Petrodor: A Trial of Blood and Steel, Book 2 (51 page)

When Sasha climbed to the pier from Mari's boat, a box of crabs on her shoulder, she found Errollyn running with long strides along the planks toward her. He looked alarmed, dark grey hair flying, unconcerned of his footing on the wet pier. Sasha lowered her box.

“Father Berin is dead,” Errollyn announced as he arrived, his green eyes hard. “Murdered.”

Sasha swore. “Mari!” she called. “I have to go, there's trouble!” From down on the boat's deck, Mari waved her off impatiently, toiling with several more boxes.

“What do you know?” she asked Errollyn, as their boots thumped on the planks.

“The sculptor Aldano found him in the workshop after morning sermon,” said Errollyn. “His throat had been cut.” Sasha cursed again. “Sasha, the morning sermon was trouble. Elsewhere there's uproar, apparently the archbishop wrote a speech saying nasty things about serrin.”

“Not Father Berin, surely?” Their boots hit the paved dock, and they turned right. There were few stalls this morning, partly thanks to Varansday and partly the rain. It fell light and cold from a grey sky, but Sasha was already sodden from a morning exposed on deck. A few sailors and locals walked the dockfront but most seemed intent on business, not wandering the sparse stalls in search of a bargain.

“No, not Father Berin,” Errollyn agreed. “Those who attended his sermon said he spoke of tolerance. A passage from the scrolls where Saint Tyrone encounters a starving pagan and gives him food and water although he was starving himself.”

“Oh aye,” Sasha muttered as she ran, “I'm sure the archbishop's men would have loved that.”

There was a crowd around the temple doors when they arrived, a forlorn cluster of men and women standing in the rain, and praying. A pair of caratsa let them in and they walked fast down the aisle, beneath the ceiling scaffolding. Several Nasi-Keth were guarding the door to the workshop, Sasha recognised them as Alaine's men. Beyond the doorway, standing amidst statues and ragged blocks of uncarved rock, stood Alaine himself, arguing furiously with another three of his men.

“I don't care if they protest!” Alaine was shouting. “I want every man, woman and child who attended morning service questioned, and their person and residences searched!”

“Alaine,” said Marco, a wide man with long hair, “it is most unlikely to be one of the common folk who did this thing…”

“In the name of the good gods, man, how will you know until you start asking questions?”

“It will require the consent of either Kessligh or Gerrold,” another man warned him.

“Damn Kessligh and Gerrold to the hells!” Alaine exclaimed. “Gerrold's too busy licking the serrin's boots to care what happens to our poor Father Berin, and Kessligh cares only for the greater glory of Kessligh!”

Marco looked at Sasha as she approached, and then others did too. Alaine turned. Sasha ignored his glare and looked to the left. Father Berin's body lay before a magnificent statue of Darshan, the Verenthane God of Fire. He had fallen forward, hunched on his knees, as if in prayer at the feet of the gods, and the statues, he had loved. A round, brown bundle of cloth, the pavings before him awash with blood. Darshan towered over him, strong and beautiful, as his follower had been weak and stunted.

“Take good care of him,” Sasha wished the statue, swallowing hard against the pain in her throat. “He was one of the very few of you lot I ever liked.” No wonder the others had killed him.

“Father Berin did not read the archbishop's prescribed sermon this morning,” Sasha bluntly told Alaine and his men. “It seems he made the archbishop angry.”

“You're very quick to assign blame,” Alaine snarled at her. “I'm sure the notion appeals to your pagan notions of Verenthanes.”

Errollyn paid them no attention, and walked slowly around the body of Father Berin, green eyes searching.

“You'll search the homes of hundreds of local worshippers before you suspect the archbishop of wrongdoing?” Sasha asked Alaine. “You'd blame your own people before that perfumed lunatic on his clifftop?”

“This is
our
faith!” Alaine shouted, dark eyes blazing, his jaw tight. “We shall not be dictated to by highlanders, pagans or little girls! Where the hells
is
Kessligh, anyhow? Does not the murder of Dockside's most loved father concern him enough that he should make the journey here himself?”

“Kessligh has the concerns of Petrodor on his shoulders,” Sasha retorted, “as did Father Berin.”

“I think it quite likely that your great uman did it!” Alaine said. “To then point the finger at the Torovan holy father and sow division amongst Verenthanes! Nothing would please Kessligh better than to convert all the Nasi-Keth to his pagan ideologies and win support away from me!”

“Is this another of those childish accusations that you know you'll never have to back with cold steel?” Sasha asked him. Alaine's words did not sting or anger her as they might. “So brave you men of Petrodor become when you know you'll never have to suffer the consequences of your accusations.”

“If it were up to me,” Alaine snarled, “I would revoke that rule in an instant!”

“And you'd die as much the fool as you were born.”

“The murderer was left-handed,” came Errollyn's voice from the foot of Darshan's statue. Both Sasha and Alaine turned and looked. Errollyn was crouching alongside Berin's body, examining the wound on his throat. “The cut begins on the father's right, then across. It's a clean cut, the mark of someone who has experience. I've seen murders committed by common thieves, they lack precision, sometimes they make a terrible mess, their hands are shaking so. This assassin is an expert. There are also no signs of struggle, no bruises on the face or neck, although there may be some on his body.”

“So he knew the killer?” Sasha wondered.

“Perhaps,” said Errollyn. “Also, his neck chain is missing. There
is
a mark here that suggests it might have been torn.”

“Someone thought he no longer deserved it,” Sasha said darkly.

“Whatever evidence you find, your mind is already made up,” Alaine snorted, turning away in exasperation.

Sasha looked at the other three men, Marco in particular. He looked uncertain. Wary. “What do you think, Marco?”

“I think all these dead priests make a trend,” said Marco. “I think there shall be a special hell reserved for whomever has been killing them.” Sasha gazed at him, almost pleadingly, wanting more. Marco looked uncomfortable.

“It's sad,” said Errollyn, sombrely, gazing down at Father Berin. “He dies amongst the statues of his gods. His faith was free, open to reason, to art and interpretation. I think whoever killed him found that offensive.”

“We should have posted guards,” Alaine muttered, running a hand through his hair.

“Father Berin would never have accepted,” Marco replied. “We could never have anticipated that the archbishop would…” He stopped himself short. Alaine glared at him. And then beyond, as Errollyn made a holy sign to his forehead, and rose.

“You!” Alaine demanded. “You have no business making that sign in this place! You have no idea what it means!”

Errollyn regarded him coolly. “Wear your sword at your hip and no longer fight with svaalverd, Master Nasi-Keth,” he replied. “You have no idea what
they
mean.”

“That's completely different!” Alaine bristled.

“Most serrin would be intrigued at the debate you propose,” said Errollyn, returning to Sasha's side. “I find you boring, Alaine. Tedious and predictable. Come,” he said to Sasha, “let's go. If that sermon was as bad as I hear, we'll be needed elsewhere.”

“I don't
know
!” Sofy exclaimed in anguish, pacing in the little inn chamber. Teriyan stood by the curtains that had been pulled across the patio windows, leaving only a little of the morning light spilling through. Byorn sat on one of the two single cots, and Ryssin leaned by the door, one ear to the outside. “I don't know how they knew!”

It had been Ryssin who'd seen them bundling Jaryd out the rear exit of the inn. Ryssin was a tracker and hunter who lived in the woods a short ride from Baerlyn. He was a skinny, weathered poker of a man, who Teriyan insisted could turn invisible in the faintest shadow. He and Byorn had taken a different route to Algery than the others. He'd been watching the inn from the stables, suspecting any dangerous activity would come through the rear way, not the front, where half the guests were cavorting. They'd taken Jaryd down a narrow alley, posting several guards behind. Ryssin had tried to skirt around, but his quarry had disappeared. The tracker was apologetic, not liking to hunt in cities half as much as he did in the wilds.

“Sounds like they took him without a fight,” Byorn said grimly. “Considering our boy's state of mind, I'd say they had him trapped from the beginning. Otherwise he'd surely have died fighting.”

“Like I said,” Teriyan said. “A trap.” His stare was fixed hard on Sofy, his arms folded. “And so I'll ask again, Your Highness…how did they know, do you think?”

“You're accusing me?” Sofy stared at him. “If it weren't for me, you wouldn't even have known where Wyndal was!”

“Haven't seen him yet,” Teriyan said flatly.

Sofy felt a surge of fury. “I am a princess of Lenayin!” she said hotly. “And you'll not take that tone with me!”

“I'm a warrior of Baerlyn,” Teriyan retorted, “and a Goeren-yai, and I'll take that tone with whomever I damn well choose.
Think
, girlie. I'm not accusing you of treachery, I'm suggesting someone's been playing you like a reed pipe. Think for a moment. Who might that be?”

“Listen here,” Sofy retorted, trying desperately to gather her wits. Attempting to pull rank had been stupid, the kind of mistake a naive noble might make—how many times had Sasha told her that it never worked in Lenayin? “I might not be able to fight with a sword, but I know things that you'll never know. I know people, and I know maids and servants, and I know when people trust me and when they're lying to me. And I'm telling you,
Wyndal is here! He was staying in that room, and the servants had seen him there!”

“There's more ways to skin a rabbit than that,” said Ryssin. “You ask them and they tell you what they think is true. But what if someone was fooling
them
?”

Sofy stared at him. Somewhere deep in her stomach, a little knot began to twist.

“Look, who bloody well cares?” Byorn said in exasperation, smacking one big fist into his other hand. “All we need to know is where's Jaryd now? He's got only nobles defending him, we can take those chicken-legs any day…we get him out, and…”

“Kill another bunch of Tyree nobility?” Teriyan retorted. “Aye, there's a fine plan. That'll make the king right happy with us, he'll probably order Koenyg to wipe Baerlyn off the royal maps!”

“Then what are we going to do, just let them have him? We were well within our rights to come here, we weren't attempting to hurt anyone, we were trying to rescue Jaryd's brother from treachery…”

“And you're going to stand out in front of Prince Koenyg's cavalry charge in the Baerlyn Valley and argue that when they're all thundering down on you?” Teriyan asked.

“Koenyg!” Sofy exclaimed, horrified, as it occurred to her. “Oh dear gods.” The men all looked at her. “Don't you see?” she told them. “It could only have been Koenyg. He
knows
I know all the servants, he
knows
that's where I get all my information from.”

“What, here in Algery?” Teriyan asked, frowning.

“No, in Baen-Tar! He must have…must have planted a rumour, or…” She put a hand to her forehead, staring hopelessly at a wall. She felt so stupid, and so ashamed. Maybe she'd even got Jaryd killed…or would do when Great Lord Arastyn was finished with him. She wanted to cry.

“Now hang on a moment,” Teriyan cautioned, “all your information can't be wrong. I mean, someone did try to kill Jaryd in Baerlyn, and you rode to tell him of that plan.”

“Yes, but they can have different sources,” Sofy replied in a small voice, a hand to her mouth. “It's possible that tale was real, while the other was false. Perhaps the plan to kill him came from some other lord, someone not involved in
this
plan.”

Teriyan frowned at her for a moment longer. “What is this plan?”

“Koenyg hears about me asking questions, knows I'm concerned for Jaryd, and plants the story about Wyndal where he knows I'll find it,” Sofy said quietly. “He knows I'll ride to Baerlyn, since a princess has no men of
her own to command. Maybe that was why it was so easy to get away. He knows I'll tell Jaryd, and Jaryd will come here. All Arastyn need do is make sure Wyndal's room is watched and guarded, and wait for Jaryd to climb through the window.”

There was silence in the room. “Well let's not leap to anything hasty,” Ryssin cautioned finally. “We don't know that's what's happened.”

“You don't know Koenyg like I do,” said Sofy “Not many people can fool me in this kind of thing. But he could.”

“You're saying there was
no
plan to kill Wyndal?” Byorn ventured. “Koenyg just made it up?”

“To lure Jaryd here,” said Sofy, with a sad nod. “And let the Tyree lords put him on trial.”