Tamerlan drew a stuttering breath, sucking in his tears. Jhinn was right that there was time, but he didn’t dare smoke again. Not when it could mean the lives of dozens of people. He felt like he was a deck of black and white cards – more white than black – but he’d been shuffled and all the black were on top. Any play he made could only be black, black, black until they’d all been played. There weren’t enough hands left to find a white.
“I can’t go back. I can’t do it again.”
“You were willing to die for your sister,” Jhinn said. “Right? That was your plan?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t have a sister.”
“That’s probably for the best,” Tamerlan said. If this was what love did to a heart, then no one should ever love again.
“I think you need to ask, what is she worth? Is she worth your life?” Jhinn asked as he pulled the needle through Tamerlan’s shredded palms.
Of course, she was.
Jhinn wasn’t done. “Is she worth someone else’s? And if she is – how many lives is she worth? If I could pull my parents back from the breast of Queen Mer ... if I could do that ... there wouldn’t be a price too high to pay. There wouldn’t be a limit I would put on what I would do.”
“I can’t even get the Legends to go in the palace with me,” Tamerlan said. Why was he considering this? He shouldn’t be talking about it. Talking only made it feel possible and it shouldn’t be possible. “Every time I try, they go their own way. But I need them to fight and pick locks and do the things I can’t once I get in there.”
“Try asking a hard question next time,” Jhinn said, tying a deft knot. “That one is easy to solve. You sneak in the palace in that pretty uniform I just gave you. Then you call the Legends when you get there. Can it work like that?”
“I don’t think so. I throw the mixture into a brazier or fire and breathe it in. If I did that in the palace, it would draw a lot of attention and it might affect other people, too. Who knows how many Legends can cross the Bridge at once.”
Jhinn laughed. “You’re a fool, boy. Another easy solve. Just wrap the mixture in paper and smoke it when you’re ready – real simple. No big smoke. No one else affected. Just you. And you would waste less of it that way, too.”
It was a brilliant idea.
And a terribly dangerous one.
And Tamerlan should not be considering it at all. He kept thinking of what Jhinn said – what was his sister worth? And then seeing the images of what he’d done last night flash through his mind. Shame and hope mixed in a foul brew that nauseated him at the same time that he clenched his newly repaired hands in determination.
It wasn’t too late to save Amaryllis.
If he dared to try again.
There was a clinking sound in the distance and Jhinn motioned to him hurriedly. “Strip down again and put your clothes in the bag. Hurry!”
“I just got dressed!”
“Hurry!”
27: Cold Regret
Marielle
Marielle woke to hurried footsteps and the door slamming open, hitting the wall. She shook herself, straightening and wiping her mouth. She hadn’t meant to sleep here, but after Tamerlan had snuck away she couldn’t just go back to the Watch House. Without him in hand, she had to wait the night out in his room. It still smelled like him.
“No luck, I see,” Carnelian said, the glow of the dawn streaming into the room around her. “Looks like we both missed the excitement tonight but come on. Captain Ironarm wants every Scenter in the Watch on this investigation and you’re going to help me turn my dry streak around.”
Marielle stood, wiping at the corners of her eyes.
“No time for that,” Carnelian said, grabbing Marielle by the arm and pulling her behind her. She smelled of cilantro anticipation. “We’re already late. I was at that decadent party all night in your place. What a waste of time! Nothing happened there and everything happened out here.”
She was so full of pent-up energy that she practically bounced as she stormed through the quiet halls of The Copper Tincture, leading Marielle back out to the streets beyond.
“It’s a good thing you fell asleep,” Carnelian said. “Because there won’t be any sleep for anyone tonight.”
“What happened?” Marielle asked as Carnelian shoved a flask onto her hands. “It’s too early for drinking.”
“It’s water. Take a swig. Try to get your wits about you. We’re about to walk into hell.”
“In the Alchemist’s District?” Marielle took a swig of the water, using a tiny splash to clean her face and then handing it back to Carnelian. She felt like she was five steps behind her friend already.
“No, the Temple District. By the time I left that Landhold Party and all the frills and lace, it was all over except the sobbing.”
“What was all over?”
“Someone has a grudge against the religions of this city, let me tell you. Ho! Gondola!”
A small gondola rowed by a teenage boy streaked past them without so much as looking at Carnelian’s outstretched hand. A lump of oilcloth filled the front of the gondola and the whole thing stank of a slaughterhouse. Marielle drew her veil up, flinching from the heavy scent of death even as Carnelian hailed another gondola and dragged her into the small craft.
“Temple District,” Carnelian ordered, paying the man a coin. “And right quick.”
There had been something else under the scent of all that blood. They were already into the center of the canal, the small gondola disappearing around the corner when Marielle realized what it had been. Under the cloak of blood and death and terror had been a residue of magic, potent enough to cut through blood – and that was saying something! – and just the faintest hint of honey, lemongrass, and tarragon.
It couldn’t be ... could it?
“Marielle? Pay attention!” Carnelian was snapping her fingers. “We need to be on the alert. Last night someone – some crazy love-forsaken devils – slashed and hacked and bit – yes, bit! – their way through the Temple District. Can this thing go any faster?”
“Hurrying, Officer,” the gondolier said deferentially.
“Every Watch House is on alert. Half the temples are gone – burnt to the ground! Timeless Cathedral is half-gone. There’s just a tower and a few buttresses left. And the whole thing is blackened. Most of the Smudger Temples went up like ready torches. Doesn’t help that they have so much fire everywhere. They’re still dragging out the dead but there are hundreds, Marielle. Hundreds.”
“Temple District,” the gondolier interrupted.
“Keep going until you see the Watch,” Carnelian instructed. “We missed it all, Marielle. Everyone did. There were hardly any guards set on the Temple District. We had them focused on the Government and Library Districts after all the threats there. And the ones here didn’t get a chance to raise the alarm. With the Seven Suns Palace Guard and everyone of any importance inside the palace – well, it wasn’t until the fires took off and alerted us all.”
“Who was stationed at the Temple District,” Marielle asked quietly. She finished braiding her hair out of the way. She needed it swept back so she could focus. She could already smell the terror and horror rolling from the burnt District like slices of raw red vinegar and stomach-acid icterine. Nausea filled her as the first members of the City Watch came into view. They stood along the rails of the street above directing traffic as gondolas came and went, packing the dock and the edge of the canal ledge.
“One at a time, take your turn. Everyone will have a chance,” the voice of a portly Watch Officer droned. He’d done this a hundred times. “No pushing for position. Oars stay in the water, repeat, in the water. You hire the one that’s there, my lady. No holding up the lines, please.”
“A lot of the Officers were other places, pulled off this beat,” Carnelian hedged.
“Who wasn’t pulled off?” Marielle pressed softly as they waited for their turn to dock.
“Xi When, Tiya
Ka’lina, Casabara Tavereaver, Linnelin Taskervale, Jin Ch’ng, Lia Tasmarina,” Carnelian said just as softly, her usually firm face softening in acknowledgment that it could have just as easily been them last night. “They say Lia might survive. Maybe. She had a belly wound. Those can be unpredictable.”
Marielle shivered. She was beginning to catch whiffs of what was up in the streets above. Gore and viscera was the primary smell. That and smoke from the fires. Water – stained red and dark with soot and ash – ran from the streets down to the canals in slow trickles, staining the water in grisly whorls of what had once been life and faith.
“Keep your nose up, Scenter,” Carnelian reminded. “I think you’re the best, and I plan to use you to catch these hounds of hell.”
Marielle tried not to look at the dark burdens being carted away on the gondola that left the dock. They varied in size and length, but they were all about the same shape – the shape of dead people wrapped in black-dyed jute.
“Here we go,” Carnelian said tugging Marielle out of the gondola as they finally bumped up against the dock.
“Double your rate to carry my girl home,” a red-eyed woman said to their gondolier. Behind her, two grim-faced workers carried a dark jute-wrapped form.
Marielle ducked her head in respect to the mother. She could smell the bone-deep grief in the woman like the smell of red wine and thyme. It was a washed-out blue color.
Carnelian hardly seemed to notice the civilians on the dock. Her body was bent forward, head leading the rest like a hunting dog scenting for its quarry.
“This way.”
She tugged Marielle up the steps and into the chaos on the street above.
People were everywhere. How strange in a place where so many had died last night – where so much violence had ruled. But they were here. Ash stained and grimy, blood to the elbows or with those heart-wrenching jute rolls in their arms. Tear-stained and hand-wringing or sharply barking orders to bucket lines, they choked the street and spilled into the charred wreckage. Monks and priests in robes the deep saffron of the Smudgers, or the pure white of the Timekeepers, sifted through the wreckage, pulling out what could be salvaged.
It was hard to believe this had only happened a short time before they arrived.
Someone whistled – a piercing sound like a knife to the ear – and Carnelian tugged her to a knot of Watch Captains. Captain Ironarm was there with arms crossed over her aged chest, looking more wrinkled than ever in her exhaustion.
“You’re on investigation, Carnelian, Marielle. Find what you can. Check with Anaala. She’s started interviewing survivors. Then see what you can sniff out.”
Carnelian saluted briskly and Marielle joined her a half-second later, but her eyes lingered on Captain Iron Arm and the other Captains. Oddly, they all smelled the same. Usually in a group like that there were ambition and infighting, wariness, mistrust, loyalty, comradery and so much more all rolled up into one. But today they all stank of a world-weariness so thick it hung heavily on them, mixing with exhaustion and absent hope. She wished she could wash it away, like the ash running into the gutters and from there to the canals.
“Anaala’s that way,” Carnelian reminded her, dragging her away. Would Marielle be so tired of the world when she was a Watch Captain someday? Would Carnelian? “It’s not our job to fix this, Marielle, so don’t get hung up on that. It’s just our job to find the people who did this and bring them to the Lord Mythos to be executed. Simple.”
Marielle nodded, but she had a feeling that there was nothing simple at all about this. And her feeling was growing worse by the moment as the turquoise of magic stood out in little pools of powerful lilac scent and burst around the ash and blood in blossoms of vanilla, threading through the fear and death and the chaos of the night. If Maid Chaos herself had walked these streets, she couldn’t have seeded more tumult in the city.
The magic clouded her mind, drawing her attention from one spot to the next as she followed Carnelian. She could almost smell the direction that these people had gone when they tore through the District killing everyone in their path. But there was a little problem. The path Marielle smelled couldn’t possibly belong to more than one person. There were many scents, sure, but they followed only one trail. No single scent broke off on its own. There were no places where it branched or converged.
Many other scents intersected with the magic and crossed over it or crossed the path afterward. She smelled the brilliant last moments of the victims of their attack, their last scents like bright flashes in her mind, as if they had tried to dump every last emotion out at once while they still could. Over and around those scents, the smells of the mourners and rescuers, the healers and Watch Officers, the priests and the Smudgers, all wove one over the other, building the form of the scene layer upon layer in a weaving of scent. Those scents – normal scents – were simple enough to filter out, especially with the scarf over her nose, but it was the lead scent that would not make sense.
If it had been more than one person, they must have moved in lock-step with each other. A military unit, perhaps? But she didn’t think so, and her suspicions were slowly carving a hole in her belly. Because under the smell of violence and fear was the smell of magic and under the smell of magic was a whiff of something that Marielle had smelled before. The faintest whiff of gold mixed with orange ginger – that smell she was beginning to know so well – the one laced with leather and acid, old books and cinnamon, cardamom and lavender and warm honey – the smell of the man she had let slip out the window last night like an innocent smile slipping off the face of a murderer when he was caught red-handed.
She shivered, suddenly cold.
What had she done?
“Officer Anaala,” Carnelian acknowledged when they drew up beside the Officer. She had a hand on her hip as she spoke to a tearful young woman.
“Officer Carnelian.” Anaala made everything sound like a rebuke. Even a greeting. She turned back to the shaking young woman, little older than a girl, her Maid Chaos costume tattered and bloody. “So, it was a woman who attacked you?”
“A wo – woman, yes,” the girl managed, her voice shaking as an older woman wrapped an arm around her. “It was Maid Chaos.”
“Maid Chaos?” Anaala lifted a single eyebrow, her expression bland. “Your attacker was dressed as Maid Chaos?”
“She wasn’t dressed as Maid Chaos. She was Maid Chaos!”
Carnelian smirked but Anaala kept a straight face. “In moments of fear, it’s easy to see things.”
“I wasn’t seeing things! It was a woman with flowing golden hair and a golden breastplate. She was tall and broad, and she swung a sword just like Maid Chaos in the stories. She was merciless. Merciless!”
“Thank you for your statement,” Anaala said. “You are free to go. Next!”
But that was a good thing, wasn’t it? Because if it was a tall blonde woman then it couldn’t be Tamerlan, which meant that this couldn’t be Marielle’s fault for letting him go. And yet, the rock of worry in her belly felt heavier by the moment as if it might carry her through the street into the fires of hell below.
“And you saw?” Anaala prompted a man who was clearly a street vendor, his apron still stained with the brown smears of whatever food he had been selling. It smelled like meat pies.
“A young man. Tall. Strapping. Short blonde hair and a lean build. He fought with a small belt knife the length of my palm.”
The stone in Marielle’s stomach grew icy cold.
“He caused all this with a belt knife?” Anaala asked wryly.
The vendor shook his head. “Seemed like it. But then sometimes he looked like a woman with a sword.”
“There were two of them?” Anaala clarified. “A man with a knife and a woman with a sword?”
The man shook his bald head like he couldn’t find words for what he’d seen. “Two, yes. But also one. Like they were the same person, if you know what I mean.”
“I really don’t.”
<
br /> “Sometimes it was one. Sometimes it was the other. One would sort of fade out and then the other would surface. It was the oddest thing.”
“How much did you have to drink last night?” Anaala asked the man.
“Well, my fair share, I suppose.” The street vendor laughed nervously and Anaala gave Marielle a pointed look as if to remind her that she wasn’t supposed to be hauling off everyone for public drunkenness. Marielle felt her cheeks heat. Even she could see this was no time to enforce that law.
No, right now was not the time for enforcing petty laws. Now was the time for Marielle to panic, because that description sounded a lot like Tamerlan. And last night she had let him go to save his sister. And now, today, there were over a hundred people dead because of her choice. Regret made the stone in her belly heavier as it pulled her down, down, down.
28: The Chase
Marielle
“I think we have enough to give chase,” she said quietly to Carnelian.
Carnelian’s eyes lit up. “Any other people described, Anaala?”
Anaala shook her head, waving the street vendor on. “They all mention either the man or the woman or both. No one else. It’s not much to go on.”
“But you can follow the scent?” Carnelian asked Marielle eagerly.
“With my eyes closed.”
Carnelian pumped a fist, but at Anaala’s severe look she colored, clearing her throat awkwardly. “Lead on, Marielle.”
Once you had a scent, it was easy to follow it. Easy to block out the mother-wail of a nearby mourner and the agonized questions of a child. Or at least, it was easy to pretend you were blocking them out. It easy to forget the tragedy, the pain, the chaos. Easy to just give in to following your nose, to seeking the scent, to chasing that sensation.
There it was, leading up the side of that building. Had he really climbed up there? And there was still no divergence where anyone had broken off. If it had been both him and a woman you would think one of them would have gone a different way up the side of the wall. Not so.
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