Free The Shadow Master by Craig Cormick

slower than the others to keep up with the pace of the conversation. He was still wondering where they were going to put the dead man’s body and how he was going to be able to cook breakfast with him there.
    â€œPerhaps he was, um, playing the bone flute,” said the steward, turning a little red at the presence of the kitchen girl. “At the time of his death.”
    The cook looked at him aghast. “Such behaviour is not acceptable in my kitchen!” he said.
    â€œNevertheless,” said the steward, “It might explain things a little better than the vengeance theory.”
    The Captain of the Guard considered it and wondered, if a man was slain while his ivory tower was erect, might it not stay erect? He wondered who would know the answer to such things. Leonardo, probably, as the Duke said. He seemed to know every other secret of the body. Rumour has it he performed experiments on the bodies of the dead to know how they worked. But rumour also had it that he could turn invisible and walk through walls. Perhaps he was in the room with them now, if that was the case. The man turned his head and looked around the room carefully and was surprised to see that Leonardo was indeed with them. The old man was standing in the doorway, out of sight, his thick eyebrows knit closely as he stroked his long unkempt beard, carefully regarding everything.
    â€œNo,” said the cook firmly. “Not in my kitchen. In the guards’ house, perhaps, but not here. I would not permit it.” The standing of the kitchen and his role in the household had risen as the variety of foods became scarcer in the Walled City. Not only did he now supervise the growing of vegetable gardens in the courtyard but was charged with hunting down rare treats from across the cellars of the city, which citizens would exchange for sacks of plain grain. Just this last week he had obtained two jars of pickled onions – many of which were in the soup at the dead man’s feet.
    â€œHow would you enforce it?” asked the steward. “You are not here all through the day and the night.”
    â€œI would come to hear of it,” said the cook. “I would see guilt in the man’s eyes.”
    â€œSo are you saying you can tell whenever a man has committed a sin?”
    â€œI can tell whenever anyone of my kitchen staff has,” the cook insisted. The kitchen girl turned her head a little, making a vow never to let the cook look into her eyes and also to warn the other girls who worked in the kitchens too.
    â€œThese are all guesses,” said the Duke. “All I can be certain of is that someone has sent an assassin who has killed one of my household and that it shall not be allowed to go unpunished, be it a Medici or lesser house who is responsible.” His wife would be told of that vow and he hoped that would placate her while Leonardo solved the crime.
    And then Leonardo stepped forward. He didn’t say anything but looked carefully at the metal arrow in the man’s neck and touched it with his fingers. Then he looked down at the pot of soup under the table and pulled the man’s hand away from his member and looked at the fingers. Then at the other hand. Then he put a finger into the soup bowl that the dead man had fallen into it, licked it with the tip of his tongue and spat it out quickly.
    The cook pulled a face at the thought of tasting dead man soup, and said, “Let me at least save the pot under the table.”
    â€œNo,” said Leonardo. “Throw it out. Throw it all out. It has been poisoned.”
    â€œBut the man has clearly been killed by an arrow,” said the Captain of the Guard, “Not poison.”
    â€œVery astute,” said Leonardo. “But this man is a poisoner.”
    Everyone in the kitchen was taken aback. The Duke, the Captain of the Guard, the steward, the cook, the kitchen hand and the kitchen girl. The Duke asked the question first.