Page 17 of Crucible of Chaos

Estevar reached out a hand to tentatively touch the abbot’s corpse. The skin was cold and lifeless, yet showed no signs of decomposition or the gnawing of the flesh by worms or insects. He rose to his feet. Before he could investigate properly, he needed to tend to his wounds and those of Imperious, as well as establish a place within the abbey from where to work, most likely the infirmary. Then he noticed the way Brother Agneta was looking at him. ‘I would have been Venia’s choice to pursue his murderer, but not yours, Inquisitor?’

The lines of her face looked deeper, her body more frail. ‘Faith is not a matter of choice, Eminence.’ She gestured one by one to the six towers rising above the abbey. ‘It is no more my business deciding who should or should not investigate Venia’s murder than is the business of monks to debate which gods they will believe in and which ones they won’t. Religion is not built on compromise. It is a matter of conviction.’

‘Then you will not seek to impede my investigation? For I will see the killer face justice, and this, I believe, will aid us in uncovering the deeper sickness festering at the heart of this abbey.’

She smiled back at him, weary and. . . something else–pitying, perhaps? He’d never seen a Cogneri– even one as old as Agneta–so meek before a secular magistrate. With great gentleness, she reached out and placed her palm over the wound at his side. He realised it was bleeding freely once again. ‘You Greatcoats, with your idealism and your grand swordplay, you see the law as the means not only to punish the guilty, but to bring peace. It is a noble thought.’

‘You speak as if we were dreamers.’

‘Forgive me, then, Eminence. I was an inquisitor, not a magistrate, and my sword-fighting days are long behind me. All that remains. . .’

Estevar saw for the briefest instant the old woman’s hand close into a fist, and the short, sharp blow she delivered to his wound that banished his consciousness like a puff of air to a faltering candle flame.

As he fell backwards, slumping against the braying, confused mule that had braved its fear of the statuary to try and save him, he thought he heard Agneta say, ‘. . . are my convictions.’

PART THE THIRD

THE SIGILS OF TESTAMENT

Bring forth the sinners of the community and compel the testimony of their transgressions. Inscribe upon the flesh of the sacrifice a sigil to represent each offence, being careful not to draw the sigils too large, else the sacrifice’s skin may prove too small a canvas for them all.

CHAPTER 12

THE ONLY QUESTION THAT MATTERS

‘Is your mind clear?’

The voice echoed from somewhere in the darkness, suggesting that Estevar was in a large chamber or cavern with stone walls. The skin on his back hurt, as if he’d been stung dozens of—No, not stung:scraped. There were scrapes and cuts down his back–new ones. Someone must have dragged him a long way, and judging from the painful bruises accompanying the scrapes, dragged him up or down steps as well.

‘Is your mind clear?’

The question was a fair one, Estevar judged, and set about answering it by first devoting his muddled thoughts to deducing who had asked it.

The pitch was deep, somewhere just below the second open string of a bazatia. The heavy, lute-like instrument was played with the bottom of its belly resting on the floor, giving it a sonorous drone. Bazatias were favoured by the minstrels of his homeland as bass accompaniment for more melodic flutes and guitars. Not one in twenty adult men had voices so deep, and fewer than one in a thousand women.

Estevar had made a study of the particularities of the human voice years ago when he’d theorised that verbal deception could be detected by an attentive ear trained to alterations in pitch, tremulousness of the tongue, tightening of the throat and various intermittent hesitancies masked through the use of ‘hems’, ‘ahs’ and, of course, that old plodding clod, ‘umm’.

Alas, extensive experimentation on known charlatans had failed to confirm any of Estevar’s hypotheses, and he’d been forced to accept that most peoplesoundedlike they were lying most of the time, whether or not they spoke the truth. The most skilled deceivers were, in fact, the least likely to reveal themselves through their voices, any more than by their facial expressions.

‘Is your mind clear?’

The accent was Tristian, but there was something underneath, possibly a foreign tongue dulled by years of disuse. The choice of words was odd, yet also familiar somehow, almost as if—

Estevar reined in his wandering thoughts, returning to the voice, for there were more clues there, as yet unexamined. The deep tone suggested a big man, the hint of a rumble possibly indicating someone of substantial girth. There was something else there, too: a faint wheezing threading through the syllables.

An old man, then? No, too much vitality in the vowels, something that typically faded with age. Perhaps what Estevar had heard was the exhaustion of someone who’d run a long way to reach him? But no, that too was unlikely due to the absence of the rapid ‘huh-huh-huh’ inhalations that signified the lungs trying to recover from exertion. This wheezing was slower, accompanied by a brief rattle cut off with each consonant, like the sound of someone in pain trying to mask their infirmity.

Try all you wish, my friend, Estevar thought, perhaps a trifle arrogantly,I will discern your nature and intent soon enough.

‘Is your mind clear?’

That same question again, but this time Estevar recalled why it was familiar to him. Years ago, Kest Murrowson, one of his fellow Greatcoats, had asked him to consider delivering a seminar on investigative reasoning for newly recruited members of their order. Estevar’s travels at the time–along with his often less than cordial relationships with his fellow magistrates, who had got into the habit of calling him ‘The King’s Spook Hunter’– had inclined him to refuse. Still, he’d spent a great deal of time during subsequent journeys contemplating how best he would impart the investigative arts to others, should he ever decide to do so. None of his ideas had proven fruitful, at least in his own estimation, as each one relied on bits and pieces of knowledge that could only be acquired after years of focused study. Few Greatcoats, their heads filled with visions of riding a fast steed, sword in hand, to storm a corrupt noble’s palace and rescue some unfortunate–often very attractive–soul from injustice, displayed such patience.

In the end, Estevar had settled on a compromise: the best he could do would be to distil his methods down to core principles– elemental questions that would enable an investigator to properly focus, thus enabling them to better utilise what intellect they did possess. And the first question was:

‘Is your mind clear?’

This was the keystone–the foundation upon which every other aspect of an investigator’s subsequent reasoning depended. It was the first question they must ask themselves when stepping into a situation in which their case–or perhaps their very lives–would depend upon whether or not they could outwit the perpetrators.

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