Hammers of Ulric, page 15
‘I thought you’d put things like that behind you. When your wife and boy went missing.’
There was a pause. It came from me. ‘I did,’ I said, ‘but it looks like he didn’t. And I do not care to be reminded of it.’
‘So – what? You want him warned away? Out of the city? Dealt with?’
‘I need to know where he’s staying. That’ll suffice for the time.’
‘A shame,’ Bruno said, ‘but I’ll get someone on it. Can I offer you a glass of brandy and the warmth of my hearth? I’d appreciate your advice on a piece of tricky business.’
‘I’m sorry, Bruno,’ I said. ‘I don’t do that any more.’
‘But you still ask for favours from old friends. I understand.’ I started to say something but he held up one slab-like hand. ‘No. Today I forgive you. With such a big death in the city, Morr’s people must have much to do.’
‘All deaths are the same size,’ I said. ‘It’s only the living who think different.’
He looked at me for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Whatever you say. You’re the priest. I’ll send a messenger to the Temple if I hear of your Grubheimer.’
‘Thanks, Bruno,’ I said. ‘And any time you or your boys need advice on death, you know where to find me.’
He chuckled. ‘Maybe I’ll do that. But when it comes to death we have more experience than you, I think.’
A recent memory filled my head: a man plunging down into blizzard-whipped snow from the Cliff of Sighs, his blood still warm on my hands. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘you might be surprised.’
There was no need to bring Reinhold’s body back to the Temple. A pauper’s body should be flung from the Cliff of Sighs with the briefest of blessings. But however he might have died, Reinhold had lived as more than a pauper. Besides, with Father Ralf and the others occupied with the death of the Countess, nobody was going to notice, and preparing the body would give me time to think.
On my way back to the Temple, crossing from the hubbub of the streets into the relative solitude of the frozen Morrspark, I heard the sound of a spade ringing against the unyielding ground. Brother Jakob was still digging. He was standing in the grave, and the sight of him there sent an unexplained shiver down my back. I walked over, and he looked up, his face pale with cold.
‘I don’t suppose you’re here to help,’ he said bitterly.
‘No, brother,’ I said. ‘I have other business.’
He put down the spade, rubbed his hands to get the blood back into them, and looked at me.
‘You told me you’re not liked around here, brother?’ he asked.
‘It’s true enough,’ I said.
‘So why do you stay?’
I looked down at him. ‘Why? Don’t assume that “being hated” is the same as “hating”, brother. I have devoted my life to Morr. I work in his temple, and I tolerate the pettiness of those whose dedication is less than my own.’ I paused to stamp my feet; they were going numb. My words sounded hollow, even to me. ‘But that’s not what you meant to ask. You want to know why you should stay.’
He stared at me as if I had just told him his innermost secret. He paused. ‘I hate it here.’
‘I know.’
‘I want to run away.’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘I want to be a knight, fight for the Empire, live and die a hero. But without my father’s help I’d never get a rank or a command.’
Ah, his father, some minor noble with three sons in the army and the youngest sent into the priesthood to pray for them. ‘Run away. Join a band of mercenaries,’ I suggested.
He looked at me with disdain. ‘There’s no honour in that,’ he said. ‘And mostly they’re Tilean too.’ He spat on the cold earth.
‘But it would be better than being a priest, eh?’ I said. ‘Life’s what you make of it. If you do not make your own way, a way will be made for you. You must choose, brother, you must choose.’
He didn’t reply. As I walked away I heard the ring of the shovel against the earth, striking out like a slowly tolling bell.
The half-rebuilt Temple was crowded with mourners, its normally quiet spaces filled with noise and jostling. Father Ralf’s coffers would be doing well and he would be revelling in the attention which was being paid to him. The throng of people, normally obedient to one wearing the robes of Morr, seemed not to notice me and I had to shove my way between them as I made my way towards the entrance to the priests’ quarters in the far wall, and my cell which lay beyond.
I didn’t get there. A wailing woman tugged at my robe, begging for a blessing, and then a man in rich clothes wanted to know what the Countess’s death augured for the spring rains, and I was trapped by the crowd, speaking words of comfort and saying short prayers for someone I didn’t care for to people I hated. Then Father Ralf stood beside me, at my shoulder.
‘Is the soul of our departed brother flying to Morr?’ he asked, using the Temple’s code to ask if I’d tipped the corpse from the Cliff of Sighs. I shook my head.
‘Sadly, his passing was swift but not welcomed,’ I said, meaning he was killed. Father Ralf looked exasperated.
‘I sorrow. I must learn more of this. Be in the Factorum in five minutes.’ He turned away to minister to the needs of some well-dressed goodwife. I left: I’d been heading to the Factorum anyway. The Watch would be bringing Reinhold’s body there soon.
The Factorum was cold and smelled of death. I sat on one of the scrubbed marble slabs, thinking, waiting for the corpse, and trying to piece together what I knew. Reinhold had failed to find work yesterday, but he had come back with money all the same: money, and the news that Grubheimer was back in town. He returned late, got drunk, took a room alone, and there he was killed. Killed by an assassin, killed almost as if expecting it, almost as if he offered no resistance. Almost as if he felt he should die. That’s a rare thought for Middenheimers, who cling as tenaciously to life as their ancient city clings to its rocky mountaintop.
Yet the more I thought about the way Reinhold had looked, the more I believed he had been prepared to die. He hadn’t put up a fight. People reach that state for many reasons but desperation is not one of them: it may be a reason to take one’s own life, but not to lie back quietly and let it be taken. Drugs, perhaps his wine was drugged? No; if they wanted Reinhold dead, they could have poisoned the wine. There was something more here. I’d seen it before: the sense of something completed, finished, over. A man who was determined to leave on a high note, so when people looked at his life they’d say, ‘What did he accomplish? He accomplished this.’
But Reinhold had been a down-and-out, unable to find a day’s work to pay for a night’s lodging. The thought of imminent death can drive one to incredible ends, but only to escape it – not to welcome it. What had happened to him?
I knew I didn’t have the secret of this yet but, looking at the facts, I thought I knew where it had to be hidden. I needed to find where Reinhold had got the money, and I needed to know whether he had got it before or after he saw Grubheimer in Wendenbahn. This wasn’t some penny-pamphlet tale of intrigue: I was already certain that my friend had been killed by Grubheimer or someone hired by him. And I knew that meant Grubheimer would come after me. Possibly he wanted to kill my old associates first, working his way through what was left of my organisation, knowing that I’d know he was coming for me. That was good. It might give me some time.
There was a sharp knock at the door and Father Ralf entered without waiting for permission. He glared at me. I stood up, my knee-joints cracking.
‘I told you to deal with this matter quickly,’ he said, ‘and you start a murder enquiry out of a flop-house stabbing.’
‘It was more than that,’ I said. ‘I sense it. The dead man was a friend of mine.’ My voice sounded false to me. It was my old self, Dieter, playing the role of a priest of Morr. It made me uneasy.
Father Ralf glared at me in exasperation. ‘Friendship has no place in the life of a priest of Morr, brother. Besides, I did not think you cultivated friends.’
‘He was a friend in my former life.’
No answer. Even Father Ralf knew of my past and my old reputation, and therefore what sort of man the deceased must have been. There was a long pause. Our breaths formed white mist, swirling in the cold lamp-lit air.
‘Well,’ he said, then stopped a moment. ‘And another thing. I’ve learned you spent the afternoon walking around the city with beggars, refusing to listen to mourners who tried to speak to you. This is not behaviour becoming of a priest of our order, brother. It makes us look haughty at a time when we must be at our most open and approachable. Ar-Ulric himself mentioned the matter to me.’
I said nothing. I didn’t remember ignoring anyone on the street but that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. But I doubted that Ar-Ulric, the highest priest of Ulric in the whole Empire, had taken any interest in the matter. Father Ralf was trying to intimidate me and make himself look important at the same time. It might have worked if I cared about either him or Ar-Ulric. But I didn’t.
‘At six bells we are holding the mass ritual of mourning and remembrance for the Countess,’ he continued, ‘to be led by myself and Ar-Ulric. You will take part prominently because it is important that you are seen there. And you will be seen to weep for the Countess. Am I clear?’
‘Yes, father,’ I said plainly. Disagreeing would only have started an argument, and I needed to get rid of him so I could think. He seemed to want an argument anyway, but we were interrupted by another knock at the door. I opened it, and in a blast of cold air there was Schtutt.
‘Help me get this dead bugger inside, father,’ he said, gesturing to a lump lying on a cart behind him. ‘I’d have brought one of the lads but everyone is over at the Nordgarten, minding the mourners at Countess Sophia’s townhouse.’ Then he noticed Father Ralf behind me and dropped into an embarrassed silence.
Ralf made for the door, turning back to me as he reached it. ‘Six bells, brother. Do not be late,’ he said, and left.
Together Schtutt and I lifted the body – the rigor mortis was wearing off and Reinhold felt like a sack of logs – and carried it down the steps, dumping it on one of the marble slabs. Schtutt was panting.
‘I’m not as fit as I used to be in the old days, eh?’ He wiped his brow. ‘But none of us are. He certainly isn’t.’ He gestured at the body. He seemed to be in a mood to chat but I, aware of the passing of time and the presence of Grubheimer somewhere in the city, wasn’t. Still, a thought pricked me.
‘Schtutt, do you remember a Marienburger named Grubheimer? Tall, greasy black hair, Bretonnian accent, got run out of the city for smuggling Black Lotus? About ten years back?’
‘Can’t say I do. But if he sounds Bretonnian he wants to watch out. The city’s too hot for them at the moment, with the rumours about them killing the Countess and all. There’ve been two stabbed in brawls already, and another one fell from a high window and broke his neck.’
‘Unfortunate,’ I said nervously, feeling panicky and distracted. The notion struck me that if Grubheimer had learned which flop-house Reinhold was staying in, he must know by now that I had become a priest, and if I stayed around the Temple I would be an easy victim. I needed to move. ‘But I should–’
‘Though,’ Schtutt said, warming to his theme, ‘I’ve heard from the best authority that the Countess was not assassinated.’
‘No?’ I feigned interest.
‘No. More like a robbery, they reckon. There’s an old dwarf tunnel as comes out in the Countess’s cellar. Nobody knew it was there, but the murderer got in that way. And a stack of her jewels was missing, including the Dauphin of Bretonnia’s engagement ring. Money gone too. She must have come across the robber, and–’
So the dwarfs were likely to pick up the blame for the killing. They didn’t do well in Middenheim. ‘A tragedy, truly,’ I said. ‘We are all the poorer for her loss. Now, there is much I must do.’
‘Aye. I’ll be off.’ He looked discomforted at having his chat cut short, but left anyway.
I sat on the cold slab next to Reinhold and stared down at the body of my friend. How did his death piece together? And why were my instincts telling me that it was important to work out why Reinhold had lain down to die, when there was a man in the city trying to kill me? When I had allowed myself to think like my old self once more, I had expected a surge of ruthlessness, of sudden thought and decisive action, but there had been none of that. Perhaps the thing I had feared, the part of me I had buried eight years ago when I joined Morr’s temple, had lost its edge in time, as I had hoped. Perhaps I had succeeded in destroying my dark half. Perhaps that success would lead to my own destruction.
I still needed to know where Reinhold had got his money. If I was honest, other than running and hiding, I could think of nothing better to do. The old Dieter had never run or hidden, and I wasn’t going to start now. I needed to talk to Louise again.
The sun had set by the time I left the Factorum and the wind had picked up. Down by South Gate it chilled my marrow and blew the embers of the guards’ brazier into fierce redness. I gazed out over the long, twisting bridge, lit by torches, as it curved down from the cliff’s edge to the ground hundreds of feet below. Workmen were still busy with ladders and ropes, lanterns and stone and mortar, toiling to repair the huge breach in the viaduct that the magics of the traitor-wizard Karl-Heinz Wasmeier had caused, as he fled from the city after the last carnival. It would take weeks more to finish the job.
Behind me, in the glow of the brazier, Louise finished the pie I had bought her with the appetite of a woman who has not eaten all day. Now she would be more inclined to talk. She knew I had been Reinhold’s friend, but I would still be asking hard questions. Better to start with softer ones, to make it sound as if I cared.
‘How did you come to Middenheim?’ I asked. She glanced at me in that way that horses do if they’re nervous and about to shy. I smiled at her, my face feeling odd at the unaccustomed gesture.
She said, ‘Back home, in Bretonnia, I worked for a woman. She was with a noble, brought me here when that was… when she left him. She was wild, fierce, but much money. I serve for six years. Then she throw me in the street with nothing. For no reason.’ She stopped. I had expected anger or rage, but she must have told this story so many times that its emotion had all drained away. Yet I could tell there was still deep, black pain, far below. But was there resentment? Hatred? I didn’t know.
I looked at her for a moment while I groped for the right thing to say. Then it came to me, all of it, in a sudden rush like a spring flood, and I said, ‘You’re talking about the Countess! You said her name this afternoon. You were trying to tell me something.’
Louise didn’t speak but her eyes said I was right.
‘Louise, what are you afraid of?’
She said nothing.
‘Did Reinhold give you something last night?’
She nodded, despite herself. Tears were beginning to streak her cheeks. With frightening speed, skeins of logic were weaving themselves together in my mind.
‘Reinhold knew how much you hated the Countess, didn’t he? And you’re afraid that he had something to do with her death. You’re scared, because you realise now that you don’t really want her dead, and because you don’t want to believe Reinhold could do something like that… and because if he did kill her, then people might think you’re involved too.’
She shook her head. For a moment I was confused.
‘Louise, do you mean that’s not what you believe, or,’ and the realisation hit me hard and sudden, ‘or because it’s what you know?’
She nodded, a little nod, her silent weeping unabated.
‘Did he give you some jewellery last night?’
A tiny nod.
‘And you recognised it.’
Another, tinier.
‘Because it was the Countess’s.’
She didn’t need to nod. I already knew I had the truth. I took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to be easy.
‘Louise, you have to trust me. The jewellery was the Countess’s, but Reinhold didn’t get it from her. He stole it from the man who killed her – that Bretonnian he saw earlier that day.’
‘The Grubworm,’ she said in a small voice.
‘Yes, Grubworm. And then Grubworm went to the flop-house and killed Reinhold to get it back, but he’d already given it to you.’ I paused. She said nothing. I had no idea if she believed me. ‘Louise, it is my duty as a priest of Morr to understand death. We commune with death, we speak to it. We live our lives surrounded by it, and we comprehend things about it that most people could never understand. We know who killed the Countess. He will be arrested soon. Reinhold had nothing to do with it.’
I paused to let my words sink in. She still said nothing, her head buried in her hands. The cold wind blew between us, the thin flames of the brazier warming nothing at all.
‘But you must give me the jewellery,’ I said.
At last she looked up and met my eye. A long moment passed, and then she scrabbled amongst her dirty rags, and I knew I had won. She held out a balled fist, and I reached out to receive what lay within. As I did, she grabbed my arm with her other hand, and held hard.
‘I have your word for the truth?’ she hissed.
‘You have my solemn word as a priest of Morr,’ I lied.
A jewelled ring fell into my hand: heavy, with the soft warmth that only solid gold has. I cradled it, thinking. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but I knew that at least I now had the truth of yesterday evening in my grasp.
Because Reinhold had killed the Countess. He knew the old dwarf tunnels under the city better than anyone except a dwarf. He could pick the locks, there had been blood on his pocket-knife, and he’d given Louise that ring. More importantly, I’d known Reinhold for long enough to understand what he was capable of doing. He believed that the ends justified the means, and his means were ruthless. I’d never asked him to kill anyone, but he had killed while working for me, more than once.
