‘No.’ Victor Begum stepped forward. ‘It’s ridiculous to suggest any one of us could have done such a thing to one of our own. It has to be someone from outside the Council.’
<Please, Victor,> de Almeida scripted, her tone weary. <We can’t make exceptions for ourselves if we’re going to work out what happened here.>
Somewhere beyond the high narrow windows, Luc could hear waves crashing on the island’s shore. His lungs felt like they had turned to granite in his chest, fear sharpening his senses. He was unpleasantly aware that any one of the men and women before him could order his death, without reprisal or consequences, and at a moment’s notice, if he failed to satisfy them.
‘Excuse me,’ he said.
They all looked over at him.
‘If I were to hazard a guess,’ he said, feeling cool sweat trickle past one eyebrow despite the chill air, ‘I’d say your biggest worry is whether you can trust each other since, technically, any one of you could be responsible for Vasili’s murder.’
There; he’d said it. He waited, breath catching in his throat, fully expecting to die at any moment for words that sounded wildly heretical even as they emerged from his mouth.
‘He’s right,’ said de Almeida, turning to the rest. ‘This is why Father Cheng agreed to my proposal – we need the perspective of someone from outside of the Council, someone who couldn’t possibly have an axe to grind with the victim.’
‘Yes, all very good,’ said Ruy Borges irritably, ‘but why him?’
Good question, thought Luc, turning his gaze back to de Almeida.
‘Luc Gabion has entirely proven his loyalty, and his skill, by almost single-handedly apprehending the criminal Winchell Antonov,’ she replied.
‘Oh,’ said Borges, regarding Luc with new eyes and nodding slowly. ‘Him.’
Cheng clapped his hands together, almost as if he were hosting a dinner party. ‘I think it’s about time we took a look at the deceased, don’t you?’
Luc’s feeling of being out of his depth intensified as de Almeida beckoned him through a side-door. The smell of putrefaction, mixed with the scent of smoke, hit Luc as soon as he passed through it. Sevgeny Vasili’s death had clearly not been a recent one.
Luc found himself standing inside the entrance to a library filled with two rows of tall bookcases. The shelves of the bookcases were lined with actual physical, bound volumes, and each bookcase rose to well above head height, terminating just beneath a ceiling four or five metres overhead. Reading tables and thickly upholstered furniture on ragged and dusty-looking rugs filled the space between the two rows, while the walls of the library appeared to have been cut from the same unadorned stone as the hall.
A body lay slumped a few metres from a pair of glass-panelled doors at the far end of the library, beyond which lay an outside patio with a view over the rest of the island. Two mechants hovered near the corpse, presumably set there to guard it.
Luc stepped forward, then glanced back to see Zelia de Almeida and the rest of the Councillors gathered by the entrance to the library. De Almeida fluttered one hand towards Vasili’s inert form as if to say go on.
Luc stepped around the body where it lay sprawled across a patterned rug. Part of Vasili’s head, along with much of his torso and almost the entire pelvic region, had been burned to ashes. The rug beneath the body was crisped black.
Luc tried to keep his breathing shallow as he knelt on one knee by Vasili’s remains. He glanced toward the patio doors, thinking.
Vasili had hit the floor face-down, but the blackened remains of one arm reached towards the patio. Luc put one hand on the scorched rug near what remained of the head, then leaned down until his cheek almost touched the floor, trying to get a better look at the dead man’s face without disturbing the body. One side of the skull had melted, exposing the brain, but the side of the face that had been facing away from the blast that killed him was recognizably that of Sevgeny Vasili. That, at least, removed any doubts about who had been killed.
Luc sat back up and looked towards the patio doors, noting that the glass panels nearest the ground had melted and shattered.
He glanced back down at Vasili, and spotted something he’d missed at first glance. Leaning down again, he saw that a book lay wedged just beneath the body, and by some miracle appeared to be intact. It lay partly open beneath Vasili’s chest, and what pages Luc could see had a slight metallic lustre to them, as if they were formed from sheets of some metallic composite instead of paper. That, at least, might explain why the book had survived as well as it had.
He reached down to see if it was possible to carefully tug the book out from under the body without disturbing it too much. As he did so, his fingers brushed the edge of one page, and what happened next took his breath away.
He stumbled into the library, frightened and alone. Beyond the patio, the sun cast long streaks of fire across the evening sky as it sank towards the horizon. He searched frantically for what he needed.
There. He raced towards a shelf and picked out the book, catching sight of the lettering on the spine: A History of the Tian Di, by Javier Maxwell.
Stepping towards the glass doors, he peered out to see a flier drop towards the courtyard outside. Fear clutched at his heart, but then he took a deep breath, pressing trembling fingers against the pages, desperate to record one last message . . .
‘Winchell,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘I was wrong, so very wrong. I see that now.’
Luc gasped, and rocked back onto his haunches, pulling his fingers away from the book and pressing them against his chest as if he had been scalded.
Just for a moment, he had been Sevgeny Vasili.
‘Mr Gabion? Are you all right?’
Luc turned to see Cheng standing halfway between the entrance to the library and the corpse. The rest remained huddled together by the door.
Luc glanced down at Vasili’s body, the book still mostly hidden beneath it. From where he stood, Cheng couldn’t see it.
‘I’m sorry, I guess this is all just a little . . .’ Luc shook his head, struggling to regain his composure and unsure what to say. Some instinct prevented him from mentioning anything about the book.
<And this is the man you’re hoping will exonerate you, Zelia?> jeered Borges.
‘Did you note anything of interest?’ Cheng pressed.
Yes. ‘If I may speak candidly once more . . . ?’
‘You may,’ Cheng rumbled, regarding him curiously.
‘Forensic investigation isn’t exactly my forte,’ he explained. ‘I’m not sure just how much good I can do you here without the help of someone who might be better qualified.’
Cheng regarded him with mild amusement. ‘Zelia showed me the details of your record of service for Security and Intelligence’s Archives Division, Mr Gabion. It was all very impressive. As Zelia already pointed out, you managed to track Winchell down essentially single-handed, not even counting several other lesser but nonetheless equally impressive triumphs earlier in your career. Under the circumstances, I think she’s entirely right to think you’re more than sufficiently qualified to give us an objective opinion regarding what took place here.’
It further occurred to Luc that if Vasili’s killer really was a member of the Temur Council, he could well be amongst those standing arrayed behind Father Cheng. And given the power of life or death any one of them had over him – or, indeed, over almost anyone throughout the worlds of the Tian Di – there was a real chance he’d be putting his own life in serious danger if he did mention the book. Nor had he missed Ruy Borges’s comment about Zelia’s need to be exonerated – but exonerated from what? From suspicion of murdering Vasili, or something completely unrelated?