Chapter Four

Nanda peeked over his shoulder. ‘I am determined not to be blocked out, Konrad.’

‘There is nothing for you to be prevented from seeing,’ he mumbled, dazed.

Nanda surveyed the empty cupboard in brief silence. ‘Wandered off, has he?’

‘It appears.’

‘Why does that keep happening to you?’

‘I don’t know.’ Konrad felt a weak-kneed desire to sit down. ‘He has no... I mean, he couldn’t wander off. He hasn’t got any — any—’ He made a vague gesture in the direction of his own legs, unable to finish the sentence.

He had presided over a string of recent cases wherein the bodies of apparently murdered people were later discovered to be everywhere but where Konrad had left them. There were a variety of explanations for this, most of which were decidedly... strange.

In this instance, Konrad held on to a faint hope that the truth was a bit more mundane.

‘Someone has moved him,’ said Alexander.

‘But Eetapi was watching.’ Konrad belatedly added, ‘Weren’t you, Eetapi?’

Yes, Master.

Konrad waited.

‘Did you see anything relevant?’ He prompted, when she did not elaborate.

No, Master. No one has come into this room today, except for a maid who was collecting food. She did not go near this cupboard.

So the corpse could not have walked off by itself, and no one had moved it, either. ‘What in the world...’ muttered Konrad, bemused. ‘Why cannot a case be simple, for once?’

‘You know you would be bored if they were,’ said Nanda, unimpressed.

Konrad grunted.

Alexander had not participated in the exchange, for he was intent upon a close study of the cupboard. At length he stepped back and said softly, ‘The back is loose.’

‘What?’ Konrad darted forward, electrified. ‘Show me.’

Alexander demonstrated: a slight wobble in the back panel, as of a plank of wood poorly fitted. ‘It may be possible to remove it entirely, from the back.’

‘But that would place whoever removed it on the other side of this wall. Even supposing the wall itself to have been modified to permit access to the cupboard, Eetapi can see through walls. She would have noticed somebody pausing there.’

I did not, Eetapi confirmed. No one has been there.

An investigation ensued, which furnished the information that a storeroom lay directly behind the pantry; that the corresponding section of wall was bare and accessible; but that there was no sign that it could be opened or that the cupboard could be got into that way. Even if there was some secret to it that they had not discovered, the question of how anybody could linger in the room, so close to Eetapi, without her seeing them remained insoluble.

The matter had to be abandoned soon afterwards, for the hour grew late, and Konrad feared that some one or other of the servants would spot them if they lingered any longer.

But as he made his way back to the theatre, trailing along wearily in Nanda’s wake, he received the impression that he and his friends were not the only ones with clandestine business below stairs. For a flicker of green caught Konrad’s eye, whisking out of sight around a corner. He paused, hastened to catch up, and held his lantern high. But though the lamp cast a long, if faint, glow down the bare stone passage, no fleeing figure could he discern. Whoever it was — the owner of the green coat, or cloak, or gown — was gone.

The next day dawned snowy, intensely so. The world was a blur of white when Konrad shambled to the window; even the dark shapes of the craggy pine trees were obscured beneath the blinding flurry. The glass itself was coated in cracked white frost, and cold rolled off it in waves. A maid had been in to light the fire sometime before Konrad awoke, and he gravitated quickly towards its welcoming heat.

He was not given long to enjoy it.

Malykant, whispered Ootapi, when he had not done more than extend his hands towards the flames. Eetapi sends word! The half-of-a-man is back.

‘He is wh— back? Where?’

In the cupboard.

Konrad was speechless.

He left for the pantry at a near run, hardly caring, in that moment, whether anybody saw him descending below stairs. The keys were waiting for him, hanging from nothing a few inches in front of the door. He snatched them up and dragged open the door, holding his lantern high to illuminate the interior of the cupboard.

Konrad stared for three stomach-churning seconds, and then quickly shut the door again. ‘It is not the half-of-a-man.’

He felt both serpents materialise beside him, twin whorls of killing cold either side of his head. It is not? said Eetapi, bemused.

It’s the other half! Ootapi enthused.

‘No.’ Konrad steeled himself, and opened up the door again. There was a body there, all right, but it was not Alen Petranov. Identifying it would be tricky, for while it retained both of its arms and hands, its head was missing. Naught but a ragged stump of a neck remained, splintered bones sticking up like broken fingers coated in dried blood.

The hands looked female, and elderly, the skin wizened and wrinkled. She — if it was a she — was wearing a shapeless black gown; Konrad could not see whether or not her legs were where they were supposed to be.

‘I think it is Kati Vinter,’ he said softly. The dark gown resembled the one the old lady had worn the night before, her costume as a dark witch.

He remembered what Tasha had said. Kati knows something.

Konrad wanted desperately to take her out of there, to restore whatever dignity he could to her poor abused body. Her torso, like Petranov’s, was a torn, ruined mess, her ribs smashed. Her heart she retained, but other organs were missing: a lung, perhaps others. He blanched and swallowed hard, wondering if she, too, had been alive when this damage was done to her.

He could not remove her. The same objections prevented him as before. But unlike Alen Petranov, he had known Kati Vinter, if only briefly. She lived for him in ways that Alen never had, and it hurt him all the more to close the cupboard door upon her and lock it.

‘Eetapi,’ he said, speaking very low, for there were sounds of life emanating from the kitchens: the clatter of pots and knives, the low hum of voices, as the servants prepared breakfast for the household. ‘How does it come about that a second corpse should find its way into this cupboard, while you were set to guard it? You must have seen who placed her here.’

I did not see who put it there. I did not see anyone.

‘Nothing at all? That cannot be, serpent. It cannot have appeared by itself.’

It. She. He was picking up the snakes’ dispassionate language; he hoped never to develop their ice-cold attitude along with it.

I saw nothing, Eetapi insisted.

Konrad gritted his teeth upon a wave of anger, determined not to let it get the better of him. His serpents could be maddening sometimes, but they were loyal, and they were not usually careless. Their interpretations of his orders could sometimes be eccentric, but they were never outright disobedient. Eetapi had, in all likelihood, stood guard over this room all night, as he had asked of her. How, then, had it come about that she had not seen anybody put Kati Vinter’s body into the cupboard? Somebody had. He refused to entertain the possibility that it had somehow materialised there all on its own.

He stood for a moment, absently jangling the keys in his hand as he thought. No, stop. They were noisy, and he could not rely on the muted cacophony of sounds from the kitchens to conceal it.

‘Ootapi,’ he murmured.

Yes, Malykant.

‘How are you finding it so easy to keep borrowing these from the housekeeper? Does she not notice their absence?’

She sleeps much.

‘Sleeps? In the day?’

She smells of drink. The serpent’s tail thrashed in disapproval. There is much snoring.

Eino Holt kept a drunkard for a housekeeper? Excessively odd. But perhaps he did not know of her propensities.

It would be easy enough, then, for someone else to steal the keys for this cupboard. He had hoped for a clue there, but it was not to be.

‘Ah, well. Take them back, please.’ He handed off the keys once more, and Ootapi drifted away with them. ‘Eetapi, when your brother returns please switch places with him. Ootapi shall guard, for today.’

Is it a punishment, Master? She was doleful at the prospect, but also... slightly thrilled. Her chiming tones were more funeral than ever, but her incorporeal form vibrated with the energy of anticipation.

Konrad sighed, deeply. ‘No. But you will grow weary and bored if I leave you here, day after day. It is Ootapi’s turn. You will return to my side.’

He departed the room immediately upon uttering these words, intent upon finding Tasha. If something was afoot that was eluding the guile even of his serpents, he was going to need better help; and who more able than a lamaeni?

Konrad found Tasha wandering the castle’s long gallery, staring intently at each of the many aged, faded portraits that lined the walls. The vast room had an air of neglect: its tiled walls were dust-covered, their colours muted with age, the windows caked in dirt. A long, dusty-green carpet ran the length of the gallery, its edges fraying. There was little furniture in evidence: only an occasional rickety-looking wing-back chair pushed against the wall, daubed with fractured gilding.

Tasha was about halfway down the room, craning her neck to stare up at an enormous portrait of a dark-haired man wearing what looked like a silken nightcap. ‘Morning,’ she said, without looking at him.

‘Tash, I need your help.’

That got her attention fast enough. She blinked at him, then adjusted her cap with a grin and sprawled into the nearest of the aged armchairs. Konrad winced a bit, half expecting the decayed thing to collapse even under Tasha’s slight weight. But it held, merely emitting a great cloud of dust which made Konrad cough. ‘What may I do for the boss?’ said she.

Her tone was cheeky in the extreme, and Konrad mimed out bestowing a swift kick upon her for the impudence. Tasha only grinned wider.

He outlined the recent development and the problem of Eetapi’s failed guard, all of which she listened to with quiet attention. At the end, she chewed thoughtfully upon her lip and looked him over with a critical air he did not quite like.

‘The problem with you — or one of them — is a certain lack of... shall we say, practicality in your thinking? Or we could call it deviosity. Yes, let’s call it that.’

‘Deviosity is not a word.’

‘It is now. Think. You have established that it would be possible for somebody to unlock that cupboard when they want to, and using the door would be the most obvious and convenient way to access it. Wouldn’t it? Cupboards have doors for that very purpose. It is what they are for.’

Konrad’s eyes narrowed. ‘You border upon patronising.’

‘You border upon deserving it. So the cupboard has a door, in the usual way of things, and there is a key to unlock it that (in theory) anybody could get at. That doesn’t mean that the door is either the only, or even the most convenient, way of getting at the contents.’

‘No, indeed,’ Konrad agreed. ‘The back is loose. Alexander discovered that much. But—’

‘But the cupboard is backed up against a solid wall, with no apparent way to get through. So you dismissed the removable back from consideration entirely.’

‘Do you know of a way to push a corpse through a stone wall?’

‘No! But if the back is loose, maybe other parts of the cupboard are removable as well?’

‘Like the bottom. Yes, we tested that, when the inspector found the back loose. It is solid, with no way to remove it.’

‘Not from the pantry, perhaps.’

Konrad blinked.

‘What if someone could get at it from the other side?’ Tasha persevered. ‘Maybe it is quite possible to open the bottom of the cupboard from—’

‘Underneath,’ said Konrad. Now that she had spelled it out, it seemed so embarrassingly obvious.

She was right, curse it. He did lack a certain something by way of obscure logic.

Tasha leapt out of her chair and stood dusting off her dark coat. ‘I will investigate,’ she announced.

‘Thank you.’

She doffed her little cap to him. ‘Go do what you do best, Sir Malykant.’

‘And what is that, in your estimation?’ It was probably an unwise question to ask.

‘Lounge by the fire,’ she said brightly. ‘Eat rather a lot, and act the gent with panache. You do all three of those things extremely well.’

‘Wretch.’

‘Forever, for it is a sadly incurable trait.’ Tasha made for the door at an insouciant saunter. ‘Go and see Nanda,’ she threw over her shoulder. ‘You do that pretty well, too.’

She was gone before he could enquire into what she meant by that, exactly. Seeing Nanda? Talking to Nanda? Drifting around after her in fits of aching loneliness, desperate for a few words to brighten his bleak and empty day?

Probably all of the above. He heaved a weary sigh, tangled his fingers in his thick dark hair — which had not been brushed yet today, he only then recalled — and set off for his own room. First: grooming. Second: Nanda. She had planned to go after Eino Holt again, and that fact was causing him concern in the wake of Kati Vinter’s murder. What if Tasha was right, and Kati had known something? What if she had been killed because of it? If Nanda was too obvious about her probing for information, she might make a target of herself, too. And if not Nanda, who else? Two victims was a problem. Two victims was a pattern.

Those sensations in his chest and stomach and knees: the fluttering, the tightening, the weakening, the quickening pulse of his heart. They did not grow any easier to bear. Was he cursed to suffer them forever? Would he ever cease to worry about Nanda, now that he had remembered how?

He clenched his jaw, and summoned a mental vision of himself as he had once been: cool, even cold, going about his business with bleak efficiency. Incapable of worry or fear, except when his Master appeared. Almost impervious to pain, at least of the emotional variety. Had he been a monster? Close to it, yes. But he was the Malykant. Sometimes, he needed to be.

He fitted himself into that picture, forcing down the nausea, the dismay, and the fear. His heart rate slowed, and he breathed a little easier. The incipient trembling in his knees took itself off, and left him stronger.

Good. Now he could proceed.