“You’re saying the Chancellor knew about them already? Then why wouldn’t he have—” I shook my head; it didn’t matter. “You lied to my face. I asked you if the Guild had records of tunnels this side of the lake.”
“I did.” Her voice shook. “But I knew there was nothing down there. I got the maps out and checked; there’re no exits from the city—it doesn’t go anywhere near the walls—or passages to the other side of the lake. And the Chancellor was clear that it was unsafe. It was no use to the defense of the city. I only lied because it was my only private place.”
Hadrea and I looked at each other. The trickle of doubt inside me wound its way deeper. Eliska caught the look and for the first time calculation passed across her expression. “I’ve seen you before,” she said. Her gaze lingered on Hadrea’s neckline and the charms hanging there. “You’re Darfri, too.”
But Hadrea offered no solidarity. “Yes. That only means I know perfectly well what you were doing here and who you were trying to summon.”
Eliska dropped her gaze and clutched her clothing more tightly around herself reflexively. “Dara saw right away how ugly this was going to turn,” she murmured. “I told her she was wrong—this is Silasta, by all the fortunes! I’d never advertised my beliefs because people look at you like you’re an infant when you do, but I didn’t hide them, and I’ve never had anyone be outright hostile. But as soon as we found out for sure this was a rebellion, Dara knew what would happen. She was right. I stopped wearing my charms.” She touched the back of her neck where a necklace might lie, and I suddenly recognized the movement; I’d seen her do it a hundred times when she was anxious or under pressure. A nervous gesture. Fingers searching for jewelry that wasn’t there. “Jovan, you don’t know how … Everyone was so angry with the Darfri, saying the stupidest, cruelest, most absurd things about us. I couldn’t see Dara in public or even in private. The other Councilors talk, when you’re not there, especially, and you should have heard the vitriol. I was too frightened we’d be caught, and everyone would turn on me. I’d lose my position.”
“And who is this Dara?”
A tiny smile brushed across her face for a moment, and her eyes took on a look … just a fraction of a moment, but that glimpse convinced me. Eliska loved this woman. “She’s a carpenter in the Darfri quarter,” she said. “She wanted to join the Guild, but no one in admissions would let her application progress. She had no one to vouch for her apprenticeship. But one day she found me in person, and shoved the most beautiful jointed toy under my nose and demanded to know why she could not get a place. I’d never met anyone like her.”
“And then she told you about all the ways the city was mistreating the country people, and you sympathized.” I kept my voice gentle. “And Caslav, Etan, Tain, the Darfri miner prisoner we had in jail? The murders were Dara’s idea?”
Her head snapped up. “No! It’s nothing like that! You have to believe me. Dara isn’t … She just wanted to be with me. She loves the city. And we love each other.” She slumped against the wall. “I grew apart from my Tashi—he’s just an angry old man now, and I’m not close to my cousins. I wanted … we wanted, to leave our family homes and live together instead. I knew it would be odd, and I’d never have lasted as Guilder if people knew. Guilders have to be beyond reproach. If it meant we had to leave the city, I was willing. I’ve been saving for months now. When we had enough, we were going to rent a place on one of the estates and live there together as our own family.”
“You know that would be just as unusual among the villages as in the city,” Hadrea put in, regarding the Stone-Guilder with a softer expression. “There would be talk. Smaller villages can be vicious.”
“Let them be!” Eliska cried.
“In that case, why skulk around in tunnels you’ve been told are dangerous?” I asked. “If you don’t care about talk.”
She shook her head. “They can talk all they like when I’m gone. But I wanted to help protect the city, and I’d have lost my Guild and been thrown off the Council if they’d known about this.” Eliska looked between us. I realized I still held Hadrea’s hand, and dropped it quickly. “Being Darfri, or loving one, doesn’t mean you’d betray your honor or your home. Listen, yes, we were making an offering to the lake spirit. We want him to protect us, to end the fighting. He’s very old and powerful, and he sleeps deeply, but is it not worth trying? We were all his people once—would he not protect us from tearing each other apart?”
Hadrea gave a bitter snort. “Or rise from the depths to destroy the city, which has ignored and shamed him,” she said. “I can see why the rebels on the other side of the lake would be doing this.”
Fresh tears welled in Eliska’s eyes. She looked about fifteen years old. “I’m not a rebel and I’m not a murderer. How can I prove I didn’t do any of those things? What would convince you? You don’t have any evidence against me. I love this city, I love my Guild, and I was always loyal to the Chancellor. Both of them.” She wrung her hands together. “Please, Jovan. I would do anything to show you I’m not a traitor.”
“It’s too much, Eliska. Even if you’re telling the truth, I can’t risk it. You know Tain was poisoned—barely anyone knows that. It’s too much of a chance, trusting you after all this. We’re going to have to put you in jail until we can prove it one way or the other.” I could not trust my instincts or my emotions when it came to this decision. “Do I need to call an Order Guard, or will you come along with us and preserve your honor for a bit longer?”
Eliska wiped her tears with the back of her hand and sniffed. She scrounged around for her dress’s cording and wound it back on in silence. Only then did I dare look at Hadrea, who rocked on the balls of her feet, arms folded, frowning. “If you are not the poisoner, who is our enemy?” she asked Eliska.
The Stone-Guilder glanced up, straightening her hair with her fingers as she tried to reassemble her dignity. She looked at me, then back at Hadrea. “If you’re convinced I’m your enemy, it doesn’t matter what I think.”
I shrugged. “And if you’re not, you’re a loyal Councilor I’ve just humiliated and accused of murder. Then you’d be reluctant to help me anyway.”
She half-smiled. Clothing back in place and posture straight, she regained some confidence. “I’ve no head for intrigue,” she said. “There are plenty of Councilors I don’t like, but I’ve never thought of any of them as killers. I suppose I would just say what I told you the other day, Jovan. You seem bent on the idea that the poisoner is working with the rebels. And maybe they are. But they’re no Darfri or rebel sympathizer, not truly. They killed your prisoner before he could tell you something that would help you understand the uprising. They murdered the only leader we had who didn’t want them destroyed. Why are you so sure they care anything for those people out there?”
“A means to an end,” Hadrea murmured. “Is that not your saying?”
My heart beat faster. The pieces that had been clattering around in my head, too jumbled to decipher, started straightening. Patterns forming. Images and memories—some my brain had been trying to draw to my attention for days, weeks even—began to make sense. Someone had incited the rebellion. If Tain and I had not returned unexpectedly early to the city, it would have been besieged while leaderless and absent its own army. Clearly the traitor wanted the city to fall. But Eliska was right: the traitor was using the rebels and the Darfri, shredding any chances for peace between the sides, murdering anyone who brought a chance of understanding between us, consigning both sides to massive losses of life. They’d tried to make us think our enemy was someone external to the Council; a rebel spy among the city Darfri, the Talafan visitors, a lone guard with a grudge.…