Dead Man Riding East by Jim Webster

Author:Jim Webster
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, mystery, fantasy, epic, high fashion, Urlan, vengence, adventure, opera, food and drink, Destriers, the Land of the Three Seas, Benor, Toelar
ISBN: 9781782344438
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2015
Published: 2015-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

He looked over Benor’s shoulder at Kirisch and Amiche. “Let’s get something to eat and get caught up with what is going on. Then we can decide what needs doing.”

Kirisch nodded. He put his arm round Benor’s shoulder and steered him quietly along the corridor, following Maurshott’s directions. They came to a small dining room and sat around a table. Maurshott joined them.

“I’ve ordered lunch. Now tell me exactly what has been happening.”

For the next hour, Benor, with help from the other two, gave his nephew a detailed account of what had happened since he had left Hung Halfman’s Hill with his young Urlan.

Finally they came to the fight with the Talan men in the Starving Lands. Maurshott interrupted. “Did you find anything of interest on the bodies?”

Amiche pulled a list from his pouch. “It was obvious that only two of them were Talan men, the rest were hired muscle. The Talan men had money, pages with lists of numbers on them we cannot make head nor tail of, and bizarrely both had a copy of ’The Corners of Yesterday’, a book of poems by Mortiquan.”

Amiche pushed one of the books across to Maurshott, who looked through the book carefully. He glanced up and asked, “Are literary affectations one of the qualities one looks for in a dedicated assassin?”

“The man killed in Toelar had a copy as well.”

Maurshott looked quickly at Kirisch and passed him the little book, “Kirisch, would you know if it was the same edition?”

Kirisch looked at it carefully. “It looks the same.”

Amiche picked up the little volume and said, “It’s poetry; I cannot imagine anyone publishing more than one edition of a book of poems.”

Maurshott paused. “Have you got one of those pages with lists of numbers on?”

Amiche unfolded several sheets from his pouch. Maurshott looked at the first one, took the book of poems off Amiche and started flicking through. He made notes on the paper and then flicked through some more. The others watched him with silent interest. Finally he looked up.

“It’s a book code, meaningless unless you look in the right book. If you look, the numbers are in groups of three, so you have here a group consisting of sixteen, twelve, and four, which means you go to page sixteen, look at the twelfth line and find the fourth word on it. Jot that word down and then look at the next three number combination to find the next word. But obviously it only works if you both have the same book and it seems that Prince Cirramar decided upon ‘The Corners of Yesterday’”

Benor nodded, “It would make sense, Mortiquan is considered by some to be a great poet, and carrying a slim book of his verse with you might just be the sign of a man of culture.”

Maurshott set to, deciphering the papers. Eventually he pushed the little book away.

“One thing is convenient; the man you killed was in the habit of composing his draft message on the back of the message he’d just received.

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