“It’s not srirach.”
“Not from what you’ve described,” Alex agreed. She wiped the powder off the counter and replaced the jar of srirach on the shelf before taking out another.
“Why do you have it on the shelves if it’s such a violent way to go?” Carth asked.
“There are other uses for srirach,” Alex said. “Not everything that can kill is meant for killing. Think of your knives,” she said, nodding to the pair of knives sheathed at Carth’s waist. “Do you think they’re only meant for killing? Can’t they be used to cut your food, or to help with the lines on the ship, or—”
“These aren’t meant for anything so practical,” Carth said. “Sometimes things are weapons.”
Alex shrugged. “And sometimes they’re tools. Dangerous tools, to be sure, but tools just the same. Now, try this one.” She placed a small amount of pale white powder into a bowl.
Carth stared at the powder. This would be the fifth poison that she intended to try, and so far, she’d come no closer to knowing what the assassin had used on his blade, no closer to understanding the way that Lindy had died. She was determined to discover that secret, if only so she could know who to target.
She had to find the answer. For Lindy, she had to.
Carth dipped a finger into the powder and brought it to her lips.
It had a bitter taste and made her lips numb immediately. Her tongue followed, and she found that everything the powder touched went numb. As it hit her stomach, she struggled to breathe. With a panicked surge of the shadows, she drew power, then sent the A’ras flame magic through her, destroying the traces of the poison.
“What about that one?” Alex asked.
“That… that was unpleasant,” Carth said. In some ways, it was worse than the srirach. At least with the srirach, you could feel the way the poison burned, and you had time to attempt to counter it, even if that was unlikely. With this, the numbness washed through her so quickly that, without her abilities, she doubted she would be able to do anything to stop the effects. “My mouth, my throat, went numb. It became hard to breathe.”
“Ylish powder. Some call it by other names, but it’s the one I know. It’s effective for stitching wounds. Dust a little on the wound and it goes numb. Hard to find, so there aren’t many healers who use it, but when you do…”
“If it’s used like that, why did you let me try it as a poison?”
Alex placed the jar of ylish powder back beneath the counter. “Because as I said, not everything that’s used as a poison is meant as a poison. Even too much water can kill, Carth.”
She smiled, trying to think of someone dying from water. “Too much water?”
Alex nodded. “I’ve seen men mad from the sea, thinking they’re thirsty, and they drink so much water that they die. It’s awful in its own way. Ylish powder is an effective anesthetic, but when you swallow it… then it becomes something different.”
The woman’s knowledge continued to impress Carth. Not only did she have the necessary connections within the city to find these powders, but she had the knowledge to use them. She was more knowledgeable than Carth’s mother had been, and she had seemed to know quite a bit about plants and their uses. Then again, Hoga had a terrifying knowledge of plants and their uses, and had managed to find ways to combine them to counter the effect of different magics. They still used some of that knowledge, but they’d lost something with Hoga’s disappearance that they still hadn’t regained.
Alex reached for another jar, this time one with a thick oil in it. She spooned out a small amount and then mixed a grayish powder into it. The combination turned a faint blue, one that practically seemed to glow.
“What is this one?” Carth asked.
Alex shook her head. “You need to try it first. This would be rarer than some of the others, mostly because there probably aren’t too many who have the patience to mix the olinph oil. That can take days, and even one wrong stir can leave the entire batch destroyed.”
“I’m beginning to think that you are more dangerous than you let on,” Carth said.
“Me? I know enough to be dangerous, but Hoga was the one who really knew these compounds. A shame she’s disappeared.”
“A shame,” Carth agreed. A woman like her wouldn’t stay hidden for long, and there was the matter of the different plants she needed to find to make her concoctions work. Carth had limited the supply out of Asador, but that did nothing to prevent her from going elsewhere, to any of the great cities along the coast or even inland. She could even have gone across the sea. With Guya, Hoga would have connections to the smugglers. If she ever determined who ran them, she would see if that was information they possessed.
“Try this. I warn you, the combination is unique.”
Carth glanced to Alex, and then dipped her finger into the liquid. It was sticky and left her finger burning, but not in the same way that the srirach had. Carth brought the liquid to her lips, ready for the same sort of numbness that she’d experienced from the last, but there was none of it. It tasted sweet, with an undertone of something harsher, and she licked the liquid off her lips.
Immediately, all strength in her body failed.
She dropped to the ground, unable to hold herself up.
Carth tried moving her arms, but they didn’t respond. Her mouth wouldn’t even open for her to take a breath. She would suffocate, and in a different way than with the terad they had been experimenting on.
Panic raced through her, and she had to force her mind to slow so that she could focus on reaching for her abilities. The flame magic eluded her, and the shadows… they were there, but just beyond her grasp. She could detect the shadows, but they slipped away from her.
She couldn’t breathe. The poison suffocated her, and now, there was a hint of something more, visions of those she’d known and failed, that came to her.
“Carth?”
She heard Alex’s voice as a distant sound, almost a memory.
Had the woman done this to her intentionally?
No, she had been trying to help Carth, and she had warned her against trying the poisons, as if she had known what Carth might come across.
She felt something on her arm, and she shuddered. Was this the blood priests coming to take her away? Was this the Hjan?
Her heart hammered, and she could feel it as it seemed like it wanted to leap from her chest. It was the only thing she was really aware of.
Then her head was tipped back. Something was poured into her mouth and she was forced to swallow.
More poison.
Alex was trying to kill her.
She couldn’t even reach for her knives. Maybe this had been the intent. She had wanted to gain Carth’s trust long enough for her to be able to poison her.
As she swallowed, feeling returned to her arms, and then her legs. She was able to breathe.
The terror that she’d been feeling began to abate, but didn’t disappear completely. It was still there, but more as a vague sense of unease.
“Carth?” Alex asked.
Carth opened her eyes, realizing that they had been closed through the ordeal. “What happened?”
Alex held a small clear vial in her hand and her eyes were wide. “You were… shouting.”
“Shouting? I couldn’t move.”
Alex shook her head. “That’s the effect of this. It forces your fears forward and immobilizes you, but you still can move. As I said, this one is interesting.”
“I couldn’t use my abilities.”
“You could,” Alex said.
Carth shook her head. “I couldn’t. I tried, but they eluded me.”
“You only thought that they did. They were there. You were… glowing… with power. And shadows swirled around you. I wasn’t sure you were going to let me get close enough to help you. I thought that maybe you would…”
“Ignite you?”
Alex nodded. “Something like that. When I saw you weren’t going to get past it on your own, I ri
sked it to give you the antidote.” Alex sat back and studied her. “We can stop for now. You don’t need to keep at it.”
Carth shook her head. She did. She needed to know what poison had been used. “We keep at it,” she said. She would do it for Lindy.
“If only we knew where Hoga had gone.”
Carth snorted. It was something she should have thought of. “Maybe we can find her.”
“How?”
“I think it’s time we draw her out.” And Carth knew how she would do it.
17
Carth raced through the streets of Asador, still feeling some of the effects of the last poison she’d attempted to use. After meeting with Alex, it was clear that what she needed now was to find Hoga. The woman was going to be key to helping her understand the poison that had been used, and who might have been responsible. There was only one other person in the city that she thought might be able to help her, but Carth was uncertain whether Marna would be willing.
She didn’t intend to give her much of a choice.
The woman had been responsible for what had happened to Lindy, and Carth would see her avenged. That required that Marna would help her.
Only Carth somehow had to reach her.
The woman kept herself isolated. Carth had monitored the various entrances to the underground tunnel network and had so far never seen her make an appearance. Carth had tasked the women who worked with her with looking for Marna as well, and they hadn’t found anything. Given the nature of Marna’s business, the fact that she smuggled and needed to keep it away from the city council, she suspected that she would be difficult to reach. But Carth was determined to find her.
Even if it meant drawing her out.
And that was what she intended to do now.
Carth tracked a smuggler as he made his way towards the tunnel entrance. Using one of the sedatives that Alex had taught her, she crept up to him and dosed him with a syringe filled with it. It was just enough to sedate him, barely more than a few drops, the rest of it diluted with water. It was enough to be effective, though.
The man crumpled, and she motioned to two of her women waiting in the shadows. They raced out and grabbed him, and Carth took his cart, hurrying along the street with it. Whatever else happened, Carth was determined to find a way to pull Marna out of hiding.
Carth hurried through the street with the cart. The other women would carry the smuggler back to the hospital, where they had retrofitted it into a sort of cell. She hadn’t wanted to begin a battle for control of the city, but it seemed Marna was going to force her. And while Marna might know the underground connections better than Carth, Carth knew the streets, and she knew the rooftops.
Carth loaded the contents of the smuggler onto her ship. The Goth Spald was a trading ship and had plenty of room for in the hold for everything she might find. She didn’t expect to need to reach too much before Marna reacted. And she didn’t intend to kill anyone. This was all part of her plan to draw her out. That was all she wanted—all she needed. She could do that, she could coax Marna aboveground, and possibly to a meeting. Then she would find out the information she needed. Then she would use Marna to find Hoga.
Carth waited in the hold of the ship. There were more supplies now than there’d ever been when she’d traveled with Guya. Between chasing after the smugglers and sedating and capturing over a dozen, she had now collected enough goods to fill about a quarter of the ship’s hold. Some of the items here were odd. Carth noted some jewels that would have some value on the open market. In addition to the jewels, some of the smugglers had different spices and powders, all of which she had had Alex evaluate. Most of them had some innate value, while others had value simply because they were difficult to prepare, but all of them came from somewhere outside of the city.
She noted knives in one basket that had contained several swords. Carth had claimed one of them for herself. She’d needed a sword since coming to Asador, and rather than waiting for a metalsmith to forge her one, she would just confiscate this one. The sword had a nice heft to it, and it was well-balanced.
In her time studying in Nyaesh, she had grown comfortable gauging the quality of swords. This particular blade had been finally made. It was plain otherwise, not as ornate as some of the other swords the smugglers had been moving, but with the quality of the blade, she suspected they knew what they were getting.
Carth was holding on to her sense of the shadows, as well as the flame, when she detected movement outside the ship.
It was not the kind of movement that came from any of the women working with her. Plenty of those women knew about the Goth Spald—it was not necessarily a secret, but few were willing to come onto her ship, wanting her permission first.
The sense came from somebody already on the deck of the ship.
When Lindy had lived, Carth would have expected her to have joined her on the ship. When Dara was still in town, she would have visited. Alex had visited her on the ship as well, but only when Carth had invited her. This was none of them.
And yet, it was not an unfamiliar person.
Carth had detected this signature before.
She smiled.
Had Marna thought to surprise her by coming onto her ship?
If she had, Carth would prove that she wouldn’t be so easily surprised the second time.
Slipping up a back staircase to the deck, she poked her head out, peering into the shadows. Carth drew upon the shadows, using them, and saw Marna as well as two men with her. They were looking toward the back railing of the ship, hidden in the shadows, but not hidden from Carth.
Carth pulled upon the strength of her shadow power, using it to surge her body upward, and practically soared into the air, flying above the deck, where she reached the mast. Carth clung to it, wondering if she’d made too much noise. She never practiced this maneuver before, but she could hang from here, use this place to hide, remain separate from those on the deck of her ship.
Carth cloaked herself in the shadows, hiding within them.
“She’s not here. We’ve not seen anyone moving on or off the ship for the last day.” This came from one of the men with Marna.
Carth smiled to herself.
They believed they were protected because they hadn’t seen her moving on or off the ship?
She slid down the mast, dropping slowly, going hand over hand, carefully, so that she didn’t alert them to her presence. She wanted to get closer, so that she could not only listen but could also hear what they were doing, and she could be ready to attack them if it came to it.
“I’ve been warned not to underestimate her,” Marna said.
Carth hesitated. Warned? That made it sound as if Marna worked with someone else. She’d thought Marna ran the smuggling ring, but maybe that wasn’t the case. Maybe there was somebody else who was involved.
“Anything they would’ve taken would be in the hold.”
“Just find it. It was bad enough when she started attacking, but now she’s managed to get something I actually need.”
“She probably doesn’t even know what she has.”
“No. I doubt that she does. I think it angered her that she lost someone she cared about. She thinks that if she takes those who work with me, I’ll be equally angered.”
Carth smiled to herself. They thought her more impulsive than she was. If her training had taught her nothing else, it was that acting impulsively was a mistake. She couldn’t risk acting like that, not if she intended to be successful with her plans. Even in revenge, she would act thoughtfully.
Carth wondered what it was that she possessed that had driven Marna onto the ship. This was a woman who had played Carth, who had used someone she’d cared about in such a way that she could eliminate a threat to herself. This was a calculating woman, and Carth needed to be equally calculating. Whatever it was she intended, Carth had to not only discover it but prevent her from doing it.
An idea came to her.
Sliding a little further down
the mast, she reached the railing where the ship was tied and sliced through the rope before crawling along the railing and reaching the rope at the back. Once there, she sliced the rear line, and then, surging on the shadows, she pushed the ship away from the dock.
It moved slowly at first, but with Carth massaging her connection to the shadows, she sent them out to sea. The ship picked up speed, and Carth continued to pull on the shadows, thankful they’d been foolish enough to come at night, when her connection to the shadows was strongest. She could use the shadows, and she did, sending the ship deeper into the sea. By the time they noticed the ship was moving, it was already too late.
The water here was deep enough that swimming back to shore would be difficult, even if they could swim. Only then did Carth jump to the deck, making her presence known. Carth released her connection to the shadows, maintaining some sense of them, as well as a sense of the flame.
Doing so revealed her to the two men, but Marna was the only one that Carth cared about.
“That’s how you want this to be?” Marna asked.
“I think I want some answers from you. I didn’t expect it to be quite this way, but this will work,” Carth said.
“You are one person on a ship with three,” Marna said. “Even with the abilities that I’ve seen you possess, I don’t think you will be able to get off the ship safely.”
Carth watched Marna. The woman had skill, and speed, something that Carth could counter with her abilities, if she was ready. Now that she had seen it, now that she knew what to expect, she was prepared for her. At the same time, Carth had begun to suspect that whatever Marna possessed was not necessarily an inborn talent, not quite like Carth’s shadow ability or her ability to use the flame. Whatever it was reminded her more of the concoctions Alex mixed, making her think that it was something like Hoga’s medicines and augmentations.
Perhaps she worked with Hoga.
That would make it easier for her to find Hoga for Carth.
Shadow Found (The Shadow Accords Book 6) Page 10