City of a Thousand Dolls

by Miriam Forster

  Guilt, Esmer sent with surprise. Acidic, soul-eating guilt. She shook herself as if she were wet. Strange. It’s rare for human emotions to smell this strongly. Fear does, of course, but not the others. This has soaked all the way through....

  It was strange, Nisha thought as she staggered to her feet. Zann had always made it very clear she blamed everyone else. What could she be feeling guilty about now?

  Nisha was still pondering the mystery of Zann’s behavior when she turned around and started walking. The greenhouse was on the other side of the hedge maze, and she needed to go and get her hand bandaged. Esmer trailed her like a speckled gray shadow.

  Inside the greenhouse, the damp heat embraced Nisha like a friend. She breathed, savoring the smells of tangy herbs, sweet blossoms, and thick green growth.

  “Sashi?” she called.

  Only humid silence answered her. Nisha thought briefly of trying to find a healer, then dismissed the idea. A healer would want an explanation, and Nisha wasn’t sure she had one. She could mix up the poultice herself.

  Nisha gathered pieces of the herbs she needed along the way to her space on the workbench. She put the leaves onto her flat grinding tablet, then reached for her rollstone. It wasn’t there.

  Nisha glanced around. She thought she had left the stone right next to the grinding tablet. Then she spotted the rollstone on Sashi’s part of the table. She must have borrowed it and forgotten to return it.

  Nisha picked up the rollstone, a slender cylinder of satiny white marble. She was about to go back to her herbs when she caught a whiff of something.

  The smell was gone too quickly to identify, but it made Nisha pause. A faint alarm bell clanged in the recesses of her mind.

  She leaned closer to the bench and sniffed delicately. At first she smelled nothing. Sashi was a fanatic about keeping her bench clear and washed. Nisha sniffed along the length of the rollstone. There was a hint of herbs, but not enough for her to recognize the smell.

  Ignoring her throbbing hand, Nisha looked over the workbench one more time, running her fingers over the wood of the table. This time she caught a flash of green, a tiny leaf caught in a crack.

  Nisha pulled the leaf from its hiding place and rolled it in her fingers. The smell was as sharp and clean as the taste of frost on her tongue.

  Clovermint.

  Nisha remembered Sashi’s hand breaking pieces of lavender as she talked about Atiy’s death. Sashi, who worked regularly with poisons, who had could have gotten the key to the poison cupboard easily. Sashi had been rolling clovermint.

  Confused and sick, Nisha rolled her herbs and mixed a poultice for her hand. Grabbing some bandages, she stumbled out of the greenhouse.

  Was Sashi there? Esmer sent.

  “No,” Nisha said, swallowing. There was only one person left in the City she could trust to help her and not ask questions. “Maybe Tanaya can help me get these splinters out.”

  Nisha walked blindly around the maze to the House of Flowers, her thoughts knotted in an endless tangle. Sashi needed a guide whenever she left the House of Jade. How could she have been involved in Atiy’s death? Unless the deaths weren’t connected after all. Could Sashi have sneaked the seeds into Jina’s snack bowl while the girl was asleep? But why? Was there a rivalry that Nisha didn’t know about?

  No. It couldn’t be…

  Nisha clutched at the bandages, feeling as if the world were tilting on her. How much of Sashi’s peaceful air was real, and how much was a mask? Could her friend really be a part of this?

  Tanaya was kneeling on the floor of her room, painting an exquisitely detailed figurine of a dancer in midleap. She looked up when Nisha staggered in, and her smile of welcome shaded into concern.

  “Nisha, what’s happened?” Tanaya sprang up and helped Nisha to her reclining couch.

  Nisha sat, berating herself for jumping to the most obvious conclusion. Sashi was studying to be a healer. She wouldn’t kill. She used clovermint in her medicines all the time.

  “Goodness,” Tanaya said. “What happened to your hand?”

  “I fell,” Nisha said, pulling her thoughts back to the present. “I fell and scraped it badly. Sorry to interrupt, but I couldn’t bandage it by myself.”

  “Don’t apologize, Nisha,” Tanaya said. “I’ve been stuck in this room all day. Of course I’ll help. Just tell me what to do.”

  Nisha gave her careful instructions as Tanaya pulled out the slivers, then wrapped her hand with the poultice and clean bandages Nisha had brought. By the time she was done, the throb in Nisha’s hand had dimmed to an ache. It still hurt, but the pain was bearable.

  “You poor thing,” Tanaya said as she finished tying the bandages. “You lie here for a minute and relax.” She leaned over Nisha to adjust a pillow. The ruby necklace at her throat glistened, and her sleek black-and-gray asar smelled of lavender.

  “That’s a new scent for you,” Nisha mumbled.

  “Do you like it? The girls from the House of Jade brought us some lavender today. I’ve never tried it before, but I was getting bored with the night-queen scent. Now you rest. I’ll tell Matron you’re helping me if anyone asks.”

  “Thank you, Tanaya,” Nisha said. She was starting to feel the effects of her early awakening. Maybe if she just took a short nap, she could think more clearly.

  Nisha closed her eyes, trying to push out the image of Sashi’s hands snapping the lavender twigs.

  How long she dozed, she didn’t know. But a staccato knock at the door jerked her awake. Nisha sat up, trying to clear her fuzzy sleep thoughts.

  Tanaya had changed into a gray-and-red asar and sat putting her hair up. “Enter,” she called around the hairpins in her mouth.

  One of the Council House servants burst into the room.

  “Matron sent me to find Nisha,” she cried. “Something terrible has happened!”

  Nisha jumped up, forgetting the pain in her hand. “What is it?” she asked, a sick certainty in her gut.

  “Another death,” the girl said, white-faced. “I’ve been looking for you all over. Matron said to bring you to—”

  “The House of Music,” Nisha said, ignoring Tanaya’s puzzled gasp.

  The girl shook her head and gave Nisha a confused look. “No,” she said. “Not the House of Music. It was the House of Beauty.”

  Leaving Tanaya in her room, Nisha followed the servant girl out of the House of Flowers and down the short stone path that led to the House of Beauty. Confusion blurred her mind. She’d been so sure that the killer was going to the House of Music. Had the stolen asar been just to throw Nisha off the scent?

  Nisha barely noticed the spotted shadows that darted after her as she stumbled along. Esmer had to yell to get her attention.

  Nisha, slow down!

  Are you all right? Jerrit sent, shame coloring his voice. I’m sorry I ran away. I felt your distress all the way across the estate.

  There’s been another killing, Nisha sent in a tense burst of thought. At the House of Beauty.

  Both cats reacted with stunned silence.

  There was no way you could have seen this coming, Esmer sent. We did everything we could.

  It wasn’t enough! Nisha snapped back, surprised by the quickness of her own anger. Leaving the cats to wait outside, she walked in through the front doors of the House of Beauty. The foyer was smaller than that of the House of Flowers, and more comfortable, filled with padded benches and paintings in soft colors. The air smelled of jasmine and lavender. And unlike the broad main stairs of the House of Flowers, the House of Beauty stairs were a graceful spiral, hung with lilies. Nisha climbed them, following the servant to an upstairs room.

  A crumpled figure lay on the bedroom floor, a wide black stain stretching across the carpet underneath her. Nisha bit her lip.

  It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t anywhere close to enough.

  22

  “NISHA, WHAT ARE you doing here?” Rajni, the Mistress of the House of Beauty, was standing behind her. He
r slender hands were clenched hard, turning them the color of the White Mist.

  “Matron sent for me,” Nisha said. “To help.” She gestured at the body.

  “Indeed I did,” said Matron, appearing beside the trembling Rajni, looking pointedly at Nisha. “I wanted you and Josei to examine her first. Josei should be here soon.”

  Confusion wrinkled Rajni’s smooth forehead. When Matron didn’t explain, the House Mistress turned to the servant.

  “News of this … accident doesn’t leave the room,” Rajni said to the servant, her voice ragged with anxiety. “If I hear one whisper, one rumor about this, I will revoke your work permit and turn you out of the estate.”

  Nisha cleared her throat. “I was with Tanaya in the House of Flowers when I heard,” she said. “Someone should probably tell her not to talk about it, too.”

  Rajni frowned. “See to it,” she ordered the servant.

  “Yes, House Mistress,” the servant girl said with a bow, perfectly submissive. “It will be as you say.”

  “Yes, it will,” Rajni said, dismissing the girl with a wave. “This is terrible,” she said to no one in particular. “Nothing like this has ever happened in my House before.”

  Nisha walked around the body, careful to touch nothing. The dead girl was huddled in on herself, little more than a heap of blue muslin and a tangle of dark-gold hair. Nisha’s nose twitched at the dry, metallic smell that soaked the room. The deep-purple carpet underneath the body was stiff and dark with blood.

  A flash of white caught her eye. She reached out a hand, careful not to disturb the body, and drew a small folded piece of rough paper out from under the tangled hair.

  There, on the front in black block letters, was her name: NISHA.

  Rajni was talking to Matron, and neither of them was looking at Nisha. Nisha slipped the note into an inner pocket.

  A hand touched her shoulder, and she jumped.

  “She was stabbed,” Josei said. She had come into the room so quietly that Nisha hadn’t heard her. She sniffed, her sharp nose subtly tasting the air. “Smells like a stomach wound. She must have been stabbed in the gut.”

  Nisha copied Josei, taking a deep whiff of the room. There was a foul, decaying tang underneath the blood smell, one that she hadn’t noticed before. She held her breath until the nausea passed.

  Josei didn’t seem to notice. The Combat Mistress was feeling carefully under the body. “Is there a weapon here, I wonder? Ah, there it is.”

  Josei reached under the girl’s hip and slid out a thin metal object as long as her hand. The tip of the object was shaped like a butterfly and set with deep-blue sapphires; it sparkled deep blue in the light from the window. The sharp, slender point was crusted with blood.

  “That’s her hair ornament,” Rajni said, her voice thick with shock.

  Josei raised one dark eyebrow. “It’s a dagger,” she corrected. “You arm your girls?”

  “It’s more than a dagger,” Rajni said. “It’s a symbol. The girls here are not just beautiful, they are creators of beauty. They draw and sculpt, arrange flowers, paint. Beauty is the only skill, the only dowry they have. And beauty is not only to attract or impress. It’s also a medicine, a tool … and a weapon.”

  Rajni tugged her curls. “The girls are given the hair ornaments the year they are ready to be spoken for, on their sixteenth birthdays. It’s a reminder to them of beauty’s power and danger.”

  “Beauty is serious business,” Nisha murmured.

  “Exactly,” Rajni said. “The House of Combat is not the only House that teaches its girls to survive.”

  Josei twisted the hair ornament, watching it flash in the light. “So this belonged to the dead girl? That will make things more difficult.”

  Nisha noticed a sapphire sandal peeking out from the soft blue fabric. The stones matched the hair ornament exactly. Nisha imagined the dead girl’s graceful feet dancing about the room, the sapphires glowing as she moved.

  “What was her name?” Nisha asked.

  Rajni’s liquid brown eyes filled with tears. “Lashar,” she whispered. “Her name was Lashar.”

  “Lashar,” Nisha repeated. She knelt beside the tangle of hair, brushing it away from the cold, still face. The girl’s light, clear eyes were wide and glazed over in death.

  “The killer did it face-to-face this time,” Nisha said. “She looked into Lashar’s eyes and slashed her open.”

  Josei muttered a curse. “This is no long-distance poisoning. This death was personal. Was this girl already spoken for?”

  “Yes,” Rajni said. “She was to be an estate wife. She and the client had met a handful of times. He’s the son of a minor lord and wanted a good bedmate when he was home.”

  Nisha grimaced. Wives without political power or connections were known as estate wives. They were kept in style at luxury country houses, entertained their husbands’ friends with lavish parties, and gave birth to heirs. Estate wives did not often visit the Imperial Court, leaving the husband free to gain power and status through carefully chosen flirtations and affairs.

  With so many plots and intrigues around, no wonder the House of Beauty gave its girls daggers.

  Something clicked in Nisha’s mind, falling into place with an almost audible snap. “Did you just say the client wanted a good bedmate?”

  Rajni nodded, a puzzled frown creasing her golden skin.

  Matron’s eyebrows went up in a flash of understanding. “Rajni, did Lashar ever receive training from the House of Pleasure?”

  “Yes,” said Rajni. “She never went there—but one of the trainers came here.”

  “Three girls dead, all connected to the House of Pleasure,” Josei said. “How interesting.”

  Nisha rubbed the back of her neck, feeling the tension in her muscles. What possible reason could anyone at the House of Pleasure have to kill so many girls? She felt as if there was a thread here that she wasn’t seeing, a connection that would make all the pieces fit.

  Maybe there was a clue in the note.

  Nisha fingered the note in her pocket and peered around. The others were deep in conversation. No one was looking at her. Carefully, so as not to make noise, she unfolded the note. The edges of the thin paper were torn, and shaky black letters streamed across the page like drunken footprints. Nisha forgot about the paper—her eyes were drawn to the words.

  You’re looking for me, but you’ll never find me. Come to the old quarry that lies to the south at Darkfall tomorrow. If you don’t show up, or if you tell anyone, I will kill again.

  And I’ve set a trap for your friend in the House of Flowers. If you find it first, you might save her life.

  Nisha crumpled the note, her mouth dry with fear.

  Tanaya was in danger.

  Nisha bolted past the House Mistresses, ignoring their startled looks. She raced down the stairs and straight out of the House of Beauty. Her heart was pounding, and the faces of the dead girls followed her.

  Not Tanaya. Not her.

  She was darting up the front steps of the House of Flowers when she heard the scream.

  No.

  Nisha flew up the wide main stairs and into Tanaya’s room. Tanaya stood on her couch, her eyes wide, one hand at her throat. On the carpet was a coiled reddish shape banded with white.

  Nisha skidded to a stop. It was a blood krait, the most poisonous snake in the Empire. And Nisha was much too close to it.

  Sensing movement, the snake turned its unblinking eyes on her. Its forked tongue flicked in and out, tasting the air for the new arrival. Then it hissed.

  A whimper caught in Nisha’s throat. Blood kraits moved quicker than the eye could follow. There was no way she could get away in time.

  Blunt head moving back and forth in a hypnotizing dance, the snake slid toward her. It was the length of her arm, and its scales slipped over the carpet with an obscene caressing sound. The slitted golden eyes pinned Nisha in place.

  She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. She could on
ly watch her death slither closer—

  A tawny-colored streak shot past her feet. With a cry of rage, Jerrit placed himself between Nisha and the snake.

  “No!” Nisha jerked out of her trance. “Jerrit, don’t!”

  The snake reared up with a vicious hiss. Long fangs like curved blades jutted from its open mouth. Jerrit hissed back, a sharp sound of pure fury. His back arched as he circled the snake. The snake lashed out and Jerrit danced away, dodging the lethal bite.

  “Jerrit, no!” Nisha looked around for a weapon. Something. Anything. But Tanaya’s room was all soft pillows and heavy furniture.

  Jerrit and the snake circled each other. Jerrit slashed at the snake with his claws, drawing a wound down the long slithery body. The snake’s hiss intensified, a deep, evil sound. Its head darted back and forth.

  Then it struck.

  The two rolled over in a blur of fur and scales. The snake’s fangs gleamed as it hissed and writhed. Jerrit twisted his body away, burying his teeth into the snake’s neck.

  “Jerrit!” Nisha circled the hissing, yowling tangle. This couldn’t be happening.

  Someone seized her wrist, and with surprising strength, Tanaya pulled Nisha up onto the couch.

  “You can’t help him,” Tanaya yelled. “They’re too close!”

  “Do you have your daggers?” Nisha asked. Tanaya shook her head.

  With an effort, Jerrit tore the snake’s head from its neck and—as quickly as it had started—the battle was over. The cat stood over the twitching body of the snake. Blood matted his golden fur, and his legs trembled.

  Nisha jumped off the couch. “Jerrit?”

  Nisha. The sending was ragged with pain. Nisha, I have to tell you—

  “No,” Nisha whispered, running her hands over his heaving sides. “Just rest, Jerrit. Don’t try to talk. You’ll be all right if you just rest.” Her hands came away streaked with red, and a sob built in her throat.

  Nisha, you need to know … Jerrit’s voice was growing weaker, fading from Nisha’s mind. Then he collapsed.

  Nisha wanted to throw her head back and howl, but she couldn’t get the sound past her throat. “No,” she choked out. “No.”