Ghosts of Mehan'Gir Read online

  ‘It’s possible, especially given the timing, but you’re carrying a dagger. If you have a dagger, why would you bludgeon this man to death with a stone skull?’

  ‘But apart from me, who else would have killed him?

  ‘If he’d been alive twenty minutes ago, then I’d have killed him,’ she said. ‘So clearly he had enemies who hated him enough to take out a contract on his life. Let’s see what we can find here.’

  ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘Anything that might explain why this man has been killed – either by you, by whoever took out the contract on his life, or by some third person. From the look of the place, someone’s already started searching it: it’s possible that something disturbed them, perhaps you, and they left before they found anything.’

  ‘But we don’t know what they were looking for.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And if they left after finding it?’

  ‘Then we won’t find it,’ the assassin shrugged. She turned her attention to the desk, and pulled the drawers out, rifling through them and tipping their contents on the floor. After that, she started taking books from shelves, shaking them in case something fell from between the pages and then simply dropping them.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be more careful?’

  ‘He’s not going to wake up and object,’ she assured him. ‘And there’s no reason to conceal our search.’

  ‘But someone else might come.’

  ‘Then we’d better be quick, but we still don’t need to hide what we’re doing. The place had been searched before we arrived, and anyone who comes later will find his body in the middle of the floor with a hole in the back of his skull. Either of these facts will probably alert them to the fact that someone was here, regardless how careful we decide to be now.’

  Lanvik had no answer to that.

  ‘What about all these?’ He pointed to the documents already strewn about the floor.

  ‘They’re patient documents,’ she shook her head.

  ‘Might there be something important?’

  ‘There might be, but probably nothing that we would recognise. Also, whoever searched this place before us simply left them here, so I doubt there’s any point looking too closely.’

  ‘I’ll check the other room then.’

  He walked back into the first room, the consulting room. From the look of it, there had been a struggle here: half the contents of the room were already on the floor. He looked through some of the papers, but there were only bills and appointment letters, and the kind of documents you would expect in a doctor’s practice. He turned over each chair in turn, feeling around the base and the back for any kind of hidden compartment. Then he turned his attention to the desk drawers, and the back panel of the desk and the bookcases.

  The lowest shelf of the bookcase was not as deep as the other three. He tapped it with the pommel of the dagger: it definitely sounded different from the others, so he carefully levered at the edges with the point. The panel popped out and revealed dozens of hidden documents, tied in thin bundles.

  ‘I’ve found something,’ he called to the assassin, clearing a space on the floor. Together, they sat and looked through them.

  The first bundle contained a number of identity papers and licences in various different names, presumably false, and included some blanks.

  ‘Well, it seems that our Doctor Gossine was not all that he seemed,’ the assassin said. ‘Perhaps one of these is his true identity.’

  Lanvik leafed through them, but none of the names were at all familiar to him.

  The second collection was of Promissory Notes and Bonds. The assassin tossed them aside.

  Next was a bundle of loose scraps of paper and a thin notebook. Lanvik leafed through the notebook but it was written in some kind of shorthand or code. There was nothing immediately obvious that might have revealed what the contents concerned: the notes scrawled on the little pieces of paper were in the same code – perhaps waiting to be transcribed into the notebook.

  ‘Interesting,’ the assassin remarked. ‘Notes about something he was watching or monitoring, perhaps, but not helpful. Not if we can’t read them.

  There were three further bundles: collections of letters, in various hands. A number were helpfully dated, and the separation into bundles seemed to have been based entirely on the age of the correspondence rather than by its subject or sender.

  ‘Here,’ she showed him the most recent two, side by side. They were tiny, each comprising only one or two lines. The letter immediately preceding them was in the same hand and dated three months earlier. ‘Look at the folds,’ she said. ‘These were delivered rolled up, so probably by messenger bird.’

  The first note read: “Have left the Court. Alarming discoveries. Suspicions confirmed, but don’t worry. Will contact you when it is safe.” The other said: “Hope to see you in the second month, as early as possible. Action will be required.”

  ‘That would be about now,’ Lanvik said. ‘So perhaps there’s a connection between his death and the letters. Maybe the sender was the killer, since it looks like it was someone he knew.’

  ‘Perhaps, or else our Doctor Gossine here was killed in order to prevent the meeting from taking place,’ she suggested. ‘Or it’s a coincidence. But there was a premium on my contract to complete it as quickly as possible, so the timing was important.’

  ‘Do you have a name, Mistress Killer?’

  ‘They call me Foxblade, but it’s not really my name. And you?’

  ‘They call me Lanvik, but that’s not really my name either.’

  ‘Lanvik?’ she looked up, a little surprised: ‘Now, that’s an interesting name. Extremely interesting.’ Then she asked: ‘Are you a mage, Lanvik?’

  He was surprised. How could she have known that from his name?

  ‘So they say,’ he admitted.

  ‘But your hair is long. And you have no staff.’

  ‘Even so. Why did you think I might be?’

  ‘I was in a place called Lanvik a few weeks ago, and they were holding a mage prisoner there. But he escaped and vanished. Your name seemed like such a coincidence that I thought it might have been you.’

  ‘I didn’t really escape,’ he told her. ‘I was rescued.’

  ‘By?’

  He told her about Kiergard Slorn and his Company: no details really, nothing about what else they had done in Urthgard or in neighbouring Tremark, only that they had sailed south to the Inner Sea.

  ‘I don’t recognise his name, but there are dozens of such mercenary bands across the Three Lands. Why did you come to Uvellia?’

  ‘I don’t know. I had an overwhelming urge – a feeling that I had to travel here.’

  ‘Then you separated from this “Company”?’

  ‘No. They are here as well: they came with me.’

  ‘In that case, why are you here alone? In the middle of the night?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, and then added: ‘I was looking for a doctor.’ That still sounded an inadequate explanation, so he added: ‘My head hurt.’ Then he asked her in return, ‘Why were you in Lanvik?’

  ‘To kill someone,’ she said. ‘But he was dead before I arrived.’

  ‘Lord Skollet?’

  ‘Indeed,’ she confirmed. ‘The man you were accused of killing. I don’t suppose you remember whether you killed him or not?’

  ‘No. No I don’t. I don’t remember anything at all before the prison cell.’

  She stared at him for a few seconds, unblinking. ‘Your story is fascinating, but not helpful.’ She looked down at the stack of documents. ‘I am not allowed to take anything away with me, much though I would like to. Do you have any use for these?’

  ‘Maybe the letters,’ he said. ‘I’d like to read them.’

  She lifted the Promissory Notes: ‘According to their face value, these are worth a good deal of money.’

  ‘Then I’ll take them for the Company.’ He folded them with the letters and crammed them into the opposite pocket from the dagger. He had no use for the identity documents and, without knowing their history, it occurred to him that they might be dangerous to carry or to use. The notebook, written in code as it was, was also useless.

  ‘We should finish here quickly,’ she told him.

  ‘I’ll check the front shop,’ he agreed.

  ‘Be careful,’ she warned. ‘You could be observed from the street.’

  ‘I’ll keep the lamp turned down,’ he assured her.

  There wasn’t much of interest in the front. He found pills and bottles and other articles for sale on shelves behind the counter; there was a line of simple wooden chairs for people waiting and a little wall-shrine to Ja’Orr, the Healer of Bodies. Other than that, there were cupboards under the counter that were mostly empty apart from a few bundles of clothing. He couldn’t find any evidence of false backs or sides. There was a small metal cash box, which he shook in one hand and decided was empty.

  As he searched, he heard occasional thumps from the other rooms. The young assassin girl was tapping on the walls and floors looking for secret compartments: whenever she found anything that sounded slightly different, she was pulling off the wall panels in case there was something behind them.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ he asked her. ‘More papers?’

  ‘No – I think we have already found his hidden documents. If there are more then I trust you will find them, but for someone who had secrets to hide, he has a surprising lack of personal weapons. I believe there must be something hidden somewhere.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t like to use weapons … you know, as a doctor.’

  She didn’t answer that, but carried on pulling at the woodwork on the walls in case any of the boards were loose.

  He walked round her and into the fourth room, which was a surgery or examination room of some sort. There was very little there, and she had already lifted one floorboard and removed several of the coloured panels from the lower part of the wall. He sliced open the trolley bed, and felt through the layers of felt and cloth for anything hidden inside.

  There was a sudden crash from the other room, and he heard the assassin curse. A moment later, she called: ‘Here!’ He ran through – she had levered off a section of the panelling that clad the upper wall, revealing a narrow alcove. Sitting in the alcove was a mage’s staff.

  It was obvious and unmistakable: about six feet long with a small bend towards one end, and made from some smooth, featureless white material.

  ‘I will not touch it,’ she told him. ‘I have heard what they say. But you might want to.’

  Without hesitating, he walked over and lifted it down from the alcove. He didn’t know if he had been expecting anything to happen – a tingle of magic perhaps, or some flashback of memory – but there was nothing. The staff felt neither warm nor cold to the touch and was smooth enough that his hand could move easily along it.

  She was looking at him as if she had fully expected him to be reduced to a charred cinder simply from touching the staff. ‘Perhaps you are a mage after all.’

  ‘Or perhaps Doctor Gossine was,’ Lanvik said. The Doctor had a full head of hair, but Lanvik remembered something that Kiergard Slorn had told Garran: a shaved head might be nothing more than a uniform or a livery for mages – only used to make it easier for mages to disguise themselves when they needed to.

  ‘Yes,’ the assassin agreed. ‘Hair or not, it seems clear that this man was a mage. Why else and how else would he have a staff? Are you finished here?’

  It was almost an hour since they had met.

  ‘Yes,’ he decided. It didn’t seem likely that there was anything else to find.

  ‘Then get away from this place, this town,’ she advised. ‘This man will have friends, relations, customers: his body will be discovered in the next few hours. You have no real idea if anyone saw you coming here or leaving. Even worse, because you cannot remember, you have no idea if you are actually known in these parts – as an associate of Doctor Gossine, perhaps. Or worse, as his enemy.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘No-one has seen me this evening,’ she assured him, ‘and no-one knows me here.’ She nodded towards the staff, which he had leaned against the wall: ‘Are you planning to take that with you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It may help me get my memories back, or my magecraft. Or both.’

  ‘It might, but it will also incriminate you if anyone knew the Doctor had it. And at best it will attract the attention of every person who sees you, even from a distance.’ She brought out a small knife with an extremely narrow blade and used it to slice across and all the way down the curtain that covered the window.

  ‘Your knife is really sharp,’ he said. None of the weapons that the Company carried could have cut through the thick cloth so effortlessly.

  ‘Why would anyone carry a blunt knife?’ she shrugged.

  ‘Is that a saying in Assassin School?’

  She ignored his question and tossed him the piece of fabric. ‘Wrap the staff in this. And if you decide to keep it, I’d recommend that you find a better way to conceal it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, as he wrapped the material round and round the staff, but when he looked back up, there was no-one there. She had left, quickly and silently.

  2

  The assassin called Foxblade slipped out through the same window that she had used to enter, and then pulled it almost closed again: the same way it had been when she arrived. She stood on the sill, pulled herself onto the roof, crossed to the front of the building without a sound and waited there, standing a little back from the edge.

  When the man Lanvik emerged, she followed him silently across the rooftops – it was easily done here, where the streets were narrow and the roofs were flat. The wide boulevards of Arafel or the sharply-angled roofs of Emindur would have made this impossible, but people here built flat roofs for storage and for living in a way that simply wasn’t possible across much of the Three Lands. Of course, she had to reassure a few dogs on the way, and from time to time she found people sleeping in the open on mats: they didn’t wake and never knew she was there.

  Lanvik went straight down to the harbour, where he was met by a group of his friends. She waited until she saw which boat he boarded, but even with her spyglass she couldn’t read the name because of the harbour wall. A minute or two later, however, they started making preparations to sail. That was good – that was the sensible thing to do. If they’d arrived late at night, it was possible that they had not been seen by anyone.

  She saw the name “Magda’s Choice”, as the little boat swung out into the harbour and headed for open water.

  It was time that she left as well.

  She dropped lightly down to the street and made her way further along the bay to where she had pulled a small sailing skiff up onto the beach, with its sail collapsed and neatly folded inside. She hauled it back down to the water, climbed inside and raised the sail, ducking just in time as the wind unexpectedly gusted and the boom swung from one side to the other. Careless! she shook her head at her own temporary lapse in concentration.

  Focus on the thing that needs done first: that was one of the mantras – one of the things they taught at “Assassin School”, as the mage might have said. And now what needed done first was to get the boat away from the shore and on course for Great Tirassa. The short journey back would take a couple of hours: that would be plenty time to let her mind ponder the events of that night.

  She was staying at the small Guildhouse on Great Tirassa. It was “Tirassa” on maps, and only when you arrived did you discover it was “Great Tirassa”. There were two Chapters with rooms and the Sisters of the Silent Blade was not one of them, so she was using one of the two private rooms that the Guildhouse maintained for members of other Chapters or for Free Agents. The room was comfortable, easily twice the size of her room in Arafel, and had magnificent views across the bay: the sounds of seabirds and waves and chatter from the nearby streets drifted lazily in through the windows.

  After arriving, she had wasted no time in finding a small boat and crossing to Little Tirassa. Even so, she had arrived about an hour too late. Despite herself, her mind kept flicking back through her journey, reviewing it to find points when she could perhaps have saved an hour or two. That would have been enough – enough to arrive there in time to either dispatch Doctor Gossine himself or to encounter his actual killer, whether that was the curious mage Lanvik or someone else.

  The events in Urthgard and in Uvellia had taken place about fifty days apart.

  Travelling overland, at a leisurely pace or with limited funds, the journey from Lanvik to Uvellia would probably take around fifty days. So if there was a third agent involved, then the interval might easily have been determined by the time it took them to move from one to the other.

  But that supposed an extra person: were they the actual agent, the killer, or were they a catalyst: a cause of the deaths? Perhaps, if they even existed, they were the sender of those letters.

  When she heard about him in the north, she had thought that the mage might be a decoy: some poor Human who’d had his head shaved and been left in incriminating circumstances, perhaps in the palace itself, on the night of the murder. Perhaps he was a decoy here as well, even though she’d seen him arrive at Doctor Gossine’s practice of his own volition.

  It would have been easy to conclude that the Human was the killer, but there were so many things that didn’t seem to make sense.

  If he had killed Gossine and searched the place, then why had he come back?

  And if he had killed Gossine, then why had he not used his dagger?

  And if he had searched the place already, then why had he not found those documents the first time?

  There was also the simple fact that she had met him and he had seemed gentle – nice, she supposed. She had rather liked that about him, though it probably wouldn’t be too long before someone killed him.