When Raya set out from her home in Fork Crossing the next morning, with Benn and Dondar in tow, she was still trying to understand of what coincidence Mistress Nerlav had spoken. She lived in the neighborhood where Master Nerlav had once worked, the month of his death, and now was part of the leadership of a revolution that was affecting far more than the widow. It seemed a stretch to draw any sort of connection from it, but the woman’s plea seemed earnest.
Dondar’s scowl had a clear definition—this was an fool’s errand, all for the sake of Raya’s sympathetic will.
Whenever she looked at Benn, he smiled reassuringly. He only grew distant when she spoke of missing her father and mother, for he had no one to get home to. Beyond that, his kind words were only in support of hers.
There were a hundred construction projects in the inner city of Ith, but only a dozen or so towers. It was not difficult to find one of the few towers under fresh construction. There were three or four teams it seemed, but one group of rugged, shirtless men were labouring on a wooden scaffold, dotted with cranes. They didn’t seem to be working on the tower, simply aiding the hauling of materials up to the fourth storey and maintaining the pulleys and contraptions that bore the heaviest loads.
Raya heard a few snickers as she stepped into the construction yard through an opening in a short stone wall, and one man called, “Has the entertainment arrived?” Dondar put a hand on his sword hilt and pulled the brass blade out an inch, and the hubbub subsided. The men kept working.
A short bearded man with an open tunic dangling around his shoulders wiped his hands on a cloth and smudged what was left on them trying to wipe his sweaty brow clean. “Begging your pardon, mistress, can I offer you any assistance?”
“I’m friends of Carack and the rebels,” she said, quietly, and got a raised eyebrow. It was a little risky to identify such an allegiance, but almost everyone except the Mage Kings hated the Mage Kings. “I’m investigating the death of Master Nerlav last year.”
“It’s been a while, but I’ll help however I can,” the man said. “I’m Vorgin, old Elric’s right hand man.”
Raya nodded. “Mistress Nerlav mentioned you, I believe. But she said there was another employee that changed position at the same time… he left?”
Vorgin nodded, and waved her away from the workmen. They found some shade beneath a cedar near a small clay building. “Master Nerlav hired the fellow himself, so we were shocked by what happened. A sell-sword, so perhaps we should have known not to trust him. His name was Dajo, I think… No, Dago. He had quite the story, but vanished the day that our good Master was killed.”
“Dago?” Raya said, despite herself. She had heard the name many times, and had met the man once, in Olston. Dago had vanished the same day as Hanik the guard, and Raya had only found sign of him again in the house in Vagren, in the puzzle of Nalisa Orr. Nalisa and Axar’s names had both been scrawled at the foot of Mount Lukar, so the disappeared name could have been involved with that crisis as well. Raya tried to refrain from her shock at Vorgin’s words. “Was he a good employee?” she asked, innocently.
The man folded his arms and nodded thoughtfully. “He was a very hard worker, and was never late,” Vorgin explained. “But he always seemed a little off his balance, you know? Like he was a little mad, but not enough to be a problem? Apparently he’d been a prisoner of some random sorceress before he got to Ith, and killed her to get away… so did he kill Master Nerlav, despite everything the master did? I wouldn’t put it past him.”
Raya shook her head. Another connection of Dago to a sorceress—probably Nalisa Orr. This train of conversation was better answered by one of Raya’s other contacts. Vorgin might have useful information, but she needed more basis and background information for that conversation. “Who else might have wanted Master Nerlav dead? You seem to have benefited from that.”
Vorgin’s cheeks flushed, but he forced a reassuring smile and explained, “I was truly the only one who knew the management side of our company enough to pick it up when the Master died. The only reason I refused to let Mistress Nerlav withdraw more of our accounts is because of her excessive spending. She wasted more than a thousand coins on investigators to determine who killed her husband. Did she scrounge up more coin to pay you too?”
“I haven’t accepted any money from her,” Raya said. “She just approached me and asked for my help.”
“I see,” Vorgin muttered. “Well, I was not happy to treat her how I did, but I had to.”
“So who else did she pay?”
The workman sighed. “She bribed a city guard to look into the death, but it didn’t illuminate any light. After that she hired a mercenary to find answers at any cost—he learned some things, but she couldn’t afford to pay him the other half of his fee, not without borrowing more from the company. We just could not afford it.”
Raya nodded. It seemed quite reasonable. “Thank you for your time,” she said. “I think I have some other questions I need to ask in other places.”
He tipped his head to her and walked back toward the noisy scaffold, while she collected her thoughts and returned to where Dondar and Benn waited near the short surrounding wall. She scratched her head and explained what she had learned to Benn.
“What are you thinking now?” he asked.
Raya shrugged. “We’re going to have a couple words with Miss Nerlav,” she said.
It took them most of the afternoon to find Miss Nerlav’s home on the edge of the Low Dales, even with the help of directions from a few pedestrians. When they at last found the correct estate, Raya was a little surprised by its state of repair. The grounds were overgrown with weeds and bushes, while a broken wagon leaned against a dusty porch table. The woman opened the door after only a moment of delay, and invited Raya and her friends to sit in her study. While the main book shelves were dusty and laden with books, it was clear that a lot of the room’s contents had been sold.
The woman straightened her wrinkled wool dress and asked, “Have you learned anything?”
“I spoke with Vorgin, at the work site and learned that a man named Dago is his top suspect for the crime. Dago was an employee that your husband hired, even though he had a concerning background.” As Raya spoke, Mistress Nerlav began to nod. Raya continued, “I also asked about how the company changed hands and how your access to the treasury lapsed.”
Mistress Nerlav blinked. “I know this already. Vorgin is a family friend, and these were the first details we established. Did you find out where Dago went after he killed my husband? Or why he did?”
Raya blinked. “Actually, I briefly met a man named Dago in my village, in Olston,” she explained. “It was around the same time. A little less than a year ago, I suppose.”
“What?” the widow questioned. “What was he doing there? Hiding?”
“No, just travelling,” Raya told her. “He wanted to buy some fresh meat I had hunted, but then never showed up. At the same time, a guardsman disappeared without a trace.”
“Are the two crimes related?” Mistress Nerlav asked. “Did Dago kill two men, then, to the best of your knowledge?”
Raya leaned forward in her chair. “I do not know.” The mention of a sorceress from Vorgin made her suspect there was more to the story.
“It seems likely,” Benn said, quietly. “It might also explain why Dago disappeared from Olston.”
“But we found no word of him in Vagren,” Raya murmured.
“So we don’t know much more about him or his whereabouts?” Mistress Nerlav asked, quietly.
Raya shook her head. “But I hope to find out more,” she said. “Thank you for your time today, and we’ll return when we have more to tell you.”
“No, no,” the widow said. “I must thank you.”
As they walked back down the overgrown footpath and out of the rundown estate, she raised a hand against the brilliant sunset. The home was built on a gentle hill, as the city covered many, and the footpath had such a breath-taking view. Raya remembered many days seeing such a sight from a hilltop near Olston, out in the wilds with her bow on her back.
“What’s next?” Benn asked.
Raya frowned. “Axar might know more about the sorceress, which is the only clue we have about Dago that hasn’t already been explored. So next, we speak with him.”