by Claire Luana
Chapter 9
Wren met no resistance until she rounded the hallway and found an ebony-haired guardsman with a mustache standing sentry before Kasper’s door. “No one allowed inside, miss,” he said with more than a little hostility. “’Specially you.”
“I’m assisting Inspector Imbris with the investigation,” Wren said, sticking her chin out haughtily. “He asked for me.”
The man looked at her, his bushy eyebrows furrowed.
“Ask him yourself,” she said, praying that Lucas would corroborate her story.
The guard slipped through the door with a grumble, closing it in her face. Muffled voices sounded inside.
He reappeared and opened the door for her, clearly not happy about it. “You leave when the Inspector leaves,” he said. “And I supervise. It’s the scene of a crime.”
“Fine,” she said, stepping inside, the guard following close on her heels. The man positioned himself against the bookshelf where Callidus himself had been leaning just the day before.
“Hello,” Wren said, crossing to where Lucas was pawing through a pile of papers on Kasper’s desk.
“I asked for you, did I?” Lucas said in a low voice.
A guilty smile flitted across her face. “Thanks for going with it,” she whispered.
“That Hale fellow bored with you already?” he asked, not looking at her.
Wren crossed her arms. “No. Sable had need of him. Our lesson was short today.”
Lucas snorted. “I’ll offer another lesson then, free of charge. That artisan has been under the skirts of half of Maradis. Watch yourself with him.”
“You presume that I’m foolish enough to need that type of lesson?” she snapped. “Give me a little credit.”
He held his hands up in surrender. “Forgive me for questioning your wisdom, my lady. Surely, you don’t have time for such distractions anyway.”
“I don’t,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “As you said, the king and his inquisitor return in less than a month.”
“Is that why you’re here? To keep away from… distractions?” His eyes met hers and warmth blazed through her.
“Yes. I thought I could help you do… whatever you’re doing. It is my neck on the line.” Her eyes drifted to the dark spot on the patterned Ferwich rug where Kasper’s blood and foam had mingled as he’d died. Why did the man have to die? It might not have been so bad—to be sleeping in her huge feather bed, taking lessons from Hale, shopping with Olivia—if there wasn’t a murder charge hanging over her head. Why could things not have gone her way, just once?
Lucas straightened, considering her appraisingly. He softened. “There’s a lot to go through… But no.”
“No?” Wren said, dismayed at the waver in her voice.
“I’ll find whoever did this. But I can’t have your help,” he said softly, his eyes flicking to where the guard stood, watching them. “It’s bad enough that I vouched for you. I’m lucky they didn’t take me off the case.”
Her throat constricted as she tried to suppress her disappointment.
“There must be something,” she said. “I can’t… I can’t just do nothing.”
He sighed, looking about the room. “Just—sit over there.” Lucas pointed to the couch. “I can’t have you touching anything, but you can observe.
“Thank you!” she said, following instructions. At least she could be the first to learn of anything he learned.
“You there,” Lucas said to the mustached guard. “What’s your name?”
“Pimm,” the man said.
“Would you mind helping if you’re going to be in here?”
The man’s mustache twitched with distaste, but he nodded, leaning his spear against the bookshelf.
“Take everything you find that you can eat or drink and pile it in that corner,” Lucas said to the guard. He crossed to a table near where Wren sat, riffling through some papers, speaking low. “I procured a bit of Gemini poison that was forgotten in the evidence vault. If one of these items reacts…”
“Then we know it’s filled with Gemini’s other half.”
“Precisely.”
Wren watched as the guard piled bottles of wine and brandy, boxes of chocolates, and even a wedge of hard cheese. “This man had quite an appetite,” Wren commented as she surveyed the growing pile.
Lucas stood from the desk where he had resumed leafing through letters and knelt by the pile, pulling a small indigo vial out of his vest pocket.
Wren held her breath, watching like a hawk as Lucas removed the stopper and began administering a tiny drop in each of the bottles and delectables Kasper had in his office.
“That’s the last I could find,” Pimm said, depositing a bottle of bourbon-infused maple syrup on the floor next to the others. “What’re you looking for?” the guard asked, his role in the investigation apparently sparking his curiosity.
“I’m not sure,” Lucas said. “But I feel like there should be something out of the ordinary… I’m basically going on instinct here.”
Wren knew that feeling.
As Lucas put the last drop on the wedge of what looked and smelled like gruyere cheese, she deflated slightly. None of the edibles had reacted.
They exchanged a disappointed look.
“I was so sure…” Lucas said. He shook his head. “It’s fine. We’ll find it.”
Wren looked about the room, a niggling feeling biting at her. She had been so sure he would find it here too.
“Is there anywhere you didn’t look?” she asked.
“No. Well—” he amended. “The bottom desk drawer is locked, but I haven’t found the keys. It’s pretty solid. I’ll have to come back with one of our locksmiths.”
“There are a spare set of keys to everything in the guardsmen’s office,” Pimm suggested. “It might have a key to the desk.”
“Would you run and grab them?” Lucas asked. “We can check.”
“Sure,” the man said, turning and jogging out the door, apparently forgetting he had angrily sworn to supervise her.
Wren grinned, suddenly thankful she had aid to offer, no matter how illicit. One didn’t spend two years on the streets of Maradis without picking up a few tricks. She was terrible at fighting, but she had quick fingers. The same gifts that made her an excellent confectioner made her handy at picking a lock. “No need to wait and see,” she said, standing and striding to the desk.
Wren knelt down, eyeing the lock. She rummaged around the desk for something long and thin. The lock was large, the kind that would turn with an ornate key. Her eyes lit up as they fell upon a thin letter opener, and a twisted clip of metal holding the pages of a ledger together. “This’ll do.”
“Wren…” Lucas said with warning in his tone.
Wren shushed him. “I’ll be done before he even gets back.”
She jimmied the makeshift instruments into the lock, feeling around for the tumblers. She was rusty at this. She hadn’t picked a lock since before Master Oldrick had found her. But her hands fell into their old rhythm easily, and in another minute, the lock turned with a satisfying click.
Lucas offered her a hand to help her up, his thick eyebrows raised. “The king’s inspector is going to pretend he didn’t see that.”
“I think that’s wise.” With a deep breath, Wren opened the drawer. Her senses were tingling. There was something here, she knew it.
“Well done,” Lucas breathed, lifting out a bottle of amber liquid. Wren peered at the bottom of the empty drawer for a moment. It looked strange to her, smaller than she would have expected from the exterior. She poked at the bottom, experimentally. Yes, there was something odd about it.
He opened the stopper and whiffed, rearing back slightly. “Whiskey.”
She abandoned the drawer and looked at the label, a plain parchment affair with two words inked across it. “Destrier’s Reserve,” Wren read.
“It looks like a private label,” Lucas remarked. He took the stopper off the tiny via
l of poison and let a single drop fall into the neck of the whiskey bottle. The instant it hit the liquid, the amber turned milky, foam covering the surface.
“We found it.” She squealed in relief, hugging Lucas before she thought better of it.
He didn’t seem to mind, and after a moment of stiffness wrapped his long arms around her, burying his nose in her hair.
“What in the Beekeeper’s name is going on in here?” a stern voice barked from the doorway.
Lucas and Wren flew apart like oil and water.
Callidus stood at the door, his expression thunderous under his swooping black hair.
Pimm stood behind him with a ring of keys.
“Your investigation methods are quite irregular, Imbris,” Callidus snarled. “What am I to think other than she’s corrupted you too, and now you’re aiding her cause? Perhaps I should have you replaced as inspector.”
Wren trembled with anger and regret. Lucas had told her she shouldn’t be here, yet she had insisted. Had she jeopardized the whole investigation? No other inspector would believe her like Lucas. Though she had only met him yesterday, she somehow trusted him to find the real killer, at least more so than anyone else. He had believed her. Vouched for her. If he was removed from the investigation… the thought struck terror in her heart.
“You don’t have the authority,” Lucas growled, taking a step towards Callidus. “Besides, Wren and I were just celebrating the discovery of a key piece of evidence. She sat on the couch the entire time and didn’t touch a single piece of evidence. She was supervised the entire time by both myself and Mr. Pimm here, isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” Pimm admitted, his face darkening with embarrassment. “I wouldn’t let her in without watching her like a hawk, Grandmaster.”
“Supervised. Is that what you call it?” Callidus’s piercing blue eyes flicked between Wren and Lucas with a look of disdain.
“We’re done here,” Lucas said, tidying the papers on the desk, pocketing the little flask, and grabbing the bottle by its neck. “If you’re done with your insults, I’ll be going.” He walked towards the door and Wren followed involuntarily, towed along behind him like a moon orbiting its planet. She didn’t want to be alone in this room with Callidus.
“Imbris,” Callidus said, stopping him with a hand on his chest. “The girl is not allowed back in this room. Am I understood?”
Lucas nodded curtly.
Wren’s blood boiled over. To talk about her as if she weren’t even in the room! Like she didn’t have a name, an identity. She suddenly hated herself for staying small and meek and quiet, a little wren as light as air, a flitting shadow barely there. “What’s the matter, Grandmaster?” she said quietly, her normal reserve overcome by a sudden recklessness. “Worried this girl will discover who the real killer is? That you have a traitor in your hall?” She met his gaze, the challenge written on her face. I know it’s you, she thought. And I’m going to prove it.
“Come on, Wren,” Lucas said, taking her gently by the arm. “I agree to your terms, Grandmaster.” Lucas pulled Wren out the door.
They strode down the two sets of stairs, not looking back. Lucas’s warm fingers still rested on her arm, heating her skin. His face was stormy.
Her roiling anger gave way as they left Callidus behind them, leaving guilt in its wake. “I’m sorry. Have I jeopardized the investigation? Will you be taken off it?”
“It’s all right. The Grand Inspector trusts me. He wouldn’t take me off the case, especially…”
“Especially why?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Because I’ve already begun to know the case.”
“Good.”
They stopped near the front door to the Guildhall, under the hanging gas chandelier of iron and glowing bulbs. “I’d like to continue to help, if I can,” Wren said. “I’ll keep my ears open here, like you asked.”
“That will be valuable, thank you.”
“How will I contact you if I find something? I don’t want to just walk into the inspector’s office.”
He considered this, scrunching his lips in thought. The gesture pulled at a string in her chest. She had a sudden urge to run her fingers across the right angle of his jaw and clutched her hands behind her to still them.
“My brother is a priest at the Temple of the Sower. It’s not far from here, across the plaza from the end of Guilder’s Row. To the south. We could meet there to exchange information.”
“The Temple of the Sower?” She blanched. She had sworn she would never reenter a temple, never trust the Sower or its priests. Not… Not after what had happened.
Lucas cocked his head, watching her. Those gray falcon eyes missed little. “Will you be struck down if you enter?” he joked.
She shook her head and forced a laugh, struggling to ignore the crawling feeling that itched across her skin. “I just…” She couldn’t explain, and so she settled on a joke. “I have a hard time trusting authority figures…”
“Who doesn’t?” He shrugged. “I can try to find somewhere else…”
“Your brother is a priest? Is he… trustworthy?”
“He’s my brother,” Lucas said. “Well, yes, he’s one of the trustworthy brothers.”
“How many brothers do you have?”
“Six.”
“Six?” She raised an eyebrow.
“And a sister.”
“My, your parents must have been busy. And your poor sister, to be terrorized by seven brothers!”
“Feel sympathy for us! She’s the headstrong terror.” Lucas joked, his hands on his heart.
Wren smiled. “I only have to deal with your brother? No other priests?”
“I’ll make sure of it,” he said.
She nodded her assent. “When should we meet?”
“We need some sort of signal…” He drummed his slender fingers on the bottle tucked under his arm. Then he pulled something out of his pocket and flipped it to her.
It slipped through her fingers, but she retrieved it from the ground with a grunt of annoyance. It was a silver button—the outline of a bird etched into its surface. Wren saw that it matched the buttons on his waistcoat. The bottom button was missing, the thread hanging.
“In the front vestibule of the temple, there’s a statue of the Sower. People leave offerings, coins. Leave that in his outstretched hand. I’ll check it daily, and you do the same. If it’s there by six, we meet at ten that night. My brother’s name is Virgil.”
She looked at the button in her hand. “You need one too,” she protested, holding it out.
“I have four more,” he grinned, tapping his chest. “We have both the poisons now. I should be able to discover how Kasper acquired this one. It was locked away, which means the true killer is unlikely to be a servant.”
But also unlikely to be Callidus, she thought. Unless he had a key or had picked the lock. She shook her head to clear it. She would think on it.
Lucas watched her with obvious amusement. “It will all be fine, Wren. I’ll see you soon,” he said, his voice thick with promise.
Chapter 10
Wren fell into a deep and soundless sleep that night, exhausted from the revelations of the day. When morning came, bright and strong, she rose and splashed water on her face, examining how her alabaster skin glowed in the illuminated light pooling through the window, how the sun’s rays highlighted the flecks of gold in her eyes. She brushed her auburn hair until it cascaded about her shoulders in thick, shining waves before dressing in the cornflower blue dress she had taken from the seamstress’s shop. The dress was lovely, its neat white stitching and marching row of buttons accenting its simple tailoring. She smoothed her hands down the soft fabric. It was finer than anything she had ever owned.
Despite the murder charge hanging over her head, Wren felt like a new woman in this place. She had to stay. She couldn’t go back to the dingy room above Master Oldrick’s shop. She had been standing still for far too long, unwilling to leave the safe monotony
of life as an apprentice. She had told herself she was being cautious, biding her time, but the truth whispered in the corners of her soul. She’d been afraid. Afraid to reopen old wounds, unwilling to risk old vulnerabilities. But she was older now, shrewder, wiser. And for whatever it was worth, she was enchanted. Valuable. Perhaps she was readier to meet this world than she realized.
Wren descended the stairs and found her way to the dining hall. The simple wooden tables and benches were sparsely attended, with only a half-dozen guildmembers and guards sitting down to breakfast. The dining hall was large enough to house all of the guildmembers en masse, which was clearly not a daily occurrence.
Wren retrieved a plate from the front of the room, where the food was laid out buffet style. She grabbed two of the amazing biscuits and the loganberry jam she had devoured the day before and added a poached egg and a cluster of grapes. Finally, balancing a steaming cup of coffee in the other hand, she turned. Marina and her artisan colleague, Lennon, stood behind her, toothy wolves waiting for a sheep.
Wren’s face paled, her newfound confidence leaving her with a rush of breath.
“Are you still here?” Marina sneered. She wore a pale lavender dress today, cut low to reveal her swan’s neck and generous bosom. “Haven’t you been hanged yet?”
“The king doesn’t hang murderers,” Wren said coolly. “He beheads them.” Hardly the most comforting of retorts, but it seemed to give Marina pause.
Wren seized the opportunity and stepped past them. A heel-clad foot shot out and tripped her, sending her sprawling on the floor in a splatter of jam and coffee.
Laughter rang out behind her as Wren gathered herself and got to her feet. She surveyed her dress in dismay. It was ruined—scarlet jam and egg yolk smeared down the bodice, coffee soaking through the skirt. Her face burned in anger and embarrassment.
Wren was overcome with an urge to pummel the girl, to hear her fist connect with Marina’s nose in a satisfying crunch. It was a fleeting fantasy. She’d just as likely break her hand. And so she stood, her cheeks on fire, glaring into Marina’s haughty face. Even when she had lived on the street, where casual violence was a currency much respected and often traded between street gangs, she’d been no good at fighting. Ansel, the head of the orphan gang she had run with, the Red Wraiths, had tried to teach her to fight for weeks before declaring the cause hopeless and teaching her to pick locks instead.