Bound by Iron

Chapter SEVEN

Soundings

Zor, the 11th day of Sypheros, 998

Cimozjen shook his head to clear it. “No, of course not. As I told someone just last night, I have seen more than enough fighting to last me the rest of my life.” He waved a hand dismissively and started to continue aft, then paused and looked at the man again. “Why do you ask?”

The man smiled. He was a large man, over a hand’s span taller than Cimozjen and robust bordering on the rotund, with bags under his eyes and a slight jowl to his chin. His facial features were shaped pleasantly enough, however it seemed that they had never acquired the same size as the rest of his body. They were slightly too small, grouped just a tad too close to look agreeable on a head his size, thus his smile, too, looked constrained. A thick red surcoat embroidered with gold only added to his apparent size. It broadened his shoulders and swept the deck as he walked.

“My apologies,” said the man, running a hand through his mouse-brown hair. “I speak without considering my manners. My name is Rophis Raanel’s Son, of Fairhaven, though most call me Rophis the Winemonger.” He extended his hand.

“Cimozjen Hellekanus, at your service,” he said, shaking Rophis’s large palm with a firm grip.

“And is this lovely creature your wife?” Rophis asked, gently taking Minrah’s hand and bowing deeply.

“Minrah, and pleased to meet you,” she said, blushing and nestling up against Cimozjen’s arm.

“She’s not my wife,” added Cimozjen. Then he felt a sudden sharp pinch in the crook of his elbow, just under the hem of his chain mail shirt. He drew a sharp breath between his teeth, but managed to avoid vocalizing the unexpected pain. He glanced down at Minrah, who gazed back up at him, her face beaming.

“Not yet,” she said, looking back to Rophis. “But a girl can always hope.”

“Indeed,” said Rophis. “With a radiant face like yours, I would think that your hope would be enough to spur any suitor to the chase. Be that as it may, uh, Cimozjen, again let me offer my apologies. I spoke thusly only because, well, it took me aback to see someone wearing chain aboard ship. It’s a dangerous gambit to wear heavy mail on the water, even when sailing the relatively calm waters of Scions Sound. Were you to fall overboard, you’d find those extra pounds to be a very unwelcome weight.”

Cimozjen looked down at his mail hauberk, largely concealed by his tunic. “I had not considered that possibility,” he said. “I wear it only because I find the weight easier to bear when the chain’s on my body rather than in my pack.”

Rophis rubbed his nose. “At the risk of seeming improper, good warrior, I would also suggest that you not wear your pack strapped to your back in such a manner, especially with a heavy sword lashed to the very top. Again, were you to fall overboard, you’d be dragged down by your shoulders. A very difficult situation in any waters. You’ll take heed that most tars carry their bag slung over one shoulder, so that it can be readily shucked. I only bring this to your attention because the seas can be dangerous, and it would grieve me to see ill befall you or your lovely … companion.”

“How do you know so much about sailing?” asked Minrah. “You don’t have the build of a sailor.”

“Minrah!” scolded Cimozjen.

“Well, he doesn’t.”

Rophis laughed. “It’s all true, of course,” he said. “You’d not catch me climbing the ropes, not on your life. Not unless the ship had sunk that far beneath the waves, eh?” He laughed again. “But I have done a lot of sailing, my dear, from here, where I can buy Nightwood pale, to Fairhaven for Windshire rainbow wine, to Flamekeep for their thrakel-and-berry brandy. Once in a while, I’ll even go to Droaam. The Droaamites have this … this … I don’t know what to call it. It’s heavily distilled, and they won’t tell me what it’s made from, but their name for it translates roughly as Brain Sledge.”

“So you buy and sell spirits.”

Rophis shrugged. “It keeps me in coin. There are a lot of veteran soldiers these days who seem to think they have nothing better to do than duel a bottle of spirits to see who’ll come out the victor. Although it seems you’ve managed to avoid that fate thus far.”

“I’ve more important things to do,” said Cimozjen. “And when I complete them, I may take a single glass for celebration.”

“Just one glass?” asked Minrah. “Then we’d best keep you away from the Brain Sledge. Come, let’s go find our room.”

“If you will excuse us, Rophis,” said Cimozjen with a slight bow.

“We’ll be aboard several days,” Rophis said with a wave. “I’m sure we’ll speak again.”

They found a suitable cabin belowdecks. Like all the others available to them, it was equipped with four berths, several squat candles, and a door with a latch but no lock.

“Hammocks!” squealed Minrah, happily hopping into one and setting it swinging.

Cimozjen grumbled deep in his throat.

Minrah slung her pack across the small room to land in another hammock. “We’re here, and on the trail,” she said triumphantly, crossing her legs and smoothing her skirt.

Cimozjen peered out into the narrow hallway to ensure there were no others within earshot, then closed the door. “We are,” he said.

“So let’s take stock of what we know.”

“First, I think it would be best for us to clear up some misconceptions before they bring us more difficulties,” said Cimozjen. “For starters, you need to understand that you cannot be my wife. You see-”

“Of course I can!” said Minrah. “I assure you my parents wouldn’t object.”

“No, you cannot,” insisted Cimozjen, “for-”

“Am I too young for you?” asked Minrah. “I’m not as young as I look, you know. I’ll bet I outpace you by a good twenty, thirty years.”

“Wh-what?” asked Cimozjen.

“I’ve seen over eighty winters now,” she said. “More than you, isn’t it?”

“But you-you look-”

“Elves grow slowly,” she said. “I won’t be considered an adult until I start my one hundred and eleventh year.”

“An adult has to be one hundred and eleven years old?”

“No, silly man, one hundred and ten.”

“But you just said-”

“I said you’re an adult when you start your one hundred and eleventh year. Think about it. How old are you when you start your first year of life?”

“Just born,” said Cimozjen.

“Right. So you’re zero years old, and at the end of your first year, you’re one year old, right? So when you turn one hundred and ten, you start your one hundred and eleventh year of life. And that’s when you become an adult.”

“It seems an odd number …”

“It has something to do with Aerenal numerology,” said Minrah with a shrug. “That’s all my father ever told me about it. I don’t think he ever knew any more than that, to be candid.”

Cimozjen nodded and marshaled his thoughts. “I understand. However, you’ve run off with our conversation here. Your age has nothing to do with-”

“You don’t care about how old I am?”

“No,” said Cimozjen, chopping the air with his hand. “I mean yes, but-”

“Wonderful!” said Minrah. She rocked happily in the hammock, swaying back and forth.

Cimozjen let out an exasperated sigh. “Minrah, I have my vows.”

“I know you do, Cimmo, you’re an oathbound. And that’s fine. So are we going to talk about Torval, and draw up a plan of action, or are we going to spend the whole voyage mincing up our pasts? I’ve got the frayed end of a great story here, and I want to start tugging at it!”

Cimozjen threw up his hands, resigning hope of being able to direct the course of the conversation. Dealing with people had been so much easier in the Iron Band. If they were Karrns, the military hierarchy made communication easy. If they weren’t Karrns, you killed them. Simple. “As you wish. Let’s review what we know.”

“Torval was killed by an axe blow from a powerful strike. That means whoever killed him was strong.”

“And carried an axe. This is not new to me, Minrah.”

“Let me finish. Once he was killed, someone tied a rock to his foot and dumped him off a ship.”

“Or off the end of a dock.”

“No, not off a dock. Off a ship.”

“Perhaps you could explain to me how we know that.”

“I went to King’s Bay while you slept, and borrowed a fishing line. I weighted the line and measured the water depth at each of the docks. It’s not deep enough to be certain of hiding a body. I mean, Torval was over six feet tall, add another foot or two for the rope and the rock, and another foot for his arms floating upward once he started to … well, add all that together and we come up with, say nine feet of water for Torval to be fully submerged, with his fingertips barely below the surface. But the deepest water off one of the docks isn’t even ten feet deep, and the water is fairly clear. People would see him down there. And if you’re going to take all that trouble to hide a body in the water and keep it down, you’re going to ensure that it can’t be found by the first person who saunters by.”

Cimozjen nodded. “In contrast, if he were dumped off a ship in the deeper waters away from the shore …”

“He wouldn’t be found. Except of course that the rock slipped off his ankle, and put him to drifting. Lucky, that. So do you know where he was dropped into the water?”

“How could I know that?”

“I also tossed wood chips into the bay, so see how the current flows. It moves against the sundial, did you know that? The river flows east to west across the north side of the bay, and as a result, the water in the bay moves slowly around from the north end to the west to the south, then back up the east to the river. It’s slow, but definite. Which, since he was dropped at night and found in the day, means that the most likely place for him to have been dropped is the west end of King’s Bay.”

Cimozjen grunted as he considered this, pushing out his lower lip. “That’s the section of the bay that lies farthest from any of the docks,” he said. “The water has carved out the bluffs, so it’s not particularly useable for much of anything.”

“Correct,” said Minrah. “So the ship that dumped him moved away from everyone else to do it.”

“Might he have been tossed off the top of the bluff?”

“Not without a catapult,” said Minrah. “The only fresh scrapes on his skin were on his naked foot. The bluffs aren’t so steep that one could hurl him and a heavy rock into the water without the body tumbling down the slope.”

“Did you perhaps check if there was a ship in the harbor that had moved out there? If we find that ship, then we can find the murderer, or at least know that the captain abetted the deed by going to the best place to dump Torval’s body.”

“I did check,” said Minrah. “And three vessels did. The longshoremen told me it’s not that uncommon in the spring or fall when shipping is heavy. If a ship is waiting on cargo, she may move over there to vacate a dock for another ship. That means that the captain might not even have known about Torval-and that the killer took advantage of a good opportunity. However,” she added, “I can tell you that this very ship is one of the ones that did move over there, and of those three, this is the largest.”

“Thus the odds are good that the murderer was on this ship,” Cimozjen said.

“He may be still. This looks to be primarily a merchant ship. They take on some passengers, of course, but I’d wager they don’t take on too many. I mean, there’s not that many cabins here and that Kundarak woman said we might keep this room to ourselves.”

“Why-” Cimozjen yelled, then lowered his voice to a murmur again. “Why did you not inform me of this earlier?”

“I didn’t want you to pick a fight with the first person to look at us crosswise. If you came onboard actively stalking a killer, your attitude might have prevented us from being let aboard. Or you might have dueled the Winemonger on the spot.”

“I suppose that’s true. The first part, at least. Torval once told me I had the face of Khyber himself when it came to injustice.”

“There are easier ways,” said Minrah. “We’ll have to ask the captain to share the passenger list with us. And we’ll have to watch the crew.” She opened her bag and pulled out Torval’s shoe. “Why don’t you take off your chain mail and take a look around the ship. I’m going to see if this has anything left to tell us.”

Cimozjen looked at Minrah with frank appreciation. “I give you my profound thanks for your help in this matter,” he said. “However this turns out, you’ve been of great assistance.”

Minrah grinned and blushed. “You can thank me later, when we’ve untangled the knot,” she said with a wink.

The evening meal found the two sitting on a hawser on deck. Although the weather was cold, the striated clouds in the sky were spattered with reds, golds, and purples, and well worth braving the chill. Cimozjen wolfed his meal in a militarily efficient fashion, while Minrah dipped her hard bread into her stew before each bite.

“Did you find anything?” murmured Cimozjen.

“Of course,” said Minrah. “Torval’s pale skin implies that he spent most or all of his time indoors, which, given his past experiences, his size and frame, is very unusual. His shoe confirms it. There are no grass strains on it, and the wear on the sole is even and doesn’t show the typical pits or marks from walking over rocky ground. There’s some dust on the sole, like he walked in white sand, perhaps. It does, however, show some unusual wear on the top, which I haven’t yet figured out. Best of all, Cimmo, there was this.” She proffered a small item in her fingers.

Cimozjen took it and looked at it. “It’s a chunk of wood.”

“It’s a sliver of wood. From the sole of his shoe. You can see that the wood is weathered on one side, and clean of the other. Like as not, he picked it up in the moments before his death, because the clean side was exposed, yet never got dirty. I know it’s a stretch, but if we can find some wood that matches the weathering, we might have an idea of where it was he died. So far, all I can say is that it doesn’t match anything on deck.”

“You want us to look for weathered wood on a ship.”

“Like I said, it’s a stretch. Did you have any luck?”

“First, I must say that there are an inordinate number of passengers on this ship, despite what you said earlier. Mostly soldiers, it seems, and a few merchants. In fact, I think we have the only cabin that’s not full.”

“Really?” asked Minrah. “That’s odd. I wonder if it was something you said.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you, Cimmo. I draw suitors like dung draws flies, no matter what I say.”

“That is not precisely the simile I would use for you, Minrah,” said Cimozjen.

Minrah grinned, hugged her knees, and leaned her head on Cimozjen’s shoulder. “What about the crew?”

“The sailors are a hardy lot, but they all seem more wiry than bulky. None of them seem to have the weight, the sheer power one would need to inflict a wound like Torval’s. And they all bear smaller weapons: hatchets, knives, hammers, that sort.” He looked at the sails. “I suppose they need to keep a hand free to grab the rigging.”

“And those weapons all have two uses,” said Minrah. “Chop a rope that’s tangled one day, chop a pirate’s neck the next.”

“True enough.”

“Nothing in their cabins?”

“Not that I could see from the hall. They all have small sea chests, though.”

“You didn’t look through them?”

“I’ll not stoop to that, Minrah, that’s-”

“You have a lot to learn about unraveling stories, Cimmo.” Minrah took another bite of her dinner. “So what you’re telling me is that the only person on this ship big enough to have killed Torval is our friend Rophis the Winemonger.”

“It looks that way.”

“We’ll have to make a point to sup with him.”