"By the Light!" Seregil hissed. The last thing Klia or the negotiations needed was another death. "Does anyone know when he went out this morning?"

"I haven't had time to ask."

Seregil tugged on his breeches and boots, hopping awkwardly from one foot to the other in his haste. "Tell whoever found him that he's not to be moved!"

"Too late for that, I'm afraid. The woman who brought the news says her kinsmen are already on their way with the body. They should be here any time now."

"Bilairy's Balls!" Seregil threw on his coat and followed.

The sound of raised voices guided them to the main hall. A middle-aged Bry'khan woman and two youths had just arrived, carrying a cloak-shrouded body on a shutter. The contorted angles beneath the makeshift pall already suggested that Torsin had not died peacefully. Escorted by Sergeant Rhylin and four riders, they set their makeshift litter down in the center of the room. The woman introduced herself as Alia a Makinia. The young men with her were her sons.

"I found this beside him," one of the boys said, handing Seregil a bloody handkerchief.

"Thank you. Sergeant Rhylin, post a guard at the doors outside and send someone to inform my sisters of what's happened." He turned back to the Bry'khans. "The rest of you stay a moment, please."

A welcome sense of detachment settled over Seregil as he knelt by the litter, the body already reduced in his mind to a puzzle to be solved.

Drawing back the cloak, he found Torsin lying on his back, knees drawn up and twisted to the left. His right arm was extended stiffly above his head, the splayed hand white and swollen beneath a thin layer of drying mud. The left hand was clenched tightly against his chest. The robe was the same one Torsin had worn the night before, but soiled and damp now. Bits of dead grass were tangled in the old man's hair and in the links of his heavy gold chain.

Someone had tied a cloth around the dead man's face. Black blood had soaked through it by the mouth. More blood had dried on the front of his coat and the back of the fist clutched awkwardly to his chest.

"By the Light, his throat's been cut!" Thero exclaimed.

Seregil probed beneath the jaw pressed rigidly to the chest. "No, his neck's sound."

He pulled the cloth from the dead man's face, certainty already

taking shape in his mind. The lips, chin, and beard were streaked with dried blood and flecked with bits of dead grass and mud. Death had cruelly transformed the dignified features, and insects had been busy in the open eyes and between the parted lips. The left side of the head had turned a mottled purple and was peppered with small indentations. The rest of the face and neck were a leaden hue.

Thero caught his breath sharply and made a warding sign.

"There's no need for that," Seregil told him. He'd seen more corpses than he cared to recall and knew the marks of death like an alphabet. He pressed a fingertip into the livid cheek and released it. "This side of his head rested against the ground. It's the settling of the blood after death that discolors the skin this way. See here, on the undersides of his arms and neck?" He pressed the darkened skin again, noting that it didn't blanch beneath his fingers. "He's been dead since last night."

He looked up at the Bry'khans again. "When you found him, he was lying on his face at the water's edge, wasn't he? With this hand outstretched in the water, the other curled under him?"

The Bry'khans exchanged startled looks. "Yes," Alia replied. "We went to the Vhadasoori for blessing water this morning and found him lying just as you said. How did you know?"

Preoccupied, Seregil ignored the question. "Where was the Cup?"

"On the ground beside him. He must have dropped it while drinking." She made a blessing sign over the dead man. "We treated him with all respect and said the words of passing over him."

"You and your kin have my gratitude, Alia a Makinia, and that of the princess," Seregil said, wishing they'd left Torsin where he lay. "Did you find anything else near the body?"

"Just the cloth."

"Where is the Cup now?"

The older boy shrugged. "I put it back on the stone."

"Go and fetch it at once!" Seregil ordered sharply. "Better yet, carry it to Brythir i Nien of Silmai and explain what has happened. Tell the khirnari I fear poison."

"Aura's Cup poisoned?" the woman gasped. "That's impossible!"

"There's no sense taking chances. If you can, learn if anyone has used it in the meantime. Hurry, please!"

The moment they were gone, he let out a snort of annoyance. "Thanks to their kindness, we may never pick up the trail now."

"No wonder no one saw him go out," Thero murmured, hunkering down beside the body. "These are the clothes he had on last night. He must not have come home at all."

"Beka said he refused an escort home from Ulan's house."

The wizard touched Torsin's face gingerly. "My experience with death is still quite limited, it seems. I've never seen a person turn blue like that. What can it mean?"

"Suffocation, most likely." Seregil held up the handkerchief. "His lungs finally gave out on him, drowning him in his own blood. Of course, he may have been strangled or smothered, too. We'd better have a look at the rest of him, just to be sure. Help me strip him."

And pray to Aura he wasn't murdered, he thought. There had never been a murder in Sarikali as far as he knew. Better that Skala didn't set the precedent. There was no telling how the 'faie would react to that.

Thero might be unversed in death, but the war had toughened him to its aftermath. In his sheltered days at the Oreska House, the young wizard had lacked the stomach for such things; now he worked with grim determination, mouth pressed into a tight line as they cut and pulled the clothes from the stiff limbs.

They found no obvious wounds or bruising, nor any evidence of theft. Torsin's skull and long bones were sound, and his right hand and wrists showed no wounds indicating he'd warded off an attacker; the left fist would have to wait until the rigor passed.

"So what do you think? Was it poison?" Thero whispered when they'd finished.

Seregil prodded at the rigid muscles of the dead man's face and neck, then pried back the wrinkled lips. "It's hard to say with the discoloration. Any feel of magic on him?"

"None. What was he doing by the pool?"

"It lies between here and Viresse fai'thast. He must have stopped there to wet his throat, then collapsed. He was staggering by the time he reached it."

"How do you know that?"

Seregil picked up a discarded shoe. "Look at the toe, how scuffed and stained it is. Torsin would never wear dirty shoes to a banquet; therefore, it happened after he left. And see how dirt is ground into the front of his robe about the knees and arms? He fell at least twice getting to the water, yet had the presence of mind to use the Cup instead of simply dipping it up with his hand. He was sick, all right, but I'd say death itself overtook him suddenly there at the water's edge."

"But the contortion of the body?"

"It hasn't the look of a death agony, if that's what you mean. He collapsed and fell over sideways. The death rigor hardened his limbs this way. It makes for a grisly corpse, I grant you, but there's nothing unusual about it. All the same, I want a look at where they found him."

"We can't just leave him lying here."

"Have the servants lay him out upstairs."

Thero looked down at his soiled hands and sighed. "First Idrilain and now him. Death seems to be dogging us."

Seregil sighed. "Both were sick and old. Let's hope Bilairy has had enough of us through his gate for a while."

Adzriel arrived in the hall just as Seregil and Thero were leaving for the Vhadasoori.

"Kheeta sent word. Poor Lord Torsin!" she exclaimed. "He'll be greatly missed. Will there be another mourning period, do you think?"