“One last thing, Lady,” Teia said. She drew the short dagger again and stabbed it low in the corpse’s stomach to pierce the intestines. She almost gagged at the gases it released as she withdrew the knife, but those were smells not out of place in a latrine.
She pierced the bag in several other places. The stones at Aglaia’s feet would pull those lowest, so Teia made the holes near her head.
Then she began stuffing the body down the latrine. Bit by bit, each grunt and heave a labor pang, Teia squeezed Aglaia’s body through the death canal and out of this life.
Shit you were, my lady, and to shit you return.
But the body only dropped a few feet. With a muffled clang, the rocks inside hit metal. Teia froze for a moment, then remembered. This mansion’s indoor latrines had a metal plate below that swung open to drop waste and then swung closed again to keep the odors below from being blown constantly back up into the house.
Teia found the handle, and with effort because of the weight of the body on the plate, was able to slide it aside.
Lady Aglaia plopped like an especially large turd into the effluvia below. Teia slid the plate closed, went invisible, and waited in the hall.
With every corpse she left, Teia was inviting the Order to suspect her existence, so every kill had to account for the body somehow. Here, Teia had already scouted the mansion for disposal areas, going as far as directing paryl gas between the walls and eventually down the latrines. Here there was a holding area for the sewage—a septic pit?—Teia hadn’t known anything about sewage.
But with what she’d learned from Quentin, she’d made her bag. Enough murdered bodies washed ashore every week on the Jaspers that Teia knew they bloated with gases and floated to the surface, white ghastly things. So she needed the rocks to keep Aglaia’s body down. She’d pierced the stomach to allow the release of accumulating gases and pierced the bag to make sure it didn’t inflate and buoy the body to the surface.
Their hope—they hadn’t done this before—was that the body would decay naturally in the sewage but that the bag would slow the rate of decay. They didn’t want the body to bob to the surface, where it had a chance of being seen. They also didn’t want it to decay so quickly that anyone using the latrine would smell death.
Instead—they hoped—the air that blew through the sewage ducting would have a chance to take the smell of decay a little bit at a time.
Teia almost left before she remembered the hat box. As she slipped back into Lady Aglaia’s chambers, she saw a slave on her way back up the steps to clean out the room.
Teia grabbed the hat box with its Order mask and robes and walked to the closet.
Damn. Me.
Aglaia had gotten the box down from the highest shelf she could reach. Unfortunately, Aglaia had been significantly taller than Teia was. The shelf was too high for Teia.
Teia hopped and tried to shove the box into its spot.
Not even close to high enough.
Oh, for Orholam’s sake, a stupid hat box!
But any wrong detail could give her away—even stupid ones. She had to be a ghost, and ghosts don’t leave evidence. She looked at the door. She had only one shot at this.
If she missed, it was going to be a disaster. This closet was a mess. Hat boxes were piled upon each other in huge piles. Even putting one on top of the pile with too much force might make the whole collection collapse.
Teia backed up and took a running leap and stabbed the costume box toward its spot with a little toss at the end.
She landed on her toes, in the closet, a hair’s breadth away from colliding with the entire stack. She tipped forward. She couldn’t see anything to balance herself against that wouldn’t knock down everything.
But just as the door slid open, she regained her balance and threw the master cloak closed about her. But she stepped on the hem of the cloak as she stepped backward and fell—
Gracefully. She spun, taking the fall on her hip and tucking her knees so the cloak spun around her, covering them.
A servant walked in, yawning. She saw Aglaia’s half-full tray of food.
She sat and ate with gusto. She didn’t even look around. She hadn’t noticed anything amiss.
Teia took a few deep breaths to steady herself and regain her grip of paryl. She’d come this close to losing it. And that would have meant another dead innocent, another body to dispose of.
While the girl was distracted, Teia stood. Then she got her first look at the hat box. She had left the closet door open, of course, and the hat box was perched at the top of its tower. Precariously.
The air billowing gently into the room from the open door was enough to set the whole stack swaying.
If Teia jumped and missed, it would all come down—and having just jumped, her cloak would be swirling around chaotically at the very moment the servant girl looked toward the sound.
There was nothing Teia could do but pray she didn’t have to kill this pimply sixteen-year-old kitchen girl.
So she did nothing. The girl finished eating in no time and stood. She glanced toward the closet and walked over.
Oh, Orholam dammit, what had she seen?
But the girl just walked to the closet, stood on tiptoe and pushed the hat box back into place, and closed the closet. Then she grabbed the tray and left without a look back.
Teia breathed easily for the first time in many minutes.
She left quietly: out onto the balcony, a quick climb down to the street, and she was on her way to the Order’s meeting to find the priest. It wasn’t until she was halfway there that she realized that with this kill, she didn’t feel damned, she didn’t feel disgusted, she didn’t feel satisfied. She hadn’t felt anything at all.
Chapter 65
“Can someone explain to me again why we drafters are charging toward an enemy that can paralyze drafters?” Winsen deadpanned. “I’m so confused. We are all drafters, right?”
“We’ll get there before they raise the bane,” Kip said.
Of course he and Cruxer hadn’t gone alone. The Mighty had all come. ‘Oh, so if I’m going to be in egregious danger, we all are?’ Kip had asked. ‘We didn’t make it that far in the training,’ Cruxer had said.
Actually, not all of the Mighty had come. Though the new one, Einin, had joined them, Tisis hadn’t. She’d been on a skimmer farther away, already formulating plans for Big Jasper with her own command. Kip hadn’t waited to consult with her, much less asked her to come—but time was of the essence, and she was no good in this kind of fight.
Not that that was why she’d be furious.
Now the Mighty sped across the waves together. Their skimmers were able to interlock together, and with all of them working the reeds, they moved as fast as Izemrasen had.
“And you’re so sure of that why?” Winsen asked.
“Because the White King is greedy,” Kip said. “He likes a big spectacle. At Ru, he triggered the ambush when the bulk of our fleet was centered right over his trap. It destroyed the most ships possible with one stroke, but he’d have been better served if he’d waited until most of the ships were past the trap. He would have sunk fewer in the first strike, but he’d have trapped everyone else in the bay where he could kill them at his leisure.”
“So what’s that mean for us now?” Cruxer asked.