Retribution

The List

We entered a small room by a discreet oak door, which had been painted the same terracotta shade as the walls. It was the kind of entrance one might easily pass without noticing. Next to the door were shelves bearing ornaments and small busts of old Detratan kings, which only added to the reasons not to notice this door.

The room had a remarkable iron-framed window that overlooked one of the kitchen gardens. Even from here I could see it was rich in herbs. Beyond stood a small fountain, and the garden was smothered in several beautiful arrays of rose bushes. The study was wood-panelled in a way that reminded me of a fine room in a monastery rather than a Detratan-styled villa. Evidently this had been added on at a later stage, perhaps to satisfy Lydia’s need for discretion. It was a narrow room, too, no more than eight paces wide with bare floorboards, a desk, various writing implements and four heavy shelves of ledgers.

With an extra air of confidence, Sulma Tan directed me to sit at the desk, and pointed out a piece of paper that glowed warmly in the evening sunlight.

‘What am I looking at?’ I asked.

‘It is a list of names I found within an otherwise empty ledger, written in a very archaic form of the language. What do you think is strange about these names?’

I glanced over the list but was unable to decipher the script. I asked Sulma Tan if she could read it out. ‘Well, the important names on this list are Grendor of the Cape, Bishop Tahn Valin. . And a little further down, Lydia Marinus. There are four other names though.’

‘Do you know who these people are?’

She scanned the list once again. ‘This couple are bankers, for the most part, but they own an armoury, which the queen uses to supply our own military. I can’t recall their names. The two others, Han and Lunus Saul Kahn. . I can’t recall their roles. . But I would think these four people should be very worried for their safety.’

‘I agree. What is the list’s purpose?’

‘I believe it to be a notification of access to. . just a moment.’ Sulma Tan reached over to one of the nearby shelves to retrieve a map, and laid it out flat across the desk. ‘This is the Kotonese coast and islands. And now things get very interesting. The access list, or perhaps a list of passengers, is for this little island here. Evum. I have never seen it before.’

‘Evum,’ I repeated. ‘So it’s not the stone, but an island?’

‘Yes, yes. Well, according to this anyway, and it lies a hundred miles north-east of our coast. I have just conducted the greatest survey of our nation and its properties — yet I, too, have never heard of it. But it exists. Simply not on any of our maps.’

‘How could it be missed?’ I asked.

‘Also of interest is that Grendor, being a naval officer, conducted cartographical surveys — or arranged for them to be conducted — of the sea and coastline.’

‘And he somehow missed off an island.’ I could not believe what I was hearing. ‘Let me get this quite clear. This list — which we can assume to be a list of victims — involves passengers to the island of Evum, a hitherto unknown place. Evum isn’t the stone — but perhaps the location where the stone was mined.’

Sulma Tan nodded. ‘That was where my thoughts were taking me.’

‘By Polla. .’ I breathed, and looked back at the list of names. The only script I could understand was the date, which was for a period over two years ago. Was that the last time the journey to Evum had been carried out?

‘What’s this place?’ I pointed to the almost illegible word. ‘Brutahn. I recognize that from your maps, I think.’

Sulma Tan peered over, her eyes narrowing. ‘It is a port town at the mouth of the estuary, the next settlement up from Kuvash. It must be where they sailed from, as it was discreet enough. What do we do now?’

Leaning back in the chair and staring out of the window, I contemplated this question. The sun finally lowered itself over the far hills.

‘We protect the others on the list. We put them on watch — in secrecy, though, since there is a very good chance we can capture the murderers in mid act.’ I looked up at Sulma Tan. ‘Is that possible? To shadow these people but not have anyone know about it?’

Without hesitation she replied, ‘We can do this immediately upon our return.’

‘Presently I would like to look further into the matter of this new island.’

‘Yes, so would I,’ Sulma Tan sighed.

I sent word out to round up as many of those on the premises as possible. After they had gathered in the atrium, I informed them that the search could carry on, but that some of us would be returning to Kuvash immediately.

An hour later we were riding back. Evening light glimmered in hilltop pools that I had not noticed on the way, and now and then we passed through a meadow of flowers emptying their delightful scent into the air. The mild climate and the tang of smoke from burning fires in yurts made for a pleasant journey, one that possessed a calming silence. It enabled me to contemplate what we had found, and I wondered if we were making one too many assumptions.

Sometimes supposition, trying to tease out the correct way of thinking, or in this case attempting to get into the minds of the murderers, was all I had to go on. It was not much, admittedly, and it often went against my more logical, Polla-based instincts.

Why had an entire island been kept off maps by Grendor? The obvious answer was that he did not want anyone finding the place, but what was on the island worth protecting? If this was the precious mineral I had mistakenly called evum, then the group of people on Lydia’s list had been involved with its extraction. That was all well and good, but I still could not link it to the murders. Mining precious stones is not worthy of murder, unless someone else was after it?

But even then, there were more subtle ways to go about it. These murders were violent and very ritualistic incidents. If someone had wanted to take over the island, for example, then the obvious deaths of individuals in Kuvash would attract attention.

No, whatever that mineral was, I did not think it the reason for the murders. It was on Evum that we would find answers, perhaps, and I was determined to go there after we protected the others on the list. However, hours later, as we arrived back in the Sorghatan Prefecture back in Kuvash, it soon became apparent that we were already too late.

Two more people on the list had been found dead.