Mark Newton - Retribution

The hierarchy of this religion would be easy enough to research to confirm his statement. I made a mental note to send for confirmation of the facts via Sulma Tan.

‘Could someone have wanted to prevent the bishop from leaving the city?’

Damsak looked dumbfounded by the question. ‘If they wanted him to remain, why send him to a different spiritual realm altogether?’

‘He may have been smuggling secrets with him. Documents important to the state.’

‘This is very fanciful.’ Damsak’s expression made it clear he felt the idea absurd. ‘The bishop barely left the temple other than to help the poor from time to time. There were certainly no business affairs.’

‘How well did you know him?’

‘We were as brothers.’ Damsak paused for a moment, and his head turned as if he was listening to something in the distance. ‘Of the priestly kind. We spoke very little about our personal lives, but in our religious community we do not especially have personal lives to speak of. We are known only by our work.’

‘Your work being. .?’

‘In many ways I was learning from Tahn. There are many rituals to perfect, and a common priest like myself only has the authority to conduct a certain number, lest they go wrong. I studied our main texts under Tahn.’

‘You seem rather old to be studying,’ I said.

The priest smiled in a way that suggested he had heard that comment many times before. ‘One does not get access to higher strata of society easily in Koton. My family is from a far lower caste, and related to the Yesui clan, who were not looked upon favourably by our queen’s father.’

‘The Night of the Plunging Blades?’

‘Thankfully not then, which is why they are still here. No. A family name can mean a lot in Koton. Things are easier than they used to be, thanks to the queen. But some of the old ways are still prevalent, and authority is reluctant to give up power.’

‘Even in the house of your gods?’

‘It is perhaps more forgivable in such circumstances. Only appropriate people should be allowed to channel such gods.’

Very convenient for a priest to speak in favour of being a gatekeeper, I thought, no matter how low his rank. ‘How long ago was it that the bishop went missing?’

‘About twenty days ago. It was just after the Service of Remembrance, a day for all fallen soldiers. He conducted a most memorable service.’

‘What were his last known movements? I’d like to know where he went, if he decided to meet with anyone. No detail will be too small for us.’

‘You ask for much.’ The priest gave a sad sigh and sat down on one of the cushions. He gestured for us to do the same, and we obliged — facing opposite him. Only then did I notice the amazingly detailed fresco on the ceiling of the temple — the swirling patterns of the heavens and yet more scenes featuring the two gods.

Then the priest began to provide his verbal portrait of Bishop Tahn Valin.

The bishop had lived in the city of Kuvash for all of his fifty-seven years, Damsak told us. Like all city priests, he lived alone in a room at the back of his temple, so that someone was present even when there was no congregation. He had led a simple life; he was a bookish man who did not eat meat — something that was a sharp contradiction to the rest of Kotonese culture, which thrived on meat. The queen was an admirer of his work and even of his religious and mythological poetry — sometimes she would invite him to her personal court to read it aloud at banquets.

‘He was well loved by the community,’ Damsak said with a sigh. ‘People would often leave food offerings at his door — though he never asked for such things — and sometimes he even spent the following hours handing those donations to the poor outside the main gates to the prefecture.’

‘And his final moments,’ I asked. ‘Do you recall them precisely ?’

‘The last time that anyone saw him was at the end of his last daily, dusk sermon — on the remembrance evening. People left one by one and he went alone to the back of the building — as he had always done. I heard him go into his quarters and I left him to it while I went to mine.’

‘And he just vanished?’ I said.

Damsak nodded. ‘When I knocked on the door later that evening, to ask if he would like a cup of wine to help him sleep, he gave no reply. I went in, and his room was empty.’

‘You heard nothing?’

‘No. Though my quarters are on the other side of the temple, and I liked to leave the bishop to his quiet contemplation. He was due to rise early, you see, to take alms to the poor. And so. . I really cannot see why someone would be so. . vicious as to butcher him in this way.’ The priest paused to make a circle with his hand above his head. ‘What ill times we live in. .’

Damsak’s face once again exhibited the distress of someone who felt like he was being hunted.

‘What did you do when you didn’t find him?’

‘I did little that night. He might have gone for walking meditation about the city. It was only in the morning, when he still had not returned, that I contacted the City Watch.’

‘Is it possible he left his quarters willingly, then?’ I suggested, leaning back on my hands. ‘To meet someone else?’

‘Very much so, though he’d have no reason to,’ Damsak replied, somewhat confused. ‘Anyway, as I say, I contacted the Watch and they must have notified the various authorities within the queen’s palace. I heard very little. I maintained everything as it was here and wrote to the elders within our organization, to keep them informed. After that matters were kept out of my reach — they were not for me to know. The bishop had gone, and that was that.’

Only to be later returned in pieces. If the priest’s account was completely true, then there was only a small window of time that night in which the bishop could have been taken. It was possible that the killer invited the bishop outside, but that sounded unlikely. What was more probable is that the killer was all too aware of the bishop’s movements. He knew exactly when to strike so as to cause minimal fuss — it had all the hallmarks of a well-planned assassination, by a killer who was familiar with the bishop’s routines, and who had easy access to this prefecture. The idea that someone would send an assassin to kill a simple bishop did not make sense, unless the priest was only giving us part of the picture. He might not have known all of it himself.

‘May we see his room?’ I asked.

‘Of course.’ Damsak rose with ease from the cushions, and I followed with a grunt.

Despite being far younger than the priest, I was going to find it difficult getting used to the Kotonese custom of sitting on the floor and getting up again.

I could almost hear Leana’s thoughts: You’re too soft .

We were led into the small living quarters at the back of the temple, and Priest Damsak lit the candles on the wall mounts. Frugality did not seem to adequately describe this place — in comparison, my current rented accommodation was fit for a queen. Here was just a small bed in one corner, an old oak table at which he must have dined and worked — judging by the ink pots, candle and plates — and a rug across the flagstones. The handful of books on a shelf beside his bed were theological texts.

‘He wasn’t much one for furnishings or ornaments,’ I said, thinking how the room was too dark at this hour for a thorough search. I glanced up to a simple leaded window above the bed.

‘We do not encourage trinkets,’ Damsak replied. ‘Tahn always said that one cannot take trinkets to the heavens. Other than for purposes of identification, generally speaking our organization does not approve of such things.’