The Nine of Fires: untimely death.
A death before its time, whether through illness, accident, or murder.
Arisa made a choked sound and fell to her knees beside her maid. Once glance at the dagger told her she didn’t dare try to pull it out— too near, far too near the heart. If Katrin wasn’t dead already, she would be soon. Arisa touched the woman’s neck, searching for a pulse. Her skin was still warm but there was no pulse she could feel.
Let her not be dead, not be dead…
She pressed her fingers harder into the yielding flesh and felt nothing. But she was still warm! Surely there was a chance…
She was still warm. And Arisa had seen no exit from the yard.
She shot to her feet and ran before she was aware of making the decision to move. Out of the lot, slipping on the wet cobbles as she rounded the corner. Sheer terror of what might happen if she fell kept her on her feet. Did she hear something behind her? It would have to be loud to make itself heard over the thundering beat of her own heart.
Arisa raced down the alley faster than she’d ever run in her life. When she reached the street, she started to scream.
There weren’t many people around, not nearly the huge crowd she wanted. Of the scant handful on the street, two turned and walked away when she started screaming, but several others hurried toward her. Within moments a woman’s plump arm was around her shoulders, and two men peered at her from under dripping hat brims.
Arisa didn’t realize she was still screaming till the woman slapped her.
“… to tell us!” she snapped. “We can’t help you if you don’t tell us what’s wrong.”
“Sorry,” Arisa choked, pressing her hands to her face. Sammel would be ashamed if he could see her now—he’d taught her better than to have hysterics in an emergency. “Katrin. A woman. In the lot behind the brewer’s yard. She’s been stabbed and I think she’s dead and he may still be there!”
“Stabbed!” one of the men exclaimed. He looked at the other man, who shrugged.
“I suppose we’d better check it out.” But his glance into the alley’s dark mouth was reluctant.
“Don’t leave me!” Arisa was embarrassed to hear her voice rise once more, and struggled for calm. “He might still be there.”
All three citizens exchanged glances over Arisa’s head, and her cold cheeks heated.
“I know how it sounds, but I’m not making this up! There’s a woman, stabbed, in that lot. She may be dead. She might be dying right now!”
Another two men had come out of nearby buildings in time to hear this, and with five people around her Arisa’s panic began to subside. She started to shake, and the woman’s arm tightened around her shoulder.
“You could have been dreaming, couldn’t you?” she asked gently.
I wish I was.
“No,” said Arisa. “Check it out.”
It took them several minutes’ discussion, and another man had added himself to the group by the time they concluded that they should investigate.
Then there was further delay, while two of them went to fetch lanterns. Arisa stood and shivered. Katrin had been dead. She was almost sure of it. She didn’t like the maid, but the thought of her dying, while these fools dithered, was intolerable.
On the other hand, wild horses couldn’t have dragged her back into that alley alone. Wisdom or cowardice? Both? Arisa shivered.
By the time they finally went to determine the truth of her story, Arisa knew the killer would be gone. It seemed like so much time had passed that she half-expected Katrin’s body to have vanished as well. But no, the woman’s rain-soaked form still lay behind the woodpile, just as Arisa had left it. The bloodstain surrounding the knife hadn’t spread much, she noted. And looking at the knife’s position now, surrounded by lamplight and horrified citizens, she knew it had lodged in the maid’s heart.
Arisa’s stomach rolled and she looked away. She had seen her mother shoot Pettibone a few months ago, but it was different when you found the body. Different when it was someone you knew. She hadn’t liked Katrin, but she hadn’t wanted this.
At least Katrin would have died within moments of the blow. She’d almost certainly been dead when Arisa found her. All staying with her would have accomplished was to put Arisa in danger as well, for she’d been only a minute behind her maid. The killer must have been there. Watching her.
Her shudder was so convulsive that the plump woman gave her a worried look and held her tighter. One man went running for the city guard, and another went for a healer, though he didn’t bother to run.
It wasn’t easy to strike the heart on the first blow like that. When Sammel had taught Arisa knife work, he’d showed her the spot and the right angle, then draped an old straw-stuffed coat over a scarecrow and had her practice the blow over and over. Even when she could consistently strike the right place, he’d warned her that it was even odds that she’d hit a rib and the knife would be deflected.
This killer was either very well trained or very lucky. Either way, it shouldn’t matter to her, Arisa told herself fiercely. He’d seen her, yes, but he knew she hadn’t seen him. His job had been to kill Katrin, and he’d accomplished it. No need for him to come after anyone else. No need for her to fear…
Why had he wanted to kill Katrin?
One of the guardsmen asked her that, eventually. By the time the guardsmen had arrived, the brewer had been summoned to open his doors and rake up the fires, so they could wait warm and out of the rain.
On arrival the brewer had found his front door unlocked, and a back window unshuttered. Several men had gone to look at the fence and found bits of fresh mud. They’d cleverly concluded that the killer had escaped by climbing the fence, going through the brewery, and out the front door after they’d all gone into the alley.
He’d have watched them through the front windows, Arisa thought, timing his escape. Cool. Professional. Who could command a professional assassin and would want Katrin dead? Katrin had been working for her mother’s enemy, and if his orders had been to make the Falcon’s daughter look bad, then Katrin had succeeded. So he had no reason to want her dead. The members of the conspiracy might be willing to kill, though it was hard to believe it of Master Mimms. Master Darian, on the other hand, might well know how to hire an assassin—but Katrin had been on their side! The Falcon was Katrin’s primary victim, but she could have fired the maid if she’d wanted to be rid of her. If the authorities had learned about the conspiracy, they would send the guard to arrest them, not assassins. Assuming, of course, that the conspiracy was against Justice Holis. Arisa had assumed that when she’d seen Master Darian, but she didn’t really know what they were up to. Or that they were up to anything. Or why anyone at all would want to kill a ladies’ maid.
It was far too nebulous to explain to the wet, unhappy-looking city guardsman who took her statement.
“They say you found the body, Mistress…”
“Benison,” Arisa told him. “Arisa Benison.”
His brows rose. “Any relation to lord commander Benison?”
“Her daughter. And the woman is… was my maid, Katrin. I don’t know her last name.”
She hadn’t bothered to learn it. How could anyone expect to gain her servant’s loyalty if she didn’t take the trouble to learn the servant’s name? Did Katrin have a family who’d grieve for her? Or who depended on her salary, as the Falcon had suggested? How strange to feel guilt, even something close to grief, for a woman she’d so disliked.
No one should die like that, whether Arisa had liked her or not.
“We’ll find out her name,” said the guardsman. “And a lot more, before we’re done with this. What were the two of you doing here?”
He thought Katrin had accompanied her here, and for a moment Arisa was tempted to let him go on thinking that—but lying to the guard wouldn’t help them find the killer.
“I saw her sneaking out of the palace, earlier this evening,” Arisa said. “I wanted to see where she was going, so I followed her.”
The guardsman’s brows rose.
Arisa once more considered telling him about the tavern, but all she really knew was that she’d seen Master Darian go into the building. Once. It was a public tavern. He might just have gone in for a drink, or to get out of the rain. No, it hadn’t been raining then. This long, dreary storm had started that night. And besides, Katrin had been working with the conspiracy. Telling the guard what she suspected would only confuse the issue. If they started their investigation without preconceptions, they might uncover something that Arisa didn’t already know. How could she find out what they learned?
She’d been silent too long.
“Why did you follow her?” the guardsman asked. “If you wanted to get her in trouble, you could have told the master of household she was slipping out.”
Arisa glanced away from the contempt in his eyes. “I did want to get her in trouble,” she admitted. “But not like this! And you know nothing about it, so stop looking like that. She may be dead, but that didn’t make her a nice person when she was alive. Not nice to me, anyway.”
Why hadn’t Katrin been nicer to her? It was foolish to antagonize your employer, and Arisa had been willing to cooperate with her maid in the beginning. Well, cooperate within reason.
“All right,” said the guard. “You wanted to get her in trouble, so you followed her. Then what?”
Arisa related the rest of the night’s events just as they’d occurred. And hours later, her brain numb with the need for sleep, she told her mother the exact same story.
“That was… small of you, Ris,” said the Falcon coldly.
Given the incandescent fury that had greeted Arisa when the city guard brought her home in the middle of the night, cold was an improvement. Still, heat flooded Arisa’s cheeks. Her motives tonight hadn’t been petty, but she had planned to get Katrin into trouble the first time she’d followed her. It felt uglier, now that she was dead.
“You don’t know what it was like,” she told her mother. “And I only wanted to get her fired—or just away from me. It’s not my fault she was killed!”
“It isn’t?” the Falcon asked softly.
Arisa’s jaw dropped. “You don’t mean that! You couldn’t possibly think I’d… I’d… Over a quarrel about corsets?”
“No,” said the Falcon. “I know that you know how, but… No, of course not.”
But she had thought it. She’d asked the question seriously, whatever she said now. Arisa’s heart ached.
The Falcon looked away. “I’m sorry, Ris. That was uncalled for. But everyone knows you’ve been quarreling, and Master Giles told the whole court how good you are with a sword. I just hope no one else thinks you might have done it.”
If anyone else thought she’d murdered her maid, they didn’t show it the next day. Arisa slept late, and then went to her lessons. By the time she had to dress for court there was a new maid to attend her, a plump middle-aged woman who spoke in a murmur and hardly ever met her eyes.
She must have refused to take over Katrin’s room, however, for no light appeared under the door that night. The guards would have searched it, Arisa knew, but having searched it herself, she also knew what they’d have found—nothing. If she wanted to learn more she’d have to return to the tavern. But not that night. She was tired, and her heart ached. Let Katrin’s friends learn of her death in peace.
The next day Arisa followed her usual schedule, setting off for the tavern at the usual time. It was just nerves that made her think she heard an echo of footsteps behind her. The sound of the rain would have kept her from hearing it even if someone were following her, and as often as she spun around, she saw no one suspicious. Nerves, she told herself firmly.
The tavern was open for business, though the lines on Stu’s face looked deeper when he opened the door. It was Baylee who told Arisa that her cousin, Katrin, had been murdered two nights ago.
“I’m so sorry!” Arisa had no trouble sounding shocked. Katrin had been the Mimms’ niece? Had her visit to the tavern been an innocent family visit after all? On the same night that Master Darian had been there? No, that was too great a coincidence. Wasn’t it?
It would have been horribly rude, and out of character, to ask questions about a family member’s murder, so Arisa resolved simply to listen and see what she could learn.
The Mimms were quieter than usual, and if they talked about Katrin’s death, they did so when Arisa wasn’t there. However, several nights later Master Mimms began complaining to his customers about the summary firing of the palace guard, who had served the realm so loyally and were now begging in the streets and sleeping on benches in the One God’s church. Arisa didn’t know for certain, but all the guardsmen she’d seen had been young fit men—she doubted many had been reduced to begging.
“Last week your pa was talking about the regent’s woman, all dressed up in jewels and silk,” she told Baylee when they found themselves working together over a tub of dirty dishes. “How’d he know such a thing? I mean, none of the customers here are going to the palace for tea, are they now?”
“He got news like that from my cousin Katrin, the one who was killed,” Baylee told her sadly. “She was dresser to a fine court lady. Lived in the palace herself! She told us all manner of things.”
Arisa could just imagine it. She winced.
“We’ll miss her,” Baylee went on. “We—my family—have been in service to the palace for generations. I might be working there myself, if Pa hadn’t inherited the tavern. Now he’s saying it’s too dangerous for any daughter of his to go into the royal service, but that’s nonsense. It wasn’t in the palace she was killed.”
“Who killed her?” Arisa asked. It was natural to ask that now.
“We’ve no idea,” said Baylee. “The guard are guessing she went down a back alley and maybe surprised a gang of thieves, but no one knows why she’d go there in the first place.”
“Could your father be right?” Arisa tried to keep her voice casual. “Could it have something to do with someone in the palace she worked for?”
Baylee snorted. “She was ladies’ maid to a girl no older than me. A country bump—” She cast Arisa an apologetic look. “A country girl who’d no idea of proper dress or manners or anything, she said. How could that get her killed? But Pa wouldn’t have let me work in the palace, anyway. He says he’d rather serve the people of Deorthas than their prince.”
Regret mingled with the pride in Baylee’s voice. She would have liked to be a palace servant—understandable, since even the lowest maid in the palace was several social ranks higher than a tavern maid. It was odd that a tavern keeper’s family served in the palace at all, but from what Baylee said the connection went back several generations.
Serving “the people of Deorthas,” or at least the new regent’s failure to serve them, made up a fair portion of the tavern master’s conversation. It wasn’t obvious. Most would have taken it for the grumbling all people indulged in about their shareholder, or their employer, or their mother-in-law; anyone who had power was the subject of complaints.
But to Arisa’s experienced ear, Master Mimms’ comments sounded less like ordinary griping and more like a man arguing for a cause.
She knew all about causes, she thought, making her way home in the late-night chill. Causes were something that could get people killed. Had Master Mimms’ cause been the motive for Katrin’s death? How? And if that cause was Justice Holis’ downfall, then maybe Arisa could find out why.
She cornered Edoran during their dance class the next morning, as they worked their way through an intricate set. They’d spent the first part of the lesson working on the different moves; only toward the end did they perform, or attempt to perform, the dance.
Both her dance and etiquette lessons had become easier since Weasel and Edoran joined them. Arisa’s tutors had taken the firing of their fellows as a warning, and were now genuinely trying to teach—though they seemed a bit out of practice. Her music teacher was still simply despairing, but even he despaired more politely.
She was finally learning to dance, and Edoran was good at it. In the midst of the music, with the dancing master’s orders and complaints, and the servants who’d been drafted to make up the numbers flowing around them, this was as close to privacy as she could manage.
“I want you to do some extra research for me,” she told Edoran as the dance brought them together. “You, and Weasel.”
Edoran bowed, right on the beat, curse him. Her own curtsy was half a beat behind.
“You should ask Weasel,” Edoran murmured. Both of them were keeping their voices low. “He’s the one who’s good at it.”
“Yes, but you’re…”
The movement of the dance turned him away.
“… you’re the one who can talk and dance at the same time,” Arisa finished, as the pattern brought them together. “Weasel can’t.” In truth, she wasn’t sure she could talk and dance at the same time, but this was her best chance to talk to him. “Listen, we may not have a lot of time. Katrin’s uncle, Master Mimms, owns…”
This time she was whirled off, to dance with another partner for several turns.
“Katrin’s uncle owns a tavern called the King’s Folly. I want to know if he, or someone he cares about, had any trouble with Justice Holis. A judgment that went against them, or a kinsman…”
The sequence of the dance pulled them apart again, but the grand rond was coming up and Edoran would be walking her around the circle. When they met for the beginning of that final promenade, however, he spoke first.
“You shouldn’t worry so much about your maid’s death. No one really thinks—”
“This isn’t about Katrin’s death,” said Arisa. “Or not exactly. It’s about the reason she died. And that reason probably still exists.”
They both turned around. When they were face-to-face once more, Edoran was frowning. “How can the reason she died still exist if she’s dead? Anyway, it’s not the archives you want for that kind of thing. City records stay in the court files for fifty years, before they’re passed into the archives.”
He offered his elbow and Arisa laid her hand on it. “Yes, but you could get access to the city records, couldn’t you? Without anyone finding out about it?”
“I can’t do anything without everyone knowing about it,” Edoran told her. “What do you expect me to do? Sneak out at midnight and break into the Justice Hall? Besides, I’m beginning to make progress with my own search.” His voice, already low, dropped even further. “Did you know that my father had several accidents—near misses, which might have injured or killed him—in the year and a half before he died?”
“No,” said Arisa. “But people have accidents, and near misses, all the time. If he wasn’t injured—”
She stumbled as Edoran maneuvered her into the slow rotation that she’d forgotten occurred at each quarter of the circle. The couples on either side of them were staring. Arisa smiled, trying to make the low-voiced conversation look less intense than it was.
“The first time,” Edoran told her, “something happened to the brakes on a wagon. It came rolling down the hill right at him, and would have crushed him if he hadn’t gotten out of the way. Do you think that was coincidence?”
“It might be,” said Arisa. “But even if it—”
“And the next time,” Edoran went on, “he was hunting with a group of courtiers. He got separated from them, and—”
“We don’t have time for hunting stories!” Arisa hissed. They were coming up on the second quarter pirouette, and the dance finished at the circle’s end. “Even if you’re right, even if they weren’t accidents and Pettibone did kill your father, Pettibone is dead! You can’t kill him again, can you?”
“No, but—”
This time he forgot the turn. She grabbed his arm and manhandled him through it.
“You can’t punish him any further,” she went on more gently. “I understand why you’d want to, and I see that you need to know for certain, though I don’t quite understand why, but my research is urgent! Mine is important now!”
Edoran’s face froze. “Your research is about a maidservant. Mine is about the death of a king.”
The haughtiness of all his royal ancestors rang in his voice, and Arisa scowled.
“Are you going to help me, or not?”
“Not,” Edoran snapped.
They finished the circle in angry silence, without missing a single step.
She thought about enlisting Weasel alone, but what could he do without Edoran’s help? He might be able to break into the Hall of Justice, but he couldn’t do all the research she needed without someone seeing the light of his lamp.
What she needed was for Edoran to invent some excuse to go there, like looking for more information about his father’s so-called accidents.
Except, as they’d learned while looking at the investigation into the sword’s disappearance, records from the palace guard went straight into the archives when an investigation was closed. And Edoran was using their search for the sword as an excuse to investigate his father’s death.
Why would he bother to hide that, anyway? The man who had (or hadn’t) killed the king could hardly become suspicious and flee. It made Edoran look paranoid and weird, but so what? Everyone who knew him thought he was paranoid and weird. The lucky ones who didn’t know him thought he was a spoiled brat. And all of them were right!
But if he wouldn’t help her, she’d have to find someone who would.
The next afternoon she postponed her nap and made her way to the stables. She told the head groom and half a dozen undergrooms that no, she didn’t want to ride in this downpour, she just wanted a change of scene after all this time cooped up in the palace. Eventually they gave up, and she located Sammel in a small tack room.
“Do you want me to saddle Honey for you, Mistress Benison?” he asked in his “Henley” voice, laying down a broken bridle and rising to his feet.
“It’s pouring rain,” Arisa pointed out. “And I’m wearing a dress.”
She looked around to make sure no one was paying any attention to her, and closed the tack room door.
Sammel grinned and sat down on the stool, taking up the bridle again. “I can’t blame you for not wanting to ride out in this. No one does. The horses are restless, but when we turn them out to pasture they don’t want to stay out in it, either. Downright unnatural, if you ask me.”
“What, the rain? It always rains on the coast in winter.”
“Not for eighteen days straight, it don’t,” Sammel told her. “They say this is the longest continual rain in anyone’s memory. It should be flooding fields and cellars all around the city, but it isn’t, and that’s unnatural too, they say.”
“They always say it’s the longest rain, or the deepest snow, or the hottest whatever,” said Arisa. She seated herself on a worn tack chest. “Sammel, I need your advice. Maybe your help, though I don’t know what you could do.”
His expression softened. “If this is about young Katrin’s death, that wasn’t your fault. It must have been a right shock finding her, and it was wrong t’ try to get her in trouble, but—”
“I know it’s not my fault!” Arisa snapped. “This is… This is a practical matter. I went to the prince first but he turned me down. Flat. Arrogant, spineless twit that he is.”
“What else were you expecting?” Sammel asked. “He’s the prince, after all. And it’s not like you’ll be putting up with him much longer, anyway.”
“What do you mean? My mother wants me to befriend the royal runt. I’ll have to put up with him forever!”
Sammel blinked rapidly. “Well, but he’ll be growing out of it, surely. He’ll have to. King’s not a job that a spoiled brat can handle.”
Arisa thought of Regalis. “I’m not so sure about that. But at least that isn’t my problem.”
“If your mother wants you to befriend him, it is your problem,” Sammel said firmly. “Don’t you go making trouble for your mother, young mistress. What with Holis against her and these pirates raiding ashore, she’s got more than enough on her plate.”
“I don’t think Justice Holis is against her, exactly,” said Arisa. “And there hasn’t been a raid for weeks, so—”
Her heart sank at the sudden regret on Sammel’s face.
“There’s been another raid?”
“News came this morning,” he said. “It’s not known t’ many, but the messenger babbled it out as he came off his horse. Rode the poor beast into a lather. Not that I blame the man. They hit Marsden.”
Arisa frowned. “Marsden’s one of the larger fishing villages. It’s almost a town.”
“The weather’s better away from the city,” Sammel told her. “So the men were out in their boats. Those left—the women, children, and old folks—they had no warning at all.”
Arisa shook her head in shock and sorrow. Then she thought about what Master Mimms would say, and winced.
“Why doesn’t mother hire more men into the navy? Send them after those… those killers.”
Sammel sighed. “It’s not just a matter of manpower, lass. The whole navy’s searching the coast already, but the southern islands are a maze. You could send ten times the number of ships the navy’s got, and still not find ’em.”
“Then we need twenty times more ships!”
“Aye, but you can’t build a naval sloop overnight—takes over a year start to finish t’ make a ship like that. And even if we built ’em they’d need men to man ’em, and you can’t train sailors overnight either.”
Arisa rose and paced back and forth. “What about the army then? Have them patrol the coast. Stop them on land, since they’re raiding the land.”
And why were the pirates doing that now, for the first time in living memory?
“Your mother commands the army in name only,” Sammel reminded her. “It’s General Diccon they really obey, and he takes his orders from Holis, not your mother, whatever the rules might be. Nothing but a swindle, that lord commander flimflam.”
His lips were tight with anger. He could never accept that the Falcon had taken second rank to Justice Holis, when it was her men who had defeated the palace guard and overthrown the old regent. None of the Falcon’s men had accepted it—which was why Holis had dismissed the Falcon’s men.
“But the navy’s loyal to her,” Arisa pointed out. “Some of the naval officers were hers even when Pettibone was in charge, and now those officers are in command. Besides, Holis wants those pirates stopped as badly as mother does—maybe more. There has to be something the army can do.”
“They’re trying,” Sammel admitted. “They’ve put troops into every fishing village that might be a target. Small troops, for the most part, but they haven’t got that many men to spare, either.”
Arisa frowned. “Then why weren’t there troops in Marsden?”
“They did have a troop there,” Sammel told her. “But there were far more pirates than soldiers—and you’re enough your mother’s daughter to know how that ends.”
Arisa thought of brave men bleeding out their lives on the wet sands, and wanted to weep. And she wanted to help, hang it! Somehow.
“But there’s nothing either of us can do about that,” Sammel told her, unknowingly answering her thought. “So what’s this advice you want from me?”
Don’t you go making trouble for your mother. If she told him about Master Mimms, in his present mood Sammel would probably stalk into the tavern one night and beat the man to a pulp. He would certainly stop Arisa from returning there.
“Nothing,” she told him. “It doesn’t seem important now.”
It wasn’t important, Arisa thought, wiping furiously at the mud the last dozen customers had tracked in on their shoes. She wasn’t even sure what she was doing at the tavern that night.
Yes, Master Mimms was a blowhard with a grudge against the new regent. Who cared? The guard thought Katrin had surprised a bunch of thieves; they might be right. All she’d seen Katrin do was visit her own uncle’s tavern. So what if she’d seen a man who looked like another man? Master Darian was probably three realms away by now, and still running.
Edoran’s paranoia had rubbed off, that’s what it was. Her maid hadn’t liked her—that didn’t mean there were enemies lurking everywhere. The court was so full of small minds, living small lives, that little things started looking bigger than they were.
Arisa rinsed her rag in the bucket, then moved to one side as a knock sounded and Stu went to open the door. It would be only another customer, bringing in more of this eternal mud. She was scrubbing floors, while pirates slaughtered villagers and undermined the government.
She glared at the muddy boots that had just crossed the threshold as if it were their fault, and then froze, the rag dripping in her hand.
Tall polished boots, that didn’t belong under the hem of the ragged coat. The boots of a naval officer.
