Death's Avenger

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Tasha, of course, made herself scarce just when he wanted her. That or she was ignoring his attempts at attracting her attention, which was possible. The serpents could not locate her either, and Konrad soon gave up. Tasha could wait.

He and Nanda went straight to Nuritov. Konrad judged it their best course of action; they would benefit from having the Inspector’s visible presence and support if they wanted to visit the two condemned men.

Konrad also thought it high time that he introduced his two friends to one another. Being able to number his friends in the plural felt odd, but good, and he felt a need to somehow cement the agreeable situation by making them known to one another. Particularly if they were to be united, for a time, in investigating the strange cases of Sokol and Dubin.

Nuritov did not seem surprised to find Konrad at his door. Nor was he much puzzled by Nanda’s presence. He ushered them both inside with his usual quiet courtesy, and made his bow to Nanda with particular friendliness. ‘Miss Falenia. It is a pleasure to welcome you.’

Nanda curtseyed. ‘I wish it had been possible to meet you under better circumstances.’

Nuritov’s friendly smile became a frown. ‘Indeed. Your friend Dubin is in a poor way, I am afraid. He will be glad to see you. And we are happy indeed to have your services. Do you know how rare Readers are?’

‘I have some idea, considering that I have rarely ever encountered another.’

‘Shall you mind practicing your arts upon Sokol, as well?’

‘Mr. Savast and I are eager to visit both gentlemen. It seems clear that the two cases are connected.’

Nuritov glanced at Konrad, and nodded. ‘I believe they must be, indeed, though it is impossible to say how. Dubin and Sokol have never encountered one another before, so I understand. You are not aware of any connections between the two?’

Nanda declined any knowledge of such, as did Konrad, and Nuritov nodded thoughtfully.

‘It is well to ask the question. Never mind. Let us proceed to Dubin.’

Konrad and Nanda followed him out of his office, whereafter he led the way down a great many corridors and a few sets of staircases. Konrad judged that Dubin and Sokol were being kept somewhere far beneath the police headquarters, probably in an area designed to be far removed from other prisoners — or, indeed, their jailers.

Nuritov confirmed this surmise when he finally came to a stop. He paused before a stout door of solid oak and iron, at the end of a corridor which featured no other doors at all. He said, with an apologetic air, ‘It has been necessary to confine them with the utmost security, I am afraid. Though neither appears to be harbouring any violent tendencies now, the extremity of their recent behaviour is such that we cannot take any chances.’

Nanda looked grim. Konrad felt the same as they passed through the stout door into a small sequence of cells, each one iron-barred and comfortless. Most of them were empty.

Dubin sat, alone and disconsolate, at the back of his cell. His hands were in heavy manacles. His blood-stained clothes had been exchanged for the nondescript grey of a prison uniform, and he looked unkempt. He did not look up as Nuritov stopped at his door.

‘Mr. Dubin,’ said Nuritov, his tone friendlier than Konrad might have expected. ‘I have brought visitors.’

‘I will see no one,’ said Dubin.

Nuritov coughed slightly. ‘One of them is Miss Falenia.’

Dubin looked up at that, though he did not seem at all delighted by the prospect of Nanda’s near presence. ‘No!’ he cried. ‘Of all people, I would least like to see her!’ He shuddered, and corrected himself. ‘Or of all people, I would least like her to see me.’

Nanda stepped forward, her face grimmer than ever. ‘I saw everything, Danil, but I have come anyway. Does that not tell you that I do not condemn you?’

Dubin covered his thin face with his hands, as though he could block out the fact of Nanda’s presence along with his sight of her. The gesture was childlike and oddly heartrending, and Konrad felt deeply uncomfortable. ‘You should go,’ said Dubin, his voice muffled behind his hands. ‘Please.’

‘I need to remain,’ said Nanda gently. ‘We are here to help you. You must permit us.’

‘No one can help.’ Dubin removed his hands at last, though he could not meet Nanda’s gaze. He sat looking at the floor, and Konrad could not tell whether he had registered the fact that Nanda was not his only visitor. ‘Do you not understand?’ he continued. ‘I am told there is no possible doubt. I was seen to kill, by many witnesses. Yourself among them! I am a murderer! And there is only one fate that awaits murderers in Ekamet.’ He gave another, strong shudder. ‘If I have indeed killed, then it is the fate I deserve.’

‘You remember nothing?’ Nanda enquired.

‘Nothing,’ Dubin repeated. ‘I was passing through the gate with you, cold and hungry and ready to be home at last. Then I was restrained, held down by people I could not see. Everybody was upset, afraid, shouting. My clothes were bloodied. The police came and took me away, and only later, much later, did I learn why.’

Konrad’s heart twisted, a feeling he deeply resented considering the object of it, but he could not help it. Poor Dubin. His confusion was palpable, and Konrad could well imagine his terror at the treatment for which he could find no explanation, and the reason for which was not made clear to him until he had had plenty of time to suffer under it. And when he was told what he had done, what then? How must that have felt?

Nanda looked ready to cry, and Konrad wanted to comfort her. But he knew she would not welcome such a gesture, under the circumstances, so he held his peace.

‘Danil, please give me your hand,’ she said.

Dubin looked up at last, surprise making him incautious. He flinched as he met Nanda’s gaze, and saw there the pain she was suffering on his account. Though perhaps the lack of condemnation gave him courage, for he swallowed and got to his feet. He wore manacles around his ankles, too, and his gait was awkward as he approached the barred door. He slipped one hand in between the bars, which Nanda immediately took.

‘I do not doubt you,’ she told him gravely. ‘But my arts will confirm everything you have said, for the benefit of the police.’

Dubin shook his head. ‘It is not the police whom I fear. It is the Malykant who now holds my fate in his hands, and can either of us suppose that any testimony in my favour will invoke mercy from him? I am a doomed man, Nan, and you waste your time.’

She did not reply. Her eyes were closed; she was lost in her perusal of Dubin’s mind, gathering every possible glimpse of his recent memories, his thoughts, his impressions. Konrad knew that the art was imprecise; Dubin’s mind was not fully laid open to her. She could not read his every thought, access his every memory, understand his every action. But she could reap some clues: his most powerful feelings, his most persistent memories. The memory of a recent, violent murder ought to be at the top of that list, if he held any such recollection.

The silence gave him plenty of time to reflect upon Dubin’s words. The man’s impression of the Malykant echoed Nanda’s, though he could have no idea that he stood in the Malykant’s presence at that moment. If he had, his terror would have been palpable. Konrad knew that the Malykant’s public image as implacable, ruthless and unavoidable was carefully cultivated by the Order. It had to be, if his existence was to serve as a deterrent. But he recoiled from this vision of himself: heartless, without conscience or will of his own. A tool for killing, and nothing more.

Should the day ever come when his own behaviour matched and justified such an image, he hoped that somebody would be obliging enough to kill him. And that The Malykt would be merciful enough to let him die.

Nanda opened her eyes at last, though she did not release Dubin’s hand. She held it still, though her intention seemed more to comfort him than to Read him, for she laced her fingers through his and held tight.

‘No memory whatsoever,’ she said, more to Nuritov and Konrad than to Dubin. ‘The events of this morning are clear enough, but it is as though… there is a gap, where the murder should be. His mind remembers just as he has said: he got down from the stagecoach outside the gates, and came through them with me. We exchanged a few words. The next instant he remembers himself in the grip of strangers, frightened and covered in blood, but with not the smallest idea how he came to be so. It is as though everything that happened in between has been neatly sliced out.’

Confidently though she spoke, Konrad knew that her testimony alone would not be enough to save Dubin. She was an acknowledged friend of his, a close friend. She had been travelling with him when he committed the crime. No third party could possibly accept her account as unbiased.

But it meant much to Konrad. He knew she would not lie to him, not even to save Dubin. If she truly suspected that her friend had knowingly, willingly, committed such a crime, she would not try to cover for him. Her principles were too unbending for that.

It was a shame that The Malykt was unlikely to accept such an argument.

‘What of the knife?’ he murmured.

That brought Dubin’s attention upon him at last, and the young man’s face darkened. ‘Savast?’

Konrad nodded politely, unsure what to say of his presence there.

Dubin did not appear to know what to say either, but his joy at seeing Konrad was not profound. He stared at Konrad’s face for a time, searching, perhaps, for some clue as to his intentions in accompanying Nanda. Finding none, he looked away. ‘I am glad Nan has someone with her at this time,’ he muttered, a little ungraciously, but the sentiment seemed sincere.

‘No memory of the knife at all,’ Nanda replied, letting the brief exchange pass. ‘Not a one. Judging from his memories alone, I would have said there was no knife.’

‘In point of fact,’ murmured Nuritov for Konrad’s ears alone, ‘Witness reports all agreed about the knife, but we never found it. Or the sword either.’

That little oddity brought a frown to Konrad’s face. Both weapons had gone missing?

‘I do not carry weapons,’ said Dubin. ‘Not ever. If I had ever wished to kill, I possess much more expedient means.’

This was news to Konrad. ‘How so?’

Dubin looked down at the grey clothes he wore, and sighed. ‘I cannot show you now, but if you inspect my old clothes — wherever they are — you will find three cloth pouches sewn into the seams. They are there for self-defence. If ever I was threatened as I went about my business, or if somebody accompanying me was in danger, they were my recourse. They each contain a virulent poison which, if thrown, will cause successively greater discomfort and inconvenience to an assailant. The first would cause partial, if significant, loss of sight. The second would burn the lungs if inhaled, leading to the kind of coughing one does not lightly suffer through. If these two proved insufficient and my need was great enough, the third would cause death.’ His jaw tightened and his eyes grew wintry in expression. ‘I have never had reason to even think about using that third one, but believe me: if I had wanted Kovalev dead, that is how I would have accomplished it. A knife? How clumsy, how dangerous, how unsure a weapon! It is the last thing I would have chosen.’

Konrad was surprised to hear mild, meek Danil Dubin so coolly outline his preparations for violence at need, though a small part of him was impressed. He ruthlessly suppressed that part.

The argument was persuasive. Dubin was a poison trader; what else would he choose, by way of a weapon? His story could easily be verified. Nuritov looked electrified, and would, no doubt, ensure that a search of Dubin’s clothing would be conducted the moment they returned to ground level.

Where, then, had the knife come from? How had he come to be carrying it at all? How had he known to reach for it when presented with an opportunity to kill Kovalev, if he had not known that he had it, and was much more inclined to reach for his poison packets?

Konrad thought of Sokol, and the sword he had used in his attempt upon the life of Radinka Nartovich. A sword was a strange weapon for a silk merchant to carry, too.

‘Dubin,’ said Konrad. ‘If you had to find an explanation for what has happened to you, what would you conclude?’

‘There is none.’ Dubin returned Konrad’s stare with a look of impatient resentment.

‘Think.’

Dubin withdrew to the back of his cell and sat down on the bare bench there, his manacles clanking. He sagged against the wall and stared at Konrad from beneath lowered lids. His attitude was suggestive of despair, but Konrad suspected that he was thinking deeply. Nuritov and Nanda stayed quiet, the former watching Dubin with an air of mild fascination blended with sympathy, the latter staring after him with naked concern.

‘It would be difficult,’ said Dubin at length.

‘Undoubtedly.’

‘Perepin’s Arrow. It is a rare poison, usually prepared for inhalation. It is mesmeric, sometimes used in low doses as an aid to hypnosis. Combine a careful dose of that with something like amberleaf, which can cause loss of memory in sufficiently high doses…’ He tailed off, shaking his head. ‘It would be difficult,’ he said again. ‘To administer both poisons to the same target in precisely the right doses to have the desired effect, and without detection, would be virtually impossible. And then, they would not produce all of my… actions unaided. Perepin’s Arrow prepares the way, but the intervention of a powerfully skilled hypnotist would still be required to implant the desired suggestions in my mind, and strongly enough to compel me to act upon them. Especially when those suggestions run so contrary to my nature.’

Too many drawbacks. Besides, why Dubin? Why Kovalev? Why would anybody go to such lengths to compel a man like Dubin to slay a rival, if the process was so delicate, so likely to result in failure? Surely there were easier ways to dispose of a Kovalev undetected. Konrad could think of three or four off the top of his head.

Still, Dubin’s train of thought was interesting, and he may have hit upon some part of the truth, if not the whole. ‘Is there any way to detect whether Perepin’s Arrow or amberleaf have been used?’ He was familiar with both poisons himself, as poison collecting was one of his stranger hobbies. But he could not pretend to equal Dubin’s expertise.

‘Not really. A little coughing, perhaps, in the case of the Arrow. The amberleaf is ingested. Its milder effects include confusion and dizziness, neither of which I remember experiencing. But I might, of course, have forgotten all that as well as the rest.’

Konrad looked to Nanda, wordlessly asking her the question: had Dubin been coughing?

She understood, and shook her head.

Nuritov had been silent, letting Nanda work and Konrad question. But at last he spoke up. ‘Mr. Dubin. How did you know Mr. Kovalev?’

‘In my youth,’ replied Dubin (which struck Konrad as absurd, considering the man could not be much more than five-and-twenty), ‘There was a girl. Inna. Kovalev and I both courted her for a time, though she would have neither of us. I thought him a fool and disliked him very much, of course. Since then I have occasionally passed him in the street or encountered him in a shop, or some such. We both forgot Inna long ago, I believe, and our exchanges were brief but civil enough. That is the extent of my acquaintance with him.’

A bland story. Nanda would say, later, whether or not his professed feelings about Kovalev matched anything she had drawn from his memories or thoughts. For now, he had nothing further to ask.

Neither did Nuritov or Nanda, so they soon took leave of Dubin. Nanda lingered over the task long, clearly reluctant to abandon him to the cold solitude of his cell. He was equally unhappy to see her go, and Konrad averted his eyes from their anguished leave-taking.

He waited with Nuritov a few feet away, their backs discreetly turned.

‘What do you think?’ murmured Nuritov.

‘I think him sincere.’

Nuritov nodded agreement. ‘Somehow, the notion that he could be compelled to commit such a crime against his will and without his recollection seems less far-fetched than the notion that such a man could behave so by his own will, and with so little reason.’

‘I have known him some little time. I do not think he has it in him.’

Nanda joined them, her face drawn and too pale. Konrad felt an impulse to take her hand, touch her, anything that might comfort her. But having witnessed her hand-holding with Dubin the gesture struck him as misplaced, and he did nothing, only signalling sympathy with his eyes when she glanced at him.

This she ignored. ‘Sokol?’ she prompted.

Nuritov led the way.

Sokol proved to be a rotund man in his forties, with greying hair and the kind of face that had probably been fixed in cheerful lines until recent events. He watched his visitors’ approach with anxious intensity, and hope flared in his eyes.

‘Is it over?’ he said. ‘Am I to be freed?’

‘Ah… not yet,’ said Nuritov. ‘This is Miss Falenia and Mr. Savast, associates with the police. They are here to assist with the investigation.’

Sokol’s face fell, and he shrank away from his cell door. ‘More questions! I have answered your questions, over and over, and here I still am.’

‘Miss Falenia is a Reader,’ said Nuritov. ‘That means that she is able to access your thoughts and memories in a limited way, if permitted to touch you. She will be able to verify some parts of your story.’

This was an interesting test, for a man truly innocent ought to jump at the prospect. A guilty man would find a reason to refuse, for Nanda would surely see that he lied.

Sokol all but threw himself at the bars and thrust a hand towards Nanda. ‘Read, then, and you will know I speak the truth.’

Nanda took his hand, and spent her usual minute or two in quiet concentration. When she opened her eyes, she released Sokol’s hand with a reassuring smile.

‘Much the same,’ she said, meaning much the same as Dubin. ‘He and Miss Nartovich were engaged in a civil conversation about the state of the silk markets. The next thing he remembers, he was in custody. He certainly has no memory of trying to harm Miss Nartovich. Or of any kind of weapon, knife or sword.’

‘Thank you.’ Sokol looked ready to cry.

Konrad hoped the poor man had not concluded that Nanda’s testimony exonerated him. Many assumed that if one had no memory of an action or event, then one could not have committed or experienced it. In fact, the mind and the memory were far trickier than that, as Dubin’s theory suggested. There were ways to interfere with memory. And then, the mind sometimes interfered with itself, and opted not to remember things it had far rather forget…

‘You do not own a sword?’ Nuritov enquired.

Sokol shook his head, growing frustrated. ‘I have said this over and over. I have never owned a sword! Why would I? I am a family man, and a peaceful man. I could have no use for such a weapon. I own a small dagger, which I keep with me sometimes when I am abroad, for there are dangers on the road. That is all. I do not know how to use a sword.’

Which, Konrad noted, was an interesting point of potential enquiry. A sword was a specific kind of weapon. It was not like using a knife. Dubin might never have picked up a knife in his life, but a simple blade like that was not hard to employ if one’s intention was merely to stab blindly at a target. A sword, though, required more precision, more skill. Particularly since the newspaper report had spoken of an attempted decapitation. To take someone’s head off with a sword was no small task, and usually required a conveniently stationary target. Konrad assumed that Nuritov had checked into the merchant’s activities already. If there was any evidence that he knew how to wield a sword, the inspector would have mentioned it.

‘Did you have the dagger with you at the time?’ asked Konrad.

Nuritov nodded at once, so presumably the weapon had been found among Sokol’s clothing. So far, so good for the confirmation of his story.

The tale so far put him in line with Dubin. He had his own, preferred, familiar weapon to hand; why use a sword?

‘And Miss Nartovich?’ Konrad asked.

‘An old friend. A rival, sometimes. We have disagreed on occasion, but never seriously. We have even helped each other once in a while, when one of us struggled. I would never harm her, or she me.’

Nanda nodded. ‘The look on Nartovich’s face, in Mr. Sokol’s memory. It is of utter shock. I cannot think that she had ever anticipated such violence from him.’

That could be checked when he spoke with Miss Nartovich, but Konrad trusted Nanda’s assessment.

So. Konrad was satisfied, for the present, that neither man appeared to be guilty of their crimes in intent. He was not altogether satisfied that lack of memory equated to lack of action, for it was distantly possible that both had repressed such horrific, violent memories. But it was a shaky surmise, and the weapons were the problem with that theory. It simply made no sense, that both men should choose weapons unfamiliar to them for so grave a purpose.

In Konrad’s not inconsiderable experience, when a person set out to commit a murder, they typically did so with two primary aims: One, to succeed in their goal. Two, to escape without being detected or caught. Controlling the outcome of the endeavour was deeply important, and that meant sticking as much as possible to ideas and methods that made the perpetrator feel comfortable, powerful and unassailable. Picking a weapon one has no familiarity with and no affinity for was the kind of mistake made only by the stupid, and Konrad did not think either Sokol or Dubin merited that word.

So, then: something else was behind the two incidents. Or perhaps someone. Dubin’s theory merited investigation, for if neither the silk merchant nor the poison trader had planned these murders, then who had? And if they had only been physically responsible for carrying them out, who had been pulling their strings?