Retribution

Return of the Guard

Presently we were confronted by seven men, each one wearing a similar leather breastplate with a scaled leaf pattern, and a long green cloak. They were of mixed ages, but a thickset man in his late forties, with a few scars on his face and two-day-long stubble, came forward demanding to know who we were.

Sulma Tan stopped him in his tracks and revealed her title, before introducing me as the man investigating the murder of Lydia Marinus.

He grimaced and looked towards the wall of the corridor. There was a sudden sense of shame about the men and they couldn’t seem to look anywhere but their own feet. One of them made a circular movement around his chest, and then reversed the direction of his hand — a gesture I believe was associated with the two gods Astran and Nastra.

‘And,’ Sulma Tan finished, ‘we will require a full account of Lydia’s final movements. You should have been protecting her, should you not?’

‘Yeah,’ he sighed loudly. There was nothing but abject failure in his expression. He had failed to protect his mistress. He had failed at his one duty, and he knew it. ‘Yeah, we should have done better. We should have. But we weren’t to know she was heading off, were we? She never goes anywhere without us. Never.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Santhan Brak, formerly Captain of the Horse Guards.’

‘How long have you worked for Lydia?’

‘Nine years, head of her personal protection for the past two.’

‘Tell us what happened then, Santhan.’

‘A messenger came bearing a tube from the city,’ he began in a measured and precise manner. ‘Actually, he had three messages. Nothing new there, of course, it happens all the time. Lady Marinus is — was — a busy lady, and she would often be sending letters to various people about business details. This time there was a different message. Don’t know what was in it, but it was different. I remember the occasion very distinctly — as sometimes I’m permitted in her private quarters. When she read the letter, this look came over her face. .’

‘How do you mean?’ I asked.

‘She turned white. Had a distant look. For a moment I thought someone in her family had died, but then I realized that she’s got no one left, so it couldn’t have been. Then I thought maybe a business failure, one of the mines had collapsed or something, but it wasn’t that.’

‘So what was it?’

‘She didn’t tell me. Didn’t tell anyone. When I asked she merely rolled up the message and put it up her sleeve. She maintained a sense of dignity though — made out that there was nothing amiss. Did a lot of that. Hid her feelings.’ Santhan paused for a moment, searching for the right thing to tell me. ‘You know, I served her for all those years and got to see her more than anyone else. There was no family, of course. Despite that, despite my familiarity, sometimes I felt as if I barely knew her.’

There was no reason to dispute what he was saying. ‘But you have no idea what that message could have been, or where it came from?’

‘Well, it came from the city. You see the messenger brought it in a bundle and said he’d come directly from Kuvash.’

‘The messenger has gone?’

‘Oh yeah, long left. Headed up along the coast with more deliveries to make — chap like that could be gone for days before he returns, not that I’d got his name at the time — they only show their medal of identification.’

‘Did he look like the other messengers? There was nothing unusual about him?’

‘Seemed fairly standard to me.’

‘There’s a good chance Lydia might have brought the message back with her to the city,’ I muttered to Sulma Tan.

As if reading my thoughts she replied, ‘There wasn’t a note found on her body or anywhere nearby. There were no private possessions at all, come to think of it, merely the clothes that covered her wounds.’

That was frustrating, but at least the fact of the message’s existence and its origins confirmed to me that the killers were still operating in Kuvash. They had not fled. That led to the speculation of how many more people would end up being killed before we found the persons responsible.

‘Precisely when was the last time you saw Lydia?’

‘Lady Marinus?’ Santhan puffed up his cheeks and let out a long sigh. His fellow soldiers remained rigid by his side. ‘Two days ago,’ he said at last. ‘In the morning.’

‘It took you this long to get here,’ Sulma Tan commented. ‘And you were her protection?’

Santhan shot her an angry glare and snapped, ‘I’ll not take comments on soldiering from a woman, especially one who sits behind a desk all day.’

Sulma Tan curled up her lips and leant into him, uttering the words quietly. ‘This woman would have placed a report on your performance into the hands of the queen. That woman would, if she thought it appropriate, have you and your men executed for betraying a good friend, or whatever reason took her fancy. So keep your tongue firmly in your head, before you lose the latter.’

Though his expression was full of anger, Santhan lowered his head. ‘Aye, lady. I forget my station.’

Sulma Tan remained impassive and for a moment nobody spoke, as if waiting for the tension to drift out of the open doors.

It struck me how Sulma Tan did not get visibly angry about such things — but spoke in a cool, if somewhat vicious manner in reply. But there was the slip of the tongue: whatever reason took her fancy could get a person executed. It reaffirmed the suspicion I had had since I’d arrived in Koton. That the queen possibly ruled in some royal dictatorship, without any real assistance from a council or senate, without any accountability to her people. If there was a political coup in the making, it was easy to see where the motivation lay. Royals were meant to rule along with democratically elected officials in exchange for the benefits of trade from being in the Vispasian Royal Union. It was a two-hundred-year-old agreement that did not appear to be fulfilled. I would remember to mention this in a report to the Sun Chamber later on. And, in the event that some of my messages were being read, I would write that information in code.

‘It was two mornings ago,’ I said, bringing the conversation back on track. ‘How did she leave you if she normally has you by her side all the time?’

‘She asked me to bring our horses around the front and to wait for her in the dining room, before she headed to her private baths. That is the one moment of the day where she remains alone. She has no bath attendants, nothing like that. I think she liked the privacy — it was just her and the water.’

‘What was she like at that time?’

‘There were no more signs that she was disturbed by the message, if that’s what you mean. As I say, she has a good face for hiding her feelings. Lady in her position needs to be like that. So she carried on as normal.’

‘And you were. .?’

‘Waiting in the dining room. The opposite side to her house to where I’d taken the horses. Time passes and one of the other lads came to ask me why she’s taking so long. We head to the bath where there’s no noise, no splashes. Eventually we go inside and find it empty. Search the whole house. In the end there’s nothing to be found and when Varn here,’ he nodded to a short but muscular individual, ‘took a look out front, we saw that her horse had gone. Couldn’t even see her in the surrounding hills.’

‘What was your next course of action?’ Sulma Tan asked, in a much more friendly tone than before.

‘I sent a few men in different directions, leaving one back just in case she returned. It was clear she’d taken the horse to go somewhere, so there seemed no point in looking around the house. Hours later and we’d seen nothing. We gave it another night, waiting for her to return, and waited for patrols to get back and then we got word from the city about what had happened. So we set out last night to get here as quick as we could. There the story ends.’

‘Has she ever left you alone before, for any length of time?’ I asked.

‘Never. Absolutely not. I wouldn’t say she was paranoid, but she paid us for protection and safety.’

‘Had you ever had any trouble previously?’

‘No more than what you’d expect in the world of business. If things got heated then we were there to calm things down, a lady who lives alone like that, and who has so much to lose, needs a few spare hands if things get rough.’

‘She deliberately left you because she didn’t want you to follow,’ I concluded. ‘For the first time in her life, she went somewhere without telling you. All of this came immediately after a message arrived from the city, a message she brought with her and which was presumably taken from her during her murder. Whatever was in that message would reveal, of course, what we’re dealing with, but that’s not available to us.’

‘Could it be a business rival?’ Santhan asked.

‘Were there really any serious rivals to someone of such power?’ I asked in return. ‘You should know.’

‘Guess not. But maybe there were those who wanted what she had.’

‘Again, were you aware of any?’

He shrugged and shook his head.

‘Besides, the killer has not taken anything. . No. All they’ve taken is her life and that’s probably all they wanted.’

‘You have a theory forming, am I correct?’ Sulma Tan said.

‘Not really. For a while now I’ve believed the past to be behind the deaths of Bishop Tahn Valin and Grendor of the Cape. And Lydia’s death also leads me along this same road. A message that came out of the blue, enticing her to the city. Something from the past. A secret that she wanted no one to know about. . These three people were killed the same way for a reason. Somehow, by looking at these three lives, we’ll find out what has connected them all.’

Santhan was listening eagerly and clearly wanted to know what to do. His mistress was the one who gave the orders, and now there were none. He rested a hand on the wall and looked at me expectantly.

‘Santhan,’ I said, ‘you will lead us to Lydia’s country residence tomorrow evening, after the games. Along the way you will tell me absolutely everything you know about her life. You may know more than anyone. What you say may help me to discover a vicious killer.’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘Good. We’ll meet you here. Don’t stray too far in case we need you.’

With that, Santhan took his men back through the corridor and outside, leaving Sulma Tan and me to linger in the calm of the house. We moved to one of the lighter rooms, overlooking the gardens towards the front.

As my gaze drifted across the herbs there, I reflected on the direction of the case. Sulma Tan, too, remained quiet — though she couldn’t hide the fact that she was unsettled.

‘Have recent developments given you reason for concern?’ I asked.

‘He was right.’ She gave a deep breath and tilted back her head.

‘Who, Santhan?’

‘He said I spend too much time behind a desk.’

‘I must confess, it is not the life for me. As much as my life has its problems, I love being among people out in the world. Seeing different landscapes.’

‘I envy you,’ she said. ‘Seeing so much of the world the way you do.’

‘The other option always seems more attractive,’ I replied.

‘No. I genuinely envy you.’

‘There are always opportunities to come and work in the Sun Chamber,’ I said. ‘I’m sure they’d welcome your ferocious intelligence.’

‘I don’t know if that is the life for me. My place is here with my queen.’

‘I must confess, I’m deeply glad to have such intelligence to hand. We’re going to need both our minds if we’re going to solve these crimes.’