Chapter 15

When the anvil fell on old Incline Barium, Talos was the first who was blamed.

After all, the mishap took place in the narrow courtyard off Talos's chambers, and the rumor swept quickly through the Thirtieth Level that the old gnome had been invited there. Paying one of his many social calls, Incline had not noticed the springboard beneath his feet—the very board that sent the anvil swinging over the courtyard like a hellbent pendulum.

Hurtling through space, its heavy iron weight picking up speed in the downswing of the arc, it had slipped from the rope that held it—all agreed that the slipping was carefully engineered—and sailed fifty yards in the air toward the secluded open space where Incline Barium stood, his view blocked by high trellises of rose quartz.

The old miser never saw it coming. They heard the crash two levels below.

Needless to say, the Barium girl was outraged. Weeping before the sympathetic gnome constables, she mapped out a sinister plan of vengeance.

Crazed by sorrow at the loss of his prospective bride—even more crazed at the loss of her considerable dowry—Talos had approached the old fellow in private. He had asked for that dowry as compensation for his pain and suffering. Incline had justly refused, on the grounds that Talos had been involved in the bride's demise.

A last meeting had been arranged—to "iron over" all hard feelings, Talos had supposedly said. Then the anvil, hurtling into the courtyard, had found its ingenious target.

Even the dimmest of constables wondered at the story. How someone from a family as rich as Talos's could murder for a simple dowry, and why he would arrange that murder so close to his own dwelling, where suspicion would fall like an anvil on his own head.

But the girl was weeping, was inconsolable. "First my sister," she claimed, "my intimate soul- and womb-mate, for whom I have mourned these long and sisterless months! And now my father! What kind of monster could plan such a thing? That is, without substantial money, family prominence, and a metaphorical axe to grind?"

"I smell a two-headed monster," Scymnidus said, "Deddalo and this conniving hydra of a girl."

The barrister sat with his cousin in the unkempt offices. Innova had come to visit him shortly after news of the murder had spread through the upper levels, and together the two of them pondered the details.

"I can figure the how but not the why," Scymnidus continued. "The trap set near Talos's chambers. The blubbering girl drawing all sympathy to her orphaning. To top it off, there's her whole sensational story of wronged love and bloody family intrigue—just the kind of thing we love around here, a story that would convict Talos by sheer entertainment alone."

Innova paced the study, his eyes drawn to his cousin's collection of onyx figurines—black statues of scantily clad elf maidens, some in the most compromising and embarrassing of postures. He was thinking of his return to Deddalo's chambers, of what was revealed by his old friend's infamous eyelid.

He was almost certain. But was "almost certain" enough?

"Have you seen Deddalo since the contest?" Scymnidus asked.

"He's been hard to find," Innova admitted. "I've called on him at home, searched for him afternoons at the Hair of the Dog. The Barium girl says she's seen him on occasion, that he's come by to offer condolences and beer, but that's all I know. All I know for certain, that is."

"Such are the facts," Scymnidus said quietly. "Now for the suspicions behind the facts."

Innova picked up one of the tamer figurines—an onyx elf maid running through an onyx field, her tunic slipped appealingly free of her left shoulder, her little onyx breast even more appealingly free, exposed to a wanton sculptor's imagined breezes.

"I'm stuck on the why," he said, turning the statue in his hand. "I suspect that love has something to do with it, and the philosophers tell us that's a form of chaos, don't they? Who's to tell what love will make the best of us do? And Deddalo isn't the best of us."

"You're very young, Innova," Scymnidus said. "Suppose you tell me what you suspect, and leave the why to my older and colder imagination?"

Innova set the figurine back on the shelf, in the same clear circle where the dust had once settled around its base. He didn't want to betray Deddalo, but it seemed like the time had passed for his more tenderhearted feelings.

Reluctantly, he told Scymnidus about Deddalo's infamous eye. The barrister's own eyes widened as he heard the story about Innova's return.

"It's clear to me now," he said. "If your suspicion is correct—"

"If, Scymnidus," Innova emphasized.

The barrister nodded. "If it's correct, then the why is money and power. The old grease and tickle of policy public and private. The heart's blood of betrayal."

Innova flushed. Wasn't he guilty of betrayal himself?

He looked around his cousin's office, at the stacks of paper, the dipping goose that had inspired his invention. The portrait of Gordusmajor with the hollow eyes, and this naughty collection of figurines, which somehow seemed more fragile now, as though anything he had touched with his hands was inclined to break.

No matter what the Paradise Machine was doing throughout the levels of Mount Nevermind, the first corollary of the old Second Law still applied in the physics of friendship.

All things run down eventually.

"There'll be no moping," Scymnidus ordered, settling into his scroll-covered chair and writing something on a folded piece of parchment as the scrolls dropped to the floor. "You're a member of the Council now, by judicial appointment one of the most respected philosophers in Mount Nevermind."

It was obvious from the look on his face that Innova's newfound importance was a source of mystery to him, like a donkey being crowned King of Ansalon.

"And as a prominent citizen, you have direct audience with High Justice Gordusmajor, an audience that can be used for subtle and less subtle leverage. Take this note to him; in it I tell him that I shall defend Talos against these capital charges. But I also tell him that there are things he should know before this whole nasty business goes to trial."

"You're… influencing a justice, then?"

Scymnidus laughed quietly. "Bias and influence are my best friends," he said, "my companions for years in the trenches of jurisprudence. When all is said and done, these companions have stood me well. What of your friends, Cousin Innova? How well have they treated you?"

Innova was surprised to find a similar set of figurines lining the shelves of Gordusmajor's chambers—a collection that, if anything, was even more extensive and indecent than that of Scymnidus.

The onyx statuary told him nothing but the Justice's appetites and weaknesses. Nor did the scattered pages torn from law books and smeared with mustard and icing, except that Gordusmajor's regard for law was no greater than his attention to table manners. The tubes of the metavox reared from the wall like striking cobras, but it was obvious from the cloaks, hats, and underwear draped over them that Gordusmajor was listening to no one.

Finally, there was the portrait of the Tribunal painted decades ago. Gordusmajor stood between Harpos and Julius, his huge, meaty hands on their shoulders in a gesture of either friendship or aggression—it was hard to tell. Like the portrait in Scymnidus's office, the eyes were missing, but they were missing from each of the faces, and all of Ballista's figure from the waist down had been sliced neatly out of the painting, revealing a narrow passage in the wall behind the frame.

Innova looked into that shallow darkness as the High Justice looked at Scymnidus's note. Then they looked at each other.

Both faces registered astonishment and disbelief.

"Do you know the contents of this letter, notable colleague?" Gordusmajor asked. "It's… why it's downright illogical! Philosophically and ideologically inconsistent, like a gully dwarf in charge of protocol! I've been the counselor's friend almost as long as I've been his enemy, and this whole idea he writes about is laced with contradictions!"

Innova only nodded. As usual, he doubted that it was logic and evidence that influenced the old bounder's opinion.

Skeptically, Gordusmajor spelled out the argument of his old friend and enemy. Scymnidus, it seemed, believed that the whole untimely death of Incline Barium was the fruit of an inheritance conspiracy. The demise of one of the twins months ago was no accident of wounded love at all, but a cold, cash-inspired murder, engineered by Deddalo himself. The so-called Meryl Barium, the older of the twins by minutes and consequently the heir of the major part of Incline Barium's fortune, was in reality Beryl Barium, the younger and less economically promising of the two.

It was a case of probate overkill. According to Scymnidus, Beryl and Deddalo had plotted the murder of Meryl Barium, thereby assuring that Beryl would not only be the principal heiress but the only one. Of course, to calm all suspicion, Beryl would masquerade as Meryl, would be discovered lost and wandering in the depths of the mountains. On returning home, she would "have a change of heart," "fall for" and marry Deddalo, thereby assuring, they thought, that the primary schemer got his hands on a large portion of Incline Barium's money.

There was still the problem of Talos, the real Meryl's bereaved lover. Deddalo's and Beryl's solution, Scymnidus maintained, would be irresistible to an engineer—a situation where two birds were killed with a single anvil. Framing Talos for the murder of Incline Barium would get him out of the way, and it would also hasten the moment when Beryl Barium's inheritance lay in her fat little hands.

It was enough to leave Innova breathless. It all made sense to him—all the evidence led toward a conspiracy worthy of Scymnidus's paranoid imagining.

Though Gordusmajor claimed not to believe a word of it, you could tell that he was fascinated by the story, that the inner workings and the plots layered over plots gratified his gnomish heart.

Then why did he not believe it?

Probably, Innova thought, because the High Justice stood to make more money by believing something else. His thoughts confused and muddled, he inspected Gordusmajor's figurine collection once again.

One of the figures, her sculptured clothes shed in an onyx pool at the base of the statue, performed an action that was not only lurid but, as far as Innova could guess, anatomically impossible.

"But here is the funny thing," Gordusmajor said, interrupting the young gnome's thoughts. He wheezed and coughed, a smile spreading over his oatcake-encrusted lips. "Even if Scymnidus's whole fantasy harbored only a grain of truth. The whole matter of Incline Barium's legacy. Whichever of the daughters expected to take the lion's share would have been disappointed at any rate. For years ago, when the old miser drew up his will, I was the lawyer who helped him to draft it, to seal his money away from the grubbing hands of family and friend and charity. All of his considerable money is bequeathed to a monument foundation, which has been instructed to buy out all residences and businesses on the Twenty-Sixth Level of Mount Nevermind and turn that level into a tomb and memorial. A whole level of the city will honor the generosity and civic-mindedness of Incline Barium as long as this city stands. As you can see, Innova, though the proverb says that 'you can't take it with you,' that old bastard Incline Barium has found a corollary: 'but if you can't take it with you, you can spend it all on the funeral.'"

There was still the matter of Talos's guilt or innocence. Innova could tell that it was fruitless to argue evidence or logic, when the thoughts of the High Justice circled around profit and kickback.

"It seems to me," Innova began, knowing he was on slippery ground but determined to save his friend nonetheless, "that Talos might… more effectively serve justice in Mount Nevermind through freedom rather than imprisonment. After all, he would be able to use his money to search for Incline Barium's real killer rather than letting it lie wasting in the safes and coffers of his ancestral vaults."

"Wouldn't lie wasting there anyway," Gordusmajor mumbled. He had filled his mouth with sweet rolls as he looked again at Scymnidus's letter. Raisins and pine nuts tangled in the white hair of his beard, and he licked his fingers absently, as though he was lost somewhere in thought.

"Wouldn't lie wasting there. According to Statute Twenty-Four, Subclauses One Hundred Seven and Eight of the criminal codes, his ancestral fortune is confiscate in the case of murder."

Confiscate? Innova didn't like the sound of it.

But he could see that Gordusmajor did.

"In cases of confiscation," the old justice declared, a joint session of guild tribunal and guild council determines the allocation of seized funds. In rough translation, that means we'll decide what becomes of his money."

A rough translation of that was that the High Justice himself, who sat at the head of both Council and Tribunal, would have the last word as to Talos's guilt, innocence, and riches. When all was said and done, Gordusmajor stood to be more wealthy than bribes could reckon by simply believing that Talos's hand was on the fatal anvil.

"High Justice Gordusmajor," Innova began, intent on defending his old friend but uncertain where his argument would take him, and doubtful that he could succeed where the able Scymnidus had failed.

He was almost relieved when, in a flutter of clothing and a long, crackling honk from somewhere on another level, the metavox sprang to life.

It seemed to startle the High Justice as well. Gordusmajor pivoted in his chair, rocked dangerously over the floor, then recovered his balance amid a spill of sweet rolls.

"How… how do you answer the thing, Innova?" he asked.

The younger gnome shrugged. "As though you were talking to the speaker face to face, I imagine."

The metavox blasted again—a rude and discordant sound like something from the wrong end of a goose.

"As though the speaker were before you? Standing face to face? In full glory?"

Innova nodded.

"In your veritable presence?" the High Justice continued. "In the tangible? More than virtual?"

Innova nodded. "All of those."

"Then go away!" Gordusmajor shouted at the tubing as he slipped from behind his desk and headed toward the passage behind the portrait. "I'm… leaving this moment on philosophical business. Please call tomorrow!"

Again the metavox trumpeted, and this time, after the loud, tuneless call, a voice from somewhere along the network of tube and piping called out nervously, in a voice intended for whoever was listening.

"Alert! Alert! Invading forces on Level Twenty-Four!"