Realms of War

killing!'

Mirt sighed. 'Unbar the door,' he ordered Targrath with disgust. 'Can't we even plot our own dooms in peace?' Striding forward, he asked calmly, 'Who's dead now, Torandral?'

'Another heir! The vizier would not let me see but said the man was lying in his bed, called by the gods but without a mark on him.'

'Everyone stay here,' Mirt ordered. 'Awake, boots back on, armed and ready. No need to go creeping anywhere. Any violence will probably soon come calling at this door.'

Sword drawn, he flung the door wide. Torandral stood alone in the passage, fairly hopping in excitement.

'Just along here! In the—'

'Bedchambers, yes,' Mirt said. 'Get back to your post. Strangely enough, I can find my way along this passage without a guide.' Then he added gruffly, 'My thanks, Torandral. Diligently done.'

The crestfallen young armsman smiled uncertainly, then rushed back down the passage to his post.

Watching him stumbling along, Mirt shook his head and wondered how few breaths Torandral had left in life.

Or would the jesting gods leave the young fool alive, in a day or two, when all the rest of them were dead?

* * * * *

Imril Morund was lying on his back, sprawled naked across the grand bed. The vizier had cast the dead man's tunic across his face, but the rest of him did indeed lack signs of violent struggle. There was a faint, sharp tang in the air, like the aftermath of a lightning storm.

Harlo Ongalor stood beside the bed, looking agitated. 'Another slaying! Mirt, you must find this murderer quickly, before...' He waved both hands expressively.

Mirt frowned. The vizier wasn't feigning; the man was truly upset. He plucked away the tunic to lay bare the man's face.

As he'd expected, it wasn't Morund.

Mirt looked at the vizier. 'A clue you wanted me to discover for myself?'' he asked calmly.

Ongalor glared at him murderously for a moment, then recovered his usual smooth near smile. 'But of course. This must be Morund—or at least the man we thought was Morund—but I don't recognize the face. Do you?'

'Yes,' Mirt said, watching the vizier closely.' 'Tis the mage Klellyn. One of your longtime trading partners, I believe.'

The vizier blinked, then stared at Mirt just an instant too long. Accustomed to lording it over everyone within reach, Ongalor wasn't quite the smooth actor he believed himself to be. Looking down again at the dead face, he frowned. 'Is it? No, surely... but yes... yes, it is!'

He looked up again at Mirt as sharply as any snake. 'So how do you know of Klellyn and my dealings with him?'

Mirt shrugged. 'I was one of Klellyn's longtime trading partners, too.'

The vizier's look of astonishment required no acting. 'But—but he never discussed one of his, ah, associates with another.'

'Didn't he?' Mirt kept his face as expressionless as the dead man's. 'Well, I suppose there were those he trusted enough to talk freely with, and... others.'

The vizier went red, then white. 'You will uncover the killer of Klellyn, sellsword,' he snapped, 'if you want to remain ali—in my employ!'

Mirt turned away, heading for the door. 'But of course,' he said over his shoulder, in perfect mimicry of the vizier's own habitual, softly mocking voice.

* * * * *

Mirt had barely dozed off when the scream awakened him.

Tauniira tensed, bare and warm against him but awake in an instant. Mirt rolled away, growling, 'You stay here, and keep the bed warm. I won't be long.'

'Said the man stepping off the cliff,' Tauniira hissed at him in the darkness as he buckled on his breeches and stamped his feet into his boots.

Mirt gave her a friendly growl by way of reply as he shrugged on his mail shirt and made for the door, sword in hand.

Deln and another two sentinels were waiting in the passage as he came trotting up to the row of closed bedchamber doors.

One opened momentarily, farther along, but closed again just as swiftly. It was Larl Ambror's door, though Mirt could have sworn the momentary slice of face peering out into the passage had belonged to the Lady Roselarr.

Well, such doings were none of his concern. Deln and the others stood guard over another door.

The door of Harlo Ongalor's bedchamber.

Mirt put his hand on the door ring. Locked. He leaned against the door. Barred, too.

'Begone,' the vizier said curtly, from the other side of the door. 'Get hence.'

'You screamed,' Mirt said.

'It was nothing. A nightmare.'

'You've charged me to investigate two murders,' Mirt replied, 'and I'm doing that. Operating under Hawkwinter orders, not just yours. I insist on entering your room now, to see matters for myself. Open your door or I'll break it down—with great satisfaction.'

There was a long moment of silence, then the gentle thumping of the bar being lifted could be heard, followed by the scrape of the bolt and the rattle of the lock. The door swung inward.

Deln stepped forward in perfect unison With Mirt, the points of their two swords entering the dimly lit room first. The vizier gave way before them, drenched with sweat and staring-eyed, as white as his own bed silks. . . but there was no body to be seen, nor anything disarranged in the room. Ongalor was fully dressed, and his bed had been turned open for slumber, but not slept in.

'Satisfied?' the vizier snapped, his voice thin and high with fear.

'What happened?'

Ongalor shrugged.

'You screamed,' Mirt said. 'What happened?'

'A nightmare,' the vizier replied. 'You've seen—and beheld nothing. Now go. Please.'

Mirt walked slowly around the man, peering intently at him from all sides, then turned away without a word and strode out, Deln standing as rearguard as if they were on a battlefield.

'Back to posts,' Mirt ordered wearily, and the sentinels trudged away.

The moment no one else was within earshot, Deln muttered, 'I saw what befell.'

'You fail to surprise me,' Mirt murmured. 'Speak.'

'Ongalor was out in the passage, creeping along like a sneak thief, listening at every door. He went past Marimbrar, then me, ignoring us like we were furniture, so we tailed him. 'Twasn't hard; he never once looked back—until he got his fright, and turned to flee. What scared him was just seeing two men, standing calmly talking to each other, away down the end of the passage.'

'And these two men were... ?'

'Prince Elashar's double, and a second double. So alike you couldn't tell one from the other, but neither of them the so-called 'real' Elashar. Neither had that little scab on his cheek from where he cut himself on that hanging lamp.'

Mirt nodded slowly. 'They'll both have fled long since, of course. So our vizier is worried that someone else is playing little games in this house. Or that wizards he thought he had under control are doing what wizards always do: getting up to mischief of their own.'