“What was all over?”
“Someone has a grudge against the religions of this city, let me tell you. Ho! Gondola!”
A small gondola rowed by a teenage boy streaked past them without so much as looking at Carnelian’s outstretched hand. A lump of oilcloth filled the front of the gondola and the whole thing stank of a slaughterhouse. Marielle drew her veil up, flinching from the heavy scent of death even as Carnelian hailed another gondola and dragged her into the small craft.
“Temple District,” Carnelian ordered, paying the man a coin. “And right quick.”
There had been something else under the scent of all that blood. They were already into the center of the canal, the small gondola disappearing around the corner when Marielle realized what it had been. Under the cloak of blood and death and terror had been a residue of magic, potent enough to cut through blood – and that was saying something! – and just the faintest hint of honey, lemongrass, and tarragon.
It couldn’t be ... could it?
“Marielle? Pay attention!” Carnelian was snapping her fingers. “We need to be on the alert. Last night someone – some crazy love-forsaken devils – slashed and hacked and bit – yes, bit! – their way through the Temple District. Can this thing go any faster?”
“Hurrying, Officer,” the gondolier said deferentially.
“Every Watch House is on alert. Half the temples are gone – burnt to the ground! Timeless Cathedral is half-gone. There’s just a tower and a few buttresses left. And the whole thing is blackened. Most of the Smudger Temples went up like ready torches. Doesn’t help that they have so much fire everywhere. They’re still dragging out the dead but there are hundreds, Marielle. Hundreds.”
“Temple District,” the gondolier interrupted.
“Keep going until you see the Watch,” Carnelian instructed. “We missed it all, Marielle. Everyone did. There were hardly any guards set on the Temple District. We had them focused on the Government and Library Districts after all the threats there. And the ones here didn’t get a chance to raise the alarm. With the Seven Suns Palace Guard and everyone of any importance inside the palace – well, it wasn’t until the fires took off and alerted us all.”
“Who was stationed at the Temple District,” Marielle asked quietly. She finished braiding her hair out of the way. She needed it swept back so she could focus. She could already smell the terror and horror rolling from the burnt District like slices of raw red vinegar and stomach-acid icterine. Nausea filled her as the first members of the City Watch came into view. They stood along the rails of the street above directing traffic as gondolas came and went, packing the dock and the edge of the canal ledge.
“One at a time, take your turn. Everyone will have a chance,” the voice of a portly Watch Officer droned. He’d done this a hundred times. “No pushing for position. Oars stay in the water, repeat, in the water. You hire the one that’s there, my lady. No holding up the lines, please.”
“A lot of the Officers were other places, pulled off this beat,” Carnelian hedged.
“Who wasn’t pulled off?” Marielle pressed softly as they waited for their turn to dock.
“Xi When, Tiya Ka’lina, Casabara Tavereaver, Linnelin Taskervale, Jin Ch’ng, Lia Tasmarina,” Carnelian said just as softly, her usually firm face softening in acknowledgment that it could have just as easily been them last night. “They say Lia might survive. Maybe. She had a belly wound. Those can be unpredictable.”
Marielle shivered. She was beginning to catch whiffs of what was up in the streets above. Gore and viscera was the primary smell. That and smoke from the fires. Water – stained red and dark with soot and ash – ran from the streets down to the canals in slow trickles, staining the water in grisly whorls of what had once been life and faith.
“Keep your nose up, Scenter,” Carnelian reminded. “I think you’re the best, and I plan to use you to catch these hounds of hell.”
Marielle tried not to look at the dark burdens being carted away on the gondola that left the dock. They varied in size and length, but they were all about the same shape – the shape of dead people wrapped in black-dyed jute.
“Here we go,” Carnelian said tugging Marielle out of the gondola as they finally bumped up against the dock.
“Double your rate to carry my girl home,” a red-eyed woman said to their gondolier. Behind her, two grim-faced workers carried a dark jute-wrapped form.
Marielle ducked her head in respect to the mother. She could smell the bone-deep grief in the woman like the smell of red wine and thyme. It was a washed-out blue color.
Carnelian hardly seemed to notice the civilians on the dock. Her body was bent forward, head leading the rest like a hunting dog scenting for its quarry.
“This way.”
She tugged Marielle up the steps and into the chaos on the street above.
People were everywhere. How strange in a place where so many had died last night – where so much violence had ruled. But they were here. Ash stained and grimy, blood to the elbows or with those heart-wrenching jute rolls in their arms. Tear-stained and hand-wringing or sharply barking orders to bucket lines, they choked the street and spilled into the charred wreckage. Monks and priests in robes the deep saffron of the Smudgers, or the pure white of the Timekeepers, sifted through the wreckage, pulling out what could be salvaged.
It was hard to believe this had only happened a short time before they arrived.
Someone whistled – a piercing sound like a knife to the ear – and Carnelian tugged her to a knot of Watch Captains. Captain Ironarm was there with arms crossed over her aged chest, looking more wrinkled than ever in her exhaustion.
“You’re on investigation, Carnelian, Marielle. Find what you can. Check with Anaala. She’s started interviewing survivors. Then see what you can sniff out.”
Carnelian saluted briskly and Marielle joined her a half-second later, but her eyes lingered on Captain Iron Arm and the other Captains. Oddly, they all smelled the same. Usually in a group like that there were ambition and infighting, wariness, mistrust, loyalty, comradery and so much more all rolled up into one. But today they all stank of a world-weariness so thick it hung heavily on them, mixing with exhaustion and absent hope. She wished she could wash it away, like the ash running into the gutters and from there to the canals.
“Anaala’s that way,” Carnelian reminded her, dragging her away. Would Marielle be so tired of the world when she was a Watch Captain someday? Would Carnelian? “It’s not our job to fix this, Marielle, so don’t get hung up on that. It’s just our job to find the people who did this and bring them to the Lord Mythos to be executed. Simple.”
Marielle nodded, but she had a feeling that there was nothing simple at all about this. And her feeling was growing worse by the moment as the turquoise of magic stood out in little pools of powerful lilac scent and burst around the ash and blood in blossoms of vanilla, threading through the fear and death and the chaos of the night. If Maid Chaos herself had walked these streets, she couldn’t have seeded more tumult in the city.
The magic clouded her mind, drawing her attention from one spot to the next as she followed Carnelian. She could almost smell the direction that these people had gone when they tore through the District killing everyone in their path. But there was a little problem. The path Marielle smelled couldn’t possibly belong to more than one person. There were many scents, sure, but they followed only one trail. No single scent broke off on its own. There were no places where it branched or converged.
Many other scents intersected with the magic and crossed over it or crossed the path afterward. She smelled the brilliant last moments of the victims of their attack, their last scents like bright flashes in her mind, as if they had tried to dump every last emotion out at once while they still could. Over and around those scents, the smells of the mourners and rescuers, the healers and Watch Officers, the priests and the Smudgers, all wove one over the other, building the form of the scene layer upon layer in a wea
ving of scent. Those scents – normal scents – were simple enough to filter out, especially with the scarf over her nose, but it was the lead scent that would not make sense.
If it had been more than one person, they must have moved in lock-step with each other. A military unit, perhaps? But she didn’t think so, and her suspicions were slowly carving a hole in her belly. Because under the smell of violence and fear was the smell of magic and under the smell of magic was a whiff of something that Marielle had smelled before. The faintest whiff of gold mixed with orange ginger – that smell she was beginning to know so well – the one laced with leather and acid, old books and cinnamon, cardamom and lavender and warm honey – the smell of the man she had let slip out the window last night like an innocent smile slipping off the face of a murderer when he was caught red-handed.
She shivered, suddenly cold.
What had she done?
“Officer Anaala,” Carnelian acknowledged when they drew up beside the Officer. She had a hand on her hip as she spoke to a tearful young woman.
“Officer Carnelian.” Anaala made everything sound like a rebuke. Even a greeting. She turned back to the shaking young woman, little older than a girl, her Maid Chaos costume tattered and bloody. “So, it was a woman who attacked you?”
“A wo – woman, yes,” the girl managed, her voice shaking as an older woman wrapped an arm around her. “It was Maid Chaos.”
“Maid Chaos?” Anaala lifted a single eyebrow, her expression bland. “Your attacker was dressed as Maid Chaos?”
“She wasn’t dressed as Maid Chaos. She was Maid Chaos!”
Carnelian smirked but Anaala kept a straight face. “In moments of fear, it’s easy to see things.”
“I wasn’t seeing things! It was a woman with flowing golden hair and a golden breastplate. She was tall and broad, and she swung a sword just like Maid Chaos in the stories. She was merciless. Merciless!”
“Thank you for your statement,” Anaala said. “You are free to go. Next!”
But that was a good thing, wasn’t it? Because if it was a tall blonde woman then it couldn’t be Tamerlan, which meant that this couldn’t be Marielle’s fault for letting him go. And yet, the rock of worry in her belly felt heavier by the moment as if it might carry her through the street into the fires of hell below.
“And you saw?” Anaala prompted a man who was clearly a street vendor, his apron still stained with the brown smears of whatever food he had been selling. It smelled like meat pies.
“A young man. Tall. Strapping. Short blonde hair and a lean build. He fought with a small belt knife the length of my palm.”
The stone in Marielle’s stomach grew icy cold.
“He caused all this with a belt knife?” Anaala asked wryly.
The vendor shook his head. “Seemed like it. But then sometimes he looked like a woman with a sword.”
“There were two of them?” Anaala clarified. “A man with a knife and a woman with a sword?”
The man shook his bald head like he couldn’t find words for what he’d seen. “Two, yes. But also one. Like they were the same person, if you know what I mean.”
“I really don’t.”
“Sometimes it was one. Sometimes it was the other. One would sort of fade out and then the other would surface. It was the oddest thing.”
“How much did you have to drink last night?” Anaala asked the man.
“Well, my fair share, I suppose.” The street vendor laughed nervously and Anaala gave Marielle a pointed look as if to remind her that she wasn’t supposed to be hauling off everyone for public drunkenness. Marielle felt her cheeks heat. Even she could see this was no time to enforce that law.
No, right now was not the time for enforcing petty laws. Now was the time for Marielle to panic, because that description sounded a lot like Tamerlan. And last night she had let him go to save his sister. And now, today, there were over a hundred people dead because of her choice. Regret made the stone in her belly heavier as it pulled her down, down, down.
28: The Chase
Marielle
“I THINK WE HAVE ENOUGH to give chase,” she said quietly to Carnelian.
Carnelian’s eyes lit up. “Any other people described, Anaala?”
Anaala shook her head, waving the street vendor on. “They all mention either the man or the woman or both. No one else. It’s not much to go on.”
“But you can follow the scent?” Carnelian asked Marielle eagerly.
“With my eyes closed.”
Carnelian pumped a fist, but at Anaala’s severe look she colored, clearing her throat awkwardly. “Lead on, Marielle.”
Once you had a scent, it was easy to follow it. Easy to block out the mother-wail of a nearby mourner and the agonized questions of a child. Or at least, it was easy to pretend you were blocking them out. It easy to forget the tragedy, the pain, the chaos. Easy to just give in to following your nose, to seeking the scent, to chasing that sensation.
There it was, leading up the side of that building. Had he really climbed up there? And there was still no divergence where anyone had broken off. If it had been both him and a woman you would think one of them would have gone a different way up the side of the wall. Not so.
She followed the zigzagging scent through the District, every shred of thought directed at the hunt, at the trail.
“That’s right, Marielle,” Carnelian encouraged. “Find them! Find them.”
Marielle hurried, barely watching where she was going, she was so intent on the trail. Twice, Carnelian pulled her out of the path of a cart moments before she was hit. Another time, she’d physically picked Marielle up and swung her over a hole in the ground before she broke a leg falling in.
There was nothing but Marielle and the scent. And now she was no longer smelling the blood or death at all. In fact, she barely even smelled the pleasant call of the magic or saw its turquoise and gold. She was so narrowly focused that all she smelled was the honey gold of Tamerlan. She could have found him anywhere. She felt like she knew him. She could smell what he last ate, how he felt, who he was.
She stumbled, caught by Carnelian, and then recovered.
She could smell how he felt. She stopped for a moment, letting that sink in. He did not feel like a man on a killing spree. He felt panicked. Trapped. She could also smell horror in the golden smell, but when she drifted out of it again, she smelled glee in the turquoise magic.
Her mind whirled, confusion bubbling up. She’d never smelled anything like this before. It really was like there were two people she was following. Two people so close that they never left each other. Had the woman taken Tamerlan captive? Had she forced him forward while she killed all those people? That didn’t make any sense. But neither did this smell.
She was barely watching her feet as she let herself drift on his scent. He was out there somewhere and either he had made her the accomplice to his evil when he convinced her to let him go, or he was somehow a victim, too.
Or maybe she just wanted to believe that because the alternative was too terrible.
Because if he had done this, then she was responsible for it, too. She was the one who had let him go. She was the one too cowardly to give her own life for the life of another. And these people had paid for that cowardice.
A hand yanked her back by the tail of her scarf.
“Fancy a swim?” Carnelian asked, pointing to the canal Marielle had almost walked into. For some reason, the railing was broken here.
“The scent goes that way,” Marielle said.
“Into the water?”
She nodded.
“Come on, then.” Carnelian led her along the shattered railing, through the access gate, and down the steps to the canal below. “Ho! Gondolier!”
They leapt onto the gondola as it pulled up and Marielle breathed deeply.
There it was. The scent.
The oar of the gondolier splashed merrily into the green canal – the only merry thing in a city of mourners – and
then they were off, following the scent in Marielle’s nose.
Was it possible that Tamerlan’s scent was almost as addictive as the scent of magic? She was being foolish. Tamerlan had likely stained her soul with a black mark she could never expunge. She shouldn’t be reveling in his scent.
They followed it down the canal and past where they had arrived, further and further out of the Temple District and across the river into the Trade District. The scent was growing fainter now, but the air was cleaner across the river and away from the tragedy. Here, a river away from the deadly rampage, trade continued as hagglers argued at the tops of their lungs along the packed streets and between the laden carts and crowded shops.
The Trade District was everything that Marielle usually hated – crowded, loud, and chaotic, it was the source of all of Jingen’s wealth. And today it held their prize. They followed the canal under a bridge and then under a small inn – The Laughing Gondolier.
“Are you sure you still have the scent?” Carnelian whispered.
“Yes!” Marielle could still smell it and it still made her want more and more.
They slipped into the dark cavern. A small gondola floated, empty but for the oar and a bailing bowl, tied to a peg against one wall. The scent ended at the gondola.
Marielle looked around. There was nowhere else to go. No door nearby – the door to the storeroom of the inn was further into the cavern.
“Is there a trap door?” she asked.
Carnelian leaned out from their gondola feeling the bricks lining the canal. “I don’t feel anything. What is a gondola doing here without a gondolier?”
She looked at their gondolier pointedly. He shrugged and she leaned forward aggressively.
“Don’t just shrug. What is it doing here?”
“It’s tied up,” he said, with another shrug. “And look, it’s little. Too little to be useful for trade or transport, yes?”
Carnelian grunted in agreement.
“Someone in the inn above us might own it. Maybe they use it to make it easier to unload barges,” he suggested. “Or maybe someone pays to tie it here. Docking fees can be very expensive.
Summernight Page 17