Liar's Moon

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  Neither of us spoke for a long time, but Durrel finally broke the silence. “How’s Raffin?”

  “He’ll be fine.” I didn’t know what to say next. There was so much going on, and I wanted to talk to somebody — to Durrel — but I couldn’t decide where to start. “Where did you go?”

  He shrugged. “Just — here. Along the water. I went past my house, but . . .” he trailed off. “I knew she didn’t like me,” he said, and it was obvious he meant Talth. “And I accepted that. I knew she was cold, and hard, and never let a drop of warmth or affection go to waste. I even knew she was a terrible mother. But to find out that she was involved not just in extorting and exploiting vulnerable people, but — this thing that Raffin told us . . . How could anyone do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He turned those dark, anguished eyes to me. “And my father?”

  “No,” I said, my voice rough with relief. “He wasn’t involved. Koya explained it to me.”

  He looked perplexed. “Koya?”

  I had forgotten Durrel didn’t know that Koya and Ragn were working together — because I’d only just figured that bit out before poisoning myself. I recounted what Koya had told me tonight, finishing with, “It was only Karst and Talth who were involved with the Inquisition.” Koya had just said Karst, but she hadn’t had the benefit of Raffin’s intelligence regarding her mother’s involvement. “Your father didn’t do anything wrong.”

  He nodded slowly, still looking troubled. Eske appeared at that moment, bearing a ewer of mead. “Busy night?” she asked, and I choked on my drink.

  “You have no idea,” I said before she slipped away again. It had started with a visit from my brother and ended with the discovery that I’d killed my own magic, and it seemed unbelievable that everything that had happened between could fit into the same evening.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” Durrel reached for my hand and I pulled it back. “Did something else happen?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t really want to talk about it, but I told him anyway. “I figured out what the poison was for. It — quells magic.”

  “Quells?” Durrel looked hard at me for a moment as this sank in. “Damn, Celyn. Are you all right?”

  “Koya said it’s temporary,” I said — but she couldn’t know for sure. Koya had never dealt with a magic like mine. There was no telling what the Tincture of the Moon might have done to my singular power.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He looked helpless, and there was concern threaded all through his voice. He did take my hand then, refusing to release it when I tried to tug away.

  “I’m sure I’ll be fine,” I lied. “Is there any more mead?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The rest of that night involved a great deal of the Temple’s best offerings and a concerted effort to blot out our mounting mysteries for a few hours. I woke late and muzzy-headed and just a little surprised to find myself alone in what seemed to be my own room at the tavern. I got myself more or less put together, in time to see a note slip through the crack beneath the door. We’d had a message from Koya, calling Durrel and me to a meeting at an address I didn’t recognize. I was suspicious, but Durrel confirmed the hand and knew the house, so we set off that hot, drowsy afternoon, squinting against a damnably bright sun.

  “What’s this about?” I asked, as if Durrel knew any more than I did.

  “I don’t know,” Durrel said, “but I’m glad to finally be doing something besides sitting around the Temple waiting for something to happen.”

  “I’m sure it’s very onerous,” I said crossly. “Being anonymous among all those masked women.”

  “I’m only interested in one masked woman,” he said, and was rewarded with my most withering scowl.

  The address Koya provided was in a middle-class district, on a street with a view down the Oss to the city wall. I felt a stab of concern as I saw that black iron bars were lowered over the river.

  “They’ve closed the gates?” Durrel’s disbelief mirrored my own. But the queue of vessels backed up thickly in the water, and the frustrated buzz of conversation all along the riverside, was plain enough. To protect the city from invasion by Prince Wierolf’s troops, Bardolph had ordered all the gates sealed, cutting off transit in and out of Gerse, closing docks, and shutting down shipping. It had been hard enough for ordinary people to enter or leave town for months, but at least we knew food and goods and information still passed through the gates. Now I felt my chest constrict a little, as if Bardolph’s grip was literally closing around me, and not the city.

  Durrel stopped to question a merchant standing outside his shop and shaking his head at the sight. “Been some kind of incident,” the fellow explained. “A fire at a house down Sixth Circle way — burned half a dozen soldiers in their beds, and the family they were staying with.” At this last, he spit on the ground.

  A woman drawing her washing in from a cramped courtyard told us more. “They say it were deliberate,” she said. Somehow the home’s doors and shutters had been fixed shut, ensuring that there would be no survivors. “And a purple handprint, right there on the front door.”

  Durrel and I exchanged alarmed glances. “That purple handprint again,” he said in a low voice as we moved on. “Just like those dead Greenmen.”

  “Well, whoever they are, they’ve progressed to killing civilians,” I said grimly.

  Eventually we turned down along the river and stopped at a modest town house painted sky blue, its narrow balcony overlooking the water. “We’re here,” Durrel said.

  “Where?” I looked the place over; I saw no wall, no guards, just a well-tended patch of garden and a sleepy, white cat draped sinuously across the doorstep. What was Koya up to now?

  “Ah — this is Stantin’s house,” Durrel said, his voice a little tight. “Koya’s husband.”

  I drew back in surprise, but the door swung open, and a tall man with white hair stepped over the cat and bowed briefly to Durrel. “Your lordship,” he said in a smooth voice like warm wine. “And Mistress Celyn. The others are here. Come.”

  “Others?” But Koya’s husband just ushered us inside, making polite inquiry about the weather, as if we were ordinary visitors. He led us upstairs to a cozy sitting room overlooking the river. The balcony doors were thrown wide, lightweight curtains lifting in the air. Koya and one of her sighthounds had taken over a delicate, turned-wood bench, and she was deep in conversation with Lord Ragn and another man about Stantin’s age (Claas, Durrel quietly informed me). In her beaded velvet she looked utterly out of place here, but turned a relaxed face to us when we entered.

  I felt Durrel tense up beside me when he saw his father, but Lord Ragn rose and embraced him firmly. “Is he being careful?” Lord Ragn demanded of me. He looked windblown and weary, as if he’d ridden hard to get here. “This will be over soon,” he added — and I wanted to ask what he meant, but was forestalled by Stantin bearing a dish of fruit and a pitcher of wine.

  “How did you get strawberries?” I asked instead.

  “I’ve been at Favom,” Lord Ragn said. “They’re falling off the vine, they’re so ripe, and the fields are black with crows feasting on them. I’m afraid they’ll rot, since there’s no way to get them from the farm anymore.”

  “Lucky you made it back before they sealed the gates,” Durrel observed.

  “Only just,” his father agreed.

  “How are Lady Amalle’s friends?” I heard the edge in Durrel’s voice.

  Lord Ragn stiffened. “Safe,” he said curtly. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to speak with our hosts.”

  He turned away, but his path was blocked by Koya. “Ragn,” she said softly, “let them help.” Leaving him no room to object, she steered us all toward the sitting area. “Tell him what you’ve told me,” she said to me, and Durrel and I explained what Raffin had said about Karst and the Sarists he’d sold to the Celystra.

  Disturbingly Lord Ragn’s face betrayed no surprise or alarm at this inform
ation. “We’d feared something like this might be going on.”

  “Something like what?” I said.

  Instead of answering me directly, Ragn shifted in his seat. “Your ability to sense magic seems to be unique in the world, Celyn,” he said. “But there’s always been the question of how the Inquisition seeks out and identifies magic.”

  “Beyond random accusations, you mean?” Durrel said.

  “Right. But we know from firsthand accounts that their techniques do occasionally turn up an authentic magic user or artifact.”

  “The lodestones, the treated silver,” I said. The Confessors had tools to detect the presence of magic, but they were only a noninvasive first step. The other techniques came later and weren’t so kind.

  “Exactly,” said Lord Ragn. “But I wouldn’t be able to work the lodestones; Lord Durrel wouldn’t know how to tell the difference between altered silver and ordinary.”

  “And altered how?” Durrel put in, obviously tracking his father’s line of thought. “You’d need —”

  “Someone like me.” Listening to the Decath’s analysis, I felt cold all over. They were right. How would ordinary people craft a lodestone to respond to magic in a room? The stones themselves weren’t inherently magical, so how did they work? “Somebody inside the Inquisition must have magic.”

  Lord Ragn’s face was set, and I realized he must have come to this conclusion ages ago. Why had I never thought about it?

  “Well, I can hardly imagine Werne putting very many wizards on his payroll,” said Durrel.

  But I could. What had he wanted me to do, after all? I looked between father and son, willing it not to be true. “Karst’s prisoners.”

  Lord Ragn nodded grimly. “It would appear that at least some of the Ferrymen’s clients who come short of their ransom aren’t killed outright by the Inquisitor’s men.”

  “Wait,” Durrel said. “You think Talth and Karst turned people over to the Greenmen, who subsequently put them to work charming chains and rocks so the Confessors could track down their fellow Sarists even more efficiently?”

  It was a horrible thought, and one that had too much of the ring of truth about it. “We know Werne’s tried to recruit me,” I said. “And it explains what Raffin saw.”

  Lord Ragn gave me a barely perceptible nod, but Durrel looked alarmed. “And this is why Karst killed Talth? Some dispute over this — arrangement with the Celystra?”

  “We’ve been trying to find evidence,” I added. “But all we have right now is the word of a disgraced Greenman.”

  Koya’s cool voice broke into the conversation. “We actually called you here for a more urgent matter.” She rose from her seat and drew closer to us, giving Lord Ragn a pointed look. “Tell them.”

  He looked stubborn, but finally acquiesced. “There’s been a delay in the arrival of one of our shipments,” he said.

  It took me a moment to understand what he meant, and then I wished I didn’t. “You have missing Sarists?”

  “The last clients we contracted to move through Mother’s firm,” said Koya. “There was an arrival the day she died, but there were — people absent. Passengers we know had arranged for the journey somehow did not reach Gerse with the others, and we fear there may also be others we were unaware of, people she added on her own.”

  Something heavy settled on my chest as I took this in. “They’d already turned them over to the Celystra?”

  “Fortunately I don’t think so,” Lord Ragn said. “It was Talth’s habit to put them to work in her own enterprises while bleeding them of their money. Only when they were worked half to death or the gold had run dry did she turn to the Inquisition.” There was a bitter edge to his words, and I couldn’t blame him. “No, as far as we can tell, they just never arrived.”

  “So they’re still out there?” Durrel sounded horrified. “It’s been weeks! They could have suffocated in some cargo hold, or —”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Lord Ragn put in gently. “But that is one reason Koya and I have been so concerned.”

  “We have to find them,” Durrel said, an accusatory note to his voice.

  Koya reached for him. “That’s what your father’s been trying to do,” she said. “He’s been traveling, making inquiries —”

  “But unfortunately the one person who definitely knew what happened to them is dead, and her colleagues have not been forthcoming either.” Ragn stood and paced behind the bench. “I’ve tried to suss out information from sources inside the Celystra or the Council —”

  “And I’ve asked what I could of the Ceid,” Koya added.

  “But it’s delicate work, inquiring after Sarists, and I’ve found no sign of them. I’m afraid only Talth’s close associates know where they are.”

  “How many?” I asked, my voice very small.

  Ragn took a breath before answering, looking over my head to the river outside. “At least six.”

  “Hells,” Durrel said. “What can we do?”

  Here Koya looked at me. “That’s one of the reasons I reached out to you, Celyn. I thought you might —” She broke off, shaking her head.

  In a sudden, awful rush I understood what she meant. “I can’t,” I said.

  “We wouldn’t ask you to expose yourself,” Ragn said. “But if there were some way you could turn your gift to this matter, you would be doing a very great service for the cause of good.”

  I stared at him. Why hadn’t Koya mentioned this? “No, I mean I really can’t,” I said. “I took the tincture.”

  From the look of dismay on Lord Ragn’s face, I knew he understood precisely what I meant. “And you’re sure — you sense absolutely nothing?”

  “Father, please. If you knew what she’d been through, you wouldn’t ask her. There’s got to be another way.” Durrel leaned forward in his seat. “Are you sure the refugees made it to the city?”

  Ragn lifted his hands in defeat, but said, “To the best I could figure out. I’ve been able to trace them as far as a checkpoint outside Tratua, but after that the trail runs cold. But Talth preferred to keep her assets close; she didn’t like to leave things unaccounted for.”

  “The city it is, then,” Durrel said. He shoved aside a pile of books on a little table and started to trace a figure on the table’s surface — a wide circle representing Gerse. “You’ve already checked the docks, I hope,” he said.

  “Of course,” his father said, sounding cross. “All Talth’s shipments have been accounted for. And the warehouse near Bal Marse, where we know she’d held people before.” He marked a spot on the table with the stem of a strawberry.

  “Here,” said a low voice, and there was Claas, spreading a rolled-up parchment across the little table. “It’s a bit dated,” he added apologetically, as the image of Gerse opened before us. “Which is why we were allowed to keep it.” He was being generous. The fragile document lacked at least two major bridges crossing the Oss and the Big Silver, and Markettown appeared to be a pasture. Still, it was good enough for our purposes.

  “Didn’t you tell me Talth owned houses in Markettown?” I asked Durrel, pointing to the general area on the map. “Where we saw the plague flags?”

  Koya slipped in closer. “Barris told me he sold those properties. Ragn?”

  Durrel’s father frowned at the map. “It’s something,” he said, not sounding particularly hopeful.

  “Let’s go look.” Durrel stood up, but his father shook his head.

  “We can’t simply rush straight into a quarantine,” Ragn said. “We need to consider our next move carefully.”

  “How much time do you think they have?” I asked. “If Karst realizes we know what he’s doing, he’ll get rid of them. I’m with Durrel on this.”

  “Karst won’t realize, because I have gone out of my way to keep from arousing his suspicions,” Ragn said.

  “But we haven’t,” Durrel said heavily. “He’s seen Celyn, and I’m obviously not where the Ceid put me for safekeeping. We
need to find those refugees.”

  Their argument continued, Durrel wanting to leave now, and his father urging caution. I was starting to feel a little sick, from the heat, and last night, and the whole awful weight of what this meant finally settling on me. The idea that I could somehow use my skill to track magic users had always repulsed me, but now that I absolutely couldn’t do it, when it might have been used to save people instead of condemn them — I squeezed my eyes shut and bent my head to my knees, wishing all of this would just go away.

  A few moments later, I felt a gentle arm around me. I looked up, expecting Durrel or Koya, but it was Claas sitting beside me, offering me a drink. He was watching me, a strange, sad kindness in his warm eyes, and there was something here that I almost, almost understood. I swallowed hard, rubbing at my chest.

  “They’re gathering for dinner,” he said. Lord Ragn and Durrel had disappeared to the dining room next door. “Why don’t you step outside for some air? There’s actually a breeze this evening.”

  It was so bland and simple it was comforting. “Thank you.”

  Outside on the balcony, Koya and her dog gazed out over the glassy water, and I went to join them. She turned and leaned against the balustrade, her gaze tracking back inside the house, where Durrel still spoke with the other men.

  “Stantin and Claas seem . . . hospitable,” I said tentatively, to break the awkward silence.

  A weak smile flickered across her face and was gone again, fast as a darting bat in the dusk. “They are all good things,” she said, and there was a trace of the old, arch Koya in her voice. “They didn’t even flinch when I asked if I could bring you here, just threw open their doors and steamed some oysters.” She cast her head back, as if to soak up the night. “Koyuz is like an overindulgent uncle, happy to give me anything I ask for.”

  “Except a divorce,” I said baldly, and her laughter clapped through the night, too harsh.

  “No,” she said. “Not that.”

  The moons hung heavy in the thick sky, over a chorus of crickets and frogs. After the longest moment, Koya spoke again, her eyes on the sky above us. “I want a child,” she said. “If I have one, Stantin will say it is his. But as you may imagine, it’s not been easy finding potential . . . candidates. I thought Durrel, but —” She shook her head. “He wouldn’t. Mother overheard us that night. I was crying. Durrel was Durrel. Gallant, defending me. Mother banished me from Bal Marse. That’s what their quarrel was over.”