Centaur of the Crime: Book One of 'Fantasy and Forensics' (Fantasy & Forensics 1) (19 page)

That’s when Vazura did what I least expected.

He
shrugged
.

“Accidents happen,” he said, supremely unconcerned. “Dragons can escape their tethers when one is inattentive.”

Kajari rose to his feet in indignation.

“Accidents happen? Is that all you have to say for yourself?”

Vazura considered for a moment.

“Oops,” he added.

The Duke tried to speak, but nothing escaped his lips but an angry hiss of air. The nobles next to Vazura, save for Lord Behnaz’s wife, instinctively recoiled from the Captain. Kajari moved to grope for his sword hilt, but caught himself.

“Guards!” he cried. “Put Captain Vazura in chains!” A pair of Royal Guardsmen appeared at Vazura’s side. “Bring him to my chambers!”

I tried to interrupt, but Kajari cut me off. He stabbed his finger my direction.

“I wish to see you in my chambers as well. Immediately.” His gaze swiveled like bright blue rifle sights to Liam. “Prince of the Fayleene, forgive this breach of protocol. I bid you go with the court wizard for now, as there is a matter which must be settled at once.”

“Of course, Lord Regent,” Liam said, bowing still more deeply. “I understand completely.”

Just great. Even the Fayleene understood more about what was going on than I did.

Chapter Twenty-One

The Duke’s chambers were a mess, even by the standards of your average slumming bachelor. Kajari’s main room looked like a wealthy man’s study. That is, a few weeks after the maid, butler, and assorted staff had quit and walked out.

An air of neglect extended to every part of the man’s quarters. A coat of dust draped itself in a velvet shawl over the furniture. In the next room, I made out a dusty blue coverlet stretched tautly atop a four-poster canopy bed.

A sprawling hardwood desk dominated one wall. Dried-out ink bottles and quill pens perched atop a heap of vellum letters. A silver tool resembling the love child of an egg beater and a spork lay in one far corner. Next to the tool, reeking of evergreen, sat a bundle of rotting stems dotted with puckered-looking blue berries. And huddled in the opposite corner was a glum-looking bag of violet sand.

“Bide a moment,” Kajari said. He went to his desk and began to sort through the mass of papers.

As he fumbled through the pile, I gazed out the room’s largest window. Outside lay a swath of courtyard, a bushy copse of trees, and the solid mass of the Parliament building.

The scrape of heavy chains on the floor jolted me out of my reverie.

Kajari turned at the sound. He scowled, and then dropped the stack of vellum in one hand back to where he’d picked it up. With his other hand, he peevishly stabbed the letter opener he’d picked up into the desk’s soft wood surface.

Captain Vazura stood in the doorway, flanked by a pair of Royal Guards. Shackles clamped to his wrists and ankles left tea-colored stains on his Air Cavalry uniform. The chain that connected his ankle restraints left just enough slack for him to walk at a measured pace. The iron smell of rust followed him into the room like a musty ghost.

To my surprise, Lady Behnaz trailed the two guards. She stood almost protectively behind the Captain. Her look, pinched at the best of times, didn’t benefit from her acerbic expression. The black outfit she wore made her look like a pissed-off vampire bat.

Kajari’s expression returned to one that was composed, if not completely at ease. With an obvious effort, he spoke in a civil tone to the cavalry commander.

“Captain,” he said, “your flippant tone nearly earned you permanent residence in the dungeon. You have all but admitted to the attempted murder of last night. Now, confess: did you kill Good King Benedict?”

“I did not,” Vazura said firmly.

“Then why hinder the investigation?”

The Captain remained silent.

With a snarl, Kajari grabbed Vazura by his armored collar and shook him, the way a large dog might shake prey in its jaws.

“Talk to me, Vazura! What do you know about King Benedict’s murder?”

Vazura coughed. Kajari released him. The captain glared at the Lord Regent, and then spat into a dark corner. He gritted his teeth as he spoke.

“I know as little and as much as you.”

Kajari raised his arm. He moved to strike the man.

“Lord Regent, wait!” Lady Behnaz deftly stepped around the guards to put herself at Kajari’s side. The Duke slowly lowered his clenched fist.

“Milady, you should not be here,” Kajari said. “This talk is apt to be dark.”

“Dark without need,” she shot back. “Vazura has told you he did not murder King Benedict. There’s no way to show that he released those dragons.”

I snorted. “Your Captain had plenty of motive for murder,” I said. “He wasn’t exactly apologetic about those dragons that happened to cross my path.”

“An unhappy co-incidence,” she sniffed.

“And I have a bridge to sell you,” I said under my breath. “How are you so sure of Vazura’s innocence?”

Lady Behnaz rounded on me. She got right in my face, boring into me with her fierce, button-black eyes. “Vazura was here at the palace. While my husband is out tending his estates, the good Captain was here, defending our land out of his sense of duty. Which is probably a foreign concept to you, trollop!”

Again with the ‘trollop’ thing. Captain Vazura himself had called me that, now that I thought about it.

My brain did the
clicking
thing again. Made me sit up and pay attention. Specifically, to the rank, mothball scent that Lady Behnaz’s presence had all but shoved under my nostrils.

“You know what’s foreign to me?” I said, baring my own feminine fangs. “How a man can defend your lands by sitting on his rump here at court. Or is it really your ‘land’ that he’s tending?”

“I don’t know what…what you mean,” Behnaz said, startled. She hurriedly took two steps back.

As if abruptly reminded that her skin carried Vazura’s distinctively scented cologne.

“Oh, I think you do.” I’d played one of my nose’s hunches, and I was right. In spades. “Tell me, ‘Lady’. Is your husband aware that you’re screwing his ‘Good Captain’?”

Lady Behnaz let out a shriek of fury. She jabbed an elegantly manicured finger at me. “I hope the next time, the dragons crack your bones and devour you down to the marrow!”

She stamped out, her heels clicking like angry beetles on the stone floor.

“Anything else to add to that little spat, Vazura?” Kajari said wryly. The Captain remained silent, so Kajari added, “Let this be my first of two warnings to you. Do you wish to remain alive and in your Lord’s service? Then keep your sword in its sheath.”

“I’ll take that under advisement, Lord Regent,” Vazura said, with the slightest roll of his eyes. “What’s your second warning?”

Kajari leaned towards the Captain. This time he spoke slowly. With a palpable, dark air of menace.

“If harm comes to anyone investigating Benedict’s murder, you and I shall have words. In private. And you will regret what I have to say.”

And with that, he stepped back and gave a curt order to the pair of guards.

“Release him,” Kajari commanded. “Escort him back to his command.”

Vazura’s chains fell away with a dull
clank
.

I think my jaw hit the floor about a nanosecond after the damned chains.

The Captain rubbed his wrists as the guards removed his ankle cuffs. He smiled wickedly at me, a cat that just got away with a tanker truck filled with heavy cream. He bowed to the Lord Regent, and then calmly strode from the room.

The guards followed at his heels. One stopped to close the wide double doors into Kajari’s chambers. The muffled boom echoed in my ears. The Duke nodded wearily at my wide-eyed, outraged expression, and then turned back to the open window beyond his desk.

“But…why?” I whispered.

“Forgive me,” he said, looking out over the courtyard. The sun had gone behind a mass of heavy clouds, turning everything a murky gray. “I didn’t think that you would understand.”

“Understand?” I shook my head, forced myself to avoid shouting in frustration. “What is there to understand? That you’re actually going to buy that excuse of Vazura’s? ‘Oops, we let a weapon of mass destruction loose. Sorry for the inconvenience.’ And don’t even get me started on that paper-thin alibi from Lady Behnaz.”

“And yet, I have no choice.” Kajari faced me squarely. “That’s the part you don’t understand. I have no choice.”

“You’re the Lord Regent, the most powerful man in Andeluvia! And you say you have no choice? Do you realize that we just let the best suspect for Benedict’s murder walk out your door?”

“Actually, I do. But it doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter now. Fine! Why not?”

“Because all we have are suspicions,” Kajari said patiently. “You haven’t done what we brought you into our world to do. You haven’t proved—to me, or anyone else—that you’ve found Benedict’s murderer.”

“I’m still on the killer’s track, Duke Kajari! Why else would Vazura want me dead?”

“Why else would he want you dead?” Kajari raised an eyebrow as he continued, adding an air of delicacy to his words. “You may accuse me of underestimating your character a second time. Based on the fact that you are quite the fair member of the fair sex.”

“What does that…” I shook my head, kept my fingers tightly clenched.

“You’re dealing with a man’s ego,” the Duke pointed out. “You turned down Vazura’s advances quite forcefully. You inflicted harm on his person. And you stole his prized mount, right out from under him. All done, I must add, in front of his men.”

“Fine. I wounded his pride. So why did you need to let Vazura go?”

“It’s very simple,” Kajari said.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Duke Kajari gave me an unsettled, troubled look. The look of a man whose energy and patience had been strained for the past few days. The folds of his mantle swayed as he walked over towards me. One strong hand grasped at the air as he hunted for the right words to say.

“When I was young,” he mused, “I thought that being in charge meant that you could be freer than other people. Because no one could tell you what to do. It took me a while to learn how ignorant I was.”

I nodded. This was a side of the Lord Regent I hadn’t seen before. Perhaps one that nobody had.

“A ruler—even a temporary one—has duties. Sometimes, one must do things that seem foul in order to complete them. As we say in Andeluvia, you cannot scramble eggs without shattering some shells.”

“I’ve heard something like that in my world,” I replied. “It’s usually said by those who believe the end justifies the means—any means.”

“Perhaps that is true, then. But I have no ‘choice’ in my duty to protect Andeluvia. Unless you find King Benedict’s murderer, our land goes to war with the centaurs in two days.”

“Yes, but–”

He held up a hand until I quieted.

“I’ll admit, Captain Vazura has his faults. Large ones.”

Oh, yeah. And they’re Grand Canyon sized, at that.