I need to send a message to Astrath Triple Moon to see if we can do anything to boost the spell of bafflement to keep Quen hidden till we decide what to do about her. I can't go myself. Walking straight out of here and round to a friendly Sorcerer would be a sure sign of what I was up to. The same goes for Makri, and anyway she doesn't want to miss her afternoon lecture in rhetoric. Gurd and Tanrose can't leave the bar and Palax and Kaby are out busking on the streets. Which is the sum total of people I can trust.
"Dandelion could go," suggests Makri.
I let forth some abuse about Dandelion, pointing out that a woman who walks around Turai in bare feet with flowers in her hair is likely to be as much use as a one-legged gladiator when it comes to practical matters.
"She casts horoscopes for dolphins, for God's sake."
"The Brotherhood won't suspect her."
True enough. We send Dandelion with the message.
"You know, Makri, two days ago I was sitting here without a care in the world. How did all this happen?"
"You got annoyed because Prefect Tholius dragged Grosex out of your room."
So I did. Foolish of me. I didn't need to do anything. Wasn't even hired to do anything. And now I'm looking for a two-ton statue and trying to find the wife of a murdered sculptor. Which led me into the affair of Thalius Green Eye and his inebriated daughter, again entirely my own fault.
"But Quen was nothing to do with me. You landed me in that one. What did the landlord do to her anyway?"
Makri doesn't want to go into details, though she seems satisfied that burning down his tavern and him in the process was a reasonable act of retaliation. She's hopeful that if she can protect her from her immediate danger then some of the more powerful women in the Association of Gentlewomen will look after her, maybe providing funds for her to leave Turai and set up somewhere else.
Soolanis finally wakes just as Makri is taking her leave, wrapped in the large cloak she is obliged to wear at the Guild College. Her chainmail bikini proved to be far too distracting for young students and old professors alike, and even her man's tunic showed off too much of her legs, apparently.
"What's the matter with these people?" complains Makri. "If it's not one thing it's another. Now I have to sit at the back of the class wrapped up like a mummy just because they can't concentrate on the lesson."
Soolanis needs a drink. I pass her some water. If she wants to drink herself to death that's her affair, but I need her to stay sober long enough to tell me some details of the case. She drinks the water with the same lack of enthusiasm I might show in the same circumstances.
"Where did you get that?" she asks abruptly, rising to her feet and pointing at Makri's purse.
"I took it from the neck of a man I killed."
"It's my father's," says Soolanis. "It has his name embroidered on it."
I study the purse. And indeed, the name of Thalius Green Eye is embroidered in tiny letters in one of the arcane magic languages normally reserved for spells. It's something I should have spotted earlier, though the writing is very small and intertwined with the rest of the needlework.
Soolanis is highly agitated. Myself, I'm puzzled. What's the connection between the man who walked into the bar and tried to kill me, and Thalius Green Eye?
I ask Makri to leave the purse behind, and she does so. Quen is still sleeping in my bedroom. I leave her be for the moment, but when night comes she's going to have to go and struggle for space in Makri's room. I surrender my bed for no one. And I don't share it with anyone, either.
"All right, Soolanis. Tell me everything you know about your father's death."
Soolanis tells me that Thalius was always in trouble with money. He was a minor figure at the Imperial Palace, outshone by the talents of the other Sorcerers, and even his business of drawing up horoscopes for lesser aristocrats was on the wane. It's expensive living in Thamlin and the upkeep of his villa in Truth is Beauty Lane soon led him into debt.
"He didn't know where to turn. So he turned to dwa."
The dwa made him forget his problems but the natural consequence was that his problems worsened. Less work, more expense. He couldn't even face going to the Palace unless he was full of dwa, and when he made it there he was in no state to draw up a horoscope.
"After a while it took over his life."
I get the impression that somewhere at that time drink took over for Soolanis. When the neighbours started talking about Thalius she found it almost impossible to face the world without fortifying herself.
Despite the poor state Thalius was reduced to, he was never forbidden to enter the Palace, which suggests that he might have been taking something there that someone important wanted quite badly. Prince Frisen-Akan has already been in trouble because of his liking for dwa.
"You think your father was killed because he couldn't pay his dealer?"
"Probably. That's what happens, isn't it?"
She claims not to know who his dealer was. Because Thalius was killed by a crossbow I question her about Sarin the Merciless, but the name doesn't ring a bell and she doesn't recognise my description of her. For the past four months she's been so obliterated by alcohol that she can't recollect much of what's been going on around her.
She looks sadly at the small purse. "He liked this. Never let it out of his sight. Do you have any wine?"
I shake my head. I never developed a taste for it. I take her a beer, which serves just as well.
"I'd say it was unusual for a Sorcerer to be killed over a dwa debt. Not impossible, but the dealer would rather have the money, and there must have been stuff in the house your father could have sold. Unless it wasn't just a small debt for his own dwa. Perhaps he owed much more. Was he dealing himself?"
The thought of her father actually dealing dwa brings tears to Soolanis's eyes. She admits that it's possible, but she doesn't know.
I muse on these things. If Thalius was a rather larger player in dwa than his daughter realised it might explain why the Guards have covered up the facts of the case. Drug scandals have already come too close to the Palace, particularly in the person of Prince Frisen-Akan, and the authorities wouldn't want any more trouble. Consul Kalius has already had to hide the Prince's shortcomings from the public. The politics of Turai are in a perpetually fragile state and Senator Lodius, the leader of the anti-royalist Populares, is always quick to pounce on any scandal he can use for his own ends.
Prince Frisen-Akan is keen on dwa and I have no doubt that he's not the only one among his circle who is. If Thalius Green Eye was supplying them it would explain why he wasn't thrown out of the Palace and also how he might have accrued enough debts to get himself killed. Taking a shipment of dwa and failing to make the payment is a stupid thing to do, but it happens surprisingly often, with inevitable results.
I'm considering the possibilities of Thalius taking dwa into the Palace when an odd thought occurs. Why was he so fond of the purse? This one is nothing special. All sort of things can have sentimental value, but I don't recall meeting anyone who was overly attached to their purse.
I study it. It's small and the top fastens with two drawstrings, the sort of thing for holding a few gurans. No room for anything else. I mutter a word in the old Sorcerers' language, a common word for commanding something to open. I sense a fractional cooling in the air. I draw on the two strings and the purse opens, and keeps opening. It opens an impossible amount.
Soolanis gapes in astonishment as I draw the small mouth of the purse further and further apart till it eventually reaches the length of my outstretched arms.
"What is it?" she asks, disconcerted by the impossibility of what she's seeing.
"The magic space," I reply. "Or rather an opening into the magic space. Another dimension, whatever that means. This is no ordinary purse. It's a magic pocket."
I look into the large hole I have now opened. My face goes cold as it nears the interface between the normal world and the magic space. Inside everything is tinged with a purple hue and my eyes take a while to adjust.
Anything put in magic space to all intents and purposes will lose all weight and volume. Which would be a very handy way for a Sorcerer to take a large bag of dwa into the Palace for instance. My eyes adjust to the odd light. I reach down, stretching my whole arm into the purse. Anyone looking on would think that my limb was vanishing into thin air. I'm expecting my fingers to settle in soft-powdered dwa. Instead they encounter something hard, cold and metallic. I take my hand out and look again. It's a head. A bronze head. With a body attached. And it's sitting on a horse.
I withdraw my head from the magic space and look at the purse in my hand. Even for a man who's used to magic, it is very strange to realise that I am at this moment holding a two-ton statue of Saint Quatinius right in the palm of my hand.
"Well, that explains a lot," I mutter.
I'm fairly pleased with myself. The Guards are looking all over the city for this. Sorcerers at the Abode of Justice have been hunting for it. And I've found it. Which, I believe, means a handsome reward is now owing to me. Well done, Thraxas. Not only have you found the statue, you've enabled the religious ceremony to go ahead and also smoothed over a very awkward breakdown in relations between Turai and Nioj. They might even give you a medal.
More importantly, I've probably found Drantaax's killers. If the two men who arrived in the Avenging Axe were carrying his statue it seems a safe bet they killed him to get it. Too late to question them but with the Sorcerers at the Abode of Justice that's not always necessary. If they were at Drantaax's workshop there's a strong chance a few things like dust will have stuck to them. A good Sorcerer will be able to pin it down, linking them to the crime. I just have to get the bodies examined.
I waste no time. The bodies, once deposited in Quintessence Street, were picked up by the public refuse service. I informed the Guards of what had happened but, for a pair of known crooks, the Guards won't have taken much trouble. The bodies will have been sent to the morgue in Twelve Seas for burial or cremation. Fortunately for me, there's been a backlog ever since the riots. Beggars who die in the streets now have to wait up to two weeks before it's their turn to go.
Captain Rallee is at his Guard station. When I tell him I think I've found Drantaax's killers he's full of questions, most of which I decline to answer.
"So it just so happens that the two guys who attacked you in the Avenging Axe also killed Drantaax?" he grunts, suspiciously. "How come you just discovered that?"
"Can't reveal my sources, Captain. You know that. It won't matter to you anyway when we get the bodies checked and they turn out to be the killers. It'll be a feather in your cap. Also, it'll put Grosex in the clear."
The Captain says he'll believe it when he sees it. We take the short walk to the morgue. The Captain sends the attendant through to the back to check his files.
"I still reckon the apprentice did it."
"That poor little guy? Come on, Captain, does he look like a murderer to you?"
"Yes."
After some time, the morgue attendant comes back. "Cremated the bodies yesterday."
My jaw drops in a foolish manner. "Yesterday? What do you mean yesterday? There's a two-week delay."
"Not any more. Prefect Tholius provided us with the funds for more workers. We've been clearing up the backlog. The Consul figured it was time we got this city back in order after the riots."
I turn to the Captain. "But they did it."
The Captain raises an eyebrow. "And now they're gone. Very convenient, Thraxas. Look, I know you have to try and clear your client, but I'm a busy man. I don't have time for this. If you have a fight with some other thug and he miraculously turns out to be Drantaax's killer as well, don't tell me about it."
The Captain thinks I've made the whole thing up. Probably suspects I checked that they were cremated first before coming to him with my theory.
"You were a good soldier, Thraxas, but as an Investigator you're about as much use as a eunuch in a brothel."
He departs, leaving me frustrated, cursing my luck that the Consul should at this moment decide to assign more money to the city's morgues. If these two did kill Drantaax all traces of the connection have now gone up in smoke. I trudge back to the Avenging Axe. What to do?
I still have the statue but that isn't much use any more. There seemed an excellent chance it would carry decisive clues to the murderer of Drantaax. During their manhandling, the killer or his accomplices would have left traces of their auras which a Sorcerer could detect. Not now though. The aura will have been irretrievably washed away in the magic space. From what I remember of my lore physical objects survive unscathed in the magic space, but all magic vanishes, including remnants of auras. Spectacular find or not, it hasn't moved me any closer to clearing Grosex. With my number one suspects now gone, I'm not sure how I'm ever going to clear him.
"Just keep digging around, I guess," I mutter to no one in particular as I order a beer. Thinking about it, even if the two newly departed crooks were in on it, I doubt if they masterminded the whole operation.
Soolanis is at the bar, so I ask her a few more questions.
"Where did your father get that purse?"
Soolanis doesn't know. She thinks he brought it back with him from his travels in the west when he was a young man.
"It's an extremely rare item. You know it's illegal to have one in Turai? As far as I know there are only two in the city and they're both owned by the King. If Thalius had been caught with this he'd have ended up rowing a prison trireme."
They're banned because they make the King nervous. Too easy to seek an audience then suddenly pull a sword out of thin air. It wouldn't be the first time a King had been assassinated that way. I suppose Thalius was safe enough using it to take dwa into the palace. Magic purses like this can be detected by Sorcerers, but only with difficulty, and only if they're looking for it. Who would expect a wash-out like Thalius to have such a rare and valuable item?
Soolanis finishes her beer and looks around for another.
"So, Soolanis, it looks like whoever killed your father also killed Drantaax. I had a couple of suspects but I can't get to them now. Maybe someone else was in on it. Did anyone know he had this purse?"
Soolanis doesn't know. She doesn't know much about anything. All she wants to do is drink. The Avenging Axe is home from home for her. I offer to call a landus to take her back to Thamlin. She says she'd like to stay a while. As a Sorcerer's daughter from Thamlin, she's never been to a tavern on the wrong side of town before. She likes it.
"I've never had beer before. We always had wine at home."
I leave her to her beer and climb the stairs to my office. As I enter a knock comes at my outside door. I ask who it is. It turns out to be three monks. Unlike the last ones that visited, they ask politely if they can enter. They're wearing yellow robes. I figure that's okay. It was the red ones that burgled me. I let them in. Two young monks, plus one old and venerable. The young ones stand respectfully as I clear some junk off a chair for their master to sit down. Despite his obvious great age he walks quickly and easily, and when he sits his back is straight as a broomstick.
He greets me in a voice far stronger than you'd expect from such an old man. This is a man who's lived a healthy life. I doubt if he's ever drunk beer or smoked thazis.
"Forgive us for calling without sending warning of our coming. We are not often in the city and felt it was best to take the chance of finding you home."
Politeness always makes me suspicious. I stare at him. "How can I help you?"
"We wish to hire you to find a statue," says the venerable monk.
Now there's a coincidence. And me with a large statue right here in my pocket. "Tell me about it," I say.