Tabaea smiled, and her hand dropped from the table to the hilt of the Black Dagger.
CHAPTER 13
Lady Sarai leaned in the doorway and asked, “Anything interesting today?”
Captain Tikri looked up, startled; before he could do more than drop the report he was reading, Sarai added, “Don’t bother to get up.”
“Yes, my lady.” He settled back and looked up at her uneasily.
“So, is there anything interesting in your reports today?” Sarai insisted.
“Oh.” Tikri looked down at the paper. “As a matter of fact, there is one odd case. It’s probably just a revenge killing, but... well, it’s odd.”
“Tell me about it.” Sarai stepped into the office and found a chair, one with a dragon carved on the back and the seat upholstered in brown velvet.
“A girl named Inza, an apprentice warlock,” Tikri said. “Her throat was cut last night while she slept, and then she was stabbed through the heart—to make sure she was dead, I suppose.”
Sarai grimaced. “Sounds nasty,” she said.
Tikri nodded. “I would say so, yes. I didn’t go myself, but the reports... well, I’d say it was nasty.”
Sarai frowned and leaned forward. “You said it was probably revenge? Who did it?”
Tikri shrugged. “We don’t know who did it—not yet, anyway. Whoever it was came in through a window—pried open the latch, very professional job, looked like an experienced burglar—but then, nothing was stolen or disturbed, so it wasn’t a burglary at all.”
“Unless the thief panicked,” Sarai suggested.
Tikri shook his head. “Panicked? Cutting the throat and a thrust through the heart doesn’t look like anyone who would panic.”
“So it was revenge—but you don’t know who did it?”
“No.” Tikri frowned. “Not yet, anyway. The girl’s master swears she doesn’t know of any enemies, anyone who hated Inza or had a grudge against her. Warlocks don’t do divinations, of course, so she couldn’t identify the killer herself; we have a wizard checking on it instead.”
“You don’t think it was the master herself?”
Tikri turned up an empty palm. “Who knows? But we don’t have any reason to think it was her. And Luris is a skilled warlock; why cut the girl’s throat when she could have simply stopped her heart? Or if a warlock wanted to be less obvious, she could have staged any number of plausible accidents.”
“That’s true.” Sarai considered and tapped the arm of her chair as her feet stretched out in front of her—signs that she was thinking. “It’s very odd, you know, that anyone would kill an apprentice warlock—isn’t this Luris now duty-bound to avenge the girl’s death?” Tikri nodded. “Just so. Whoever did this isn’t afraid of warlocks, obviously.”
“And how could an apprentice have an enemy who hated her enough to kill her? Apprentices don’t have time or freedom to make that sort of enemies, do they?”
“Not usually,” Tikri agreed.
“How old was she?”
Tikri glanced at the report. “Seventeen,” he said. “She would have made journeyman next month.”
“Seventeen.” Sarai bit her lip. She had been worried about her father, but he was almost sixty, he had had a long and full life. She had been worried about her brother, but he probably wouldn’t die of his illness. If he did, if either of them died, it wouldn’t be a shock. But a healthy seventeen-year-old girl, five years younger than Sarai herself, had been killed, without warning, apparently without any good reason.
“Has anyone talked to her family?” she asked.
Tikri shrugged. “I think someone sent a message,” he said.
“I was also thinking of asking if anyone in her family knew if she had any enemies,” Sarai remarked.
Tikri blinked. “Why bother?” he asked. “The magicians will tell us who did it.”
Sarai nodded.
“Let me know what they find out,” she said. She rose and turned away.
She had intended to stay and talk to Captain Tikri for a while. She didn’t have any specific questions or assignments for him; she just thought it was a good idea to know what her subordinates were doing. She wanted to know everything about how the city guard worked, how crimes were investigated, how reports were written, what got included and what got left out— the real story, not what she would be told if she asked. She wanted Tikri to talk to her easily and not treat her as some lordly creature who couldn’t be bothered with everyday details. Chatting with him had seemed like the best way to work toward that. The news of the murder bothered her, though, and she no longer felt any interest in light conversation.
There were murders fairly often in Ethshar, of course—with hundreds of thousands of people packed inside the city walls, killings were inevitable. The annual total was often close to a hundred, even without counting the deaths that might have been either natural or magical.
Most of them, however, involved open arguments, drunken brawls, attempted robbery, or marital disputes. Someone breaking into a warlock’s house to butcher a sleeping apprentice was definitely not typical.
But there really didn’t seem to be much she could do about it just now.
Then a thought struck her, and she turned back. “You said a wizard is doing the divination for this one?” “That’s right.” Tikri nodded. “Who is it?”
“Mereth of the Golden Door. Do you...” “Oh, her! Yes, I know her. Is she working at her home?” “I think so, yes...” Before Tikri could finish whatever he was going to say, Sarai cut him off. “Thanks,” she said. Then she turned away and strode down the hallway.
She did not care to wait for an official report; she wanted to talk to Mereth and find out just what had happened, why this poor Inza had been killed. Mereth’s home and shop were on Wizard Street, of course—at least three-fourths of all the magicians for hire in Ethshar of the Sands located their businesses on Wizard Street.
Wizard Street, however, was several miles long, winding its way across the entire city, from Westbeach to Northangle; simply saying a house was on Wizard Street didn’t tell anyone much.
In Mereth’s particular case, her shop was just three blocks from the palace in the district of Nightside, where Wizard Street made its closest approach; that was probably, Sarai knew, why Mereth got so much investigative work.
Or perhaps Mereth had chosen her home in order to be close to her preferred customers; Sarai really didn’t know which was the ox and which was the wagon.
The weather was cool, but not unpleasant, and Sarai didn’t bother with a wrap. She marched quickly across the bright stone pavement of the plaza surrounding the palace, across Circle Street, and out North Street—which, with the usual Ethsharitic disregard for unimportant details, ran west by northwest through Nightside, and not north through Shadyside.
Like all the neighborhoods close around the palace, Nightside was largely occupied by the mansions of successful merchants and the city’s nobility; this portion of North Street ran between tall iron fences that guarded gardens and fountains. Sarai paid them no attention.
Harbor Street, being a major thoroughfare between the waterfront and Grandgate, was crowded and bustling where North Street intersected it, and was also far less aristocratic than its surroundings. As she crossed the avenue Sarai was jostled by a heavy man who reeked of fish; her hand fell automatically to her purse, but it was still there and seemed intact. If the man had been a cutpurse or pickpocket he had missed his grab.
At the corner of North and Wizard she turned left, and there was Mereth’s shop, two doors down on the far side. The draperies were drawn and the windows closed, but the trademark gilded door was ajar.