Liar's Moon

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  But what did happen, just then, was the door snapped shut, and a thin voice drifted through the storeroom. “Digger?”

  I stiffened and peered over the barrel we were hiding behind. “It’s Cwalo. What do we do?”

  “I don’t think it matters much at this point,” Durrel said, and he stepped out of the barrels, his balled-up clothes in one hand. “Good morning, sir.”

  It’s really hard to surprise Master Cwalo, but the look on his face that morning was worth sovereigns, as he beheld Durrel and me, in nothing but our small clothes, lurking in the back of his warehouse.

  “I take it your courtship with Piral is off,” he finally said.

  “We got wet,” I said indignantly, pulling away from Durrel.

  “Evidently.”

  “Escaping the Watch,” Durrel said.

  “Stop helping.”

  Cwalo said, “Why don’t you two get dressed, and then step into my office so we can have a chat.” There was the very slightest emphasis on dressed, and I had the distinct feeling he was trying hard to conceal a laugh.

  We followed him to the smaller room, and I realized how stiff and hungry I was. “I’m sorry about your door,” I said.

  “I recognized your handiwork, but usually you’re a little neater.” Cwalo sat at the desk, and Durrel and I took the chairs. For a moment we three just looked at one another, all at a loss for words. But it wasn’t long before Durrel and I were pouring out our story — not just of our wild flight from the Night Watch at Stantin’s, but everything. Talth, Karst, Ferrymen selling refugees to the Celystra, all of it. I even included Werne’s visits to the bakery.

  “Lost magic users? Here in Gerse?” Cwalo frowned as he poured out a measure of a hot, spicy drink for each of us. The drink was thick and sweet and fortifying, and I held fast to the warm cup.

  “We need to find them before Karst does something with them,” Durrel said. He didn’t need to specify what something meant.

  Cwalo was tapping his fingers together. “If they’re not inside the city wall by now, they won’t be, not with the gates closed. Have you followed this Karst’s movements, to see if he’ll lead you to them?”

  “We’re too conspicuous,” Durrel said. “He’s already suspicious, and the Ceid have men watching my father.”

  “This might be a matter I can help you with,” said Cwalo. “I have a man I trust. But it could take a few days before our efforts turn anything up.”

  “They might not have a few days,” Durrel said. “There has to be something we can do right now.”

  I shared Durrel’s restlessness, and pushed away from the desk. “First we need to get word to the others,” I said. “We have to make sure they made it out of Stantin’s safely, and let them know we’re putting a tail on Karst. I’ll also see if Koya knows anything else about where the Ceid might hide their prisoners. You stay here and help Cwalo.”

  “You can’t go out there alone,” Durrel said. “And what am I supposed to do — spend the next few days just hiding in Master Cwalo’s warehouse?”

  “You’ll be fine,” I said. “He keeps a room here.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “I’ve been dodging guards since I was eleven years old,” I said, though a growing part of me really wanted Durrel by my side. “I know what I’m doing. I can’t have you hanging about, throttling everyone we run into.”

  “Listen to the lady, your lordship,” Cwalo broke in. “Besides, I’ll need you to tell me all you can about your late wife’s operation. Maybe we can uncover a lead you two have missed. You’ll not be idle.”

  “You’re still a murder suspect and a fugitive,” I added gently.

  “Damn it, stop reminding me!”

  “When you start acting like one!”

  “All right, easy there, both of you.” Cwalo stepped between us. “Milord, I hate to admit it, but our girl’s right. She’s the best person to send word to your friends, and you have a very important job to do here.”

  “What’s that?” Durrel asked sullenly.

  “Don’t get caught,” I said.

  “All right,” he finally said, and followed me to the doorway. But I didn’t leave, just stood there, staring up at his fathomless dark gray eyes, the hair that wouldn’t quite stay in place, the smooth contour of his jaw. I wanted very badly to kiss him again, but Cwalo was looking over us like a brooding chaperon. Instead I put a hand against Durrel’s chest. He touched his fingers to my wrist.

  “Go,” he whispered. “And come back soon.”

  I went. Out into the bright, hot morning, the kiss of his fingertips still lingering on my hand, but a knot of worry pushing itself to the front of my thoughts. My chest felt curiously tight as I hurried along the docks, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something, somehow. We had a plan, and now with five of us searching, a better chance of finding Lord Ragn’s lost refugees. So what was wrong? I squeezed my hands into fists as if I could coax my magic sense back even more quickly. But that odd anxiety only intensified when I left the river behind.

  All the same difficulties I’d enumerated to Durrel last night were still in place, but I hazarded a visit to Cartouche, thinking it was probably the place least likely to attract Barris and his thugs, and where I could most easily get a message to Koya. It was a long trek, made longer by my twisting route as well as the unusual crowds abroad. It was as if the whole city had just opened out onto the streets for a festival — but the mood was anything but celebratory. I saw soldiers clotting the entries to public circles, and angry citizens arguing with them, and city guards hanging back, doing nothing to intervene.

  Cartouche was quiet during the day, the public rooms all but empty, and the indolent company I did see had more on their minds than calling down the Watch on me. I found no sign of Koya, but a pink-clad footman went to look for her. While I waited, I stole up to the bar to buy the first real meal I’d had in two days. When the barman turned to take my order, I almost didn’t recognize him. He had filled out a little, and lost that panicky look he’d had the last time I’d seen him, but he was unmistakably the lanky youth Koya had tried to foist upon me my first night here. The wariness in his eyes said he recognized me, as well.

  “Mistress Koya’s out today,” he said. His eyes darted across the room, and I saw he wasn’t quite as nonchalant as that pink uniform made him seem. Before he could engineer an escape, I leaned forward.

  “If I put my hand on your arm,” I said quietly, “what would happen?” Even before taking the tincture, I hadn’t detected his magic, and I still couldn’t tell anything, yet I knew, with solid certainty, that I was right.

  “Are you trying to get me in trouble? No one here knows, all right? I’m just working here until my family gets to town.”

  “They’re still with Ferrymen?” My voice was as low as possible, but the boy still flinched at the word. “With Karst?”

  He scrubbed at the bar determinedly with his rag. “I can’t say any more.”

  “Do you know where they’re being held?”

  He looked up sharply, and the fear was back in his gaze. “They’re late, aren’t they? Koya said not to worry —” He shook his head. “But I’m sure they’re coming. We paid our fares.”

  “How did you get separated?”

  “I came ahead,” he said. “In the first group, with my uncle. My mother and my sister were supposed to follow after. My sister was sick when I left, and they couldn’t travel with her. But I know they set off,” he added with conviction, “because I got a letter from them saying Meis was better, and they were coming in the next transport.”

  “And you haven’t heard from them since.”

  “It’s been over a month,” he said. “And every day Mistress Koya promises that they’ll arrive soon. Something’s happened to them, hasn’t it?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m sure they’re safe.” What was I going to say?

  “Marau’s moon was full when we arrived in Gerse, and I remember ou
r guard making morbid jokes about us, because of it.” He gave a shudder, remembering. “Karst was the worst. He’d torment the women, touch them, pull their hair and — and worse things.”

  “You won’t have to worry about him much longer,” I said. “We’re sure he killed his boss among the Ceid, and he’ll hang for it. Lord Ragn is doing all he can.” But the promise was hollow, because none of us had the faintest idea where this boy’s family was, and chances were good that Karst wouldn’t be anywhere near as patient as Talth had been.

  I started to leave, but something tugged at me as I slid from the bar stool. “Wait —” I turned back, and the boy looked up, still wary. “When did you say you arrived?”

  “About a month ago,” he said, gesturing toward the shuttered window. “When Marau was full.”

  The full moon of Marau, which fell at the same time as the new moon of Celys, and upon which Durrel had commented, when we were hidden together in the rowboat. I remember thinking how odd it was, to die on the night of Marau’s full moon. Like a bad omen. The night of Talth’s murder.

  “Are you sure? You saw the full moon?”

  He nodded. “They moved us from the ship to a — some kind of cellar that night. It was the first time I’d seen the sky in weeks.”

  “And Karst was with you the whole time? Did he ever leave? Get relieved by another guard? Leave you alone for a couple hours, maybe chained up?”

  “That one never left. Not even to use the privy,” he added with such obvious distaste it didn’t take much to figure out what he meant. “Kept us all at gunpoint until dawn. I think he was waiting for somebody. . . .”

  I didn’t hear the rest of what he said. If Karst was with a shipment of refugees all night, then he couldn’t have been at Bal Marse, slipping poison into a drink.

  He couldn’t have killed Talth.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I left Cartouche feeling hollow. I had wanted Karst to be the murderer; he was cruel and ruthless and guilty of so much else that it only seemed fitting that he had killed Talth. Yet somehow I had ignored the signs that he was blameless in that particular crime — that someone else was responsible.

  There was no conceivable reason for Koya’s pink bartender to give Karst an alibi. He could have been mistaken, no matter how confident he felt about the date. That’s what I tried to tell myself, anyway. With Talth dead, Karst could move in and seize control of the Ferryman trade, and how better to make a name for himself than by killing his ruthless boss to get her out of the way? But as I walked into the slanting sunlight, I knew I didn’t believe it. Karst’s boasts to Fei and his cronies had been nothing but bravado, lies told to impress his men, to establish his own reputation as a cold-blooded Ferryman — and a more entertaining story than the official version of murder by unhappy husband. It was possible, I supposed, that another Ferryman had killed Talth, but I doubted it. No self-respecting Gerse criminal lets another man take credit for his work, and if someone else in Talth’s crew, or some rival organization, had done it, he’d have spoken up fast when Karst started bragging. That left me with one suspect, and a sick core of dread when I thought about it.

  I walked aimlessly through the city. My feet led; my head was somewhere else. The mood of people in the streets had grown thin and tense, as if everyone was waiting for something. All around me were soldiers, the king’s Green Army, ambling through the dusky evening, but they were scattered, disjointed, not the lean, organized regiment mustered to bring order to Gerse. I heard a shout, two, a dozen, and when I finally made out the words, I was too weary and distracted to notice them at first.

  “Take a torch to the cursed place, that’s what somebody ought to do.”

  “Burn old Werne to ashes. It’s his damn fault we’re at war in the first place.”

  “Too much control over Bardolph, and his green dogs grow fat and lazy while we’re doing all the work and starving in the streets!”

  I halted at a corner. Had I heard them right? The king’s army was planning an assault on the Celystra? What did that mean? I found a high place, a shop rooftop where I could see across the city, to the green tiles of the temple’s massive dome. For a moment, I thought it was aflame, but that was only the reflection of the setting sun off the glass. But the streets everywhere were full of soldiers — and for once they weren’t harassing ordinary Gersins. These were fighting men on a mission, and it could not be one that boded well for the city.

  I sat on that roof for what seemed like hours, the sun slipping lower behind the city, trying to make up my mind. I should do something. That was a nagging certainty, but what? Walk back to the warehouse and tell Durrel what I’d learned? Definitely not that.

  I got to Koya’s house when I ran out of places to go. It was a guess, but it felt like the right one tonight. She answered her own door, the dogs peering curiously from behind her. She was dressed informally in a loose, dark robe, her hair in a long plait down her back, and relief washed over her face when she saw me.

  “Celyn! We were so worried! I’ll never forgive that bastard Barris.”

  “I need to speak to Lord Ragn,” I said.

  For a moment she hesitated, obviously trying to decide whether to dissemble, ask why I would think to find Lord Decath at her house, but finally she stepped aside and said, “Outside.”

  Lord Ragn was on the terrace landing, seated at a stone table and flipping through maps he couldn’t possibly read in the dusk. I slipped out silently and stood beneath the limp white mourning banners, watching him. How could I have missed it? I hadn’t. I knew the truth, had known it for nearly two weeks now. Since the night of the opera when I’d looked at Durrel and Lord Ragn and not been able to tell them apart. I should turn back. Why couldn’t I just ignore the Cartouche boy’s story? He’d been traumatized; surely it was possible that he was mistaken about the date?

  But he wasn’t. I knew he wasn’t, and I watched Lord Ragn now, studying the river as if scanning the water for some vessel’s distant approach. Stop, I told myself. Don’t go, don’t speak, don’t ask the question. Because I already knew what the answer was — and I also knew, somehow, that he would tell me. If I didn’t say anything, didn’t force him to respond, we could all go home and keep telling ourselves that Talth had been killed by some Ferryman thug she’d ripped off.

  And not by her innocent husband’s father.

  I stepped down into the moonslight, and Lord Ragn rose and caught me by the shoulders, crushing me in a hug. “Celyn, thank the gods!” he cried. “The Watch didn’t find you? Where’s Durrel?”

  “Safe,” I said, but that was all. I gestured toward his maps. “Any more leads on the missing Sarists?”

  “None,” Lord Ragn said, but he was still looking at me with that devastating concern. I had to move away from that compassion before I forgot why I’d come. Ragn frowned. “It’s almost enough to tempt me to call in the Night Watch myself, have them raid the Ceid’s warehouses.”

  “Don’t do that,” I said, alarmed. “If they found the Sarists —”

  “Of course not,” he said. “But it would put a stop to this endless waiting, at least.”

  “And prove Karst’s guilt?”

  He looked at me sharply. My next question was a knife, and I aimed it precisely. “Where were you when Talth was killed?”

  Lord Ragn breathed out slowly, as if he’d been waiting all month to hear those words, and he was almost relieved someone had finally asked him. The Celystra bells tolled through the muggy night, and the nearby water seemed to make the hot air even thicker. The moons shimmered through the damp, and no breeze teased off the water to pretend that anything besides more heat was coming downstream.

  “You don’t understand.” His face looked cool in the moonslight, but I could still see the darkness of his eyes, and the shadows, deeper still, that lingered there. “I owed her money, you see,” he said. “The smuggling operations were getting more expensive. Bribes went up as security tightened with the war. I’d had some dealings w
ith Grensl Ceid, Talth’s first husband, and knew him to be a good man who’d left a fortune to his wife. I had no notion of the kind of woman Talth was.”

  “She hid herself well,” I said.

  “Too well.” But Lord Ragn continued, “When I decided to expand my operation, I needed more cash. I was cautious at first, didn’t tell her what the money was for, and she was only too happy to grant me a loan. Plus interest, of course.” He paused, his lips tightening. “Eventually she wouldn’t lend me any more until I told her what it was being used for. She’d invested a lot in our operations, so I brought her into my confidence.”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “I had to do something! You know what she was, what she was doing to those innocent people who trusted her. I had married my son to a monster. It was my responsibility. I had to take care of it.”

  “And leaving Durrel the blame? That was how you took responsibility?”

  “Of course not! I’ve always intended to turn myself in, but before I could do anything, we learned of the missing passengers. With people delayed, possibly trapped, I had to do what I could to save them, first. It never occurred to me that —” He broke off.

  “That Geirt would see you, and mistake you for your son?”

  He closed his open hand, a brief fist of frustration. “When Durrel was arrested —” He faltered, a shadow crossing his face. “I swear by Marau, at the time it seemed like the safest place for him. Talth’s thugs wouldn’t care if she’d been murdered by a disgruntled husband — they weren’t going to come after him.”

  But they did. They nearly did, and we’d only just saved Durrel in time. “You have to speak up,” I said. “Barris’s men are still after Durrel, and the Ceid are calling for his blood.”

  “I never meant for anything like this to happen,” he said. “You know that.” He sighed and shook his head. “I keep wondering how it all could have gone so wrong. Amalle was not in favor of the match. She felt Talth was too old, that Durrel was too young to be married, particularly after what had happened to him in Tratua. But I thought I knew better, that marriage to a woman like Talth would give the boy some stability in his life. I should have listened to her.” He sounded weary, resigned. “But at first, things seemed to go well. I had no idea how unhappy my son was.”