The Fire Seer and Her Quradum (18 page)

Mandir seemed to be drifting off.

“Do you think Runawir is the murderer?” she asked him.

Mandir’s only response was to shift a little on the bed.

She couldn’t let him sleep through the afternoon, not with a murder investigation in progress. She swung out of bed, hoping her absence would prompt him to wake. “You knew he’d been the one to stab Yanzu last night. Does that mean you think he’s the murderer?”

Mandir drawled his words into the straw tick. “I really don’t know.”

“Do you have a theory at all?”

“No.” Mandir sighed and rolled onto his back. Raising his arms above his head, he stretched luxuriously.

Taya was distracted for a moment, watching the muscles ripple across his chest.

“We need to talk to more people,” said Mandir. “Trouble is, some of them are going to lie.”

“Nindar won’t lie.”

“Not unless he has something to hide,” said Mandir. “But I don’t think he knows anything we didn’t already get from Setsi. As for Shardali and Ilinos, they lie so routinely that anything they tell us will be worthless.”

“There’s also the tutor.”

“All we know about him is he’s a drunk.” Mandir heaved his bulk out of bed. “Let’s get your timeline and fill in what we’ve learned.”

Taya found her clothes, which she’d carelessly flung on the floor—or perhaps Mandir had done that; she couldn’t remember—and put them on. She turned to see Mandir heading for the table, stark naked, carrying two tablets and a stylus.

Taya eyed their window. “Putting on a show for your brothers?”

Mandir grinned. “I’m putting on a show for
you
, banana girl.” Nonetheless, he grabbed his pants from the floor and slipped them on. Then he went to the table and laid down the tablets. “Here’s what we had earlier this morning.”

Taya reviewed what was on the tablets.

Ilinos lets out the dogs

Setsi tells us the dogs are out

We go outside with Setsi and Nindar

We see Runawir

We see Setsi luring a dog

We see Tufan calling his dogs

A bracket around the last line indicated that it was one of the possible times during which Tufan’s cup could have been poisoned, because when Tufan was out calling his dogs, the wine cup had been unattended outside his door.

“We can add a few things to that list,” said Taya. “Right after Ilinos lets out the dogs, we can put
Setsi tells Runawir
and
Setsi tells Shala
.”

“Right.” Mandir called water from the air and smoothed it over the clay. Then his stylus hand went to work transcribing. “Also,
Shala goes out
. But now it gets more frustrating. Because we’ve got
Setsi sees Runawir
and
Setsi goes to the kitchen for meat
, but we don’t know if that was before
We see Runawir
or after.”

“I wish I knew where to place the fight between Runawir and Yanzu.”

“So do I,” said Mandir. “But we don’t even know if the fight happened inside the house or outside.” He waved the tablet gently in the air to dry it. “We know one thing for certain—the murder happened sometime after
Shala goes out.
But that’s about it. We need to talk to more people.”

Someone knocked on the door.

Taya went to answer it while Mandir, still bare-chested, ran to the bed to grab his shirt. He was just pulling it over his head when she opened the door.

It was the palace guard Bel-Sumai. A little frisson of fear ran through her at the sight of him. This man had the authority to do her and Mandir harm, and she didn’t trust him. “What can we do for you?”

“I need to talk to each of you,” said Bel-Sumai. “One at a time. Mandir first.”

Taya turned to Mandir, now fully clothed though his hair was mussed. She hoped the room didn’t smell like sex.

Mandir nodded and left with Bel-Sumai.

∞

Mandir knew he’d have to tread carefully during this interview. Bel-Sumai had the power to make his life miserable, and on top of that, he had the motivation to do it. Mandir wished for the thousandth time that in his youth he hadn’t salted so many once-fertile fields. He could have been planting seeds, which by now would have grown into a network of friends and allies.

But instead he’d salted himself a network of enemies. He and Bel-Sumai ought to be working together on this investigation, since each of them had access to information the other didn’t. Unfortunately, the trust they might have enjoyed was spoiled. Seeds didn’t grow in salted fields.

Bel-Sumai led him to Tufan’s chambers. Bel-Apsu was sitting in a chair near one of the windows, presumably keeping watch over the crime scene. Mandir glanced at the bed and saw that Tufan’s corpse was in fact still present. It was wrapped in a blanket, so at least he wouldn’t have to look at the dead man’s face.

“I’m glad we’re sitting down together,” said Mandir, hoping to seize some control of this interview. “Taya and I have learned a few things we’d like to share with you.”

Bel-Sumai’s jawline quirked, and he gestured Mandir toward a chair. “I thought you said you weren’t sharing anything. Something about your visions being for Coalition ears only.”

Mandir took the indicated seat. “Taya and I discussed that and decided that given the importance of this investigation, we should tell you what we’ve discovered.”

“All right, tell me what Taya saw in her fire vision.”

“First things first,” said Mandir. “Taya and I detected
nepenthe
in Tufan’s wine cup and Yanzu’s water cup”

Bel-Sumai picked up a tablet and stylus as if preparing to take notes. “Tufan always puts
nepenthe
in his nightcap. As for Yanzu, he and his brothers—your brothers—have been known to steal
nepenthe
from time to time.”

“Given the quantity we detected in a tiny taste from each cup, we think they took too much.”

Bel-Sumai’s brows rose. “You think Tufan’s death was accidental? An overdose?”

“I wouldn’t rule it out,” said Mandir. “Another possibility is that his wine was poisoned
before
he added his nightly dose. Shala left Tufan’s cup unattended on two occasions. The first was in the kitchen, while she went out to try to round up the dogs, and the second was outside Tufan’s door when she delivered the cup and nobody was there.”

“Who would you say has motive for poisoning both Tufan and Yanzu?” asked Bel-Sumai.

“Everybody.”

“I’m aware that Tufan and Yanzu had enemies,” said Bel-Sumai. “But they’d had those enemies for a long time, and until now nobody had moved against either of them. I want to know what made somebody, last night, cross over from inaction to action. I believe
you’re
the one with the clearest motive. We all saw you try to kill Tufan at supper the night he died.”

Mandir swallowed. “I didn’t try to kill anybody. I yelled at Tufan, and I called him out. But that’s not murder. In the end I walked away.”

“Because your partner intervened.”

Mandir shook his head. “Even if Taya had said nothing, I would have backed down.”

“That wasn’t your only violent outburst yesterday,” said Bel-Sumai. “I have it on authority that you also beat Ilinos half to death.”

“I apologized for that,” said Mandir.

“And I’m sure Ilinos forgives you, because obviously a few words of contrition mean more than bruises that hurt for weeks.”

This interview was going worse than Mandir had thought it would. Bel-Sumai was right that Mandir had struggled to control his anger here, and he’d twice erupted into violence. Three times, if one counted his provocation of Runawir. But that didn’t mean he’d killed Tufan or Yanzu. “Both times I erupted, it was in the heat of anger. Poisoning, on the other hand, is a calculated and premeditated sort of crime.”

“Maybe you switched tactics,” said Bel-Sumai. “Last night at supper, you wanted Tufan dead. This morning, he
is
dead. You expect me to believe that’s coincidence?”

“Yes, because it
is
coincidence,” said Mandir. “If I’d been planning to kill Tufan, do you think I’d have called him out so publicly, so visibly, at supper?”

“I think you simply can’t control yourself,” said Bel-Sumai.

“You say on the one hand I can’t control myself,” said Mandir, “and that on the other hand I carried out a meticulously planned murder. I didn’t kill Tufan or Yanzu, and I didn’t kill your dog ten years ago, either. All that was somebody else.”

“Then who
did
kill Tufan and Yanzu?” asked Bel-Sumai.

Since Mandir didn’t have any idea who the murderer was, if he started naming names, he ran the risk of leading Bel-Sumai to another innocent. Still, he had to propose some alternative theory or Bel-Sumai would stay stuck on the theory that Mandir was the murderer. “Taya and I are trying to figure that out. We know that Ilinos let the dogs out and that he was one of the few people who didn’t go outside to help recover them. That means he had opportunity. And we know that Runawir got into a fight with Yanzu last night and stabbed him in the arm.”

Bel-Sumai frowned. “How do you know it was Ilinos who let the dogs out?”

“That was Taya’s vision.”

“Ah—we come to that at last. How does a fire vision work? Taya talked to Mother Isatis, who told her it was Ilinos?”

“Not told,” said Mandir. “Showed. Isatis shows Taya images in the fire, silent images of things that happened in the past at that particular location.”

Bel-Sumai’s brows rose; he seemed impressed by that. “Couldn’t she just ask for a vision that shows her who killed Tufan and Yanzu?”

“No, because her visions are specific to the location where she calls her fire, and it appears Tufan and Yanzu were poisoned indoors. Where she is unable to scry.”

“Hm. You have anything else to tell me?”

“No. Taya and I are still talking to people.”

“Tell me about your activities last night,” said Bel-Sumai. “And leave nothing out.”

“After Taya and I left the supper table, we returned to our guest room and talked for a while. Then Setsi knocked on our door and said the dogs were loose. He wanted us to help him find them before Tufan discovered they were out, so we went outdoors and tried to round them up. We saw Runawir out there, and later we saw Setsi again, luring a dog to the pen with a piece of meat on a stick. Then we saw Tufan and you and the other guards, and since our help wasn’t needed anymore, we went back inside to our room.”

“What then?” asked Bel-Sumai.

Mandir shrugged. “We went to bed.”

“Did you see anyone else while you were out there?”

“No.”

“Hear anything during the night?”

“No.”

“Do you carry any poisons with you?”

Mandir blinked. “Only
kimat
, which disables magic but has no effect on the nonmagical.”

Bel-Sumai scribbled some notes onto his tablet. “You can go, but send in your partner.”

∞

Taya waited outside in the hall during Mandir’s interview with Bel-Sumai. With her partner in a position this vulnerable, she didn’t want to be physically distant from him. Now that Mandir was in trouble, it was her turn to be
quradum
.

Mandir was in Tufan’s chambers with Bel-Sumai for about half an hour. When the door opened and he finally emerged, she caught his eye, hoping for some hint of how the interview had gone. He looked tense and worried, perhaps a bit downcast, which suggested the interview had not gone well.

He took her place in the hallway, leaning against the wall, and she entered Tufan’s chambers for the second time that day. The wine cup no longer sat on the table beside Tufan’s bed, but his corpse was still on the bed, wrapped in cloth. A second guard, Bel-Apsu, sat by the window.

Bel-Sumai gestured her to a chair.

She sat. “Will the funeral be tonight?”

“If Bel-Zaidu finishes the pyre in time.”

“Would you like magical help in lighting it? There’s not a lot of dry wood around here.”

“No,” said Bel-Sumai. “This won’t be a Coalition funeral, and I’m sure we’ll manage with the wood we’ve got. Tell me your movements last night, starting at the point where you and Mandir left the dining room.”

Straight to business, then. Taya related to him every detail of what they’d done the night before, surmising that Mandir had been asked the same question already and that their stories would be compared. Fortunately, neither of them had any reason to lie. While Mandir’s behavior at supper had been problematic, Bel-Sumai already knew about that, and after supper neither of them had done anything wrong. Certainly they hadn’t murdered anybody.

When she finished relating her story, Bel-Sumai picked up a tablet from a nearby table and studied it, holding it so that she couldn’t see what was written on it. “After the two of you saw Runawir outside and then Setsi, leading the dog with the meat on a stick, nobody saw Mandir again last night except for you?”

Taya reviewed the events of last night in her head. “Correct. But I was with him the whole night.”

“Was there a time when you were briefly separated?” asked Bel-Sumai. “Perhaps you were in the washroom, or he stepped out to fetch water.”

“We each used the washroom briefly before bed,” said Taya. “Not long enough for the other to sneak out of the room and do anything.”

“Do either of you carry
nepenthe
, or any other poisons?”

“We carry only
kimat.
It disables magic but has no effect on the nonmagical.”

Bel-Sumai frowned. “I see.”

Taya clasped her hands, feeling self-conscious and more than a little nervous. Bel-Sumai would consider Mandir’s behavior at supper suspicious and damning; he was not going to take seriously her testimony that he’d been with her all evening, given that they were partners and would naturally close ranks around one another. On top of that, she feared Bel-Sumai was blinded by old prejudices. “There’s something you should know about Mandir. He’s changed a lot since he was a boy in this household.”

“Do you think so?” Bel-Sumai’s eyes narrowed. “Unlike you, I knew Mandir as a boy. He was violent and cruel, beating the younger boys and playing pranks on the older ones. He killed my dog out of sheer vindictiveness.”