Nartovich was in the city’s old quarter, but it was not among the crumbling, neglected buildings that lined some of the streets there. Hers was of moderate size and well maintained, its facade carved and gilded and gleaming with fresh paint. Miss Nartovich was by no means poorly off.
It also bore an air of vacancy which troubled Konrad immediately. His acute senses detected no sign that anybody had passed that way in a day or two, and the lingering silence struck him as cause for concern.
He was not surprised when no one answered the door, though he knocked a few times. Glancing around at the empty street, he proceeded quietly to the back of the house. The rear door was locked, but a touch of his Malykant’s fingers soon dispensed with that obstacle, and he went inside.
Serpents, find her for me, he ordered, and Eetapi and Ootapi drifted ahead of him into the house.
Konrad prowled through the ground floor rooms, taking note of the fine furnishings and ornaments that adorned Miss Nartovich’s home. There was no sign of her, but there was also no sign that anything untoward had befallen her.
When his serpents reported a similar state upstairs, Konrad breathed a little easier. Hopefully she was well, then, but where was she? He performed a quick search of the upper floors himself, hopeful of some sign as to her whereabouts, but came up with nothing.
He regained the street in some frustration, irritated with himself for failing to gain access to her before. It was probably irrational of him to imagine that she held some vital piece of information, something which would elucidate everything.
He stood on the street for a few moments, unsure what to do next. He had dispatched a note to Nuritov, requesting more information as to Sokol’s and Nartovich’s whereabouts during his attempt upon her life; an answer had not yet come. What more could he do?
His senses prickled.
A presence, Eetapi announced.
Yes, he snapped back. Thank you.
Better late than never, she hissed primly.
Somebody was watching Konrad, but he did not feel under threat from the waiting presence.
‘Tasha?’ he said aloud. ‘Do come out.’
She did not appear, but her voice spoke from nearby. ‘It is not poison.’
‘What is not poison.’
‘The source of these crimes you are investigating. Dubin’s theory is interesting, but it is wrong.’
Konrad turned in a circle, trying to spot the girl, but flurries of late afternoon snow obscured any glimpse of her. ‘All right. Will you tell me how you know this?’
‘I know where Radinka Nartovich is.’
‘Wonderful.’
‘Some of her, anyway.’
Konrad’s heart sank. ‘She is dead, then.’
‘Not exactly.’ Tasha paused, perhaps thinking. ‘She is sort of alive.’
‘If you could contrive to make better sense, I would appreciate it.’
Tasha appeared at last, her black cap and dark clothes materialising out of the snow a few feet away from Konrad. ‘It’s hard, when I don’t know what’s going on myself. But I saw her leave the house, early this morning.’
‘Tell me everything,’ Konrad ordered.
Tasha nodded. ‘She came out without a coat or anything, and I thought she would come right back. But she didn’t, so I followed a few minutes later. She went into a shop in the Darks and didn’t come out. There’s living quarters up there, so I reckon she’s shacked up on the upper floors.’
Konrad frowned. The Darks was the poorest quarter of Ekamet, a winding maze of shabby streets so-named because the gas-fuelled street lamps which lit most of the city were always broken there, and no one seemed to think it worth mending them. The tall, craggy buildings leaned and loomed over the narrow streets, blocking what little light filtered down during the day. It was filthy and crumbling and rife with crime — an area Konrad avoided, as did all those of Ekamet who had any choice.
Radinka Nartovich certainly had a choice. Why would she abandon her handsome, comfortable house for premises over a shop in the Darks?
‘Why do you say she is “sort of” alive?’ Konrad squinted at Tasha, suspicious. She was by no means telling him everything she knew.
‘Hard to explain.’
‘Please make the attempt.’
Tasha sighed. ‘She doesn’t… feel alive, but she doesn’t feel dead either. I mean, if I wanted to feed from somebody I wouldn’t choose her.’
Meaning Radinka was lacking in the kind of energy a lamaeni would need to siphon off, in order to sustain themselves. Ordinarily that would mean she was dead, for sure, but she was oddly perambulatory for that.
Konrad opened his mouth, on the point of requesting Tasha’s guidance to the shop wherein Radinka had hidden herself. But he hesitated. Something else sprang to his mind, a suggestion that had been made the last time he had encountered lamaeni. A possibility he had been trying not to think about.
He did not want to ask, but he had to.
‘Do I?’ he whispered.
‘Do you what?’
Konrad cleared his throat. ‘If you wanted to feed from someone, would you choose me?’
He meant, did he possess the living energy she would consider as food? For another lamaeni had claimed Konrad was not strictly alive, either; that he was more of a puppet, operated by The Malykt. That when he had died in the line of duty and been revived, he had not been brought back to life precisely but only some semblance of it.
It was horrific thought, and Konrad had been dodging the idea ever since.
‘I wouldn’t think of feeding off my new boss,’ said Tasha, with a grin.
‘Of course not, but… could you? If I were not your boss.’
Tasha tilted her head at him, obviously not following his line of thought. ‘Maybe.’
‘Maybe? What do you mean, maybe?’ Konrad’s heart began to pound with terror, and he broke into a sweat.
But Tasha just shrugged. ‘Hard to explain. Do you want to see Radinka or not?’
Konrad took a slow, deep breath and strove to pull himself together. Maybe. He had hazarded the question in the hope that her cheery yes would satisfy his doubts once and for all. Alas, the courage it had taken to ask had been poorly repaid. ‘Yes,’ he said shortly, and with a ruthless effort put the whole question of his own mortality out of his mind. The question of whether or not Radinka lived was more pressing.
But as he followed Tasha through the streets, the doubt lingered at the back of his mind. By the time they arrived at the shop in question, Konrad’s mood was as dark as the streets around him.
It was a pawn shop, and surprisingly well kept, for the Darks. It had received a new coat of paint somewhere in the past year, and its windows were clean. A narrow alleyway ran alongside, and Tasha led Konrad just inside, and pointed at a red-painted door. ‘She went in there.’
‘Is she still here?’
Tasha shrugged, so Konrad sent Eetapi and Ootapi up to investigate.
One woman present, Eetapi reported. Feels odd. Maybe dangerous.
Konrad unlocked the red door with a touch of his fingers, and started up the narrow, steep wooden staircase that lay behind it. Bind her then, please.
It was one of his serpents’ more terrifying abilities: to bind themselves into the body of a living person (or a recently deceased one), bending that person to their will, albeit in a limited and temporary fashion. They would hold Radinka immobile while Konrad investigated, ensuring that she did not take it into her head to attack him. Tasha’s and Eetapi’s vague sense of disorder left him uneasy.
He heard Tasha’s footsteps behind him upon the stairs, and briefly thought of ordering her to remain behind. But he was forgetting. She was no ordinary fourteen-year-old. She was lamaeni, and as such, dangers that might threaten him could have little effect upon her.
At the top of the steps, he took care to ensure that the serpents had successfully secured Radinka before he ventured into the room beyond.
We have her! Ootapi hissed, and Konrad proceeded.
The quarters over the pawn shop consisted of one room, reasonably spacious, its walls simply white-washed and its floor bare wooden boards. Its furnishings were minimal and much worn. A bed occupied one corner, and in it lay the woman Radinka Nartovich.
Presumably. Konrad did not know her appearance. ‘Is that her?’ he asked of Tasha.
She nodded. ‘Leastwise, that’s the woman I saw leaving her house.’
Miss Nartovich was prone upon the bed and unmoving, dressed in a fine-quality gown which looked out of place in her shabby surroundings. She did not move as Konrad approached, though her eyes focused upon him. Her expression chilled Konrad to the core, for she glared at him with clear murderous intent.
Then her eyes flicked to Tasha, and if anything her hatred deepened.
Let her speak, Konrad ordered his serpents.
Aloud he said, ‘Miss Nartovich. I am an associate of the Ekamet Police, and I wish to ask you a few questions.’
Radinka’s lip curled. ‘Little spy,’ she spat, her gaze fixing again upon Tasha.
Konrad blinked. Radinka Nartovich appeared to be, perhaps, in her late thirties, and she was a fairly handsome woman. But the voice that emerged from her graceful throat was far deeper than Konrad might have expected, and harsh in character. The contrast was jarring.
‘Boss,’ said Tasha, and he thought he detected a hint of nervousness. ‘Something ain’t right. I would say she’s lamaeni, only she’s… broken.’
‘Broken how?’
Tasha merely shook her head, and backed away. Her composure had deserted her all at once, which prompted a deepening of Konrad’s unease.
He looked more carefully at the prone woman, the beginnings of a theory forming in his mind. She fought the grip of his serpents, and she was strong; he would have to move quickly. ‘I have already addressed you as Miss Nartovich. What is your first name?’
The woman snarled something incomprehensible.
‘Try again,’ Konrad ordered.
She did not try to speak further, but strained against the paralysing influence of Eetapi and Ootapi. Futilely, for the present, but Konrad feared they could not hold much longer.
‘You do not know, do you?’ he said. ‘And I do not think it is because you have forgotten. It is because this body does not belong to you.’
The body of Radinka Nartovich thrashed upon the bed, but Konrad was now certain that somebody else looked out through her stolen eyes. ‘Tasha,’ he barked. ‘What becomes of a lamaeni whose body is destroyed while their spirit is elsewhere?’
‘The link is severed,’ she whispered. ‘They… I don’t know. No one knows. We say that The Malykt has mercy upon them and takes them up, but there is no way to be sure.’
‘Perhaps He does, sometimes. Not always. This one is a stray, I think.’ Konrad lifted his stick and set its base against the thrashing woman’s torso, holding her pinned. ‘Having lost your body, you went shopping for another, did you not? And you found one. Miss Nartovich did not survive the attempt upon her life. It merely looked as though she did. You borrowed the limbs of Kazimir Sokol, who happened to be standing by, and slew Nartovich. You achieved this by much the same means that my serpents are holding you now.’
And they still held, though Konrad could sense their strain. It was beginning to hurt them, and he could not expect them to bear it much longer.
Master, Ootapi gasped. We weaken.
Konrad was not surprised to see a sword flicker into being in Radinka Nartovich’s hand. It was not a fully solid weapon, but it could pass for metal if not closely inspected. Such a blade could wreak damage enough, wielded by a determined lamaeni.
Well, that explained the disappearing weapons.
‘Time to go,’ Konrad barked. Tasha was already running for the door. He followed, backing his way to the stairs with his eyes upon the still recumbent form of Radinka Nartovich until he reached the door. Then he turned, and fled.
Once he and Tasha were safely away, he sent a parting order to his serpents. Release her. Or him.
With which words he hastened on, intent upon putting the Darks behind him as swiftly as possible. The two serpents soon caught up, ragged and spent, and Eetapi’s voice chimed dolefully in his mind.
I do not like lamaeni.
‘I am not fond of them either,’ he agreed. He eyed Tasha, who kept pace with his longer stride with remarkable ease. Her fear was gone, though she had yet to fully recover her composure. ‘Present company excepted, possibly.’
Possibly. Tasha had not given him reason to distrust her, but it struck him as a mighty coincidence that a lamaeni should appear in his life just at a time when others were creating the kind of havoc he had to deal with. ‘Tasha. You knew something of this beforehand, did you not?’
‘No!’
‘Then how did you happen to appear just at this time?’
‘No one sent me,’ Tasha said reluctantly. ‘You caused a lot of havoc at the Circus. Some of it good, some of it bad. Things got… uncomfortable for me there, and I thought it was time to move on.’
‘So you came looking for me.’
‘Yes. The way you handled Myrrolena, and Alad… it was masterful.’
‘I did have help,’ Konrad murmured, feeling absurdly flattered anyway. The Malykt had actually handled Myrrolena, the former Ringmistress.
‘Whatever. You’re interesting, and if anybody can keep them off me, it’s you.’
‘But you informed on me to the police.’
Tasha shrugged. ‘Just helping you out.’
‘You have a funny way of helping.’
‘As long as it works.’
Konrad found that hard to answer, for as much as he did not like having decisions taken out of his hands, Tasha’s interference had indeed helped. Instead of engaging further with this thorny topic, he said: ‘Do lamaeni often go dangerously maverick like this?’
‘I never heard of it before.’
They were some distance from the Darks, by now. The shabbiness and filth had given way to well-swept streets and sparkling shop-fronts, and Konrad slowed his pace. ‘So we have a couple of dispossessed lamaeni wandering around house-hunting, so to speak,’ he said to Tasha. ‘Who are they? How did they come to lose their bodies? And why is it that our knife-wielder is still looking? That one has killed three that we know of, and availed themselves of none of the corpses.’
‘It seems odd to me. I mean, I never heard of anyone shacking up in a random corpse, either. It shouldn’t be possible. If it was, we would do it all the time. It makes no sense.’
Interesting point. The prevalence of victims who had not got up again and wandered off suggested that Tasha was right — whoever had killed them had not been able to repurpose their slain corpses.
But Konrad was not disposed to doubt his theory. He felt certain that Radinka Nartovich was Radinka Nartovich no more, and he had Tasha’s testimony in support of the idea that whoever occupied that body now was lamaeni. And she ought to know.
Little spy.
‘She spoke as if she knows you,’ Konrad observed. ‘And hates you.’
Tasha gave a crooked little smile. ‘It is possible. There ain’t all that many lamaeni about, all told.’
‘Any idea who we might be dealing with?’
‘I’ll look into it.’
Tasha might prove very useful indeed, at least for this case. ‘I wonder why they thought it would work,’ he mused. ‘If it’s never been heard of before.’
‘And why did it work with Radinka, and not the others?’
Also a good question. ‘Suppose there was something different about her.’
‘There was.’
Konrad did not immediately realise that it was not Tasha who had spoken those two words, for the voice was light and female and not dissimilar to hers.
‘We got company,’ said Tasha, with unseemly cheer considering that the street was empty save for their two selves.
Serpents?
Dead lady incoming, Eetapi confirmed.
Minus body, Ootapi clarified.
In a flash, Konrad reached for his spirit vision and let it take over his regular sight. The colour bled out of his world, and the shops and houses around him and turned to stark, hazy black and white.
A ghost hovered directly behind Tasha. The figure was vaguely female, though too indistinct for Konrad to discern much detail.
‘Radinka?’ he guessed.
‘Correct,’ she said. ‘Any chance you’ll help me to get my body back?’
‘Why haven’t you…’ Konrad began, but then the pieces came together. ‘More lamaeni.’
He got the impression that Radinka smiled, a little. ‘We are not all bad, I assure you.’
A strange vision passed through his mind, of the unknown lamaeni walking off with Radinka’s body as though he had stolen her coat. Bizarre, bizarre. ‘Why don’t you tell us what happened?’
Radinka gave a gusty, ethereal sigh. ‘I was in the Blue Rose Coffee House, talking with Kaz. Kazimir that is, Kazimir Sokol. I felt someone else come in, someone like me, in spirit form. Then Kaz went nuts, came at me with a sword and tried to cut off my head. I dodged that, but I think it was just a distraction, because he got me with slash to the belly and a psychic punch the likes of which I have never felt before. Knocked me clean out. When I came to I was like this, and my body was walking itself out the door. I’ve been following myself around ever since, looking for a chance to evict the bastard, but I can’t match whatever it was he did to me.’
‘Because you aren’t possessing,’ said Tasha.
‘Excuse me?’
‘We ain’t exactly at our best in spirit-shape, right? If we were, why strive to maintain a link to our physical selves at all? It’s exhausting and inconvenient. But a spirit without a body is only half. When those two things work in concert, everything we do is stronger. So, our mystery man probably couldn’t chuck you out by himself either. That’s why he grabbed Sokol, and used him to weaken and distract you until he could hustle you out. Mortals are pretty feeble really, not that hard to overpower for a little while. It’s not the same as the link between a spirit and its own body — or a lamaeni vessel. But it’s a lot better than nothing.’
Konrad looked sharply at Tasha, impressed. The girl had a quick mind.
‘So I need to possess some hapless bystander, stick holes in my body until it weakens, and then try to batter my way back into my own head.’ Radinka said all this in a flat tone, deeply unimpressed at the prospect. ‘You do know what’s happened to poor Kaz, I suppose?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Konrad said absently. ‘I will make sure he is fully exonerated.’
‘Great, but I’m still not doing it.’
‘We will work it out,’ said Tasha.
‘The other one,’ said Konrad. ‘We’ll call him Knife. Or her, whatever. Sword figured out that a lamaeni target works, but Knife apparently hasn’t.’
‘Wrong.’
Konrad eyed Tasha in irritation. ‘What do you mean, wrong?’
‘Knife knows that he needs to find a lamaeni host. He must do. No one would be stupid enough to imagine that any old corpse would work.’
‘But he’s been possessing living, mortal people.’
‘Yes… and vacating them again soon afterwards. I can’t really explain to you what it’s like to be squashed into someone else’s living body, alongside someone else’s living soul. It isn’t what they need, or want.’
‘So kill the living soul, keep the body. Come to think of it, I’ve no idea why he didn’t do that to begin with. Why not just keep Sokol’s corpse, instead of bothering with Radinka?’
‘Because then it’s a corpse. It’s dead, not undead. Lamaeni are something else.’
‘You mean… all the people Knife killed were lamaeni.’
‘Have to have been. He just wasn’t strong enough, or quick enough, to take control the way Sword did.’
‘So why weren’t they home? Those two victims of Arina’s looked stone dead to me.’
‘Knife probably managed to dislodge them, but he either failed to anchor himself in the bodies afterwards, or they fought him off in spirit-form.’
‘And then they declined to reclaim their own bodies afterwards.’
‘Gravely wounded. Would you want to get straight back into a body with sixteen stab wounds?’
‘Fair point.’
‘It takes a lot of extra energy to heal a body that’s separated from its spirit. They’ll do it, given time and access to enough nice, lively people.’
‘Bad planning on Knife’s part. If they couldn’t reclaim their own bodies for a while, surely he couldn’t seize them either.’
‘Maybe that’s what went wrong. Knife broke his prospective hosts too successfully. I don’t get the impression he’s thinking too clearly here.’
Konrad thought with dismay of the rib he had taken from Kovalev’s corpse. In his own defence, the man had looked more than dead enough at the time. ‘I wonder if any of them have got up and started wandering around, yet. That should entertain Nuritov.’
Tasha grinned. ‘Better find out. It might be interesting to talk to them.’
Radinka interjected. ‘Do you have any idea how cold it is with no body?’
‘I cannot say I have ever mislaid mine,’ Konrad replied.
‘Think yourself lucky. I really want mine back.’
‘Stick with us,’ Tasha said cheerfully. ‘We’ll find a way.’
Konrad wondered when he and Tasha had become us, and moreover when the two of them had become so formidable a team that she could make promises with such unassailable confidence. ‘We will try,’ he corrected.
‘How feeble.’
‘How realistic.’
Tasha snickered. ‘What aspect of your life is ever realistic?’
The wretched girl had a point, but Konrad was disinclined to admit it. ‘Let’s go see Nuritov,’ he suggested. ‘He might release Sokol and Dubin already. And we can find out whether any of our supposed murder victims have woken up yet.’
‘Solid plan,’ said Tasha.
Konrad looked at Radinka. ‘Coming along?’
Radinka drifted in his general direction, shrugging wispily. ‘I seem to have an opening in my schedule.’
So Konrad made his way back to police headquarters, accompanied by two lamaeni — one corporeally equipped, one rather less so — and two dead animal spirits, his inside coat pocket heavy with a rib bone its original owner probably wanted back. Realistic? Not so much.