by Sam Hawke
On the other hand, there were very real and very legitimate forces working against us that were not supernatural, and untangling that conspiracy needed our full attention. I couldn’t let myself become distracted.
“Credola!” A familiar voice startled me out of my contemplation. “Half the city is talking about it. I saw the Perest-Avani diplomat, what is her name? Abae-something? And she said you were attacked on the walls by a monstrous winged beast!” Ectar swooped in and crouched beside me, eyes wide with dismay. “The poor thing was very distressed. Are you all right? How badly are you hurt?” His eyes traveled anxiously over my bandaged upper arm and shoulder, and the various cuts on my face.
“I’m fine,” I reassured him. “Just scratched up a bit. It was just a bird.” His expression, if anything, grew even more alarmed, so I smiled and patted his hand. “It was kind of you to come, anyway.”
His hands gripped the edge of the pallet. Shook, then steadied. “Of course,” he said.
“I heard they found your missing soldier,” I said softly. “And I wanted to say I was so sorry it happened here in my city. I had hoped you would see Silasta without violence this time.”
“Ah.” He fidgeted, did not meet my gaze. “An unpleasant business, yes.”
“The whole household must be so upset,” I continued, risking a sidelong look; his head was tilted firmly down, staring at his hands, the bed, anywhere but me. “Poor Lady Mosecca. I met her, you know, a few days ago, and wanted to pass on my condolences.”
“The lady is distraught, of course,” he said. He pulled at the collar of his nihep as if it were too tight around his neck. “She is … It is a very difficult time. She had lost her husband not so long ago and Tuhash was her only son.”
“I wanted to reassure you I personally know the Captain of our Order Guards, and our determination council is very good. They’ll investigate and find the person who did this.”
Ectar looked at me quite sharply. “There must not be any investigation, Credola.” At my perplexed frown he stopped and softened his tone. “I mean no offense, but you must understand. The circumstances in which he was found … it is very embarrassing. My grandfather His Majesty would not have such a thing made public. An investigation would be most ill-advised.”
I blinked at him, genuinely surprised. “But—Ectar. He was killed. Do you not want to find out who, and see them punished?”
“He should not have been where he was,” Ectar said, almost a whisper now. His face had flushed red, the shade clearly visible even through his cosmetics. “He had no business in some local house, doing the Great Lord only knows what. My grandfather’s own spiritual adviser is here, you know this, even if he is confined currently due to injury. If Brother Lu hears any of this, it will go back to the Church. It must not. Lady Mosecca is a member of the royal household, Credola. She is a member of the Young Empress’s court! The shame!”
I had known this was a risk, though I hadn’t been sure how much the Talafan would infer from the circumstances in which Tuhash had been found. A rented house, hastily abandoned, evidence of a party gone too far, and the body in a compromising position. The Talafan Church was a powerful and strict master and its believers were not permitted certain freedoms. But still, the callousness was startling.
“Please. Convey to the right people that it would be most humiliating if the Royal Family were linked in any way to this scandal. I am confident my uncle the Prince has accepted the personal apologies given by your most honored Chancellor and your Administrative Guild. Please, let it go no further.”
I hesitated. If he had heard this much, he would no doubt have heard the entirety of the rumor. “Ectar,” I said quietly. “There are rumors, false rumors, but rumors you may hear—”
“They will not reach any further.” There was a strange set to his jaw, and the speed of his reply told me whatever his sources of information, the rumor had at least reached him. I felt doubly grateful he had come to see me. “Your family is a valued trading partner, and a friend to the Empire. And, I would hope you know, to me.” He cleared his throat, the flush on his neck deepening further still. “I would dismiss such things as nonsense, and would tell any as much, even someone in my own family.”
I was oddly touched by his loyalty. “Thank you.”
There was a long and awkward silence, in which he darted small, furtive glances at me, but did not speak. To break the moment, I asked, “Have you done much business with our western friends lately? I noticed the nations seem to be on better terms than usual, and Duke Lago and Prince Hanichii were extolling the virtues of their new waterway system to Minister Kokush earlier.”
Ectar nodded, seeming grateful for the subject change. “Where opportunities present themselves, I am always interested. You are right to say that Tocatica and Maru, and Perest-Avana and Costkat, too, are working more cooperatively. Never have I seen so many westerners together in Izruitn than over the last few years. Why, the Tocatican delegation at Government House has tripled, I think.” He chuckled. “But you need not fear I will forget my southern friends, Credola, if that is what you are worried about! There are many opportunities for all. You will see when you come to the Empire, do not worry. Minister Kokush was quite impressed with you, you know, and I have dozens of friends and colleagues who are awaiting your acquaintance with much anticipation. Many of us have been doing business in Sjona for years. I know there can be some cultural differences”—and here the sudden flush up the skin of his neck told me he’d heard of my encounter with Hiukipi—“but businessmen understand how things are here.”
Cultural differences were one thing but rudeness was rudeness, and I hadn’t mistaken Hiukipi’s behavior for the former. But I smiled, to let him know I had taken no insult. “I wouldn’t be much of a diplomat if I expected every culture to have the same standards and rules, Lord Ectar.”
“Your interest in our culture and traditions is a pleasure to me, I admit it.”
“It is a fascinating country,” I said. And then, seized by impulse and curiosity, I added, “Some of the texts in our library are so dry. I would love to know more about some of your culture from you directly.”
“Oh, yes?” He was gazing at me with an indulgent smile now, composure fully restored. “I would be delighted!”
“What can you tell me about witches?”
“What?” The word came out so aggressively he stumbled to add, “I mean, I am sorry, Kalina. What did you say? I did not quite understand the word.”
“I am interested in Talafan folklore,” I said innocently. “I started reading some of your myths and legends while I was recovering from my injuries. It is a lovely way to improve my language skills and learn something about the ancient cultures of your beautiful land. The word is witch, is it not? I have a book of your children’s stories and several stories feature witches. It is not a concept we have in Sjona, and I am curious.”
Ectar smoothed his impeccable nihep, looking over his shoulder as if fearing to be overheard. “Please.” He sounded almost frightened. “That word is…”
I stared at him, curious about the reaction. “It is an … insulting word? A forbidden one? But I read it in a children’s book.”
“Witchcraft has been forbidden for decades, but in recent years the Church has decreed all talk of witchcraft a sin,” he whispered, and his hand trembled on his sleeve as he brushed away imaginary lint. “You should not mention a child’s tale like that to anyone, especially in the presence of Brother Lu. Or anywhere when you come to the capital. It could get you in trouble. Such stories are no longer permitted.”
I blinked. “I did not know. My apologies, Ectar. I had read some stories and wondered whether it was something like our Darfri magic, if you would call it that.”
A shadow and a shudder passed over him, and I knew he was recalling what he had seen in the siege.
“I won’t bring it up again,” I promised, and turned the subject to his business dealings; always a safe topic. While he grateful
ly seized the opportunity to tell me about some reclusive Sjon gemstone merchant he had been trying to do business with, inside my thoughts raced. Far from reassuring me, the conversation had convinced me there was much more to these legends than stories for children, and we should ignore that at our peril.
INCIDENT: Hallucinogenic honey from Chakra township
POISON: Atrapis
INCIDENT NOTES: Several guests at Beaton family party in Silasta, including prominent legal scholar Jacin Dimi, writer Shan Borti, and chief librarian Aidenna Khehir, appeared to suffer significant dramatic hallucinations and died from a fall from the roof. Witnesses attested the women were convinced they had grown wings (it appears they became tangled in a tablecloth). Several elderly guests hospitalized. Source of intoxication eventually traced to honey pastries consumed at party. Entire batch contaminated with atrapis; investigation in source at Chakra revealed wild atrapis in bee feeding zone. Honey seized and Leka family fined for negligence of beekeepers under care of steward. (Unofficial trade in unrecovered honey continues at a premium within the cities.)
(from proofing notes of Credo Bobi Oromani)
11
Jovan
I had been in effective exile for days now, and we were out of fresh ideas. Rather than being short of information, we now had too much of it.
I didn’t know what to make of the business with the bird. Kalina and Ana had been injured, and too many unsettling and unpleasant things had occurred to dismiss the possibility of supernatural forces at work, whether native to our country or not. Once alerted to the possibility of such things, I found myself seeing them everywhere. An oven that flared too high and fast, catching my sleeve alight. A passing worker who had slipped on a stone on the street outside our apartments and almost crushed my foot with his fallen load of bricks. Little accidents and incidents ordinarily no more than bad fortune felt like miniature staged attacks on our family. Poisons, deceptions and lies, even assassins, these things we were at least trained to deal with, but against the supernatural I had no armor.
And all the while, our enemies circled, drawing closer. I could smell it, yet here I was stuck in my apartments, doing nothing for Tain other than preparing his food, forced to leave him in the hands of the blackstripes who would not recognize the assassin if they saw him. And no matter how hard Kalina and I studied what we knew, tried to identify things we might have missed, speculated about what was planned next, we were no closer to an answer. My leg and rib injuries hobbled me, preventing me from moving around with ease, and so my compulsive habits felt concentrated somehow, more intense, for the lack of being able to use my whole body in them. Sitting at the table together for hours, it was natural to fidget as we read and drew lines connecting linked theories and talked out possible motivations for the thousandth time, but the distractions interrupted my patterns and wound up the tension inside me. Kalina didn’t comment, she never did, but it was clear my relentless tapping, flicking, and tensing was affecting her, too.
“If this is part of a single plan—”
“It’s too convoluted. I can’t even work out what we’re thinking here,” Kalina said, gesturing to the piles of paper, the scrawls and the lines and the jumbled mess of our thoughts, and I couldn’t argue. We look mad. Paranoid and mad. If anyone came in here now they’d not listen to a thing we said, and I couldn’t blame them. “We think the man you keep seeing is connected to the Hands, because he led you right to them, but from what Dee says, they were surprised to find you there, so he didn’t warn them. And we know they’re connected to these new drugs, and they’ve either got a grudge against you or are working for someone who does. But I don’t know how this connects to the rebellion, or to anything to do with the Darfri. Can this really be all part of some giant scheme? Are we just overcomplicating everything?”
Frustration, exhaustion, a mild sense of panic, it all seemed to rise in a wave. The fact was, there were too many moving parts, and it was impossible to know which were connected. Darfri agitators in the city could be a false problem manufactured by Credolen with a grudge against the Darfri or at least self-interest in diminishing the growing power of the lower classes. Or it could be a legitimate expression of dissatisfaction by people still angry about how slowly progress had been made and the continued existence of the Credol seats on the Council. We knew there were spirits dying, even if we didn’t know why. Maybe some Darfri really had gotten drunk and set fire to a boat, or pushed someone into a canal, though I doubted any magic was actually involved in either of those incidents. Or—perhaps more likely—it could be the enemy who had helped incite us to a civil war only a few years ago was once again creating wedges between our people, trying to turn us on each other.
“It could be the same group that’s already working against me. Everyone knows I’m a ‘Darfri sympathizer,’ to use the charming phrase I heard out of one of Karista’s younger sisters recently, and lots of people know about my relationship with Hadrea. Naming her as a perpetrator not only hurts Darfri relations in the Council, it hurts me personally, too.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “It all has to be coming to something, doesn’t it? They can’t be separate, unrelated problems, not when everything is just converging like this, all around the karodee.”
Even to myself it sounded more hopeful than convinced. Perhaps I only wanted it to be a single problem, because that left open the possibility that if we just thought hard enough, we could solve it.
The list from the hospital had finally arrived today. Thendra had included a short note on top, in her own hand. I conclude are looking for a man with very large hands, based on the marks on the neck. Something had unwound in my chest in relief, knowing that was her way of telling us she accepted our explanation and would keep our confidence. My reputation had suffered, but servants gossiping in markets and peers whispering behind their hands was a very different matter from getting hauled before a determination council, accused of murder.
Here is your list of deaths, no doubt for the purposes of research. I have not completed the more complex task of identifying all presentations to the hospital, as you can imagine, but for now, I have enclosed presentations in the last week as they were on hand. Some poor clerk at the hospital had obviously been tasked with compiling the list; over the past three months there had been forty-eight deaths recorded. “Is that a lot?” Kalina had wondered aloud. “For natural or unnatural causes?”
I had shaken my head absently. “Not really. Etan told me once it was usually something like two hundred a year, in a city this size, with our medical care. It’d be a higher rate outside Silasta because we have the best physics here. Probably way higher in the Empire, especially among the lower classes. But violent deaths are rare … well, less rare since the siege, but still not exactly common.”
The list contained bare details, just a name and a cause of death. I had circled any reasonably proximate to the dates I’d seen the assassin. I read the list more generally now, hoping something would jump out at me as significant.
“Only a few murders, that’s some—that’s gruesome,” Kalina said, pausing at an entry for a man found in a canal with his throat slit. “Honor-down, there’s two of them.”
“Chen told me about those when they happened. She thought those were gang retaliations,” I said, without looking up. “She says the gang—these Prince’s Hands—collect money from businesses in the lower city and send thugs to beat up anyone who doesn’t pay. Then all the business owners are too scared to talk to Chen’s people. And they’re even harsher on their own members.” It was sickening to think of such a thing happening here, of all places. Our non-violent city had no place for such brutality. Despite the siege and the battle and all the mistakes we’d made, I still wanted to believe we were better than the kind of city where people were found in canals with their throats slit.
“I don’t know half these names,” I muttered, frustrated. “How are we supposed to know if a death is significant if we don’t know who it was? Do any o
f these sound familiar to you?”
Kalina scanned my list of deaths near the relevant dates. “Traviso Oskata. He’s an Order Guard, isn’t he? Pretty senior, too.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking more closely at that entry. “Ex-soldier. He was here during the siege. Always smoked too much janjan and had that cough.” According to the list he’d died of apparent lung disease, which accorded with my memory of a thin, reedy man who coughed often. “Can’t imagine why he’d have been a target. Though…” I checked back on his list of events. “He died, what, two days after the arena opening, that’s the first event on my list. He might have been working security for it, definitely.” I chewed my lip, but I was feeling slightly more encouraged. “What else is there?”
A few members of Guilds, a couple of Credolen and merchants; plenty of deaths that appeared to be accidental, but could easily enough have been caused by someone who knew what they were doing around poisons. Like us. The list of presentations for accidents and illnesses was longer than the death list despite only covering a week. In addition to a range of accidents and alcohol- or narcotic-related admissions from masquerade night, evidently there had been a good dozen people admitted for apparent burning pox the following day. “I know some of these names,” Kalina said, pointing to the section on pox sufferers. “This woman, An-Kake, is on the karodee committee, I was talking to her about ticketing for the closing ceremony.”