The Fire Seer and Her Quradum (13 page)

“I don’t think he had that injury at dinner,” said Mandir.

“No, it’s fresher than that,” said Taya. And yet it didn’t look like the injury had killed him. The bandage seemed to have contained the bleeding.

Bel-Sumai, who’d been standing by the door, came over to peer at the bandage. “Unwrap it,” he said. “I want to see the wound.”

Mandir unwrapped the bandage, revealing under each layer another layer beneath it with a slightly larger blood mark. Still, Taya maintained her opinion that the injury itself had not killed him. When Mandir bared the skin beneath the bandage, it was clear they were looking at a minor stab wound.

“Poisoned knife?” suggested Taya.

“I don’t know,” said Mandir.

“Are you satisfied now?” said Bel-Sumai. “He obviously wasn’t killed by flood or fire.”

“Nearly,” said Taya, although Bel-Sumai was right; this murder clearly wasn’t magical. She and Mandir were arguably overstepping their bounds, but given that Bel-Sumai might later accuse Mandir of the crime, she felt it was essential that she and Mandir collect what evidence they could.

Mandir pointed to the bottom of Yanzu’s left foot. “He’s got a cut here.”

She leaned over to look. It was a short, shallow cut that had bled sparingly. Yanzu’s feet were otherwise unremarkable—dirty, with toughened soles from walking outdoors. Yanzu could have been out on the grounds last night, hunting for the dogs like everyone else. He could have cut his foot by stepping on something in the dark. Or perhaps he hadn’t been out there at all, if he’d gotten in a fight with someone after dinner and been stabbed. That wound on his arm wasn’t a dog bite. “Did you see Yanzu when we were looking for the dogs?”

“No,” said Mandir. “I heard more people than I saw, but I couldn’t say who most of them were.”

“It looks like he bandaged his wound, drank some water, used the chamber pot, and went to bed,” said Taya. “And then died in his sleep. I see no sign that he struggled or had convulsions.” She wondered what sort of poison could kill quietly. Unfortunately, she and Mandir were not experts on poisons; they specialized in magical crimes.

Taya lifted Yanzu’s eyelids. “Look at this.”

Mandir came over, followed by a curious Bel-Sumai.

Yanzu’s pupils were small as pin pricks. “He died during the night,” said Taya. “Shouldn’t his pupils have been large because of the darkness?”

Mandir’s brow furrowed. “It’s as if he looked at a bright light just before he died.”

“Or perhaps it was an effect of poison,” said Taya.

Mandir went back to the table, dipped his finger into the water glass, and raised it to his mouth.

“Don’t,” said Taya quickly.

Mandir put the finger in his mouth.

Taya’s neck burned. Foolish, reckless man. “Are you crazy? That might have been poisoned!”

“How else am I going to learn if there was anything in it?” said Mandir.

Bel-Sumai looked interested. “Did you taste anything?”

“Just water,” said Mandir.

“Never do that again,” snapped Taya. She didn’t like this feeling of being concerned for Mandir. For years, she’d wished him dead. Now her stomach twisted at the thought of his coming to harm.

“You’re right,” Mandir said to Bel-Sumai. “This wasn’t a magical crime. We’d like to see Tufan now.”

∞

As Mandir led the way to his father’s chambers, he was aware of the hostility emanating from Bel-Sumai. He’d embarrassed the man last night at supper, and Bel-Sumai might just get back at him by blaming him for Tufan’s murder. Certainly no one could argue that Mandir didn’t have the desire to kill Tufan, as well as a hot and poorly controlled temper.

His best defense was to find out who had really done it.

Bel-Ditana stood in front of Tufan’s door.

Mandir held out his hand to touch fingers. “Terrible circumstances.”

“Spare me the false sympathy,” said Bel-Ditana. “You’re
glad
your father is dead.”

“Let them pass,” said Bel-Sumai. “I told them they could check the scene to see if the crime was magical in nature. It’s their right, as agents of the Coalition. Did you hear that Yanzu is dead as well?”

Bel-Ditana’s brows rose. “Really?”

“He seems to have died in his sleep. Had a stab wound on his arm,” said Bel-Sumai.

Bel-Ditana, who seemed sufficiently shocked by this to forget his hostility, opened the door and ushered them inside.

Mandir had seen Tufan’s chambers before, nine years ago, and they hadn’t changed much. The prince, who had a fetish for gold, had trimmed all his furniture in gold leaf. When Mandir had been a lad, he’d been impressed by the shine and flash, but now that his tastes had matured, the room looked ridiculous. It was overdone, as if compensating for some fundamental insecurity. Mandir spotted a walking staff propped in a corner, tipped with a gold knob, very likely the one Tufan had used last night to punish his errant dogs.

He glanced at Taya, wondering what her fresh eyes thought of the scene. Her nose was wrinkled—apparently she wasn’t impressed by the gold leaf either. As a farmer from a poor family, she wouldn’t think much of a cruel, ungenerous man who hoarded his wealth in a back bedroom.

If one ignored the gold leaf, Tufan’s crime scene looked similar to Yanzu’s. Tufan lay in bed with his eyes closed, his bedcovers only slightly disturbed. A cup sat on a table beside the bed, flecked with telltale specks of gold. That would be Tufan’s customary nightcap of wine laced with
nepenthe
and gold dust.

He turned to Bel-Sumai. “You discovered him just like this?”

“We moved the body a bit, trying to wake him up,” said Bel-Sumai.

“What caused you to go in his room in the first place?” asked Taya.

“He likes to be awakened every morning at precisely one hour past sunrise,” said Bel-Sumai. “I went in to wake him at that time, and couldn’t.”

Mandir approached the bed.

“He obviously didn’t die in a fire or in a flood,” said Bel-Sumai.

That was true, but Mandir wanted to learn as much as he could before the guards forced them to leave. It was hard to touch Tufan’s body at all. The man’s eyes were closed, and he looked like he could just be sleeping. Some small part of Mandir, the little boy inside him, feared the corpse would rear up and grab him, make him pay for this transgression.

But he wasn’t a little boy anymore, and he knew dead men didn’t rise. Steeling himself for the physical contact, he used a finger to check for a pulse, and when he didn’t find one, he lowered his ear to the man’s chest to listen for a heartbeat. There wasn’t one, and the body was getting cold. The man was certainly dead, but unlike Yanzu, there was no stab wound and no bandage. Mandir threw back the blankets and checked his feet for cuts, in case that was significant, and found none. Tufan hadn’t a mark on him. Mandir lifted the eyelids. “Taya.”

She came over to look.

The pupils were like Yanzu’s: tiny black pinpoints.

So far, the evidence suggested that Tufan and Yanzu had died in the same way. He returned to the cup. “Could the wine in which he takes his gold dust have been poisoned?”

“Unlikely, since I tasted it for him,” said Bel-Sumai.

“Did you feel sick at all last night?” asked Mandir.

“No.”

“Did you taste it before or after he added the gold dust and
nepenthe
?”

“Before,” said Bel-Sumai.

Mandir nodded. The poison could have come in with the gold dust or the
nepenthe
. Or it could have come with the wine, and Bel-Sumai hadn’t been affected because he’d had only a sip, while Tufan had drained the entire cup. “Who brought his wine last night?”

“Shala,” said Bel-Sumai.

That meant Shala would be a suspect. So would Mandir himself, especially if one of his brothers tried to set him up. A wave of despondency washed over him. He didn’t want to solve this crime. He wanted to take Setsi and Nindar and leave this place. He wanted to be away from here. He wanted to make love to Taya as they camped by the side of the road and then return to the Coalition Temple, where people could trust each other, at least most of the time.

Taya dipped her finger into Tufan’s wine cup.

“Don’t you dare,” said Mandir.

She stuck the finger in her mouth.

“What are you doing?” asked Bel-Sumai.

“Seeing if it’s poisoned,” said Taya.

“Very likely it
is
,” fumed Mandir. “Woman, are you crazy?”

“No crazier than you,” she said. “How can we tell if Tufan and Yanzu were poisoned by the same substance without testing both of their cups?”

“You can leave now,” said Bel-Sumai. “Clearly his death wasn’t magical, and I have work to do.”

Not wanting to antagonize him, Mandir took Taya’s hand and headed for the door.

Chapter 15

Taya’s head was full as they headed back to the guest room. While she had some thoughts about the case, she didn’t want to draw any conclusions until she’d talked everything over with Mandir. The man was good at noticing small details and making sense out of a complicated scene.

When they reached the room and shut the door behind them, she said, “I think we’re in some trouble here.”

“Flood and fire, but that’s an understatement,” said Mandir.

“I’d scold you about losing your temper last night,” she said. “But that horse is already out of the barn. What if Bel-Sumai and the other guards accuse you of the murder because of your outburst last night and because they don’t like you?”

“I don’t think they’d shirk their duties so blatantly,” said Mandir. “The palace guards are hand-picked, the best of the best.”

“I thought you said the ones sent here were being punished for something.”

“Yes, but even so, the king wouldn’t send them here to guard his son if he didn’t believe in their competence. What worries me is that in this house, everybody blames someone else for their misdeeds. Whoever murdered Tufan and Yanzu is likely to try to plant some evidence that will implicate somebody else—and that somebody is likely to be me. This is especially true if the murderer gets the idea that the guards
want
to accuse me and need only a little urging to do so. Also, Bel-Sumai thinks I killed his dog ten years ago.”

Taya blinked. “You killed Bel-Sumai’s dog?”

“No. He thinks I did.”

Taya leaned against the wall, feeling powerless despite her magic. She’d thought she’d be immune to the scheming of Mandir’s brothers for the duration of their short stay, but apparently not. Either she and Mandir needed to place their trust in the competence and trustworthiness of the palace guards, or they needed to find the murderer themselves, and quickly. “How skilled do you think the guards are at handling a situation like this?”

Mandir rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know. They’re guards, not investigators.”

“We need to investigate the crimes ourselves.”

“I agree,” said Mandir. “But we’ll have to keep a low profile. We have no authority here.”

“Let’s sit down and think this over.” She headed to their little table and took a seat. Her fingers itched for a tablet upon which to write a list of suspects, but that was premature. They didn’t know much of anything yet. “Do you think Tufan and Yanzu were killed by the same person?”

Mandir took a seat across from her. “It seems likely, given that they died in the same way and on the same night.”

“I think whoever killed them was the one who let the dogs loose.”

Mandir nodded. “The dogs were a distraction, and that distraction could have provided cover for our murderer.”

“I’m going to come right out and say it. Setsi and Nindar are suspects.”

“I don’t think they did it.”

She glanced out the window at the distant stable. She had a fondness for that place and for the boys in it. “I don’t either, but we can’t assume they’re innocent just because we like them. They had an obvious motive for killing Tufan, and they trust each other. They could have planned it together, or one of them might have done it to protect the other. We know Setsi will make sacrifices to protect his brother.”

“But would he kill a man?” said Mandir. “We know Setsi would turn down a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but that doesn’t mean he would go so far as to kill Tufan. Also, why kill Yanzu? Still, I’ll grant it’s a possibility.”

“Then there’s Shala.” Taya began to count suspects, holding up two fingers for Setsi and Nindar and adding a third for Shala.

Mandir nodded. “Obvious motive and opportunity, if Tufan was killed by poisoned wine that she served and delivered. We’ll have to talk with her. Though, again, I don’t see how Yanzu fits in.”

“Runawir and Shardali.” Five fingers.

“Both are capable of murder,” said Mandir. “Especially Runawir, who’s got smarts and courage as well as a certain nastiness that he’s skilled at hiding most of the time. Both of them have motive, but so does everyone in the entire house. We need to find out who got in a fight with Yanzu.”

“Who inherits Tufan’s possessions now that he’s dead?” asked Taya.

Mandir’s brows rose. “Good thought. The answer is complicated. Tufan doesn’t own this property; it belongs to the king, and anything Tufan does own, he owns jointly with his brothers. His possessions will pass to the king or to his brothers.”

“So we can rule out inheritance as a motive.”

“Not quite,” said Mandir. “A ruling-caste man in a joint marriage owns his major assets jointly with his brothers, but there are a lot of minor assets here that nobody at the palace will be interested in, such as the horses and that awful gold-leaf furniture. Those minor assets could be worth a lot to a man who has nothing at all.”

“Did Tufan write a will?”

“I’m sure he didn’t,” said Mandir. “The guards will probably distribute anything they don’t want to take back to the palace.”

“Distribute it equally, or to the eldest?” said Taya. “And for that matter, who is the eldest?”

Mandir blinked. “Well, it would have been Yanzu.”

Taya’s brows rose. “Who’s next in line?”

“Runawir,” said Mandir. “But I wouldn’t read too much into that. The guards may decide to distribute the goods equally.”