by Darian Smith
Brannon scratched at his scar. He had to admit, the story fit with what they knew. If Eaglin hadn't been having an affair with Belania and if their plans for cornering an exotic shoe market would fail without him, then neither of these two had a motive for murder. Not to mention the strange way the man had died. They'd yet to figure out what kind of magic or toxin had turned the man's heart to glass. These two didn't seem an obvious fit for having that kind of ability.
“Can you account for your whereabouts on the night Eaglin died?” he asked.
Belania gave short, jerky nods. “Yes. We were at a dinner party. There are several people who can vouch for us.”
He nodded. “Okay then. We will verify that. In the meantime, if we clear you two of suspicion, who do you think had a reason to kill him? Have you seen anyone or anything strange around either Eaglin or his daughter?”
Lady Belania exchanged a look with her husband. She took a deep breath, slipped off the shoe she was wearing and stood up. “There's something you should see.”
Belania led the way out of the room in her stockinged feet, with her husband trotting behind like a gangly puppy on a leash. Brannon and Draeson followed, their eyes sharp for any sign the couple were preparing to make a bid for escape. Brannon was fairly sure they weren't involved in the murder, or the disappearance of the dead man's child, but he wasn't ready to rule anything out entirely.
She led the way to a small kitchen area where a wood-burning stove fought for space with a dining table and a preparation bench which was a slab of stone propped up on stacked shingles. Next to the bench, a curtain covered an alcove which, when Belania pulled aside the curtain, was revealed to be a pantry. Shelves were built into the small space, scattered among them were jars of spices, wrinkled fruit, and a moldy loaf of bread—spaced out as if to avoid squabbling.
“It doesn't look as though anyone's been here for a few days,” Brannon said. “That's not strange. We know that already.”
Belania said nothing but pointed to the right of the shelving.
Brannon stepped into the alcove and looked closer. There was a gap between the shelves and the wall, that opened into a short hallway and ended with a flight of steps. A hint of daylight crept in through a crack under the door at the top of the stairs.
“It leads up to the street,” Belania said. “It was constructed from the old access way from before the basement was converted into a dwelling. This is how we would visit Eaglin so we could keep our business arrangements private.”
“And how you snuck in today,” Brannon muttered. “I'm going to have to have a word to the guards.”
“Exactly,” Belania said. “And if that little girl had wanted to come home and stay hidden, this is the way she would have done it. Now look up.”
Brannon did. The ceiling in the rooms they'd investigated so far had been plastered and painted. Beyond the pantry, however, were the bare floorboards of the house above. No light shone through the cracks so he assumed there were carpets or some other covering on the floor upstairs, but the bones of the house were laid bare here with nothing to transform them into the home Eaglin had made in this basement. Cobwebs hung like streamers from some long abandoned party.
“Do you see it?” Treagid's voice was barely a whisper. “We think something took her.”
Brannon shifted further into the access way and a little more light spilled in from the kitchen. He looked up and his breath caught in his throat. “Blood and Tears, what is that?”
A pale blue egg, large enough to hold a small child, was nestled amongst the cobwebs, glued to the underside of the floorboards with some sort of congealed jelly-like substance. Silver lines ran over the thick, rubbery blue shell, like arteries wrapped around a heart. Brannon almost expected to see it pulse, but a closer look revealed why it would not—the egg had split open, a wide gash like a grinning mouth ran from base to tip. Peering through the opening, Brannon saw the inside was empty.
Whatever it was had already hatched.
Brannon looked back to Draeson, who was peering through the opening in the pantry. “That's an egg of some kind, isn't it? What kind of creature comes from that?”
The mage shook his head. “No idea.”
Brannon's hand clenched and the metal of the dagger hilt he still held dug into his palm. “Then let's get it down and take it to Taran's lab. I'm sick of having no idea what's going on in this city. We have a missing child and a missing shipment of gold and it's long past time we got some answers.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Taran placed his mouth over the end of the pipette and gently sucked, drawing blue fluid up into the glass tube. The displacement stirred what remained in the beaker. He'd let the end dip a little too far in and tiny flecks swirled in the liquid, not fully dissolved. He paused, letting the sediment settle to the bottom of the saturated solution before drawing a little more into the pipette and then placing his thumb over the end. He would only get one chance at this. He needed to be careful.
The laboratory was a large room in the lower levels of the Third Alapran Monastery, a sprawling stone complex housing the cathedral and the monks' living quarters. In the years since his escape from the Children of Starlight, Taran had spent many happy hours conducting experiments alone. The other priests found him odd and understood little of his chemical endeavors. He'd been trained to blend in for short periods of time but found it difficult to fully mimic the social graces of someone who had been raised in Kalanon. They had no way of understanding his childhood and, for his own safety, he couldn't tell them anything about it. He found those who tried to tell him about their own life journeys baffling.
He remembered an older priest who, having surmised that Taran had joined the monastery as a form of atonement, had spoken about his own sordid past as a thief and pickpocket in an attempt to convey a hopeful message of redemption. Taran had completely misunderstood the purpose of the story and deeply offended the older man by laughing at these supposedly dark exploits. A recommendation had gone to the bishop that Taran's lack of sensitivity made him a poor choice for interactions with the public in any but the most restricted of ceremonial capacities.
It was a recommendation that suited Taran's need to remain hidden perfectly. Until his recent involvement with Brannon's investigative team, he'd hardly left the monastery other than to supply medicines to the physician college and to check on Marbella at Lady Magda's orphanage. He'd been allocated the space and the sanctuary of priesthood by special request of the king and so, despite the disapproval of the occasional bishop who considered his experiments unnatural, he was mostly left to his own devices.
The lab had several workbenches, with an array of equipment on each. A large filtration system took up one wall, looking like a small distillery for some particularly viscous wine. Bunsen burners warmed beakers of colored liquid, steam pushed wheels on contraptions, and jars of chemicals waited to be used. On this bench, however, Taran had nothing but the beaker of solution he was now pipetting and the pile of magically stabilized ash from the harbor master's office.
He brought the tip of the pipette close to the corner of the ash and loosened his thumb on the end to release a drop of the liquid inside. The blue solution soaked into the ash, as if that tiny portion of burnt paper were a sponge, eager for the moisture it had been denied.
Taran let the rest of the solution drain back into the beaker and set the pipette down on the bench. He would let the treated portion dry and then carefully test its strength. If he was right, the solution would have bonded the ash into a stronger form so it could hold the ghost of the shape of the paper it had once been, even when manipulated. They could then flatten it out and work on bringing out the ink remnants to read what the fire had destroyed. He'd seen something very similar done before when he was learning his chemistry with the Children of Starlight, but the paper then had not been so badly damaged.
Of course, this time he had Magus Draeson to help as well. Between science and magic, he was optimistic the
y could find a way to restore the burned documents.
He took the flask from his pocket and sipped the contents. There was very little left. A day's worth at best. He'd better mix up some more.
He lowered the flask and took a few steps across the room when something caught his vision out of the corner of his eye. He turned and saw the sign of the star painted on the wall next to the laboratory door. Panic burned through his chest in a hot wave like poison. They'd found him!
But when he blinked and looked again, the star was gone. It was just a patch of shadow, nothing more.
Taran leaned against one of the workbenches and let his body sag. He forced deep, calming breaths into his lungs. He took another sip. If anything, he'd increased his dose since returning Fressin's body to the Assassin House, but his anxiety and paranoia were on high alert. They were natural responses, he had to assume, because what he'd done was risky. The smart thing would have been to dispose of Fressin's body quietly—feed the meat to wolves and dissolve bones in acid, perhaps. But his guilt over his friend's death would not allow it. He'd sent Fressin back to the only family the man had known.
Taran sighed. Fressin himself would have found such sentimentality hilarious and foolish. He'd always been quick to advise moving on. “Your loyalty is to the Children of Starlight and the mission the House gives you,” he'd say. “Those that fall behind are for the Hooded One to take care of.”
The Hooded One and stardust.
He shook the flask and set it down on the workbench for refilling. He'd been the reason for many of his old friends falling behind and being taken by the Hooded One. While they were hardly innocents, it was a difficult guilt for him to live with. Fressin's death especially had been hitting him hard lately and it didn't help seeing what was left of Marbella at the orphanage. Magda did the best she could for the woman's body, but her sharp scientific mind was gone.
He remembered when he'd first met Marbella. Fressin had taken him to meet her. It'd been a lab not dissimilar to this one but in the depths of the Assassin House where the walls were made of dark, smoky glass.
Taran's younger self had been nervous and unsure of what was to happen.
His stomach was tight and his fingernails scratched at his forearms like a camel rider with fleas.
Marbella had looked him up and down, assessing his worth. She held up a vial of blue liquid, letting the light shine through it like a large, smooth sapphire. “This is an elixir known as Valdan's sweat. It's made by heating a particular berry grown in the mountains until it begins to leak juice through its outer skin. You collect the juice but don't eat the berries—they're poisonous on their own. Quite delicious, apparently, but deadly.” She swirled it and the light sparked on flecks in the liquid like a tiny whirlpool in the jar. “However, when mixed with our special recipe for stardust, Valdan's sweat activates the drug and delivers it to the body—and more importantly, the mind. It's this combination that keeps us sane.”
Taran swallowed. “Oh,” he said, uncertain of the correct response.
“I've been told you show a fair aptitude for chemistry,” she said.
Taran murmured and stared at his feet.
“Do you disagree?” Marbella asked him.
He looked up. “No ma'am. I enjoy our chemistry classes very much. I, um, I think I'm one of the better students in the class.”
She nodded. “You are,” she said. “You don't need to be modest about your skill. I've used your poisons myself.”
“On . . . people?”
“They're not people. They're targets.” Her eyes narrowed. “Your poisons were very effective.”
Taran swallowed and risked a smile. “Thank you.”
“You're welcome.” She nodded, her eyelids relaxing. “The Children of Starlight don't tolerate failure but we do reward talent and skill. You've been selected to learn one of our most closely guarded secrets. I'm going to teach you how to make stardust.”
Taran's young eyes widened. “Me?” He looked from Marbella to Fressin. “Is that why you had me practice milking the venom from creagor spiders?”
Fressin chuckled. “I don't know what you're talking about.”
Marbella raised an eyebrow at them both.
“Don't blame me,” Fressin said, his hands spread wide in innocence. “He worked out that much all on his own.”
She pursed her lips and studied the two young men. “Well, I'm impressed,” she said finally. “Very few have ever guessed any of the ingredients. Now you know two. Can you surmise any more?”
Taran's eyebrows knitted together as he thought. “The ingredients would have to be unusual but things that we can get in large enough supply. Farmed or mined maybe. From a place the Children of Starlight control. Like Valdan's sweat . . . there must be a supplier in the mountains who grows the berries and provides it. Creagor spiders we have ourselves, but their toxin alone wouldn't be enough . . .” He thought about the texture of stardust, the flavor. How it had made the tip of his tongue tingle when he'd placed a few grains on it without dissolving them in his first few weeks in the House. “There has to be a binding and powdering agent,” he mused. “That could be anything simple, but as for the addictive and mind-altering substances . . . I just don't know.”
“Good,” Marbella said. “Nobody knows all the ingredients. Those of us entrusted with producing stardust know pieces of the recipe, but no single Child of Starlight knows the entire thing. I will teach you my part of the recipe and you will be part of the next generation of those who make our supply.” She reached out to clasp his shoulder. “This is a big responsibility, Taran. Are you ready for it?”
He nodded; a jerky, staccato movement. “Yes. I . . . um . . . I wonder, has anyone else from my class been chosen for this?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Some. Why do you ask?”
He licked his lips. “I thought maybe . . . what about Mud? He's good at chemistry as well.”
“Who?”
“My friend. We call him Mud.”
Fressin leaned in to whisper in her ear.
“Oh.” Marbella's face hardened. “I'm afraid he won't be joining you for any more lessons, Taran. Ever. But I think you know that.”
Taran stared at the floor. He did know. And he knew why. His friend's blood was on his hands.
Those hands clenched at his sides as Taran broke free of the memory and directed his attention back to the present in his own lab. Mud, Marbella, and now Fressin. They'd all suffered because of him. His need for freedom and the ache in his chest that had been his growing sense of morality had been their downfall. Even now, he couldn't say that what he'd done was wrong. Metamorphosis was always uncomfortable, and transforming from a Child of Starlight into the man he'd become was necessary and painful. But Fressin's death had reignited the pain. Did a butterfly feel guilt for having changed from a caterpillar?
He sighed. What caterpillar had ever sacrificed his friends to gain his wings? No matter how necessary those wings were to his peace of mind.
He shrugged his shoulders as if to flutter those metaphorical wings. Dwelling on past misdeeds would do no good now. The best way to shake the guilt was to keep busy and be useful in the present. It was one of the reasons he appreciated being a part of Sir Brannon's team. The work they did was important and worthy.
“And if I want to keep doing it, I need to mix up some more tonic,” he muttered to himself. He took the last flagon of Valdan's sweat from a cupboard and placed it on one of the workbenches. This was another reason to be disturbed by the robbery of the gold shipment. That boat had been carrying not just gold but Taran's secret supply of the deadly berries used to make the sweat as well. He would have to be very sparing with what remained of his supply until the next shipment arrived.
The solution would suspend the stardust, but he would have to make the powder himself. He began to gather the ingredients. There was creagor spider venom, teragin paste, and powdered cactus spines. It had taken him a long time to learn the full recipe. With each i
ngredient, a face rose in his memory—someone he'd managed to sneak the secret from or who had unwittingly helped in his experiments to figure out the true formula. It had not been an easy process.
It still wasn't.
He measured precise doses of acetic acid and bile into a beaker and was lighting the burner beneath it when a voice spoke from the doorway.
“This lab of yours really is a cave of wonders, isn't it?”
Taran glanced up, his hand reaching automatically under the workbench for the dagger he kept strapped to the underside. When he saw who the voice belonged to, he relaxed. “Magistrate Gawrick. I wasn't expecting you.”
The magistrate's nose wrinkled. “No, I suppose not. Although neither you nor any of Sir Brannon's team have thought to keep the magistrates informed of your progress so it does seem logical that I would have to seek you out, don't you think?”
Taran swallowed. “Well, um, we're working on two different cases now so we're very busy. Sir Brannon would be the best person to speak to for an update.” He tweaked a valve on the burner and the flame narrowed and turned blue.
“Sir Brannon is very difficult to find,” Magistrate Gawrick said. He moved across to the workbench, peering at the ingredients laid out across it. He reached for the stoppered jar of teragin paste. “What's this?”
Taran's hand moved faster, shifting the jar out of reach. “These are for another project,” he said. “As I'm sure you are aware, I supply the physician college with medicines for their hospital.”
Gawrick snorted. “Given the way you people seem to be dragging out such a simple case, I'm surprised you have any other projects.”
“Um,” Taran stammered. “It's actually not simple. A child is missing and her father murdered. There are rumors of others missing as well. I'd think you would be more concerned about that.”
“These are poor people,” Gawrick said. He laid a finger on the stopper of the flagon of Valdan's sweat and traced a circle around the rim. “Poor people die all the time.”