Liar's Moon

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  It seemed that everything, as always, came back to the Inquisition.

  I chewed on this for a bit and then gave Koya’s boatman a new direction. He frowned, dubious, but took me there at my insistence, and a few minutes later we pulled up alongside the Celystra’s beautifully maintained riverside promenade.

  I dragged myself up onshore, dizzy from the effort and the heat. The boatman offered to accompany me and then promised to wait as I shook him off, stepping tenderly over the sunbaked cobbles in my bare feet.

  Across High Street, the bar where Raffin had taken me was a little emptier this time of day. Standing there, surrounded on all sides by green, I almost changed my mind. Don’t be an idiot, I told myself. Greenmen or no, a tavern was still Tiboran’s domain, and I had nothing to fear.

  Or at least I’d see if there was any truth to Raffin’s claim about Werne’s order to leave me alone. It was the height of idiocy to present myself, neatly gift-wrapped, to a room full of guards, but it still wasn’t the dumbest thing I’d done this week. Half a dozen pairs of eyes swung my way as I pushed open the tavern doors, and for a moment I felt like I was still wearing nothing but Koya’s sheet. I took a shaky breath and came inside.

  “I’m looking for a friend,” I said, trying to pitch my voice calm and level.

  “I’d like to be your friend,” said a gangly young guard in the back, rising from his seat, but his tablemate pulled him back down again and whispered fiercely in his ear. By the way the first guard’s face turned scarlet, I had an ugly suspicion what was said. I forced myself to take a few more steps inside.

  “I’m trying to locate Raffin Taradyce,” I said. “Some of you may have seen me here with him before. Does anyone know where he is?”

  That was met with a stony, chilling silence, and for a sickening moment I was all too afraid what had happened. But finally an older guard, neat as a nob in his uniform, turned from his fellows and met my eyes.

  “I know him,” he said. “Partners with Brum, right?”

  I didn’t know Raffin’s partner’s name, but I gestured with my hand to indicate the burly size of the guard I’d seen patrolling with him.

  “I haven’t seen Taradyce in a few days,” the guard said. “But we can ask around. Were you trying to get a message to him?”

  “Just looking,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster. “He knows how to reach me. If you see him, can you let him know I need to speak to him?”

  Expressionless faces pulled together across tables, things were whispered, a few hands went for nightsticks, but eventually the Inquisitor’s order must have prevailed. The spokesman turned to me again.

  “We have your message. You may wish to leave now.”

  And with that, I could not have agreed more. I fled back to the street and into the boat as fast as I could, stubbing a toe on a cobble and tearing my toenail. The whole litany of recent abuses threatened to overwhelm me, and I sat the rest of the ride home a small, sniffling bundle of misery.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  When I stepped back inside the bakery that afternoon, it was to absolute dead silence, shocked faces turning my way, and at least one customer getting up and leaving. In fairness, I was barefoot and wearing somebody else’s clothes and my hair hadn’t been combed in days; I probably did look like the Allegory of Wantonness from a cautionary play. But it was Grea in the kitchen, slowly setting down her knife, whose expression stopped me cold. Rat hurried over to me, his own face drawn with concern.

  And before I knew it, he had flung his arms around me and was absolutely crushing me. “You had us scared to death,” he said. “Aunt had no idea where Lord Durrel carried you off to.”

  Minutes later, having finally released me and shuttled me to privacy at a table in the kitchen, Rat and Grea shoveled loaf upon bowl of hot, hearty food into me. I had to give them a detailed accounting of my last two and a half days before they would really believe I was actually back home and safe. “But what happened?” Rat demanded. “Aunt said you were sick.”

  I shook him off, not yet ready to explain to everyone that I’d been testing Talth Ceid’s murder weapon on myself. When I was sufficiently fed, in their opinion, Rat turned a pointed gaze to Grea. “We should tell her. You know she’ll find out.” At her nod, he continued. “The Watch was here. The day before yesterday.”

  “With Barris Ceid,” Grea’s voice was thick with disgust. “Acting like they owned the place. Pawing their way through the rooms and helping themselves to a whole night’s product.”

  “Through the rooms?” I asked. “Our rooms? Did they find anything?”

  “What’s to find?” said Grea. “They were looking for you and Lord Durrel, who we were obviously not concealing. Told them your clothes were mine, left from when I was a slim young girl,” she added with a wink. Grea had a good eight inches on me, but apparently it had convinced the guards.

  I scowled at this news. “What if they come back?”

  “They probably will,” Rat said. “Our explanations were hardly satisfactory, and I doubt they’ll lose their motivation to track down the missing Decath any time soon.”

  The day was getting better and better. I pulled myself up to go — somewhere else, but the look Grea fixed me with was severe. “Upstairs with you. To bed. And if anybody shows up asking after you, you’re my niece.”

  “I’ve been sleeping the last two days,” I objected as Rat half pulled me up the stairs. I stopped him in the snug landing. “My clothes weren’t the only thing in that room,” I said quietly. I had never taken Reynart’s magic primer back to its hiding place in the roof.

  “I know. Don’t worry; it’s safe.”

  “Where?”

  “I took it to Hobin’s.”

  “Hobin’s!”

  “Marau’s balls, I’m only kidding,” he said, trotting up the rest of the stairs. “I sold it to Grillig.”

  I stared at him a moment, that cheeky, unconcerned grin, then dissolved into helpless laughter.

  The rest of that day and the next dragged out hot and intolerable. Grea fussed, Rat kept his ear to the ground, and Durrel came by to visit, bringing word that Koya was still concerned, and would I consider coming back to stay with her? I declined, reminding Durrel that he was supposed to stay put at the Temple. He merely shrugged, and I let myself ignore the signs that he was behaving recklessly.

  But as for reminders for myself? They didn’t come. Though I searched every inch of Rat’s well-swept floor, I couldn’t find the tincture bottle again, and I was no closer to remembering what I’d thought I’d discovered about Koya’s poison. Was it that Koya had killed Talth? That awful letter I’d seen would certainly give anyone motive for matricide — but somehow that wasn’t right. It didn’t click any tumblers in my brain, which was as dull and sluggish as if still fogged with poison.

  Around dusk on the following evening, when the dinnertime crowd was thinning out, Rat scurried up to the apartment to fetch me. “You’d better get down there,” he said. “Your brother’s back.”

  I just stared at him stupidly, momentarily unable to fit this latest development into the week’s catalogue of torments. But finally I hauled myself to my feet and followed dumbly after, down the stairs, and into the common room, where the remaining customers were tripping over themselves to depart. I didn’t see Werne at first, so I pushed through to the doors, and caught a glimpse of a low, green boat moored outside, where two big Greenmen were lifting something — somebody — to shore. Tall and bent with exhaustion, their charge wore nothing but a rough, gray tunic belted to his knees. As he tried to straighten, I caught a flash of sunlight on bright hair.

  “Raffin!” I cried.

  He looked ragged and weak — with a spectacular bruise all across one cheek from where Durrel had punched him — but he found a sleepy grin for me. A third Greenman held the bakery door open for Raffin’s guards to drag him inside. Grea was right there, slipping one of her great strong arms around him. He winced and sucked in his brea
th as she eased him down into a chair.

  “What is this?” I said loudly, because everyone was ignoring me. The Greenmen parted, and Werne finally came forward. He gave me a little bow, and I backed up a couple of paces, bumping into the bread counter.

  “Well met, sister,” he said. “Mistress Grea, it gives me great pleasure to see what fine use you have made of the Goddess’s bounty. May you continue to enjoy her blessing.”

  Grea looked up from Raffin and nodded uncertainly. “What’s going on here?” I asked, a cold edge to my voice.

  Werne gave a little cough. “It, ah, came to my attention that you had made certain inquiries into the location and condition of one of the Holy Mother’s servants. I feared you would not heed a message from me, so . . .” He trailed off oddly, his hands lifted halfway between me and Raffin, as if he weren’t sure exactly what to do with them.

  “What did you do to him?” I demanded. “I was told his ribs were cracked. But he looks like —” Something sharp hit me in the foot, and Rat was at my side, his face expressionless.

  Werne’s lips thinned, and there was a deep line between his thick brows. “Unfortunately there was some miscommunication regarding his — treatment while in our care at the hospital ward.” The note in his voice, the expression on his face, didn’t track. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost say he was uncomfortable. Apologetic, even.

  I knew better. Raffin was hunched forward slightly, breathing shallowly, which seemed right for cracked ribs, but I didn’t like the too-loose way his limbs fit together, as if he were afraid to move his arms. I was afraid I understood why. “Did you torture him?”

  “Of course not!” Werne said hastily. “But discipline was called for. He abused the authority of his uniform —”

  “The authority of his uniform? Do you know what those thugs of yours do, in back alleys, because everyone is afraid of the uniform? Why don’t you discipline some of them!”

  “Silence!” One of the Greenmen barked at me. “Do not raise your voice to His Grace!”

  “Guardsman!” Werne held the palms of his hands to his forehead, breathing evenly. “Captain, I think the mistress of this place has our, ah, patient well in hand. Take your men and wait for me outside.”

  “You can go with them,” I said, kneeling beside Raffin. I couldn’t read the expression on his face, beyond the grimace of pain with every breath. “We’ll take him from here.”

  “Sister, please — Mistress Grea, perhaps you ought to get this young man to bed. I believe his wounds are paining him.”

  I burst to my feet, outraged, but Raffin managed, “It’s all right, peach,” and a weak nod. Everyone filed out of the common room at once — Grea and Rat with Raffin between them, the Greenmen ushering the remaining customers outside — leaving me alone with the Inquisitor. I was pressed up against the bakery counter as Werne advanced on me. I tried to pull back —

  And he eased off, a frown creasing his forehead. “Will — will you sit?” he said, indicating a chair. I shook my head.

  “What do you want?” I said. “You can’t think that returning Raffin will buy my cooperation.”

  “No. I —” He paused, frowning deeper. “I handled our last encounter poorly. I should have realized you would not understand the situation as I did.”

  “I understood you perfectly.”

  “I only wish to speak to you,” he said, sliding into a chair. “Can you not manage that much civility for a few moments’ time?”

  I scowled, my chest tight. He was right; I was not particularly good at staying calm and civil in his presence. It gave everything he’d always said of me a little truth — that I was wild, uncontrollable, a corrupt thing unworthy of the gods — and I didn’t want that. So I scrunched into the seat opposite him, feeling damnably like his misbehaving little sister. He reached his hands across the table, but I kept mine folded tight in my lap.

  Now that I was seated calmly, Werne didn’t seem to know what to say to me. For a long moment he just looked at me, staring intently, searching my face for — I don’t know what. I made myself stop biting my lip.

  When he finally spoke, it was nothing I’d expected. “You look like our mother,” he said.

  One hand flew to my face, my fingers brushing over chin, lips, scarred cheek. “You never told me her name,” I said, then wished the words back. Treacherous tongue; this was nothing to me. I was technically Werne’s half sister, born in the Celystra to his mother by some unknown sire. Having achieved the ultimate glory for the Goddess, she had then died in grace, to be remembered, sanctified, an anonymous saint. And I’d stopped caring about any of this years ago.

  “You always hated me for that,” he said. There was a question in there, buried deep. I kept my mouth shut this time; he wasn’t going to get anything more from me. “Very well,” he said softly. “It was Fenna.”

  I sat still, impassive — but inside I was turning the word over, looking for openings, seeing if it held any secrets for me. It was nothing, just two soft syllables that slipped in and out of the world.

  “I know you bear rancor for me,” Werne said. “You think I should have protected you better at the Celystra, and you may be right. I —” He took a deep breath and leaned toward me. “I am sorry for whatever passed between us, and I want to mend it.”

  I pulled back as if he’d struck me. “You don’t even understand what you’ve done,” I said. “Not to me, but to everyone. Did you see the burned house down the lane? That was your handiwork. And now you bring Raffin in here half dead from beatings that your men gave him, and you can’t even see the trouble with that! There’s no mending what’s wrong here.”

  “Sister — Celyn.” Werne paused briefly, and in that moment I had never hated that cursed alias more. “The things I did, have done — I wished only to protect you. It’s hard for you to see that, I understand.”

  I was silent, looking everywhere but at Werne. I didn’t want to have this conversation, with him trying to play the penitent one, all the while looking at me and only seeing the corrupt thing who’d lost his Goddess’s favor six years ago. I knew what he wanted from me; my mother’s name was just another bribe, like the flour and the release of Raffin.

  A moment later, there were footsteps on the stairs, and Grea descended into the common room. Werne rose. “I know you’ve never understood the price the Goddess has asked,” he said. “This work she has called me to, but believe me when I say I am only her tool, the instrument of her work.”

  “Her Holy Arrow.” But he’d never hear the irony in my voice.

  “Exactly. And it is larger than me, or you, or any one of us — but you are my blood kin, and Celys cherishes family above all else.”

  I pulled away from the table. “I don’t have a family,” I said, my voice as calm and civil as his.

  There was something in his face that hurt to look at, but I did it. “Celyn, please.” He took a step forward, his voice almost plaintive. “I’m not the monster you imagine me to be.”

  “No,” I agreed. “You’re worse.” And without waiting for whatever poison would come out of his mouth next, I turned and went straight back upstairs.

  Up in the apartment, the one inadequate bed had been given over to Raffin. He lay facedown, breathing shallowly, his back a mass of bandages, stained and stiff with blood and ointment. I hung back in the doorway until Rat pulled me inside.

  “’S’all right, peach. It’s not as bad as it looks.” Raffin’s voice was muffled, a little slurred.

  “Not anymore, anyway,” Rat said. “Thanks to a little poppy. The wounds look to be a few days old.”

  “What did they do?” I made myself ask, made myself come forward to see how badly Raffin was hurt. I was painfully aware of my share of the blame for his injuries, and I would not flinch at the sight of them.

  “Cane,” he said. “Fourteen lashes. Fourteen! And I bore them like a man, Father.”

  “How much poppy did you give him?” I asked Rat, mostly to blot out the
image of Raffin strapped to the Hanging Ash in the Celystra courtyard, flogged with a switch from the sacred tree. I had seen it before, and hoped never to witness it again.

  “There may have been some wine too.”

  “Aw, don’t fret so,” Raffin said more clearly this time. “They don’t like to be too rough on their own. I will be” — he winced — “fresh as milk in a few more days, and then the ladies will have fourteen impressive scars to admire. And I have a shiny new Writ of Discommendation to match them.”

  I felt sick. Beaten and drummed out of the Guard for what we’d done! Regardless of how I felt about the Greenmen, this wasn’t good news. Raffin’s father would probably disown him. “You sound almost proud of yourself.”

  He managed the start of a grin, though I could tell it hurt his face. “Come closer, peach. I have to tell you something.” I knelt beside the bed. Raffin’s eyes were too bright, his face glossy with perspiration. “Your man came to see me at the Keep,” he said, voice low.

  “Karst? Did he hurt you?”

  “No, that’s the thing.” Raffin turned his face to me. “We recognized each other.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” he said. “I’d seen him before, making deliveries at the Celystra.”