Chapter 29
The letter, Nirma knew, would soon be delivered to Manuel Botaneiates, the Prefect of the City of Byzantium whose name continued to surface in every corner of this case—a letter informing him that investigators Nirma and Arya had successfully identified the cause of death of the eighteenth victim.
However, given the distressing condition of the body, they earnestly requested that the Prefect dispatch another enclosed carriage to transport the corpse without provoking panic among the citizens of Byzantium.
The soldier handed the letter to one of his younger subordinates, a clean-shaven youth, and whispered brief instructions that did not reach Nirma's ears.
The young man nodded, slipped the letter inside his tunic, and swiftly disappeared from sight, running toward the Prefect's palace with the speed of someone accustomed to serving as a courier along the slick, stone-paved streets of Constantinople.
Nirma watched him depart for a moment before turning back into the Kapeleion, leaving the senior soldier to arrange his men in preparation for moving the victim once the second carriage arrived.
Inside the still-silent Kapeleion, accompanied only by the rhythmic clang echoing every five seconds and the faint hissing from the victim's back that refused to subside, Nirma and Arya began to move with the coordination forged over decades of traversing the corridors of time.
Without exchanging words, without even glancing at one another, both knew precisely what to do, which object to examine first, and how to handle it without disturbing any trace that might still cling to its surface.
Nirma knelt beside a small overturned table with its legs pointing toward the ceiling, her slender fingers cautiously brushing the rough wooden surface, feeling every scratch, every stain, every possible fingerprint that might remain—though in the year 1101 there was no technology capable of analyzing such evidence.
Across the room, Arya performed the same careful inspection upon a wooden chair with one broken leg, his sharp eyes scanning every inch, his keen nose detecting foreign scents that might mingle with the pervasive odors of wine and sweat filling the chamber.
Slowly but steadily, they collected the scattered items one by one, examined each with meticulous care, and then returned them to their original positions with a precision nearly impossible for an ordinary human.
A shattered glass near the victim's feet—Nirma lifted the largest shard, turning it in her cloth-wrapped palm to avoid leaving new prints, studying the pattern of its cracks, observing how the residue of wine at its base remained damp despite the passing hours.
A thick woolen cloak lying near the doorway—Arya raised it carefully, assessing its weight, inhaling its scent, examining every fold and stain for clues, then folding it again exactly as he had found it, with the same creases and the identical orientation relative to the overturned table beside it.
A short sword still sheathed yet discarded upon the floor—Nirma picked it up with both hands, testing its balance, inspecting the blade without unsheathing it, noting the simple engravings on its hilt that might reveal ownership, then placing it back at precisely the same angle at which she had discovered it.
Outside the Kapeleion, from a distance neither too near nor too far, the Prefect's soldiers standing guard around the enclosed carriage began to take notice.
At first they remained motionless, faces set like stone, performing their duty without question or overt curiosity.
But as time passed, as they observed more frequently how Nirma's and Arya's hands moved within the sunlit room, as they witnessed the peculiar ritual of lifting an object, scrutinizing it, and returning it with near-maniacal precision, their brows gradually rose and glances were exchanged among them.
A young soldier, on his first dawn watch in the cold morning air, could not restrain himself from whispering to an older companion.
"Why are they doing that? Why take an object only to put it back? Shouldn't such items be collected as evidence, taken to the palace, shown to the proper officials?"
The older soldier, a veteran bearing an old arrow scar along his arm, merely shook his head slowly, his gaze never leaving Nirma and Arya inside.
"I do not know," he whispered in reply.
"But one thing is certain—they know what they are doing. They are no ordinary investigators."
Amid the morning silence repeatedly broken by the rhythmic clang from within the Kapeleion and the distant murmur of sea wind carrying the scent of salt, the rhythm of Nirma and Arya's investigation began to form an unusual yet consistent pattern.
Every few minutes, one of them would appear at the tavern's threshold, approach the Prefect's soldiers still stationed around the enclosed carriage, and begin a brief session of questions and answers that left the soldiers increasingly perplexed.
Not because the questions were difficult, nor because the soldiers lacked the answers, but because the inquiries bore no resemblance to what they imagined a murder investigation ought to entail.
A young soldier with curly red hair, recently returned from gate duty, furrowed his brow when Nirma approached holding a small ceramic shard she had just found beneath an overturned table.
"Does the lady not wish to know where this ceramic was made, what material it is composed of, or how old it might be?" he asked in mild confusion, his eyes shifting between the fragment in her hand and her composed expression.
Nirma offered a faint smile, the same smile she had given to merchants in the market days earlier—a smile that conveyed respect while maintaining distance.
"No," she replied gently, her voice almost a whisper yet clear in the stillness.
"I wish to know something else."
"Is an object like this relevant to the victim's behavior in recent days?"
"Was Étienne d'Arques ever seen carrying or using such ceramic ware?"
"Or perhaps, does any among you remember who last handled this object before the change of day?"
The young soldier froze, his mouth parting slightly before closing again.
He shook his head slowly, eyes reflecting a sincere effort to recall, but in the end he lifted his shoulders with an apologetic expression.
"My apologies, Madam. I do not know. I serve at the gate and was never near those crusader soldiers."
Nirma nodded, accepting the answer without displeasure, then retrieved the small wax tablet hanging at her waist.
With the pointed tip of her stylus, she inscribed neat Greek letters upon the soft wax, recording the soldier's name, the questions asked, and the answer—did not know—which might one day become a crucial clue.
When finished, she offered polite thanks, turned, and returned to the Kapeleion, leaving the young soldier standing with a mingled expression of confusion and admiration.
To be continued…