Page 52 of Crucible of Chaos

‘What are you doing?’ Caeda asked, watching him curiously.

He grinned at her as he found another helpful shard still retaining a mouthful of wine and brought it to his lips. ‘Experimenting.’

‘Well, if you get drunk and pass out, don’t expect me to drag your fat arse back up the stairs to the abbey.’

‘No need for concern, my dear. I am possessed of a redoubtable constitution. Legendary imbibers from every corner of this country have faced me across the drinking table, only to fall before my incomparable resilience to intoxication.’

Despite his boasting, he took smaller sips of what remaining clean samples he could find of half a dozen vintages, each one delightful, which made their wanton destruction even more offensive. Wine lovers across the world would weep when they heard of this carnage of claret. Would it not have been a crime against the art of wine-making, he might have tried to combine what thimblefuls of the remaining vintages into a bottle to take with him.

‘Had your fill?’ Caeda asked archly when he joined her beneath the central vaulted ceiling once more. ‘If you’re right about someone having tampered with the wine, you do realise that you may have just poisoned yourself with whatever it is that’s driven the monks mad?’

Estevar gestured to the field of broken barrels all around him. ‘Survey the evidence, Piccolo. Tell me what you see.’

She turned slowly, her eyes seeking out some clue amid the wreckage that she assumed he’d kept from her during his own examination. Her expression soured with every passing second. ‘Not that I particularly care about a drink that leaves men stumbling, half-insensate and looking to paw every woman they come across on their way to whichever ditch they plan to spend the night in, but all this destruction is terribly wasteful. The abbey coffers will be considerably the poorer next year for the lack of revenues that come from our wine sales, and the monks even more irritable than usual.’

‘And whom shall we blame for this callous crime?’ Estevar asked. ‘Strigan’s Hounds? Leogado’s Trumpeters–the flower for which they’re namedispoisonous, is it not? Or perhaps the Bone-Rattlers scurrying about in the shadows, evading our questions as they avoid the many dangers afflicting the abbey?’

‘Clearly you don’t think any of them did it,’ Caeda said, folding her arms across her chest. ‘Are you accusing me? Just because I don’t care to have inebriated monks trying to have their way with me, that doesn’t make me a poisoner!’

‘I know it wasn’t you, Piccolo.’

She uncrossed her arms and began to step carefully among the wreckage of the barrels. ‘If it wasn’t any of the brethren, and the rest of the islanders had already fled, that just leaves Abbot Venia himself.’ She opened her arms wide as if to encompass all the destruction around them. ‘Do you really think one man could have done all this?’

‘No.’

‘Then who—?’ Again, he saw that sudden excitement lighting up her face as the puzzle pieces finally formed the correct picture. ‘The knights! Twelve big men and women– more than enough to destroy all the barrels.’ She jabbed Estevar in the chest, hard enough that he was glad for the return of his greatcoat. ‘They broughtaxeswith them– when Strigan said the knights had come armed with swords and axes, you asked himwhat kind.’

‘Do you recall his reply?’

She bit her lower lip a moment. ‘I think he said “the regular kind”.’

Estevar nodded. ‘The military battle axes wielded by ducal knights tend to be double-headed and short-hafted– something a monk would consider noteworthy. The “regular” kind would almost certainly have a single edge and a long haft, the sort used for chopping wood. This suggests that the knights brought with them not weapons, but tools.’

Caeda frowned. ‘But the timeline doesn’t make any sense– the chaos began weeks before the knights arrived. Venia had already been killed and the brethren split into factions– which means they’d already been poisoned by then.’ She gestured to the shattered barrels at their feet. ‘Why bother destroying the abbey’s entire supply of wine? Unless. . .’

Estevar waited as she strode purposefully towards the part of the chamber which was free of debris. ‘The knightsdidn’tbreak all the barrels!’ she declared triumphantly. ‘They left those meant for the monks untouched– so someone tampered with the wine meant for the brethren, then two weeks later sent the knights to smash the other barrels to make sure the monks would keep drinking the poison!’ From across the room she caught his eye. ‘That means Mother Leogado is right about the Margrave of Someil being behind this.’

‘There was never any question of the Margrave’s lust for Isola Sombra’s economic and political advantages,’ Estevar agreed. ‘What he lacked was credible legal grounds for invasion. By having one of his agents meddle with the wine and drive the monks to behave in bizarre fashion– something the villagers would surely have noticed before the knights arrived to usher them to the safety of the mainland– he engineered a pretext for conquestandensured there would be minimal resistance to his troops.’

‘But why bother ruining the unspoiled wine? The monks had already gone nuts by then, and Venia’s murder should be more than enough excuse for the margrave to intervene. Unless you think he’s shaking in his boots at the prospect of facing Mother Leogado’s Trumpeters with their silly yellow habits and sour expressions?’

‘Do not scoff, Piccolo. A hundred monks, accustomed to hard work and armed with the abbey’s weapons, shielded by a curtain wall on all sides, could easily defend the front gates for days, even weeks. All the while, the margrave’s own soldiers would be wondering why they were attacking such a holy site, and at what cost to their souls.’

Caeda resumed her wandering about the cavern, swinging the lantern as she turned this way and that. ‘So the knights weren’t sent to investigate Venia’s murder at all but instead to make sure the only wine left came from the poisoned barrels?’

‘Precisely. Their role was to ensure the madness spread unabated, setting the brethren against each other so that when the storms abate, the margrave can simply walk across the causeway and claim his prize.’

Sir Daven’s frantic tale of twelve knights returned soulless from their journey to the island had been nothing more than a ruse meant to set Estevar down the wrong path. He wondered how the deceitful knight would react when he learned that his fanciful tales of monstrous demons infiltrating the abbey had proven so unexpectedly accurate.

Caeda picked up one of the wine-soaked pieces of oak. ‘You asked me yesterday about the three different ways people might react to an impending invasion. Some would want to fight, like the Trumpeters, others hide, like the Bone-Rattlers, and still others loot whatever they can for their own benefit before everything falls apart.’ She sniffed at the damp wood and wrinkled her nose. ‘Add a little delusion-inducing poison to the mix, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for what’s happened to the monks of Isola Sombra, haven’t you?’

But it’s not enough.Estevar was frustrated at his inability to bridge the chasm between a few dozen barrels of poisoned wine and a quintet of horned demons prowling the grounds. There were hundreds of herbs, venoms, crushed seeds, insect stings, fermented alcohols and other toxins that flourished in Tristia, each with the potential to transform wine into something far deadlier–with someone’s help.

Estevar silently interrogated his unknown suspect. ‘Tampering with the wine to drive the monks mad was the first step in your plan,but how did the unleashing of their inner demons give rise to the summoning of actual ones?’

Caeda, scuffing her foot along the bare floor, was asking the same question. ‘What if the monsters you saw came from. . . ? No, that’s probably not it.’

‘Speak, Piccolo. What are you thinking?’

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