5

INVESTIGATION

Five days to figure out who killed the king. I had no real information to work with, no way of knowing where to start or who to talk to. Anyway, I was still the First Blade, and had responsibilities. How exactly I would conduct an investigation while serving Lukan was a question I didn’t have an answer to.

I rushed back toward the palace, wind lashing at my face. The sky was increasingly dark, the clouds deeper and blacker by the hour. Crows pierced the stormy veil and circled the city. It started to rain, and through the sleet the palace loomed up before me.

The obvious thought was that Lukan was responsible for his father’s death, that this was just another story of a heir clearing the way for their own ascension. Perhaps that was what had happened. If it was, I didn’t like my chances of proving it. My word against my king’s…I could see where that path led.

Or maybe a rival kingdom was responsible. They’d slipped an assassin into the city, and this assassin, evidently crafty and competent, had managed to find their way into the palace and to the king’s bedside. In that case, it’d be nearly impossible to find the killer…if they were smart, which they would have to be, they’d already be out of the city.

Then the other possibility: that it was Islana. Maybe she hadn’t expected to be caught, maybe her plan had gone horribly wrong, and I was her last, wild hope at getting out of the mess she’d created for herself.

My stomach ached. I needed food and something to drink. A nap would’ve been nice, too, but it seemed unlikely I’d be getting much sleep in the coming days. So be it, I knew how to operate without sleep. I’d often been forced to stand guard throughout the nights when Emrik chose to drink and whore his way through the streets of the city.

Soldiers outside the palace moved to intercept me, then saw my face and let me pass. I stormed in through the main entrance and stood dripping in the vast hall, suddenly so cold that I could hardly breathe. I ran a hand through my soaked hair, stretched my shoulders, and tried to think. Where now? I was terrible at plans. There was a good chance that someone in the palace might be of use to me, but who, and where? I crossed the hall and paused before a carved wooden statue of a wolf. Its five eyes were hollowed out pits of darkness, its mouth frozen in an eternal snarl. Gavath, The Skull Wolf, which came to collect the spirits of the dead in its maw for deliverance to The Screaming Tree, where the wretched, the hateful, and the heretics must hang forever.

Once, while on a hunting trip in the woods with several other men, I had seen Gavath in the flesh. I’d strolled out of the clearing to piss, and had seen five yellow eyes floating in the utter darkness of a moonless winter night. The stench of rotting meat and damp fur had filled my nostrils. I’d turned tail, might’ve even screamed, for which I felt no shame. Back in the clearing, one of the boys, who I’d known for years, had been dragged out of his bedroll. No sign of where he’d gone or what had taken him but I’d felt a warm, putrid breath on the back of my neck, had seen in my mind those glowing eyes, and had known that Gavath had, for whatever reason, claimed that man as its own.

The statue was threatening. Looking at it, a part of me expected it to come to life, to lunge at me and clamp its jaws around my skull. Its eyes were portals to a vast, hollow space where the only sound was screaming.

I backed away from the statue and didn’t take my own eyes off of it until I’d turned a corner.

The barracks that housed the king’s guards was right at the very center of the palace. It didn’t take me long to get there, and soon I found myself standing before its entrance. It was a building inside of a building, the oldest part of the palace, originally a chieftains hall. A century ago, when the decision had been made to bring the empire up to the standards of the rest of the continent, they’d brought in architects and engineers from across the eastern sea in order to build a palace. Great kings and emperors could not reside in a mere hall, after all, and if our people did not elevate ourselves to modernity, we would be left behind. Those were the thoughts of the men who had rebuilt much of the city, who had made an attempt to popularize foreign faiths, who had tried so hard to abandon our customs and culture. I was old enough now to see that the change was slow but steady, an inevitable and fatal sickness.

Through the doors of the barracks and I was standing in the rectangular hall that served as the mess. Men sat around at small tables throwing dice carved out of bone and telling stories. Candles flickered and danced, shadows thrashing across the weathered walls, pelts and skulls serving as the primary form of decoration. All good warriors are also good hunters, and tend to enjoy showing off their greatest successes. There was a pair of elk horns to my left, my contribution to the space, gnarled and stunningly large even after all this time. I breathed in smoke and remembered that foggy morning. I’d hunted the mighty animal for days, perhaps a full week, spending endless hours creeping silently through the woods with my bow. My shot had been perfect, entering in just behind the shoulder, piercing the heart and killing it near instantly. I had prayed over its corpse. Every time I looked at the antlers, it was like seeing an old, dear friend.

Bero was seated closest to me. He was captain of the king’s guard, a shaven-headed, famously strong brute. I’d wrestled with him countless times, and it was like trying to grapple a bear.

“First Blade,” he said, rising to his feet. “Nice of you to stop by.” These words said slyly, and were followed by a side-ways look to the three other men at his table.

That was another thing about being First Blade. Other warriors respected and feared me but there was also a distance. I didn’t often visit the barracks because I had my own quarters in the palace and was considered high enough in station to be a separate entity to the royal guards. They liked to remind me of that every time they saw me.

I squared my shoulders. “Can we talk?”

“We’re talking.”

I stared at him. He knew what I meant.

“Very well,” Bero grunted. Another glance at his men, who returned to playing dice. Bero ambled toward a door to the right, one which led to the armory, where everyone kept their spare weapons and shields.

“Listen,” I said, “I need to know who was meant to be guarding the king’s bedroom on the night of his death.” The bluntness was deliberate. I didn’t have time for anything else, and with men like Bero, one needed to get straight to the point.

Bero’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

I didn’t want this to be any more difficult than it had to be. I said, “Somehow, queen Islana managed to brutally kill the king without anyone hearing anything, and then ran straight out of their bedroom, covered in blood and with his heart in her hands, and managed to make it out of the palace. Does that not seem to you like a problem, Bero? Does it not make you wonder how exactly that happened?”

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Bero worked his jaw. “Aye. I’ve wondered.”

“You’ve wondered.”

“I have. And the truth of the matter, First Blade, is that some of my men were negligent. They have already been punished. The issue has been dealt with.”

“I would like to speak to them.”

“Why?” he said again.

The better question was, why was the captain so resistant to letting me in? Perhaps he had done something wrong personally, was trying to cover up his own mistakes. Perhaps he was keeping a secret.

“I am First Blade,” I said stiffly. “I am the first line of defense for the king. The king is dead, and so thus I have failed. Now I’m doing my best to ensure something like this can’t happen again.”

Bero seemed to consider this for a long moment. He cracked his neck from side to side and then finally said, “Conrat and Kitan were outside the king’s quarters.”

I knew both men, though not particularly well. Warriors who, after several successful raids, had been elevated to the king’s royal guard. I’d trained with Conrat several times. Skilful, though with a tendency to become too emotional and abandon technique in favor of wild aggression— in other words, a typical young man.

“Are they here?”

“Conrat is,” Bero said. “Kitan’s off-duty.”

I nodded, thanked the captain, and went off in search of Conrat.

Didn’t take me long to find him. He was in the Fur Room, the open space reserved for training, so named for the fact that the entire floor was carpeted in animal furs. As soon as I entered I was struck by the hot reek of sweat and body odor. Conrat was on top of his training partner, raining down punches, though with very little force behind them. His partner bucked his hips, twisted, tipped Conrat over, but Conrat pursued in a wild scramble, locked his hands around his partner’s waist, hoisted him up, and slammed him back down to the ground. Hence the furred floor.

I watched for a few moments. I had trained like a madman in my youth, had broken my body down in pursuit of martial greatness. I still trained —I had no choice, a warrior who doesn’t train is soon a corpse— but these days irregularly, and with only a fraction of the intensity I was now witness to. I opened my mouth to call out to Conrat at the exact moment his partner brought him to the ground with an elegant foot sweep.

“You were standing too upright,” I said, as the two warriors collected themselves.

Conrat, naked from the waist up, sheened with sweat, said, “First Blade. I didn’t see you there.”

“I didn’t want to interrupt.”

Conrat’s partner, his name escaping me, said, “Perhaps, First Blade, you’d go a round with me?”

“Next time,” I grunted. “Right now, I need to talk to you,” I pointed at Conrat, “privately.”

The man glanced at Conrat, who shrugged, and then walked past me as close as he could without actually touching me. An earlier iteration of myself might have reached out to grab him, spin him around, and sit him down on his ass. These days I was just glad every time I made my way out of an interaction without violence being necessary…not that I was in the clear yet. The way Conrat was looking at me at that moment told me to brace myself.

“What do you want, First Blade?’

“You were on duty the night king Emrik was murdered.”

A nod.

“You have nothing else to say about it?”

“Not to you.”

I sighed. “Don’t be a fool, boy. You know who I am and you know my title. I was responsible for keeping Emrik safe and alive. Well, he’s dead now, and that means I didn’t do my job.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “But what I can do is find out exactly what happened that night and make sure it won’t ever be repeated. So I’m going to need you to talk.”

Conrat checked over his shoulder. It was a small, subtle movement, but I saw it nonetheless. He stepped in closer. “I’ll tell you, but…”

“Yes?”

The young man’s shoulders sagged. “I failed.”

“We all failed. Speak to me.”

“I was asleep.” He paused, then hurried to say, “But not for long. Only briefly, because I was exhausted. I’d been training earlier that day and then, the night before, I was out…” he shook his head. “I was asleep when it happened.”

“The whole time?”

“Not entirely. Kitan started shouting, which woke me up. I…well, I got up, of course. I saw her, just the back of her. The queen, I mean.”

“And then?”

“I ran after her,” he said fervently. “I knew what she’d done. I hadn’t even looked inside the room yet, hadn’t seen the crime, but I knew, and I drew my sword and I was determined to cut her down, but…”

“Yes?” I said patiently.

“She was fast. Far too fast. She just…vanished.”

“Weren’t there guards at the door?”

“There were, of course. But they saw the queen and got out of the way. By the time they actually realized that she needed to be stopped, it was too late.”

I crossed my arms. Part of me wanted to backhand the man across the room for being such a failure, for daring to sleep on duty, and for allowing all of this to happen. But I was too old, and too short on time, to start making enemies where I didn’t need to.

“What did the queen look like?” I asked. “Was she afraid, was she smiling?”

Conrat shook his head. “I couldn’t honestly say. I didn’t see her too well…”

I frowned. “You saw her running, though.”

“Just the back of her dress. Her hair.”

“You’re entirely sure it was her?”

“Who else could it have been? She came out of the king’s room.”

Was that the flutter of hope I could feel in my chest? The supposed witnesses had not, in fact, clearly seen Islana at the scene. Only a dress, and a woman’s hair, but any assassin could’ve dressed like her and put on a wig. And maybe the assassin had slipped something into the drinks of the guard’s, putting them to sleep. Maybe the whole thing had been much more elaborately planned than anyone could’ve guessed.

“What about the other man, what was his name? Kitan. Did he see her?”

“Yes,” Conrat said. “He saw her, and chased her.” I could tell he was starting to tire of our conversation, that he no longer wished to be answering my questions. His eyes shifted off to the side, slid back across to me.

“Where does Kitan go when he’s off duty?”

“Usually? I don't know.” Conrat spat. “But if you want to talk to him, and I’m guessing you do, I know for a fact that he’s at his house.”

“You know where he lives?”

“I do.”

“Tell me.” I held up a hand to stop his complaint. “I’m done with you, Conrat. Just tell me where the man lives and I’ll leave you alone. And don’t look at me like that, you really don’t want to try it.”

“I—”

“Conrat. Please.”

“Smiths quarter,” Conrat said, more than a little reluctantly. “Near the church to the Deer Queen. Stone house with a door painted green.”

I pursed my lips and attempted to commit this to my memory, which seemed worse every day. How and why memories get worse, I had no idea, and sometimes I wondered if I’d contracted some kind of silent, hidden illness that was slowly eating away at my mind day by day. I feared that a time would come when there was nothing left and I wouldn’t even remember Islana’s name, what her favorite food was —fresh salmon— or even where we’d first secretly met— in a grove just outside of the city, by a small pond.

“Alright,” I said, “I’ll leave you then, Conrat.” I started to turn, then paused. I looked him in the eyes. “I don’t like violence anymore. I used to love it more than anything else in the world, then I discovered true love. Even still, Conrat, falling asleep on duty, I should kill you for that.”

Conrat smoldered and I could see him considering an attack, but I was ready, and I think he saw that I was ready. He backed down and silently watched me leave.