Excerpt: A Mote in Morgan's Eye /and/ The Murder of Mazer Jenn

The opening scene of "The Murder of Mazer Jenn" (unedited, so reader beware):

1.

Mazer Jenn was murdered on a Tuesday morning at ten oclock while on his way to his late wife's grave. His attacker's blade caught him quite unawares, piercing his left kidney in one quick, violent thrust. He fell forward onto his knees, the precious vial he carried so delicately, landing with a clank and clatter that made him wince. For a moment, he was focused solely on the vial. He had to protect it. Its contents were his life's work and held all his hopes for the future. If he lost it--if it broke!--it would mean undeniable tragedy. He reaching trembling fingers out to where it rolled in the bitter red earth, his fingertips just barely brushing the slick glass sides.

But his attacker's foot caught him in the rib cage, flipping him onto his back, away from the vial. He groaned. His blood seeped out of the stab wound, moistening the dry earth beneath him and he was aware of an incredible agony. He peered blearily up at his attacker--a dark sihouette against the brilliant morning sun. The man wore a stetson and long duster despite the morning's heat. His face was too shadowed and blurry for Mazer Jenn to make out. His spectacles lay broken on the ground beside him, victim of that first angry blow.

"What--?" Mazer Jenn gasped out. He wanted to ask the man what he thought he was doing. Didn't he know who Mazer Jenn was? The importance of his work? But a kick from the man's scuffed boot dislocated Mazer's jawbone and he found himself suddenly bereft of speech.

From there on out, it was inevitable. Unable to do more than moan weakly and incoherently, Mazer Jenn could not call for help. Already his life blood oozed from the wound to his kidneys, and it might in and of itself become a fatal wound if the attacker only practiced a macabre sort of patience. But the man had an agenda of his own to carry out.

He kneeled beside his victim, ignoring the way Mazer Jenn's fingers grasped feebly at the heavy cotton fabric of his pants. The attacker ruthlessly turned out Jenn's pockets, dumbing its contents on the ground. A handkerchief. A small switchblade. A miserable coin purse that held naught but a few small bills and three piddling coins of the lowest denomination. And finally, the antique silver frame that held his wife's portrait. The attacker pried open the back of the frame, discarding the portrait, and slipped the small item into his own pocket. The handkerchief he let the wind take, a tiny banner tumbling in the dry desert breeze, and the switchblade, after swift examination, he set aside as well. It was the coin purse that interested him, though not for its miserly contents, though he dutifully transferred the small amount to his own purse.

The purse itself he lay for a moment on Jenn's valiantly struggling chest. Jenn's movements had grown weaker, more desperate. His eyes looked off into the distance, in the unfocused gaze of a man on the verge of death, though to the attacker it seemed that Jenn was looking after either the scattered portrait or the small glass vial that still lay in the dirt. The attacker allowed himself to wonder about the vial, what contents it might hold that a man like Jenn would value it even over his own wretched life. But the attacker was a professional and he did not allow his curiosity free reign. Jenn was his task here, not the mysterious contents of a small vial.

The attacker pulled a small blade from a sheathe on his belt--a delicate thing, thin, broad at the hilt but tapering off to a tiny, deadly point. The attacker kept it finely honed. His favorite weapon. With one steady stroke, the attacker dragged the blade across Mazer Jenn's throat, averting his face from the spray of arterial blood. Jenn's throat worked. His sightless eyes stared up at the sky. His lips shaped a word, a small movement forming a name: Lenore. But that was it, the body of Mazer Jenn stilled into death. A quick release.

Such a pathetic waste of a man, the attacker thought as he levered open Jenn's mouth with the point of his blade. Jenn's teeth were yellowed with decay. His final breath, released from its confines in Jenn's mouth by the work of the blade, stank of sour whiskey and fetid rye. Grimly, the attacker stuffed Jenn's small coin purse into the mouth, forcing it deep into the throat and then pushing the mouth closed, a task made awkward by the shattered jaw bone. But he achieved it in the end, and rose to stand over the body. A quick glance around assured him that no one had as of yet discovered the attacker or his crime. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket--clean, white and devoid of any identifiable insignia, the kind of kerchief a man could buy from market at two pennies for five--and smudged the blood from the collar and sleeve of his duster, from the gloves. Then he let the stained kerchief too fly off on the wind. Stuffing his gloves into his pocket, which hadn't exactly come clean and thus might yet give him away, the attacker turned heeled and strolled away from the corpse, whistling softly to himself.

It would be nearly a full day before any one discovered Mazer Jenn's body, and by then, the attacker was long gone. Of the vial, Mazer Jenn's most prized possession, there was no trace.