The Malykant Mysteries

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

Tired from his nocturnal adventures of the night before, Konrad hoped for a decent rest to follow. He was never at his best when he was sleep-deprived, and he had a feeling that the Orlov case would be tricky.

But it was not to be. After a few hours of uninterrupted slumber, Konrad was dragged out of sleep by Ootapi.

The Malykt sends us again, said the splintered-ice voice of the male serpent.

Is it Orlov? he queried.

It is another, Eetapi told him in her melodic tones.

Another what? Another corpse? Konrad was out of bed in an instant, quickly shaking off sleep. He dressed rapidly and made his way in silence to the rear door of his city house. As he stepped out into the night, his serpent-spectres streamed ahead of him, their translucent shapes clearly visible to his eye.

They led him out of the richer sector of Ekamet and into the merchant’s quarter. Here were some fine houses, though on a more modest scale to those enjoyed by the aristocracy and the very wealthy. The serpents came to a stop outside one of these, a large terraced house four storeys high.

Inside, Eetapi said. In the servants’ parlour.

Konrad eyed the building with misgiving. This was a different matter from Orlov’s little house, in which he lay alone. A house this large would have at least five servants, perhaps more, plus the family. He would have to take much more care.

Making his way to the back of the house required him to walk back to the end of the street, then pass around to the rear of the row of buildings. He counted carefully: eight houses and then the ninth was the one he wanted. He walked across the rear garden, taking time and care, until he reached the back door.

The Malykt had given him a number of gifts with which to carry out his investigations, and one of these made locks and bolts little barrier to him. He touched cool fingers to the sturdy lock on the servants’ door of the silent house and it opened for him. He heard bolts drawing themselves back on the inside, and then he was able to open the door. This he did with care: had anyone else heard the noise?

He stepped into a mercifully empty—and very cold—back kitchen. Moving with the silent stealth of long practice, he followed his spectres through into a short passageway, and then into a small, comfortably furnished servants’ parlour. Inside, a youngish man lay on a sofa, apparently asleep.

It was the work of a moment to establish that he was not asleep, but quite dead.

Light, he requested, and his spectres obligingly brightened the ghostly white glow that clung to their incorporeal forms. He had shut the door behind him, but still he would work fast: he wanted no wandering, sleepless servant to notice a thin beam of light under the parlour door.

Konrad checked the body thoroughly for any wounds, obvious or subtle. Like Orlov, this man had none. And like Orlov, he appeared to be healthy and strong, with no signs of lingering illness or physical weakness. He was a handsome man, dark-haired and apparently in his thirties. That he was a servant in this house was obvious from his costume, but he was a high-grade one; if not a butler, then a front-of-house footman.

How long had he been dead? Not long, Konrad judged; his body still looked disconcertingly close to life. If he worked fast, he might have time to catch the soul before it departed.

Bind him, he instructed his spectres, and as one they dived towards the manservant’s lifeless shell and disappeared. Konrad didn’t know exactly what it was they did, but the result of these bindings was a talking corpse that could sometimes give the Malykant information about their death.

Last time, of course, it had not worked. Orlov’s soul had not lingered. Would their efforts be successful tonight?

As he thought this, the serpents faded back into view.

The soul is absent, Malykant.

Konrad sighed. No soul, no clue. For the second time in two days—or rather, nights—he had been called to the side of a fresh corpse whose soul had apparently departed as normal. Why had he been summoned?

But the Master could not be wrong. In sending Konrad to this scene, The Malykt asserted that this man’s soul had not passed into His care as it should have. Konrad had to trust to that, and find another explanation. But what could possibly have become of the manservant’s shade? It was a rare thing for a ghost to resist the Passing, but it sometimes happened. For a ghost to resist the Passing and wander away from its earthly remains—or the site of its death—was highly unusual.

For two souls to do this in such a short space of time was unfathomable.

The circumstances surrounding these two deaths were too similar to admit of a doubt: they had not occurred naturally, and the murders must have been perpetrated by the same person. That meant there was a connection between the killings. Konrad would worry about the problem of the missing souls later: first he would find out what linked these two crimes.

Turning away from the body, he spent a few minutes in thorough examination of the scene. The parlour wasn’t particularly clean. A few articles lay about the room: a ragged newspaper from two days ago, a pair of worn slippers, a box of matches. Besides these the room was bare, rather like the sparse surroundings of Pietr Orlov. Nothing struck him as out of place or unusual. Most importantly, there was no sign of any drinking vessel that might have been used by the dead man—and therefore might have contained a poison. If a venom had been taken orally, the killer had removed the evidence.

Konrad felt that he was running out of time. He had been in the parlour for more than half an hour already, and he felt his position to be precarious. A house full of servants was rarely still for more than an hour or so at a time; if he stayed much longer he was sure to be discovered. With a last regretful look at the silent form on the sofa, he left the parlour and made his way back through the house and outside. He still didn’t know anything about the slain manservant, but he would find out everything he could in the morning.

Returning to that prosperous street first thing the following day, Konrad found the house in obvious disturbance. The servants’ door was wide open and, as he watched, a boy in his early teens came hurtling through it and departed at a run. He judged that the body had not long since been discovered.

He sent a silent call to Eetapi and Ootapi, and they materialised before him. Their translucent bodies were all but invisible in the morning sun; he saw them only with his spirit vision.

Go and eavesdrop, he instructed. He didn’t need to say anything further: they knew what kind of information he wanted, and how to find it out.

Yes Malykant, they said and drifted away.

Konrad retreated to a safe distance, stationing himself where he could see the house without being observed by its inhabitants. He waited patiently for more than half an hour, shivering a little in the cold winter air despite his thick coat and boots. The sky was leaden with snow and the dull grey light cast an air of sullen misery over the row of luxurious houses. Fitting, Konrad thought.

He sensed rather than saw the serpents’ return. They settled around his neck, putting their cold faces close to his ears, and began to whisper.

The man is Mikhail Ivan, said Eetapi. A trusted manservant. He had worked here for three years. The house is owned by Alexander Nureyev, a carpet merchant. He was happy with Ivan’s service.

Ivan had no enemies within save one, Ootapi continued. The butler resented the goodwill his master felt towards Mikhail, and feared for his position.

Did the butler not give satisfaction? Konrad enquired.

Yes. His fears appear to have been unfounded. We do not think the merchant meant to replace him with Mikhail.

Konrad nodded slowly. Anything else?

The servants are unsettled. They say Mikhail was in fine health and fear some event must account for his death. But the merchant is calm. He does not call it suspicious.

Two possible angles here then, Konrad thought. First, the butler. A paranoid man without scruples might well remove the younger servant he feared would replace him. But if his fears were largely baseless, it seemed a particularly extreme action to take. Besides that, the obvious similarities between Ivan’s death and Orlov’s discouraged Konrad from relying on this theory: what possible motive could the butler have had for killing Orlov? It was hardly possible that a lowly baker could have posed any threat to him.

But what of the merchant? His coolness in the face of his servants’ agitation was odd, and his refusal to consider the possibility of foul play could be suspicious. But then again, the servants would have known Mikhail in a way that his employer probably had not. It may be merely the natural conclusion of a man with no reason to believe that his footman’s death was peculiar, and who preferred to maintain peace in his household.

And again, there was Orlov. Everything about the baker’s case counted against the possibility of the merchant’s involvement, as it did the butler’s. Unless Konrad could discover some clear connection between Orlov and someone in that house, he must assume that Ivan had been removed by some outside agency.

Thank you, he said to his serpents, and dismissed them. He walked alone in the direction of his house, deep in thought.

Halfway there, he changed his mind and went to the police headquarters instead. Finding Nuritov out, he slipped a note under the door of his office with the name of Mikhail Ivan and a request for information. If there was a link between Orlov and Ivan, he hoped the inspector would be able to uncover it.

A reply came from Nuritov the following afternoon, in the form of a letter.

Can’t leave the office, it began. I’ve looked into Orlov and Ivan—lifestyle, past history etc—and there’s nothing unusual in either case. No sign of secrets either. Definitely the two most boring people I’ve ever had to investigate.

As far as I can tell, they did not know one another and had nothing in common. Are you sure they were murdered?

I’ll write again if anything comes up.

- A. N.

Konrad folded the note with a sigh, and put it away in his desk. There had to be a connection and he had been sure that Nuritov would discover it. The man was a terrific inspector and he had some skilled people working for him. What if he was right to question their cause of death? What if the two men had died of natural causes, in a similar way, at around the same time? Stranger coincidences had happened.

But his Master said otherwise, and Konrad had to have faith in The Malykt. If those two souls had not passed on to the Deathlands, then something peculiar was happening whether their deaths were natural or not.

Konrad sat in his favourite armchair, stretched his long legs out onto the footstool and folded his arms behind his head. Closing his eyes, he sought for his serpent-shades.

Remind me of the circumstances of each death, he requested. Beginning with Orlov.

For the next half-hour, he revisited each of the scenes of death with the help of Eetapi and Ootapi. Nothing in either case had struck him as significant before; nothing struck him as significant now. If the two men had been killed, the crimes had been carried out by someone skilled at removing all trace of their presence.

The only possible lead Konrad could think to follow was the manner of their deaths. Irinanda was probably right about the poison: ceruleaf was quick-acting and much less violent in its effects than many others. But how had it been administered? He felt instinctively that the peaceful repose of both men had been no mere seeming: they had died in their sleep. In which case, it was unlikely that the poison had been ingested. That left two options: the poison had been inhaled or injected in some manner.