The Spirit of Solstice Read online

  It was not here earlier, replied Ootapi, and that brought Konrad up short.

  You mean this was done while we were in the shop?

  Yes.

  Hm. Then it was either unrelated, or… Vasily’s killer had lurked outside while Konrad was within.

  Let’s follow it, shall we? Lead on.

  Ootapi gave a mental salute and took off, and Konrad fell into step behind, musing. This disturbance in the aether, what did that mean? It certainly was not usual for any killer to leave such a trail behind, or to have any such effect upon their environment. If this was the doing of Vasily’s killer, he might be unaware that he was doing it at all. If he was, and he had indeed lingered outside the shop… perhaps he intended that Konrad and Ootapi should follow.

  Suspicion and paranoia… Konrad was becoming far too adept at both. He dismissed the idea from his mind — mostly. It would not hurt to take some care.

  Ootapi gathered speed, soaring overhead with the swiftness of a bird. Konrad hoped that the trail might lead them away from the centre of Ekamet and its busier streets, but no such luck: he was forced to push and dodge his way through crowds of smiling, red-cheeked passersby, and felt in danger of losing Ootapi any moment. The serpent was excited, deaf to Konrad’s pleas to slow his pace.

  ‘Konrad?’

  The voice was familiar, and dear. Konrad stopped dead, Ootapi forgotten, for Nanda stood before him. She was wrapped in a warm blue coat, a dark scarf encircling her throat, a woollen hat covering her pale blonde hair. She held a bag bulging with parcels in one hand.

  Konrad grabbed her free arm and set off once more. ‘There’s trouble!’

  ‘But it’s Solstice—’

  ‘Season of Joy and Cheer, I know. But not everybody can keep it up quite all the time.’

  ‘There’s been a killing?’

  ‘You don’t truly believe people will refrain from hacking each other to pieces just because it’s Solstice, do you?’

  ‘I suppose not.’ Nanda trotted along behind him in silence after that, leaving Konrad to wonder why he had dragged her along. Some mad impulse. Poor Nanda, he ought to let her get back to her celebrating. Just because he had to be out chasing killers all nigh—

  He stopped, because a woman lay sprawled in the street and he had almost run over her. Her enthusiasm for the season had perhaps got out of hand, for she was decked in sprigs of holly and everything about her was red: her coat, her hat and shawl, her gloves, dress, shoes… and the blood that soaked the front of her clothing, from her torn-out throat down to her waist.

  ‘Oh!’ Nanda came to an abrupt halt beside him, her toes only inches from the woman’s out-flung arm. She stared down at the body in wide-eyed horror, and Konrad bitterly regretted whatever whim had prompted him to bring her along.

  ‘Sorry, Nan,’ he sighed, and knelt by the woman’s head. The blood still flowed; she had not been dead for long. Ootapi, bind her up.

  Nanda collected herself and approached the crowd of horrified onlookers who were beginning to gather; Konrad heard her soothing people, asking if anyone had seen anything. His feelings turned about again, and he was glad he had her close. She was eternally reliable.

  Of course, the crowd was slightly inconvenient. He couldn’t very well compel a visibly slaughtered woman to start talking, not with such an audience at hand. Not if he wanted to maintain the secrecy of his position as the Malykant, anyway, and that was vital.

  He would have to do it the more difficult way.

  Ootapi, keep her mouth shut.

  The serpent obeyed. The woman’s eyes lost the staring look of death, filling with character and a semblance of life once more, and fixed upon Konrad. He gazed back, taking note of the lines about her eyes and mouth, her grey hair: she was older than Vasily, much older.

  Speak, he ordered her. Not aloud. What happened to you?

  She blinked slowly, twice, and tried to move, but Ootapi had her bound fast. I do not understand. Is something amiss? Have I fainted?

  Konrad winced inwardly. Once in a while, he encountered someone whose death had come upon them so swiftly, so unexpectedly, they failed to realise it had happened at all. He did not relish having to break such news. He never knew how to do so gently.

  You are dead, he told her.

  So much for gently. Her eyes filled with tears, and a suppressed shudder racked her body.

  Then, to his immense surprise, she smiled — if not with her mouth, then with her eyes. Oh, thank goodness. The words formed in his mind, wreathed in relief and joy.

  I… I beg your pardon?

  But she would not speak another word. A breath, two, and she was gone from his mind, inattentive; deaf to his pleas that she would return, tell him her name, anything.

  You can let her go, Konrad said at last to Ootapi.

  Konrad got to his feet, trying to ignore the stares of the people around him. He did not look as though he had any right to be taking such an interest in the corpse; he was obviously neither a doctor, nor a member of the police force. The other, obvious alternative was that he was the person who had inflicted the wound, and he could see that conclusion forming in the minds of some of those nearby. They stared in growing horror, and began to back away.

  Good, let them take themselves off. They were only in the way.

  He toyed with the idea of sending Ootapi to Nuritov in his sister’s wake, but abandoned the thought. The news would travel by itself, and fast.

  That trail, Ootapi. Does it continue?

  Yes, Master.

  Then we follow.

  This was no time to collect a bone from her; that would have to wait. Konrad paused only to collect Nanda, who was talking to a sobbing woman a few feet away.

  ‘We go,’ he told her, voice pitched too low to be overheard. ‘There may be more.’

  Nanda awarded the afflicted woman a parting smile and a friendly squeeze of the arm. ‘The police will be here soon,’ she said. ‘I am sure there is no danger now.’

  Then they were away once more, leaving the dead woman prostrate in the snow behind them. ‘She knows nothing,’ Konrad said as they walked, Ootapi riding the winds ahead. ‘Nor would she tell me her name.’

  ‘I gleaned little from the onlookers,’ Nanda admitted, pulling her cloak closer around herself as a strong gust of wind blew through the street. ‘No one recognised her. Some of them described the attacker, though. A tall man in a tall hat, shrouded in a dark cloak.’

  Konrad grunted, remembering the frightened, accusing stares of some of those who had been close to him. ‘Are you sure they were not talking about me?’

  ‘Possible.’

  Then again, the description was not inconsistent with Vasily’s recollections of his final customer, either. A tall, dark man. What a fine cliche it made.

  Some ten minutes passed. Ootapi forged ahead, oblivious to the freezing wind and the driving snow. Konrad and Irinanda followed, considerably more afflicted by both. They covered a significant distance in the time, moving as fast as they could down the snow-laden streets, and Konrad began to relax. Perhaps there would be no more deaths tonight; perhaps the bloodthirst was slaked, the killing over…

  The streets were growing dark, now, most of the shops closed for the night. Streetlamps shone upon shut doors and shadowed windows, and the crowds were dissipating at last. But one window up ahead glowed with the welcoming, flickering light of lit candles. The sight ought to have been inviting, but Konrad felt a sense of dread, for the door was wide open…

  Sure enough, Ootapi swerved, and dived inside.

  The establishment proved to be a cheese shop. Its proprietor had been prevented from closing it up, in all likelihood, by the attack that had made a bloody ruin of his throat. Unlike Vasily, he had not been laid out upon the counter. He lay in the middle of the floor, a slight man dressed in a black coat patched at the elbows. His dark hair was swept back in a shaggy mane, all askew and spattered with blood. His dark, vacant eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling, one dis
coloured with a blood-red stain.

  Ootapi, quickly. Bind!

  The snake flew to obey, and within moments the slain man’s body began to shudder. He coughed and gagged, and could not seem to stop.

  Konrad realised, with shock, that the man was laughing.

  ‘Speak,’ he ordered.

  The man continued to chortle, wheezing and hacking and spluttering in helpless mirth.

  ‘Please, stop laughing,’ Konrad said, aware that he sounded both plaintive and weary but unable to help it. ‘We are not blessed with an abundance of time.’ There was a killer tearing through the streets of Ekamet and if Konrad was to have any hope of finding him, he needed information soon. ‘Who killed you?’

  The man was giggling now, his lips spread in a rictus grin. ‘Charming fellow. Dark cloak, hat, all that. Scarf over his face, couldn’t see much.’

  ‘Why do you say he was charming? I do not see the humour.’

  ‘You w-wouldn’t, would you?’

  Konrad exchanged a look with Nanda. She looked as disturbed as he.

  ‘Nan. That Reader thing you do. It doesn’t work on corpses, does it?’

  Her eyebrows rose. ‘It… oddly enough, I have not had occasion to try it, very often.’

  ‘Don’t handle corpses much, hm?’

  ‘Not especially often, no. It might work tonight, since he’s in residence. So to speak.’ Nanda knelt beside Konrad, gingerly avoiding the pool of sticky, congealing blood spread across the floor, and wrapped her fingers around the giggling man’s wrist. Konrad gave her credit for doing so unflinchingly.

  After only a few seconds, she released him with a gasp. ‘I think his mind’s slipping. There’s nothing but laughter!’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘All I can discern otherwise is a lack of familiarity for this place. He isn’t the proprietor.’

  ‘What? Then where is the shopkeeper?’

  Nanda shrugged.

  Konrad made one last effort. He gripped the lapels of the laughing corpse’s coat and tugged, forcing the man to return his gaze. ‘Tell me who you are.’

  An answer came, but so smothered in laughter that Konrad couldn’t understand a word.

  He gave up. Time pressed; their quarry was out there still, somewhere in the city, possibly slaying someone else while Konrad wasted his time trying to talk to a dead madman. Release him, Konrad ordered, and Ootapi shot free of the man’s soul with a strangled noise of disgust.

  He is mad.

  We noticed that.

  Out into the street they hurried, hats and hoods pulled close against the snow. But the chase ended abruptly, and in disappointment, for not twenty steps beyond the cheese shop’s door, Ootapi came to a dead halt.

  What is it? Konrad watched, bemused, as the serpent turned in agitated circles overhead.

  The trail ends here.

  Ends? Just like that?

  Just like that! It is gone.

  Chapter Three

  Konrad stood nonplussed, unsure how to proceed. How could so clear a trail vanish without trace? You are certain?

  Ootapi did not deign to respond, but he expressed his opinion of Konrad’s doubts clearly enough by way of a few disgusted flicks of his sinuous tail.

  All right, I apologise.

  He thought of Eetapi, and Nuritov. Had the inspector caught up yet? Perhaps he was even now attendant upon one of the earlier victims.

  Konrad shared this notion with Nanda, and she, for lack of a better alternative, swiftly agreed to retrace their steps.

  They found Nuritov by the side of the murdered woman. The inspector wore his usual wide-brimmed rain hat and long coat; he had a pipe in his hand, which he could not possibly hope to keep lit under such wet, windy conditions, but perhaps merely holding the familiar object was of comfort. He greeted Konrad and Nanda kindly, if a trifle abstractedly. ‘Thought I might see you two turn up.’

  ‘We were here earlier,’ Konrad said.

  Nuritov transferred his gaze from the dead woman’s visage, to Konrad’s. ‘Oh?’

  Konrad drew him aside, for though the inspector’s men had largely dissipated the earlier crowd, there were still far too many people nearby for public conversation. In a low voice, he related all the events of the night thus far.

  Nuritov’s gravity deepened with the tale, especially at the news of a third victim. ‘Eetapi brought me word of the wine merchant, but the cheese shop, I hadn’t heard about.’

  ‘All we know of the man is that he’s not the shopkeep. No sign of him or her.’

  Nuritov put his unlit pipe into his mouth and sucked upon it, his gaze distant. ‘That could be suspicious.’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘You don’t think the shopkeep might be responsible for all this?’

  Konrad shrugged. ‘I can’t yet say, but I… tend to doubt it. All the descriptions of the culprit point towards a large, powerful man, and we know he is capable of brutality. Those who spend their lives quietly vending produce do not often display those characteristics.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Then again, sometimes they do.’

  ‘Also true.’ Nuritov fell silent again, and Konrad allowed his thoughts to wander. His steps, too; he drifted back to the side of the fallen woman, and indulged in a leisurely, more considered examination than he had previously had time for.

  She looked peaceful, he thought, looking once more into her face. How often could he say that, of the bodies he tended to encounter? The victims of violent deaths, all of them; slain against their will and before their time. Except, apparently, for this one. Grateful to find herself dead, however violent the means of dispatch. How odd. He had never encountered its like.

  ‘Who is she?’ Konrad asked, wandering back to Nuritov. ‘Did you find that out?’

  ‘Mm.’ Nuritov removed the pipe from his mouth, glancing at it in a vague, puzzled way. ‘Her name is Albina Olga Narolina. Wife of Sergei, deceased. If she has living relations, we have not yet discovered who they are.’

  ‘Vasily, though. The cousin. Have you spoken to her?’

  ‘Not yet. I was waiting for you.’

  ‘You… you were?’ Konrad tried not to feel ridiculously pleased, like a girl asked to dance against all her expectations.

  Nuritov’s wry smile suggested that he guessed at Konrad’s feelings. ‘Your insights are always of interest, and frequently of use.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘In addition to which, if I did not take you along, I would only have to fill you in later. Saves time.’

  ‘How practical.’

  Nuritov gave a tiny bow. He leaned closer and said in a much lower voice, ‘I see you have not… taken anything, from the body.’

  He referred, of course, to the rib bone. ‘Too busy,’ Konrad replied. ‘I will do so later.’

  ‘Ah. Then I may have her transferred to the morgue?’

  ‘Please.’

  Nuritov absorbed this, then looked to Nanda. Nan had declined to participate in their conversation, choosing instead to wander the environs of Mrs. Narolina’s body, her watchful gaze fixed upon the crowd. ‘Will Miss Falenia be joining us?’

  ‘Yes.’ He had not asked her, of course, but he intended that she should. She had once reproved him mightily for leaving her out, excluding her, keeping secrets from her. Actually, she had done so more than once. They had moved far beyond those days, now; frequently of use to one another, their lives and duties were increasingly bound up together. And he had grown to trust her. Far from wanting to keep her away, he now sought to keep her close — by any means necessary. He’d beg if he had to.

  Fortunately, he was not driven to such lengths this time. Nanda serenely took it as read that she was invited along, and did not wait for anybody to assure her of it. She fell into step in between Konrad and Nuritov as they departed, and took the opportunity to say in an undertone: ‘I could not read her. She is gone.’

  ‘Thank you for trying.’ Konrad was not surprised. Albina had been broadl
y unresponsive even when Ootapi had held fast her spirit; now that she was released, there could be little hope that Nanda’s talented touch would encounter anything but dead flesh.

  Kristina Vasily lived unusually close to the docks. Those who owned property typically preferred to distance themselves from the more unsavoury aspects that sometimes came with it; while owning a warehouse or two was undoubtedly advantageous for anybody with mercantile leanings, these structures were almost universally situated in the insalubrious docks area.

  This did not appear to matter to Kristina. Her house was a mere three minutes’ walk from the docks, situated upon a street of only modest pretensions towards gentility. Not that she herself suffered from any such shortcomings. When Nuritov, Konrad and Nanda presented themselves at her door, it was swiftly opened by a nicely-dressed manservant who did his best to repel them at once. Upon finding Inspector Nuritov most insistent, he reluctantly summoned his mistress.

  Kristina Vasily did not lack for money; that much was immediately obvious. She was swathed in fine velvets and adorned with gems, though perhaps the season had something to do with her choice of attire. The noise from within the house indicated that some manner of gathering was underway.

  She did not invite them inside. Looking down upon them from her admittedly impressive height — an effect exacerbated by her elevation several inches above street-level — she said in forbidding tones: ‘What is it?’

  ‘Madam,’ said Nuritov politely. ‘I am Inspector Nuritov, of the Ekamet Police, and—’

  ‘I have been informed of your name,’ she interrupted.

  ‘Mm. Well, I do of course apologise for calling upon you at such a time, but I am afraid I have bad news.’

  ‘What…what kind of bad news?’

  ‘The worst, I’m afraid.’

  Madam Vasily’s gaze travelled to Konrad, to Nanda, and back to Nuritov. The prospect of ill tidings robbed her of some of her importance, and she invited them inside rather more cordially. She led them to a tiny parlour — ‘I apologise, all the better rooms are in use this evening’ — and waited with an air of ill-suppressed anxiety.