Night of Long Shadows

CHAPTER 13

The third day of long Shadows

Sar, the 28th day of Vult, 998

When Cutter first entered Wren’s apartments, he had to struggle to keep the amazement from showing on his face. He’d be damned if he let the half-elf see how he felt. He probably watched everyone who came into the place just to see their reactions.

Cutter glanced over, and sure enough, Wren was watching him with a slight look of disappointment.

The thing that was so impressive about the apartment was that it seemed to be outfitted entirely from livewood. The wood had been coaxed and shaped into everything possible: chairs and desks, bookshelves and partitions. It must have taken decades to get the apartment into its current form.

“It was my father’s pet project,” said Wren, launching into a little speech in spite of Cutter’s apparent unconcern. “He poured all of his time and a substantial amount of money into it. Wanted it ready when he retired.” Wren looked up at the gracefully curved branches that formed the rafters. “Unfortunately, that meant neglecting everything else while he worked on it, his family included.”

Wren glanced at Cutter. “He died two days before he was to move in. My mother always said there was a lesson there, but we could never decide if it was about the foolishness of putting off one’s enjoyment to some unforeseen future, or spending all your time on pointless projects.” He grinned. “I always said it was the first, she said the second.”

“And he’s devoted his life to making sure he doesn’t repeat his father’s mistakes,” said Torin, heading past them into the lounge. He took a bottle of wine from the specially grown alcoves.

“Indeed. Instant gratification is the way to go. At least if I die, I’ll die happy.”

Wren put the small box on the dining table and sat down. He took off the lid and set it aside while Torin poured three glasses of wine and handed them round. Cutter took his crystal glass gingerly, scared he was going to break the delicate stem.

“I don’t suppose you have any ale?”

“Afraid not, no.”

“Didn’t think so.” He placed the glass gently on the table and turned his attention to the box. The Khyber dragonshard lay on a bed of white cloth-Cutter leaned closer. It looked like a towel. The shard itself was black, about the length of his hand, with purple-blue veins running through it. Such a small thing to be responsible for so much trouble.

“So,” said Wren, “what do we know?”

“Nothing,” said Torin. “Everything we thought we knew was based on the assumption that this was a drug deal gone bad. Everything’s changed now.”

“Not so,” said Wren. “We simply need to adapt our theories. First, why is the professor involved? Why did he have the shard in the first place? Cutter, did Rowen say anything to you about that?”

Cutter felt his whole body lurch at the sound of her name. He took a gulp of wine.

“Nothing that I can remember,” he said. “We always assumed it was drugs, seeing as it was Salkith coming to pick it up.”

“Right. Salkith. Did he say anything of interest when you questioned him?”

“Only what I told you. He was supposed to drop this off at a tavern in Khyber’s Gate. The Goblin’s Revenge, I think he said.”

“At least that’s some progress.”

“Not really,” said Torin. “We have no idea who he was supposed to deliver to.”

“And the fact that he was delivering it there in the first place is strange,” said Cutter.

“How so?” Wren leaned his elbows on the table.

“It’s Daask territory. If Salkith was recognized, he’d be killed straight away. There’s a war going on between Boromar and Daask. We don’t just traipse around each other’s territories setting up meetings and drops.”

“Now that is interesting,” said Wren. “So what would make someone from Boromar set up a meeting with someone from Daask?”

“You’re making assumptions,” said Torin. “One, you don’t know it was someone from Boromar, and two, you don’t know it was someone from Daask. This could have been a private deal.”

“I don’t think so,” said Wren. “The speed with which Rowen was tracked down implies someone with a lot of resources. No, until we know differently, let’s assume this is a Boromar deal.”

“That opens up more questions than answers,” said Cutter. “Boromar clan isn’t just a bunch of people working for one person. It’s hundreds, thousands of people with their own agendas. Most of the members of Boromar have never even laid eyes on Saidan Boromar. They do what they do and they pass money up the chain. As long as that money keeps moving, everyone is happy. To say it’s a Boromar deal means it could be one of ten thousand people.”

“Hmm. Point taken.”

“The biggest question to me,” said Torin, “is where does that warforged fit in? Does he work for Boromar? He certainly did their dirty work for them when he killed the professor and Rowen.” He glanced at Cutter. “Sorry.”

Cutter ignored that. “The warforged seemed a bit crazy to me. Talking all this religious stuff, you know? ‘He was the darkness’ kind of thing. The Boromars don’t like crazy people. They’re not dependable. And it was like no warforged I’ve ever seen. More like an animal than anything else.”

“Fine. Let’s leave it out of this for the meantime.” Wren poured himself more wine. “So what do we do next? We have no more leads. Nothing to follow.”

“I have a question,” said Cutter.

“Please,” said Wren, “go ahead. We’re all ears. At least, Torin is, but it’s not his fault the way he looks.”

Cutter ignored that. “Now, understand that I’ve never been to a university before.”

“Understood,” said Wren.

“But the professor-he taught at Morgrave?”

“He did.”

“The thing is-at his apartments-I didn’t see any kind of course work. No books, papers, or anything that told me he was a teacher.”

Wren and Torin exchanged glances.

“So the way I see it, he’s the key. All this started with him. Why don’t we check his office?”

Wren said, “Torin, did you check his office?”

“Didn’t know he had one.”

“And you call yourself an inquisitive?”

“Me? I’ve barely been at Morgrave. Why didn’t you check it out? You went back there.”

“I had other things on my mind.”

“Hah. I’ll bet you did.”

“Enough. What time is it?”

Cutter glanced out the window. “Probably two hours ‘til dawn.”

“There’s still time. We need to take a look around his office before everyone arrives for the day.”

“One point,” said Cutter. “Actually, two. We’re wanted by the Watch. We have to keep a low profile until we can clear our names. So strolling through the crime scene of a murder I’m supposed to have committed doesn’t seem such a great idea.”

“Good point.” Wren turned to Torin. “I’ll understand if you want to sit this out. So far, your name’s been kept clean.”

“Please,” said Torin. “I’ve stuck with it this far. I’m not going to bail when it starts to get interesting.”

Wren grinned at Cutter. “Such loyalty. He’s like the son I never had.”

“I’m older than you are, idiot.”

“Then you’re like the father I never had.”

“You had a father.”

“Then the slightly aloof yet wise and knowing great uncle I never had.”

Torin thought a moment, then said, “I’ll accept that.”

Cutter blinked, staring between the two. They were like an old married couple, bickering like that all the time.

“And what’s your second point?” asked Wren, turning his attention abruptly back to Cutter.

“What? Oh. We have no idea which office is the professor’s.”

“Leave that to me.”

“Host,” groaned Torin, “do we have to?”

Cutter hung back and looked around nervously while Wren knocked briskly on the door of the boarding house.

There was no immediate answer, a fact that didn’t surprise Cutter in the least. It was still an hour before dawn. No one in their right mind would be up.

He had to admit that it was kind of peaceful. The cold of night had faded, and he could feel a tiny hint of warmth in his bones. The sky was clear up high. Not a cloud in sight, and the stars still shining like brittle ice.

The door opened a fraction, and the point of a sword slipped through to hover a hair’s breadth from Wren’s groin. He looked down and raised his eyebrows in amusement.

“My dear, I did one day hope to have children. Please don’t destroy that dream for me.”

The door opened all the way, and Cutter saw a young dwarf woman standing in her nightdress. Her hair was a mess, flat in the front and sticking up like a bird’s nest at the back. The right side of her face was marked by the wrinkles of her blankets.

“Wren? What are you doing here?”

“We need your help, Kayla.”

“My help? Why not ask Larrien?”

“I don’t want to wake him at this ungodly hour.”

“But you’ll wake me?” She looked over Wren’s shoulder. “Who’s that?”

“That’s Cutter. He’s helping us investigate the death of the professor.”

“I thought that was taken care of. Didn’t they arrest someone?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure he’s the right man. Will you help? It’s urgent.”

Kayla sighed. “What do you want me to do?”

“Did the professor have an office on campus?”

“Of course he did. Oh-”

“Yes. It would have been nice if someone had told me earlier. Can you take me to it?”

“Of course. Just let me get dressed. Host, Wren, I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think of it.”

“That’s fine. I won’t say ‘no harm done’ because we don’t really know that yet. But let’s hope we can find something.”

The university was deserted so early in the morning. Kayla led them sleepily through the front door and across the huge plaza that would be filled with students in a few hours.

The first hallways they walked down were bare of ornamentation. The walls needed a coat of paint underneath pinned-up notices and advertisements. The deeper into the university they went, the more expensive the finishings became. Paintings of past chancellors lined newly painted walls. Busts of famous explorers stood atop marble plinths. Eventually, the walls were no longer painted but were instead lined with polished wood paneling. Pictures hung in intricately carved frames which were gilded with precious metals. Cutter looked about with interest. He had no idea there were such rich pickings in a school. He’d been through tough times-it would have been a matter of a few moments to break in here and walk away with something valuable. The security was a joke.

He was busy thinking who might possibly buy some of the paintings when Kayla stopped before a solid mahogany door.

“This is it,” she said. “I should warn you. The professor was rather … messy.”

“Not to worry. We’ll figure it out. Many thanks, Kayla. I wonder-could you do one more thing for us?”

“What’s that?” she asked suspiciously.

“Nothing that would get you into trouble, never fear. Do you happen to know how good the recordkeeping is here?”

“Everything is cataloged, if that’s what you mean.”

“And you have a collection of dragonshards, is that correct?”

“We do. Quite a substantial collection.”

“I thought so. Could you do me a favor and check to see if any are missing from your collection?”

“Why would any of them be missing?”

“It’s just a hunch I have. Please?”

Kayla sighed. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll see what I can find out. Please don’t wander off. Especially you,” she said, glancing at Cutter before hurrying away.

Wren grinned at him. “You have that look about you,” he said, before heading into the office.

Cutter followed and felt his heart sink as he looked around. The room was an explosion of parchment. It lay everywhere, on every available surface, jammed between books, stuffed beneath books, piled on chairs, piled on the floor.

“Host, when she said he was messy, she wasn’t jesting,” said Torin.

Cutter stared around the room. Yellowing paper was even stuffed between the top of the bookshelves and the ceiling. “How are we going to get through all this?”

“Not by complaining about it, that’s for certain,” said Wren. “Torin, you take that side. Cutter-”

“I’ll take the desk, thanks.” Cutter walked around the antique desk and lowered himself into the padded seat. He let out a groan and rubbed his back.

“Fine,” said Wren. “You take the desk. I’ll take this wall.”

“What are we looking for?” asked Cutter.

“Anything that strikes you as odd or out of place. Correspondence, threats, anything.”

“You think we’re going to find a signed letter from the killer asking the professor to steal the dragonshard?”

“One can always hope,” said Wren.

“Maybe while we’re at it, we should keep an eye out for a receipt for the shard with the killer’s address on it.”

“Yes,” snapped Wren. “That would be very helpful. Get started, please.”

“This is a waste of time,” said Cutter. But he tried the drawers to the desk anyway, and found them locked. He pulled out a small knife and jammed the point between the lock and the desktop. He gave it a sharp push, and the drawer jerked open with the sound of cracking wood.

The others were looking at him. “What?”

“That desk looks like it’s a hundred years old,” said Torin. “Don’t you have any appreciation for the finer things in life?”

“Afraid not.” He pulled the drawer out and dumped its contents onto the desktop. He rifled through them. Some reminder notes, a diary-he opened it but it was just birthdays and anniversaries-some old boiled sweets that had been long forgotten. Nothing interesting.

He did the same with the next drawer, then the next, until his chair was surrounded by piles of useless papers. But he didn’t find anything of interest. Torin and Wren were methodically going through the bookshelves, checking each piece of paper carefully before moving on to the next. The task would take all day at this rate.

Cutter got down on his hands and knees and checked inside the empty drawer compartments. He knocked on the wood, searching for hiding places. Desks this old were usually riddled with them.

He couldn’t reach in far enough so he moved around the back of the desk. He knocked on the wood, but it was too thick to hear anything. If there was a hidden compartment, he wouldn’t be able to tell.

He stood up and glanced at the others. They were busy with their own searches. He turned to the desk and kicked the wooden paneling with the heel of his boot.

The sound of breaking wood pierced the room like the crack of thunder. Torin and Wren both jumped.

“What are you doing, man?” exclaimed Wren. “That desk is worth more than you are.”

Cutter paused in examining the hole he had inflicted in the panel. “Desks this old usually have hidden compartments. Believe me, I know. You’d be amazed how many people who say they’re broke hide their money in a desk and think it’s protected.”

He kicked the desk again. This time the whole panel caved in. He pulled the broken wood out to reveal an empty space.

“You see? There’s room to hide a few valuables. You could fit a painting in it if you wanted.”

Torin peered inside. “Pity there’s nothing there for us.”

“I haven’t finished yet.”

He proceeded to tear the desk apart, something he found immensely satisfying. Even after the other two told him to give it up, he kept at it, sure that if a professor was going to hide anything, he would hide it in his desk.

He found what he was looking for on the underside of the desktop, after prying it away from the frame with the knife.

It was a small notebook, and it was hidden in a tiny drawer that opened from within the beveled patterns that ran around the edge of the desktop.

He held up the book. “Is this what we’re looking for?”

He had to admit that he got a certain amount of satisfaction from the looks on their faces. They weren’t so clever now.

He tossed the book to Wren. He opened it and paged through it, frowning.

“What is it?” asked Torin.

“It appears to be a record-” he paged some more, then flipped back to the beginning-”a record of someone’s movements. For a whole week. From the time they left their house to the time they returned at night. Everything the person did.”

“Which person?”

“Someone called Xavien.” He looked up. “Sound familiar?”

Cutter shook his head. Torin did the same.

“Why would a professor be following someone?” Cutter asked.

“Indeed. That’s the question, my destructive friend.”

Torin looked around at the mess. “We’ve found what we’re looking for. Let’s get out of here before someone finds us.”

They opened the door and stepped out. Kayla was hurrying down the corridor toward them. “You were right,” she said, stopping before them. “There’s a Khyber shard listed in the manifest that isn’t where it should be.”

Wren glanced at the others. “Now we know why they approached the professor.” He turned to Kayla. “Does the name Xavien mean anything to you?”

“Of course. He’s a city councilor. Donates a lot of money to the university. He even has a wing named after him.”

“Is that so?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Hmm? Oh, no reason. My dear, thank you ever so much. You’ve been a great help to us.” He gestured over his shoulder. “I wouldn’t go in there, if I were you. It’s a bit of a mess.”

They headed down the corridor. Kayla ignored them and opened the door.

“Hey!” she called angrily. “What have you done?”

“Uh, I think you have woodworm,” said Wren over his shoulder. He lowered his voice. “We should run now.”