I reached out with my right hand and laid it where her shoulder and neck met. She flinched but didn’t move away.
“Listen up,” I said. “Anyone leaves my blinds open when they should be shut, I take it badly. And personally. You talk to those Eriffs you call Oaks and get things straight. But tell them this, too: Any more problems and I deal with them myself.”
Fowler’s jaw set, pushing her lower lip out. Anyone who didn’t know her would think she was pouting, instead of barely keeping her hands from my throat.
“My people, Drothe,” she said. “My problem.”
“My neck takes precedence over your people,” I said. “Just remember that.”
Fowler clenched her jaw some more. “Like you’ll . . . Oh, to hell with this! ” Fowler gagged and took two quick steps back, waving her hand in front of her face. “I can’t argue with you when you smell like that. What did that Blade attack you with, anyhow—a chamber pot?”
I resisted the urge to look down at my clothes. “It’s a long story.”
“Then tell it to me after a long bath,” she said. “I’m going to try and figure out what went wrong before I lose my dinner. Do you need to yell at me about anything else before I go?”
“No.” I waved a hand. The adrenaline was finally starting to wear off, and I could feel the fatigue setting in. “Wait—yes.”
Fowler stopped just beyond the archway and turned back, the setting moon turning the hair at the nape of her neck into fine silver. “What?” she said.
“Send someone to find Jelem the Sly. He’ll either be in Brass Street or Quarters cordons this time of night.”
Fowler nodded. “It may take a while.” She waved up and down the street. “I have a few things to do here, first.”
“You’ll find me.”
“Damn straight I will,” she said. Then she was off, jaw set, steps fast. I didn’t envy her people the grilling they were about to receive.
I sat down on the steps. I knew Eppyris was waiting on me, but I didn’t have the energy for another argument right now. I needed five minutes—just five minutes of no motion.
I leaned back on the steps and winced as something shifted and poked into the small of my back. Oh, right.
I reached behind me and pulled out the case—or rather, its broken remains. The fall down the stairs had split its top nearly in two, and the fine hinges and clasp that held it closed were a twisted and buckled mess.
The filth from the sewers was dry now, and some of it had flaked away. I could see more of the inlay and make out hints of gold wire along with the ivory—even a few glints that might have been precious stone. It looked for all the world like the box a person would . . .
“Son of a bitch,” I said as I carefully lifted the broken lid. Inside the battered case, on a bed of padded velvet scented with myrrh, rested a narrow crystal tube. Gold filigree scrolled around it, forming artful flowers and intricate symbols, almost hiding the crystal itself. I didn’t need to look in the small window that had been left in the filigree to know what was inside the tube, but I did anyhow, and saw an old, faded, slightly dirty quill pen, its end feathers nearly gone.
I knew it; or rather, knew of it. It was the pen the emperor Theodoi had used to write the Second Apologia in an attempt to make amends with his other incarnations almost two centuries ago. By all accounts, he was still the most consistently sane of the three, but that hadn’t stopped him from writing far less placating tracts to his various selves in later incarnations.
I resisted the urge to bow to the quill three times, then three more, then three again. I’ve handled enough purloined relics to know my obeisance wasn’t going to make a difference to the Angels anymore—I was damned a couple times over, by that reckoning.
“Son of a bitch,” I said again as I examined the goldwrapped tube. “What the hell were you doing with my relic, Fedim?”
Chapter Ten
I
sat at the bottom of the steps, trying to put things together. Nothing fit.
Athel and Fedim, Fedim and Athel—was there a direct connection between the two, or had the relic passed through more hands on the way to the Dealer’s shop in Ten Ways? And what was it
doing
in Ten Ways, for that matter? Imperial relics meant money and powerful interests—neither of which frequented Ten Ways, and certainly not a Dealer of Fedim’s status.
The book—somehow, I suspected, this all had to do with the book the Cutters and their employers had been looking for; a book they thought Fedim had had, and Larrios might have right now; a book I was suddenly starting to get interested in despite myself.
I pulled the slip of paper out of my ahrami pouch and ran it through my fingers.
Imperial
and
relic
, it said—but what else? If there was a connection between Athel and Fedim, the relic and the book, I was in deeper than I’d thought and against people even Degan wanted to leave alone, barring an Oath.
Shit. I needed to get my hands on Larrios and squeeze some answers out of him.
I stood up and gingerly made my way upstairs, every ache and bruise I’d gathered making itself felt along the way. My left arm still wasn’t working, so getting into my rooms was a challenge, but I managed it without setting anything off. I deposited the reliquary and Tamas’s rope underneath a loose floorboard, then made my way back down the stairs and to the front door of Eppyris’s shop.
The apothecary had a brazier glowing and was adding a pinch of something or other to a mortar when I opened the door. He didn’t look up. I shaded my eyes against the light coming from the lamp, and entered.
I took a deep breath as I waited for my eyes to adjust. As always, a riot of smells greeted me, and, as always, they seemed just a little different from the last time. There was a dark, almost roasted smell in the shop tonight, mixed with a hint of spice, riding on a wave of smoke and oil and lampblack. Nothing was brewing or steeping overnight, which left a vacancy usually filled by some sharp, caustic, or musty odor.
My vision began to adjust, and I got a better view of Eppyris seated at one of the two massive tables that played host to an assortment of bottles, mortars, cups, scales, and loose ingredients. The walls to either side were covered with row upon row of shelves, each crammed with the raw ingredients of Eppyris’s trade: jars of oils, boxes of fine powders, sheaves of dried herbs, and the occasional jug or sealed pot marked with the strange script Eppyris refused to translate for me.
Eppyris put pestle to mortar and gave a few quick, well-practiced grinds. As I walked over, he pulled a small box down from a shelf, removed a dried sprig of something, and sniffed it.
“Separate the flowers,” he said, handing me the delicate bit of branch. I moved to join him at the table. “Over there.” He pointed to the far end of the room. “And burn this beside you.”
I took the proffered incense, went to another brazier at the far end of the room, and tossed in the scented nugget. The heavy odor of the incense mingled with the smell of sewage that clung about me, but did little to hide it.
I sat down and lit a candle from the brazier. Feeling was starting to creep back into my left arm and hand—along with the occasional flash fire of pain—so I was actually able to strip the flowers. The petals were tiny purple-and-yellow things the shape of tears, their colors faded from drying. They felt like fly wings beneath my fingers.
“Are you all right?” asked Eppyris after several minutes of silence.
“Bruised, mainly. Nothing broken that I can tell.”
“And the filth you’re wearing?”
“Long story.”
Eppyris grunted. He shook the contents of the mortar into a cup, added two pinches of something from a shallow bowl, and poured boiling water over the whole thing.
I held up the nearly naked branch. “You need this?”
The apothecary shook his head and pointed at the cup. “Has to steep. We’ve time. What are you handling?”
I tasted the dust on my fingers—sweet, heavy, with a bit of burning at the back of the throat. “Harlock?”
“Yes. Good. But you should use your nose before your tongue, and your eyes before either. The flowers might have been poisonous.”
“I know what can kill me in that small a dose.”
“Of that, I have no doubt.” Eppyris picked up the steaming cup and gave it a practiced swirl. “What about the other man?” he said.
“The one who was on the stairs? He didn’t fare as well as I.”
“What did he want?”
“I missed an appointment. He was upset.”
“So he came for you.”
“More or less.”
Eppyris set the cup down, then put both hands on the table. “I thought they weren’t supposed to be able to get in the building. You said it was taken care of.”
“It was a mistake,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”
“He got in the
building
, Drothe.” Eppyris’s voice began to rise. “On the stairs.” He stood and pointed toward the entryway beyond the wall. “One door away from my family!”
“He wouldn’t have come after you or Cosima or the girls.”
“No?”
“No. He was deep fi—He was professional. He was here for me, no one else.”
“And what if I had walked out into the stairwell when he was there, Drothe? What if Cosima had come up to ask you down for tea? What if one of us had found him by accident?”
I stood up and walked the petals over to him. I set them down carefully, then stared up into his face.
“He was a
professional
, Eppyris. That means you wouldn’t have seen him. Even if any of you
had
been up four hours before sunrise.”
Eppyris scowled. “Don’t patronize me. You know what I mean.” He swept up the petals and crumbled them between his fingers, letting them fall into the cup.
“So what happens the next time?” he said more softly. “What happens if the next one isn’t as ‘professional’? What do you do then?”
The next time—there was the problem. Would there be a next time? Would I allow her another chance?
I didn’t doubt my sister was behind this; there was precedent, after all. Besides, no one knew to use her livery, let alone to make an appointment with me, like that. I couldn’t figure exactly what I had done to bring this latest attempt down on me, but that didn’t matter. I’ve found you don’t have to know why someone is trying to kill you; you just have to know that they are.
I thought of the rope upstairs, its knots as dark as charcoal. That was the part that bothered me the most. Hiring a Mouth to speak a spell is one thing; spoken magic is hard to trace, difficult for the empire to come down on. But portable glimmer like Tamas’s rope was another thing entirely; magic of that sort had been outlawed by the empire three centuries ago. It was still around, of course; it just cost—a lot. More than I had thought I was worth.
But if she was now willing to go that far . . .
If.
“There won’t be a next time,” I said.
Eppyris grunted.
I looked up, meeting his eyes. “There won’t.”
We stared at each other for a long moment, both of us feeling righteous, or just right, or stubborn, I’m not sure which. Finally, Eppyris sighed and rubbed his eyes.
“My shop is here,” he said. “I’ll stay for now. But Cosima, Alarenna, and Sophia will go to her mother’s tomorrow.”
“Eppyris, they don’t have to.”
“Yes, they do,” he said.
I wanted to argue, but didn’t. I wasn’t about to put my pride above his family.
“Here,” he said, setting the steaming cup before me. “This should be ready. I’ll prepare a salve and set it on the stairs for you. Do you need more ahrami?”
“Yes.” I picked up the cup. The brew was hot and bitter and scorched my throat on the way down.
I heard the click of a lock, the soft rattle of a latch being turned. A male voice spoke; it was Josef, my sister’s butler. The words were muffled by the double doors leading from the hallway to her parlor. I was in a room farther beyond, in Christiana’s bedroom, but I could still make them out.
“Will you be needing Sara tonight, madam?”
“No, thank you, Josef. It’s late. Let her sleep. I can manage.”
“As you will, madam.”
I heard the outer chamber doors open, then close, saw the flicker of approaching candlelight reflected on the marble floor. I had left the doors between the bedroom and parlor ajar.
I bit down on the seed in my mouth, worked it for a moment, swallowed. It had little effect, as the painkilling potion Eppyris had given me also dulled the ahrami. Still, it tasted good, and after my argument at the baths with Degan, I’d take whatever solace the night was willing to offer.
He had wanted to come with me; I had refused—not because I didn’t want a sword at my back after Tamas’s attempt, but because I didn’t trust him when it came to Christiana. I’d seen the way Degan looked at my sister, and the way her eyes played over him. It wasn’t that I thought he would harm me when it came to her; it was just that I wasn’t sure he would let me harm her.