The cost of silence

They were late. They had ridden as hard as they could, as fast as they could. But they were still late. Nylarn Baxtyrnus Lamanbhurg, Lord of the House of Sherhor, overlord to a dozen lords and scores of knights, master of half a dozen castles, twice as many towns, and hundreds upon hundreds of villages, was dead.

Raina could hardly believe it. Her father had been assassinated. A poisoned crossbow bolt to his left shoulder blade. The physician was beside himself. He kept apologizing.

"I didn't think the bolt was poisoned, my lady. I pulled it out, patched up Lord Nylarn, and thought he would get better. He got worse. When I checked the wound, it was red and filling with pus. By then, it was too late. I did all I could but that only delayed his passing."

"Who did it?" Willy asked.

"A woman," Lady Carla sobbed. "We don't know who. We were on the road. The bolt came from behind. We only saw her run away. Two men chased her but she killed them too. It's how we knew it was poison. One died from a shot to the arm. It shouldn't have killed him."

"And this woman is just in the wind?" Raina asked.

"We sent Hyrman with the hounds. The woman had a half-day head start. But Hyrman will find her. He always finds his quarry," Lady Carla asserted, more out of hope than certainty.

"And you don't have any suspects?" Willy asked.

Lady Carla sobbed some more. "No. Nylarn had many enemies. It could be any of them. It could be some deranged peasant. The woman's garb was very common. Or it could be a skilled assassin pretending to be a peasant. We only saw the back of her and the hair."

Raina went to console her mother. She couldn't bear to look into her father's twisted face. Nylarn Lamanbhurg's final moments had been pure torture. But Willy stood over the bed, turned her father over, and examined the wound in his upper back. "What kind of poison is this?" he asked.

"Siirasisuch, my lord," the physician said. "It used for—"

"I know what it's used for," Willy cut him off. "Poisoning wolves and stray dogs. It has a simple antidote. Why didn't you recognize the symptoms?"

Raina was startled at the mention of the poison. It was the same one used on her and Kojor. She said nothing. Now was hardly the time. But in her heart of hearts, she knew… Her body grew cold and her heart thudded like a war drum. Raina held on to her mother as tightly as she could, sobbing with her.

"It's normally ingested, my lord," the doctor explained. "This is the first time I have seen it put on a crossbow bolt and shot directly into the blood. The symptoms are different. And it's more lethal this way."

"You cannot fit enough Siirasisuch on an arrowhead to kill a puppy, let alone a grown man. That's why you put it in food," Willy said.

"That is quite right, my lord," the doctor agreed. "It's got me stumped too. The powder would blow away if you released it and even if you turned the poison into a paste and slathered the entire shaft, you would need the whole shaft to go in to have any hope of lethality. But the bleeding would kill quicker than the poison anyway so using poison would just be overkill. But only the tip went into Lord Nylarn. I don't know how it could have killed him. That's why the thought of poison never crossed my mind until it was too late. I thought it was a regular wound."

"Where is this crossbow bolt?" Willy asked.

"I will find it for you, my lord," the doctor promised. He left and returned a while later with three crossbow bolts. They looked like any other bolt Raina had ever seen. Short shafts, the length of an arm from wrist to elbow, fletched with red feathers and tipped with rusted iron. Willy examined them closely. "There seems to be nothing strange about them, my lord," the doctor observed.

"It seems so," Willy agreed. He picked all three up. "Yet the shafts are a little too thick. Not enough to be troublesome. I have seen thicker shafts before but they were usually of cruder construction. Can you see how smooth these ones are?"

"Yes, my lord," the doctor agreed.

"Whoever made these shafts was too skilled a woodworker to unnecessarily waste wood."

"But that tells us nothing, my lord. He could have made a mistake," the doctor said.

"Indeed," Willy said. He hefted one bolt and twirled it in his fingers. He handed it to the doctor. "Twirl it." The doctor did as Willy asked. "Notice anything?"

"The weight is not evenly distributed in the shaft, my lord," the doctor said. "It keeps shifting for some reason."

Willy nodded and took back the crossbow bolt. He unsheathed his dagger and began knocking the flat of the blade against the shaft. The whole thing rang hollow. And metallic. He tried the same with the other two crossbow bolts. All rang hollow.

Willy sliced the shaft off one bolt and hit steel. The whole shaft was steel, hidden inside a hollowed wooden tube. The whole room gasped when Willy pulled it out. The tip and shaft formed an intricate syringe. When Willy shook it, a liquid sloshed around inside. When he pushed the arrowhead, some of that liquid squirted out and everyone darted away to avoid being sprayed.

Willy split open the other two crossbow bolts and found the same complicated syringe hidden inside. "It wasn't some deranged peasant, mother," Willy told Lady Carla. Then he examined the giant murder syringe. It had no markings of any kind.

Carla Lamanbhurg sobbed some more and Raina stiffened. Carla's sister, Mariana, who hadn't said a word before, spoke up, "Why go through all the trouble with such a complicated construction? Why not use a more effective poison?"

"A more effective poison would cost a lot more. That limits the number of suspects to the very rich. A cheap poison and a crossbow? Any peasant can get her hands on that. Whoever is behind this assassination wanted us to believe the assassin was just some deranged peasant with an axe to grind. It's why he went to such great lengths to conceal the poison syringes."

"Who would do such a thing?" Raina's mother sobbed. "The Reendeni?"

"I don't know," Willy said. "But why would the Reendeni target Lord Nylarn? I live closer to them and I'm more dangerous. I am the one who has been fighting them. It would make more sense for them to try killing me. Whoever did this had a grudge against Lord Nylarn. Or perhaps he's coming for us all. Is there anybody in particular you can think of?"

"No," Lady Carla said. "Lots of lords don't like Nylarn. But I can't think of anyone who disliked him enough to assassinate him."

"One of them has," Willy said matter-of-factly. Then he shook one of the murder syringes. "This is intricate work. Your regular blacksmith or armorer couldn't do it even if he killed himself trying. You need a highly skilled master craftsman. How many around here are capable of this?"

"I don't know," Carla Lamanbhurg said. "Big Roror would know."

"Where is he?"

"He went on the hunt. With Hyrman."

"I think I can help, my lord," the doctor said. "I only know of two smiths around here who can make a proper medical syringe, let alone anything as complicated as these. All the others are in the cities. Lamania, Luche Bend, Cardinum, Confluencia, and Deltopolis."

"Confluencia and Deltopolis are too far from here," Willy said. He beckoned Leytyrn Brooksbhurg, Aunt Mariana's visiting son. "Send men to Lamania, Luche Bend, and Cardinum. And the two local smiths the doctor mentioned. If you can't find the craftsman, expand your search radius. Go to the ends of the earth if you have to. Find the smith who made these and find his customer. If we're lucky, we'll find both our assassin and her paymaster."

"At once, my lord," Cousin Leytyrn promised, suddenly deferential to Willy.

Raina watched her cousin leave and prayed. Whoever had killed her father or sent the assassin was coming for her. Whoever it was had wanted her dead first and that wasn't going to change.

Her silence had only made the unknown killer bolder. Her silence had killed her father. Her silence was going to get her killed. She knew it in her bones. But who to tell? Her mother? Her aunt? Willy? Would any of them understand?