Then Marco chuckled; it might have been the first time I’d heard him laugh. He immediately seemed smaller, less remote. “I followed a boy,” he said. “He wanted to go to the ‘center of civilization.’ Unfortunately, there were more exciting things in civilization than the unsophisticated soldier he brought with him to Silasta. His interest in me waned shortly after he discovered the curtained sections of the bathhouses.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
He chuckled again. “It was a long time ago and I do not regret it. I was quite young, and he was quite beautiful.”
“So you stayed?”
“Oh, no. I went home, but I was never happy there again. Eventually I left the army and became a private guard for a merchant. We traveled all over the world. When I came here again, I found the city did not have so many bad memories after all.”
“I’d like to travel the world,” I admitted. “I—” A blink of light from the west flickered on the outside of my field of vision. I grabbed the spyglass and peered down. The west entrance was through one of two alleyways, both dark; my magnified gaze switched between them swiftly, searching for movement. “There,” I whispered, making room for Marco.
“Is it him?”
I bit my lip. He moved slowly, quietly, and his head was covered. “Can’t tell.”
Marco made a whistle that sounded like a gull, the signal for everyone to be ready to move. I shifted position, trying to get a glimpse of the figure’s face. He paused on the other side of the road to the guard, placing something on the ground. The payment?
“Is it him, Credola?” Urgency in his tone. We didn’t want to spring the trap on the wrong person, but we couldn’t let him enter the sewer, either. But still my vision was obscured by the light and his clothing and our angle.
Helpless, I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
The man sauntered close to the grate and paused. I caught a glimpse of his face as he pivoted, checking around him with exaggerated casualness; still not enough, just a pale reflection of the lamplight. Then his foot edged out and stuck into the grate, tucking under a bar. Testing it.
“Good enough,” Marco said, and blew the whistle again. This time there was immediate action; suddenly the yard below was full of sounds, and Marco had leaped up and was barreling down from the attic to assist. The man at the grate sprang away toward the nearest alley but someone from above dropped one of our weighted nets and it caught his head and one shoulder. Instead of slowing him, it seemed to spur him on; a bladed weapon appeared in his free hand and he charged fast at the exit, slashing out at whoever blocked his path there. It was all frantic moving shadows and shouts to me. Balls and ropes flying through the air. A flurry of bodies across the cobbles. Shouts and groans. I gripped the edge of the roof opening, throat tight.
Then a loud curse. Marco? I squinted down; someone had lit a small lamp and the huddle of bodies was illuminated. “We need a physic!” someone cried, and another voice said, “No good.”
Enough was enough; I abandoned my perch and scrambled down from the attic, the horrible tightness in my throat expanding through my chest and stomach as I skidded out, dreading what I would find.
The worst outcome. “It’s too late,” someone said, and to the side the bribed guard stood, shaking, a bloody shortsword in her hand.
“He ran at me,” she mumbled, looking dazed. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean … I’m so sorry.”
No, I thought, no, we needed him alive. I slipped through the confused clutter of Order Guards and hunters to where Marco knelt beside the man, his hand searching for a pulse. He rocked back on his heels, shaking his head, even as I reeled back in horror.
The lamp illuminated the man’s pale-skinned face.
I had just enough time to spin around so that my sudden bitter vomit didn’t spill over the body. It wasn’t Batbayer. It was one of Ectar’s servants. We had the wrong man, and we’d killed him.
Manita fungus
DESCRIPTION: Fungus growing in damp, shaded, rocky areas with orote deposits, growing from a white fuzz to a series of slender, hollow-stemmed mushrooms at maturity. Poisonous if ingested or skin exposed to dried mushroom powder.
SYMPTOMS: Weakness in limbs, intense abdominal discomfort, constipation, kidney and liver damage, confusion, restless sleep; large doses can cause collapse and heart failure.
PROOFING CUES: Smell and taste of fresh or cooked mushrooms is mealy, earthy, and difficult to disguise. Dried powder becomes odorless but retains strong taste. Powder form reacts with naftate powder to reveal a blue residue.
13
Jovan
In the course of only a few hours, everything had unraveled. We were supposed to have the connection to Doran as well as the chief conspirators behind bars, ready to turn on one another and give us the information we needed. Instead, we had a dead man from an entirely different country, with no idea how or if he fit into the broader plot, and no leverage over the imprisoned Councilor.
Bradomir was around town rattling doors, trying to locate his missing cousin, and meeting only obstruction and misdirection. We had no idea what to do with him. Or with Ectar. And we now had a bunch of Order Guards and civilians we’d had to swear to secrecy without properly explaining ourselves.
All in all, today had turned into a heap of shit, as Tain had put it.
We’d left Varina and Hasan long enough. “We haven’t caught Batbayer, but nothing else has changed,” I tried to reassure my friend. “He might not have been trying to escape the city, but that just means he’s gone to ground here. He was still working with Varina, he was still at the lunch, and they were still making poison.” Even if I hadn’t managed to identify it yet.
We passed by the guard at the entrance and descended the stairs to the cells below. The jail felt still and cold and empty. All but one warden had been pulled from guard duty after the Council released all the petty criminals to help defend the city. With the few remaining prisoners locked in their cells, there was no real reason for my apprehension as we passed through the dim corridor that held our Darfri prisoner—silent and still, again—and, at the end, Hasan.
We planned to speak to the musician Hasan first. He was a weak character; after a day and a night in a jail cell he ought to be suffering, afraid, and ready to talk.
His singing greeted us before we could see his thin hands gripping the bars. A pitiful lament in his high, smooth voice, broken with tiny hitches that might have been sobs. The melodrama almost made me smile, before the seriousness of the situation hit me again. This was a man who might well have poisoned our uncles and perhaps been involved in inciting a war. No matter how pathetic he sounded, we couldn’t forget that.
His song broke off when he heard our footsteps, and the pale-nailed fingers on the bars withdrew for a moment. Then, as we came up in line with the door, Hasan threw himself at the bars, pressing his face into them as if he hoped he might somehow force his head through the iron. “Honored Chancellor,” he croaked, blinking at us with eyes feverish and bloodshot. “Credo Jovan. I beg you. The indignity.”
Tain took a step back, looking Hasan over with cool contempt. Uncorded, the tunic we’d put him in looked like a grimy sack. His skin dripped with sickly-smelling sweat. His long hair, usually intricately beaded and impeccable, hung about his cheeks and neck like sodden rope strands. He looked as if he’d been languishing down here for months.