Steven Erikson: Blood follows

He saw the diviner stumble ash-faced from the other alley. The king’s court magus wasn’t a man of the streets, but the cloth at the knees of his white pantaloons now showed intimate familiarity with the grimy, greasy cobblestones.

Guld had little respect for coddled mages. Too remote from human affairs, bookish and naive and slow to grow up. Ophan was nearing sixty, but he had the face of a toddler. Alchemy at work, of course. In vanity’s name, no less.

“Stul Ophan,” Guld called, catching the man’s watery eyes. “You finished your reading, then?” An insensitive question, but they were the kind Guld most liked to ask.

The rotund magus approached. “I did,” he said thickly, licking his bluish lips.

A cold art, divining the Deck in the wake of murder. “And?”

“Not a demon, not a Sekull, not a Jhorligg. A man.”

Sergeant Guld scowled, adjusting his helmet where the woollen inside trim had rubbed raw his forehead. “We know that. The last street diviner told us that. For this the King grants you a tower in his keep?”

Stul Ophan’s face darkened. “Was the King’s command that brought me here,” he snapped. “I’m a court mage. My divinations are of a more…” he faltered momentarily, “of a more bureaucratic nature. This raw and bloody murder business isn’t my speciality, is it?”

Guld’s scowl deepened. “You divine by the Deck to tally numbers? That’s a new one on me, Magus.”

“Don’t be a fool. What I meant was, my sorceries are in an administrative theme. Affairs of the realm, and such.” Stul Ophan looked about, his round shoulders hunching and a shudder taking him as his gaze found the covered body. “This… this is foulest sorcery, the workings of a madman-”

“Wait,” Guld interjected. “The killer’s a sorceror?”

Stul nodded, his lips twitching. “Powerful in the necromantic arts, skilled in cloaking his trail. Even the rats saw nothing-nothing that stayed in their brains, anyway-”

The rats. Reading their minds has become an art in Moll, with loot-hungry warlocks training the damn things and sending them under the streets, into the old barrows, down among the bones of a people so far dead as to be nameless in the city’s memory. The thought soothed him somewhat. There was truth in the world after all, when mages and rats saw so closely eye to eye. And thank Hood for the rat-hunters, the fearless bastards will spit at a warlock’s feet if that spit was the last water on earth.

“The pigeons?” he asked innocently.

“Sleep at night,” Stul said, throwing Guld a disgusted look. “I only go so far. Rats, fine. Pigeons…” He shook his head, cleared his throat and looked for a spitoon. Finding none-naturally-he turned and spat on the cobbles. “Anyway, the killer’s found a taste for nobility-”

Guld snorted. “That’s a long stretch, Magus. A distant cousin of a distant cousin. A middling cloth merchant with no heirs-”

“Close enough. The King wants results.” Stul Ophan observed the sergeant with an expression trying for contempt. “Your reputation’s at stake, Guld.”

“Reputation?” Guld’s laugh was bitter. He turned away, dismissing the mage for the moment. Reputation? My head’s on the pinch-block, and the grey man’s stacking his stones. The noble families are scared. They’re gnawing the King’s wrinkled feet in between the sycophantic kissing. Eleven nights, eleven victims. No witnesses. The whole city’s terrified-things could get out of hand. I need to find the bastard-I need him writhing on the spikes at Palace Gate… A sorceror, that’s new-I’ve got my clue, finally. He looked down at the merchant’s covered body. These dead don’t talk. That should’ve told me something. And the street diviners, so strangely terse and nervous. A mage, powerful enough to scare the average practitioner into silence. And worse yet, a necromancer-someone who knows how to silence souls, or send them off to Hood before the steam leaves the blood.

Stul Ophan cleared his throat a second time. “Well,” he said, “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, then.”

Guld winced, then shook himself. “He’ll make a mistake-you’re certain the killer’s a man?”

“Reasonably.”

Guld’s eyes fixed on the mage, making Stul Ophan take a step back. “Reasonably? What does that mean?”

“Well, uh, it has the feel of a man, though there’s something odd about it. I simply assumed he made some effort to disguise that-some simple cantrips and the like-”

“Poorly done? Does that fit with a mage who can silence souls and wipe clean the brains of rats?”

Stul Ophan frowned. “Well, uh, no, that doesn’t make much sense-”

“Think some more on it, Magus,” Guld ordered, and though only a sergeant of the City Watch, the command was answered with a swift nod.

Then the magus asked, “What do I tell the king?”

Guld hitched his thumbs into his sword-belt. It’d been years since he’d last drawn the weapon, but he’d dearly welcome the chance to do so now. He studied the crowd, the tide of faces pushing the ring of guards into an ever tighter circle. Could be any one of them. That wheezing beggar with the hanging mouth. Those two rat-hunters. That old woman with all the dolls at her belt-some kind of witch, seen her before, at every scene of these murders, and now she’s eager to start on the next doll, the eleventh-questioned her six mornings back. Then again, she’s got enough hair on her chin to be mistaken for a man. Or maybe that dark-faced stranger-armour under his fine cloak, well-made weapon at his belt-a foreigner for certain, since nobody around here uses single-edged scimitars. So, could be any one of them, come to study his handiwork by day’s light, come to gloat over the city’s most experienced guardsman in these sort of crimes. “Tell His Majesty that I now have a list of suspects.”

Stul Ophan made a sound in his throat that might have been disbelief.

Guld continued drily, “And inform King Seljure that I found his court mage passably helpful, although I have many more questions for him, for which I anticipate the mage’s fullest devotion of energies in answering my inquiries.”

“Of course,” Stul Ophan rasped. “At your behest, Sergeant, by the King’s command.” He wheeled and walked off to his awaiting carriage.

The sergeant sighed. A list of suspects. How many mages in Lamentable Moll? A hundred? Two hundred? How many real Talents among them? How many coming and going from the trader ships? Is the killer a foreigner, or has someone local turned bad? There are delvings in high sorcery that can twist even the calmest mind. Or has a shade broken free, climbed out nasty and miserable from some battered barrow-any recent deep construction lately? Better check with the Flatteners. Shades? Not their style, though The bells clanged wildly, then fell silent. Guld frowned, then recalled his order to the young corporal. Oh damn, did that lad take me literally?

The morning smoke from the breakfast hearth, reeking of fish, filled the cramped but mostly empty front room of Savory Bar. Emancipor sat at the lone round table near the back in the company of Kreege and Dully, who kept the pitchers coming as the hours rolled into afternoon. Emancipor’s usual disgust with the two wharf rats diminished steadily with each refilled tankard of foamy ale. He’d even begun to follow their conversation.

“Seljure’s always been wobbly on the throne,” Dully was saying, scratching at his barrel-like chest under the salt-stained jerkin, “ever since Stygg fell to the Jheck and he balked at invading. Now we’ve got a horde of savages just the other side of the strait and all Seljure does is bleat empty threats.” He found a louse and held it up for examination a moment before popping it into his mouth.