Page 55 of Crucible of Chaos

‘Come, Piccolo,’ Estevar said, seeing the agony in Malezias’ stare and unwilling to risk the man falling to his knees and blurting out tales that for now must remain secret.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked, following him onto the winding street leading back up to the abbey. Despite the rumbling earlier, neither the wind nor the rain had picked up. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought the storm was biding its time.

It was silly to continue Caeda’s lessons, but he couldn’t deny her this paltry gift. Perhaps, like Malezias, he was struck by the woman she’d been and felt a debt to the one she could have become. He paused to point back to the stable. ‘Are you telling me that after I shared one of my most prized and secretive investigative techniques, you forgot so soon?’

She stared at him quizzically. ‘What? You mean that nonsense about Imperious and him “listening” to you in his way and his various brays and grunts and farts somehow help you solve a case?’

‘Precisely.’

She turned back to the rundown wooden stable, looking thoughtful. ‘When he didn’t react to the thunder, you said he was telling you that you’d allowed your investigation to be diverted by the loudest voices.’

‘And?’

Her grin of satisfaction when she turned back to him would have broken the heart of any parent who’d hoped for a sensible, sedentary life for their daughter. ‘Imperious is right, my Cantor. We’ve been distracted by the howls of Hounds and the trumpets of Trumpeters, the acid tongue of an old inquisitor and the diabolical doings of demons.’ She bent down and picked up a pair of little stones, which she rolled along the flagstones. ‘Now we must follow the quiet rattle of bones.’

What a Greatcoat I could have made of her, Estevar thought again, then buried his rage so she wouldn’t see it.Damn you, Venia. Damn you to whichever of the Seven Hells has taken your soul.

‘But how do we find one?’ Caeda asked, standing back up to peer through the abbey gates ahead. ‘Other than your inquisitor friend, every traditionalist we’ve encountered went scurrying off into the shadows like a frightened mouse when we approached, shutting their eyes and moaning to whichever god their last dice roll told them to pray to. Even that one who kept spying on us hasn’t returned since your encounter with those demons. How do you expect to get anything out of the Bone-Rattlers?’

Estevar forced a reassuring grin to his lips as he set off through the gates towards the one part of the abbey he felt sure would serve their purpose. The familiar ache in his side reappeared and he reached inside his coat to press a hand over the wound, wanting to make sure the stitches were still sound and he hadn’t started bleeding again. ‘Not all mice are quite so timid, Piccolo. The one we seek will come to us, so long as we set the right trap.’

CHAPTER 31

THE MOUSE TRAP

Estevar crouched behind the wide mahogany base of the lectern at the centre of the chapter house. His knees were complaining bitterly, as if to remind him that, contrary to his frequent assertions that the Greatcoats knelt for no one, he was doing rather a lot of it lately, so perhaps he should do some praying while he was down here and hope the gods took pity on his aching bones.

Tristians typically conducted their prayers in caverns and basements,a tradition born in the underground slave pens where they’d first been housed before being sold off as indentured servants to Avarean warlords in the west. Prayer was a quiet, solitary form of worship in this country, even when performed in large groups. Sermons and theological debates, however, were activities that had been brought above ground and into magnificent chapter houses like this one.

Seventeen marble pillars bore the weight of a domed roof that rose so high the stars in the night sky looked as if they’d been painted upon the curved glass. This chapter house was far less cold and rigid than the abbey’s towers and keeps. Bright rosewood-panelled walls complemented polished oak floors inlaid with bronze. There was gold too, elaborate gilding accentuating carvings on the walls depicting scenes of Tristia’s liberation: the good God War rallying slaves to overthrow their masters; Craft teaching them to forge weapons with which to fight; Death embracing those who fell; Coin rewarding the victorious with well-deserved riches. Then came the myth that gave Estevar hope for the people of this troubled nation: a scene of Love herself uniting her people at the end of the battle, urging mercy towards their defeated foes and reminding the victors that to enslave an enemy’s body is to corrupt one’s own soul. The final tableau, perhaps the most profound of all, was the space left empty for the sixth god of Tristia: the missing story, the absence of understanding.

Estevar wasn’t a praying man, but if he had been, it would be this unnamed, unknown and unspoken-of deity to whom he would kneel. The world needed reminders that no cleric, no scholar, no magistrate, not even the other five gods themselves, knew all there was to know about the mysteries of life. Crouching here behind this lectern, he couldn’t help but ponder what the will of that absent god might be.

‘How long do we have to hide here like idiots?’ Caeda whispered.

Estevar stifled his irritation. Patience wasn’t one of her virtues, he’d seen that, but patience was their sharpest weapon now. He turned his head and tried to pair a reassuring smile with a silencing glare. Neither was successful.

‘Oh, fine,’ she muttered. ‘This is the part where you usually give some long lecture about how a proper investigator listens more than she speaks and accepts that the pace of an enquiry isn’t always hers to set. Only instead of your typical bloviating, you’re waiting for me to work it out for myself so I can show you I’m one-tenth as clever as you are and thus marginally worthy of your instruction.’

That sounded like a more reasonable explanation for this interminable waiting, so Estevar nodded solemnly. ‘Yes, and if there were some way for you to do so without talking out loud, we might actually find the individual we need to interrogate.’

‘Assuming such a person exists,’ she hissed back at him. Caeda had been of a mind to hunt down as many of the traditionalist monks as necessary, and with soothing words or a firm slap– she was happy to try both– calm them down long enough for them to reveal what they knew about Abbot Venia’s last days. But cruelty employed against those who’d committed no crimes themselves in pursuit of the facts was a brute’s methodology, something Estevar would not tolerate.

A second–and, if he was being honest with himself, more pernicious– impediment was that most of these monks were so skittish they became hysterical with fear when cornered, which meant their answers would be worse than useless. Terror and torture were ineffective methods of getting to the truth; diligence and persistence were far more reliable tools of investigation, especially when raising questions no one else thought to ask.

Paranoia, elation, paralysing fear–the monks of Isola Sombra had shown all these emotions, but it surely could not be possible that multiple variations of the toxic hallucinogens had been introduced into the wine. It was likelier that the supposed theological differences between the three factions were merely intellectual justifications masking the monks’ far more primal responses to the fear brought on by the deaths of the gods two years ago.

An unnerving thought.He had always preferred to believe that one’s philosophical position was a matter of reasoning and moral dedication rather than an unthinking response to baser instincts. Abbot Venia had always struck him as a man almost as driven by logic and enquiry as Estevar himself.

What effect did the poison have on your beliefs, my friend? How did it twist that magnificent mind of yours?His gaze went briefly to Caeda, who was tapping her fingertips against each other in a silent rhythm to distract herself from the boredom.What could possibly have brought you so low as to bind and torment this innocent girl, Venia?

The answer to that question was hidden somewhere in this abbey, but to trace the abbot’s last footsteps, Estevar needed a guide whose mind hadn’t been addled. Unfortunately, the only monks who’d remained with Venia had been the traditionalists– the Bone-Rattlers–and from what he’d seen, almost all of them were terrified to the point of catatonia.

It was only when recalling something the perpetually calm and collected Brother Agneta had said during their first meeting that Estevar was able to devise a plan.

‘Almost makes me wish I hadn’t given up liquor,’ the old inquisitor had said while Sister Parietta and Brother Jaffen had been demanding to take Estevar prisoner.

Agneta had not imbibed the wine, so she had not been afflicted by the hallucinogen. Her obsessions, her madness, belonged to her alone.

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