Thraxas - The Complete Series (144 page)

I break open a new bottle of klee. Lisutaris, not a great drinker, downs a glass in the blink of an eye and holds out her glass for more. I pour her another glass and ask her if she knows of any reason why an operative from the Venarius Investigation Agency might also be on the trail of the pendant.

“I’ve no idea. Surely it’s not possible.”

“I’m pretty certain that’s what Demanius was doing in the Blind Horse. Before the woman died she seemed to recognise him, and she mentioned the jewel.”

“This is a disaster,” says the Sorcerer, and starts pacing again.

“It is. So far this pendant has been in the hands of various unknown thieves, the Brotherhood, and the Society of Friends. Both these organisations have contacts all over the city, extending right up into the government. When you add in the fact that whoever stole it in the first place probably knew exactly what they were getting, and probably tried to sell it to someone who also knew all about it, it’s pretty clear that the matter is no longer much of a secret. In fact, we might as well assume that everyone knows about it. Are you sure you don’t want to call in some outside help?”

Lisutaris doesn’t.

“The moment I admit the loss, I’m ruined. We have two days left. You must find the pendant.”

“I’ll do my best. I’ll do better if you fill me in on a few missing details.”

“Like what?”

“Like why so many people are dying. It’s not credible that they all just happened to kill each other in a fight over the jewel. Thieves don’t suddenly kill each other. If one is dominant the others back down after the first sign of violence. None of these crime scenes looked like the scenes I’m used to. It looked to me like something had affected the people in a way that drove them insane. Which would be backed up by some of their dying words. One man told me he was on a beautiful golden ship and another one thought he was King of Turai. Any particular reason why they might be thinking that?”

“Yes,” says Lisutaris. “Looking into the green jewel would drive an untrained mind insane. Four people who had all looked into it would be quite likely to kill each other as their dreams took over their reality.”

“You’re telling me this now? Don’t you think you could have mentioned it earlier?”

“I did say that it was a dangerous object,” protests Lisutaris.

“Not so dangerous that it was going to lead to such slaughter. So it’s quite likely that every time someone gets hold of this pendant they’ll go mad, kill their companions and make off with it?”

“Yes. But they won’t get far. If they look into it they will probably die even without violence being inflicted on them. It will just break their minds.”

I could protest more. Lisutaris really should have given me more information when she hired me. There’s not much point in complaining now, though. I’m stuck with it.

“So we now have two problems. One, lots of people seem to know about the jewel. Two, it’s going to drive them all homicidally insane.”

Lisutaris studies her glass.

“This klee is disgusting. My throat is burning. Where do you buy it?”

“It’s supplied to Gurd by a monastery in the hills. The monks distil it in their spare time.”

“Do they have a grudge against the city?”

“I find it bracing.”

Lisutaris drains her glass and winces again as the fiery spirit trickles down her throat.

“It’s poisonous. This liquid would kill you.”

She holds out her glass.

“Give me more.”

I fill her glass.

“I could ask Gurd to send you a few bottles for your masked ball.”

“I don’t think the Senators could take it,” replies Lisutaris, completely failing to catch my hint that she ought to be inviting me. Not that I really want to go. The sight of Turai’s aristocracy disporting themselves in costume is not one that appeals to me. But it still rankles that Makri has an invitation. All she did for Lisutaris at the Assemblage was walk around behind her pretending to be a bodyguard, meanwhile getting so wrecked on thazis, dwa and klee that I had to carry the pair of them home in a carriage. It was me who did all the hard work and her ingratitude is simply appalling. I realise that Lisutaris has been talking to me for some time.

“What were you saying?”

“Have you not been listening?”

“I was contemplating some aspects of the case. Tell me again.”

“I can no longer locate the pendant.”

“Why not?”

Lisutaris is frustrated at having to repeat herself. Apparently after I failed to find the gem in the Blind Horse she repeated her sorcerous procedure for tracing the pendant but was this time unsuccessful. Someone has now succeeded in hiding the jewel from sorcerous enquiry, no mean feat against the power of Lisutaris. It might mean that it is now in the hands of someone capable of providing some heavyweight sorcerous protection themselves.

“There aren’t too many rogue Sorcerers around who could do that. There’s Glixius Dragon Killer of course, he might have the power. I haven’t seen him for a while but he’s been on my mind ever since I saw that woman’s Society of Friends tattoo. He used to work with them.”

Another possibility is that whoever now has the jewel has wrapped it in red Elvish cloth, which would have the effect of casting an impenetrable shield over the object. No sorcerous enquiry can penetrate the cloth. However, red Elvish cloth is fabulously expensive and very hard to come by. It’s illegal for anyone but the King and his ministers to own it.

“Which isn’t to say that someone else in the city might have got their hands on some. Another possibility is that the pendant might have left the city. It might be on its way east right now.”

Lisutaris looks alarmed.

“Surely no one would be so base as to sell such an item to the Orcs?”

“You’d be surprised how base some people in this city can be.”

“You may be right. But not much time elapsed between when the pendant last went missing and the time of my enquiry. I think I’d have picked up the traces were it close to the city. I think it most likely that it is still in Turai, concealed in some manner. Where do you suggest we look?”

“I’ve no idea. It could be anywhere. If you can’t locate it with sorcery, I’m stuck.”

“I thought you were an Investigator,” says Lisutaris, drily.

“Number one chariot in the field of investigation. But we don’t know who took it and Turai’s a large city. I’ll start making enquiries but it’ll take time.”

Lisutaris clenches her fists.

“I have no time.”

There’s a knocking at the door. I open it. Sarin the Merciless is standing outside. Sarin is one of the deadliest killers I’ve ever met. She has a loaded crossbow in her hand. She points it at my heart.

“Give me the pendant or I’ll kill you.”

“Y
ou keep getting in my way,” says Sarin.

Sarin the Merciless is as cold as an Orc’s heart. Not a woman you can take lightly. She learned her fighting skills from warrior monks and is as ruthless a killer as I’ve come across in all my years of investigating.

“You know it’s illegal to carry a weapon like that inside the city walls?”

“Is that so?”

“It is. But don’t get the impression I’m not pleased you visited, Sarin. There are enough warrants out for you for murder and robbery to make a man wealthy.”

“Only if he was alive to collect the reward.”

Sarin is rather tall. She wears a man’s tunic—unusual enough—and, uniquely for a woman in this city, has her hair cut very short. This is next door to taboo and quite unheard of in civilised society. For some reason I’ve never been able to fathom, she wears an extraordinary number of earrings, an odd indulgence for a woman whose image is otherwise so severe. She’s added a few since I last saw her and the piercings now travel the full semicircle of each ear.

She looks at Lisutaris, meanwhile keeping the crossbow pointed at my chest. A bolt at this range would pin me to the wall. Sarin once shot Makri and it took the power of a magical healing stone to save her life. Round about the same time she killed Tas of the Eastern Lightning, one of Turai’s most powerful Sorcerers.

“Who are you?” she demands.

“Lisutaris, Mistress of the Sky,” replies the Sorcerer coldly. “Put that crossbow down.”

Showing no wish to put the crossbow down, Sarin points it instead at Lisutaris, which is a mistake. Lisutaris makes a slight movement of her hand and the weapon flies from Sarin’s grasp to clatter on the floor, ending up under the sink. If Sarin is perturbed she doesn’t show it. She steps forward so her face is only a few inches from that of Lisutaris.

“I don’t like Sorcerers,” she says.

“I don’t like you,” counters Lisutaris.

Lisutaris is not a woman you can intimidate easily. She fought heroically in the last war against the Orcs, bringing down war dragons from the sky and blasting Orcish squadrons with powerful destructive spells. When her considerable supply of sorcery eventually ran out, she picked up a sword and hewed at the Orcish invaders as their heads appeared over the city walls. I know because I was beside her at the time.

“You might believe that the spell protection charm I sense on your person will protect you against me. You are mistaken. Remove your face from mine or I will engulf you in flames.”

“Will you?” says Sarin, not removing her face. “Before you wore down my protection spell I’d break your neck.”

As a sporting man, I wouldn’t mind seeing Sarin and Lisutaris squaring off against each other, but it would probably mean my rooms getting wrecked, and when that happens Gurd is never happy about it. So I interrupt.

“Did you come here just to pick fights with my guests? That’s something I can usually do myself.”

Sarin draws back a few inches.

“No, Thraxas, I came here looking for a pendant. I thought you might have it. Not an unreasonable assumption, given that you were seen at the green jewel’s last known location. Do you have it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The pendant. For far-seeing. Lisutaris hired you to retrieve it for her. Just as I hired men to retrieve it for me. My men ended up dead. I see you fared better.”

“I’m a hard man to kill.”

An expression of withering contempt flickers over Sarin’s features. Not feigned contempt, but real.

“Hard to kill? I’ve passed by you drunk in the gutter, Thraxas. I could have gutted you had I wished.”

“When was this exactly?”

“On one of the many occasions I’ve been in this city, undetected. There are plenty of unsolved crimes which could be laid at my door, Investigator. Some of them investigated by you, without result. The few successes you brag about are as nothing compared to your multitudinous failures.”

I don’t believe her. Sarin is just angry at me because I’ve thwarted her in the past. But I notice Lisutaris is looking at me with a new lack of respect. No client likes to hear their Investigator being mocked by a criminal.

“Me lying drunk in the gutter notwithstanding, Lisutaris hasn’t lost any pendants that I know about. The Mistress of the Sky merely called in to invite me to a masked ball she’s holding in a couple of days. And I’m very gratified to receive the invitation, Lisutaris. I shall be delighted to attend.”

“Stop this buffoonery,” says Sarin, loudly. She studies my face.

“You don’t have the pendant,” she says.

She turns her head to Lisutaris and regards her for a few seconds.

“And neither do you.”

“So you can read minds?” I ask, intending it to be sarcastic.

“Not exactly,” replies Sarin, taking my statement at face value. “But I trained with warrior monks. I can read emotions.”

She picks up her crossbow.

“A puzzle,” she says, softly. “I knew that the pendant had been intercepted by the Society of Friends. I intended to take it from their operative at the Blind Horse. But someone beat me to it. I thought it might have been you but apparently I was wrong. No matter. I do not doubt that I can find it again. If you get in my way I’ll kill you.”

Sarin the Merciless departs, closing the door quietly behind her.

“At least we’re not the only ones who don’t know where the pendant is.”

“That is little comfort,” says Lisutaris. “Who was that woman?”

“Sarin the Merciless. Ruthless killer. She almost killed Makri and she did kill Tas of the Eastern Lightning though it could never be proved against her. She once blackmailed the Consul’s office and made off with enough gold to last her a lifetime, but it hasn’t induced her to retire from crime. I get the impression she enjoys it. Of course, she’s mentally unwell. That whole part about seeing me lying drunk in the gutter was obviously a hallucination.”

“Obviously. Who are her associates?”

“She has no fixed alliances. Did work with Glixius Dragon Killer and the Society of Friends one time, but they fell out, as I recall. She was all set to rob the Society but someone beat her to it.”

“Might we use her as a means of finding the pendant?”

“Perhaps. Can you follow her?”

“I can,” says Lisutaris. “I will trace her movements round the city and keep you informed. Meanwhile I must urge you to spare no effort in your own search. I must depart now. I’m due at a meeting of Turai’s ministers of state.”