by Sharon Shinn
“I would if I was hunti,” Mally said.
Leah smiled. “What would coru people build things out of?”
Mally thought for a moment. “Ice?”
“Oh, I bet you’re right. And sweela people?”
“I don’t know!”
“Hot coals,” Leah suggested.
“They’d get pretty dirty.”
“I can’t even guess what elay people would use.”
Mally shook her head. “They’re elay. They don’t need houses.”
Less than an hour later, Virrie showed up at the door, an elaymotive idling outside. “Back from my adventure in the slums,” she said, grimacing when Leah asked her how the day had gone. “I don’t know how Josetta stands it there. All those people—all that suffering. And yet there’s a serenity that flows from her so powerfully you can almost see it. I still can’t imagine how she can live there five days out of nine.”
Leah glanced at Mally. “She’s elay,” Leah said. “She doesn’t need a house.”
A few minutes later, Virrie and Mally were gone and Annova was gathering her things. That was when Leah realized it was closing time—the entire day had gone by while she had been focused on receipts and rocks and a little girl.
“No need to get here especially early tomorrow,” Annova said. “Everything’s in good shape.”
On her way out the door, Annova passed two men who had arrived in a horse-drawn cart loaded down with shipping trunks. One stayed with the wagon while the other entered. He wore the excessive personal adornments she associated with Karkan natives.
“I’m looking for Leah Frothen?” he said hopefully, glancing over at the lighted sign.
“That’s me,” she answered. “Are you making a delivery?”
Chandran joined them. “One of my suppliers,” he said, launching into an animated exchange with the visitor, all conducted in Karkan. When he turned back to Leah, he looked satisfied. “He was able to bring everything I requested. I think you will find your foreign customers very pleased indeed.”
It took almost an hour for the four of them to unload the cart and carry everything upstairs, and then Leah raided the cash box to settle the bill. “Be a few ninedays before we’re back in Welce,” one of the men said as he pocketed the money. “But we can come back with more then.”
“Please do,” Leah said.
It was full dark before she locked the door behind the Karkan traders. “So?” she asked, turning to Chandran. “Which of these new bits of merchandise will be the most thrilling to Seka Mardis?”
“The spice you’ll find in the red tins. It is called fillichie. Her prince will be equally delighted.”
“Delighted enough to come here to get it? Or will I have to go to him?”
“Having met you, he might be curious to see you here in this setting,” Chandran said. “Make sure that your guard is on hand if he comes to visit, though.”
Leah laughed. “I will, but I think Yori might be even more uninhibited than the Karkan prince.”
“No,” said Chandran. “She is not.”
That gave her a chill, but she covered it with a yawn, then sank to the floor right where she stood. Since she happened to be by the sales counter, she leaned her back against it and said, “I’m exhausted.”
Chandran settled on the floor in front of her, dropping down with unexpected grace for such a big man. “I admit the day was not an easy one,” he said.
“Physical labor late in the day. Always hard.”
“Physical effort combined with emotional effort,” he said softly. “They both take their toll.”
She gave him a tired smile. So they were going to talk about it. “What did you think of Mally?”
“Like all children, she has a curious, sideways wisdom—a way of looking at the world that is so much fresher than the way we adults see it. It makes complex things seem simple and simple things complex.”
“You were nervous at first.”
“As were you,” he retorted.
“I was,” she admitted. “But I—I’m glad you got to meet her. I wanted you to. I’m glad it went so well.”
“As am I.”
She drew her knees up and linked her hands around her ankles. “I was watching you with her,” she said. “And I thought— You’ve been around children before. Did you have any of your own?”
“No,” he said, and there was a note in his voice much darker than regret. “At first I wanted children and my wife did not. Then Dederra wanted children. But I did not.”
“Why did you change your mind?”
He spoke with great deliberation. “I did not think she should be anyone’s mother.”
Hardly a surprise, given what he’d said about his wife before, but the words still sent a shiver down Leah’s back.
“But by the natural way you acted with Mally, you must have had children in your life at some point,” Leah said.
Chandran nodded. “There were servants in our house and among them they had several children. One was a girl about Mally’s age. Blond, though, and thinner than Mally. A laughing girl. Sweet.” He fell silent a moment before adding in an almost inaudible voice, “She died.”
Leah felt a burning uneasiness gnawing at her gut. Don’t ask the question you don’t want to know. Don’t ask the question you don’t want to know. She could hear the warning in her head, but she couldn’t heed it. “What happened to her?”
“My wife killed her.”
The silence in the shop was so deep it built up like geological layers. The air was thick as a sandstorm, impossible to breathe. They sat there so long without speaking that Leah thought a whole quintile might have passed, each nineday compressed into an impenetrably dense moment.
“Killed her?” she finally managed to say, barely choking out the words. “But how did— What happened?”
“When I lived in the Karkades, some members of the wealthy class had developed a new—appetite,” Chandran said. He was trying to keep his voice to its usual steady measures, but Leah could hear the pain and repressed emotion underlying the calm tones. “They liked to drink blood.”
Leah swallowed against a tight throat. “When I was at the party the other night. The prince was drinking a red liquid. Yori said it was blood.”
“I would not be surprised.”
“I thought—I mean, I just assumed—I mean, animal blood?”
“I do not know what the prince was drinking,” Chandran said, “but in the Karkan court, the fashion was to drink human blood. At first, it was a game—often part of sexual play. A knife, a thin slice in the skin, a few drops of blood or maybe more than a few drops. Exciting, a little dangerous, but everyone was willing.”
Now Leah’s throat was so thick she couldn’t swallow or speak. This was going to be worse than she had imagined. She nodded at him to go on.
“But for a select few among the nobility,” Chandran said, “these sips of human ambrosia were insufficient. They wanted more. A glassful. A carafe. A keg, a barrel. More blood than one body could contain. For some of them it became practically their sole sustenance.”
That’s disgusting, Leah wanted to say. In her head, she heard Yori’s response: No more than meat, when you think about it. But it was. It felt like it was.
“Among the poor of the royal city, it became a new source of income,” Chandran said. “They could come to certain collection houses, cut open a vein, and squeeze out as much blood as they thought they could live without. They were paid handsomely.” He made a sharp gesture and his voice changed, assumed sardonic overtones. “A few of them miscalculated and gave too much. They would be found collapsed in the street, pale and chilled, too weak to move. Some of them recovered. Some did not. Those who died near enough to one of the collection houses would be brought back in for their blood to be harvested while it was still warm.”
“I’m going to be sick,” Leah managed to say, pressing a hand to her mouth.
Chandran, usually so solicitous, did not even pause to ask if she wanted him to abbreviate the tale. He just went on, unheeding. “But there were those among the nobility who found the taste of the donated blood to be too bland. They argued that it lost some of its flavor, some of its—its—potency if it did not flow straight from another person’s vein into their own bodies. And, as you can imagine, there were still volunteers who, for a great sum of money, would present their wrists or throats to the hungry mouths of the wealthy and depraved.”
Leah could see where this was going—but surely not—but how else? She stirred on the floor, pushing herself to a kneeling position, and bent over a little, hoping to relieve the building nausea. It didn’t help much.
“The tastiest blood, or so I was given to understand, consisted of the last few ounces, the final drops that a body would yield before it could no longer sustain its own life,” Chandran continued. “So for even more fabulously huge sums of money, very poor individuals who wanted to ensure the well-being of their families—”
“No.”
“Would agree to open their veins and be sucked dry.”
“No.”
“It was a legal compact,” Chandran said in a hard voice. “Everyone benefited, and no one objected. But, of course, for some people, that was not enough.”
I can’t hear any more, Leah said. Or wanted to say. She couldn’t get the words out.
“The blood with the freshest, sweetest, richest taste came from children.”
Leah flung herself across the floor, trying to find a receptacle for the vomit that rose violently up her throat. A hunti bowl shaped like a grinning skull—perfect. She threw up twice. When she felt Chandran loom behind her, she extended one hand as if to hold him off. Even she wasn’t sure if she was saying, Don’t come near me or Don’t say another word.
They stayed like that, Chandran motionless, Leah bent over, panting slightly, awaiting the decision of her roiling stomach. When a couple of minutes had passed, Leah thought it was safe to straighten up.
“Don’t,” she said, when Chandran stepped forward and opened his mouth. Don’t speak. Don’t touch me. “I need to clean this up. Wait for me down here.”
She went upstairs to the water room, rinsed out the skull bowl, washed her face, cupped her hands and slurped down so much water she thought she’d throw up again. Then she stood over the spigots for a long time, bent forward, resting her head against the cold tile of the wall.
It all made sense now. Chandran didn’t have to supply the coda for Leah to understand what had happened next. Dederra was one of the reckless nobles with an insatiable taste for blood; the servant’s daughter had died to satisfy that craving. Maybe Chandran had even caught his wife with the girl’s lifeless body in her arms. Leah wasn’t surprised he’d killed her. She was surprised he hadn’t gone on a rampage to murder every bloodthirsty noble in the city. She wanted to send a fleet of warships to the country right now and burn the whole place down.
She dried her face, smoothed back her hair, and stepped into the storage area to rummage around for a piece of candy. Not keitzee, oh no. She needed her head clear for this. But she wanted to chase the taste of vomit from her tongue. She found a bar of creamy chocolate and ate half of it with one bite. Then she snatched up her coat and headed back downstairs.
Chandran was standing by the hunti display, rearranging merchandise, but she thought he was just trying to find something to occupy his hands. He looked up when she stepped through the stairwell door, but he didn’t speak. His face was troubled, riled by old memories, but she knew he was glad he had told her. That is the very worst of me. She could only hope that was true.
“Get your coat,” she said. “We’re going to the palace.”
Chandran raised his eyebrows. “Why?”
“Because we have to talk to Darien.”
• • •
They hired a private elaymotive to take them around the Cinque and up the hill to the palace, sparkling like a fairy castle against the chilly winter evening. Traffic was heavy enough along their route that Leah suspected their timing was bad—there was a dinner or some other event going on at the palace and their arrival would be inconvenient. She didn’t much care.
Indeed, as soon as they entered the huge, booming, cavernous space of the kierten, she could tell she was right. Servants hurried in all directions, carrying platters and decorations and cleaning supplies. She could smell complex and delicious aromas wafting out from the kitchens in back. The whole staff was so busy that none of the footmen approached to ask her business and she guessed even the palace steward would be reluctant to disturb Darien as he prepared for a state dinner. And she was in no mood to wait.
So she headed straight for the corridor leading to the king’s quarters. Chandran trailed behind her. None of the servants stopped them, but they hadn’t gotten within five yards of the doorway before three guards deployed around them, faces stern and weapons drawn.
“You can’t enter here,” said the fiercest-looking one.
“I need to speak to the regent,” Leah said. “And I need to speak to him now. I’m the niece of the torz prime, and Darien Serlast will want to hear what I have to say.”
• • •
Ten minutes later, Darien and Zoe joined Leah and Chandran in Darien’s small, quiet study. They were both in formal attire, wearing dark severe clothing and discreet jewels, though the effect was more transformational on Zoe than Darien. The regent always dressed as if he was about to speak to a crowd of funeral mourners.
If Darien was annoyed at being interrupted right before his dinner, he showed no sign. “What have you discovered?” he asked.
Zoe showed more concern for the talebearer than the tale. “Are you all right? You look so pale,” she said, coming over to lay a hand on Leah’s arm. Instantly, Leah felt uplifted, as if Zoe’s touch had energized her lethargic blood. Blood. Leah pulled away.
“Chandran has just been telling me something that might explain a few of the bodies that have turned up in Chialto lately,” she said.
Darien remained impassive. “What bodies?”
Leah felt a wave of irrational anger at his pretense. “Oh, for once, see what it gets you when you share information!” she exclaimed. “You might learn that other people have knowledge that can help you!”
Chandran touched her arm. On his face was a look of mingled concern and horror. “What bodies?” he asked urgently.
Leah pointed at Darien. “I overheard something. The first day I was here. About someone who was cut and bleeding and found dead at the river flats. And then about a nineday ago, right outside my shop, Yori and Rafe and I found a young man who was all sliced up—his throat, his wrists, his legs—”
Leah heard Chandran whisper a Coziquela curse but she didn’t even try to interpret it. “And Yori said you’d want to know about it and Zoe said we shouldn’t tell anybody else about it, so I didn’t, not even Chandran—although if I had told him, we’d have learned about this a lot sooner—”
“This is Chandran?” Zoe murmured. “I’ve been wanting to meet you.”
Leah ignored her. “So apparently what’s been happening but you haven’t told anybody is that someone is going through Chialto and taking people off the streets and cutting them open and siphoning off all their blood. And apparently from what Chandran just told me, this is a common practice among the Karkan nobility. So I’m guessing that the loathsome prince you’ve brought in is responsible for all those corpses. And who knows what other disgusting things.”
Darien’s gray eyes sharpened, but otherwise he showed no change of expression. “I didn’t bring in the loathsome prince, he invited himself,” he said in a mild voice. “But this is very interesting.” He looked at Chandran. “Are you willing to talk to me
about the details of this practice?”
“I had no idea they had imported their activities when they arrived,” Chandran said. He looked more upset there in Darien’s office than he had in Leah’s shop when he was recounting his story. Maybe because his wife’s predations were familiar to him, and this situation was new. Maybe because he felt obscurely responsible. I hate those Karkans, he had said. But in some way, he was still connected to them.
“I had begun to suspect the Karkans were responsible for the mutilated bodies, but I had no proof,” Darien said. “And the timing seemed off, because the first few cases occurred before the prince was officially in Chialto. So I have been hesitant to lay these crimes at his door.”
Suddenly, Leah’s anger fled, leaving her exhausted. She flapped a hand in Chandran’s direction. “Tell them,” she said, and collapsed in a chair.
“For the past fifteen years or so, wealthy Karkans have considered human blood a delicacy,” Chandran told the other two, who drew closer to listen. “Most of them pay for willing donors. It is possible your corpses received money for their transactions.” He spread his hands. “But it is possible the prince simply took from them what he wanted.”
Darien was watching him very closely. “How do I make him stop?”
“It is very hard to dissuade Karkans from any course of action,” Chandran said. “They are never embarrassed and rarely chastened. They recognize only their own personal code of honor. Nothing is wrong unless they think it is wrong.”
“Then my only option is to withhold,” Darien said.
Chandran inclined his head. “You are exactly right. You have discovered the trick to negotiating with the Karkans.”
“But it only works if I have control over something they want,” Darien said.
Leah lifted her head. “An alliance against Cozique,” she said. “Isn’t that what they’re here for?”
“A defensive alliance with the Karkades?” Chandran repeated. “That seems like a bad bargain.” When Darien gave him a swift look, Chandran bowed his head. “I apologize. I am not here to advise you on statecraft.”