Shironne ignored Perrin’s chatter, her thoughts turning back to the Angel of Death. She wished she knew who he was so she could have a better sense of him. She wanted to understand why he did this, why it seemed like he singled her out. Was it because she was such a strong sensitive? Or just because he felt like no one else was listening to him?
She might still be a child by their standards, but in a few months, she was going to be an adult. Despite Kassannan’s concerns, she didn’t think that the angel would overpower her. Once the New Year came, she was going to pester the colonel until he did introduce her to the man.
• • •
Joio Dimani was a young man of clear Larossan descent, his skin a medium brown and his eyes so dark they seemed black. He’d proven willing to work with the Daujom, providing information for a small stipend and an occasional story lead. So far it had been a mutually beneficial arrangement, as Dimani knew Larossan society far better than Mikael ever would.
Mikael enjoyed the times he could get out and try new foods. The chicken curry he ate wasn’t particularly strong, just enough to be thoroughly enjoyable. The restaurant, with its fine red-draped tables and efficient waiters, was a hint of what his life would be like if he left the Family and lived in the Anvarrid world his father had occupied. His grandfather’s world.
He usually ignored that traitorous impulse. He was Family. He belonged in the Family. But at times, especially after a dream that made the sensitives despise him, it seemed a seductive possibility.
His grandfather, Lord Vandriyen, was the Master of Lee Province. Mikael’s father, Valerion, had been the favored son, the chosen heir. But Valerion had been missing for almost a decade now, and Mikael’s grandfather stubbornly refused to name a new heir, claiming that Valerion would return. Should Lord Vandriyen die without doing so, Mikael would become the new Lord Vandriyen by default.
Mikael knew his father was dead. He’d dreamed it, many times.
“Do you have any idea how many people disappear every day in a city this size?” Dimani was saying. His dark brows raised, he pushed a sheet of paper across the red tablecloth to Mikael. “These are only the ones who were reported to the police. I’ve crossed off the ones who disappeared before that night. That should help a bit.”
Noikinos was the capital and currently held almost two hundred thousand lives spilling down the sides of the hills and onto the plain on the other side of the Laksitya River, the vast majority of them Larossan. Dozens of people disappeared daily, although many did so by choice, fleeing creditors, abusers, or responsibilities. Or looking for a new life. The police generally waited a few days before beginning any investigation, believing that such a gap would decrease their workload.
“I do appreciate that,” Mikael said, glancing down at the list.
Joio sat back. “I certainly hope so. That fat ass Faralis asked why I was asking for that, and I had to make up a story about a cousin who’d . . .”
He went on to describe his run-in with Police Commissioner Faralis, who was rampantly unpopular these days, given the man’s well-known corruption. Mikael had stopped paying attention, though. He was staring down at the list the writer had given him.
One of those names was his.
Not his in the sense that it said Mikael Lee there, but he’d worn the name for a brief time in his sleep. His mind had made contact with the victim’s. He’d known what the victim knew, only it was buried deep in his brain. Bits and hints would float to the surface of his mind, the victim’s fleeting memories. Sometimes that helped him find the killer. Sometimes it didn’t.
Liran Prifata. He’d been Liran Prifata for a time. He’d shared the man’s death.
His breath came short, and he tried to crush down the fear he didn’t quite recall. A sudden headache dug its talons into his brain, sending twinges of nausea through his gut. He turned the list back toward Dimani and pointed. “This is the one, Liran Prifata. He’s dead.”
Mouth hanging open, Dimani didn’t say anything.
I interrupted him while he was speaking. He probably thinks I’m crazed now.
“I’m sorry,” Mikael managed, rubbing his temple with his free hand. “I recognized his name. But if you start asking questions, I think you’ll find he’s dead. In a manner sensational enough to sell newspapers, I’m afraid.”
Dimani had taken out a notepad and was taking notes. “How do you know that? Does his death fall under the purview of your office?”
Mikael knew nothing about the man in question, but given the Larossan name, it was unlikely. Then again, if he dreamed the man’s death, somehow it would become his concern eventually. That was a self-fulfilling prophecy for the most part, since once he dreamed of a death, he felt obligated to pursue the killer. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Does his name mean anything to you?”
“No,” Dimani said.
Mikael mentally cursed at his aching head. When he had flashes of memory from one of his dreams, the associated pain usually faded after a moment. It was lingering this time. “I feel certain it’s important to the Daujom, somehow. I don’t know the link yet.”
“This is one of those things, isn’t it?” Dimani asked warily. “Because you’re a witch?”
Mikael bit down his irritation. That was Larossan terminology, calling any talent witchcraft. Dimani hadn’t meant to be offensive. He simply didn’t see any distinction. Mikael pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling the urge to abandon this meeting. “Yes.”
Dimani gazed at him, perturbed. Larossans had a strange relationship with their witches. They were respected, but given that the majority entered the priesthood, most Larossans wouldn’t wish it for their children unless they were poor. The loss of autonomy upon entering the priesthood was accepted as necessary for the greater good of the people, but was periodically called into question, almost as if it were a form of slavery rather than duty. Most Family—raised from infancy to serve—found that protest inexplicable.
He would choose the restricted life of the Family over his father’s life any day. Unfortunately, he would probably always be caught between the two worlds.
“Do you have any idea what time this happened?” Dimani asked.
“Between midnight and one.” That was what he’d heard from Deborah. The sensitives who were awake often felt just a touch of his dream and could report the time, even if he slept through the whole affair.
He sat back, his thoughts clarifying. He had a headache, not simply left over from the memory of the dream. It was one of those, a harbinger of death. Can the dream be repeating?
There were some dreams that repeated, over and over, until he solved the crime, but to have only one night passing between dreams was unusual. There must be something particularly urgent about this man’s murder.
Then Mikael laughed softly. For tonight he’d escaped Deborah’s well-meaning orders. He should return to the fortress and let Deborah keep watch over his dreams in the infirmary, using some soporific to keep him from inflicting his dreams on the sensitives. He should.
But he wasn’t going to. Not tonight. He was outside the fortress and thus beyond Deborah’s reach.
“I need to head down into the Old Town,” he told Dimani. After cleaning his hands on a damp towel, Mikael took thirty royals out of his wallet, more than enough to pay the restaurant’s bill, and handed it to Dimani. “If you could pay, I would greatly appreciate it.”
Dimani regarded him with suspicious eyes but agreed, and a few minutes later Mikael was walking down the narrow, stone-walled streets of the Old Town toward the Hermlin Black. He walked through the tavern’s back courtyard, past the stables, where the number of horses told him the tavern was crowded. He let himself into the tavern’s back entrance, through the kitchen.
Synen’s son didn’t look surprised to see him. “There’s a creepy moon tonight,” he said as he gathered two fistfuls of mugs to carry out
into the common room of the tavern. “Looks orange. Good night for killing someone.”
Mikael didn’t tell the young man there wouldn’t be a fresh death, merely a repeat of his earlier dream. The smells from the massive stove made him consider a second dinner, but he wanted a bottle more.
“I’ll ask Father to set up a room for you,” the young man said as he headed out the kitchen door.
It’s nice to have an arrangement. Mikael took off his overcoat and hung it among the others on hooks near the kitchen door. One of the waitresses came back into the kitchen and smiled winsomely at Mikael, her gold earrings flashing with a toss of her head. “Hello again, Mikael.”
Oh, Father Winter, what’s her name? He was supposed to know, since she’d come up and sat with him one night the previous year when he’d reportedly started screaming in his sleep. Apparently Synen’s customers had found it disturbing; Synen had ordered the girl to hold a pillow over Mikael’s mouth to stifle the sound. He was lucky the girl hadn’t suffocated him.
She was pretty, with thick, dark hair, brown eyes that glittered with merriment, and the ready smile that he liked so much about Larossan girls. Even so, he didn’t recall ever having a lengthy conversation with her, and had no idea if she was kind or cruel, or somewhere between. At least, he’d never had a conversation with her that he remembered. They might have talked at some point when he was drunk. Given her apparent perception of familiarity, perhaps they had.
Merival, that’s it.
“Good evening, Merival,” he managed with moderate certainty. “How are you this evening?”
She sidled closer, so he’d gotten the name right, at least. “Better, now that you’ve come to visit.”
“I’m just going upstairs tonight, get some sleep,” he said quickly.
“We all know what you think passes for sleep.” She ladled curry into a shallow bowl and set it on her tray. “Keep yourself quiet this time.”
Mikael hoped he could manage that. Synen, his dark face flushed from rushing about, strode into the kitchen a moment later, a broad smile creasing his features. “Back again already, boy? I’ve got number four open.”
He’d yet to come here and find that Synen didn’t have a room open for him. He often wondered if Synen tossed other patrons out to make room for him, since he faithfully paid his bills. “Thank you, sir.”
“Why don’t you follow me on up, boy?” Synen held the kitchen door open and Mikael trailed him out to the stairwell at the edge of the tavern floor.
The patronage of the tavern was usually exclusively Larossan, but Mikael could see a group of five young men at one table in the corner who could pass for Anvarrid. Or half bloods perhaps, although they certainly weren’t ones who’d been raised by the Family, given their boisterous behavior.
“Are they a problem?” Mikael asked, pointing toward them with his chin as he mounted the stairs.
Synen glanced back at him and snorted. “Not worth dragging the palace into it. They come, get drunk, fondle the waitresses, but in the end they leave.”
The Daujom wouldn’t get involved unless there was a crime committed. Mikael pinched his nose but gazed back at the men, fixing those faces in his memory anyway. “Does the name Liran Prifata mean anything to you?” he asked Synen then.
“Are you courting him too?” Synen asked with a grin.
Mikael paused on the next-to-last step, his stomach sinking again. “Too?”
Chuckling, Synen led him along the mezzanine walkway. “Merival said you didn’t remember her.”
His host had reached the appropriate room and opened the door to let Mikael inside—the yellow room again.
“Remember what about her, exactly?” Mikael managed in what he hoped sounded like a calm voice.
“That you asked her to marry you,” Synen said, a wide grin splitting his face.
He wasn’t sure whether that was the truth . . . or an expression of Synen’s sense of humor. Mikael stepped inside the shabby bedroom. “Uh . . . when was this?”
“That night you were screaming.” Synen laughed jovially. “Months ago. You were pretty drunk, son.”
He didn’t recall much of that night, but Synen had sent her up to quiet him. That had been her with the pillow, hadn’t it? For the first time, Deborah’s idea didn’t sound like a bad thing.
Mikael sighed. “I didn’t mean . . . I’m sort of engaged already.”
“Sort of? You don’t sound pleased about it.”
He hadn’t mentioned Sera when he’d talked to Jannika, but Sera did make a convenient excuse at times. Deborah had told him the elders wouldn’t approve the match with Dahar’s daughter, so he’d never taken it too seriously, but he needed to get that straightened out with Dahar one of these days. Mikael hated the idea of disappointing him.
“The girl’s . . . temperamental,” he told Synen, which was the absolute truth.
“You’re just lucky Merival knows you Family boys don’t have any money. She might have held you to it.”
Mikael cringed. People talked to Synen, so Mikael considered it possible that the innkeeper had actually heard of his legal situation. He would inherit a fortune when his father was eventually declared dead.
“I’ll send my boy up with a bottle,” Synen said, patting his shoulder. “You should lock the door after that, in case Merival changes her mind.”
Mikael sat down on the shabby bed, gazed at the wood of the closed door, and rubbed fingers across his aching forehead. The statue of the Larossans’ true god seemed to smile at him from its corner. He grinned at a sudden memory of his father talking about how the House gods of the Anvarrid were made up, that none of the Anvarrid actually believed in them but each House felt they had to have them if other Houses did. His father had put more trust in Father Winter, who, although distant and incorporeal, seemed to have kept the Six Families safe. The Larossans believed that their true god was simply another face of Father Winter—or the opposite; Mikael had never been certain which way that went—but that smiling icon in the corner never offered him any protection from his dreams.
Why was this dream recurring so quickly? What made Liran Prifata so important? Mikael closed his eyes, trying to dig up any memory of the first dream, but it eluded him, like fog slipping through his fingers.
A tap came at the door, and he pushed himself off the bed. He eased the door open a crack, and Synen’s son passed a bottle of oak-aged whiskey through the narrow opening and hurried away. Mikael shut the door and sat on the edge of the bed again.
He gazed down at the bottle and the golden whiskey inside. When had this gone from being a temporary measure to take the edge from his broadcasting to the only thing that kept him from drowning others in his dreams? Who had suggested alcohol in the first place? It hadn’t been long after he’d arrived in Lucas Province, back when his dreams hadn’t been nearly so urgent.
Perhaps the reason they were so bad was the alcohol itself. He frowned down at the bottle, wondering if he shouldn’t go back up to the fortress and put himself in Deborah’s hands after all.
But the bed, while shabby, was comfortable. And he was already here. He considered the bottle a moment longer, then lifted it to his lips and drank.
CHAPTER NINE
Shironne had only half dressed when she heard footsteps coming up the stairs that led to the kitchen. Kirya, she decided, recognizing the bells she wore and the disciplined determination of her mind.
“Ah, Miss Anjir,” Kirya’s voice said then, confirming her guess. “Messine is down in the kitchen, asking to talk to you.”
That saved her time, since she would have had to send for him anyway. She’d had another dream, this one bizarrely similar to the one two nights ago, yet different enough to assure her that the victim hadn’t been the same. She wasn’t sure how to quantify that for the colonel, what evidence led her to that conclusion, but she felt certain o
f it anyway.
One thing she never saw in the dream was the victim’s face. The colonel guessed that was because the victim couldn’t see his own face, and therefore the angel—who was touching that victim’s mind—couldn’t see the face, either. That also implied that the angel could know only what the victim knew, if he remembered it at all.
“I’m on my way down. Tell him I’ll be there in a moment.” Shironne walked toward the stairwell, trailing one hand against the plastered wall. Kirya’s footsteps clicked back down the steps. Shironne followed as quickly as she could, coming down into a kitchen full of busy minds.
Melanna was already there, irritated and itching to know what was happening, with Cook bidding her to sit down again and eat. Perrin was trying to look pretty. At least that was what Shironne called it to herself. Whenever an attractive male showed up—in this case Filip Messine—Perrin did her best to be pleasing. Perrin had told her more than once that Messine was handsome. Shironne hadn’t told her sister that the lieutenant returned her admiration, primarily because it was Messine’s business to do so, not hers. But somehow she doubted he would do so, given that Perrin was even younger than Shironne herself.
“Miss Anjir,” Messine said quickly. “Captain Kassannan is out in the mews, wanting to know if your mother would let you go to view . . . a person with him.”
A body, he meant. Shironne didn’t need any more clarification than that. Messine didn’t want to talk about a dead body in the kitchen. Not in front of Perrin or Melanna, even though they knew what manner of work their elder sister did for the army. “I’ll go ask my mother.”
“Would you like me to go up, miss?” Kirya inserted. “Kassannan’s in a hurry.”
And she could get up and down the stairs faster. When Shironne agreed, Kirya’s feet fled back up the stairs, along with her determination. Shironne went to sit in her usual chair but kept her face turned toward Messine. “Did Kassannan say why he’s in a hurry?”
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