“Is there something I can do for you?” Varis asked.
“I only wanted to say hello. You’ve looked tired lately—” She shrugged, artless concern. That at least was true. For an unannounced evening visit to find anyone else unbuttoned and disheveled was normal; for Varis it was alarming. Beneath his open collar she glimpsed the edge of a dark and ugly bruise, and her blood chilled. She’d seen a similar mark on Isyllt Iskaldur, when the necromancer had delivered her report to Nikos. A vampire bite.
“I have, haven’t I?” He ran a hand over his scalp and sighed, surreptitiously tugging his shirt closed at the neck. “Even debauchery can be exhausting sometimes. The parties multiply so this time of year, and the planning and invitations and costumes…” He gestured toward the tailor.
“I understand. I’ll leave you to it, and to your guest.” She smiled at the woman, but found no hint of an answering expression behind the veil. “We should have lunch
sometime. You can come to the palace and scandalize everyone.”
His smile looked like a grimace. “Yes. We should do that.” He leaned in to kiss her cheek, his lips soft and cool. “I appreciate you thinking of your decrepit old uncle.” His hand settled on her back, steering her toward the door so lightly and unobtrusively that she hardly noticed it.
“Buying dresses for other men’s wives?” she asked as they started down the stairs.
“Someone has to. I can’t bear another season of the Hadrians setting fashions.”
He took her arm, and released it again when she flinched. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. A bit of clumsiness, is all.”
Neither her tone nor face faltered, but Varis blanched. His eyes darkened and splotches of color bloomed in his cheeks. “That lie, my dear, is as old as the hills, and unworthy of both of us. Did he hurt you?”
She drew back from his cold rage, tongue slow with confusion. “Did who—No!” Realization made her stomach lurch. “No, of course not!” She forced her voice low when she wanted to shriek. “Nikos has never hurt me. He never would. How can you think that?”
“I’ve seen how the Alexioi treat their pets.” Anger made him a stranger.
“He is not his grandfather.” And so much for saving that particular secret.
Varis’s face twisted, finally settled back into his usual sardonic half-smile. “Indeed. Nor his father either, I suppose. That doesn’t seem to have helped you, does it?”
“He does the best by me that he can. We have both of
us always understood how it would be.” Unbidden, the memory of Ashlin’s skin surfaced. She hoped her stinging blush could be taken for anger. “If you act against him—or the princess—you act against me. Please, Uncle. Don’t make us enemies for the sake of a man decades dead.”
He turned away, folding his arms across his chest. “I act for the living and the dead. And I have more cause than you can pry out of your mother.”
“Then tell me! Make me understand this.”
She caught the glitter of his eyes as they rolled upward. Toward the library. “I can’t,” he said softly, and the wrath drained out of him like water. “I don’t want to hurt you, Savedra.”
Her jaw tightened. “You already have.”
He lifted his chin, as chilly and urbane as ever. “Then you’ll forgive me or you won’t, darling. That’s up to you. Perhaps when this is over I can explain it to you.”
Her spine straightened in response, and her voice cooled to match. “I hope you can. I hope I can forgive you when I hear it.”
She turned away, sweeping down the rest of the stairs and snatching her cloak off the peg before the miserable housekeeper could reach it. She didn’t turn back, but out of the corner of her eye she saw him, frozen pale and motionless as marble. If he called to her, it was lost beneath the shutting of the door.
Safely enclosed in her waiting carriage, she let her face crumple, pinching her nose against the building pressure in her sinuses. She wanted to scream, but restrained herself for the driver’s sake.
She couldn’t fall apart yet. And she couldn’t do this alone. Her mother wouldn’t endanger the house, and
Nikos couldn’t allow anything to threaten the throne. Ashlin might help her, but Savedra couldn’t risk the princess again. Captain Denaris was loyal to the throne—
No. She sat up straighter. She didn’t need a soldier or a courtier; she needed a sorcerer.
Savedra yanked open the panel that connected the interior to the driver’s seat. “Take me to Archlight.”
“What happened to your hand?” Dahlia asked later, as Isyllt measured mint and tarragon for tisane.
“A knife, with a would-be assassin on the other end.” Her fingers flexed at the memory, bone and tendon aching around their pins. The fresh scars on her throat were obvious; she’d been careful not to show the bruise on her thigh when she got out of the bath. Ciaran must have noticed it, but had chosen not to comment.
“What happened to the assassin?”
Isyllt frowned at the teakettle. “I don’t know. I never found her again, only her masters.” She stroked the band of her ring with her right thumb—that had been the only time she’d ever been parted from her diamond, and she meant to keep it that way.
“It would sound better if you’d killed her.”
“It would, wouldn’t it?” She set the kettle on the stove, shivering at the heat pulsing from the tiles. A previous, more culinary-minded tenant had installed the expensive green-glazed cooker; Isyllt had promised herself one if she ever moved into a house of her own.
“What about your wrist? Was that the same assassin?”
Burn scars ringed her left wrist, ridged and glossy tissue in the shape of a man’s hand. “No, someone else. He isn’t dead either.” She smiled a little at that memory,
though there had been no humor in it at the time. “We’re friends now, actually.”
Dahlia snorted. “Do you have any stories where someone dies?”
“Oh, a few. We’ll save those for later.”
While the water heated, Isyllt found a spare mirror in the clutter of her workroom, and instructed Dahlia on its use. She also passed along the lecture on the cost and quality of the glass that the Arcanost glassmakers gave her every time she broke one. Next she found a knife—nothing as large or elaborate as her kukri, but a sharp blade all the same, and one spelled to wound demon-flesh.
By then the water was boiling, and even puttering around the apartment had winded her. She poured herself and Dahlia steaming tisane and returned to the sitting room to catch her breath.
Dahlia studied the blade a moment before sheathing it. She handled it competently, which was no surprise. “What do we do now?”
“Someone used Forsythia as a blood sacrifice.” It was the first time she’d spoken the thought aloud. She didn’t like the shape of the words in her mouth. “So we’re hunting haematurges.”
“Blood sorcerers.” Dahlia didn’t try to hide her dismay.
“It isn’t entirely like the penny dreadfuls,” Isyllt said. She remembered all the spook stories children in the city knew, about sorcerers who prowled the streets looking for victims, and what they did with them. Whether or not the murderous mages belonged to the Arcanost depended on the neighborhood, and the storyteller. “Haematurgy is an approved study at the Arcanost. But like necromancy, its reputation is… spotted. And maybe deservedly so.
The more blood you have to work with, the more you can do. And after a certain volume it’s hard to find willing donors. The stories about Evanescera Ley and Arkady Tezda are exaggerated, but there’s truth at the core. The same applies to all the stories about the vrykoloi.”
“Blood sorcerers
and
vampires. And you’re going to hunt them.”
“
We’re
going to hunt them.” She met Dahlia’s eyes over her cup, waiting for a flinch. It never came.
“What first, then?”
“First we track rumors. I can’t imagine Forsythia was the first person they’ve killed. Even if no one’s whispering about blood magic yet, there will still be people missing, or found with slit throats. Between Ciaran and my friend Khelséa, we ought to find anything worth hearing.”
“You’re friends with a marigold?” For someone so young, Dahlia could fit a remarkable amount of skepticism in raised eyebrows.
“I am. And with Arcanostoi and guttersnipes and even a demon or two. Does that bother you?”
Dahlia shrugged. “Not as long as you’re paying me.”
Isyllt snorted, but pushed herself up and shuffled to the bedroom and her coffer. Coins clinked as she counted them. “These are for your time,” she said, handing over two silver griffins, “a decad of it. And these”—she counted out another griffin and a half in owls and obols and copper pennies—“are to get yourself something to wear. If you’re going to tell people you work for me, I’d rather you were wearing decent shoes.”
Dahlia rolled her eyes. The money vanished into several different pockets; nothing jingled when she was done.
The ward on the staircase shivered softly in Isyllt’s
head and she straightened, locking the moneybox again with a touch. Her magic didn’t know the person on the stair, nor was the light knock that followed familiar.
A cloaked woman stood in the hallway, her face hidden by backlighting and the shadow of her cowl. Isyllt shifted and light fell past her, and she couldn’t stop a blink of surprise. Savedra Severos was not someone she expected to turn up unannounced on her doorstep. Or at all.
“Lady Severos.” Her title as royal concubine was more properly
Pallakis
, but Isyllt supposed she might get tired of being defined that way.
“Good evening, Lady Iskaldur.” Her voice was always arresting—not masculine, but rich and husky; according to Ciaran, more contralto roles had been written into operas and musicals since she’d taken up residence in the Gallery of Pearls. Tonight it was rough with fatigue or emotion. “Am I disturbing you?”
“Of course not.” Which of course one would always say to someone with the prince’s ear, but the curiosity of the visit more than made up for the late hour. “Come in.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry to come so late unannounced.” Blue silk flashed as she drew back her hood. Her heavy hair was held up in a lattice of pins and ribbons, but stray curls slipped free at her temples. She looked as tired as she sounded; the violet on her eyelids wasn’t paint, and her skin was too pale under the flush of cold. She moved jerkily as she crossed the threshold, as if nervous or pained, and Isyllt caught her backward glance.
Isyllt held out a hand for Savedra’s cloak even as she sent a questing tendril of magic down the stairs; if anyone had followed her, they lurked farther away than she could sense. “We keep odd hours in Archlight. It’s no
trouble.” Cloth settled heavy over her arm; the velvet was damp from the night, but the silk lining was warm and smelled of perfume—sandalwood and vetiver and bitter orange. The scent lingered as Isyllt hung up the cloak.
Savedra was dressed plainly for the palace, but even so she would stand out on any street in Archlight. Her gown was blue figured silk, a duskier shade than her cloak, slim-lined and high-collared. The pearls at her throat were black, their iridescent darkness broken by the indigo sparkle of iolites. The thought of those pearls scattered on the cobbles made Isyllt’s jaw tighten.
“Do you have a coach waiting, Lady?”
“I sent the driver away. I didn’t want to attract attention.”
“You’ll attract another sort if you walk here at night. It’s hardly Oldtown,” she said to Savedra’s quirked brow, “but students have bills and bare cupboards too, not to mention drunken stupidity. I’ll see you safely away when you leave.”
“Of course.” She shook her head. “I’m eight shades of fool lately, it seems. Thank you.”
“You needed to speak to me?”
“Yes, if you have the time.” Hazel eyes flickered toward Dahlia, who was doing a poor job of not staring.
“Of course. My assistant was just leaving.” She steered Dahlia aside.
“You’re getting rid of me.” A statement, not an accusation.
“I am, and I’ll do it again before this is over. But I do need you to find Ciaran and ask after any rumors that might help us. And make sure no one was following our guest.”
Dahlia nodded slowly and turned toward the door, curtsying awkwardly to Savedra as she passed.
“Sit,” Isyllt said when the door was latched again. Her furniture looked even shabbier beside Savedra, and she was conscious of her worn and comfortable clothes and her hair drying in rattails over her shoulders. “What can I do for you? Would you like something to drink?”
Savedra sat with studied grace, skirts pooling artfully. That grace and her natural beauty distracted from the artifice she wore as elegantly as the pearls. There was very little to remind one that she hadn’t been born a woman—the strength of chin, perhaps, the length of the manicured hands that folded now in her lap. Her shoulders were thin enough, and the cut of her dress flattered narrow hips and a flat chest.
“I wouldn’t mind some of that tisane,” she said. “I could use something calming. I find myself with a mystery,” she continued after Isyllt set the kettle on to warm again. “One I can’t take to my family or to Nikos. I’d hoped to beg your services as an investigator.”
Isyllt frowned. “I’m a Crown Investigator, and oathsworn as such. I can’t involve myself in personal matters in the Octagon Court.” Only personal matters outside it.