Read Retribution (Drakenfeld 2) for Free Online Page B

personal court to read it aloud at banquets.
    ‘He was well loved by the community,’ Damsak said with a sigh. ‘People would often leave food offerings at his door – though he never asked for such things – and sometimes he even spent the following hours handing those donations to the poor outside the main gates to the prefecture.’
    ‘And his final moments,’ I asked. ‘Do you recall them
precisely
?’
    ‘The last time that anyone saw him was at the end of his last daily, dusk sermon – on the remembrance evening. People left one by one and he went alone to the back of the building – as he had always done. I heard him go into his quarters and I left him to it while I went to mine.’
    ‘And he just vanished?’ I said.
    Damsak nodded. ‘When I knocked on the door later that evening, to ask if he would like a cup of wine to help him sleep, he gave no reply. I went in, and his room was empty.’
    ‘You heard nothing?’
    ‘No. Though my quarters are on the other side of the temple, and I liked to leave the bishop to his quiet contemplation. He was due to rise early, you see, to take alms to the poor. And so . . . I really cannot see why someone would be so . . . vicious as to butcher him in this way.’ The priest paused to make a circle with his hand above his head. ‘What ill times we live in . . .’
    Damsak’s face once again exhibited the distress of someone who felt like he was being hunted.
    ‘What did you do when you didn’t find him?’
    ‘I did little that night. He might have gone for walking meditation about the city. It was only in the morning, when he still had not returned, that I contacted the City Watch.’
    ‘Is it possible he left his quarters willingly, then?’ I suggested, leaning back on my hands. ‘To meet someone else?’
    ‘Very much so, though he’d have no reason to,’ Damsak replied, somewhat confused. ‘Anyway, as I say, I contacted the Watch and they must have notified the various authorities within the queen’s palace. I heard very little. I maintained everything as it was here and wrote to the elders within our organization, to keep them informed. After that matters were kept out of my reach – they were not for me to know. The bishop had gone, and that was that.’
    Only to be later returned in pieces. If the priest’s account was completely true, then there was only a small window of time that night in which the bishop could have been taken. It was possible that the killer invited the bishop outside, but that sounded unlikely. What was more probable is that the killer was all too aware of the bishop’s movements. He knew exactly when to strike so as to cause minimal fuss – it had all the hallmarks of a well-planned assassination, by a killer who was familiar with the bishop’s routines, and who had easy access to this prefecture. The idea that someone would send an assassin to kill a simple bishop did not make sense, unless the priest was only giving us part of the picture. He might not have known all of it himself.
    ‘May we see his room?’ I asked.
    ‘Of course.’ Damsak rose with ease from the cushions, and I followed with a grunt.
    Despite being far younger than the priest, I was going to find it difficult getting used to the Kotonese custom of sitting on the floor and getting up again.
    I could almost hear Leana’s thoughts:
You’re too soft
.
    We were led into the small living quarters at the back of the temple, and Priest Damsak lit the candles on the wall mounts. Frugality did not seem to adequately describe this place – in comparison, my current rented accommodation was fit for a queen. Here was just a small bed in one corner, an old oak table at which he must have dined and worked – judging by the ink pots, candle and plates – and a rug across the flagstones. The handful of books on a shelf beside his bed were theological texts.
    ‘He wasn’t much one for furnishings or ornaments,’ I said, thinking how the room was too dark at