The room had a wide window screened by curtains of silken gauze. The curtains had been thrown open and the room trampled by enthusiastic, clumsy investigators. Even so, there was much to see.
The body had been moved, but where it had lain, the bed was indented. The pillows and sheets seemed otherwise undisturbed. If Tarquil had come here to sleep, then he had lain down and found no time to toss and turn.
Beside the bed was a table that seemed a little like doll’sfurniture. Jus knelt carefully on the carpet, going onto all fours to examine the half-sized furnishings. A wine bottle stood open beside a pair of glasses. One glass stood untouched and full, while the other seemed half empty. Jus sniffed the cup, and Cinders confirmed his suspicions.
Holding the half-empty glass up to the light showed a faint oily film down one side. Poison had been trickled into the glass from an outside source.
The wine was poured carefully back into the bottle, and Jus surveyed the results. Nodding, he put the empty glasses aside, then cast carefully back and forth across the room.
No necklace hung from any doorknob. Various hands had wrenched open cupboards and curtains looking for would-be assassins. Yet a gleam came from the carpet, and when Jus bent down to examine it, he found the tiniest of tiny golden links-a piece of delicate chain from a necklace that had beenbroken clean through.
Cinders breathed a scent and shivered his long black tail.
“Just so.”
The Justicar looked carefully at the door that led through the apartments and into the palace. He opened the door and looked into a passageway lined with brilliant animated murals. Searching the empty corridor with a long, hard glance, Jus turned away, returned into the room… andcaught sight of a single black thread hanging from the doorjamb.
He trapped it, laid in in a folded paper, and put it in his pouch beside the golden link. Rising, Jus carefully dusted off his hands.
“Where have you put the body?”
“We are about to take it to the chapel.” Lord Faen swung openthe door to the passageway and looked carefully out into the deserted palace. “We have lain him out in the drawing room down here until then. Come quickly.”
One man, one hell hound skin, and two faeries swept quietly out into the corridor. They moved three rooms down and edged into a room guarded by a faerie warrior. The warrior looked studiously away from the Justicar, ignoring his presence entirely but nodding to Lord Faen.
In the long, cool room beyond lay the body of the Cavalier Tarquil. The corpse seemed pathetically small, like a child sleeping in the grass. They had laid him on his back, with his hands out at an angle from his body. Jus knelt beside the corpse and removed its cover sheet, looking at the clothed body in professional, dispassionate chill.
“Is this how you always lay out a corpse?”
“No, but the body stiffened in death rigor, and we could notcross his hands decently upon his breast.”
Nodding, the Justicar inspected the body’s mouth. The lipswere not inflamed, nor the inner mouth burned.
Jus opened the cavalier’s shirt and pulled up his innerclothes. The blood had pooled on the body’s belly side, leaving a purplishcolor, but it was already on the move again now that the body was laid out. Soon the corpse would be as pale as ash.
“How long ago did you find him?”
“One hour.”
“Lying on his face.” Jus levered the body over on its sideand then began methodically to strip it naked. Shocked and reluctant, the two faerie lords half started forward before leaving the man to his work.
Jus inspected the corpse’s skin inch by minute inch, thenlooked beneath its nails and through its hair. Finally the big man sank back onto his heels, looming vast as an ogre as he nodded slowly in thought.
Jus let out his breath and spoke. “He was poisoned, but notby wine.”
Lord Charn raised his brows in silence, but Lord Faen chose to speak. “Not by the wine?”
“No. Here on his scalp and hidden by his hair is a puncturewound.”
The faeries leaned in to see. The Justicar parted the black hair of the dead cavalier to show a small hole in the scalp, far broader than a needle puncture. It had oozed a clear fluid, and the hair strands beside it weresilvered with a dried mucous or glue. Jus let the hell hounds nose nestle close to the puncture hole.
“Cinders?”
“Yes.” The Justicar sat back in cold triumph. “Cinders smellsfish.”
The two faerie lords looked at him in silence, and the Justicar enlightened them.
“See the dried slime? It’s from a cone shell-a venomousmollusk that uses a puncturing tongue to kill. Instantly lethal. Small, concealable in the palm on anyone gloved and confident enough to use it. Even a faerie.”
Lord Faen scowled. “And where might a cone shell be found ina forest?”
“Nowhere. This is a kuo-toan assassination technique-rightdown to hiding the wound in the hairline.”
“You have encountered it before?”
“I’ve read about it.” The Justicar wiped his hands. “This ismy profession. I am the Justicar.”
Sitting back on his haunches, the Justicar thoughtfully regarded the corpse. “Cone shells come from tropical reefs. This has beencarried a long, long way with the intention to murder.” Jus stoked his chin,black stubble rasping in the quiet room. “The wine glasses were a decoy. Whenthe wine was put back in the bottle, it made the bottle totally full. There was not even half a mouthful missing. It reached the stain line inside the bottle neck.”
Escalla’s father grinned a predatory grin, apparentlyextremely pleased to witness the Justicar at his work. “Yes, lad. Now what elsewas in that room? What didn’t other eyes see?”
“There is one link from the gold chain that held Escalla’sslow-glass pendant. It was by the windows, probably where Escalla tore the necklace off and broke it. The necklace itself is gone. Is it valuable?”
“Perhaps a thousand times the value of a similarly sizeddiamond.”
Jus made a soundless whistle. Such a necklace might conceivably buy an entire castle, garrison it, and pay the troops’ wages for ayear.
It was time to retire from the room. Jus found a balcony and leaped over it, then let the two faerie lords follow him into the woods. Hidden by the trees, the big man sat and laid out tiny paper packets on his knee.
“The body has been dead longer than two hours. There wasrigor. I’d make it three or four hours dead, meaning he’d been dead beforeEscalla was seen entering the room.”
Stroking his goatee, Lord Faen nodded. “A hostile mind mightargue that the effects of the poison caused the muscles to freeze in spasm.”
“Yes. It’s not proof.” Jus stroked his chin. “But the mouthwas red at the back of the tongue. He was orally poisoned and then stung later by the cone shell. The shell wound hadn’t bled, not even a bead. His blood wasalready cold when the puncture was made.”
Pacing carefully back and forth, Lord Charn cleared his throat in thought.
“Was someone making certain of his kill? A poison draughtthen the more definite poison administered at a later time?”
“Possibly. The poison glasses were a decoy, though. There wasno burning of the victim’s mouth tissues. I find that interesting.” Jus openedup one of the tiny packets of paper on his knee. Inside, carefully pinned in a slot of the paper lay a single delicate piece of black thread. He gave it to the faeries, who leaned over it and thoughtfully stroked their beards.
“A thread from clothing?”
Jus shook his head. “It seems too clean. Threads ripped fromclothing show furred surfaces from the abrasion.” Jus leaned in closer. “This isa thread I found elsewhere. Identical to this second thread, from Escalla’sdoorjamb. They’re the same length and neatly cut, like threads bunched and allcut to a length.”
There was a sudden cool flood of understanding from Lord Charn. “Gateway tokens.”
“Gateway tokens.” Jus held up the threads. “Keys used totravel through the forest’s magic doors.”
Escalla’s father sat on a tree stump that had been colonizedby orange fungi. The fungi gleamed like fruit peel
