"So you don't want me to call you Mother?"

She looked at me pensively. "If you ever call me Mother," she said at last, "I'll know you truly hate me."

"Then let's go, M—" But I couldn't finish the word. "Maria," I substituted.

Steck gave a tiny smile. "Show me where Rashid is. We have a full morning ahead."

I had no chance to watch the look on Steck's face when she saw Bonnakkut's body — the path through the trees was too narrow for us to walk side by side, so I was obliged to take the lead, with my back to the Neut.

Approaching from this direction, we could see the murder scene from twenty paces off. Not that we could see the corpse itself: Rashid knelt on the ground in front of it, conducting an examination of the wounds. As we drew closer, I saw he had snipped off Bonnakkut's bloody shirt to provide a clear view of the belly injuries. Rashid's nose was only a finger away from the body as he peered through a magnifying glass at the slashes.

"Not a beetle after all," Steck said behind me.

I turned. She wore a guarded expression, very contained. It could be the look of a person who was clamping down on real shock; it could also be the look of someone who'd been preparing for this since committing the murder.

"Do we know who did this?" she asked.

"No."

"Definitely a surprise attack," Rashid said without looking up. "No defense wounds."

"What's a defense wound?" I asked.

Steck answered. "Cuts on the hands or arms from trying to block the blade. You see them in almost every knife attack… unless the victim was dead before he knew what was happening."

"You two have seen a lot of murders?"

"Enough. When someone important like a Governor or Elemarch gets killed, it's best if a Spark conducts the investigation. More impartial."

"And that's what they do down south — kill Governors and Elemarchs?"

"If 'down south' means Feliss," Steck said, "the answer is no. Feliss is a bourgeois little province that's too self-satisfied to indulge in assassination. But there's more to the world than Feliss."

"I know that." Theoretically, I was supposed to have memorized all the provinces and their capitals — Tober Cove had a good Elemarchy School that taught such things. But even if I'd never gone to the trouble of learning the list myself, I'd heard Cappie recite it enough times when her father demanded. Two hundred and fifty-six provinces; Earth was a big planet.

"The stabs in the belly were likely made after death," Rashid announced suddenly. He straightened up and brushed hair out of his eyes. "The throat slash came first: one slice, that was it. Hard to be a hundredpercent sure without any real equipment, but that's my guess."

"Sounds like a crime of passion," Steck said. "The victim's dead on the ground, but the killer still wants to stick him a few more times."

"Either that," Rashid agreed, "or someone wants us to jump to that conclusion." He turned to me. "Do people read OldTech mysteries in this town?"

"People read all kinds of things," I answered. "We have a library."

"With almost fifty books," Steck added disdainfully.

"Hundreds of books," I retorted. "The cove has come a long way since you lived here."

"So much outside information," she marveled. "It must drive Hakoore wild."

I didn't answer… but I couldn't help remembering what the old snake said about prosperity corrupting our people.

And now we had a murder.

Voices sounded a short distance in front of us. Moments later Cappie appeared, leading our Doctor Gorallin. Gorallin was a steely woman: steel gray hair and steel gray eyes, with a spine as rigid as metal and fingers of unforgiving iron when she was probing your body for hernias, lumps, and other offenses to propriety. She had been brought up in Tober Cove, but educated at a real medical college down south, one that had worked hard for four centuries to preserve everything the OldTechs knew about the human body. The cost of Gorallin's training had come out of town taxes, as she never ceased to remind us. "Your grandparents sacrificed their hard-earned silver so I could tell if your cervix is healthy, and by damn if I'll let them down because you play shy!"

Yes, there were some things I did remember clearly from my female years.

The instant Gorallin saw the corpse, she roared, "Which one of you did this?"

"Person or persons unknown," Rashid answered.

"I found him," I volunteered. "Then Cappie came along and I went to get the Knowledge-Lord."

"Hmph." She tromped up to Bonnakkut and gave him a healthy nudge with her moccasin. When he didn't respond, she announced, "He's meat. That's my official medical opinion."

Lord Rashid cleared his throat. "We were hoping for more in the way of forensic analysis."

"You think I wasted time with forensics when I was in school?" Gorallin snorted and gave the rest of us a "Who is this fool?" look. "Tober Cove didn't pay me to waste time learning things I'd never need. I took pediatrics! Obstetrics! Those were my electives. Around here, we care about kids, not carcasses."

"So you can't say anything about the cuts…"

"Cuts are made by sharp things," the doctor snapped. "Like the girl's spear. Your Bozzle's machete." She gave me a half-second lookover. "The boy's not carrying anything, but he could grab a kitchen knife at his father's place, not thirty seconds away."

Rashid raised his eyes briefly to heaven. "I really think we should move on from the idea that any of us is the killer."

"Why?" Gorallin replied. "You're the only ones here."

"In our experience," Steck said tightly, "murderers often run away from the scene of the crime."

"In my experience, they don't," Gorallin growled. "I've lived here fifty-five years, less the time I spent south learning my trade. Seen three murders, and every one, the killer was right with the body. Wife who hit her husband too hard and was crying with him in her arms, pleading for him to take her in death-marriage. Husband who caught his wife in bed with her best friend, chop-chop-chop, murder-murder-suicide. And a drunk who knifed his brother… hell, I found him trying to sew up the chest wound to make it all better. Had a spool of the cord he used to mend fishnets. Not bad stitching, given how soused he was — the man could have been a surgeon. Or a devil-be-damned forensic pathologist."

With that she wheeled about and strode down the trail toward the center of town. Rashid took a step after her then restrained himself. "It must be an experience," he said, "when she tells you to turn your head and cough."

"Oh, yeah," answered Cappie, Steck, and I in unison.

Ten useless minutes later, Rashid said, "There's nothing more I can learn from the body. What's the custom now? Notify the next of kin?"

"He's male," Cappie answered. "The Patriarch's Man takes custody of the corpse. But someone should tell Bonnakkut's mother and…"

She didn't finish her sentence. Bonnakkut had a six-year-old daughter named Ivis. Till the end of her life, maybe the feasting and celebration of Commitment ceremonies would remind Ivis of the day her daddy died.

"Speaking to next of kin is priestess work," Steck said. Her voice had suddenly fallen soft. "If a mother has to hear bad news, it should come from someone who can comfort her."

"You're right." Cappie gave Steck a keen look, and I could understand why. It was easy to forget that Steck had been a hair away from becoming priestess herself — that Leeta had chosen Steck as someone with the brain and heart to prop up the women of the cove. Things may have soured inside my mother, but bits were still intact. I caught a glimpse of Rashid, and he was looking at Steck too: smiling fondly, the way men do.