“That you’re secretly bonded to seven foxes? That you’re the formula thief? We’re not stupid,” Hava shot back.
Giddon raised a hand. “I’m stupid, actually,” he said. “Hava figured it out.”
“You’ve had your foxes following us since day one,” said Hava. “Haven’t you? What else are you responsible for? How much do you know about our two drowned men?”
Quona was watching Hava now with a new expression, quiet and grave. “I’d like to sit down,” she said. “Will you come downstairs to talk about this?”
“I’d rather stay near this desk,” said Hava, crossing her arms. “This desk interests me.”
“Yes, all right,” said Quona, whose exhaustion was showing plainly in her face. Then one of the foxes at her feet began climbing directly up her coat, working its way to her empty pocket. Another followed, scrambling the distance to her available shoulder. When the last remaining fox made a move as if to climb, Quona said heavily, “That will have to be all, darlings,” and Giddon took pity. Pulling out the desk chair, he set it before her.
“Thank you,” she said, practically collapsing into the chair. The foxes on her shoulders almost toppled, but caught themselves, rebalancing. She took a breath or two, rubbing at her forehead, looking like a human fox-perch. “It’s hard to know where to start.”
“Why don’t you start by telling us why you stole formulas from your own sister?” said Hava.
“Yes,” said Quona. “All right. That’s fairly simple. There’s a Scholar in Parliament who recently decided to change sides on the zilfium vote and vote with the Industrialists to legalize zilfium use. I stole the varane formulas to bribe him back.”
“Bribe him back!” Hava repeated incredulously. “Is this the man we heard people fighting about at the Cavenda dinner party?”
“I’m not going to tell you everything,” said Quona, with an interesting, tired resolve in her voice. “You already have the power to ruin me, but I want this deal to go through. The Scholar in question has a friend in Kamassar who will pay him a fortune for the varane formulas. In return, the Scholar will switch his vote back, vote against zilfium, and help to ensure that zilfium use does not begin to pollute Winterkeep. Simultaneously, Kamassar will develop workable airship technology, reducing their dependence on zilfium.”
“And that’s so important to you?” asked Hava. “You would break the law, steal from your own sister, even ruin your own family’s transportation monopoly, to ensure that zilfium remains illegal and Kamassar gets airships?”
“Yes,” said Quona, shooting the word out. “It’s so important to me.”
“Why?” demanded Hava.
“Because it’s our duty to care for the environment. We are bound by a promise to protect the earth and the sea. What happens if we don’t? And people know it,” she said wearily. “They know it matters, but they have other priorities. I nudge their priorities back into place.”
“By stealing,” said Hava.
“A big rule follower, are you?” said Quona sharply.
“What about all this other stuff?” said Hava, who seemed almost cheerful in the face of Quona’s antagonism. She nudged her head at the open drawers in the desk, at the papers Giddon had been going through. “Letters to Ada Balava, and who knows what else?”
“My foxes bring me many things,” said Quona. “They visit many homes, go through many desks, fireplaces, and garbage bins. I can’t be sure what they’ll bring back, but I keep everything in case it becomes useful later. In fact, that letter to Ada Balava might indeed be useful someday, to you. If you can demonstrate that the importers who cheated your queen out of her zilfium knew they were cheating her, you’ll win a lawsuit in the Keepish courts.”
“So, you did know about the importers,” said Hava.
“Of course I did,” said Quona. “Everyone in the Ledra elite knew about the importers. But I know more. I have more eyes than anyone else, and it’s good that I do, because there aren’t many people here who can be trusted to remember what matters.”
A moment of silence passed. This was a new, unsettled version of Quona Varana, and Giddon would decide what he thought about it later. For now, the things she was talking about were not, in fact, the things that mattered to him.
“In the course of reviewing the papers your foxes have brought to you,” he said, “have you ever stumbled upon anything that might explain why the Monsean envoy and a Monsean adviser to the queen were trapped in the cabin of their boat, then deliberately drowned?”
Quona turned dark eyes to him that were suddenly worried and serious. “I’m afraid that relates to my reasons for going north today,” she said.
“Seeing as you were gone about five minutes, you can’t have gotten very far north,” said Hava sarcastically.
“You’re right, I didn’t,” she said. “Almost immediately upon leaving, I saw the Cavenda airship, riding the winds north ahead of me. When Benni Cavenda flies north, he goes to his wife’s property in Torla’s Neck. That’s where I was trying to go too. But I can’t very well spy on Benni’s house from my airship if he’s there too, can I? So I shifted course, pretending to be en route somewhere else. As soon as he was out of my sight, I turned back home.”
“So you think Benni Cavenda’s house has something to do with our two drowned men?” said Giddon.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Quona, suddenly frustrated. “But I think Benni himself may have something to do with them, and some house somewhere has something to do with something.”
“How illuminating,” said Hava.
“The silbercows talk to me,” said Quona, ignoring Hava’s sarcasm. “They tell me stories that contain a certain amount of fantasy. But there are always parts that seem real. I can tell when they feel actual distress, for example, and sometimes they show me details I doubt they could know if the image weren’t true. When the silbercows show me things I suspect to be true, I can use my foxes to search for more evidence.
“Lately,” she said, “the silbercows have been showing me some sort of . . . thing that explodes. Some weapon someone is testing, or some terrible toy, some mistake, being thrown from an airship into the sea near a house on a cliff. Silbercows have come to me with burns, crying, not understanding their own injuries. You don’t look surprised, or even particularly moved,” she said, studying their faces.
“Silbercows have shown us the explosions too,” said Giddon.
“They talk to you?” she said, quietly. “They don’t talk to everyone, you know. Have they shown you the sunken boat?”