City of Lies

by Sam Hawke

  The guilt and anger inside me twisted me tighter and tighter, until I felt like a walking trap, waiting to burst. The two people I most wanted to shake and rail at, I couldn’t. One was lost to me, probably forever, and the other … well, I was reasonably sure honor did not permit an attack, even verbal, on an unconscious, deathly ill Chancellor.

  I stopped outside Tain’s room, hearing voices. Suspicion flooded me and I listened outside the doorway.

  “What did you play?” Hadrea’s voice.

  “Um … I dunno.” Davior’s high voice. The suspicion drained away, leaving me feeling tired and old. Hadrea could hardly have kept this from her mother, and despite the risks, I trusted them. In any case, I would need the extra set of eyes Salvea could provide. I tried to suppress the painful thoughts of the utterly trustworthy set I had just lost.

  “Was it a new game, that you had not played before?”

  “Mmm … No. I was catched. And some baddies. I got the prize!”

  I walked in. Davi sat on his sister’s knee by Tain’s bed, his little round head leaning back against her shoulder as he looked up at her. He smiled when he saw me and I smiled back, but it felt wooden. Salvea stood on the other side of Tain’s bed, daubing his forehead with a cloth.

  “My mother is good like this,” Hadrea said to me, tone hesitant.

  “We’ll appreciate the help,” I told her, trying to warm my tone. Like throwing a blanket on an icy lake, but it was the best I could do in the circumstances. “Could you stay with him awhile?”

  “Of course.” Salvea reached out a hand as if to touch me, then dropped it away. “He is a strong young man. The spirits will not have him yet.”

  I nodded, stiff.

  Without asking, Hadrea set her brother down and followed me from Tain’s room. I told her what had happened at the gate tower.

  “Your sister is so brave,” Hadrea said at the end, her tone admiring. I stared, unsure I’d heard correctly.

  “No, she’s not,” I said. “You don’t even know her. Kalina’s not brave. And she’s not strong. She would have been so frightened. She’s probably dead, and she would have been so frightened.” My voice caught in my throat and I turned away, blinking furiously.

  She snorted, disbelieving. “How can you say she is not brave? Doing this thing … If she was not frightened, it would not have been brave to do it. You say she is not strong, but she was strong enough to risk her life for those she loved! That is courage.”

  Even as some part of me recognized she was right, the other, tightly wound part, the part that wanted to lash out, won the day. “She made a stupid, impulsive decision, and I wasn’t there to stop her.” My voice climbed. “I didn’t watch out for her. And I was, we were … doing what we did this morning, while my sister was probably lying dead in the mud somewhere.”

  She reeled as if I’d slapped her. “I do not regret this morning,” she told me, her voice dropping as much as mine had risen.

  “Well, I do.”

  Without a word, she pivoted angrily and walked off in the direction in which we’d come. I opened my mouth to call her back, to explain, but no words came out. The truth was I had meant it. If I had thought of my family instead of myself, Kalina would never have made the attempt. I hadn’t deserved the pleasure and contentment I’d found with Hadrea today, and would never be able to enjoy it again. It was for the best that she knew that.

  Having wounded the one remaining person who mattered, I might as well turn my bitter attentions to someone who deserved them. Feeling hollow, I left the Manor in search of a poisoner.

  * * *

  I found Marco first, and had a few moments to observe him, unseen. He was in our new training hall—formerly a theater—directing an Order Guard and several others who had shown aptitude and had been designated as training supervisors. Hovering in the shadows of what had been the wings, I searched for signs of something, anything, to confirm or deny my suspicions.

  He looked agitated. Although he spoke patiently and politely, his relentless pacing about on the stage reminded me of myself. Anxious to know if his poison worked?

  I stepped out.

  “Credo Jovan!” Unmistakable relief at the sight of me. “Bosco, Garaya, please carry on without me.” He put a hand on my shoulder and steered me back into the wings. “I’ve been worried.” I tried to relax the tension in my back and shoulders.

  “Why were you worried?” I asked as we stopped in a back room of the theater. I propped myself against a set of crates, casually checking for exits. Being in a poorly lit, cramped space with him didn’t seem wise.

  He gave the room no such consideration, sitting on the crate next to me with a heavy sigh. “I’ve been trying to find you and the Chancellor since yesterday, Credo,” he said. “I’ve left word with your messengers and went to the Manor a dozen times. Every time they said the Chancellor was out somewhere and they had not seen you. It was like you’d vanished after I saw you yesterday morning.”

  I shifted, uncomfortable. I’d forgotten about the messengers. I’d have to find some way of dealing with them. “We haven’t vanished,” I said. “I had a headache yesterday and stayed indoors. I must have forgotten to pass that on to a messenger.”

  He nodded, but his brow furrowed. “And the Chancellor? I met with him yesterday and we talked about how we might try again to destroy Trickster’s Bridge. He was going to meet me by the lake at dusk, but he never came.”

  “I saw Tain this morning. He wasn’t in high spirits.” That’s true enough. “He needed a break from the Council and meetings and everyone pulling him in every direction.”

  A pause. Marco leaned forward, staring at me. Then he shook his head. “I am sorry, Credo Jovan. But I do not believe that.”

  “What do you mean?” I readied my legs. I was closer to the door than him, but would need the element of surprise to outrun my much more athletic opponent. “You don’t believe what?”

  He sighed. “Chancellor Tain would not avoid his advisers and friends because he needed a break, Credo Jovan. He is honorable and bound by duty. He would not decide to avoid people on a whim. And a headache? You look more like a person to whom something terrible and grievous has happened. Please, tell me what is the matter with you both.”

  I rubbed my hands together, stalling. Innocent or guilty, he already knew something was going on. So I gambled. “I don’t know how to tell you this. The Chancellor, he…” I buried my head in my hands.

  “Credo? What is it?” It sounded like genuine alarm.

  I took a shaky breath and looked him in the eye. “You must promise not to say anything. The city’s a tinderbox. If they find out…”

  “Find out what? Of course I promise. Please, Credo, you’re frightening me. What’s happened?”

  “Tain’s dead,” I whispered.

  Marco sucked in his breath. “What? Wh—what?”

  “He fell suddenly ill yesterday, Marco. He died last night. I didn’t know what to do. We thought it was some foreign disease that killed Chancellor Caslav and my Tashi, but now Tain, too? It must have been poison.”

  Marco stared at me, then at the floor. His big shoulders shook. A small noise escaped him, as though he had tried to say something and failed.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” I said again. “If the city knows he’s dead … I just kept thinking what it would do to morale. There are so many rumors around the city about what caused the uprising and the Council’s role in it. The rest of us just aren’t beloved like the Chancellor. He is—was—the only thing keeping spirits up.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Marco said at last, his voice hoarse. “I saw him in the morning. He was fine. I don’t understand how this could have happened. Who would do this? What purpose does it serve? We might all be dead in days anyway.”

  “But do you see why we can’t tell the city? If they know the Chancellor is gone they’ll lose hope, and we still need to defend when the rebels attack the bridge.”

  Marco nodded slowly. �
��What about the Council?”

  “I don’t trust the Council. Whoever got to Tain was someone close to him. If one of them poisoned him, I don’t want them to know they succeeded.”

  He frowned. “Credo Jovan, I understand that Council politics can be trying. And I can’t pretend I haven’t heard rumors, too. But surely no one on the Council would actively harm the Chancellor. This war is destroying our city. No one on the Council benefits from that. I truly believe there must be foreign agents at work in our city.”

  “I suppose,” I said. “But all the same, I’m not willing to risk them knowing what’s happened. At the very least, not all the Council would be happy to keep this secret.”

  “All right, then. But we will need a reason why they cannot see him when they ask.” His mouth twisted in a half smile. “I am not subtle and I’m no real Councilor, Credo. I do not understand the games. If I was suspicious about the Chancellor avoiding me, others will be, too.”

  I studied Marco’s face, with all its earnest openness. An honest man’s face. Honor-down, he was convincing. He drew me in and made me want to trust him. The emotional part of my brain still insisted here sat a good man even if the cynic in me made an enemy out of everyone. “No more Council meetings,” I said. “We’ll run out of excuses. Argo at the Manor knows what happened and he can be trusted to pass on whatever messages we want to anyone who comes to the Manor. You and I can both vouch for having met with Tain.”

  He gripped one of my shoulders. “Thank you for trusting me with this, Credo. But is there no one else on the Council you trust?”

  “Well, I thought we could trust Eliska but…”

  “I trust her,” he said. “And I think you should, Credo. The Stone-Guilder would never be involved in any plot against the Chancellor. She is an honorable woman, reliable to a fault. She has been invaluable in the defense of the city.”

  I shrugged. “She was alone with the Chancellor on the morning he died. I don’t know how he was poisoned, but we can’t discount that.”

  He shook his head, jaw set. “She was not the only one who saw the Chancellor that morning; not even the only Councilor. I did, too, and I hope you know I would never have harmed him. I can’t believe it of Eliska, either. She must have been alone with the Chancellor dozens of times since the siege began, with any number of opportunities.”

  “I suppose,” I said, trying to sound persuaded.

  “The Scribe-Guilder, too, could surely not be involved,” he added. “And the Artist-Guilder. What could Budua or Marjeta possibly gain from betraying a Council they’ve served on for sixty years?” He counted out on his fingers, “You, me, Eliska, Budua, Marjeta—if the five of us work together I am sure we could keep the illusion for at least a few days.”

  “All right.” I clapped his shoulder. “Say nothing of this, and I’ll talk to the others.”

  He nodded, his wide face earnest. “We will honor his memory, and hold the city, I swear it.”

  I wanted to believe that, but even if Tain recovered I didn’t think we would save the city, not anymore. But I’ll catch you, I told Marco silently. If it’s you, I’ll catch you and I’ll make you pay, before the end.

  * * *

  If I had found Marco’s performance convincing, Eliska’s was equally stirring. It had taken until the evening to have a chance to get her alone to explain. Her eyes filled with tears at the news, and it took her a long time even to speak. When she did, her tone matched my heart for bleakness.

  “We’re lost,” she said dully. “We can’t hold out against that army. They’re taking their time to regroup, but they know we’re trapped in too little space with diminishing resources. Sooner or later they’ll take the tower. We were all counting on Tain somehow getting through to them and convincing the rebels to negotiate instead of attack. Now we don’t even have a leader, and there’s no one from the Families we could elect who’d have the credibility to convince them anyway. No slight to your honor intended, Credo,” she added hastily.

  “None taken.” I had neither the contacts nor the presence to be a leader, and my compulsions were too obvious and inhibiting to be under such pressure. My role had always been to support and protect. You did a great job of that.

  Unlike Marco, Eliska seemed unconvinced by my plan to keep Tain’s “death” a secret. “I don’t see the point,” she said, voice wooden. “But I’ll go along with whatever you want.”

  “I need you to keep being the Stone-Guilder,” I said. “You can’t give up. We need your engineers and builders; if we can keep holding the rebels off we have more chance of negotiating peacefully with them.”

  “Fine,” Eliska said. But she sounded the way I felt: empty. She volunteered no insight into whom we could trust on the Council. I had to prompt her.

  “You have to be careful what you say around the other Councilors.”

  “Is that what it’s come to?” She gave a harsh bark of a laugh. “Honor-down. This city was lost before the siege even started, wasn’t it?”

  Sometimes I thought the exact same thing. “Maybe it was. We caused this. We created enemies of our own people through inertia and ignorance. If we’d treated our country citizens like equals instead of resources, if we hadn’t treated the Darfri beliefs as unimportant superstitions, this would never have happened.”

  Eliska glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, and her tone changed, just a little, becoming higher and a fraction quicker. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been listening for it. She rubbed the back of her neck. “Chancellor Tain was openly sympathetic to the rebels, and seeking peace. I don’t see why any sympathizer would have murdered him when he’ll likely be replaced by someone worse.”

  I nodded. “It’s possible the siege and the poisoning aren’t connected.” I might have once regarded the Stone-Guilder as naive, but never stupid. “But where does that leave us? I still don’t know who on the Council we can trust.”

  “If this was a political act, given who owns the estates you would be better trusting only the Guilders who aren’t Credolen. Marjeta, Budua, and Marco. Although…”

  “What?” I asked.

  Her lips tightened. “I can’t imagine a deceptive bone in that man’s body,” she said. “And I hate to even raise it. But I guess we can’t ignore that he’s a foreigner by birth, and a trained soldier. I suppose it’s possible he might be less loyal to Sjona than he seems.”

  “Maybe.” But we had no conflict with Perest-Avana that would seem to justify a twenty year espionage. And though I didn’t say it, on a personal level I had seen the reverence with which Marco spoke about Warrior-Guilder Aven. His loyalty to her, and the debt he felt he owed her for giving him a home and a place here, seemed absolute. I would have said he loved Sjona more fiercely than many native to it. But, again, I could not trust my impressions of people’s loyalties.

  I left Eliska, turning over the facts in my head as I walked.

  I wanted to watch both Marco and Eliska but realized, my feet turning leaden, that I would need help to follow them both. And I couldn’t ask Hadrea to do me a favor, after this morning. I still didn’t know which of Tain’s servants were trustworthy, even if I were willing to endanger an innocent party by setting them to watch a murderer who now knew we were searching for them. Of course, some of them would at least need to believe he was dead and that we had to maintain the ruse of his health. That he was alive but incapacitated would have to be kept from them all.

  I couldn’t sleep at my own apartments and check regularly on Tain, nor did I relish the prospect of being there without my uncle and sister. The thought of facing Hadrea, being confronted by her anger and hurt and my own shame and guilt, tightened the ball of stress inside me even more.

  But only Salvea waited in Tain’s rooms, head bent over the restless sleeping Chancellor. She told me Hadrea had taken Davi to bed, her tone without rancor; clearly her daughter had not shared our altercation.

  “The Chancellor’s hallucinations are growing worse, but tha
t may be because he is growing stronger,” she told me as she stood and stretched. “His thrashing is more powerful and his voice louder.”

  I thanked her and took her seat. “Go and get some sleep,” I said.

  She kissed me on the forehead as she left, a Darfri gesture notable for its rare intimacy, and her kindness and affection only made me feel a fraud. Just find the traitor, I told myself, dragging some cushions in from the sitting room and constructing a rough pallet on the floor. Then it won’t matter anymore. Nothing will matter anymore.

  With that reassuring thought, I lay down to rest.

  Though my body craved it, my mind avoided sleep. I forced my eyes shut while my brain chased itself in ever-painful circles. Images tumbled through my head, still the worst being Kalina’s head in a bag, so real I could almost feel the texture of the material, the blood dripping through its base. I counted in sets, trying to use the patterns to disrupt the loop of bad thoughts. But it was no good; something about the images tickled my brain, as though it danced on the edge of a memory. Had I missed some clue, some part of the puzzle? I didn’t know what could be found in a head in a bag except trauma and a reminder that both sides of this war were capable of atrocities. Maybe it was just another sign that I would lose my control and purpose without my family. After all, I reminded myself, poking at the wound like a fool, I was alone in the world now.

  After a while it grew too much and I was forced to stand and pace, counting steps and squeezes of my hands and breaths to calm down. Eventually, my head quieted and my body won the war, first causing me to stumble and then to collapse on the pallet. I fell at an awkward angle but couldn’t summon the energy to shift. At last, I slept.