And my own brain had been trying to give me a clue for weeks. The petitioner who had tried to attract our attention the day we visited the hospital. His head had appeared in a sack days later; Marco told us the rebels had sent his head back with our runners’, and the intelligence master had confirmed he was a spy working the southern border. But he had been trying to talk to Tain—not the intelligence master or Marco—in the city, not in the estates, and only just before the siege. He couldn’t have been killed by the army outside.
“We never saw our own runners,” I said aloud, barely registering the confused expressions of the two women. “He said the rebels sent our runners’ heads back. But we only saw them wrapped up for burial.” A spy who might have been trying to tell Tain something important—perhaps what was about to happen? “Tain would never even try sending out more messengers, not after that. And we thought they were such savages. Merciless. Killing our runners in the worst, most dishonorable way.… It just confirmed what barbarians everyone thought they were. Who would pursue peace after they’d killed our messengers rather than taking them prisoner? And taunted us with it?”
Eliska stared at me, her black-streaked face still and shocked. “They never did it?”
I shook my head, feeling on the brink of vomiting. “Maybe they killed our messengers, maybe they didn’t. Our army never came, so I guess they didn’t get through, either way. But they never sent those heads back. Marco killed the spy, a spy who might have been trying to warn us the rebels were marching. And Marco used the spy’s head to harden us against the rebels and make sure we thought them cruel and honorless.”
We looked at each other in the flickering lamplight.
Our enemy, our traitor, was the most dangerous man in the city. And fortunes knew how many of the Order Guards were working for him and not for us. How were we supposed to deal with him?
* * *
Eliska took us out a different route through the sewers. By now, I barely noticed the smell. Though my first impulse had been to charge off to do something about what we had just learned, it hadn’t taken long to realize we had to be careful. We had to capture Marco without him realizing we knew he was the traitor, and I dared not use anyone to help except those I trusted. Which didn’t leave me with many options for overpowering him physically.
Another failure to add to my list: I had likely witnessed Marco poisoning Caslav and not even noticed. I had seen Marco in his role as a bumbling, naive temporary Councilor take the first bowl in front of Credo Bradomir, the most tradition-driven of all the Council, knowing he would be corrected for his error. A bit of sleight of hand, and a clear poison could easily have coated the inside of that bowl. But there was no point lamenting my stupidity now. We needed to tell Tain, and devise a plan to handle it.…
“Oh! Tain.” I said aloud. Eliska and Hadrea stopped, water sloshing about us, and stared at me. “Eliska, you don’t know. Tain’s not dead.”
The Stone-Guilder said nothing for a moment. Then, “Is this some kind of trick? I thought you believed me.”
“I do.” I ran a hand through my hair with a sigh. “It’s because of that that you should know. He was poisoned. But we suspected either you or Marco, so we let you think the attempt had been successful.”
She swore. Then, after a moment, she laughed. “Well, you know what, Jovan? That’s the first good news I’ve heard in a while.”
And I found myself laughing as well. It was a strange moment, standing in the half dark in a sewer, stinking of shit and slime and who knew what else, the three of us laughing like nothing had ever been so funny.
Eventually it dried up, and the gravity of the situation fell again on my shoulders. Eliska led us to the exit. Through the grate we could see nothing but darkness. “It comes out here near the north side of the lake,” she said. “You can’t get in from the outside, so Dara and I used it to leave.”
“Yes,” Hadrea said, calm. “I followed you out here last night as well.”
Eliska ducked her head. “I thought I was being so careful. I never saw you.”
I grinned. “No one ever does.”
I followed the women through the grate. “We shouldn’t go together to the Manor,” I said, as Eliska closed it behind us. Aside from flickering lights on the far side of the lake, the night was quiet and still. “We can’t know whether the Order Guards are loyal to the city or to Marco. He could have any number of them watching us.”
“I’ll go home,” Eliska said. “I could use some time to digest this.”
“If you come to the Manor tomorrow, on normal business, Argo will let you in. You can see Tain. And hopefully we’ll have an idea what to do by then.”
We parted ways there, Hadrea and I heading south, toward the bridge, and Eliska north toward the gate. The sense of companionship that had renewed itself between us spiraled away in the cool predawn air. Several times I tried to think of a way to start a conversation, but the longer I hesitated, the stonier her profile became. Inside the Manor, she stopped short of Tain’s rooms and instead bade me a stiff goodnight before choosing the corridor that led to the rooms she shared with Davior and Salvea. She was gone before I could think of anything to say.
Dropping onto my pallet beside Tain’s bed, I felt completely alone. He slept, mouth open, color good, looking relaxed. One good thing, at least, and the rest could wait until morning. While Marco thought Tain dead, he had no reason to be lurking about the Manor, waiting to strike again, and Tain needed rest more than he needed news of betrayal.
* * *
I woke to the sound of my friend snorting and grunting, then he sat up and peered down at me. “Jov?”
“I’m here.” Blinking the sleep from my own eyes, I stretched and took a seat on the stool.
“You should replace that with something comfortable,” Tain said.
“The discomfort keeps me awake. Well, that and your snoring.”
He laughed, and the simple sound filled me with sudden emotion. It felt wrong to ruin the moment of levity, but I did it anyway. “Tain, Marco’s the traitor.”
“What?”
I told him everything. How Marco had managed the poisoning at the lunch. The spy who had tried to come to us. The rebel prisoner and the brutal execution of the jail guard.
Tain listened, stunned. Even more than me he had trusted Marco; he had a bond with the man from his tutoring even before he had become our invaluable adviser in the siege. “I can’t believe it,” he kept saying. “But he loves this country. You can’t tell me he’s still an agent of Perest-Avana after all this time?”
I didn’t have an answer. “I can’t tell you much of anything. But he’s not working with the rebels to help them, and he’s certainly not working for us.”
Tain shook his head. “I’m still not sure I understand. Did our runners survive, then? And if that wasn’t them we buried, who was it? They were real heads. I sang them the burial song.”
I would never wipe that image from my mind. They had been real heads, I was certain; I’d smelled it even through the masking paste. But if they’d really been our messengers he’d have showed us one we knew; no need to hide the spy’s head in plain sight.