Traitor's Moon

“Did you find anything else near the body?”
    â€œJust the cloth.”
    â€œWhere is the Cup now?”
    The older boy shrugged. “I put it back on the stone.”
    â€œGo and fetch it at once!” Seregil ordered sharply. “Better yet, carry it to Brythir í Nien of Silmai and explain what has happened. Tell the khirnari I fear poison.”
    â€œAura’s Cup poisoned?” the woman gasped. “That’s impossible!”
    â€œThere’s no sense taking chances. If you can, learn if anyone has used it in the meantime. Hurry, please!”
    The moment they were gone, he let out a snort of annoyance. “Thanks to their kindness, we may never pick up the trail now.”
    â€œNo wonder no one saw him go out,” Thero murmured, hunkeringdown beside the body. “These are the clothes he had on last night. He must not have come home at all.”
    â€œBeka said he refused an escort home from Ulan’s house.”
    The wizard touched Torsin’s face gingerly. “My experience with death is still quite limited, it seems. I’ve never seen a person turn blue like that. What can it mean?”
    â€œSuffocation, most likely.” Seregil held up the handkerchief. “His lungs finally gave out on him, drowning him in his own blood. Of course, he may have been strangled or smothered, too. We’d better have a look at the rest of him, just to be sure. Help me strip him.”
    And pray to Aura he wasn’t murdered
, he thought. There had never been a murder in Sarikali as far as he knew. Better that Skala didn’t set the precedent. There was no telling how the ’faie would react to that.
    Thero might be unversed in death, but the war had toughened him to its aftermath. In his sheltered days at the Orëska House, the young wizard had lacked the stomach for such things; now he worked with grim determination, mouth pressed into a tight line as they cut and pulled the clothes from the stiff limbs.
    They found no obvious wounds or bruising, nor any evidence of theft. Torsin’s skull and long bones were sound, and his right hand and wrists showed no wounds indicating he’d warded off an attacker; the left fist would have to wait until the rigor passed.
    â€œSo what do you think? Was it poison?” Thero whispered when they’d finished.
    Seregil prodded at the rigid muscles of the dead man’s face and neck, then pried back the wrinkled lips. “It’s hard to say with the discoloration. Any feel of magic on him?”
    â€œNone. What was he doing by the pool?”
    â€œIt lies between here and Virésse fai’thast. He must have stopped there to wet his throat, then collapsed. He was staggering by the time he reached it.”
    â€œHow do you know that?”
    Seregil picked up a discarded shoe. “Look at the toe, how scuffed and stained it is. Torsin would never wear dirty shoes to a banquet; therefore, it happened after he left. And see how dirt is ground into the front of his robe about the knees and arms? He fell at least twice getting to the water, yet had the presence of mind to use the Cup instead of simply dipping it up with his hand. He was sick, all right, but I’d say death itself overtook him suddenly there at the water’s edge.”
    â€œBut the contortion of the body?”
    â€œIt hasn’t the look of a death agony, if that’s what you mean. He collapsed and fell over sideways. The death rigor hardened his limbs this way. It makes for a grisly corpse, I grant you, but there’s nothing unusual about it. All the same, I want a look at where they found him.”
    â€œWe can’t just leave him lying here.”
    â€œHave the servants lay him out upstairs.”
    Thero looked down at his soiled hands and sighed. “First Idrilain and now him. Death seems to be dogging us.”
    Seregil sighed. “Both were sick and old. Let’s hope Bilairy has had enough of us through his gate for a while.”
    Adzriel arrived in the hall just as Seregil and Thero were leaving for the Vhadäsoori.
    â€œKheeta sent word. Poor Lord Torsin!” she exclaimed. “He’ll be greatly missed. Will there be another mourning period, do you think?”
    â€œI doubt it,” Seregil replied. “He wasn’t royal kin.”
    â€œThat’s just as well,” she mused, pragmatic despite her concern. “The negotiations are tenuous enough as things