Chapter Two

Tasha appeared a few minutes before Konrad had planned to sit down to dinner, and she did so in a more literal sense than he was fully comfortable with.

He ventured down the stairs of Bakar House, dressed for dinner, moving with more care than usual considering his inebriated state. The hall was empty, as it should be, but halfway between the bottom of the staircase and the door to the dining parlour the hallway felt significantly less empty.

Master, said Eetapi. You are observed.

Konrad turned. A girl stood just inside the front door, hands behind her back, waiting patiently to be noticed. She looked to be about fourteen winters old, and she was dressed in the neat, nondescript clothing one might expect of a ward of the police. Her dark hair was trimmed short, half concealed beneath a black cap. She watched Konrad with an air of composure he found a trifle unsettling in so young a person.

‘You were supposed to arrive in the morning,’ he admonished her.

‘No time like the present,’ said Tasha, with no trace of apology.

Konrad squinted in her general direction. He had not heard the door open or shut, and he ought to have done, considering he was standing barely five feet away from it. ‘How did you get in?’

‘Kitchen window.’

‘And you contrived to travel from there to my front door without my noticing you.’

‘You’re drunk and complacent.’

‘You mean to imply that it was easy to evade my notice.’

Tasha inclined her head.

‘Fair. But my spies. They are neither drunk nor complacent, or they had better not be. How did you avoid them?’

Tasha hesitated, perhaps wondering whether or not to admit to full knowledge of the incorporeal, invisible serpent spirits who were presently engaged in wafting in lazy circles a few inches below the ceiling. But her eyes betrayed her: a quick upward glance, hastily corrected.

‘So you have spirit vision,’ Konrad commented. ‘Are you a ghostspeaker?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Then what are you?’

Tasha took a moment to consider her answer. Konrad expected a verbal response, but instead Tasha opted for the more dramatic approach of keeling over stone dead.

‘Interesting,’ he murmured, and allowed his own spirit vision to overlay his normal sight. His elegantly decorated hallway faded to stark black and white, and lo, she reappeared: a hazy, flickering outline of a girl traced in charcoal and snow, hovering over the corpse stretched out upon his hall floor.

I am a ghost, she said, and the words reached directly into his mind, the way his serpents’ did.

Konrad’s lips quirked with amusement. ‘That explains a thing or two.’

Tasha drifted towards the ceiling and grabbed Ootapi’s tail, then swooped after Eetapi. Konrad experienced a moment’s alarm: had she any intent of harming his servants? But she dragged them both into an exuberant hug, ignoring their squirming indignation.

‘They are so adorable,’ she said. ‘But so easy to evade. You should be more careful, snakies.’

Easy! shrilled Eetapi. Master, we take the utmost care!

In watching the living, Tasha agreed. Not so much the dead. Don’t you think we might be interested in the Malykant, too?

Ootapi expressed his appreciation for Tasha’s affectionate criticism (or critical affection) by unleashing a tearing hiss, and writhed violently until he unstuck himself from her embrace. She smells odd, he complained as he shot to the other side of the hall.

‘All right, leave my poor snakies alone,’ Konrad ordered. ‘Let’s all be corporeal again for a bit, shall we?’

Tasha regained the floor obediently enough. Her ghost vanished, and her body twitched and began, once again, to breathe.

‘When you say you are a ghost,’ he ventured. ‘Do you mean you are lamaeni?’

Tasha got to her feet, and grinned. ‘We were amused that it took you so long to figure us out.’

Hmm. Lamaeni were a kind of vampire, but not the blood-supping variety. These were dead souls, but able to reanimate their own bodies at will. Konrad had encountered them for the first time a few months previously, when he had investigated a death at the famous circus that visited Ekamet every year for the Festival of the Dead. Lamaeni drew upon the life energies of those around them in order to feed themselves, which was tiring for the living people involuntarily providing sustenance.

‘No feeding on me,’ Konrad ordered.

‘Can’t promise.’

Which was probably fair, for if the lamaeni went too long without feeding, the tenuous links between their souls and their bodies could be severed forever, and they would die.

Konrad sighed. Was his headache growing worse, or was it his imagination? ‘Who sent you?’

‘They made me promise not to say.’ She beamed angelically and added, ‘No one wishing you harm!’

‘Listen here, girl,’ said Konrad in a dire tone.

He was brought up short by a peal of laughter from Tasha, who said in between bouts of mirth, ‘You sound just like my grandpa.’

If eight years as the Malykant followed by far too much whiskey of an afternoon were not enough to make Konrad feel about a century old, this was more than sufficient to finish the job. He glowered darkly at the still-giggling girl and tried again. ‘No feeding,’ he repeated. ‘And since you have been spying upon me and reporting my actions to the police, you will excuse my persistence when I ask you again: who sent you?’

But Tasha shook her head. ‘Don’t be worried. I’ve done you no harm. With your copper in on the secret, he’ll be much more use to you. And he weren’t too concerned at finding out the truth about you.’

Nuritov was sharp enough to have suspected before, of course; Konrad had realised that a long time ago. Probably Tasha’s news had merely confirmed his suspicions, and had come as no surprise. He felt a little shamed by her words, for he ought, perhaps, to have trusted Nuritov before, and confided in the inspector himself. It was true that the need to maintain his secrecy had placed obstacles in the way of his and Nuritov’s being of full use to one another before.

He did not altogether appreciate Tasha’s taking that decision out of his hands, however, and managing the business herself without reference to him. Nor did he enjoy the idea that some third party had been responsible for sending Tasha, perhaps with this very errand in mind. He was growing tired of mysterious people taking an interfering interest in his business.

‘Was it my Master?’ he asked. ‘The Malykt?’

Tasha stared back at him, expressionless. ‘No.’

‘The Shandrigal again?’

‘No.’

‘The lamaeni? Myrrolena?’

‘No.’

Her face did not change; not so much as a muscle moved. She was far too good. Konrad abandoned his attempts at guesswork with a sigh, and surrendered himself to fate in the same breath. ‘Very well. It is hardly as though I can prevent you from trailing me around, after all. But know this: my serpents are alerted to you, and you will find them much harder to evade in the future.’

‘I know,’ she said cheerfully.

‘If you cross me, I will burn your body.’

That gave her pause, albeit brief. ‘Understood,’ she said, and tipped her little black cap to him.

‘Very good. Then pray go away, and leave me to enjoy my dinner and my headache in peace.’

Tasha bowed. ‘Don’t drink too much more. It’s always best to stop while you can still walk in a straight line.’ She watched his moderately unsteady progress towards the dining parlour with a critical eye for a moment, and then added, ‘Almost, anyway.’

Konrad ignored that with magnificent dignity, and retired to his dinner.

The next day dawned brighter, for it was the day of Nanda’s proposed return. The weather had not received the news, or perhaps it existed simply to be contrary, for it presented Ekamet with a fresh load of heavy snow. Konrad spent the morning alternately worrying about Nanda’s journey through such conditions, and marvelling at himself that he was once again capable of feeling anything like anxiety.

Nanda had promised to dispatch a note to Bakar House the moment she reached home, in order to assure Konrad of her safe return. But after a few uncomfortable hours of failing to focus upon the newspapers Gorev brought and forgetting to drink his tea, he abandoned his efforts to appear composed and unconcerned and set off for Nanda’s shop.

He trudged through the freezing snow with cheerful determination, much better pleased by the chilly discomfort of activity than he had been by the warmth and idleness of his parlour. His serpents sailed overhead, riding the whirling currents of the winds with unseemly shrieks of glee. He tried once to recall them to a sense of dignity but soon abandoned the project, for though Eetapi’s squeals of delight threatened to split his mind in two, he so rarely saw them engaged in anything that might be called fun that it seemed a shame to call an end to it.

And in spite of appearances it did not interfere with the performance of their duties, for halfway to Nanda’s house Ootapi announced: Master. Tasha follows behind.

I do not see how she would follow in front, Konrad replied.

Ootapi was briefly silent. A fair point, he conceded.

‘Good day, Tasha!’ Konrad called aloud.

He felt a flicker of amusement shiver across his mind in reply, and her light voice said: Good morning, Malykant. I see your snakies are more alert today.

Konrad wondered whether the serpents’ noisy and obvious enjoyment of the weather might have been designed to persuade Tasha of their inattention, thus encouraging her into careless behaviour. He made a mental note not to underrate their deviousness in the future. ‘To what do we owe the pleasure?’ he continued. He could not sense Tasha himself, so he directed the question to the empty air, trusting that she would stay close enough to hear him even over the howling winds.

Today is a momentous day. I wanted to be around for it.

‘Oh? What is supposed to happen today?’

Irinanda Falenia returns!

‘That is an event of some moment to me, certainly, but I fail to see why it should prove of such absorbing interest to you.’

You will see.

Konrad did not like the mystery of this, for it seemed to him to bode ill. But he shook off such feelings. He was worried, and unused to the state. It was making him jumpy, and gloomy, and superstitious, seeing impending disaster around every corner.

‘As you say,’ he replied, with a mental shrug, and went on his way.

He arrived at Nanda’s shop weighed down with fallen snow, and took a moment to shake out his hat and cloak. The shop — the best and most popular apothecary’s establishment in Ekamet — was closed, of course, but he went around to the back door with some hopes of finding Nanda already returned.

She was not. The door was locked, no lights shone inside. Konrad weighed up his options for twenty seconds before deciding that the snow probably would not kill him, if he were to wait a little while.

Three hours later she appeared.

‘You are late,’ Konrad told her, his words emerging oddly through his frozen lips.

Nanda tilted her head in her characteristic expression of bemusement. She had often looked at him that way. ‘What are you doing waiting outside my house? You look like you have been here for a week.’

‘I have.’

‘Liar.’ Nanda was so swathed in layers of hat, scarf, coat and cloak that he could discern little of her face or figure, but her voice was so soothingly familiar. It warmed him to the heart, even if his body remained sadly frozen. She put down her two travelling bags by the door and unlocked it, ushering him inside first. ‘Go, before you shatter to pieces.’

Konrad went. The house was as cold as the street outside, but within a few minutes Nanda had divested herself of her outdoor garments and lit the fire in her kitchen grate. She and Konrad huddled before it together, shivering in tandem.

So delighted and relieved was he to find her hale and well and returned that his wits had gone to sleep, for it was only then that he noticed two things.

Firstly, that Dubin had not accompanied her home. Any kind of friend or gentleman ought to have been eager to ensure that she reached home safely, particularly in such weather. Konrad would have done so himself. What manner of wretch was Dubin, to leave her to walk home alone?

Secondly, Nanda’s demeanour was decidedly not pleased. But Konrad did not think it was merely the displeasure of having no attendant. In fact, she was contrary enough to resent such solicitude if it was offered. She stood in silence before the fire, with no news to share and no enquiries to make of Konrad. Her pale eyebrows were furrowed in a deep frown, and her thoughts appeared to be elsewhere.

‘Are you well, Nan?’ he said, some small part of his earlier worries unfurling once again.

She refocused her ice-blue eyes upon his face, vaguely, as though she had forgotten his presence. ‘There was some trouble,’ she replied. ‘I was deciding whether or not to inform you of it.’

He blinked. ‘Why would you hide it from me?’

She sighed, and ran her hands through her white-blonde hair. The gesture arrested Konrad’s attention, for she was not usually prone to such fidgets. ‘Because it concerns Danil, whom I am well aware you do not like.’

Danil Dubin. Konrad sighed inwardly, and put aside any fond hopes he might have been harbouring that he would not have to think about that young man again for a while. ‘What has gone awry with him? He may not be a prime favourite with me, but I would not wish harm upon any friend of yours.’ He spoke the words with total sincerity, only belatedly remembering that he had, only the day before, been cheerfully wishing death upon the man.

He put this inconvenient recollection firmly aside.

Nanda hesitated, her face sad and grim, and a horrible thought occurred to Konrad.

‘He… is alive, yes?’

Nanda arched one brow. ‘Of course.’

Konrad let out a quick sigh of relief, and mentally blessed Ootapi. The serpent had not been fool enough to carry through his cheery offer of murdering the poison trader, then; for an instant, Konrad had been heart-poundingly afraid.

But his relief was short-lived, for Nanda added: ‘For now.’

‘Um.’ Konrad took a moment to absorb these words. ‘You mean he is alive… for now?’

‘Yes. It cannot last long, I am afraid.’

‘He fell ill on the road. Oh, Nanda, I am sorry.’ Konrad realised, to his own surprise, that he really was sorry. For all his vicious, gloomy wishes of the day before, he did not truly feel that the man deserved to die, and Nanda’s pain always cut him.

But Nanda shook her head again. Finally she turned away from the fire and set about making tea and a meal. Konrad assisted her in silence, aware that she needed to gather her thoughts.

Halfway through their silent repast, Nanda finally spoke.

‘Danil killed someone.’

Konrad choked upon a mouthful of hot tea. ‘I beg your pardon.’

‘Danil,’ Nanda repeated with slow emphasis, ‘killed somebody.’ She swallowed half of her tea in one go, not appearing to notice its heat, and set down her cup. ‘A few hours ago. We travelled home a little early, hoping to avoid the worst of the weather, and reached the outskirts of Ekamet early this morning. But as we came through the gates, Danil saw someone he knew. A man called Kovalev. And he… snapped, somehow. He took a knife out of somewhere — and I have never before known him to carry a weapon, Konrad — and stabbed Kovalev seven times before he was hauled off him, and subdued.’

Konrad heard all this in utter disbelief, and did not interrupt.

‘Kovalev died, of course, and Danil is taken into custody. But, Konrad… he cannot explain to me what he has done, or why. He doesn’t appear to know. He talks of Kovalev as some kind of rival for a girl he once courted, and appears to hold him in contempt. But not murderous contempt! And he cannot remember having killed the man! He sees the blood on his clothes and frets, because he does not know how it came to be there, and he will not believe anybody when he is told how he came to be in police custody.’

Konrad felt colder and colder as he listened, his mind making too many chilling connections for his comfort. Between Dubin’s fate and that of Sokol, for a start — no reassuring pattern, that. And Dubin’s relationship to Kovalev struck him as far too similar to his own relationship to Dubin. That realisation could not enhance his tranquillity either.

Nanda applied herself to her food, and at last it struck Konrad that her composure was strained, her apparent calm only a semblance of it.

‘There can be no doubt that he is guilty of the crime,’ she said in a low voice.

Konrad was late to arrive at the conclusion poor Nanda had probably been tormenting herself over for hours.

Dubin had murdered someone, in plain sight of many witnesses. Whether he knew what he had done or not, whether he remembered, whether he could explain it: he was a killer.

And that meant it would be Konrad’s unhappy duty to kill him.

Konrad’s heart smote him at the idea, and he swallowed sudden bile. He had never imagined that his deplorable duty would someday oblige him to dispense with somebody Nanda cared for.

‘Nanda,’ he said. ‘Nan. I promise you: I will do nothing… permanent... until we have unravelled this mystery and learned the truth of Dubin’s behaviour. There is more to this story you do not yet know.’

She kept her eyes upon her food for the first part of this speech, but raised them to his face at last with the news that there was more for her to hear. ‘Tell me,’ she said, and he detected a flicker of hope in her eyes that had not been there before.

He related everything Nuritov had said about Sokol. She was as quick to recognise the similarities between the two cases as he, and she visibly revived with every word.

‘Where is Dubin now?’ Konrad asked in conclusion, filled with a restless energy to begin upon the case at once.

‘The police have taken him somewhere. They said he is a danger to the public, which may very well be true, for if he could kill under such conditions once, might he not do so again? I am glad he is safely away. Oh, but Konrad, he knows his life is forfeit. He knows he waits for the Malykant. He is in a sad way.’

She did not quite meet his eyes as she said this, and Konrad realised the answer to a question that had been bothering him. Why had she not come to him right away? Why had she sent no word? If he had not been here awaiting her, he would still be oblivious to Dubin’s fate — or he would have heard of it from some other source.

‘You do not believe me, Nan? You think I will have Dubin dispatched by tea-time.’

Nanda sighed, and rubbed at her eyes. ‘I do not know what to think. I know you would not lightly destroy anything of mine, but I am also aware that your duty is all that you live for. Can you say that you have ever hesitated to deliver The Malykt’s Justice, in the past?’

Never for long, certainly. But most of the cases Konrad had lived through had been fairly clear-cut. Murders had been committed by those of questionable morals (or sanity), for reasons that clearly benefited themselves at the expense of their victims. In such cases as that, Konrad felt no compunction about ushering them out of the world. He did not have to question either his right to deliver such a punishment, or the rightness of his doing so.

But that did not mean that he killed without thought, without judgement or without consideration. At his secret heart, he was petrified of the day that he committed a mistake — killed someone who did not deserve that fate, whatever reason they might have to claim exoneration. He always took great care.

He had thought that Nanda had come to accept him fully, at long last, as her friend, irrespective of the horrific things he often had to do. That she trusted his humanity, and accepted that he was not all horror. But his status as the Malykant could still override any other impression he might give, it seemed, and her fear of the brutal side of his nature could still overwhelm her affection for his finer characteristics.

The realisation cost him a pang, but he set it aside. He would just have to prove himself to her — again. It did not matter. If he had to prove himself worthy of her friendship a hundred times over, so be it.

‘I swear,’ he said to Nanda, making sure that she met his eyes. ‘I will do nothing to harm Dubin until, or unless, we are both fully satisfied of his full guilt in this matter.’

She winced a little when he said until, and he sighed inwardly. She wanted a promise that he would never harm Dubin, but that he could not give. If the little poison trader lied, and had killed the man Kovalev in cold blood, then he merited the usual consequences. And Konrad would be forced to deliver them, however he personally felt about the matter.

He had given the best reassurance he was able to offer. All that remained was to investigate, and to fervently hope that Dubin was as essentially innocent of wrong-doing as he claimed to be.

Nanda pulled herself together, and when Konrad rose from her little kitchen table she followed suit. ‘I will come with you,’ she announced.

She meant to do so in order to keep an eye on him, obviously, but Konrad was happy to accept the offer. ‘Have you Read Dubin yet?’

‘I have not had the opportunity,’ Nanda replied. ‘He was kept from me, while he remained armed, and soon afterwards taken away by the police. Nobody would let me near him.’

Her tone was bitter; she obviously resented that interference. But Konrad could picture the scene all too well in his mind, and privately applauded whichever passersby had contrived to keep trusting Nanda away from an apparently mad, homicidal maniac, armed with a knife and covered in the blood of the man he had just stabbed to death in the street.

‘We will do that first,’ Konrad decided. ‘Afterwards I would be grateful if you would do the same for Sokol. It seems likely that both speak the truth, when they claim no memory of the event: it would be odd, and too much of a coincidence, for two unconnected men to commit similar crimes almost at the same time, and both claim forgetfulness. But I would like to be certain.’

Nanda nodded once, and set about readying herself to depart. Konrad regained his own cloak and hat, his thoughts turning busily upon the conundrum.

The matter of Sokol had been in the papers, of course, but Dubin had only just returned from Marja. The chances that he had read of the case, and been motivated to mimic Sokol’s response to his own crime, did not seem high. Besides, there was the apparently random nature of the meeting — happening to bump into Kovalev at the gates, just as Dubin was passing through himself, would be a difficult thing to arrange ahead of time, supposing the murder both intentional and premeditated.

But then why had the peaceful Dubin carried a knife?

The matter was complex, and Konrad blessed Nanda and her abilities now more than ever.

As they left the house, a stray thought drifted into Konrad’s mind: Tasha. She had told him today would be momentous, and she could not possibly have been referring to anything other than the very problem he now faced. How had she found out about Dubin’s crime before he had?

The only possible explanation was that she was watching Nanda, too — she or some colleague of hers. The thought angered him, and he made a mental note to interrogate the interfering little lamaeni at his earliest convenience.