The Last Murder at the end of the World

THIRTY

They arrive in the exercise yard to find that the bird bath has been pushed a few feet to the left, revealing the huge blood stain that was previously hidden underneath it.

Clara’s kneeling in the dirt, scraping soil into wooden boxes for testing, while Emory strides forward to greet them. I’ve already told her about the fog and the barriers, and my deal with the elders. She knows they’re coming, and how important everything that happens next will be.

‘The bird bath was in the wrong place,’ she blurts out, without preamble. ‘It’s twelve feet to the left of where it was last night, which means it was moved to hide that blood patch.’

She points towards it, as if the enormous carpet of dried blood might have eluded them. ‘For some reason, we weren’t supposed to know that Niema died here.’

‘You’re Emory?’ demands Hephaestus, wrong-footed by the rapid-fire declarations coming out of this tiny, curly-haired woman.

‘Yes,’ she replies, brought up short.

Hephaestus throws a look at Thea. ‘One of yours?’

‘Not any more,’ she says tightly. ‘Emory was only an apprentice for two months, though she still holds the record for being the most annoying one I ever had.’

Hephaestus snorts, glancing at the blood patch and then back towards the smouldering warehouse.

‘The body was moved because her murderer was trying to make it look like an accident,’ he says, ignoring Emory and speaking to Thea. ‘They must have killed her in this spot, carried her body to the warehouse and set the fire, hoping the flames would cover up what happened. Probably would have worked, except the rain quenched the blaze.’

‘Murder?’ repeats Emory, exchanging a horrified look with her daughter. She’d half suspected it wasn’t an accident, but she hadn’t wanted to believe it.

Their stunned silence is broken by a screech of metal as Hephaestus gives the bird bath an experimental shove.

‘It’s heavy,’ he grunts, inspecting the red mark the rim has left on his palm. ‘It would have taken a lot of people to move this.’

‘Four of us in the end,’ confirms Emory, trying not to think about the fog. ‘I had to call people down from the farms to help, but you’re much stronger than any of us. You might have been able to do it on your own.’

Hephaestus offers her a sharp glance, but her expression is entirely innocent, her tone matter-of-fact. He looks across at Thea for support, but she’s walking in circles around the patch of blood.

‘Nobody could have lost this amount and survived,’ she says. ‘Not with the barbaric medical equipment we have at our disposal. Have you considered that it might belong to Hui?’ She offers Emory a challenging stare. ‘It’s my understanding that she’s missing, as well.’

Clara winces, imagining Hui lying on the ground, blood pouring out of a stab wound.

‘That’s why I’m collecting these samples,’ she says, wiping dust from her eyes. ‘I’m going to take them to your lab after we’re done.’

‘If this blood belongs to Hui, where is her body?’ demands Emory. ‘She’s not in the warehouse with the others, and there are no trails leading away from this spot to suggest she walked off. You said yourself, she couldn’t have got very far.’

Thea considers this point from every angle, trying to find a sharp edge she can toss back at Emory, but it’s a well-reasoned argument.

‘Who cares about another dead crum?’ demands Hephaestus belligerently, still angry at being implicated by Emory. ‘It’s just one less suspect, if you ask me. The villagers killed Niema, and the villagers moved this bird bath to cover it up. The fog’s getting closer and we’re wasting time on questions that don’t matter.’ He stares at Thea. ‘You can listen to all of this if you want, but I’m going to find proof I’m right.’

He storms off towards the gate, kicking up a cloud of dust.

‘He can’t honestly believe we killed Niema,’ says Emory, in a bewildered voice. ‘We loved her.’

‘Only because you didn’t really know her,’ replies Thea enigmatically.

‘I found something,’ says Clara, lifting the needle of a shattered syringe out of the congealed blood.

She offers it to her mother, but Thea plucks it from her fingers en route.

‘That’s the second one of those we’ve found,’ points out Emory. ‘There was another one under the table. That was broken, as well. I thought they might be from your lab.’

‘They could be,’ agrees Thea. ‘When I woke up my first-aid kit had been ransacked.’

‘Any idea what they were being used for?’

‘It’s facts we need not ideas.’ She hands the broken syringe back to Clara. ‘Analyse this with the other samples when you’re done here.’

‘Hui brought down a metal box from the cauldron yesterday,’ says Emory, changing subject abruptly. ‘What was inside it?’

Thea snaps her gaze towards Emory, displeased with the bluntness of her tone. Mortal danger or not, she’s used to a little decorum from the villagers.

‘Why?’

‘Because Niema took that same box out to the lighthouse last night. It was obviously important to her, and now something’s happened to both of the people who handled it.’

Thea pinches the bridge of her nose, making it obvious that she believes these questions to be beneath her. She wouldn’t even consider answering them if it weren’t for the threat to the island.

‘It was a sample box,’ she explains grudgingly. ‘We use them to collect cuttings from the cauldron garden. Niema told me she’d left it up there the night before, and asked me to collect it on my way back to the village. I have no idea why she wanted it, or what was inside.’

Emory’s eyes flick to Thea’s right hand. The bandage has come loose, revealing the ragged palm beneath.

It’s an unusual injury, thinks Emory. Most people woke up with broken bones, or bruises. Nobody else has anything like this.

Clara finishes collecting her samples and starts to sweep everything back into her bag.

‘I want you out at those farms the moment you’ve run your tests,’ says Thea. ‘If the soil’s blighted, I want to know what’s causing it. There are going to be a lot more dead people if we can’t feed everybody.’

‘But –’

‘Go,’ commands Thea.

Clara casts a desperate glance at Emory, but there’s nothing her mother can do to countermand the order of an elder.

Packing her testing kit back into her bag, Clara slings it over her shoulder and slouches back to the lab.

‘I want you to let me carry on investigating,’ says Emory, once her daughter is out of earshot.

Thea crosses her arms, regarding her former apprentice through narrowed eyes.

Emory feels like she’s being brushed with metal wool. She wilts momentarily, desperate to look away, but she knows how this goes; she knows what Thea’s hoping to see. The trials she makes her apprentices undertake aren’t just about intelligence, they’re about courage.

Apprentices do dangerous things in the dark. They’re sent into ruins and across storm-tossed waters. Thea wants to know that the person she selects won’t buckle, that they’ll see their task through.

‘You order apprentices out on errands all the time,’ says Emory, buoyed by the fact that Thea hasn’t outright rejected the idea. ‘This would be the same.’

‘You were an apprentice and you quit,’ replies Thea. ‘That rather undermines your argument, don’t you think?’

There are moments in history when entire empires, whole branches of the future, rest precariously on the words of a single person. Usually, they’re not even aware of it. They don’t have time to plan, or consider. They simply open their mouths and speak, and the universe takes on a new pattern.

Emory is now one of those people.

If she says the wrong thing next, the dreams Niema had for humanity will wither on the vine. I wish I could help. I wish I could nudge or prod or influence, but I’ve played most of my cards getting her in front of Thea.

It’s all up to Emory now.

‘Do you remember why I quit?’ asks Emory, feeling the burning heat on the back of her neck. ‘Why we didn’t get on?’

‘Because you wouldn’t stop asking questions,’ replies Thea appreciatively, realising where she’s been led. ‘And you were relentless in the pursuit of answers.’ Her eyes narrow. ‘I don’t doubt your nature, Emory. It’s your temperament I call into question. Why would I trust you with something this important?’

‘Because either you or Hephaestus is more than likely the murderer,’ she responds, with only the slightest wobble in her voice.

Thea reddens, but Emory plunges on recklessly, ‘Nobody in this village has ever hurt anybody else intentionally. I don’t believe that changed last night. If I’m right, you’ll need a third party to investigate, because you can’t trust each other.’

‘Why would I murder my mentor?’ Thea asks in a low, dangerous voice. ‘Why would Hephaestus murder his own mother?’

‘I’m asking you to let me find out,’ replies Emory ‘The fog will be here in less than two days, and unless we find out who killed Niema, it’s going to tear apart everybody I love, including my daughter. I can’t sit here doing nothing.’

She searches Thea’s face for some hint of her thinking, but all she sees is disdain and doubt.

‘This is what I’m good at,’ she pleads. ‘Let me be of service.’