"The perpetrator must be at court still, yes." Ulamat takes a hearty gulp of his coffee. Black, steaming, entirely unsweetened. "There's the—well, we could find a scapegoat, but if it happens again ..."
"Yes, that is the problem, isn't it?" She is repeating him, repeating herself. "Whoever it is, they got us well and good."
"My lord?" He looks up at her, putting his mug down so quickly it clatters on the tabletop.
It is the first time, Lussadh realizes, he has ever heard her admit defeat. No matter what she has always had a solution, given small speeches. She has always reassured. Perhaps it is exhaustion. Perhaps it is the indelible sight of Juhye tearing and shredding, his mouth too wide, as he transmuted from skin to crystal. "You should get some sleep," she says. "You need it more than I do. I'll take another look at the scene of the crime."
"That cannot be safe."
"Our thaumaturges have checked and purified every centimeter of the hall. It's as safe as it can be." And she requires privacy to reach the queen. "Go, Ulamat. We will both think better when we have had a little rest."
"Yes, my lord. Before I leave—where might the lieutenant be?"
No point asking which lieutenant. "She has pressing matters to attend to, on my orders." With Guryin, but her aide doesn't necessarily need to know that. She means to be more careful with information from now on, even with her closest. As she should have been from the start.
She smooths her hands down the front of her dress. Sanguine matter has flecked it, though at a glance this merely blends into the oxblood fabric. It is a dress recently made by the queen's couturier, Her Majesty herself helping to pick the cutting, the colors, the style of seams. She was delighted to see Lussadh in colors like these, the deep red, the jewel tones. When Lussadh pointed out she hardly needed more clothes, the queen said, Indulge me. It delights me to see you in beautiful things. The poets call you a work of art, but to me you're more like a confection.
Confectioners are artists, my queen.
To that the queen laughed before commissioning her more clothes. It is such a small thing, this memory, yet remembering it now is an ache. She misses her queen; she feels weak for the fact. The Winter Queen may never fault her for vulnerability, but Lussadh has stricter standards for herself.
Soldiers salute her in the corridors: there are more assigned than usual, double the guard detail, most of them infantry she brought with her from the capital since Sareha has all but emptied the local garrison. Guryin joked that it was a waste that Sareha didn't put them in the kilns—So many bodies, and not a single ghost wrung out between the lot. No doubt Sareha thought it another gesture of defiance to execute and cremate.
Lussadh listens to the echoes of her footfalls, the sharp clacks of heels on stone. Good shoes, built for stability and balance. She can easily stride in them, if not run, but they are loud. At the feast they adorned her well; now they only give away her position, announce her coming to anyone listening. And the perpetrator must be here somewhere, monitoring, triumphant. To have caused this much damage in so spectacular a fashion, at a moment when she was about to restore order to the palace and to the city at large.
In all her decades of service to winter she has never been struck at so effectively.
"Leave me," she says to the soldiers stationed inside the hall.
"All of us, General?"
"All of you. No one has disturbed the area or attempted entry?"
No one has. The hall has been under lock, key, and heavy guard: she counts twelve soldiers as they file out, one of them a thaumaturge. Once alone, she makes circuits around each glass sculpture. All three have been cordoned off, contained behind half-living vipers of obsidian and metal, substances that are conduits for warding. She tosses a fragment of smashed dinnerware over and one of the witched vipers instantly rears, snatching it out of the air. A crunching noise.
There is the bladed tree that used to be Juhye, twice as tall as he was, slender of trunk and branches. There are still organs trapped inside, like insects in amber, and spheres of congealed blood that never met the air: blue-black rather than red. The next is the stalagmite that used to be a judge. A length of entrails on the floor, one lung stuck within the crystal, several fingers knotted inside the pillar. The last, the ministry thaumaturge, is humanoid, bipedal. This one has retained the most body parts, the most fluids. An unblemished eyeball lolls embedded in the crook of a crystalline elbow, a piece of cartilage—ear or nose—abides in a narrow hip. A liver here, a kidney there, preserved in their entirety. Odd fleshy masses like tumors, and a solitary bezoar clotted in mucus and orange fur.
Lussadh touches her breast, the point at which her shard of glass resides. The parallel does not escape her—the glass within, erupting to horror without. Whoever is behind this almost certainly knows the secret of the queen's favored, of what winning the tribute tournament signifies and what Lussadh carries.
Her calling-glass is halfway out when she hears that sound of crackling ice. She follows the noise to the window, and there catches the familiar sight. A frost outline of a tall figure robed and crowned and brilliant in the moon.
She puts the calling-glass back, exhaling in relief. The queen has learned what happened, one way or another.
The frost sending leads her on, out from this floor, out of the palace. Strange that it doesn't simply bring her to a private, secret place in her wing, but the queen has her caprices. Lussadh exchanges salutes with patrols, her eye always on the ice figure that snaps and darts across the pavement. She does stop once to peer down at the city's lower tiers, at the commotion of crowds moving through night streets, freed at last from curfew, well-fed for the first time in a while. She watches a group of young people barrel out of a restaurant, laughing, bottles in one hand and shawarma in the other. Street vendors roast and distribute kebab, handing out skewers and small plates. What happened at the party hasn't reached them—for now.
She strides one level down to clerical offices and dormitories that house staff of limited means, limited ranks. Low, sloped buildings reinforced by crude iron. At the present they are vacant—their occupants either at the palace or down below, making the most of this single night.
The ice sending disappears outside one of the offices. She approaches, and at once knows Her Majesty is not here—not in person, not in envoy-casting. Lussadh's affinity does not stir, and her skin does not detect the shift that radiates from the queen, the drop in temperature, the change in air pressure.
Lussadh draws her gun. If she is mistaken, the queen will forgive.
On the ledge that overlooks the next level down, a person stands, hidden beneath a corpse's shroud. The white cloth billows, giving her features in fragments: broad wide-set eyes, nose like a needle, cheeks where skin is stretched tight over a skull as gaunt as a bird's.
This person is of Yatpun, like the queen. But Lussadh does not dwell too long on this thought. She shoots: a thunder of insect noise as frost-bees burst out of the muzzle—
And stop.
They hover about her in a nacreous cloud, thick, confused. They do not surge forward; they do not vent their hunger on human flesh as they've been made to. Between the shroud, the stranger smiles and unslings from their back a shark-sleek spear.
Lussadh does not allow surprise to slow her. She is ready when the first blow comes, catching it on her sword. Her wound throbs. The spear-tip slides along the length of her blade as she twists around and kicks at the stranger's midsection. Her heel connects with something that is more than flesh and muscle. Not armor—she knows how that feels and this is something else, not leather or metal mesh or even wood. Her opponent's breath hitches, yet they lose neither their balance nor impetus. The spear dips low to sweep her legs.
She leaps over it and comes down stamping on the spear, her weight pinning it by the haft to the ground. She swings, a sure, decisive strike.
The stranger lets go of the spear and pulls back, gaining distance. In their other hand a knife has appeared, as th
ough out of thin air, long and the precise shade of black ice. Lussadh did graze them: a cut on their cheek has opened wide and deep enough that it exposes fat, a sliver of skull. But bloodless. Impossibly, it is bloodless.
They bend forward and charge her like a bull.
It is the wrong stance for a blade so short and Lussadh counters it with ease, chopping downward on the riposte. It should have severed their wrist but there is that again, the sense that her blade connected with a substance other than flesh and bone, the noise grating like metal on metal. She drives them back, away from the firmness of pavement, toward the creaking ledge. Their hand hangs, attached to their wrist by a slip of skin and white tendons. It should have immobilized them with agony. They fight on, parrying and fending her off with their good hand and one little knife even as they inexorably retreat.
In the next blow Lussadh puts her back into it, all her might. Her shoulder wound splits with a gush of warmth.
The stranger dodges, overcompensates, and loses their balance finally, the pavement under them wet and slippery with frost. Lussadh grabs their shroud and with that momentum heaves them over the railing. Panting she watches them plummet and dwindle into the distance below. She waits to hear the impact; it never comes.
Next to her, the fallen spear slowly thaws, melding with the snow into oily slush.
* * *
In the teahouse's uncertain light, Nuawa can hardly recognize the major. If she was pressed she would not be able to express what precisely has changed—Guryin's features have not rearranged themselves the way Ytoba's did, and individually they may well have been the same as ever. This is not an act of shapeshifting, but some subtler practice that exerts not on Guryin's face but on the onlooker's perception, and it's not until xe grins and speaks that she is sure who xe is. "You look like you saw a ghost. Are you uncomfortable around thaumaturgy?"
"Not exactly." Nuawa has changed out of her dress uniform to plain clothes, though she keeps her weapons. The rendezvous point Guryin has chosen is a teahouse on the city's lowest level, the oldest part of Kemiraj. It is packed, drinks and food paid for by the palace's coffers. Both flow freely from what must be an overstressed kitchen. Every table bears a platter piled high with samosas and poppadum, bowls of chutney and paneer. "Something urgent happened at the palace."
"So I gather. Not to worry, I didn't invite you just to have terrifically greasy food—though this teahouse is rather nice, wouldn't you say, excellent ambience—but to give you a progress report. How was the party by the way?"
"Someone put a curse in my wine, but I imagine that's routine palace politics. Perhaps Minister Veshma didn't like the look of my nose." She keeps her tone casual: the minister is highly placed.
"Ah. Such is life among the lofty." Guryin points with xer chin. "Do you see that table by the window? Empty. It's reserved for an honored guest. Who eats for free, even on regular days. Always here for dinner."
"Yes?"
"Here ey comes. That person with the green hair? Ey's a chiurgeon of exceptional skill, specializes in flesh-molding. One of the best in Kemiraj, and Kemiraj is full of the best. What distinguishes em from the others is that ey does this—giving people the bodies they want—for a pittance."
Nuawa appraises the chiurgeon in question, a stocky person with dyed hair, dressed in a thick, loose kurta and trousers. Ey takes the seat. A waiter brings em fresh flatbread and full bowls of curry, better fare than any other table's, brimming with glistening mutton. "A philanthropist."
"And well-loved around these parts." Guryin pops a samosa into xer mouth and loudly slurps xer tea. "Ey's booked for a patient this night, after dinner. Ey's hurrying through eir food. You see?"
She cracks a poppadum in half. At the feast she ate next to nothing, and though she has no appetite now, she doubts she'll survive the night on an empty stomach. She swallows without tasting, chases it down with too-sweet lassi. To the back a table erupts in laughter and someone yells mildly obscene congratulations to a would-be bride. "And?"
"Your time at the Seven Spires was better spent than I anticipated. Someone has petitioned our good chiurgeon for a total facial reconstruction—I've made friends with eir secretary—and while the name put down isn't Penjarej Manachakul, it is a Sirapirat name. What's more, I sent word to Ulamat, he couldn't find the name anywhere in immigration records for the last ten years or so. Safe to assume the patient's living under an assumed name."
"This is all circumstantial."
Guryin makes another samosa disappear and gives her a sidelong look. "Also, the best lead we've got so far."
And Kemiraj is a city of hundred-thousands; they must start somewhere. Nuawa concedes with a nod. They go through their platter, Guryin taking the lion's share. Soon the chiurgeon finishes eir meal. "We'll give em a head start," the major says in a low voice, dipping xer fingers in a small washbasin the teahouse provides every table.
They vacate the teahouse. Their table fills up quickly: the night is yet young, and few citizens want to head home yet after this long cooped up in their domiciles.
Despite the circumstances, Guryin is casual, strolling along as though xe is giving Nuawa a tour of this district. They lose sight of the chiurgeon more than once, but xe always finds the chiurgeon again—Nuawa becomes more and more certain the major's sight extends beyond the physical. Once she looks for it, she spots out of the corner of her eye a cobalt shadow that fleets across the dirty slush, an outline of wings and beaks. In shape, a bird of prey. Not the sort that flies at night.
The alleyways around them pull tight between old buildings that slant toward each other like herd animals sheltering from a storm, their brick walls made bright by graffiti layered one over another, their awnings meeting to form tiny bridges and ledges on which birds and laundry make their nests. Once this was where those of means lived, Nuawa has been told, the entire district shaded from the sun by the upper levels and overpasses. With winter, that has changed, and wealth has climbed upward, to where it is warmest.
Past knots of public gardens where dark, faceless statues stand, they come to what Guryin informs her is the district's hospital. A square building, two storeys tall, with brutalist angles, shuttered windows, and a corrugated gate. Busy even at this time of the night. The major makes a great show of sniffling and coughing to gain them entry, though a brown-uniformed nurse lets them know that—being non-urgent—they'll have to wait behind a long queue.
In a lobby crammed with patients—sprained ankles, fever, a few families here for their birth-chamber appointment—Guryin whispers to Nuawa that xe wants the chiurgeon to be in mid-operation before they interrupt it. "We want to catch your quarry red-handed, so to speak. And strapped down at an operating table, the nice professor won't be able to run. Let's see, we still have half an hour to go, so ... how did you meet her?"
"Whom?"
"The general, of course. I've been dying to know."
It hardly seems the time or the place. Nuawa surveys the lobby and the clusters of sick people. "We met in a library."
"Ah! I can see it now. You were poring over some complex, fabulously erudite manuscript, and that is what drew the general. She likes intelligent, intense people. I tried to introduce her to a bevy of those, but none struck the right chord, for whatever reason."
"The book I picked out was mostly pictures, actually. If I may—"
"So, the library. What next?"
She hardly has any idea, Nuawa realizes, where the chiurgeon's office or operating theater is. Whatever else, she has to rely on Guryin for that. She tries not to look at her watch. “She watched me fight. I assume she liked well enough what she saw. Beyond that I don’t think it appropriate to discuss, with due respect.”
Xe issues a tsk. "I don't mean the salacious minutiae. What do you take me for? Edit out the kissing, leave in the courting. Does she properly spoil you? If she does not, I’ll tell her off."
"I really don't think—"
"Ah, you're right, we ought to get a move on. Ha
ve you ever been inside a birthing chamber? No? This way."
They blend in with prospective parents, moving to the birthing ward. A nurse passes them by, clad in layers of sanitation carapace, carrying an infant freshly extracted from a womb and damp with alimentary waters. Guryin turns to coo at twin babies carried between a trio of husbands, who beam at xer, proud. To Nuawa, xe adds, "Kemiraj subsidizes most of this, but even then, this hospital's ward is cheaper than most. Even the children of the enamel can afford it. This place has just three dozen wombs, so as you can imagine the waitlist is eternal."
"Do you want one of your own?"
"As a matter of fact, yes. My betrothed and I, we love children. We're thinking of two actually, but that'll have to be after the wedding—decency, yes? Imsou will want a grand reception. What about you?"
Nuawa strives to imagine the concept of wanting to raise children under service to winter; she cannot. At the door of another birthing chamber, a nurse speaks in a low voice to a young woman before presenting her with a small, swaddled corpse. "I can't say I have thought about it. I'm not the parental sort." Ytoba's scheme or not.
Guryin's eyes turn distant, glazed, as though xe is looking at a faraway vision—something relayed back by a familiar, perhaps. Xe flicks open xer watch and nods. "They've started the operation. The third door, down there, that's the one we want. Will you do the honors or shall I?"
Nuawa elects to: she is not, after all, the one working undercover. She marches forward and draws her gun. Nurses and assistants press in around her, blocking her way. "Lieutenant Nuawa Dasaret," she says, showing them her hyacinth. It gleams with a singular purity even under this light, a star nestled in her palm. "I'm here by order of Her Majesty. Absolute winter."
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