I never thought that Gan would go on to greet the next life in this way. I expected him to die in a fight—or failing that, as an old man in bed surrounded by beautiful women. Perhaps Temisa has rewarded him with that in the afterlife.”

“Perhaps,” Danthres said dryly, wondering if
everyone
was going to comment on the unexpectedness of Brightblade’s mode of dying, “but I’m more concerned with how he got there.”

Genero looked over at the wall. “I’m sure it was just an accident. He’d been drinking quite a bit, and he could be a very clumsy drunk.”

“So you don’t think he was murdered?”

“No, of course not.” He peered up at the ceiling. “Gan was one of the great heroes of our time.”

“They tend to be the ones with the longest list of enemies.”

Now, finally, Genero looked at Danthres. “I can assure you, Lieutenant, that all of Gan’s enemies are quite dead.”

“Really?” Danthres asked dubiously. “How lucky for him.” She leaned back in her own chair. “I’m told, Brother, that you and Mr. Brightblade arrived here along with five others. What was your business in Cliff’s End?”

“We were on our way to hire a boat. In fact, Gan and I planned to go to the Docklands to begin the hiring process this morning.” He smiled slightly, the first time his facial expression had truly changed since he walked in. “Obviously, that will have to be postponed.”

“Obviously,” Danthres said, making a mental note to send a message to Mermaid Precinct to have their foot patrols keep an eye out on the Docklands for the remaining six members of this little group. If any of them made any move to hire a boat, she and Torin needed to know about it. “Where were you headed?”

“No place in particular.” Genero again looked at the wall. “We were simply looking to take a voyage onto the Garamin Sea and enjoy ourselves.”

It was everything Danthres could do to keep from laughing out loud. “A ‘voyage’?”

“Yes.”

“Just to some random destination on the Garamin?”

Again, Genero looked at Danthres. “You seem to have trouble believing me.”

You don’t know the half of it.
“Look at it from my perspective, Brother—the idea that an elf and a dwarf would take a pleasure cruise together is a difficult one for me to wrap my mind around. Add in that they’re taking it with three humans and two halflings, and I’m afraid I find it impossible to believe that it’s just for pleasure.”

Genero nodded. “I can see why you in particular would think that, given your background.”

Danthres’s mood soured even further. But then, her dual heritage was fairly obvious. Her face combined the worst elements of the two races: her mother’s wide nose, large brown eyes, and shallow cheekbones did not go at all with her father’s pointed ears, high forehead, or thin lips.

“I’m sorry,” Genero said quickly, “I didn’t mean to give offense.”

Favoring the priest with her nastiest smile, Danthres said, “When you’ve given me offense, Brother, you won’t have any trouble knowing it.”

“No doubt. I assume, based on your age and accent, that your parents’ union was not a happy one?”

Danthres’s first rule of interrogation was that she asked all the questions; besides which, she had no interest in discussing her life with a murder suspect. “I don’t see how that’s relevant, Brother.”

“My point is that you’d naturally be suspicious of an elf willingly traveling with a human and a dwarf. And understandably so. But we have been through much, the seven of us. Today, Lieutenant, you live in a Flingaria that is at peace. For decades, that was not the case—human warred on human, elf warred on human, western elf warred on eastern elf, dwarf warred on elf, trolls warred on just about everyone—not to mention crazed wizards like Chalmraik or Mitos. But now, the human lands are united, the western elves are no more, and the elves and dwarves have a treaty. The plague of megalomaniacal wizards has ended.” He pointed to the doorway that led to the rest of the inn. “My comrades and I were at the forefront of much of that. It is in part through our efforts that there is such peace now. Through those hardships we have formed a bond, and we simply wish to enjoy the fruits of our labors.”

It was a very pretty speech, both heartfelt and convincing. Genero gave it with all the conviction one would expect of a man who had dedicated his life to the service of one of the gods, and Danthres didn’t believe a word of it.

She asked several more questions, most relating to where Genero was last night and this morning, but they were secondary. Her main question had been answered virtually the moment Genero had walked into the storage room.

Brother Genero of Velessa and his group had a very specific purpose in mind, and Danthres was fairly sure that the priest knew—or at least thought he knew—precisely who murdered Gan Brightblade.

The questioning of the two halflings—twins named Mari and Nari—went about as Danthres expected. They told the same sea-cruise lie as Genero, with just enough variations in their stories to sound convincingly unrehearsed, which made it all the more obvious that they’d gotten their stories straight ahead of time. Cliff’s End had more than its share of grifters, and Danthres suspected that these two would fit right in on Jorbin’s Way. Danthres patiently asked them most of the same questions she’d given the priest, and they responded with multiple digressions, numerous evasions, and a general refusal to give anything like a straight answer.

When she was done with Nari, Danthres went back to the lobby, where Torin was already waiting. “Boneen finally put in his appearance about a quarter of an hour ago,” he said. “The peel-back should be finished shortly.” The spell took about half an hour and required that there be nothing living besides the spellcaster present.

“Good.” Danthres peered up the stairs to see that the gray-and-white-stubbled guard was back to standing outside Room 12. Then she filled Torin in on her interviews. “What about yours?”

“The elf was Olthar lothSirhans.”

“Another celebrity.”

Torin grunted. “Well, this particular war hero was close-mouthed, arrogant, and gave one-word answers. That interview took only a few minutes and he couldn’t get out of the kitchen fast enough when I said we were done. Ubàrlig, the dwarf, was considerably more voluble, especially once he found out we work for Osric. It turns out he and the captain met several years back. He acted very open and friendly—but he didn’t give me any more than lothSirhans.”

“Let me guess—we’re all old friends going on a cruise through the Garamin.”

Torin nodded. “Mind you, he was carrying his axe with him—a Fjorm.”

Danthres blinked. “He has a Fjorm?”

“Yes. One of only six left—I even asked him about it, and he was more than happy to talk about how he got it and how many elves he killed with it, all without getting a scratch on the blade.”

“It must be worth a fortune.” Danthres snorted. “I’m amazed those two halflings haven’t tried to steal it.”

Torin grinned. “Perhaps they have.” The grin fell. “In any event, one doesn’t take such an item onto a pleasure cruise—especially if one is a dwarven general of Ubàrlig’s reputation. If he’s brought that axe, he intends to use it.”

“So whatever heroic quest these idiots were going on, it’s been derailed. We need to find out what it was.”

“I spoke to a few of the patrons who were sitting next to our merry band last night. Apprently, Brightblade, Ubàrlig, lothSirhans, and Bogg spent most of the night telling stories of their assorted campaigns, conquests, battles, and triumphs—and,” he added with a grin, “that was just their sexual exploits. Speaking of which, I can’t imagine that any of Bogg’s—that’s our barbarian—were with a woman who had a nose. I’m quite sure his skin has never known the touch of soap, and I’d be willing to bet several silvers that it hasn’t even encountered water that wasn’t rain. He spent most of the interview talking about how he would cut off the head of whoever killed Brightblade and then eat it.”

Before Danthres could respond to the visual image that provoked, she heard a door open from up the stairs. She looked up to see the squat form of Boneen exit the room. Dressed in a brown linen shirt that was about a size too small for him and matching pants that were a size too big, the magical examiner came down the stairs on his stubby legs, a scowl deepening his already heavily lined face. His oversized pants flapped as he came down. The pungent, spicy aroma of the spell ingredients preceded him, and Danthres could see the residue of same on his hands.