Thalsedon, 1459 * * * * * The last man Ion Ronir-Varros expected to see waiting in his office that morning was Lecon Rhellmanos, the Chief Investigator of the Thalsedon City Watch. "Good morning, Chief," said Ion as he hung his cloak on the rack by the door, "To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?" "I have a problem, Deputy Minister," said Rhellmanos, "And after consulting with my superiors and Minister Ghere, it is about to become *your* problem, also." He smiled humorlessly as he placed a leather-covered dispatch box on Ion's desk. "That's the file." Ion sat down behind his desk and opened the dispatch box. Inside was a collection of documents neatly bound with red ribbon. He untied the ribbon, and began to examine the documents. The top document was labelled: 'Post-Mortem Report for Erik von Kashaar'. As Ion began to read, Chief Rhellmanos began to fill him in. "Day before yesterday, a landlady down in Riverside came to a Watch Post. One of her lodgers, Erik von Kashaar, hadn't been seen for a week, the rent was due, and there was a nasty smell coming from within his locked room. The post commander was no dummy, and he sent for investigators and a Coronite priest. "When they got to the flat, they had to break the door down. Inside, they found von Kashaar sitting in a chair in front of a window, with the end of a crossbow bolt sticking out of his left ear. The window was also shut and locked. The room hand been searched." Ion looked up from the post-mortem report. "A locked room? How did the killer get in?" "We don't know," said Rhellmanos, "and it gets worse, as you'll see if you read farther in to the autopsy report. The crossbow bolt came from one of those 'one-shots' that your Ministry invented." "And you suspect that an agent of the Ministry of Special Projects killed this von Kashaar?" Rhellmanos shook his head in negation. "No, and if you read page three of the postmortem report, you'll see why." Ion turned to page three and read silently for a moment, before reading aloud, "'Due to the nearly total lack of bleeding from the wound, it is my opinion that it was inflicted *after* death'?! Who would shoot a corpse? And how did he actually die?" "Well, it's on the next page," said Rhellmanos, "but to sum it up, he was stabbed in the back with a very thin, narrow, and long blade, possibly a lady's hat-pin or a stiletto. The surface wound was very small and barely bled at all, but the tip of the blade nicked an artery in von Kashaar's left lung. He bled to death, internally. According to the examiner, he probably never knew he'd been stabbed. He just felt tired, sat down in his chair, and never got up." Ion was reading more of the post-mortem report. "It says here that as much as an hour might have elapsed between when von Kashaar was stabbed and when he actually died . . . stomach contents weren't very helpful, since he'd been dead a week when his body was found, and alchemical analysis showed no drugs or poisons in his system." He put down the report, and steepled his fingers. "So why, Chief Investigator, aside from the presence of the one-shot bolt, is this murder a matter for Special Projects?" "Because of who Erik von Kashaar was," came the reply. "He was a Kaeiran expatriate living in Thalsedon. He came here in 1443 as a staffer in the Information Secretariat section of the Kaeiran Embassy. In 1456, he apparently resigned his position at the embassy, and joined a Kaeiran merchant house, Von Kiviri, as their agent here in Thalsedon. "He seems to have been something of a deal-broker, matching buyers to sellers and taking commissions on the trades. There were complaints about sharp dealing, but nothing obviously criminal. For the last year, he seems to have been involved in a project to construct a major watermill complex on the Imperial River above Tirroth in partnership with several Sedonian merchant houses. Apparently, he and his partners were planning to build a whole complex centered around steel-making, using the river's flow to drive bellows on the furnaces and forges, and hammer-mills for beating out plates. His proposal involved building a dam, but the consortium was being sued by other mill-owners to prevent construction." Ion frowned. "A dam could obstruct river traffic, reduce the water available for irrigation, and have an adverse effect on the flour and fulling mills below Tirroth. You think someone killed him over that?" Chief Rhellmanos shrugged. "It's possible. Someone stabs a former agent of the Kaeiran Information Secretariat who's involved in litigation over Sedonian water rights on the street. He comes home, sits down and dies. Someone else then shoots him in the head with a weapon that's supposed to only be available to agents of the Ministry of Special Projects, while all the ways in and out of the room are locked. And then there was what we found under his bed . . . it should be in the box, at the bottom." Ion reached into the dispatch box and drew out an amulet hanging on a long chain. The amulet was in the shape of a grasping hand with long, pointed fingernails. "So," breathed Ion, "the plot thickens." Chief Rhellmanos nodded. "Minister Ghere and Minister Ellis want us to find out who killed Erik von Kashaar, who tried to kill him after he was dead, if his death has security implications, and why that amulet was in his room. There's a list of von Kashaar's friends and business associates in that stack of documents, and Minister Ghere has a carriage waiting for us out front. He suggested strongly that we not delay." With a nod, Ion took the list of names, put the other documents back in the dispatch box, and stood up. "Very well, let's go talk to the landlady." * * * * * Andrew ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send mail to celandra-off@phoenyx.net.
