Thraxas - The Complete Series (43 page)

I sigh. Inspiration never arrived. And I gave it every opportunity. I suppose I’d better just go out and see if I can stir things up a little. I’ll go and visit Ixial the Seer. Even if I don’t learn anything new about the case, he might let me into his health secrets.

I load up with a vast tray of stew and assorted vegetables from Tanrose. Just audible from outside are the sounds of a young woman attacking a target dummy with an axe and assorted swords and knives.

“Makri tells me she’s making good progress at the Guild College,” says Tanrose.

“Yes. She’ll be talking to the Elvish Royal Family in their own language soon. I wonder if they’ll talk back to her?”

Tanrose’s stew fails to provide me with the pleasure it normally does. I take an extra pancake to mop up my plate, but my heart isn’t really in it. In a morose mood I head out into the afternoon heat to see what I can dig up.

“Better than rowing a slave galley I suppose,” I mutter to myself, striding up Quintessence Street.

A bunch of young Koolu Kings are hanging around at the first corner, trying to look tough. They stare at me as I go past. I stare back. They’ll all be in the Brotherhood soon enough, ready for the real world of crime, unless war breaks out and they get conscripted, in which case most of them will be dead. Or the plague strikes like it did a few years back—another good way of emptying the slums.

I find a landus quickly and direct the driver to the villa in Thamlin. I’m in two minds as to whether to make a direct approach to Ixial or whether to try sneaking quietly in the back. I decide on the direct approach. I’ve had enough of sneaking for now.

My direct approach achieves results. After marching up to the villa and banging on the front door loudly enough to wake Old King Kiben it’s answered by Calia herself. It’s odd the way there don’t seem to be any servants here. I suppose the monks must look after themselves. At any other abode in Thamlin the women of the house would rather die than actually answer the door themselves, but I suppose that Calia, coming from Twelve Seas, doesn’t mind so much.

Calia informs me no one is in. She stands in the door in a manner to suggest I’m not welcome to come in and check. I notice she’s looking happier with life.

“I hear Ixial got well.”

She nods.

“How?”

“Through his great powers of recovery.”

“Amazing powers. Almost makes me want to take up meditation. Where is he? Looking for Tresius?”

If she knows she isn’t saying.

I tell her I’d like to ask a few questions about Drantaax. She doesn’t want to talk till I point out that she’s still wanted by the Guards for questioning and I’m not above turning her in. This gets me inside the door, but not much further. According to Calia she knows no more than she told me before. She doesn’t know who killed her husband, and she doesn’t seem to know anything about illegal gold.

“You know Drantaax was heavily in debt?”

“No he wasn’t. He was the most successful sculptor in the city. He had commissions for years to come, all of them worth money.”

“Maybe, but he liked to gamble. The way I hear it he’d remortgaged the house to pay off the bookmakers, and he was about to lose everything.”

For the first time Calia looks surprised, then angry. She insists I must be mistaken.

“Drantaax didn’t gamble. He might not have been so dull if he did. And he didn’t drink. I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but none of it’s true.”

So Drantaax managed to conceal his debts from his wife. And his drinking. Lucky man.

“If he wasn’t in debt, why was he so worried about finishing this statue?”

“He wasn’t worried,” claims Calia. “It was on schedule. We took a few days off in the country right before he was killed. That’s how worried he was. Now, excuse me, I have things to do.”

“Like what?”

“Packing. I’m leaving with Ixial.”

“You’re leaving Grosex to hang.”

“There’s nothing I can do about that. Nothing I can tell the Guards would clear his name.”

“Ixial being arrested for murder would clear his name.”

She falls silent. I can’t get anything more out of her. Quite possibly she has nothing more to tell. Before I go I warn her about the Assassins. Ixial’s welfare doesn’t concern me but I hate the Assassins Guild for being a bunch of cold-hearted killers, and I’ll frustrate them if I can. Besides, if they kill Ixial I’m never going to bring him to court.

“Ixial the Seer can look out for himself.”

“I’m sure he can. But pass on the information anyway. The Assassins Guild is no joke. If Hanama takes the case, I don’t reckon much for his chances. She won’t bother marching up for a fair fight like the Venerable Tresius. She’ll put an arrow in his back or use a poison dart while he’s sleeping.”

As I’m leaving the villa I have the slight impression that there’s something close by that doesn’t belong. Something or someone. I can’t quite make out what. The sensitivity that I developed during my Sorcerer’s training rarely lets me down even now. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was an Assassin in the garden. Well, I warned Ixial. If he ignores me, that’s his problem.

I figure I should check on the gambling debts. I call in on Starox, the bookie, who operates from an illegal shop between Pashish and Twelve Seas. Starox is a Brotherhood man but we’re on good terms, largely because I’ve lost so much money to him. To my surprise Starox tells me that he never took a bet from Drantaax.

I can’t work out why not. If the sculptor wanted to gamble then Starox is the obvious person for him to transact his business with. What’s more, Starox is of the opinion that if Drantaax was making large losses with any other bookmaker in town he’d have been bound to know about it.

“I know every heavy gambler in Turai. I don’t figure the sculptor as a gambler, Thraxas. He was a well-known man and as far as I know he never made a bet.”

I thank Starox. I also place a couple of bets before I leave. It’s not the racing season in Turai—it’s too hot for the chariots to run at the Stadium Superbius—but there’s a small amphitheatre and track further down the coast where they catch the breeze off the sea and they’re holding a race meeting this week. I was planning to go before I got bound up in this affair.

My next stop is the Public Records Office, which isn’t far from the law courts. It’s another place I used to be welcome but where the officials now pretend not to know me. To hell with them. I find a young clerk with time on his hands and we hunt through the scrolls in the records room till we find a document relating to Drantaax’s property in Pashish.

“Who owns it?”

“Drantaax.”

“But who’s holding the mortgage?”

“No one. According to the city records it isn’t mortgaged.”

I take a look myself. He’s right. Drantaax owned it outright. No problems with his finances are recorded here.

No debts and no gambling? Then why did Grosex think he was in such trouble? Stranger and stranger. I walk home, stopping off at a market stall to buy a watermelon which I eat, very messily, as I walk along.

It strikes me that if Sarin the Merciless carries out her threat then a bolt from her crossbow would go through me about as easily as the watermelon. There’s not much I can do about that except be careful and rely on my senses to give me some sort of warning. I can’t walk around wearing a breastplate in this heat. It’d kill me just about as quick as the crossbow. I could place the personal protection spell in my mind I suppose, but that’s a large spell and I find it tiring to carry it around these days. Also, I like to have the sleep spell handy when I’m on a case, and I can’t carry both. I just don’t have the capacity any more.

I finally manage to track down one of Drantaax’s servants, a groom. The Guard had been holding him as a material witness but his father has some influence with the Horse Masters Guild and managed to spring him. He doesn’t tell me much I don’t already know, but he does confirm Calia’s story that Drantaax seemed to be in no trouble. The statue was coming along on schedule and he doesn’t know of any debts. The groom had accompanied Drantaax and Calia on their short break to Ferias, a small town further down the coast where it’s a little cooler in the summer. People with money to spare often take a break there at this time of year. Lucky them, I reflect, as the sweat pours down inside my tunic and my leather sandals start to feel as if they’re made of wet rags.

I wonder if Drantaax had a bank account? Most of the population never have enough money to worry about banking it, and small businessmen usually just keep their own safe or hide their takings somewhere in their property but a relatively well-off man like Drantaax might possibly have kept an account up in Golden Crescent where the upper classes transact their business. I have few contacts in that area but I might be able to nose something out. It would answer the question of whether or not Drantaax was in debt. I’m preoccupied with these sort of thoughts so I don’t notice Makri till she stumbles into me in Quintessence Street.

“Hey, watch your feet, Makri. What’s the matter, the heat getting to you?”

“Sorry.”

She tells me she’s just back from her class in advanced Elvish languages, which she finds stressful because the Professor always stares at her as if she shouldn’t be there.

“I hate him. But listen.”

She says something in the Royal Elvish language.

“What did that mean?”

“Welcome to my tree.”

“Very good, Makri.”

“Are you impressed?”

“Yes. So will the Elves be if you ever sail down south and start talking it to them. Very few Humans learn the royal language.”

Not many Humans know any Elvish at all, though the Elves have no objections to people learning. Makri’s Common Elvish is quite fluent already, and mine isn’t too bad. You study some when you start off as a Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and I had a chance to practise it when I visited the Elves.

One thing that Makri actually admires me for is that I’ve been to the Southern Islands. Few men have. We trade with them of course, but apart from the ships’ crews, few citizens would ever venture that far, deeming it much too dangerous a voyage. It might not be worth the trouble anyway. We like the Elves here, but they don’t welcome too many visitors.

“I will sail down there one day,” says Makri.

I’m surprised.

“What’s brought that on? The last Elf you saw went as white as a sheet when he sensed your Orc blood. You swore you’d never even try speaking to one again.”

“Well, they’ll be pleased to see me one day.”

Perhaps they will. For a social outcast Makri does have a surprising capacity for winning people over. And legendary creatures. When we visited the Fairy Glade a few months ago the Centaurs couldn’t get enough of her. Of course Centaurs are, frankly, interested in any woman as well developed as Makri, no matter what her breeding.

“Kaby has a ring through her navel,” says Makri. “I like it. Do you think I should get one?”

I’m bewildered by this sudden change of subject.

“You told me body piercing was taboo for the Elves,” Makri explains. “Were you making it up?”

“No, it’s true.”

“Well, I suppose I could always take it out when the time comes. Do you think I should get my nipples done?”

“Only if you want to completely panic the Elves. And what the hell would you want to do it for? No one’s ever going to see.”

Makri has never had a lover. She says she might be interested if all the men in Twelve Seas weren’t so disgusting. I admit she has a point.

“Kaby has her nipples pierced. She was showing me—”

“Could we please change the subject? Guild classes are fine. Intimate bodily detail I can live without.”

Makri claims to be puzzled. “Is this another of your ‘civilisation’ things?”

Suddenly the call for Sabav, evening prayers, rings out.

“Now see what you’ve done, Makri. If you hadn’t started rambling on about body piercing we’d have made it home before prayers. I could be sitting on my couch with a beer. Now we have to kneel down here and pray.”

There is no getting around this. Wherever you are when the call comes from the tall towers, you pray.

Most people, more aware of this obligation than myself and Makri, have departed either to their homes or a temple, either to pray or to hide until it’s over, but there are a few other stragglers and, along with the people who live on the streets and don’t have anywhere else to go, we kneel down. It’s annoying, especially as the Avenging Axe is now in sight, but there’s nothing to be done about it. Makri is particularly unwilling to carry out this act of devotion as she doesn’t believe in the True Church, but no exceptions are allowed and failure to comply means arrest.

I mumble my way through the evening prayers. The sun is still beating down and the ground is hard on my knees. I console myself with the thought of Gurd’s ale only a few minutes away. After what seems like a long time the call comes for the end of prayers. At that very instant I get a strong feeling that something is wrong. Some danger is very close. I’m halfway to my feet but I fling myself to the ground. There’s the whizzing sound of a crossbow bolt and I feel a sharp pain in my arm as something nicks it. On my way to the ground I crash into Makri and we fall in a heap. I look up. There’s blood on my arm, but I’m otherwise okay.

“Damn that Sarin,” I say, drawing my sword.

I notice that Makri isn’t moving. She’s lying face down in the dirt. I roll her over gently. There’s a crossbow bolt sticking in her chest. Sarin’s bolts are nine inches long. This one has penetrated about eight inches into Makri. Blood pours from the wound. I put my hand to her throat. I can’t feel a pulse. I put my face next to her mouth; she isn’t breathing. The lethal bolt aimed at me has smashed its way through her breastbone. Makri is dead.