Chapter 5 - Bountyman; Agent
Bountyman Ostok Horksog cast a bent, paunchy shadow over the dust-heavy, traffic-marked, smooth-paved road of the Southway on the Szem side of town. From the shadow, invisible, crystalline, ghostly beads flashed like meteors from one paved stone to the next, exploding against some invisible barrier on the backdrop of the road; while from the muira man who cast this shadow, droplets of sweat flashed off his face, and exploded against the hard surface. Theman’s Bloody Sun settled a hazy redolence on all it touched. The droplets of sweat seemed to hiss into motes of steam the moment they struck the stones. The back of Ostok Horksog’s ivory neck crisped as he set his hands upon his hips, leaned back, and cracked his spine. His beetling black eyes scuddered over the baking flat road. He spotted one place where the sun had shone long and heavily onto a bench or some other piece of ironwork, where the road met the line of houses to his left. The bench had been torn out, so that there now appeared an indecipherable, grey-clean scrawl on the surface of the road stones, while the surface of the road which surrounded it had been universally sunburnt to dark ochre.
“What’s the word for that, setter Hearn?” asked Ostok, pointing a shiny finger toward the spot where the bench had once been.
“For what?” Hearn had been staring over the edge of the dry riverbed that split Aster-Szem. At the sound of his name he turned. He walked over beside the muira bountyman, shading his eyes with his tanned palm.
“For when something - the sun - burns a scribble like that onto a surface.”
“Pyrography?” Hearn suggested?
“Hem, not quite. It’s simpler.”
“I can’t say, setter Horksog.”
“Tell me this too, why are the benches missing all along this road? Why are there ragged holes in the green strip of earth before these rowhomes? They must have held gnarled city trees before.”
Hearn glanced along that side of the road. “The Mayor issued orders for The Builder’s Guild to tear up the benches, trees, stalls - anything that could be removed on Srik Tillich’s parade route.”
“I met this mayor Korllun when I was handed the assignment. He never mentioned that.”
“Mayor Kyrllus,” Hearn corrected.
“Kyrllus. Of course.” Ostok daubed his head with a white wool cloth. One by one he pointed to the five nearest homes in the row. “Have the goodness to inform your vigil guards that I wish to speak to anyone in those homes. hearths, I mean. It will sound more agreeable to the vigil coming from you, setter.”
Hearn marched across to the officer standing and sweating in the Aster-Szem burgundy under the small strip of shade cast by the house overhang. This was the man in charge of the twenty vigil soldiers - exclusively human, though the vigil was known to have muira among its ranks - standing on The Southway that day, the 15th of Middle Summer, under the burning sun. Above, from the open hole of a house where the window glass had been taken out and the drape drawn back, Hearn caught the song of smallbirds. He said to the officer, “The bountyman requests that the families inside these hearths come into the street.”
“Setter Hearn,” Ostok called in his native muiric tongue, from the center of the road, “Ask them to have the citizens step around any debris. And around the dried blood.”
Hearn translated this into common Leegesspeech. The officer called out to his men and issued orders by gesture for four of them to retrieve any occupants inside the hearths. Turning back to Hearn, he said, “Setter Hearn, can I ask what that other muira man is doing?”
Hearn followed the officer’s gesture. “A Royal Custodian,” he answered, looking on the man in a full white robe and common sandals, scrubbing with a dirty cloth at a dry black stain on the road.
“The rain would clean the street.”
“The muira won’t let the blood of their oldest hearths be washed away by elements. Each rag is scrubbed once over the blood, then placed in the sealed jar, then left to dry, then burned. No part of the body’s ash is lost.”
The officer shook his head, but said nothing. Hearn marched back over to Ostok. “Anyone in those hearths will be out shortly,” he said.
“What does this say?” asked the bountyman. He passed over a single sheet with writing on it; Hearn recognized it by the sawtooth edging of the parchment as official proclamation from the Mayoral Office.
“It’s written in Teironian,” said Hearn.
“I know. I only read Leegesspeech I’m afraid. And that poorly.”
“Auspicious are the hawks that take wing from South State this morning,” Hearn began. “It was thought yesterday that a member of Ahn’s Royal Council, Srik Tillich, would pass by Aster-Szem, especially when it was reported that the Free and Native Brothers and Sisters of Ahn would send representatives to-”
“Skip on a bit,” Ostok interrupted. “Read anything about the parade.”
Hearn skimmed for a moment, then read, “At half a span before fullmorn, the Migrant Elder and his knights will leave the amphitheater on the Basillican Way, and cross by the high street to the Mayor’s mansion. After receiving formal reception from Mayor Kyrllus, the councilor will perform a formal review of the city Vigil in uniform. At fullmorn sharp he will cross into Szem by the Lanse Bridge, making a grand parade down the full length of The Southway from the Lanse Bridge to the Longclasp, before crossing back into Aster and touring the stalls under The Arcade. Muira and Human citizens are encouraged-”
“Stop.” Hearn ceased as Ostok once more interrupted with an upheld hand. The bountyman wiped the top of his shining head and unlaced the top of his shirt, fanning himself. He scanned up and down the long, currently-empty Southway. “I don’t understand any of this geography.”
“Do you wish me to take you along the route?”
“Not yet. Here. Take this piece of chalk - I keep it with me for just such a circumstance. Draw out on that big flat stone there in the road a little - hem - diagram of what you just read.”
Hearn took the chalk and knelt to the ground. He pinched his mouth for a moment, then began to sketch on the hot baked surface, explaining as he went. First he drew an irregular circle, with an odd protrusion in the bottom left corner, then a line with a very slight curve from about the 330th degree of the circle to the 180th. This was the city; Szem on the left with its elongated southwestern corner, where the muira kept their torchbug farms inside the wall; Aster on the right with its upper portion hanging over the Szem side of town, where the manors of plantation barons and tyrant’s cousins looked from above across the sweep of the settlement. Through the middle ran the line of Gorgenjaw, the old dry river. Over top of this diagram Hearn drew a shape something like a question mark with an extra flourish at the top. The mark began in the wealthy overlook on the Aster side, crossed over the Lanse bridge at the hook, dropped down through Szem, crossed back over the dry river into Aster, before descending in a straight line, stopping just before the edge of the circle.
“It was meant to stop about there,” said Hearn. He tapped the chalk where he had ended the question mark.
“What’s there?” asked Ostok.
“The Kratocletic Library. It was built by Teiron’s present Tyrant.”
“What a mess of place and time…”
Hearn stared at the bountyman. A long awkward silence bore out. Hearn could heard the songbirds faintly from the open window, along with the dry rustling of parchments across the road. This last was caused by dozens of small strips of paper, all bearing small phrases: “Stay for neither stock nor stone”, “Time changes neither Gods nor Justice”, “Blessed Gods, Flesh, Bone, Spirit”. Hearn knew that these were idioms among the muira. Their culture used such words when they wished particularly to draw the ear of an ancestor’s spirit on the wind. The Brothers and Sisters of Ahn had dumped the papers throughout Szem right before Srik Tillich’s arrival in town. Now the scraps blew like dead leaves, for no strong breeze had blown since their dispersal.
Hearn finally broke the pause by saying, “Setter Horksog?”
“Mmm?” The bountyman had been staring at the vigil soldiers as they were knocking at the doors of the homes.
“Shall I read on?”
“No, no. Put that paper away for now.”
“The lords of the city; did they not furnish you with an itinerary of Srik Tillich’s plan? And a map of Aster-Szem?”
“I saw it all at a glance,” Ostok admitted. “But I never understand these things until I’m in the moment. What do you think?”
“About?”
Ostok waved at the muira man pulling yet another rag from a gilded box, and swiping more at the huge dark stain in the road. “Murder on this street.”
“A very sorry business, setter.”
Ostok shook his head. “Aren’t we south of the Longclasp bridge? I’m probably mistaken, but should the Elder Migrant have even passed this part of the Southway?”
Hearn nodded. “Rumor spoke that they changed the route at the last minute.”
“If I ask you to, do you know enough of this city to draw up your own map? I want one of all the streets along The Southway. Any which are half a dozen streets up or down from the Longclasp.”
“It will take some time.”
“This assassination happened in a place of flux, setter Hearn.”
“Flux?”
“As near to the middle of two distinct halves of the city as can be. As near to the biggest bridge in your town that divides them as can be. When the day was cool, Theman’s Sun not yet having reached its zenith. Have you ever been in the country, setter?”
“I have.”
“It’s like there was this wide field of dark brown silt, ready for harvest, with the sun shining down. Then flash, and the whole thing is…” The bountyman waved at the discolored squiggle on the stones vaguely, then let his hand fall.
“Scorched?” suggested Hearn.
“Hear this now - you mustn’t attend my ramblings. Too many facts; my mind wanders. I see that your city vigil have dutifully rounded up a few civilians who may have had a view of this crime. Let’s ask them.”
On Ostok Horksog’s command, and with Hearn translating, the vigil soldiers led the civilians to a shaded area under one thick, high-topped Teironian Pine which The Builder’s Guild had been unable to uproot. The vigil soldiers led the residents over one at a time. Ostok plied each with questions: Had they been at the window on the day of the parade? Had they heard anything peculiar within the noise of the crowd? Had they noticed any unfamiliar faces in the street on the days leading up to it?
There were seven people found and drawn out from the four homes overlooking the site in all. Each interview took only a few moments. Only two - a childless husband and wife - were human. Hearn translated Ostok’s questions for them. The rest were muira. Hearn noted that Ostok threw in a proverb of the household gods every now and then when speaking with the muira; “Hasten the coming, speed the parting”, or “The sun still moves in one direction”. He noted that Ostok himself carried a bag of smallbones under his tunic, but that the bag did not chuckle like most.
Ostok had just finished questioning the fifth civilian when he suddenly exclaimed in muiric, “Does every person in your town live with eyes clamped shut and hands clasped over ears? Does everyone bury their heads when a noteworthy person visits?”
“Hardly, setter,” Hearn replied. “Most came out to see it.”
“Yet none of these people were here. Or if they were, they saw nothing. Heard nothing. Were dumb even to the screaming.”
“The vigil have two more for you to speak with.”
But neither the old man with the stark white hair behind his ears, nor the tall and lanky man with the unshaven stubble around a sardonic smirk; neither one apparently had anything of note to tell the muira bountyman.
“Their eyes are full of blades,” said Ostok.
Hearn said, “People in Szem keep to themselves.”
“I don’t mean the civilians. Your vigil look at me like I’m a particularly lengthy centipede which they’ve just seen crawling out of their apple.”
“They may… resent you, setter Horksog.”
“I can think of only a few things so unrealistic. Unreasonable, I mean. I’m here to help your vigil find a murderer. ‘Murderers’ I suppose is still in the sky, for neither the vigil nor the citizens have yet presented a succinct, exact account. Whoever is responsible killed not just Srik Tillich, but some poor fellow who was only standing by at the time. Now you say I’m resented? Astounding.”
“The roads are watched,” Hearn explained. “Every man and muira with a uniform is out questioning the people. I would say that no man of any species wishes to say a thing he knows, for fear it may make him look guilty.”
Ostok smiled awkwardly. “Let me step into the road again,” he said. “You stay here.
The muira bountyman marched out again into the sunlight. Hearn stayed under the shade of the tree, taking his cue from the vigil soldiers who had retreated under the eaves again. For a while he watched Ostok march up and down the road, occasionally glancing at the homes along the side, or staring across the canyon of the old river to the Aster side of town. The bountyman seemed at times to be play-acting as Srik-Tillich; at times acting as one of Srik’s knights; at times pretending to be a pedestrian in the crowd. The vigil soldiers looked unimpressed. All the while, The Royal Custodian kept diligently at the spot of blood on the stones, rag by rag. It seemed to Hearn that the black mark was a shade paler now than when the man had started. The other large pool, presumably left by the bystander who had been slain, went unattended.
Hearn leaned out from under the tree. “Setter Horksog?” he called in muiric.
“Hmm?” Ostok spun, startled in his small face.
“What’s that piece of debris you’re standing beside?”
Ostok looked down and picked up a small chunk of something. Hearn marched over and looked down at it as well. It appeared to be a shard of ceramic, with etchings on the interior curve.
“Looks like a piece from a shattered pot,” said Ostok.
“There are more. See? Another big piece by the custodian’s foot.”
“You have good eyesight, Hearn… Hem, pardon me Royal Custodian. No, no, don’t trouble yourself. Just looking at a bit of trash… Look at this now. It has the same scrawl. Is this Teironian?”
“It’s not a script I recognize.”
“Why would someone in the crowd be carrying a great pot?”
“I don’t know, setter.”
Ostok rubbed his head. Then he snapped his fingers. Shuffling over to a large leather sack that he had laid down in the open street, the bounty rummaged inside. Hearn heard varying notes of metal and glass tinking. Finally the muira man drew forth an enormous glass lens, large enough to cover his whole face. He walked back to Hearn.
“Set the first shard on the ground,” he said to Hearn. Hearn did so. “Now I’ll set the second beside it. Now look down through this lens. It’s specially made, you see, to make those shards look larger.”
“It’s making a spotlight on them,” said Hearn.
“Nevermind. Just tell me, can you make out the writing any better?”
Hearn spent a moment looking down through the glass. “On that bigger left piece,” he finally said.
“Yes?”
“It might be Thigan script. Not much call for that volon’s native writing in Aster-Szem. But I think it’s two words: ‘path’ and ‘spear’.”
“Anything else?” Ostok stared at Hearn.
“No. Sorry.”
Ostok shrugged. “It may turn out to be useful yet.” He put the glass lens away.
“Should I take you to someone more fluent in Thigan?”
“Let that hen go to pasture for a while. Do me another service. Tell those vigil soldiers that I’d like them to ask questions of all the people in all the homes along this road, for six streets south, and six streets north. And let me ask you this: is there a place along this road, close by, open to the public, which has a high view of this spot?”
Hearn placed a hand over his brow and scanned the buildings along the Southway. He pointed to a tall and wide structure, about two-hundred arms to the south. “Do you see that building? The one with the ivy climbing up its left cheek, and the third story pediment depicting a town tocsin calling out the news to his fold?”
“If you say it’s there I believe you, this time.”
“It’s a chanter’s academy.”
“How exciting. Outside of the royal army it’s not common to find chanters in my nation.”
“I believe the master chanter is Teironian.”
“Ahh, that does make more sense.” Ostok shuffled. “Can we go in?”
“It’s not a public establishment. But they might welcome visitors.”
“Good view?”
“I’ve never been inside.”
“Then let us find out.”
Ostok went over and picked up his leather bag. Hearn watched as the custodian swiped once more across the stain, set the rag inside his royal box, and took out a fresh one. “Setter Ostok,” he said.
“Mmm?”
“That word; ‘excoriated’?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. I’ve already forgotten.”
“Speak of… Hunter-Warrior came to look?” Ostok shook his head. “Dear me, my Leegesspeech is as awful as ever.”
“I’m here to translate,” said Hearn dryly.
“Yes, it’s for the best. Try to phrase my question exactly as I put it. Has the master chanter spoken personally - face to face - with anyone of an administerial or political character? I mean, has anyone come around and asked about the presentability of the facade of his academy, for bureaucratic purposes? Or anyone asking about the tenor and wording of their chants? How they might sound to a passing pedestrian from upper class society?”
While Hearn translated the question from muiric into Leegesspeech to the best of his ability, the master chanter of the Digamettic Chanter’s Circle looked on with a foot that tapped in perfect, steady rhythm. He was a small human, with curly black hair. Wrinkles etched his face, but soft wrinkles, the wrinkles of a scholar not a worker. He had a large chest but little muscle aside. He wore the short-sleeved, heavily-ornamented style of robe common in the western school of chanting.
This master, whose name was Dylas of Teiron, shook his curly black hair slowly as Hearn finished speaking. “Our circle receives few visitors in the course of a year, let alone a month,” he said to Ostok, with Hearn again translating. “No man or woman as you describe has knocked upon our door.”
“Does he recall anyone with a particular interest in his academy’s location?” Ostok asked. “For it’s situated quite conveniently near your Longclasp bridge, and two main boulevards.”
The master chanter huffed as Hearn repeated the question. “No one of that character either. Will your bountyman have many more questions?”
“Does the master chanter - hem - go out at this time of day?” returned Ostok when the words had been translated.
“At a span past midsun, I and my students gather in the basilica for our three-sided chanting.”
“What’s three-sided chanting?” asked Hearn.
“The chanters match cadences in trios. The practice teaches focus as well as tone.”
Ostok glanced past the master chanter down the columned corridor on the first floor of the Academy. “Tell the master chanter that if he has duties, perhaps he wouldn’t mind for us to follow him a short distance. Don’t bring up our authority to ask the questions on behalf of the diplomats and mayor if you can help it. I don’t wish to make the master chanter upset. Try to phrase it in an accommodating way I mean.”
Hearn said, “Setter Horksog has some things he’d still like to ask. May we walk with you, setter Dylas?”
The master chanter gave a brisk nod. Waving a hand for Hearn and Ostok to follow, he turned and stepped into the hall leading further into the academy. The visitors saw that the building must have been put up as a military fortification, probably the first structure raised on the road. Plain stone pillars supported mortared walls, with little holes at the roofs in the event of a fire. There was one tall and narrow window at the far end of the hall, beside a stair that ran to a second level; most of the light in the building came from multicandle tubes built into the sides of the pillars, and filled each night by one of the chanting students. Each surface had been painted over in white, but not in recent years; paint flaked from every surface. The smell of old masonry mingled in the air with smells of tobacco and whale oil.
A door on the right side of the hall led into a half-kitchen/half-dining space. One of the chanters was chopping carrots into a bowl with a scored clever, while another raised and lowered his voice in controlled tones through a cadence of words; seemingly gibberish, but in actuality a set of words that put the tongue and mouth in better positions for invoking the tones necessary to produce a chant. “Beloved sister in the warmest state of hunger to be understood and you only speak the language of the spear-” The student went on for several moments, uninterrupted by the chopping of the other student at the kitchen counter or the master chanter’s entry. Hearn and Ostok stood stiff and silent on either side of the door arch.
At a moment that seemed indistinct from any other in the chant the master suddenly raised a palm. The student stopped. “Your exhaling turned sloppy on the hard consonants,” said Dylas. “Especially ‘P’ and ‘D’. Make them larger in your throat. Throw them from your mouth.”
The student listened, back stiff, fingers lace before him, face flushed. “As you advise, master,” the student replied as the master concluded. He cleared his throat, took a drink of water from a nearby table, and resumed the words in rhythm. “All conflict with the new world of the sun that has been circling beyond the glass of the sky while underneath and deep into the steel lungs-”
“You had other questions?” Master Dylas glanced back at the pair by the door. “Ask. A chanter trains for interruptions.”
“Did anyone at the academy notice anything on the parade day?” asked Ostok.
Dylas shook his head when Hearn had translated. “Nothing exceptional. Nothing unordinary.”
“Hmmm.” Ostok scratched a thinning eyebrow at this reply. “Ask setter Dylas to describe anything he saw or heard during the moment leading up to and right after the assassination. Or anything his students might have told him they noticed.”
The student who was emptying his carrots into a cast iron pot in the kitchen turned and glanced at Ostok as he spoke; he must have known at least some amount of muiric. Master Dylas waited for Hearn’s translation before replying, “We noticed almost nothing. You’ve seen the building. Thick stone walls our chambers and study and this small dining space. I myself was in here at the hour that this unfortunate foreigner came to visit our town with his soldiers. Of course we heard the crowds. Their roar was like a forge flame in a closed smithy. And of course we heard the shouting and what sounded like a few screams after the murder. I sent one of my students to look out the street door. The crowds were in such a rush to get away, and he reported that The Southway was unsafe. We watched from the windows as the last pedestrians dispersed. It was quiet thereafter until the vigil came. Such was truth and all.”
“May I speak with this young man here?” Asked Ostok, twitching an eyebrow in the direction of the cook. The master chanter nodded. He fished a silver pocket clock from his robe and checked its face as he went to stand beside the other practicing student.
Ostok and Hearn stepped over to the stove on which the cook was just then setting his iron pot. Hearn began in Leegesspeech, “Wind favor you, setter. This-”
“I believe this young red-haired chanter might know muiric,” Ostok interrupted. He smiled awkwardly at the man. “Have I stated the case rightly?”
“I know a little,” said the chanter, turning to face them.
“Splendid. I rely on this fine agent of the border agency - Hearn of Aster is his name - for translations, directions, recommendations; everything a stranger to your city might desire. But I must respect your master chanter’s wish for brevity.”
The bountyman held forth on the reason for their visit, unable to suppress a tangential note about chanting or the people of Aster-Szem in general. But the student shook his head well before Ostok finished. “Sorry,” he said. “We only saw people running.”
“Nobody suspicious in the mix?”
The student flicked a quickstriker at the pile of kindling beneath his pot, until a small plume of smoke began to rise. “There were some people who had on very vibrant brown-and-white scarves,” he said as he opened the vent above the fire stove. “I saw them from the window. Isn’t brown a special color in Ahn?”
Ostok sighed. Hearn explained to the student, “It’s on their flag. Brown and white stag on a green field.”
“Oh.”
Master Dylas marched over when he noticed Hearn and Ostok turning away from the cook. “I’m going up to our library to set the tables for our three-sided chanting,” he said.
“The bountyman would like to look through your upper-story windows,” said Hearn.
The master chanter opened his mouth to speak, closed it, frowned, then rubbed a hand down his face. “A quick look if the bountyman will be so kind,” he said.
Dylas waved a hand to the door and led the way from the kitchen.
As they ascended the narrow, dark stair to the second level, Hearn and Ostok heard the rising swell of chanters in practice. Their breath and voice echoed like a temple, like the wind whispering through a hundred different drafts in an ancient two-story home all at the same time. The master chanter came shortly to thick double doors of pine boards and iron bands, cracked slightly open. He pushed the door wide. They entered into a long tablinum, which must have once been a barracks by its long, low-ceilinged architecture. Several students and adept chanters were at practice here amidst shelves of slate and paper; old vellum filling the air with its musk, and the occasional pleasant scrape of a page punctuating the rhythms of the practitioners’ chants as one old chanter sat at a table in the corner, leafing through a book the size of a chestplate.
Three small slit windows perforated the eastern wall of the room, which looked down onto the road. Each had a large wood table in front of it stacked with volumes. Hearn and Ostok had just stepped towards the northernmost of these, when the former noticed something in an open fabric display stand to his right, just inside the door. “Excuse me Master Dylas,” he said. The master turned. “What are these shards of pottery you have in this case?”
“Amphorae,” said the master. He picked up one of the clean but jagged pieces of ceramic, which was covered in writing. “They are used as a component in some chants.”
Hearn explained this to Ostok, then asked on the latter’s prompting, “Can you explain how they’re used?”
“You must understand that we don’t have much call for them in our circle.” The Master Chanter folded his arms over his large chest and shifted to his other foot. “Amphorae are used by some men trained in chanting as an offensive implement. By control of pitch, timber, tone - by the same careful modulation of the voice employed in other chants - speed and direction is given to the shards.”
“Directed how?”
“Most often, a swirling pattern. Surrounding the chanter. The ceramics are marked with glyphs. You can see the writing here. These ones are covered in Selmonian glyphs, but most of the volon languages can work. The glyphs allow the shards to resonate with the chanter’s words of power. Of course metal, or even wood, would function the same. It’s simply easier to mark the runes on the inside of a pot, fire it in a kiln, then shatter the object when it’s removed.”
“Do they sell these amphorae at the academy?” Ostok asked. Hearn translated.
“Certainly not.” Dylas grimaced. “I reiterate, we have very little use for them. What you see on display, and a small jar in our closet, are our total supply. We only keep them as an example to visiting chanters from other schools. The military chanters are the ones who use such reagents.”
“It is strange, sometimes, the things one learns about in the course of duty,” said Ostok in muiric. Though his eyes were black and small, they seemed to see a huge something in the stones of the floor as he stared distantly down.
Hearn took out the broken piece he was still carrying from the street and looked at it in his palm. “I still think this is Thigan script.”
“I have no doubt of your good judgment.”
Master Chanter Dylas coughed once. “Anything else, setters?”
“I would still like to see the view from that far window,” Ostok answered immediately, guessing the question. The master chanter left the pair to their business. He went to a few round tables on the southern end of the room, setting three chairs to a table. Hearn caught an impatient stomp on the old chanter’s step. Together he and Ostok lifted and shifted the table in front of the window to the side. Ostok peered through the small slit first, followed by Hearn. There was no view of the actual scene of the assassination, only the road several dozen arms down, where the crowd would have come running.
“Well, setter Hearn,” Ostok said after a moment standing in silence and listening to the chanters. “What do you make of this?”
“The building, setter Ostok?” Hearn replied.
“This academy probably doesn’t have much to do with the murder, I’ll speak plainly. But these amphorae. Does your specialized knowledge of the city tell you anything?”
“I’m in no position to propose theories. I’m not a lawman.”
“Tell me something anyhow.”
Hearn thought for a moment. “The master chanter says these amphorae are military equipment.”
“And?”
“If so, the city vigil would have taken them from anyone trying to bring the amphorae into the city. At least by one of the main gates. This is just a thought, setter…”
“You think that the amphorae were here already. Purchased in town.”
Hearn clasped a fist over his mouth and nodded. “Or smuggled.”
A girl, muira, perhaps six years, with straight brown hair and pure golden veins against her white skin, came drooping and swaying across the Szem road. She wore a shabby summer dress of brown wool, with grass stains on the knees. She was dancing; the tune was that of the pigeons cooing on the eaves of the houses on either side of the street. She seemed disinterested from all her environment. Neither the hot sun nor the passage of other muira and animals in the road captured any fraction of her attention. She did, however, stop her dance when she spotted Hearn. He sat on a thin wooden chair outside of a teahouse called Desert’s Swallow, leaning back on two legs against the wooden wall of the building, and staring up at the waning sun beyond the glass sky. The little girl walked cautiously toward him. Hearn seemed not to notice the little girl stepping like a tentative fawn closer to him. Not finding whatever he sought in the clouds and the deepening purple of the sky, his eye wandered to the balcony of Desert’s Swallow overhead. He saw his employer, the bountyman Ostok Horksog, leaning out from the rail, smoking at a pipe. Hearn blew a slow, low breath.
“What’re you mad about?” asked the little girl, breaking whatever inner thought had been circling Hearn’s head.
Hearn turned, and regarded the girl with one raised brow. She looked thin, with pox scars she must have received as a baby marring her cheeks and her jawline; but otherwise, a girl of plain and healthy features. “Punctuality,” he said. He angled his eyes back to Ostok, just as the latter blew a flimsy grey strain of smoke into the breezy summer air up on the teahouse balcony.
The little girl clasped her hands behind her back. She rocked on her heels. “Are you mad because someone cut your mouth?” she persisted.
“Young child, hasn’t your mother or your father advised you not to speak with men you have never seen before?”
“She’s a beggar orphan,” said a different voice. Hearn craned his neck to look down to the street.
Theogenes of Barthos - or of Leeges, as the man himself put it - came striding bare-chested up behind the girl. He wore upon his face a blank expression, and his customary tangled beard. Even had he not spoken, the smell of smokethistle and sweat (“The smells of a man.”) which accompanied the beggar like a cloud would surely have alerted Hearn to his presence.
“Setter Theogenes,” Hearn said in greeting. He pulled his pocket clock from inside of his tunic and checked the time; almost half-a-span past midnoon. “What brings you out this evening?”
“Smokethistle,” said Theogenes.
“I haven’t got any on me at the moment.”
Theogenes shrugged at this reply. “I didn’t say you had any. I said that it brought me out this evening.” Thereupon the beggar stooped down where the road met the side of the teahouse next to Hearn. Pushing around in the old Teironian Pine needles and tattered pamphlets which had amassed there with the push of wind and rain, he turned up an old stub from a cigar. He dusted the dirt from it, placed it in his mouth, then said from around the butt, “Got a light?”
Hearn shook his head with a poorly-concealed look of disgust. The little girl laughed and said, “I have some matches.” She pulled out a dirty, crushed box she must have taken from a similar source as the cigar stub came from; the gutter. She struck a light. Theogenes smoked. Hearn looked to Ostok once more. He stuffed the implement back into the neck of his tunic, and shifted positions on his chair.
Theogenes’ eyebrows lifted with a look of affected amazement. “What could possibly make you anxious on a fine summer evening like this one? Your own conscience it must be.”
“I’m supposed to speak beside my chief tonight,” Hearn explained. “At the Border Agency, to an assembly of the Wagoner’s guildmembers. They want-”
“Senseless pulpiting,” Theogenes interrupted. “You will always be anxious when you set your expectations on events designed to win personal renown.”
Hearn rolled his eyes. “It’s a speech outlining tariffs. The fees members of the agency will expect from the men who employ us.”
“What’s a tariff?” asked the young girl.
“Money,” Theogenes answered. He returned his attention to Hearn. “And it doesn’t change the truth I give you. Men from one guild tell men from another guild the treatment they expect to receive, so that men from outside the city will look upon both groups with higher favor. You put all your hope - everything that you want - in the hands of other men. You care too much about prestige.”
“What’s prestige?” asked the girl, this time staring at Theogenes.
“How liked he is by others.”
“Thank you, Theogenes,” said Hearn in a bland tone. “Do you have a recommendation, then, on what should be my concern?”
“How much you like yourself,” Theogenes said. He rose from the road with a collection of old cigar stubs in his hand.
Hearn rolled his eyes again, but the little girl asked, “What’s the word for that?”
Theogenes thought for a minute as he counted the butts. “Integrity, probably. But look at this example before you, child. Here we have a man who says he will help to catch a killer. At least, that’s what the pigeons and starling scream my way when I pass them as I wander through the town. Hey, you!” he suddenly shouted at a baker with his apron thrown over his shoulder, probably returning home from a day at work. Theogenes held out the palmful of butts. “Buy a cigar? One copper ring.”
The baker hurried past with his eyes averted. Hearn motioned with his head to Ostok up on the balcony, saying, “The bountyman, Ostok Horksog, is tasked with finding the murderers. My only job is to show him around.”
“I heard when that happened,” said the girl. “I heard assassins cut their way through the crowd with spears, surrounded the noble elder, and stabbed him forty times.”
“That’s not what happened,” said Theogenes. “The elder - to call him noble is to misuse the word - was left alone by his knights. The assassin slipped through the crowd without trouble at all. Such is the price of prestige.”
Hearn pulled his pocket clock from his shirt again. Half-a-span, sharp, past Midnoon. He said, “No one, it seems, witnessed the crime.”
“Only if that Mass Crowd had its eyes closed.”
“In any event, all refuse to speak with the bountyman. He has spent his day finding nothing of value, and I have spent mine guiding him to it.”
“Fool,” said Theogenes.
“Yes,” said Hearn, leaning his head back against the wall.
“Fool for asking the wrong people. Why don’t you and your investigator ask Theogenes? Ask me, and you would save yourself these pathetic laments.”
Hearn came forward on his chair slowly, setting all four legs on the ground. He looked steadily at Theogenes. “What did you see at the parade?” he asked.
Theogenes squatted down on his knees and took the cigar from his lips, holding it between his index and middle fingers as he spoke. “I was down with the animals. The Mass Crowd. I was up close to that muira man in the finery. I saw all his knights in their fibercaulk. Each of those men, strong and trained as they were, sixteen in number - still each was pulled away at the behest of the mob. Nor should you think that the knights were distracted as part of some larger scheme, for it was not so to my eye. The Mass Crowd overwhelmed them with its wants and its demands. Such a thing happens to any man who falls under their spell.”
“Theogenes,” said Hearn sharply, “what happened with Srik?”
“Listen to this now: as your noble muira found himself alone and surrounded, the people tried to lay hold of him. But then there was another man - a muira who looked as though he earned his bread by the proper wringing of his brow - who pushed through. He took hold of the soft statesman’s hand. I couldn’t hear what was said over the shouting, but it looked as though this laboring man meant to lead Srik on.”
Theogenes paused. The girl and Hearn both stared, equally spellbound, the former with her jaw hung open, the latter with his own firmly set. Theogenes took a drag of his stub, threw it away, and went on. “All at once I heard chanting. You’d recognize the sound if you’d ever heard it before.” Hearn nodded at this. “There was screaming, and then I was being jostled as the crowd pushed against me. The space around Srik and that laboring man opened up, and I saw someone standing there. Around them, little shards were flying, like splintered stone blasting off a crumbling building.”
“Or broken pottery?” Hearn asked.
“It could have been. I don’t know.”
“This person, can you describe him?”
“Only what I saw. There was only one person; I can’t say that there may not have been others in the crowd. I couldn’t hear the voice very clearly, only the rhythm. It was a high voice, definitely Leegesspeech or some other volon dialect in the chant. Whoever it was wore a dark green cloak with a hood over his head and upper body, no doubt to conceal himself from the eyes around. The cloak had a long silver tassel spanning from shoulder to shoulder along the back. Now that I fix my mind on the event - for it has not disturbed me, and I haven’t let it crowd out more important thoughts - I think I saw at least one other in the crowd who wore such a garb. One of the men who grabbed at the soft diplomat’s guardians and pulled them away. A man with black hair, for his hood was pulled down… Well, has that satisfied your anxiety, Hearn of Aster?”
“Satisfied? No.” Hearn clasped his mouth in a fist and stared blankly at the road before him.
Theogenes, in turn, stared hard at Hearn. After a moment he said, “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“You should speak freely with all you meet and never take to lies. A lie will live and circulate inside you like a worm in your guts. Come,” said Theogenes, turning suddenly to address the young girl. “I saw a crust of bread in the alley behind this teahouse. We’ll split it.”
Agreeing wholeheartedly with the plan, the beggar girl wandered off with Theogenes. Hearn paid the two no further mind. He continued to stare into the space before him with a look of distraction.
“Setter Hearn.” The formal address of his name shook Hearn from reverie. He swung about to see Ostok Horksog emerging from the tearoom. “What has troubled you?”
“Setter Horksog,” said Hearn, “I have learned a few things - one thing actually - that may be of use to you.”
Ostok waved a hand. “Tell me as we walk. I’m very frustrated with myself right now, Setter Hearn.”
“Why?”
“The relations! My good fellow, we’ll find the relations of this other bystander who died, and talk to them. If it amounts to nothing, hem, so be it. But I would feel very foolish to have jumped to the conclusion that he was an innocent victim.”