Janyn watched as his client sagged back in his chair, shocked by the guard's announcement. Fear made Brent's complexion go bloodlessly shallow; his hard green eyes seemed to lose focus for an instant before snapping back to reality.
"Prentiss is...dead?"
"Murdered. There's no mistake about it. That's two in three days, Brent." The sergeant turned to Janyn. "Who's this?"
Though the question had been meant for the merchant, Janyn answered for himself. Clients were prone to lie every so often, when they had some agenda, and Janyn rarely wanted to play along.
"Janyn Carlyle, from the Hunter's Guild. Mr. Brent hired me to look into Tyrell's murder on his behalf--and apparently this new one, as well."
The sergeant's gaze narrowed, pulling his thick eyebrows together until they were almost a single line.
"Don't trust the guard to do its job, hey?"
"Two heads are better than one."
"Yeah, but are three better than two?"
The sergeant looked Janyn up and down assessingly, so Janyn returned the favor. Paul was a typical village guard, probably the biggest man in Morova. He looked to be on the high side of thirty but he was still big-muscular instead of big-fat, implying that he worked at his job instead of lounging around on his rump. The leather breastplate--sand worm hide boiled in paraffin--was par for the course, as were the sword slung over his back and the head-cracker and coil of rope at his waist. He was undoubtedly tough, but the questions of skill, honesty, and intellect remained.
Idiot, Janyn told himself. You're already in a glaring match with the local guard. Taking this job was stupid.
"You look pretty handy with a blade," Paul decided. "How long have you been working for Brent?"
"I took his job offer at the Guild yesterday afternoon. This was our initial meeting you walked in on."
"You're here to protect him?"
"I'm here to find a killer, same as you."
"And if I've already found him?"
Janyn smiled thinly.
"The Guild collected its deposit up front."
Paul's lips curled wryly.
"Good for them."
Good for Janyn and Brent, too. A man with a sense of humor was if not necessarily more quick-witted, at least likely to be more imaginative than a dour stoneface. Imagination might keep Brent a free man until Janyn could gather proof of his innocence.
If there was proof.
"I've got questions for Brent, now. Much as I'd like to perform for an audience, you're not the law. If you're serious about trying to solve this crime, though, you might want to stop by Deacon's. That's Kurtis Deacon, the undertaker. You might try out your 'two heads' theory there, hunter."
"Maybe so."
"We'll talk again."
"I hope so. I'll probably have a few questions for you the next time we meet."
Janyn got up and left the two men alone. Brent's housekeeper, a well-kept matron in her late thirties, gave him directions to the undertaker's, in between curses directed at Sergeant Paul's rudeness. Apparently Brent had won his employee's loyalty, if nothing else. It said something about him.
When two of a man's enemies were killed in three nights, it said something else.
Morova, Janyn decided as he strolled through the village, was typical of its type: dry and dusty, with dirt paths for streets and small, whitewashed buildings capped with ornamental crenelations and often domed ceilings, the domes pierced with windows to provide air and light. There were a couple of general stores, a dressmaker's, a doctor's, an open-air mart for local farmers to trade at and three bars. Janyn figured which tavern a person chose to drink at was the closest thing to a social register the village had. The Red Dog looked particularly scruffy and dilapidated, the kind of place that would suit a small-town criminal boss.
Not for the first time Janyn asked himself what he was doing there. He'd meant to walk out on Brent, to turn the job down and move on. He wasn't a crime-solver. He liked puzzles and riddles, but not the kind where people's lives were at stake.
But he'd seen village "justice" at work before. That made it almost inevitable.
The undertaker's was on the outskirts of the village, backing directly onto the cemetery. The door wasn't even closed; Janyn supposed there were some places where break-ins just weren't a problem.
He paused on the threshold and sighed. Sardonic wit, even in his own thoughts, was a sure sign that he was worried. He needed to be careful and not get too agitated, yet. He didn't know the facts, and for all he knew they might be four-square against Dolan Brent. With another deep breath, Brent stepped into the cool, dark foyer.
Some undertakers tried to formalize death, with carpets, flowers, and similar decor, to help put the bereaved at ease. Kurtis Deacon didn't appear to be one of those. The floor was bare stone, the furniture utilitarian. He clearly dealt not with comforting the bereaved survivors, but with the efficient and sanitary disposal of the deceased. A small bell not unlike those found at an inn's registration desk sat on the counter; Janyn tapped it twice.
The bell's tone was brisk and clear, and the manner of the slim, spare man who came out of a side room was similar.
"What can I do for you?"
"I'm here to inspect the body of Ovan Prentiss; Sergeant Paul said it had been taken here. I'd like to see Victor Tyrell's body too, if it's still here."
"Glad to help. Your partner's here already. Prentiss is just through there, in the embalming room." Deacon pointed to another arch.
"Thanks." Partner? Maybe that's what Paul meant with all his two-heads comments.
"No problem. You ought to wear your badge, though. I'd have known you at once, then."
Janyn went through the indicated arch. The room was cool, almost cold, and dimly lit by the pale glow from two ceramic vessels hung from the ceiling. The light resembled that cast by certain luminescent fungi and mosses that grew in underground caves, and after a moment he realized that must be what the lamps contained.
Three waist-high tables dominated the room; a naked corpse was stretched out on one while a robed figure stood over it, touching with thin hands and muttering softly under its breath.
"Hello?"
"...six inches by..."
"Excuse me?"
"...cauterized on..."
Janyn stepped forward and tapped the examiner's shoulder. The figure spun around and the hunter nearly gasped in shock at the gruesome apparition. It took a moment before he realized the emaciated face was not some ghost or undead spirit, with pale skin pulled tightly over the bone to make a death's head of a face and a black crescent moon running from the left side of the forehead, down through the left eye, bisecting the mouth, just grazing the chin, and rising up to the right cheek. The mark was similar, he noticed, to the face-paint worn by certain villagers in the northeast, far away from the Kadary Basin, but at second glance he saw that it was tattooed on. The thought of the hollow wooden needles piercing the delicate flesh of eyelid and lip to admit the ink nearly made him shudder again.
Only belatedly did he realize that he was staring at a woman.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
She was about five-five, though she had a slight stoop that subtracted another couple of inches, and she couldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds with her exaggerated thinness. Her hands were as skeletal as her face and the nails a half-inch long, but rounded rather than trimmed. What he'd taken for a robe was actually a black mantle thrown over her shoulders, worn over a simple green dress and black boots, the skirt coming to just above the knee and the boots just below. Hair the same shade as the dress was piled in an efficient knot on the back of her head, but her eyes were a disconcerting gray, like smoke or a morning fog off the sea in Termi.
A gold medallion ornamented with a steel inlay of a watchtower hung around her neck, showing just beneath the mantle's hem. Was this the badge Deacon had expected him to have?
"I'm Janyn Carlyle, a hunter from the Guild," he managed to say once past his first moments of shock. "I'm here to inspect the body of Ovan Prentiss. I have the sergeant's permission."
"You don't have mine. Still, the question of concurrent jurisdiction has never been settled. It might mean joint action is required, but it might also allow simultaneous, independent control over the whole." She tapped her thin lower lip with her forefinger's nail. "As you're here, you had might as well stay. Who is your client?"
Her voice did not match her appearance at all; it was clear and direct, even forceful.
"The trader, Dolan Brent."
"Sergeant Paul's prime suspect. Mr. Brent hired you to help clear him of the charges, of course?"
Janyn nodded.
"Not surprising, and of course I only arrived this morning; he hasn't met me and probably doesn't yet know I'm here," the woman said.
The mystery of it was getting old.
"I hate to sound ignorant," he said, "but exactly who are you and what is your authority?"
She blinked in surprise.
"No one told you? That was silly."
"Well, I think Sergeant Paul thought me finding you here would be his little joke on an uppity hunter, and Deacon assumed I was your partner on sight."
"I don't have a partner, though Zio knows it would not be a bad idea. Surely you recognize this?" She tapped the badge lightly.
"I'm afraid not."
"It's the sigil of the Order of Kadary Magistrates."
Janyn frowned.
"Kadary Magistrates? It sounds familiar, but..."
The woman shook her head.
"We were founded a year ago, after a number of criminal cases were solved in the Kadary area by hunters hired from your guild. The town council thought it was absurd that it was necessary to hire outsiders--mercenaries--to solve crimes while the guard could not. A special group of investigators was put together, hired full-time by the council. In fact, I believe that several of us were ex-hunters who preferred a permanent position to the intermittent job offers of hunting."
"I see. Why are you here, though?"
"The other villages of the Kadary Basin have entered into agreements with Kadary's council. The villages pay a yearly stipend and can in turn call upon the Magistrates to assist them to investigate crimes."
"I see. Morova covers part of the cost of your salary, and in return they can call you in if they need an expert police."
"That's right," she confirmed, nodding.
"So this case is as much yours as it is Sergeant Paul's. Brent didn't mention you."
"I doubt he knew. I only arrived this morning."
Janyn nodded.
"Do you have any problem with me being here?"
"'Neither one unbeliever nor a thousand shall stand before the faithful,'" she said. It was obviously a quotation, but Janyn couldn't place the source. "Either you're an honest hunter, in which case your help would be appreciated, or you are not, in which case I'll find out. In have no reason to object to your presence."
She said it with complete ease and confidence, as if she was merely stating an axiomatic truth. Janyn found the effect vaguely disconcerting.
"Thank you, Magistrate--?"
"Theresa Serin. You can call me Tera."
"Tera. You've obviously been checking over Prentiss's body; have you learned anything?"
She nodded, then turned to the body, while simultaneously stepping aside for Janyn to approach the corpse. As a hunter, Janyn was well familiar with violent death, and was experienced in reading the signs it left on its victims. Reading these traces in the wild often let him identify what kind of monster he might be facing. Even so, in this cool, dark room, a victim of murder stretched out naked with cold precision on a table, the lurking shadow of death was disquieting. A monster attack was unfortunate, but it was natural, a predator seeking prey. Murder was different. Murder was evil. It was that realization rather than the condition of the body that made the skin crawl up and down his spine.
"An old man," he noted. "I doubt he could have put up much of a fight, given his build, but he's been slashed and cut repeatedly."
"Many of the wounds are superficial," Tera noted. "Unless pain and shock would have caused death, only a couple are potentially mortal wounds."
"There isn't much blood. Did Deacon clean the body?"
"That's what I wondered at first, but see here?" Without apparent concern, she ran a fingertip along the edge of one wound. "It's been cauterized. All the wounds are like that. And see here; these are his clothes." She turned and picked up a pile from the floor, sorting out a shirt. "He was wearing this when he died. Look at where it's been cut."
"There aren't many bloodstains, and along the edges..." He raised his eyes, meeting Tera's gaze. "The fabric's been burnt?"
She nodded.
"It doesn't make any sense. Whatever wounded him seems to have been red-hot." She tapped a nail against her lower lip again. "You're a hunter, Janyn, so you're familiar with weapons. What might have made these wounds?"
He looked at them again.
"They're all slashes, cutting blows instead of thrusts. Too narrow and shallow for an axe; an axe strikes cleaving blows, not shallow cutting ones. A sword is more versatile, but when striking to kill it also slashes. Still, it's more likely that than a knife; the wounds are too long to easily be a knife-cut. Besides, the natural attack for a knife is to stab, not cut, not unless..."
Janyn shuddered as the thought struck him.
"Tera, if I saw a man who'd been repeatedly cut, but not fatally, with a red-hot knife, I wouldn't think he'd been in a fight, but that he'd been tortured."
Her eyes widened.
"Torture?"
Janyn nodded.
"These wounds are too consistent, wouldn't you agree? They weren't made by someone hacking wildly, without skill."
"I see. In that case, there would be varying injuries, some shallow, some deep?"
"That's right. This implies skill and deliberation."
Tera's face twisted in anger; with her emaciation the fury lent her an almost demonic aspect.
"What kind of monster could do this to an old man?"
"One with a great deal of cruelty, or else a great deal of hate."
She looked down at the body again, the darkness still in her gaze.
"Something's wrong, though. There's no indication that he was held down, or bound." Tera slid a fingertip over the corpse's wrist. "No bruising, no marks from rope. If he was being tortured, he'd have struggled, fought back. He doesn't look particularly strong, but it still would have required some kind of restraint."
"Maybe so. He could have been drugged, I suppose, or held in place by techniques. Rimit, maybe. That would paralyze a person's voluntary muscle control, but leave them conscious, able to feel." He paused, then shook his head. "No, that's absurd. Rimit only lasts a minute, at most. The killer would have had to use it over and over, or else work very fast, which doesn't go together with the idea of torture."
"I agree. Chemicals are more likely, and we can test for some of them. They remain in the blood and do not metabolize unless allowed to run their course."
Helping herself to Deacon's apparatus, Tera selected a beaker and a sharp knife. Efficiently, she turned the dead man's arm, made an incision, and drained off a sample of blood.
"There's a relatively simple test for arrowkiss and a more complex one for dreamflower. Ma'chen is different--it breaks down in hours and wouldn't show up even this late, but it's rare, as you can tell since it still has only its Native Motavian name."
"Even so, how would an outsider be able to drug Prentiss? Wouldn't it confirm that he was killed by one of his household?" Which, in turn, was unlikely if the crime was linked to Victor Tyrell's death.
"I don't know. Maybe after we've seen where Prentiss was killed we'll be able to answer that."