Dema’s head jerked up. He’d done it again, forgotten what he was supposed to be doing as he worried over the case. He’d been so preoccupied that he hadn’t even noticed they had reached the square. Despite the very early hour — the sun was just up — the outer edges of the square were packed with human beings. Unlike most Tharian crowds, this one was a hushed, silent, nervous gathering. The arurim had to poke and nudge people aside to clear the way for herself and Dema.
At last they emerged on to open ground, the Labrykas fountain. It stood in its full glory, each of its four lower basins two metres wide, fed from the mouths of three rearing horses. A long stone pillar topped by the double-headed axe called a labrys spouted water to bedew the heads of the beautifully carved white marble horses. It was the first official Tharian monument seen by new arrivals who came through the Piraki Gate, and Dema never got tired of looking at it. Many mornings he would sit on the rim of a lower basin to listen to the water and relax after his night’s service, calming down until he could ride home, serene.
When Dema saw the blot that fouled the south basin, he gasped. Inside a ring of priests and arurim that stood around the fountain, a dead woman sprawled, her legs hanging out of the basin, her upper body in the water, her arms flung wide. Her make-up showed dead white against her swollen, bloated face. Her long black curls floated in the water, creating a chilly semblance of life. Her kyten, the longer, feminine version of the Tharian tunic, was streaked with filth. The long ends of her yellow veil had been carefully straightened to grip the basin’s edge, like a yellow arrow that ended at her neck.
A short, stocky man in arurim red, wearing the silver-bordered white stole of the district commander, stalked up to Dema’s horse. “Why haven’t you caught this monster, Dhaskoi Nomasdina?” he growled. “Why didn’t you stop him before he committed this, this, atrocity!” He glared at the ring of priests and arurim. “A week, the priests of the All-Seeing tell us, a week before the fountain can be fully cleansed!” Already the priests were placing in the anchor-posts and white cloths that would shroud the entire fountain while they performed a major spiritual and magical cleansing. “A week before the people can begin to forget this offence against the order of the city!”
Dema tumbled from his horse’s back and stood at attention as the commander raved. Finally, when the man fell silent, Dema said, “I’ve been doing my best, sir. This is a canny murderer, not the usual sort of criminal at all. He has found a way to hide his tracks from magical scrutiny, there are no witnesses when he kills them, and he transports them where he likes. I’ve only eight months in the arurim, and I did request extra people to patrol Khapik. He kills them there.”
“You will do the proper work with those you have,” snarled the commander. “With this abomination in a public place, the people will be more eager to come forward, to name this murderer and cleanse Tharios of him.”
Dema’s heart plummeted into his belly. According to the advice given to him by the Elya Street arurim and the arurim dhaskoi, he had been doing all the proper things. “May I get a ban on the cleansing of this site, then?” he asked, his voice breaking. “Until I have a chance to go over it with spells of investigation?”
The commander leaned in close, his eyes fixed on Dema’s. “Ban the cleansing?” he whispered in a voice more frightening than a yell. “Take one more moment than we must to erase this spectre of disorder? It’s not just the fountain which must be cleansed, you young idiot. It’s the pipes and the source of the water itself. Apply yourself to proper investigation, and let us purify the square!”
Dema bowed his head. “I spoke rashly, without thought,” he whispered. With the taint of death hanging over the square, the least he could expect was sin and riots in the Fifth District. The immediate cleansing of the city had stopped the violence that had followed the fall of the Kurchal Empire. Ridding Tharios of all taint of death in those days had purified her, had kept the city safe and standing while the rest of the world ran