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Of course, he had known the moment they'd roused him with the news – Oseian Dalaran is dead, a murder, you're needed to Witness – but he couldn't have admitted that. So he bathed, dressed and ate breakfast, chewing though he'd wanted to throw up instead, and walked to the Ulimeire with his hair still damp and feeling like ice against his scalp in the cold spring breeze. His head hurt. His footsteps were entirely mechanical.
A murder. Oseian was dead. She was murdered and the murderer was Evru.
Thara knew but could not quite understand. The knowledge settled over him like a blanket of snow.
Entering the Ulimeire, Thara took a moment to adjust as darkness fell about him, the barest of light breaking in through the cracks around the closed shutters. Only a few candles had been lit. The chill intensified. His head was full like an overcast sky, a grey, blank expanse, heavy with rain but not yet ready to let it go. He had been told that in his grandfather's generation the Ulimeire had been connected to the Othasmeire, in a building that was now the town hall; now the Ulimeire inhabited a plain brick building, with a grey slate roof, and the Othasmeire was gone.
No one else was present inside the Ulimeire. None of Oseian's blood family were there, though they should have been requested to be present. It didn't matter for the witnessing; he knew Oseian well enough. Evru was not there, as would have been proper; perhaps he'd already fled and was gone and Thara would never see him again, but that was all right because at least it meant that Evru would be alive, somewhere, and Thara was not that selfish. Not that foolish to think that Evru was not the murderer after all.
Five steps in front of Oseian's corpse, laid out on a bed in the shadows, Thara stopped still with his hands twisted together and pressed to his stomach. He couldn't go on. He couldn't. Thoughts appeared to him like startled birds. What if he lied and said that Oseian had not seen her assailant? What if he said there'd been two assailants, strangers, drunk, who had in the dark mistaken her for someone else? It was a terrible, senseless crime; how he mourned for not just Oseian but for the world turning to evil. What if he gave up all he was and all he had dedicated his life to for the sake of a murderer, a stupid, evil man – an impulsive, frightened, beautiful man who'd been so desperate that these three days of freedom had been worth killing for? What if he turned away now, found Evru, and they left together and never looked back?
There was still time.
Grief, rending, breaking him apart; Evru had killed her. Evru. His Evru. His beloved. How?
The options slipped away from Thara like silver fish. He recited the prayer for compassion, walked to Oseian's body, placed a hand on her forehead – cold, swollen, spongy – and woke her up.
Oseian spilt into his head like hot butter, vinegar, and Thara feared the dead for the first time since apprenticeship. This was just a remnant, he knew, an imprint, but as Oseian's attention found him, so familiar, grief took hold of him and he couldn't speak, not even in thought. He was trembling, his whole chest seized up with a terrible emotion, sharp and strong as iron, and in his head Oseian had started to laugh.
'Look who it is!' she crowed, fury in her voice like fire. 'Hast thou come to gloat?'
There were formalities to go through and Thara grasped at them like a drowning man to land. 'Merrem Oseian Dalaran,' he began. Oseian did not stop laughing, except that the sound had twisted more and more as it went on, and she'd begun to sound like the screech of machinery.
'Forgive us for waking you,' Thara said, ploughing on, 'from your peaceful death. We beg of you to help us find you justice before you are returned to rest once more.'
There were some, often those who went on to be little help in the investigations, who took this poorly. They did not realise they were dead. They had died in their sleep or unawares, death coming to them from behind, from above, from someone they trusted so far they could not comprehend they actuality of the betrayal. They did not like being told they were dead. Some denied it. Some cried in fear or bewilderment or in the agony of loss.
In Thara's head, Oseian drove into him like nails.
'Hast the gall to come to me and offer thy help?' The laughter had calmed but her voice was a knife. 'Thou, the murderer! Shouldst have turned yourselves in, and saved us the trial of speaking to thee.'
There was more to say, but Thara faltered in his script. 'We–' he said. 'We had nothing to do with this.' His voice trembled. It was no use arguing with the dead. The dead did not change their minds nor their hearts: they only knew what they had died knowing, and could not be taught nor persuaded. The dead were not truly present, and Oseian's shadow would be gone the moment he opened his eyes and left her behind in the dark, but Thara could not stop himself all the same. 'Oseian, we are innocent.'
'And thou truly expectest us to believe that. Why should we believe thee? Art the same as him. Not for nothing art called degenerate. Disgusting. We should not have been surprised it ended like this.'
Thara shook his head. He could feel tears on his face but in reaching up to wipe them away his attention slipped.
'Look who it is!' Oseian said, spitting out her laughter. 'Hast come to gloat?'
'Please,' Thara said. 'Oseian, tell us who killed you.'
'As if dost not know that already!'
'We just need you to say it,' Thara begged. 'Tell us what you saw.'
'So canst pursue our shame even further? Well? Thou knowest it was Evru who killed us. How long wert you planning it? Our own husband and his mincing marnis lover! There, we said it. What wilt do now? What lies wilt tell to escape thy rightful punishment?'
'We love him, but we will not lie. He will be brought to justice.' Thara said, and though his own words hurt worse than any pain he'd felt before, he knew them to be truth.
'How canst compare what thou hast to love? How darest call that love? We may have been unlucky enough to get that cocksucker in marriage but we know what love is.'
What use was there to argue? She could not change her mind, not now. She was dead. And perhaps, Thara thought, his heart struggling, like an animal dying in winter, she was correct. He hadn't know Evru after all.
'What wilt do now? Which innocent wilt frame to escape thy rightful punishment? Who will it be?'
'We will tell the truth, Oseian,' Thara said.
'And thou callest that love. Disgusting.'
She was starting to fade again; Thara let her.
'Hast thou come to gloat?' she said, as she went.
'We swore an oath. We will report the truth as we have always done.'
'An oath, thou sayest. Evru swore one of those too, once.'
Thara opened his eyes. She was gone. His hand on her body's forehead was trembling, hard, and he clutched it to his side. Alone in his head he needed a moment to readjust, to seek out the outlines of his mind and confirm that it was his own. Sort out which were his thoughts and which were echoes of someone else's. He crouched, hands against the stone floor to brace himself, and dry heaved. What was his own and what was Oseian's? Was the anger his, or hers? Had she felt this broken-hearted betrayal? And was it he who hated Evru, or was it he who loved him?
Thara' eyes were hot, with a sharp pressure behind them. He reached up to rub them and realised he was still crying. His mouth was twisted.
As he got up, leaning against the bed when his legs refused to hold him, he scrubbed at his face with his sleeve. Outside a pair of guards were waiting for Oseian's answer. Now, in the silence, Thara could hear that they were talking. He walked to the door on unsteady legs, stood beside it and listened.
'But what could they have done?' one man said – Pelet, Thara thought, or perhaps Anthis.
'Doesn't make it any less of a disgrace,' the other said, Hora, and Thara stepped away, suddenly regretting his desire to listen – they were talking about him, of course, and he already knew he was a disgrace but to hear people say it–
'Send a courier to Pio and beg them to send us their Witness for the Dead? Why, they'll ask, and–' Anthis was continuing and in his panic to make him stop Thara slammed his palm against the wall beside him. The sound reverberated in the empty stone room. Their talking halted abruptly.
Thara's breath shuddered. Now he needed to open the door and greet the guards. But that would mean telling them what Oseian had told him, and condemning Evru. He couldn't do it. He had to; it was his duty. They were waiting for him. Time pressed down on him like a hundred eyes watching and judging him. In the end it was Oseian's body, so close, that drove him out.
The door creaked as Thara opened it. Hora and Anthis stood there, looking at him. He swallowed roughly, mouth dry, throat tight, and eyes on the wall behind them he said: 'Merrem Dalaran spoke to me and told me that her murderer was Mer Evru Dalar. Of this she has no doubt.'
The world felt like it was spinning around him. He barely heard Hora's reply, barely saw his departure. He startled badly when Anthis laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.
'Thank you, Mer Celehar,' he said. 'We will deal with this from here.' His voice was solemn. It occurred to Thara that Anthis was kinsman to Evru, a cousin on his mother's side. Thara nodded numbly and allowed himself to be lead out of the Ulimeire, Anthis' hand still on his shoulder.
They left him standing outside in the mid-morning sun, bright but offering little warmth.
'Wait,' Thara called after them. 'Tell us–' his voice cracked, 'when will the execution take place?'
Anthis turned. 'If he is found guilty, at the start of next week, perhaps. We cannot say for sure.'
So soon. 'Thank you,' Thara said, letting his mouth work by itself when his mind refused to. They bowed and left. Thara went home.
The next morning, as he sat for breakfast, his maid Chulo told him that Evru Dalar had been found guilty of murder and arrested.
Thara's eyes closed of their own accord. He couldn't reply, couldn't even move his head to nod an acknowledgement. 'He confessed,' Chulo said, quiet, apologetic, as if it were somehow her fault. She waited a long moment, then, when Thara continued to ignore her, went back to the kitchens. Thara could hear her whisper to another servant in the corridor before they walked out of earshot.
The chair and table he sat at felt insubstantial and unreal. Thara grasped his knife but could not feel it in his hand, which was trembling.
He should have done more. He could have stopped Evru. Because he hadn't done anything both Oseian and Evru were lost. Dead and as good as dead.
Perhaps it was a mistake. Perhaps he's misheard Chulo. Maybe she'd misunderstood the person who had told her.
Abandoning his breakfast Thara stood, looking aimlessly about the room as if in some corner he might find the answers to his questions. He would go to the mire and ask the guards there what had happened. Anthis would be on duty. Anthis was sensible; he'd know the truth.
And maybe, if Evru was indeed there, imprisoned and waiting for execution, Thara could speak to him. See him one last time. Ask him – Thara couldn't grasp what he wanted to ask, exactly, but the undirected urge was overwhelming.
Outside, it was drizzling. The sky was a blanket of textured grey. Thara did not notice.
An hour later he stood before Evru, metal bars between them. Outside there was the sound of people on their way to and from the market: life, going on as usual. Inside, water was dripping somewhere behind Thara. The sound of Anthis' footsteps from the other end of the hallway paused, and a door opened and closed.
Evru's skin was wan, his hair done up in a simple braid that was starting to come loose. Thara's heart beat like a drum in his throat.
'She deserved it.' Evru spoke first, and something inside Thara broke at the words.
'To die?' Thara said; his voice, too, cracked. Everything he'd been meaning to say shrivelled and died on his tongue, and he lost control of the conversation as soon as it started.
'Didst not have to live with her!' Evru's voice was a snarl. 'Knowest nothing of what I went through!'
'But didst not have to kill her,' Thara cried. 'We could have left together! Couldst left her! She didn't deserve death!' Thara shook his head wildly, hair flickering about his face. His ears were pressed flat against his skull. 'Nothing she could have done would have justified that!'
'She was evil. The world is a better place for her absence.'
'I cannot believe that. I knew her also.' Thara turned away, covering his face with his hands. 'Art not... how I remember thee, any more.' He shouldn't have come. This was not how he wanted to remember Evru, even if how he remembered Evru was false, and a lie, and this was the true Evru after all. It hurt too much.
'I still love thee. Dost know that.'
Thara shook his head. He couldn't turn back, not even to look. 'No. I don't.'
'Thara,' Evru said. His voice had always been beautiful. Thara had rarely been able to resist it, and never when Evru begged. 'Please don't go. Art the only one I have left.'
'Shouldst not have done it.' He didn't walk away. He couldn't. He pressed the back of one hand to his mouth to stifle the way he was gasping, all but sobbing save for the lack of tears.
'Please, Thara.' A pause before Evru continued. 'I didn't think they would find her,' he said. 'I... did not mean for this to happen.'
'So that is what matters, not her lost life but thee having been caught? And then – thou knowest I am Witness for the Dead! Thou knowest I would have had to speak to her, and tell everyone that she told me it was thee!'
'I'm sorry. I am so sorry.' Evru's voice, soft and pleading and heartbreakingly beautiful. It hurt like nails in an open wound.
Taking his hand from his face, Thara let out a shaky breath. 'It is not I who am to be executed,' he said.
'I know,' Evru said, then, 'Thara, please, come back. Just for a moment. Love, before thou goest and we never see each other again.'
How could he refuse? Thara turned and let Evru pull him close with a hand on the back of his neck. 'Don't,' Thara murmured, but did not break away when Evru kissed him, chaste and then not, as close as the bars between them permitted. Evru's other hand found Thara's waist, curling around it to drag him forward, pulling him into the bars hard enough to bruise. Their mouths, hot, Evru's thigh pressed between his legs, and the cold metal bars on Thara's cheekbones, and everything in the world seemed to bleed away and cease to matter, save this.
'I am frightened,' Evru said as, panting, they broke apart, whispered like a confession. Thara started to cry, the sobs working their way up his whole body, and he clung to Evru. Evru kissed him again, open-mouthed and shameless.
Anthis came in shortly after, standing back and waiting whilst Thara willed himself to let go of Evru's sleeves.
'Dost love me?' Evru called as Thara was lead away, panic creeping into his voice for the first time. 'Thara! Dost love me?'
Anthis was a cousin of Evru's, distantly related but family nonetheless, and a friend besides. Thara would not have cared if it had been Oseian's own father next to him. 'Of course I do,' he said. 'Of course I love thee.'
Two more steps and he was in the hallway; Anthis swung the door closed behind them and locked it. He didn't meet Thara's eyes before he turned away.
Thara went home. Then he put on his coat and went to organise the tending to of the graveyard, and pray to Ulis, and speak kindly to a woman whose infant son had passed away three weeks ago. He met with the canons of his Ulimeire and listened to them talk about their studies, the division of funds, and how the teaching of the junior canons was progressing. He turned down supper, left his books open on his desk, and lay down on his bed in the orange sunset light.
How long had Evru been planning this? Had he thought about it, decided on a weapon, a time and place? Had he been a murderer in mind, if not deed, when they had last lain together and loved each other?
When had Evru changed? And why hadn't Thara noticed?
Why did it matter to Evru if Thara loved him, when it was he who had condemned Evru in the first place?
His canons had been subdued that afternoon; it was known that he and Evru were close – friends, he tried to maintain. Heart-brothers. It was only because Oseian's family did not want the scandal that they did not spread the truth to the whole town. And most that knew did not care, or if they cared there was little they could do about it, save for the hierophant. But of course, now that Evru was a murderer as well as a degenerate, marnis, it would be entirely different.
What should he do? What was there to do, when Evru would be executed in mere days time?
The sun set. The sky turned cold blue.
Two days later Thara wrapped his coat around himself and walked to the mire, a squat building, ugly, originally built in wood but over the years torn down in places and rebuilt with dark stone. The windows were small and thin, like squinting eyes. Vilencis stood on guard outside.
'Thara. What bringest thou here?' Vilencis said, though he knew, of course he had to know. The first familiar ached in Thara's chest like a bruise. They had dined together just two weeks ago; Thara could barely remember it.
'Good morning, Vilencis,' Thara said. 'I wanted to see Evru, if that would be possible. Just quickly.'
Vilencis' eyes were green, handsome, and sad. 'Knowest I cannot allow that,' he said. 'Thou hast seen him once already, and once too many, by the law.'
Thara didn't reply. He'd known they wouldn't let him in, not again and not without good reason, but the rejection still struck him like a physical blow. And now, as he stood voiceless, his hands open and empty, he knew he should turn and leave. His body would not move. His ears were lowered and he did not think he could raise them.
'Go home, Thara,' Vilencis said, softly. 'Art already far too involved. Dost not need to be seen here.'
'Please,' Thara said, like a schoolchild to his master, in his ugly, gravel voice.
Vilencis shook his head. 'Go home,' he said again.
Thara bowed his head but still could not turn away. There were people on the street behind him, talking. Were they talking about him? Shame burnt into him, but he needed to speak with Evru. Just once more, before–
'Goddesses,' Vilencis said. His voice was pitying. 'Lookst a wreck.' Thara stiffened as Vilencis stepped forward and pulled him into a tight embrace, their bodies pressed together, the hard edges of Vilencis' coat sticking into Thara's bones. 'Come home with me, stay a few nights. Shouldst not be alone. Ardaö can keep thee company during the day.'
Ardaö Santheth, with her quick laugh and keen sense of humour, her eyes alight with her love for Vilencis, her husband.
'I thank thee,' Thara said, struggling to find the next part of the sentence. After a moment Vilencis smiled.
'I thank thee, but I will not,' he finished, as he let go of Thara and stepped back.
'Art welcome at any time,' he said. 'Remember that.'
Thara's gaze must have slipped, because Vilencis put a heavy hand on his upper arm. 'Do not,' he said. 'Go, eat something. I would think wert a starving vagrant if not for thy hair and clothes.'
The people behind him were talking about Evru. About Oseian and her family. They were talking about what had happened but had they ever even met Evru? What did they know of what had happened? What right was it of theirs to stand here in the street and discuss Evru like he was a broken fishing boat?
Thara bowed to Vilencis, short and sharp, and turning on his heel he left without a word. His jaw was clenched but when he relaxed it his teeth started to chatter. The people stopped talking and watched him leave.
On the way home, Thara's thoughts turned in on themselves. It was undeniably true that he hadn't realised how far Evru had been pushed. Nor had he realised how far Evru would go when pushed. And Thara hadn't been able to stop him, hadn't been able to save him or Oseian. All he'd done was stumble along in the aftermath, meek, quiet, as powerless as a marionette amongst living actors. What good had he done in any of this? He loved Evru; how could he have not seen any of it? Stopped any of it?
The drizzle had, at some point, turned to rain. It settled in Thara's hair and soaked into his clothes.
Maybe he should walk to the river and throw himself in. Evru would not know. No one else would care.
The river was behind him, back past the mire and the gossiping onlookers. Thara carried on walking. He arrived home and paused only to remove his coat before going to the kitchen.
The kitchen was hot despite the cold outside, and humid; the air smelt of the leg of lamb roasting on the spit. A half-finished pie sat on the table, the raw pastry peeled open at the top to show off its incomplete insides. Chulo was sitting by the fireplace, mending a pair of trousers. She looked up as Thara entered, her ears tilting back in surprise before she corrected them.
'Chulo,' Thara said, hearing how mild his voice was and marvelling at it distantly, 'where are the knives kept?'
Almost as soon as they'd recovered, her ears flattened. Chulo blinked up at him in fearful bewilderment. 'Oh,' she said, flustered, and putting her sewing down she got up and opened one of the drawers in the table. 'Here.'
Thara chose a knife, one with a short, thin blade, and sliced off his braid at the nape of his neck. He put the knife back, ignoring Chulo's look of abject horror, then paused. What ought he do with the braid? He could hardly throw it into the fire.
The absurdity and the reality hit him at once as he stood there, dripping wet, hair untangling and curling about his ears, his braid in one hand like a dead snake. He couldn't quite breathe correctly. He had the ridiculous urge to try reattach his braid, to mend it back into place and pretend none of this had ever happened. He wanted, with a sudden, terrible pain, to know that Evru hadn't been the murderer after all. He wanted everything to be all right again.
'If you could dispose of this for us, please,' Thara said, and put the braid on the table. His voice was tight; his fingers knocked against the wooden surface. 'We will be in the study. We have some letters to write. Thank you, Chulo.'
The staircase made him dizzy. Out of the kitchen, back into the cold, he started to shiver. He had failed. He had, in his negligence, let two lives be lost. It wasn't good enough that he hadn't seen it in time. He loved Evru. Why hadn't that been enough?
And himself: what he was about to do, and what he had already done. Thara picked up a pen, sharpened it, and started to write.
The thought that now, at least, he would never have to face another body lying in the dark and let them wake in his head, shone through the clouds as a faint relief, barely registering but feeling like the only thing holding him together. He would leave. Go far away. He wouldn't have to do any of this any more.
Evru. Why? Oh, gods, why?
In the candlelight, as the hours passed and he wrote his letters one by one, one more trouble found him: small but persistent, a doubt like a bone-deep bruise.
Perhaps he should have waited to cut his hair. What would Evru think of it shorn? In his last moments, would it be yet another distress to him?
It turned out not to matter. Evru had been hooded before he was lead out, pushed to kneeling, executed – and the blood-stained cloth removed only afterwards, as his body was loaded on a cart and taken away.