“Are these the only persons who have access to the archaeological zone?” he asked Magadone Sambisa.
“There are the day laborers also, of course.”
“Ah. And where are they just now?”
“They have a village of their own, over beyond the last pyramid. They go to it at sundown and don’t come back until the start of work the next day.”
“I see. How many are there altogether? A great many?”
Magadone Sambisa looked across the table toward a pale and long-faced Metamorph with strongly inward-sloping eyes. He was her site supervisor, Kaastisiik by name, responsible for each day’s deployment of diggers. “What would you say? About a hundred?”
“One hundred twelve,” said Kaastisiik, and clamped his little slit of a mouth in a way that demonstrated great regard for his own precision.
“Mostly Piurivar?” Valentine asked.
“Entirely Piurivar,” said Magadone Sambisa. “We thought it was best to use only native workers, considering that we’re not only excavating the city but to some extent rebuilding it. They don’t appear to have any problem with the presence of non-Piurivar archaeologists, but having humans taking part in the actual reconstruction work would very likely be offensive to them.”
“You hired them all locally, did you?”
“There are no settlements of any kind in the immediate vicinity of the ruins, your majesty. Nor are there many Piurivars living anywhere in the surrounding province. We had to bring them in from great distances. A good many from Piurifayne itself, in fact.”
Valentine raised an eyebrow at that. From Piurifayne? Piurifayne was a province of far-off Zimroel, an almost unthinkable distance away on the other side of the Inner Sea. Eight thousand years before, the great conqueror Lord Stiamot—he who had ended for all time the Piurivars’ hope of remaining independent on their own world—had driven those Metamorphs who had survived his war against them into Piurifayne’s humid jungles and had penned them up in a reservation there. Though the old restrictions had long since been lifted and Metamorphs now were permitted to settle wherever they pleased, more of them still lived in Piurifayne than anywhere else; and it was in the subtropical glades of Piurifayne that the revolutionary Faraataa had founded the underground movement that had sent the War of the Rebellion forth upon peaceful Majipoor like a river of seething lava.
Tunigorn said, “You’ve questioned them all, naturally? Established their comings and goings at the time of the murder?”
Magadone Sambisa seemed taken aback. “You mean, treat them as though they were suspects in the killing?”
“They are suspects in the killing,” said Tunigorn.
“They are simple diggers and haulers of burdens, nothing more, Prince Tunigorn. There are no murderers among them, that much I know. They revered Dr. Huukaminaan. They regarded him as a guardian of their past—almost a sacred figure. It’s inconceivable that any one of them could have carried out such a dreadful and hideous crime. Inconceivable!”
“In this very place some twenty thousand years ago,” Duke Nascimonte said, looking upward as if he were speaking only to the air, “the King of the Shapeshifters, as you yourself reminded us earlier today, caused two enormous sea-dragons to be butchered alive atop those huge stone platforms back there. It was clear from your words this afternoon that the Shapeshifters of those days must have regarded sea-dragons with even more reverence than you say your laborers had for Dr. Huukaminaan. They called them ‘water-kings,’ am I not right, and gave them names, and thought of them as holy elder brothers, and addressed prayers to them? Yet the bloody sacrifice took place here in Velalisier even so, the thing that to this very day the Shapeshifters themselves speak of as the Defilement. Is this not true? Permit me to suggest, then, that if the King of the Shapeshifters could have done such a thing back then, it isn’t all that inconceivable that one of your own hired Metamorphs here could have found some reason to perpetrate a similar atrocity last week upon the unfortunate Dr. Huukaminaan on the very same altar.”
Magadone Sambisa appeared stunned, as though Nascimonte had struck her in the face. For a moment she could make no reply. Then she said hoarsely, “How can you use an ancient myth, a fantastic legend, to cast suspicion on a group of harmless, innocent—”
“Ah, so it’s a myth and a legend when you want to protect these harmless and innocent diggers and haulers of yours, and absolute historical truth when you want us to shiver with rapture over the significance of these piles of old jumbled stones?”
“Please,” Valentine said, glaring at Nascimonte. “Please.” To Magadone Sambisa he said, “What time of day did the murder take place?”
“Late at night. Past midnight, it must have been.”
“I was the last to see Dr. Huukaminaan,” said one of the Metamorph archaeologists, a frail-looking Piurivar whose skin had an elegant emerald hue. Vo-Siimifon was his name; Magadone Sambisa had introduced him as an authority on ancient Piurivar script. “We sat up late in our tent, he and I, discussing an inscription that had been found the day before. The lettering was extremely minute; Dr. Huukaminaan complained of a headache, and said finally that he was going out for a walk. I went to sleep. Dr. Huukaminaan did not return.”
“It’s a long way,” Mirigant observed, “from here to the sacrificial platforms. Quite a long way. It would take at least half an hour to walk there, I’d guess. Perhaps more, for someone his age. He was an old man, I understand.”
“But if someone happened to encounter him just outside the camp, though,” Tunigorn suggested, “and forced him to go all the way down to the platform area—”
Valentine said, “Is a guard posted here at the encampment at night?”
“No. There seemed to be no purpose in doing that.”
“And the dig site itself? It’s not fenced off, or protected in any way?”
“No.”
“Then anyone at all could have left the day-laborers’ village as soon as it grew dark,” Valentine said, “and waited out there in the road for Dr. Huukaminaan to come out.” He glanced toward Vo-Siimifon. “Was Dr. Huukaminaan in the habit of taking a walk before bedtime?”
“Not that I recall.”
“And if he had chosen to go out late at night for some reason, would he have been likely to take so long a walk?”
“He was quite a robust man, for his age,” said the Piurivar. “But even so that would have been an unusual distance to go just for a stroll before bedtime.”
“Yes. So it would seem.” Valentine turned again to Magadone Sambisa. “It’ll be necessary, I’m afraid, for us to question your laborers. And each member of your expedition, too. You understand that at this point we can’t arbitrarily rule anyone out.” Her eyes flashed. “Am I under suspicion too, your majesty?”
“At this point,” said Valentine, “nobody here is under suspicion. And everyone is. Unless you want me to believe that Dr. Huukaminaan committed suicide by dismembering himself and distributing parts of himself all over the top of that platform.”
The night had been cool, but the sun sprang into the morning sky with incredible swiftness. Almost at once, early as it was in the day, the air began to throb with desert warmth. It was necessary to get a quick start at the site, Magadone Sambisa had told them, since by midday the intense heat would make work very difficult.
Valentine was ready for her when she called for him soon after dawn. At her request he would be accompanied only by some members of his security detachment, not by any of his fellow lords. Tunigorn grumbled about this, as did Mirigant. But she said—and would not yield on the point—that she preferred that the Pontifex alone come with her today, and after he had seen what she had to show him he could make his own decisions about sharing the information with the others.