Yet her instincts were on edge.
Verona tensed at her side.
“What's wrong?” Madi hissed, though the waccat would not be able to answer her in so many words. A talent in the element of earth blessed Madi with strength and a few dirty tricks when fighting. Communicating clearly with her waccat was not part of her gifts.
Verona took a sharp turn toward the center of the city. Madi tightened her grip on her torch as she followed, trusting the waccat's guidance.
They were entering the Temple district, far off their normal route, when the sound of sandals slapping bricks reached Madi's ears. Verona broke into a trot, and Madi lengthened her stride to keep up with the large cat. They turned a corner to encounter an elegant woman wearing a blue sari in the severe style of the devotees to the Water Goddess Marana.
“Ophelia!” Madi hurried toward her friend and year-mate, a pretty mystic who lived at Rivara, the High Temple to Marana in Trimble. “What are you doing out at night? On Taricday?”
The nearby cloister had very strict rules, and Ophelia wasn't the type to flout them, not unless her gift for foresight compelled her.
“It's Jasper,” Ophelia gasped between heaving breaths. Whining in distress, Ophelia's own waccat hovered like a golden shadow at her side.
Alarm trailed icy fingers down Madi's spine. “Is Jas in trouble?”
Ophelia's charming brother should know better than to wander around on Taricday. The musician's delicate good looks tended to attract the wrong sort of attention.
“I don't know.” The mystic rubbed her hand against her breastbone, her breath short. “I smell death.”
“You've had a vision?”
Ophelia was the most powerful seer in Trimble. If she foresaw her own brother's death . . .
Madi's entire body went cold. She groped for her waccat's support, fingers clenching into a fist around the soft fur behind Verona's ears. Verona made a keening noise. Compassion and grief surged through her bond with the waccat. A grief matched by Madi's own sense of loss and disbelief.
“Is Jas going to die?” Madi's voice sounded high and thin to her own ears.
“I . . . I'm not sure.” Ophelia's face twisted in pain, her cinnamon brown eyes focused on something only she could see. “It wasn't a proper foretelling, merely a horrible, horrible dream.”
“Where is he?” Madi grabbed her friend's arm, creasing the blue silk pallu Ophelia wore draped over her hair. If Jas yet lived, she had to help him. “Take me to him.”
Ophelia's gaze sharpened and focused on Madi's face. “He needs you. That's why I came looking for you. You can save him.”
Thank Marana! Some of the tension left her body. “Good. Now, where is he?”
“Give me a moment,” Ophelia murmured. Her eyes unfocused again, and she swallowed hard. With her powerful water gift, she should be able to track her twin through the emotional bonds of blood.
Madi let go of the seer to tug at the stiff leather jerkin covering her knee-length gray chiton. Urgency compelled her to move, to fight. While it had been weeks since she had last seen Jas, and years since they had been lovers, she would still stand between him and any danger. He was her year-mate's brother if nothing else.
“This way.” Ophelia started drifting toward the center of town. Rubbing her breastbone as if soothing an ache, her speed increased with every step. “Such pain. Sorrow. Death.”
Ophelia's hasty steps became a run.
Easily matching strides with the smaller woman, Madi fought to remain calm, even with the seer's dire mutterings echoing around her. Silent as ghosts, the pair of waccats kept pace with their Hands. Ophelia led them to a towering structure at the edge of the market. Three stories high and built of imported stone, the Troika Hall symbolized Destinese law in Trimble, and served as a nexus for the city guard.
Madi slowed. If Jas was in the Hall, he was either already dead or in the safest place in Trimble.
Clutching Madi's arm, Ophelia dragged her toward the front entrance. “Come on. He needs you.”
They hurried up the wide stone steps to a pair of oversized double doors designed to intimidate. Madi pulled open a smaller door and led Ophelia into the familiar triangular hall. The open space felt cavernous in the dark, with the light from Madi's torch unable to reach the pillars and arches lining the walls.
Voices, muffled and indistinct, sounded from the Mortarary's corner at the far side.
Ophelia hesitated in the middle of the space. “Jas is below us.”
There was only one thing below the floor. The cold room. A shiver raced across Madi's skin. “Is he alive?”
Corpses were stored in the cold room until they could be claimed by relatives or burned on the paupers’ pyre.
“Yes!” Ophelia snapped, a comforting confidence in her answer.
“Then we need to talk to my captain.” Madi headed toward the voices, trusting Ophelia to follow her light.
The voices got louder and more clearly agitated as they approached.
“You need to burn him!” The unfamiliar voice sounded young, cracking painfully on the last word.
“I'm not throwing anyone on a pyre without due cause,” Captain Tess replied, ever the voice of reason. She turned and squinted at Madi. “Han-Triguard? What are you doing off patrol?”
Madi bowed deeply, the sign of respect conveniently hiding her embarrassment at the rebuke. “My apologies for abandoning my post. Han-Mystic Ophelia d'Marana foresaw an urgent need for me here.”
“I smell death,” Ophelia said, her serene voice making the words somehow more chilling.
“There was a murder in the Old Market district,” Tess admitted.
Madi's fingers clenched around the leather grip on the torch. Jas rented a room in that shabby part of town.
“Uncle Bernard is dead and Uncle Jas killed him,” the youth cried. “He killed his own brother.”
“Absurd,” Madi said sharply. Jas was the gentlest soul she knew. He would never kill anyone, even if they deserved it. To accuse him of fratricide was inexcusable.
“I found him, with blood all over his hands.” The young man turned wild eyes on Captain Tess. “Throw him in the stocks until the burning.”
Ignoring the overwrought youth, Madi addressed her captain. “You've a touch of water. Have you tasted his heart?”
Tess sighed and rubbed her face. “I have. His guilt nearly choked me.”
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Taxing Courtship (The Hands of Destin Book 1) Page 34