Free Sharps by K. J. Parker Page B

attention to the fact that the murder weapon was of Mezentine origin, suggesting the involvement of the Republic, the Western Empire, or both, a hypothesis that met with no public interest whatsoever.
    With so much noise being made about the affair in every part of the country and stratum of society, the report of the investigating officer passed largely unnoticed, in Permia at least. The investigator admitted that he had no substantial clues as to the killer’s identity, allegiance or motive. The bodyguards had been unable to give him a helpful description – the man was medium height, medium build, inconspicuously dressed and masked, and all they could say about him for sure was that he could run very fast. Nobody had noticed any suspicious-looking strangers waiting outside the altar house at any time before the attack. The usual sources had nothing to offer on the subject of recent negotiations for the hire of an assassin, the provision of a safe house or the laundering of any substantial sums of money. The only concrete evidence was the weapon, which the killer had left behind presumably so as not to attract attention once he was clear of the scene. The weapon was easy enough to identify, though such objects were rare in Permia: a duellist’s dagger, designed to be held in the left hand, primarily to deflect the opponent’s sword; of exceptional quality and finely engraved with a characteristic leaf-and-scroll pattern, it bore Mezentine guild approval marks and the monogram of a famous sword-making firm. The guild marks revealed that it was over a hundred years old. It was, therefore, a valuable item in its own right, though worth considerably less on its own; weapons of this kind were almost invariably sold as part of a case (two exactly matching rapiers and daggers, for use in duelling), the value of a complete set greatly exceeding the sum of its parts. The investigator could only conclude that it had been acquired by theft, probably by a thief who had no idea of the true value of what he had stolen, and that the murderer had chosen it because it would be harder to trace back to him than, say, a newly made knife bought from a cutler’s stall in the market. However, no theft of such an item had been reported in the City in the last eighteen months, nor had any of the principal handlers of stolen goods heard of such a thing being offered for sale.
    Eurid Aten was able to make a certain amount of play with the report in his speech to the Conclave of Lodges a week after the murder. The dagger, he said, was, if honourable members would excuse the pun, a two-edged clue. It was all very well the investigating officer looking up his records for thefts of fancy knives in the City, where people couldn’t afford such things and wouldn’t want them if they could. A Mezentine-made duelling set was, however, exactly the sort of status symbol you’d expect to find in a Beautiful and Good castle or manor house; had the investigator bothered to write to the heads of families to ask if any of them had an empty space in a trophy of arms they couldn’t account for? In reply, Tepan Masav pointed out that a great many Beautiful and Good heirlooms had been sold off during and shortly after the War by impoverished households. Furthermore, at least two dozen castles and many more lesser houses had been stormed and plundered by the enemy – loot from these sources could easily have changed hands many times since the armistice. Equally, the Beautiful and Good had no monopoly on fine Western antiques, very few of which had ever been exported outside the frontiers of the Empire, so it was just as likely, if not more so, that the dagger had been acquired abroad (which, in Masav’s view, was where the assassin undoubtedly came from, and his paymasters as well). In any case, surely it was impossible to believe that a member of a great family would use or cause to be used a family heirloom for such a purpose, precisely because of the