said Marrok de Landoine. “Otherwise you would not address me in such an impudent manner.”
Guigenor sputtered for a moment, struggling to put together a reply. Her anger at the casual dismissal, at the murder of her friend, boiled over into tears. She roughly shoved Artus out of her way and bulled through the crowded hallway much as she had many a snowbound mountain pass.
The look on Marrok’s face appeared full of fatherly concern for the young woman, but Artus had seen that smirking, fatuous expression before. Marrok reserved that empty smile for those he found distasteful, below his notice as a person of wealth and influence. Marrok was a man of remarkable resources, position, and accomplishment, even in a group as thick with decorated military heroes and titled aristocrats as the Society of Stalwart Adventurers. And, to him, Guigenor was quite unalterably an upstart.
The smile didn’t alter when Marrok first noticed Artus standing there. Then it abruptly faded, transformed into a look of utter weariness. “Mystra save me from the rabble,” the nobleman muttered. Artus opened his mouth to reply, but Marrok turned his back on the young man and walked away.
Grumbling through clenched teeth, Artus made his way back to the Treaty Room. He followed a route he would have found difficult to map, despite his years of practice in the field, for the Stalwarts Club was labyrinthine in design and cut loose from architectural logic by the amount of magic utilized in its construction. In some places angles did not operate as angles should. In others, straight lines were not necessarily the shortest distance between two points.
All that strangeness made the Treaty Room a haven to those few Stalwarts unimpressed by mages and spell-craft. Hidden in one of the most isolated sections of the club, the room could be generously described as four walls and a single stout door. It lacked secret passages, magical gateways, even windows. Its floor and ceiling were identical to their counterparts in most mundane homes-more carefully constructed and, at most other times, quite a lot cleaner-but essentially commonplace. The two things that most obviously set the Treaty Room apart from those average places now were the amount of blood splashed on the walls and the poorly dressed and rather overweight corpse laying atop the conference table at the room’s exact center.
“Well, let’s take the gorgon by the horns,” said Sir Hydel Pontifax-mage, surgeon, sometime War Wizard, and full-time Stalwart. He gestured to the Purple Dragon stationed by the door, who was doing quite a good job of refusing Artus admittance. “Be a good soldier and let my scribe in. I rather need his help if I’m to complete the medical examination your sergeant requested.”
Artus tore a few pages from the journal he always carried tucked into his wide leather belt; the wyvern- bound book was magical, so it wouldn’t even open in the magic-dead room. Then he ducked under the guard’s outstretched arm and hurried to the table. “Thanks, Pontifax. I was hoping you’d be here.”
The paunchy mage leaned over the body. “And I was rather expecting you to show up. Just the sort of messy business you can’t keep your fingers clean of. They’re blaming Uther, you know.”
“I told him I’d help clear his name.”
Pontifax glanced up. “Good for you! That puts a noble cause behind your meddling.”
Artus took the statement for what it was-gentle ribbing by his most trusted friend. He didn’t reply, didn’t feel the usual need to fire back a cutting response. In comfortable silence, the two set about their work. Pontifax examined the corpse and occasionally murmured observations to be recorded. Artus made a very rough sketch of the body and took down notes.
“What do you make of the dagger?” Pontifax asked after they’d completed their initial examination.
Count Leonska might have died from any of the dozens of deep slashes on his body, face, and hands, but the most obvious and violent wound was caused by the knife protruding from his chest. The blade was hidden in flesh, but the golden handle burned with reflected light from the room’s many candles.
“The markings are Zhentish,” Artus said. “A ritual dagger of some kind?”
Pontifax muttered a vague reply. His white, cloudlike brows had drifted together over his blue eyes. The effect was something like a gathering storm. “The body should be more of a mess,” he said.
Blood lightly spattered the count’s hands and clothes, but most of his wounds were clean. The sole exception was his crimson-smeared mouth. Artus used the dry end of his writing stylus to pull back a swollen lip. Leonska’s teeth were missing. They’d been shattered, many broken right down to the gums.
“What’s this?” Artus murmured. As he leaned close, he felt a shiver of apprehension snake up his spine. It was as if the count’s dead eyes were watching him. Hands trembling just a little, he picked a small, dark shred of material from between two broken teeth. “It’s leather, I think. Part of a gag?”
“That would explain why Leonska didn’t cry out when he was being attacked,” Pontifax replied. The mage nervously paced around the room, his stubby fingers steepled. “Uther heard a ruckus, but no shouts for help. That’s why he didn’t break the door in.”
“Guigenor thinks the count was stumbling around in here, drunk, before she ran off to get the keys. She was screeching at Marrok about her suspicions when I came in.,
“That young woman is one to talk about suspicions,” said Pontifax. “When the watch asked her why she happened to be roaming around back here, she said Leonska had left her a note requesting her presence in the Treaty Room. But she can’t find the note now.
“As for her claim that the count was alive when she heard the noises-nonsense. This murder took a long time to commit. They heard the end of the struggle, not its beginning.”
“Do you think Guigenor had a hand in this?” Artus asked, gesturing to a wall of framed treaties and trade agreements, all of which had been signed in the room. Blood had splashed across each and every one. “What kind of weapon would she have used?”
“I’ve heard of assassinations… the work of men from far eastern Kozakura who call themselves ‘ninjas.’ They sometimes leave behind some strange gore slinging like this,” Pontifax said. “It almost looks like Leonska was stabbed and slashed, then spun quickly so the blood would cake the walls.”
Neither man commented that it would take someone incredibly strong to heft the count’s bulk. The thought had occurred to both-as did the notion that Uther was probably the only person in the club who could do so without the aid of sorcery
Pontifax returned to the table and stared at the open door. “How did the blackguard get out of the room after doing this to Leonska, I wonder. Uther said the noises continued in here until just before Guigenor returned with the keys. The door remained tightly closed and locked until he opened it.”
“You don’t suppose the murderer is still hiding in the room.”
“Already been searched three times. We’ve checked for sliding panels and any of that rot. Nothing. And no magic could possibly work in here.”
Artus prodded a pile of threadbare clothes he’d found in one corner. The moth-eaten cloak, thick gloves, and long, dirt-smeared scarf had been folded and stacked neatly. Atop the pile rested a wide-brimmed hat dyed the black of ravens’ feathers. “All these belonged to Leonska?”
Pontifax nodded. “He was seen bundled up in those rags when he entered the club this morning. It was his usual attire.”
“You wouldn’t think someone with such shabby clothes would bother folding them so neatly.” Artus held up the corner of the rather grotesquely patterned scarf and said, “Poor fashion sense for a count.”
“He had poorer social skills,” Pontifax said. “As he did most mornings, Leonska made his way back here with a full wineskin and the single-minded purpose of drinking himself to the brink of unconsciousness.” He idly flicked one hand toward the body. “Only today he didn’t get a chance to stagger out and pick fights, like he normally did. Not a good soldier in the least-”
“For once you and I are in full agreement, Sir Hydel. No army would have ever taken Leonska on campaign, not even to haul baggage.”
Artus and Pontifax turned to the door to find Marrok de Landoine standing there, surveying them with practiced disinterest. “I thought I’d find you here, Cimber. If you are done assisting Sir Hydel with his examination, I’d like a word with you.”
The nobleman didn’t wait for a reply. He hooked Artus’s arm with his own and led him out of the Treaty Room, down the narrow hall. Stalwarts deferentially flattened against the paneling or ducked into doorways to let them by.
“I have my pass,” Artus said. He reached up to his breast pocket for the thin leather card that allowed him access to certain areas of the club-the library, game room, and main bar-even though he was not a full member. The gesture was automatic; the pass was the only topic about which the nobleman had ever addressed Artus
