As ever, the physic wasted no time. “I do believe the creature and your uncles died of the same cause,” she said. “If you care to look?” She drew back a thin cloth. I squeezed my eyes shut and turned away, instinctively, at the flashed sight of layers of peeled-back skin and fur, and neat piles of slimy organs. I did not care to look, as it turned out. I forced my eyes open but my stomach bucked in revulsion. Tain, looking equally horrified, squeezed my shoulder. Jov stepped closer.
“The stomach,” he said, and Thendra nodded, pressing into one of the gleaming white blobs beside the animal’s corpse.
“It had two stomachs. You can see the damage to the first, but not the second, yes?”
I leaned close enough to glimpse what looked like heavy corrosion of the pale stomach lining, then had to turn away again. The thought of this happening to my Tashi … My eyes burned again. I envied Jov’s dispassion.
“And my uncle?”
Thendra’s face froze, her gaze jumping to Tain and back again. We’d never have progressed beyond primitive medicine without internal examinations of human corpses, but it was neither discussed openly, nor performed on the bodies of important citizens. Although the old religion was no longer commonly practiced in the cities, especially Silasta, death rituals remained an important part of our culture. Word could never get out that a Credo or, worse, the Chancellor himself, had been so desecrated. Jov gave her a wan smile. “He knows we gave you permission, Thendra,” he said.
“Credo Etan was one of the most learned minds in the city,” Tain said. “And he was the most honorable Councilor and adviser that my uncle could have asked for. He would have wanted us to use anything that could help protect us.”
She nodded stiffly. “I did examine Credo Etan, yes. Most respectfully.”
“Of course,” Jov murmured.
“I saw the same damage to his stomach and to part of his intestines, but also damage to his lungs and some other organs. I believe his heart failed, in the end.” She shook her head, looking back at the leksot’s stomach. “I would have expected complaints of abdominal pain,” she said. “The damage is most obvious in that area. There must have been some kind of numbing agent that prevented them from feeling the pain.”
“So what caused it? Was this a disease?”
Jov and Thendra exchanged looks. I wondered how much of our role she might have guessed. “No,” she said bluntly. “No, Honored Heir. The stomach is the area of greatest effect, and there was likewise some damage to the mouth and throat. There is no sign of corrosion in or around the scratches Credo Etan received from the creature. This was an ingested poison, consumed by both this animal and the Chancellor; of what kind, I do not know.”
Tain exhaled like he’d been struck. Jov merely nodded. I supposed I had known, too.
“Someone poisoned them.” From the dull resignation of his tone it was clear Tain had convinced himself it had been accidental. How much I had hoped the same.
Jov glanced at the dead animal then pointedly at me. His thoughts bled through his quick frown. My unease about the leksot’s placement in the garden, and the trampled feverhead, returned. Someone had deliberately poisoned the animal. To throw suspicion on a visiting noble, or Credo Lazar? Or in the hopes of disguising a murder as an accidental infection from an exotic pet?
“Thendra, did your apprentices help with the autopsy?” Tain asked suddenly.
“No, Honored Heir. Credo Jovan asked me to do this, but it is … unorthodox. I thought it best to—”
“Yes. Yes, it was best.” Tain squeezed his arms across his chest, tucking his hands into his armpits. His head made a little bobbing motion, like a constant affirmation of some inner thought. “Thendra, please promise me something.”
The physic gave a tense nod and regarded us, unblinking.
“Tell no one what you found. In your hospital records state only that you observed the leksot’s body and noted similar symptoms as Credo Etan and the Chancellor. Don’t tell anyone that you performed an internal examination, not of the animal and certainly not of Credo Etan. Just conclude it was likely the carrier of an exotic disease.”
We needed to know more. If whoever had poisoned the leksot believed we had been taken in by the ruse, we might have an advantage.
“Yes, Honored Heir,” Thendra said. “I understand. The city is reeling from this horrible tragedy, yes? It does not need to panic further.” She paused, a shake of her hands marking her transition from tension back to her usual gruff concern. “I must advise that you be careful, Honored Heir. If the Chancellor was indeed murdered…” She trailed off, but the unspoken end of the thought echoed around my head as if she had shouted it. Poison meant someone had targeted the Chancellor, with a poison Etan had failed to detect and we could not identify. Poison meant Tain could be targeted next.
And my brother with him.
* * *
The longhorn rolled out in grieving notes over the still lake, the sound racing across the water until it echoed into nothing on the far shore. Jovan stood in front of me, lined up with the other Councilors, his measured breathing punctuating the slower notes of the longhorn.
Earlier, Tain had performed the ceremonial release of Caslav’s body into the Bright Lake, to join his ancestors in their final rest. As the longhorns now played the traditional mourning music, he accepted personal condolences from those gathered as he moved down the line of Credolen and other prominent citizens. There only remained the final song, and then we could slip away. The public display of grief was part of our duties, of course, but oh, to be allowed to just take Etan and bury him in our homelands, instead of suffering through more scrutiny! Perhaps then we could say a proper goodbye to our Tashi, free of obligation and duty for at least a few days.
Just as Tain reached us, a commotion broke out down the shore. A messenger, right arm tattooed with the stylized pen of the Administrative Guild, same as my own, scurried toward us, his legs a frenzied staccato against his rigid body and bowed head. Everyone stared. The entire city had been shut down today for this ceremony; what could be important enough to interrupt it?
“Crowds are approaching the city from the west, Honored Heir—I mean to say, Honored Chancellor,” the messenger panted, voice low. “The guard at the west gate was afraid it was some kind of invading army, but she looked through the spyglass and it’s countryfolk. Peasants.”
“What do you mean, crowds?” Tain asked, picking up on the messenger’s undercurrent of unrest. The nearest Councilors edged closer to eavesdrop. The musicians playing the ceremonial music faltered and petered off.
“Hundreds of people. They’ve got something over their faces, wrapped around their heads.”
“Headscarves?” Jovan said, hesitant. Though rare in the cities, most countryfolk tied their hair with scarves because of the winds.
“More like masks, or veils, Credo.”
“Is it a religious thing? Lots of people in the country are still earthers.”
Jov looked over his shoulder to me for assistance, but I studied foreign cultures, not our own population. Earthers, a slang term for believers in the old Darfri religion, weren’t terribly common in the city, and less so in the higher classes; no one in our family or any of the other prominent Silastian families had been religious in generations, that I knew of. Belief in spirits was generally regarded as an embarrassing relic of the past, unfit for a modern and civilized society. Still, we’d all been believers in the beginning; someone likely remembered more about the old rituals than I.