of Cacon’s head and drew up one eyelid high using the pad of his thumb. It was rough treatment and Miss Barrow started to speak, but Cabal quenched her with a glance. She fell silent, finally understanding that the man was going to die, and that there was nothing either of them could do about it.
“Alexei Cacon! Listen!” Cabal spoke loudly and clearly into Cacon’s face, demanding a response. “Who did this to you? Who stabbed you? Cacon? Tell me!”
He tried. Cacon truly tried. He drew together what was left of his consciousness and tried to force words out through his mouth, that garrulous mouth that had always seemed so eager to gabble on about nothing in particular. Now it wouldn’t respond properly, and his jaw flapped and his tongue lay stubbornly still. He felt thirsty, terribly thirsty, but he couldn’t ask for water; he couldn’t ask for anything at all. The dark shapes above him that might have been people grew darker still. Cacon felt so thirsty and so tired. He would have a little sleep, and ask for water when he awoke, because we always wake up from sleep. And so Cacon died.
They stayed in tableau for some moments afterwards, Cabal deep in thought and Miss Barrow uncertain what to do. She rose awkwardly and sat on an upright chair near the window.
Cabal didn’t seem to notice. He stayed silent for a little longer, then closed Cacon’s eyes and laid his head down. “Typical, Cacon. Not just of you but of our whole unhappy race. Prattling importunately over nothing, but when you have a chance to say something important, silence. Typical.”
He stood up, brushing off his knees as he rose.
“Well, it won’t do. We need to know who killed him.”
“We?” said Miss Barrow, too tired and sick at heart to speak with passion. “Need?”
“Very well.
“Good. Good.” Miss Barrow seemed terribly weary all of a sudden. Cabal recognised a shock reaction when he saw one. He could have helped her, but it seemed too distracting when he had a murderer to find. “We have to find the murderer. Good. How are we going to do it?”
“Your criminology degree doesn’t suggest anything?” he said.
She didn’t rise to the baiting. Indeed, it seemed unlikely she even noticed it. “I’m still an undergraduate. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know.” She looked lethargically around the room as if noticing it for the first time. “Dust for fingerprints? I don’t know.”
“Fingerprints. Feh. Very useful in most circumstances but not when we know that he was stabbed outside and made his way here. I doubt his attacker even set foot inside the door.” He looked around the room. It was an odd house, sparsely furnished and with little sign of occupation. He frowned.
Miss Barrow was wondering the same thing. “What is this place, anyway? Who lives here? I’m not sure anybody does. The air’s stale, and there’s a thin layer of dust.”
Cabal made no reply. Instead, he took up the candleholder, relit the candle, and left the room. Miss Barrow found herself alone with the corpse. She felt that she should be scared, or at least awed by the presence of death, the last great mystery. But the body was Cacon’s, and he was as unimpressive in death as when he was alive. She sat staring at him and thinking how unlike a person a human body is once the breath of life, with all its pulses and beats and tics and movement, is gone. His corpse was pathetic, in that it inspired pathos, and pitiful, in that it aroused pity. She found herself feeling more sorry for Cacon than she had ever felt for anyone before. All hopes and dreams extinguished, all potential gone. If only she could wave a wand and make him breathe again, it would be the greatest gift that could be bestowed.
Cabal returned, shattering her reverie. “I found this,” he said, and held up a key on a ring. “It fits the lock. The one next to it is of the same pattern as the cabin keys aboard the
“So this is Cacon’s place,” said Miss Barrow, with an apparent lack of interest. Cabal pursed his lips and was about to speak, when a spark of animation ran through her as her intellect stopped freewheeling in shock and started to reengage her mind. “But Cacon’s Mirkarvian. Why would he have the keys to a house in Senza?”
Cabal wagged his finger at her tellingly. “Exactly.”
“And the answer is …?”
Cabal shrugged. “I have no idea. But I know a man who does.”
She looked at him with eager interest. “Who?” Infuriatingly, Cabal just raised his eyebrows and looked meaningfully at her. “What? You? But you just said — ” It took a second for her to understand him, but then her gaze fell to Cacon, and her mouth fell open in astonishment. Astonishment and horror. Definitely some horror. “Oh, you have to be joking.”
“I never joke about my work,” he said, and was unable to suppress a malevolent smile at the end as the ramifications settled upon Miss Barrow.
“No! You can’t. You absolutely must not, Cabal! It’s … a monstrous crime. A terrible, terrible thing!”
“Is it? What is our alternative? Do you have a criminological department about your person to aid in the application of your towering forensic skills? You do not?” He simulated amazement, and did not trouble himself to simulate it well. “Then we shall do things my way.” He made for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“For reagents. Not the ideal circumstances under which to gather them, but I think I can throw something together in a hurry that should give the hapless Herr Cacon one last shudder of animation.” Miss Barrow did not seem convinced. Impatient, for the first few minutes of a person’s death are the most vitally important minutes of opportunity for a necromancer, Cabal added, “Look, I have to go. Without the necessary chemicals, we’ll lose whatever wits are still floating around his cooling brain. The only more immediate alternative that I can think of is a Tantric ritual involving necrophiliac sodomy and, frankly, I don’t think my back is up to it. So, if you will excuse me?”
And he left, inwardly treasuring Miss Barrow’s expression.
The dispensing chemist and the general grocery stood next door to each other, and both contained homes above the shops in which the chemist and the grocer, respectively, lived with their families, which was very convenient if you wanted to throw small pebbles at both sets of windows at much the same time.
The chemist was the first to respond. He swung open a window and looked down into the street through half-moon glasses. He was jacketless, his white hair slightly awry, and he had a napkin in his collar. “Eh! What is it? Who are you? What do you want?”
Cabal finished writing a list in his notebook, tore out the page, and held it up for the man to see. “I need these supplies urgently.”
“What? What is that? Supplies?” Somebody said something behind him, and he turned away to reply, which involved a lot of arm-waving and extravagant shrugging. He returned his attention to Cabal. “I’m having my dinner!”
“A man’s life is at stake,” said Cabal, not entirely untruthfully.
“Eh?” The chemist looked him up and down. “You’re a doctor?”
Cabal’s expression twisted in a way that seemed to suggest
As he spoke, the door of the general grocery swung open and the grocer, a man of middle years but bearing a surprisingly full, raven-black head of hair, appeared. He stood, straightening a collar that was thoroughly askew, as he looked around and saw Cabal. “Signor? Did you cast stones upon my casement?”
“I did,” said Cabal. “I have an urgent requirement from your shop.”
“Eh?” said the chemist. “What is this? You are on an errand to collect vital medicine and yet you have time to bother Signor Bonacci? Eh? For what? Some nails, perhaps? A mop? I was having my dinner, signor! Not so urgent, eh? Not so urgent!”
Cabal ignored him. To Signor Bonacci the grocer, he said, “Dolly Blue. Do you stock it?”
“Eh?” said the chemist. Cabal continued to ignore him.
“Dolly Blue, you say?” said Signor Bonacci, clearly taken aback. “What, the stuff housewives put in the last white rinse?”
