wasn’t any sense in covering them. I moved to the body in the gray woolen suit on the second table.
The woman hadn’t been all that much older than my sister Khethila, but she’d been attractive, possibly beautiful when animated by that spirit we call life, with lustrous shoulder-length blonde hair. From the piercings in her earlobes, she’d been wearing earrings, but they were missing. I studied her hair, and there was something like lint in it. A red woolen scarf with a weave pattern I didn’t recognize was arranged around her neck. A scarf, and it was still largely in place? I eased it away from her neck, revealing an abrasion on the left side, as if a chain or necklace had been roughly removed. There were ring marks on her fingers, but not where a wedding band would have rested.
Most important, every elver I’d ever run across, dead or alive, had reeked of the weed. This one didn’t. Oh, there was a faint odor, but nothing like the overpowering stench that emanated from them. There was another odor, even fainter, that I recognized from my training with Master Dichartyn. That was pitricin-a poison that also sent a victim into convulsions if administered orally. That explained the bruises on her wrists. She’d been restrained forcibly, probably with a towel across her clothes, while someone had squirted the poison down her throat. But why would anyone do it that way? Pitricin could easily be added to wine or other liquids that would mask its taste…at least for long enough that the victim wouldn’t be able to do much about it.
I could see trying to cover a murder with the idea of elveweed excess, but there was something else about it…
I studied the body again. She’d been wearing a long skirt, but I didn’t see any shoes or boots. Then I looked at her feet. They were cut and bruised in places. I checked the skirt. The seams near the bottom had been strained and stretched. She’d been running, barefoot.
For all that, there was still something I was missing. Even if I couldn’t figure it all out, I had an idea who might be able to help.
I eased the woolen jacket and the scarf off the body and draped them loosely over my arm, then walked from the chill of the body room, closing the heavy door behind me, back to the duty desk.
Delanyn looked up as I stopped in front of the high counter.
“We’re going to hold the woman elver’s body until tomorrow.”
“Sir…?”
“She’s not that far gone, and it was cold last night. I need to check on something. Put it down in the logs as my orders.”
“Yes, sir.” He shifted his weight on the tall stool and looked inquiringly at me.
“She was murdered. Most likely pitricin poisoning. I’m going to see someone who might be able to tell me about her…or at least where she might be from.”
My words got a nod and a “Yes, sir.”
As I headed out to hail a hack, I had no doubt that at least a few patrollers would hear about what I’d said. I’d have preferred not to explain, even as much as I had, but Patrol Captains who did strange things without explanations created rumors more destructive than the disclosure of information could ever be. That had been what I’d observed.
It took me half a glass to get a hack and to travel to Alusine Wool. There were only two carriages waiting outside. I stepped out of the hack, alert and shields held firmly, as they always were from the time I woke until the time I went to sleep.
The factorage remained the same old one-story yellow-brick structure I’d always known, a long building stretching close to eighty yards and fronting West River Road. Khethila had nagged Father to enlarge the covered entry in the middle of the building to make it more impressive, and he’d finally given in, just before he’d agreed to let her take over the factorage in Kherseilles. I still wasn’t certain how much of her pressure for improvements had come from a desire to improve the image and the clientele and how much had been part of her stratagem to pressure Father to let her take over running the Kherseilles factorage. Still, even Father had admitted the improvements in the entrance and the more open space just inside the doors seemed to have improved business.
The loading docks were out of sight in the rear, as they always had been. As I hurried up the three steps to the double oak doors, I noted that it was about time to re-varnish them and repaint the dark green casement trim, but I wasn’t about to suggest that at the moment. Once inside, I crossed the open space to the racks that held the swathes of various wools. To the left were the racks with the lighter fabrics-muslin, cotton, linen. Despite the factorage’s name, Father had always carried a considerable range of fabrics.
“Master Rhennthyl, what a surprise!” Eilthyr was now totally bald, but his smile was welcoming and genuine. After ten years, he remained in charge of the day-to-day work on the floor.
“I was looking for Father.” The raised platform at the back, from where Father could sit at his desk and survey everything, was empty.
Culthyn saw me coming and hurried across the floor from behind the racks to the left. “Rhenn…what are you doing here?”
“I need to talk over something with Father. About wool.”
“He’s in the small storeroom in the back.”
I was all too familiar with that part of the factorage, since it had been fire-bombed years before in the events that had led to Rousel’s death. “Thank you.” I turned and nodded to Eilthyr. “It’s good to see you again, Eilthyr.”
“And you, too, Master Rhennthyl.”
I walked to the small storeroom.
Father was indeed there, checking one of the permanent wall racks. He looked up, surprised, then smiled. “I didn’t think I’d see you here on a Samedi.”
“Patrol business.” I held up the jacket and the scarf. “They’re not from here, but I was hoping you could tell me something about them.”
He stepped forward and took the garments, laying the red scarf across a rack gently, and then began to study the gray wool jacket for several moments, murmuring and mumbling to himself. Then he straightened. “The jacket is southern mountain wool…likely from the hills north of Ferravyl…”
Ferravyl…what was it about Ferravyl, except that it was a major barge and transport nexus? I forced myself back to concentrating on Father’s explanation.
“…We don’t buy any of that. It’s soft enough, like top Glacian, but it doesn’t wear all that well. The only factorage I know that deals with much of it is a place in Ruile…” He paused. “Chaeran Woolens…that’s it. He uses it for the southerners who like things soft and don’t wear wool day in and day out.”
“Can you tell me anything else about it?”
“It’s a one-off, done by a seamstress, probably the second or third one in a High Holder’s estate.”
“You can tell that?” I had to say I was impressed.
Father shrugged. “That’s a guess, but the inside trimming is just a touch off, and the stitching thread is Parmian cotton, the kind that lasts forever. Street seamstresses don’t use it. Now…I wouldn’t swear to the Nameless on that, but that’s what I’d judge.” After a moment, he asked, “Where did you get it? It smells…sort of…off.”
“The odor is elveweed, and the garments belonged to a dead woman who was supposed to have died of elveweed excess. I don’t think she did. She was probably poisoned, but someone tried to make it look like elveweed.” I paused. “What about the scarf?”
He handed the jacket back to me and picked up the scarf. After only a moment, he handed it back to me. “That’s from Etyenn. He’s the only one who uses the arbora red dye. It’s cheap, but it fades in a year or two. The wool has his weave, but there are hundreds of scarves like that. It’s faded a bit, and it’s probably three years old. Sort of scarf someone your sister’s age would wear, not that she would. She’s got better taste than to wear something so common.” He frowned. “The elver woman…she wore both of these?”
“They were both with her.” I knew what he was thinking, and I didn’t disagree.
“Bartering beauty…that’s a dangerous business.” He shook his head.
“You think…?”
My father smiled ruefully. “The jacket was a gift. The scarf she purchased. That would be my guess.”
That made as much sense as anything.
“Will you be coming to dinner any time soon?” he asked.
