He was right. I needed to put aside the illusion of Silasta as a perfect place, a beacon of illumination and progress. Whatever our strengths, we’d had a key weakness and it had been exploited. Our Council hadn’t upheld the principles that should have guided them. Honor was not an entitlement, but a reflection of our values. The leaders of our society, supposedly a society built on honor, had furthered their own causes while those without a voice suffered. The supercilious voices of entitled Councilors played around my head, whining, scheming, plotting, all the while holding themselves out as all that was right and good in the world.
“We’re still missing the trigger,” I said, to shift attention from my uncomfortable thoughts. “No matter what’s been happening over time out there, something must have changed. People don’t resort to violence as their first step.” I wished again we had survivors from the first attack to question. “Was there any indication in the Council records that something had changed recently?” If Etan and Caslav had been alive when the siege started, would we know more?
“No,” Tain said, rubbing his forehead. “I searched through meeting records for the last half year or so. There’s nothing specific. But something must have happened. And those leeches out there aren’t telling us anything.” He glared at the nearest chair as if contemplating kicking it.
Letting him stalk around the room, I sat still, thinking. If Caslav or Etan had known things were at boiling point on the estates, why had they not told us? Had we truly been so removed from their affairs? Or had things only come to a head in the last weeks before their deaths? I cursed my absence over the summer. Tain rarely attended Council meetings; the Heir’s seat was often treated as little more than an occasional tiebreaker available to the Chancellor. But I had to believe that Etan would never have been party to deliberate wrongdoing, and would have told me if he’d seen signs of it. I had to.
“What I can’t understand is how they supported this.” Tain flung the paperweight into a corner, the dull clunk muffling the curse he sent after it. I heard the same defensiveness and guilt that warred within me, and I didn’t need him to elaborate on who “they” were. The thought of Etan being oblivious or uncaring about anyone, let alone tens of thousands of people, seemed too alien to be real. I couldn’t reconcile it with all I knew of him: his compassion, his empathy.
But the more we found out about how our world worked, the more apparent it was that we’d been woefully, willfully blind. And neither of us had truly known our Tashien.
Bitterseed
DESCRIPTION: Poison derived from the inside of certain nuts, the seeds of some fruits, and the stalks of some grasses, deadly when combined with water. Poisoning can be by ingestion or by transfer through the skin.
SYMPTOMS: At low levels include weakness, confusion, shortness of breath, headache, dizziness, and seizure. In acute ingestions they are immediate and dramatic, usually involving convulsions, collapse, and death.
PROOFING CUES: Burns the tongue, acrid and bitter, detectable and difficult to mask in fatal doses. Smell is nutty and distinctive.
8
Kalina
I slipped out of our home into the rainy afternoon, hoping the combination of grim weather and a hooded waxed raincoat would discourage anyone from approaching me. My limbs and joints ached and I was still overtired from the previous day’s exertions, but the empty homes in the poor neighborhood had given me an idea. The sewers were a dark and dangerous way out. We had temporarily dammed the main pipe to let our runners out that first night, but now the flow would be treacherous, perhaps impossible, to navigate. Still, for a traitor who did not need to fear being shot at the far end as our messengers must have been, it might be a risk worth taking.
The weather had eased to a light sprinkle when I set off to the north side of the city, where the lake turned wide and marshy and the minor sewer tunnels joined the main waste conduit from the city out into the northern landscape. Not a well-trafficked area of the city, for obvious reasons. My hooded cloak bore the added weight and chill of the drizzle and my chest wheezed and squeaked, unable to fill properly.
Shallow breathing was something of a necessity anyway once the smell hit, pungent and forceful. I wished I’d thought to bring some of whatever Thendra had given us to mask the smell of decay. The grate was guarded by a solitary woman, bored and miserable as she loitered under the eaves of the closest building, carefully arranged between fat drips from the edge. “Empty your bucket and move along, lady,” she barked, when I’d stood there more than a few moments.
Instead, I joined her under the eaves, pushing back my cloak to show her my tattoos.
“Apologies, Credola,” she said, smartening up.
I waved it away. “How long’s your shift? This must be dull.”
“It’s the worst,” she agreed, without rancor. “You get used to the smell after a while, but you never really warm to watching people dump their shit all day.”
I laughed. “Fair point.”
As if summoned, a figure trudged up with a bucket and dumped it over the grate. The guard offered me a scented rag and I breathed it in thankfully.
“Begging your pardon, Credola, but this is no place for a lady like yourself.”
I shrugged. “A siege is no place for ladies such as either of us, but here we are.”
This time she laughed. “Now there’s a fair point if I ever heard one.” Another few citizens came by, laden with foul buckets and sodden demeanors. She watched them, stoic, with barely a nose wrinkle. “Can I help in some way?”
“The Council’s focused on deserters,” I told her. “The sewer tunnel is an obvious way to try to leave the city.”
She followed my thought easily enough. “Checking if anyone’s tried coming through? Well the grate’s locked tight, Credola, and there’s one of us rostered here all the time.” She looked me over. “’Course we were told that was to keep an eye out for the enemy trying to get in through the sewers.”
I shrugged. “The longer we’re in here, the greater the appeal will be to escape.”
“I suppose. Drowning in other people’s shit isn’t the way I’d like to go, but each to their own.”
“Anyone asking too many questions? Sounding out bribes?”
“Not to me. I can ask the others—there’s four of us rotate here.”
I paused to wait for another citizen to empty their bucket. This one didn’t smell foul; perhaps my nose was adjusting. “Thank you,” I said. “Please, if anyone does approach you, don’t confront them. Come to me or my brother, Credo Jovan, or the Chancellor, instead.” I handed her a small stone marked with the Oromani symbol. “You can bring that to Jovan or to the entrance of the Manor. Whatever you or your comrades are offered, my family will pay triple if you come to us instead.”
“What good’s money in this city now?” she said with a snort. “Three times useless is still useless. If you don’t mind me saying, Credola.”
I hesitated. What value had money in a besieged city when you couldn’t use it to buy food or to keep yourself safe?
“Just a joke, Credola,” she said, grinning. “Of course we would obey the will of the Council. Besides, you can still buy kori.”