Thraxas - The Complete Series (31 page)

“Who the hell are you?” I roar.

They turn and head for the door. I leap after them and grab the nearest one by the shoulder, spinning him round.

“What’s going on?”

He pulls away. Still shocked by the interruption to my trance, I have even less patience than usual. I let fly with a blow that should send the monk through the wall. He blocks it. I’m surprised. I try again. He blocks it again, automatically, with no apparent effort. When I aim a third clubbing blow at his face he touches my arm and I find myself facing the other way, God knows how. Then I’m propelled across the room by a mighty slap between the shoulder blades. I bounce into the far wall and crumple on to the floor.

Makri charges in and finds me lying confused and disorientated. She rushes to the outside door, but there’s no one in sight. My assailants have departed as swiftly and mysteriously as they appeared.

“Who was it?” asks Makri, helping me to my feet.

“Just two warrior monks out for a little fun,” I gasp, and sink down on the couch, exhausted from looking in the kuriya. Having to confront two warrior monks on top of that is way too much.

“What are warrior monks?”

“Monks who are also warriors. They spend half their time in prayer and meditation, and the other half learning how to fight. Excuse me, Makri, I have to lie down.”

My head swims. The blow winded me. I lie on my couch till it clears. Makri brings me a beer and I start getting back into the real world.

“Damn them. I was just starting to get a picture when they arrived.”

I strive to remember what the house in the kuriya pool was like. A villa on a wooded hill. Could be any one of a number of places up on the edges of the rich suburb of Thamlin where the land rises up towards the Palace. But it might be somewhere else—another city even.

“No, Calia couldn’t have made it so far away. If she’d taken passage on a ship the Guards would have heard about it. And I don’t believe she galloped off on a horse. Rallee tells me they’ve made a thorough check on everyone who hired out horses that day. Checked the trading caravans leaving the city as well.”

Makri wonders why the Guards are so keen. “They’re taking a lot of trouble over this, aren’t they? For a run-of-the-mill murder?”

“Perhaps. But Senator Lodius is making speeches about the city going to ruin again, so the Guards are working flat out to try and prove they’re not the waste of space he accuses them of being. Poor Jevox was looking forward to a week’s holiday and instead he’s up to his eyebrows in witness statements and is consequently about as miserable as a Niojan whore about everything. The Guards need to do a good job on Drantaax and reckon they’re off to a flying start having actually arrested someone so quickly. They won’t want to risk messing up the trial of his killer.”

I ought to get up to Thamlin and see if I can find that villa. Damn those monks for interrupting.

Gurd knocks and pokes his head round the door.

“Makri,” he says, “you should be working. And Thraxas, there’s someone downstairs to see you.”

“Who?”

“I think her name was Dandelion.”

“Tell her I’ve gone out,” I say, rising hastily. “Important investigating. Stop looking at me like that, Makri. I am not going to look for the dolphins’ healing stone that fell from the sky, and that’s final. If you’re so concerned, take Dandelion to one of your Association of Gentlewomen meetings. They’ll sort her out.”

I grab a sword, pick up some money to buy a loaf of bread at Minarixa’s bakery, and head on out.

As soon as I hit the street I know I’m being followed. I frown. I’m getting fed up with this. I jump in a landus and instruct the driver to take me to Thamlin quickly. He does his best, but, with all the construction work, the potholes in the roads and the market traffic, we move slowly and I fail to shake off my tail. I regret not dealing with this earlier.

Thamlin is a different world to the filth of Twelve Seas. Here the streets are clean and paved with pale green and yellow tiles. The luxurious villas stand behind leafy gardens and white walls manned by members of the Securitus Guild. Civil Guards patrol the streets in numbers, keeping them safe from the rabble. No one disturbs the calm. Even the stals, the small black birds which infest the city, look better fed. Anyone wandering up here to do a little begging is soon chased away so as not to disturb the peace of our aristocracy.

I used to live here. Now I’m about as welcome as an Orc at an Elvish wedding.

Having no particularly good idea as to where to start my search I halt the landus in Truth is Beauty Lane, where the Sorcerers live, and stroll on up the gentle slope towards the wooded area adjoining the grounds of the Imperial Palace. All around me are houses similar to the one I saw in the kuriya pool. I strain to recall any distinctive features but nothing comes to mind. Just another luxurious villa where the occupants can lie around in the shade drinking wine from their own vineyards and eating fish from their private ponds. I frown. A fine piece of investigation this is turning out to be.

I notice a Guard standing outside one of the smaller villas set back from the road. No one else is in sight, no servants trimming the lawns or tending to the flower beds. It strikes me that it is very probably the house of Thalius Green Eye, the recently killed Sorcerer.

It’s nothing to do with me. I should stay away. So I wander over for a look. The Guard isn’t paying much attention to anything. He doesn’t notice me slipping over the small wall and into the garden. I don’t know why I’m doing this. Just naturally curious about Sorcerers being murdered, I guess.

The gardens are well tended but empty. Presumably all of the dead Sorcerer’s servants are still in custody, answering questions about their knowledge of poisons. I walk swiftly through some tall trees till I reach a small ornamental pond at the back of the house. Unlike some of our wealthier residents, Thalius didn’t keep it stocked with fish. A well-stocked fish pond is a big status symbol in Turai; an aristocratic matron couldn’t ask a member of the Royal Family to dinner unless she could produce a first course from her own private source. Takes some money to maintain though.

I’m now close to the back door, painted yellow with a small statue of Saint Quatinius at each side. Yellow is regarded as the luckiest colour to paint your back door in Turai. The front one should be white. Virtually everyone falls into line on this one. Even if you’re not superstitious, why tempt fate?

I’m closing in on the door when a noise inside sends me hurrying to hide behind a large bush. Another noise from behind sends me deeper into the undergrowth. I watch with interest bordering on amazement. First, the back door opens and out come three shaven-headed and red-robed monks, very quietly indeed. They glide through the portal warily, checking that they are unobserved before moving off towards the far end of the grounds. They are not unobserved, however, because from the undergrowth behind me emerge four other monks, equally shaven-headed but garbed in yellow. They immediately rush at the first group and attack them without warning.

The silence is broken as battle is joined, and a very athletic battle it is too. People talk of the fighting prowess of warrior monks but I’ve never seen such a demonstration myself. I watch in astonishment as kicks fly head high and crunching blows send opponents spinning great distances over the lawn, until the recipients of these blows leap athletically to their feet and run back into the fray. Most of the blows are accompanied by peculiarly intense shouts so the whole neighbourhood must surely hear what is going on.

It doesn’t take long for the Civil Guard from the front of the house to arrive. When he sees the seven warring monks he wisely decides not to get involved, but blows a piercing whistle to summon help.

Hearing this, the monks disengage. They eye each other with hatred, then the uninjured help the wounded and they make off in different directions. Again, they display great agility in leaping over walls and various other obstacles between themselves and freedom.

More Civil Guards will arrive at any second. I just have time to make my escape. I ought to get as far away from here as I can. So instead I walk over to the back door and step inside. I’m a fool sometimes. My overwhelming curiosity—or nosiness—has landed me in trouble since the day I was born.

At least there’s some relief in here from the baking sun outside. I sluice some water over my neck from the pitcher in the kitchen, and head on into the house. In the first room I enter—a wide, white, calm room with pastel tapestries on the walls—I meet a young woman with a knife in her hand who challenges me in a spirited manner and attempts a vicious slash at my belly before she trips over the empty bottle of klee at her feet and falls down in a drunken heap on the floor.

Another unexpected development. I frown. I’m sure Thalius wasn’t married, yet she’s wearing a toga suitable for the woman of the house. Must be his daughter.

She looks up from the floor and demands to know what I’m doing here.

“Investigating the death of Thalius,” I lie.

“You’re not a Guard.” She climbs unsteadily to her feet. “Just as well. Guards won’t get anywhere finding out who killed my father. Guards are as much use as a eunuch in a brothel.”

I’m surprised to hear this expression spoken in her cultured voice. She reaches for another bottle of klee on the shelf behind her. She’s already had more than enough but I figure it’s none of my business so I don’t try and stop her. I think I can hear noises outside suggesting more Guards have arrived.

“The Guards will be here any moment. I’m an Investigator. I’ll help you if you tell me about it.”

It comes out sounding sincere. It might even be sincere. I’m feeling kind of sorry for her, drunk and alone with her father freshly buried.

“What’s to tell?”

“Who killed your father?”

“His dwa dealer, I suppose.”

This takes me completely by surprise. Not the fact that Thalius Green Eye took dwa—that’s common enough among all classes of people and Sorcerers seem particularly prone to it. But there was no mention of any drug connection in the reports of the killing.

“I thought he was poisoned by a servant.”

She laughs, stupidly, drunkenly. “So they say. Didn’t want another drug scandal to rock the Palace. Too many already. My father wasn’t poisoned. He was killed by a crossbow bolt. Couldn’t pay the dwa dealer.”

There are footsteps outside as the Civil Guards enter the house.

“Hire me to find the killer,” I say, urgently, but it’s too late. At the same moment as she falls unconscious to the floor the Guards enter the room led by Prefect Galwinius himself, their chief in Thamlin.

Prefect Galwinius knows me well. He dislikes me just as much as Prefect Tholius does. More, possibly. He takes one look at her outstretched body before ordering my immediate arrest and I am loaded into a wagon and carted off to jail.

It’s not unusual for me to be carted off to jail in the course of an investigation but when I reflect that I have been carted off this time because of something I wasn’t even investigating, I wonder if even at my stage of life it might not be too late to curb my natural inquisitiveness.

T
he worst thing about being in jail is the heat. And the smell. And you can’t get a beer. The company’s always bad as well. There’s plenty wrong with being in jail.

I’m sitting in a small cell with a fellow prisoner who won’t say a word and lies on his bunk looking miserable as a Niojan whore. It’s actually a relief when the prayer call rings out. Gives me something to do.

My requests to the Guards for the legal representation to which I am entitled are routinely ignored. I don’t actually have my own lawyer (though in my line of business I should), but as a citizen of Turai the state is meant to provide me with a Public Defender. They don’t. It’s well into the evening before anyone official pays me any attention at all. Two Guards thrust the door open and take me along a corridor into an interview room where Deputy Prefect Prasius is sitting stony faced behind a desk.

I’m moderately pleased to see Prasius. He doesn’t like me any better than the Prefect, but he’s not quite as stupid. He’s younger than his boss Galwinius, and well spoken, as you would expect. You don’t get promoted or elected into official posts in Turai unless you’re well born and your name ends in the aristocratic ‘-ius’. A name like Thraxas marks you out as low born. There is no legal reason why a man from the lower classes can’t be elected to high office, but the aristocrats have the Senate pretty much sewn up with money and patronage and it’s extremely rare for a new man to break through.

“So, Thraxas. You want to tell us what you were doing in Thalius’s house?”

“You want to tell me where my Public Defender is?”

Prasius looks round at his Guards. “He wants to know where his Public Defender is. Anyone seen his Public Defender?”

The Guards shake their heads, which makes the fancy tassels on the shoulders of their tunics sway back and forward.

“Looks like no one’s seen him.”

“I’ve a right to representation.”