Wilek
Wilek ran. Mind a haze, body numb. Down the stairs, walls blurring around him. Through the foyer and out into the courtyard. Up ahead, a crowd in the queen’s garden. Beneath the statue of Mikreh. Wilek pushed men aside until he reached the marble slab that held the god of fate and fortune. He stepped into a puddle of blood.
Lebetta lay on her left side, lower arm stretched above her head, the other bent at the elbow and falling over her waist, fingers touching the stone ground.
A groan came from his lips. He dropped to his knees and reached for her, but men swooped in, took hold of his arms, held him back.
“Take care, Your Highness,” someone said. “We don’t know what killed her. Must take precautions.”
“Hang precautions!” He strained against them, wanting to take her in his arms. “Release me at once!”
“Your Highness, please. ’Til we know for certain what killed her, touching her is dangerous.”
“I don’t care.” He only wanted to hold her.
“Wil.” Kal’s voice. Kal’s scarred face before his. Kal’s hand on his shoulder.
Wilek blinked, eyes blurred with moisture.
“We’ll restrain him if we must, Kalenek. The rosâr ordered an investigation, and I won’t have any trouble. Not even from a sâr. Now, if he’d like to help . . .”
“We must find who did this, Wil,” Kal said. “She deserves that, don’t you think?”
She did. Someone had taken her life, and that person must pay. Wilek nodded, gave up his fight against the men. They moved away. He sat back on his heels, throat tightening, gaze locked on her lifeless body.
Kal squatted on his right, comfortably silent.
Footsteps crunched over the gravel behind him and stopped on the marble slab. Trevn, looking down on the scene. “Gods.”
Gods, indeed. Why take Lebetta’s life? She loyally followed her five gods. She didn’t deserve death.
“Do they know what happened?” Trevn asked.
“Not yet,” Kal said.
“I’m sorry, brother.” Trevn stepped closer to where she lay. “Did she write something?”
“A rune, we think,” said one of the guards.
Rune? The word pulled Wilek’s attention to Trevn, who was circling Lebetta’s body, studying the ground. Wilek pushed to his knees and peered over her side, looking where her fingers touched the marble slab. He could barely see swipes of blood on the pale stone.
“Move the light closer,” Trevn said, as if reading Wilek’s mind.
A guard passed his candlestick to another, who set it on the ground. The light cast eerie shadows over Lebetta’s body and the statue of Mikreh.
Wilek could see shape in the writing now. “A rune?” The weakness of his voice shocked him, so he spoke again, this time with as much authority as he could muster. “Who can read runes?”
No one answered.
He tried again. “Who is capable of reading runes, even if they are not in present company?”
“Perhaps a priest,” someone said.
“Runes are Magonian witchcraft,” Trevn said. “No Rôb priest could read them.”
Wilek thought of the Magonian women from the last earthquake. “Harton?” He spun around and located his backman in the crowd. “Copy this rune and take it to the women in the dungeon. See if they can translate.”
“Yes, Your Highness.” Harton left the scene.
“Boy,” Wilek said to a young servant. “Fetch Pontiff Rogedoth. Tell him to come immediately.” Surely the Pontiff would know the runes of his enemy.
“Yes, Your Highness.” The boy sprinted away.
For the first time, Wilek looked at the faces around him. Besides Uhley the physician, most were guards or servants. His mentor and friend, Rayim Veralla, captain of the Queen’s Guard. Lebbe Alpress, captain of the King’s Guard. For some reason Zeteo Agoros, Wilek’s uncle by marriage, standing with Mahat Wallington, a local merchant.
Wilek breathed deeply. “Captain Alpress, close off the courtyard. I don’t want people gawking at her. No one but the physician need be here.”
Alpress barked orders at the servants and his guards. The crowd scattered. Servants went inside. Guards took position around the garden. Wilek glanced up at the inside walls of the castle, looking for lit rooms or faces that might be looking down.
He saw nothing.
Grief threatened to choke him, but he wrestled it back. “How did she die?” he asked Uhley.
“Loss of blood, from first glance,” the physician said. “But I see no wounds. It’s most strange.”
Wilek needed to know more. “What happened? Who found her?”
“We did,” Zeteo Agoros said. He and Mahat Wallington had not left at Captain Alpress’s orders. “Mahat and I had cut through the garden after leaving a private party in Rosârah Laviel’s apartments.”
“Did you see anything?” Wilek asked.
“Just her, lying there,” Master Wallington said. “Saw no one else.”
Silence stretched out, and Wilek’s heart seized with the gory reality before him. He heard himself make a strange noise, almost a growl.
“Perhaps you shouldn’t be here, Your Highness,” Rayim said. “Can I take you somewhere?”
“There is nowhere else I want to be right now. Uhley, how long until you complete your investigation?”
“Half an hour or so. Then I’d like to move her to the deadhouse to examine her further, determine the exact cause of death.”
Deadhouse. Cause of death. Dead. Gone forever. Had his actions somehow caused this? He had been trying to make a point. He never really wanted her gone.
That thought sent him on another trail of confusion. “Lady Lebetta was confined to her chambers. Rayim, find out who let her leave her rooms and why. Gather anyone who saw her tonight, see what they know.”
“Yes, Your Highness.” Rayim departed.
Giving orders helped distance himself from his emotions. “Dendrick, notify her parents. Invite them to the castle to gather her belongings. They should start preparations for last rites and . . . shipping.”
With that one word, he lost himself again. Gods! His Lebetta, dead. And she believed he had banished her because of Janek.
Thoughts of Janek made him want to cast blame. Might his brother have killed her? He could think of no reason why. Janek was a trickster, not a sadist. Then who would take her life? She had no enemies that he knew of, though she had upset Lady Zeroah and Miss Mielle the other day. Surely neither of them . . . A ridiculous line of thinking. Besides, those ladies had been with him when she died.
Harton returned with a wax tablet and stylus. He crouched beside Lebetta and squinted at the rune.
“She couldn’t have been out here long,” Kal said. “The courtyard is busy this time of evening.”
Yes, that was true. “How could someone have killed her so quickly?”
“Perhaps she was killed elsewhere and brought here to be found,” Harton suggested.
“Then why no blood trail?” Trevn asked, rounding the body again. “If she was moved here, bleeding as she was, we would see blood coming from one of the entrances.”
“Found none,” Captain Alpress said. “Whatever happened, she fell here.”
“With your permission, Your Highness, I’d like to roll her to her back,” the physician said.
Wilek nodded. “Permission granted.”
“Don’t smudge the rune,” Harton said. “I’d like a better look in daylight.”
Uhley positioned himself above Lebetta’s head and took her left hand in his gloved one. “Would someone wearing gloves grab that arm?” He pointed to the hand Lebetta had drawn with.
Kal took hold of Lebetta’s right wrist. He and Uhley rolled her until she lay on her back, arms at her side.
She looked peaceful, lying there, though the blood that coated the left half of her body belied that peace. Wilek could see no blemish or bruise on her face or head. His gaze caught on the tiny mole at the corner of her right eye. He’d kissed it hundreds of times. Memories flooded him, squeezed his chest.
“Drice,” Uhley said, backing up from her body. “See the holes by her left ear? Just under the lobe? She bled out there and through her ear. I suspect the majority of the drice took the simple route in through the ear.”
Wilek looked to her ear. The dried blood did seem thickest there. “Drice are from the east, right?” he asked.
“Someone must have brought them here,” Uhley said. “But they don’t kill without being provoked.”
“Perhaps whoever set them on her starved them first,” Trevn suggested.
“They’re a tool of mantics,” Kal said. “Saw them used in the war.”
Mantics.
Lebetta devoured by drice? “They are still alive?” Wilek stared at her body, wondering if the beasts were gnawing at her viscera and might break through her skin at any moment.
“Likely so,” Uhley said. “She should be burned at once or they’ll roam free . . . eventually.”
Wilek turned away, horrified. He could not allow drice to roam the castle. But burning Lebetta would not allow her body to be preserved for the journey to Shamayim. He would have to petition Gâzar to receive her ashes and rebuild her body. He swallowed his grief. “See to it, then. I will inform her parents.”
Uhley ordered a litter brought, and Lebetta’s body was moved to it by reluctant guards wearing gloves.
Just as the men carried the litter away, Pontiff Rogedoth arrived in his night robes, scowling. “Why have you summoned me at this hour?”
Wilek had wanted to go to the pyre house to be with Lebetta every moment until her body turned to ash, but the Pontiff must not be ignored.
Barthel Rogedoth was a proud man with small features and tight skin over a bony skull. He wore his receding gray hair in a single fat plait that ran down his back to his knees. His priest’s lock was so long, it darkened to black in the middle of his back.
Wilek explained about Lebetta and the rune.
Rogedoth’s scowl deepened. “This is absurd. Who cares what happened to a concubine?”
Wilek steeled himself. “I do. Can you translate the rune?”
“Of course not,” Rogedoth spat. “You will need a mantic to tell you its meaning, and there are none in Armania. At least none who would help you.”
Wilek breathed through his nose to calm himself. Rogedoth’s bluntness had always grated on his nerves. “Every man has a price.”
“With the rosâr sacrificing illegal immigrants to Barthos, no price is high enough to come forward.”
“A pardon is.”
“For a concubine?” Rogedoth shook his head. “I am going home, Sâr Wilek. Do not summon me again.”
“I will summon whomever I like, Pontiff,” Wilek snapped. “You are not above the throne.”
“Perhaps not. But you do not sit on the throne.”
The man strode away, forcing Wilek to bite back his anger. Now was not the time to take on Rogedoth.
“Arrogant shrine-kisser,” Trevn mumbled.
“This from the priest-in-training?” Wilek asked.
Trevn shrugged. “Honesty is a virtue.”
Wilek glanced down to the bloody writing on the marble slab. “There must be someone in the city who can read mantic runes.”
“By the time you unearth them, you could have walked to Magonia and back ten times,” Harton said.
Father would never permit Wilek to enter Magonia. “We must keep looking, Hart. I have to know what this rune means. Captain Alpress, if you need me, I’ll be at the deadhouse.”
Lebetta’s parents were waiting at the deadhouse with Dendrick when Wilek, Kal, Harton, and Trevn arrived. Nikk Obert was a short, tidy man with more hair in his eyebrows than on his head. His wife stood a full head taller than him and was three times as wide. Wilek had only met them twice before. Should he embrace Senja? Shake Nikk’s hand? He simply stood there, stupidly, his boots and knees stained in their daughter’s blood.
“I am so sorry,” he finally managed to say.
“I am to blame, Your Highness,” Senja said, wringing her skirt in her hands. “If only she had heeded my warning.”
“Have you discovered any new information?” Nikk asked Wilek.
“Unfortunately no,” Wilek said. “Madame Obert, what warning did you give your daughter?”
“Lebetta had been worshiping black spirits. I disapproved. Told her to stop. She accused me of being old-fashioned, said the spirits gave freedom and power.”
Wilek’s thoughts spun. Worshiping black spirits was against the law in Armania. It angered the gods and priests both. Wilek could not imagine Lebetta getting involved with something so dark. “Where did she worship them? With whom?”
“She never said. I assumed it was here at the palace with you.”
“I have never worshiped black spirits.” The very idea was insulting. “Harton!” He waved his backman over. When Harton reached him, Wilek took the wax tablet and showed it to the Oberts. “Do you recognize this? Lady Lebetta drew it.”
“Where would she learn to draw runes?” her father asked.
“From the black spirits.” Senja’s voice cracked. She made the sign of The Hand. “Gods forgive her, but only black spirits know the runes.”
“And the mantics who worship them,” Harton added.
Senja moaned, eyes filled with tears.
“Thank you, Harton.” Wilek shoved the wax tablet into Harton’s hands and shooed him back to Kal.
“Please, Your Highness.” Nikk took his wife’s hand. “Find out who did this to our daughter.”
“I shall,” Wilek said. “You can count on it.”
An awkward moment of silence fell over them.
“Lebetta left few of her valuables in our home,” Senja said. “Might I have permission to search her chambers for anything I could add to her grave offering?”
“Yes, of course. I’ll add to it as well. She won’t go into the next world empty-handed.”
“We will send her by sea,” Senja said. “Start the procession at our home and wind our way outside the city limits to the quay. We must give her every chance to reach Shamayim.”
It was the best they could do. Had she been his wife, Wilek would have chosen the same, though then the procession would have begun at the castle.
“It might not matter,” Nikk said. “If she’d been worshiping black spirits, no amount of wealth or distance travelled will appease Athos when she stands before his bench.”
This comment set Senja wailing again. Worshiping black spirits. How could that be Wilek’s Lebetta? What had she been involved in and why?
Less than an hour later, Zithel Lau, a medial priest, performed a last rites ceremony with as many votive offerings as Wilek and Senja had time to gather.
The night bells tolled just as Uhley lit Lebetta’s pyre. Kal stood on Wilek’s right, Trevn on his left. Harton and Dendrick were around somewhere. But as Wilek stared into the flames that consumed her, he felt ultimately alone. Senja’s keening nearly undid him.
Watching Lebetta’s body burn, something in him died. She had taken part of his heart with her to the Lowerworld.
He would never forget her.
Her ashes were swept into an urn that would be sent out to sea in a shipping ceremony. This way Lebetta could sail to Shamayim and have her body restored in the afterlife.
Uhley handed the urn to Wilek, who instantly passed it to Lebetta’s parents. He promised to visit them when he had answers and stumbled back to the castle. Dendrick and Kal followed silently, allowing him his grief.
A short while later, he fell into his bed. His cold bed. Lebetta would never come to him again. He would never hold her in his arms. Never kiss her soft lips or hear her throaty laugh. There was no life without her. No joy. There was only an unimaginable hollowness that made him ache all over.
Images from the night haunted him. Her pale, lifeless body. His boots standing in a puddle of blood. The flames of the pyre destroying her beauty forever.
Tears blinded him even from the darkness of his chambers. His chest and throat burned from the magnitude of his despair and the added remorse that he had banished her.
He should not have done it.
He should not have.