XXII. Discovery
You do not sleep well. In the dry heat of Cahzori nights, you have problems getting to sleep. Even the wine doesn't help; not enough. And without someone to kiss away your worries, nightmares are instead what creep into your bed and make you moan and tremble.
You don't quite remember your dreams on waking. There were things moving in the shadows, though. Things that do not wear the form of friends; things shaped like the Immaculates and like those fae monsters who were not your handsome princes. And things screaming.
Maybe it was just the wind. It's still howling when you're woken by thunder. Or maybe it was the things out in the rain and the sand. You'd prefer that to the case, because the alternative is that the screams were things conjured up by your mind, and you'd rather not think about that.
You light the oil lamps and just sit there, tired but unwilling to go to sleep again. Wrapping your hands around the beaten brass, you stare into the flame. You're just calming your nerves. You're certainly not so
weak as to need to whisper prayers to Hesiesh, asking him to burn the shadows of your fevered night-thoughts from your mind.
What time is it? You can't tell from the traces of light that creep in through the cracks. The sunless cityscape outside is lit by the unnatural light of chaos, and that shows respect for the passing of neither hours nor days. You think it might be a bit past dawn, but you were drinking last night so you might be wrong. That reminds you. You pour yourself some of your leftover wine, and down it. It helps wake you and take the edge off your still-thrumming nerves.
Fortunately, Sei isn't there to be annoying. You don't know what he's up to, but right now, you don't have it in you to care. It's not like you've seen anyone around here who would be able to catch him and link whatever he's doing to you.
Clambering out of bed, you perform some warm-up katas to stretch yourself out before things get too hot, then get dressed and head off in search of food.
It's not just you who's feeling the loss of a sense of time. There are a few jansi aristocrats sitting around in one of the sitting rooms, but none of them are sure what hour it is - or even if it's dawn yet. You've seen the same thing when you've spent extended periods underground or in sunless places away from the laws of the world. The length of your day tends to drift, stretching out.
You have your own theories about why the twenty-five hour imposed by the sun is not the natural one the bodies of men and women want to live by, but perhaps now is not the time to speak of them.
Breakfast is sweetened and spiced flatbreads, serving as both meal and plate for the goat cheeses, lentils, and yoghurt infused with dried rose petals. It's not terrible. But as you sip your black tea and then shudder and add more honey, you can't help but notice that everything here is something you'd expect from the Cahzori climate. You suspect that means they've run out of whatever expensive things they imported for the feast. The only thing that even approximates being fruit are dates soaked in spirits and painted with honey.
"You know," Sadia's distinctive voice says from behind you, "it's traditional for the tea to not be mostly honey."
You meet her eyes, and quite deliberately add another spoonful.
"Well, you do you." She seats herself down, settling her many-coloured skirts around her. She's in fresh clothes. "Is that how you drink tea where you're from?"
"No, it isn't. But the tea here is far too black and bitter for my taste." The Cahzori brew their tea as black as night and perfume and sweeten it. There's not even any green tea here - let alone white. Southern savages. You can see her hair is damp and freshly combed. You stare in jealousy. "Who did you have to bully to get them to bring a tub to your room?" you ask. It'd be nice to know who's pliable.
Sadia smiles smugly at you. "I'm not staying in the guest quarters. Auntie keeps a room for me in the family section for when I come to stay. So there are baths there. And," she gestures at herself, "clothes so I'm not wearing the same thing three days in a row."
So unfair. "I bet they don't make you wash in a tub."
"They certainly do not," she gloats. "Why, of course, Meira, I might be able to do you a favour and get you in."
"Hmmph! Hmmph, I say!" You pause. "Also, thank you. But still hmmph."
She has a rather smug aura while you chatter. You're willing to let her get away with it if it'll get you access to the Kinzira baths, however.
"So," you ask, "did I miss anything last night?"
Sadia wraps her long-fingered hands wrapped around her tea glass, emeralds gleaming on her bracelet. "Yes, where were you? We missed you!"
"Just tired." You give her a naughty smile. "I didn't get much sleep."
"Oh, you!" She leans in conspiratorially. "How was he?"
"I've had better. Sort of like a puppy, if you must know. Very self-centred."
"I know! It's the way he just sits back and expects you to please him without telling you what he wants!"
"Good with his tongue, though," you observe, drawing a blush to her cheeks. "Anyway, he enjoyed it enough to propose to me in the morning, which… well, honestly, it did not raise my opinion of him."
She pats your hand. Her skin is hot from where it had been resting. "I knew I liked you - and I knew I could trust in your taste."
"Darling," you say, "lots of young men have fallen for me over the years. A handsome face - though he'd look better if he got more rest - and a toned behind won't make me lose my mind. He needs to bring more to the table than the ability to quote a few lines of old poetry at me."
She giggles at that. "You know, you never mentioned how old you are."
"And I intend for it to stay that way. It's
so rude to ask a woman's age, you know."
"Please," she begs, "just a hint."
You sigh indulgently. "Very well. I'm old enough I could be your mother." A statement that's true; you think Sadia is in her late twenties. But you could also be her mother's mother, or her grandmother's.
She shakes her head. "It's truly disgusting how well-preserved you are."
That's a little insulting. "Darling, preserved things are dead and everything we do to them is to stop them rotting. I don't need to be preserved. I'm fresh." You sip your tea-flavoured honey. "And you didn't answer my question. What did I miss last night?"
You get an impish little grin. "I think people are starting to get a little stir-crazy in here," she says gleefully.
"You sound very happy about that."
"It's hilarious!" Her eyes gleam. "Lots of people staring daggers at Haitham. He's a man who makes enemies. Hilmi got several girls throwing themselves at him, but I got to watch him have to turn them down. That's not like him. He just stormed off, in a huff! I haven't seen comedy like that in years!"
Well, there is a reason you like her. She's a woman after your own heart. "Any more violence?"
"Not by the time I'd gone to bed, but Haitham got very, very drunk - as he does - and was being insufferable. It wouldn't surprise me if… no, of course, he was too drunk to be honourably challenged under the duelling cult rules."
He's not stupid, you think. He might have done that deliberately if he didn't feel like fighting again. "Well, he's probably hungover. No wonder there's no sign of him here yet."
"No, indeed. Which means," she smiles, "I get you all to myself."
You glance around, but Yasmine isn't here to get jealous. "Do you have any wicked plans?"
"Oh, oh, I
always have wicked plans," she says naughtily. "For example I have a teeny tiny suggestion. If I know Haitham - and I do - he'll have brought enough candied fruits along that even he won't have eaten them all yet. I'm sure if you went to him and stuck out your chest and sucked in your waist and flirted, you could get a box of them. Then we could go eat them in the baths. And," she looks you up and down, "there has to be some old clothes in some forgotten wardrobe that might fit you, even if we have to belt them in. The blood really has stained."
Your eyes light up at that. You're tempted. You're definitely tempted. But you can't let her get away with that kind of comment. "Why do I have to do that?"
Sadia rolls her eyes at you. "My friend," she says, saluting you ironically with her tea, "who of the two of us is the one sleeping currently with him? I have good reason to think you can get a hold of it from him, while I couldn't. Plus, you've finished your breakfast, while I've been so busy talking with you that I still haven't eaten."
You shrug. "Well, I suppose," you say, not entirely reluctantly. It's not like it's hard to wind a hungover man around your finger - and Sadia is offering a princely reward.
Taking an oil lamp, you ask one of the servants for directions then head back into the warren of narrow circular corridors. The noise of the dining hall fades so quickly, lost in the groan of the ancient stone and the distant moaning of the wind outside. You pass a male couple, mussed and hungover, and nod to them as they head to eat. They're lost in the darkness behind you as you head on, following the yellow-painted line on the walls that weaves between ancient dry pipework.
"Ah. Section A-02," you say to yourself, reading the ancient signage. "So room A-02-11 is… that way."
No, actually, it turns out that it's the other way, as the room numbers were only even in that direction. But after that minor, not-your-fault issue, you find his room.
There is a smell coming from inside Haitham's room. Something that worries at the senses. Something foul. You wrinkle your nose. Oh gods above, below and around. How much of a mess has he made of himself while drunk?
No. There's something else off. A tang in the air. Thicker than everything else here. Oily on your tongue.
Something is wrong. You know it in the yawning of your stomach. Something is wrong and though you haven't put things together yet, you will. It's the instincts honed from spending time in the wyldwoods of the north, where the subtle wrongness is telling.
Carefully, you put your lantern down and then rest your hand on the handle. A little pressure is enough to tell you that the door isn't locked. The light that creeps out through the cracks is a little brighter, a little greyer than it should be.
And the scent gets stronger. You
know what's happened. Because you know that smell.
When a man dies, the gods have decreed that he has no dignity. Which is a delicate way to say that a corpse shits itself. What remains of the last meal tells everyone that it's now an empty shell, good only for worm food. That, mixed with blood.
Speaking as someone who has dabbled in human sacrifice, it's not something most books tell you about. Many past sorcerers will wax lyrical about the taboo thrill and the rush of joy that comes from using a handsome youth's guts for auguries, but are much more evasive on how best to prevent blood and stinking fecal matter from ruining your workroom.
There you go again. You're thinking such things because of the smell. It's funny how scent has the key to old memories. Or maybe it's not just the stink.
Maybe you're just trying not to think of what you're going to see when you open the door. But you are going to open the door, aren't you? You're not scared, after all. You're a sorceress, jaded and beyond such petty fears.
And reluctant though you are to accept it, the squirming fear that makes the back of your neck prickle and cold sweat bead on your brow means you cling to the idea that maybe you could be wrong. Maybe he just made a mess of the bed while very drunk and the coppery undernotes are just his blood on your clothing.
You take a shallow breath, and push on the door.
The window is open. Wide open. The shutters are gone, and the materials that were used to block it have been torn away.
The room is a mess. Things have been overturned and discarded. Sand has been blown in through the window, coating every surface in a thin layer of grit.
Haitham… Haitham is dead. On his bed. Not well. No honour. No dignity. It was savage. His pretty face has been slashed. His throat; cut. He's been stabbed, or clawed. Not once. Many times. The beddings have been torn up, and stained by his dying and what came next. There is red, red turning brown, and brown. Purples spilling out from scarlet slits. One pale, bloodless hand sprawling over the edge of the bed, all the scarlet in it having drained down onto the floor from the slashes.
No more poetry from him; no more yawning remarks; no more barbed comments or sword duels. No more fun in your bed; no more drinking wine in the morning; no more of the dance of a marriage proposal against your games.
You swallow, and on the air you taste death. "Oh, Haitham," you whisper. Your eyes water, and you blink them away. You only met him the evening before last. Barely knew him. "You poor, stupid man."
Something soft brushes against your leg. "Well, well, well, look at this," Sei purrs. "He didn't die well. You should have fed him to me. It would have been cleaner."
Sudden heat coils in you; the heat of rage at your stupid familiar who can't even let you mourn someone you hadn't wanted dead! Your hands ball into fists. "Did you do this?" you hiss at your familiar.
He flicks his tails. "My lady, do you think I'd be so messy?" His many-coloured eyes meet yours. "I would have sat on his chest and sucked out his souls through his breath. And maybe opened a vein as I left, so people would say he had bled out in the night." He pads across the room, delicately picking his way over the debris. He leaves no footprints on the sand.
"It was something like you," you say through your clenched teeth.
He sniffs arrogantly. And then sniffs again, tilting his head. "No," he says thoughtfully. "No, I think not." He bounds up to the blood-soaked hand that sprawls over the side of the bed, and leans in. "My lady, there is no scent of the wyld in his wounds. In fact," he leaps up onto the head of the bed, "these are knife wounds. Very, very clean knife wounds."
"A gossamer blade?" you ask, forcing yourself to exhale - and regretting it, because the stench sits in your nose.
"Hardly! That would leave its scent in the wounds. No, there are only a few things that could cut this cleanly." He pokes Haitham's poor, cut-up face with his paw. "Orichalcum. Jadesteel. The woods of Byrthors. Starmetal. And of course…"
"Where's his knife?" you suddenly ask. "The one he won?" You look around, looking for the lotuses that would mark its water-nature. You see none.
Sei tastes the air. "I can't taste any jade in here, apart from your necklace - and I know that well," he says.
You grab your lantern from outside the room, and hold it aloft. Now you know what to look for… "Those things. The shutters and the padding," you say, avoiding the bed to peer at the debris around the window. "They weren't broken from the outside. They were pried off from the inside."
Sei meets your eyes. "Oh. So they were."
"Haitham. Haitham was murdered," you say. Cyan lightning flashes outside, followed by a boom. "If he screamed, why, everyone would have thought it was just the storm outside. Murdered here, when he was drunk. Murdered in a household where so many of the guests had a reason to hate him."
Sei leaps from the bed, onto your shoulder. "So it would seem, my lady. Now, the question is this. Given you seem to actually care about this one turning up dead, what will you do now?"
And now we're up to the real thing of the arc, the thing I've been setting up for a while.
yeah we in murder-mystery town now bois gurls and enbies.
What Will Rena Do Now?
[ ] Dramatically announce the murder in front of as many people as possible.
[ ] Quietly tell the Kinzira matriarch and no one else.
[ ] Tell Sadia - she works for the Demio, which is the closest thing to an authority here.
[ ] Begin her own investigations and don't tell a soul he's dead.
[ ] Write-in
Suspicion votes below are not mandatory, but justified suspicions where the voter makes a good case will affect Rena's behaviour
Who Does She Suspect As A First Hunch? (any number)
[ ] Justify anyone you suspect
