Chapter 4: Dead man's tale

A few days later, we got the summons. Yurilee and I reported again to the offices that served as Madiyan's headquarters. None of the girls looked up from their desks this time. If the atmosphere last time had been discretely professional, now it was positively funereal.

Madiyan's business suit looked like she'd slept in it. Probably she had, if she'd slept at all.

"Melusine divers located Julian's body this morning," she announced tersely. "I understand that the girl who found him was taken away in hysterics."

Yurilee sagged beside me. "Can't say that I'm surprised by that," I said. What the diver would have found, after a week in the warm Mediterranean waters, was a foul, man-shaped ruin. The crabs would have been at it, too.

"We need to know what happened to him," Madiyan continued. "Mark, the Chairwoman has agreed to let you conduct the investigation."

"I beg your pardon? I'm not a detective. I'm certainly not qualified to handle a murder investigation."

"I don't have anybody more qualified." She sounded a bit frayed. "Besides, you've already been investigating his disappearance, haven't you? You might as well continue. Plus, you're his countryman. I'd think you'd want to be involved."

I didn't want to be involved. But I didn't think Julian deserved to be thrown off a cliff, either.

As much as I disliked him intruding on my retirement paradise, I couldn't despise the man. He wasn't doing anything that I hadn't done, in other places and times. He was a professional, doing a job on behalf of his country. And he had died in the service of that country.

My country?

A soft grasp on my arm made me turn. Yurilee's face looked puffy and tired.

"Please? I do not understand what has happened, but I want to know, as well."

I looked from Yuri to Madiyan, and shrugged. "Sure, sure. I've got no tools, no training, and barely speak the local language. Obviously I'm your best choice for the job."

"Yurilee will accompany you to act as a translator. Dr. Aemilia has the body for examination, so start with her."

"And what am I supposed to do if I uncover something?"

"You will report directly to me. Don't discuss your findings with anyone else."

I returned her red stare. "Is Julian's death a state secret?"

Anger flickered in Madiyan's eyes, but quickly ebbed. "The death of a husband is an emotional subject to begin with," she said wearily. "The Interspecies Exchange Act adds diplomatic implications. Not to mention the impact on immigration. I'd prefer to have some control over the narrative." Her gaze locked with mine. "I know I can trust you to be discreet."

I supposed she could, at that. Keeping secrets – including hers - was nothing new to me. I might not like the situation, but I couldn't argue with her rationale.

"All right. I'll keep hunting, and I'll let you know what we find. At least one person knows what happened, although I doubt they're going to confess to us."

"I'm grateful, Mark. Go see Aemilia. She's expecting the two of you."

I turned to Yuri. "Are you ready to go visit the good Doctor again?"

She had gathered herself, and nodded calmly. "I will follow, and you will tell me what I must do."

That was that. We left Madiyan to her bureaucratic headaches, and set out again for Aemilia's clinic.


The late-morning sun had risen above the treeline, and we had the wide path to ourselves. Yurilee moved quietly at my side, without teasing or banter. This was no longer a romantic adventure or an analytic exercise.

This time, we knew that a dead man was waiting for us.

As we closed on the spot where I had followed Yuri into the woods, she broke the silence.

"It was not a murder."

I looked up at my teacher. Her face was somber but firm. She had stated a straightforward fact.

"How do you figure?"

Yuri's voice grew urgent. "You are all so precious to us. So precious. No woman would ever try to hurt one of our husbands."

I considered that for a few paces. "Has it never happened?"

"Not in my lifetime."

"Well, I don't think he jumped off the cliff himself."

She shook her head fiercely. "I do not know. But he could not have been harmed on purpose."

There was no point in disagreeing with her. She had known many more lamia than I had. But I had probably encountered more murderers than she had. The few facts we knew pointed toward a homicide. But facts can trick you if you trust your biases. I filed her assertion away with the rest of the clues.

We arrived at the apotekopoiia compound and made our way to the laboratory door we'd used before. I'd barely knocked when an Echidna girl jerked the door open as if she hated all doors. Judging from her aggressive stance and narrowed eyes, she wasn't inclined to like me much, either.

"What do you want? This is a secure building."

I didn't waste a placating smile on her. "We're here on business. Madiyan sent us."

Name-dropping the Chairwoman's Special Assistant didn't cool the girl's anger but it did establish that she would have to unleash it elsewhere. She grudgingly slid aside and allowed us into the laboratory. Several other lamia in pale smocks and goggles stared back at us from their glassware-laden tables. None of them were smiling, either. It wasn't a day for smiles.

Dr. Aemilia looked up when we reached her office door. Her facial muscles twitched a bit before settling on an expression of bleak sobriety.

"Ah. You're here. Both of you."

"Yes. I hope you were expecting us. Madiyan asked us to follow up on Julian's death." I glanced at the open doorway behind us, but none of the laboratory staff were near enough to eavesdrop.

Aemilia nodded absently. "She called earlier."

She didn't continue, just stared at or past me. Apparently postmortems weren't a routine part of her duties. It hurt to see my gracious angel reduced to such desolation.

But I also had a duty to the dead.

"Have you had a chance to examine the remains?"

Her eyes refocused. "I've completed the…autopsy. On Julian." She looked down at the file waiting on her desk, opened it. "What do you want to know?"

"Were you able to determine a cause of death?"

Given the time Julian had spent in the water, I hadn't expected much useful information. I had badly underestimated Dr. Aemilia.

"Fatal anaphylaxis."

"An allergy?!"

"Yes. Obviously decomposition was advanced but tryptase levels were high enough to indicate a severe allergic reaction. The airway was almost completely occluded by laryngeal edema. Mechanism of death …" Aemilia's voice trailed off. After a ragged breath she continued. "…mechanism of death was either respiratory or cardiac arrest, possibly both."

I rapidly shuffled through the facts in my head. "So he was dead before he went over the cliffs."

Aemilia didn't look up from the file, although I doubted she was reading it. "Very likely. I can't tell you whether he died from asphyxia or shock…the lungs were too badly degraded…but he almost certainly died within an hour of initial exposure."

Yurilee asked the next question. "Could you tell what he was allergic to?"

The doctor didn't respond immediately. Finally she raised her eyes and offered Yurilee a strange expression.

"Medusa venom."

Yuri made a small, unhappy sound.

"So somebody bit him," I said. "Have you seen this kind of allergy before?"

Aemilia returned her attention to me. "It's very rare, and usually quite mild. I've never heard of it causing a death."

"Did you know Julian had this allergy?"

"Patient confidentiality…"

"He's not a patient anymore," I reminded her. "The Chairwoman has granted us full access to his file, as part of the investigation." Madiyan hadn't said as much, but it was a plausible assumption. It did the trick, in any case.

"I…was treating him for allergies, yes. Congestion and minor inflammations, but he didn't exhibit symptoms that I believed to be dangerous. I suppose I was wrong about that," she finished miserably.

"But you hadn't identified the trigger, or a pattern to his symptoms?"

Aemilia shook her head. "I never isolated the sensitizing factor. New men often react to the local pollens and grasses, so I didn't perform an allergen battery. He came to the clinic once or twice a month for a while, then his visits tapered off. His symptoms seemed to have resolved."

I cataloged the new information. "So now we know how Julian died. And we already knew where and when, roughly. Now we just need a who."

"I'm afraid I can't help you with that. I'm not trained as a forensic pathologist."

"You've done a lot already." I glanced over my shoulder, down the length of the laboratory. "There's a chance that one of your girls saw something that night, or knew Julian personally. Do you have a room we could use to speak with them?"

"Of course, Mark." Aemilia closed Julian's file, and locked it carefully in the cabinet behind her. "You're welcome to use my office. I still have to finish up…some things…in the exam room."

"Thank you, doctor. Please give us a minute before you send the first girl in." Aemilia nodded, then crawled listlessly out of the office.

I turned to Yuri, who had been silent for a while. "What are you thinking?"

Her voice was taut. "This has to have been a terrible accident, Mark. It has to."

"We're trying to find that out, Yuri. In the meantime, are you ready to conduct some interviews?"

"Of course. Only tell me what I need to do."

"I'll do the talking. I just need you to translate the questions and answers. The girl at the door speaks some English, but it's unlikely that all the girls do." I took the opportunity to sit on Aemilia's desk and stretch my back. "This isn't really an interrogation. More like a debrief. But you might as well get comfortable. We're not in a hurry, and this will take longer than you expect."


I was wrong. The third girl collapsed into sobs before we asked the first question. Eventually, with Yurilee's gentle coaxing, she told us everything.

It didn't take long at all.


"This is exactly why everyone is directed to remain indoors during the full moons."

"What, so you don't rape us to death in the streets?"

Madiyan actually hissed at me. "Yes! People lose their inhibitions, and injuries occur. Sometimes dangerous ones."

We were back in her office suite. She didn't seem impressed that I'd solved the mystery in less than a day. I wasn't, either.

"Are you going to punish Mita?" asked Yurilee.

Madiyan turned to her grandmother. "Not very harshly. She didn't mean to harm Julian. And she didn't realize he was in distress, until afterwards. Mita only tried to hide the body because she panicked." She shot me a meaningful glance. "They were both out when they shouldn't have been."

"What about the Interspecies Exchange Laws?" I asked.

Madiyan frowned. "We don't interpret the Exchange Laws quite the way your…I mean, how mankind does. This was a tragedy, not a murder."

I didn't point out that the Exchange Laws also prohibited rape. In her culture, Mita had really done nothing wrong, even if she had broken the Treaty. And Julian had been sneaking around in the dark. "Death by misadventure," we'd have called it back home.

I still didn't like it, but I couldn't press her further without risking awkward questions about Julian's nocturnal activities.

"I guess you were right," I said to Yuri.

She blinked at me, confused. "About what?"

"You said that Julian wasn't hurt on purpose."

Yurilee couldn't quite smile but her look of gratitude made me feel dirty.

I turned back to Madiyan. "So now what?"

"I'll inform the Program that one of our guests suffered a fatal accident. Dr. Aemilia is testing a sample of Mita's venom for abnormalities, just to be sure she's not a hazard to anyone else. I'm sure she won't work late during a full moon again." The young medusa rubbed her temples. "My office will draft the reports and the Chairwoman will manage the diplomatic fallout.

"It's still a horrible mess, but I can't criticize your results, Mark. Thank you for handling the investigation for us." The corner of her mouth twitched, barely. "I'll credit this against whatever debt you owe me."

There was nothing else useful to say. Yuri and I left shortly afterwards. Julian's death was a "fatal accident" and a diplomatic problem that didn't involve me. Anyway, all the important questions had been answered, and my indignation wouldn't bring Julian back, or change the local laws. So that was that.

I thought it stank.


There was a funeral. It didn't rain. Just another beautiful Mediterranean morning.

Several lamia, and a few men, gathered around a thoroughly-sealed metal box. Some of the women spoke, giving brief eulogies that I couldn't follow. None of them knew Julian's real name. Neither did I. Yurilee held my hand, and wept.


The library felt empty, even though I'd only met Julian there once. Silence bounced between me and Yurilee, and echoed from the walls.

It felt shabby to hate a dead man, but I did. I hated Julian for spoiling this peaceful refuge from the alien women of this island. I hated Madiyan for trying to sanitize the ugly, sticky mess that he'd left behind. Nothing about Julian's death was clean. His putrefying body should have been left in the town square until the stench smothered the whole island and rose to the moon. Until the snake-women were disgusted with the full moon and themselves.

I watched as Yuri crawled along the walls, lightly touching the artifacts with her fingers. Her other hand held a half-empty bottle that she'd opened as soon as we arrived.

"Did he leave you anything?"

"Yes." She didn't elaborate.

I didn't ask further. I didn't want to be here. But the library was on my way home, and I was tired of walking. I'd done a lot of walking in the past few days. I leaned against a shelf and glanced over the spines of books I couldn't read.

"At least…" She fumbled for words. "At least Julian wasn't alone, when he…"

"Yeah, I'm sure that being raped to death by a monster snake was a great comfort in his last moments."

The library was silent for a long time.

Eventually I turned to see Yuri standing very still, arms at her sides, looking at me. Even her plekti hung limply. For the first time since I'd known her, she looked old.

"Is that what you think of me, too?" Her voice was unutterably sad. "Just another…monster?"

My anger drained away, leaving me empty and wretched.

"Oh, Yuri."

She reared back as I reached for her, pulling her human-like body away from me. I wrapped my arms around her scaly trunk instead. "I'm an ass. I've had a scare because a man I knew - a younger man – died suddenly. And he was tossed aside like trash." I hugged her tightly. "But you are wonderful, and the most good-hearted person I've met on this island. I can't think badly of you."

"Do you think I am not upset also? He was my student. My playmate."

"I know. And I want to be kind to you, not hurt you with stupid words. I am so sorry."

I felt strong hands on my arms, pulling me off the floor as her body slowly shifted and looped under me. We ended up chest to chest, both supported on a pile of her coils. She had been crying, and she was beautiful.

"Be naked with me," she whispered.

It was a plea, not a seduction. I kicked my shoes away and wrestled out of my clothes, while Yuri pulled off her scant garments and tossed them to the floor.

Then we clung together like children, pressing and sharing our grief and anger and fear into each other through our bare skins. Both of us grasping a warm body that was obviously, urgently alive.

We held each other for a long while. Eventually, we slept.


It was dark when I opened my eyes. Slow movement had awakened me. I kissed Yurilee lightly, and relaxed back into her coils.

We lay that way, wandering in our own thoughts. Something occurred to me.

"You don't go to the village meetings, do you?"

"No, not for a long time."

"Why not?"

She nuzzled my cheek. "I have had my daughters. Let the young women enjoy the village husbands. I get to have my students."

"You have had many students, then."

"Oh, yes. Almost every man in this village for the past…many years."

I thought about that. "You've lost 'playmates' before."

Yuri raised herself to look at me, demilunes dangling between her naked breasts. "I lose all of you, sweetbit. All the men come here to learn how to live with lamia. I teach you to have beautiful conversations with me, and I teach you my body. And then you all leave, because you belong to the village.

"Very few of my students come back after the lessons are done." Her smile was wistful. "Julian came back to me."

I didn't say that Julian had come back because Yuri had books he needed. She already knew. Maybe he loved her, too. It didn't matter now.

"Yurilee?"

"Yes?"

"Did you ever bite Julian?"

Her coils shifted beneath me. "That is an intimate question, Mark. You know he was my playmate."

"I'm not being jealous, I swear. It's just strange that he died from an allergic reaction that nobody knew about until now."

She lowered her head. "In that case, yes. We made love that way. More than once."

"And he never had any symptoms afterwards?"

"Never. He enjoyed it very much."

"Then…when did he develop a fatal allergy to medusa venom?"

"I do not understand it, either."

Yuri sounded pained, and I dropped the subject. Our conversation drifted to idle remembrances and silent musings. Eventually the silence lasted long enough that Yurilee began gently snoring.

I lay there, sleepless in the coils of my affectionate teacher, while my mind tried to make all the puzzle pieces fit.

They didn't. Or rather, I disliked the way they did.

Yurilee had been the first one to notice that Julian was missing. She'd brought me to Madiyan, who was also Yuri's granddaughter. Or great-granddaughter? Close enough for government work.

Maddie's information had led us to Julian's apartment, where Yurilee had watched me search the place, then handed me books from her library that contained the critical clues.

Then she had led me directly to the man she had asked me to find.

Well, not directly. Without our visit to Doctor Aemilia, we wouldn't have walked through that particular stretch of woods. Without finding Yurilee's books in Julian's apartment, we wouldn't have gone to Aemilia's clinic.

Without Yurilee's remarkable sense of smell, we would have missed Julian's body in the dark.

And then Yurilee's questioning had pulled a quick confession out of the guilty party. Which led us back to Madiyan, who marched us through the neat, blameless resolution.

Too neat, by half.

It's a messy, random world. Odd coincidences happen every day. But Julian and I were part of the world where coincidences can't be trusted, and instincts couldn't be ignored. An intelligence officer suffering a fatal accident during a clandestine mission on foreign soil was a coincidence that made my guts ache.

I recalled thinking that Maddie had a lot more information about Julian than she had given to us. She'd seemed more agitated than sorrowful about the man's death, as if he was a serious paperwork problem for her. Which I supposed that he was.

Was she more annoyed that Julian was dead, or that his body had been found?

I lay in the dark, looking at the holes where clues ought to be. I didn't know Julian's mission. I didn't know whether his cover had been blown. And I didn't know when or why his allergies had suddenly turned lethal.

There were two places I could look for more information: Madiyan's personnel files, or Doctor Aemilia's medical records. It wasn't a complicated choice. Madiyan's files were digital and likely encrypted, while Aemilia's paper records were much more accessible.

Did Madiyan even want me to complete this investigation? Had she assumed that, if I uncovered something awkward, I'd let it go, out of affection or discretion?

Would I?

I looked at Yurilee, snoring artlessly beside me.

Slowly, carefully, I disengaged from her coils. Finding my clothes in the dark, I dressed quietly and slipped out into the night.