An unfamiliar scent filled her nose as she drew close. Not the usual amalgam of spices that clung to Kiril’s skin, but orange and cinnamon and almond, delicately blended. A woman’s perfume.
Jealousy was an ugly, irrational thing, but that didn’t keep its claws out of her chest. Even uglier was the memory that followed hard on its heels, the echo of Forsythia’s hollow voice:
All I could smell was her perfume—orange and spices
.
Coincidence,
she prayed.
It has to be coincidence
. But she knew it had no obligation to be anything of the sort.
Kiril missed the instant’s horror on her face by turning away. “I can’t,” he said. “I’m sorry. I can only ask you to please leave this case alone. For everyone’s sake.”
“I can’t do that. Will you bind me?” He could, as her master and the keeper of her oaths. It was not an option that either of them had ever voiced before.
He winced, but she took no pleasure in the strike. “No.”
“Then I suppose we’ve run out of conversation.”
“Isyllt—” She turned, one hand on the doorknob. His eyes were black holes in his seamed face, and he looked frailer than she’d ever seen. Shrunken. “I am sorry.”
“So am I.”
She closed the door softly behind her and fled into the fog.
As she closed the door of her suite behind her, Savedra knew she wasn’t alone. Her knife was in her hand before
she could think, her already taut nerves singing and her pulse hard and fierce in her throat.
“It’s only me,” Ashlin said. A match scraped and wept sparks as she kindled a lamp. “Remind me never to sneak up behind you.”
“I would be very embarrassed to kill you.” She dropped the blade on a table; she’d only cut herself if she tried to resheathe it.
“What’s wrong?”
“A trying night.”
“Are you all right?”
“As well as can be expected.” She reached for the buttons on the back of her neck and hissed as her wounded arm twisted. She’d forgotten about it during her talk with Isyllt, but now it burned and itched abominably.
“Here,” Ashlin said, moving to help. “I let the housekeepers draft your maid for decorating. I promised you wouldn’t mind.”
Savedra sighed. Mathiros’s imminent return had the staff strained and rushing about their work. She hadn’t realized how peaceful the palace had been without him. She had seen masters far more critical and harsh than the king, but he was always brusque without Lychandra to soften him, and no one wanted to be nearby when his temper snapped.
In her brooding she forgot where she was and whom she was with until Ashlin began removing the pins from her hair. “Don’t,” she said, stepping away. She clutched her gown to her chest in a ridiculous display of modesty.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” The princess turned, throwing up her hands. “Gods, this is so ridiculous.”
Savedra laughed humorlessly. “It is.” She unclenched
her fingers and the gown crumpled at her feet. She wanted to kick it aside, but draped it over a chair instead. “What are we going to do?”
Ashlin sat heavily on the foot of the bed, slouching elbows to knees. “What can we do?”
“Pretend it never happened?”
That drew the princess’s head up with a jerk. “Is that what you want?”
She ought to lie; it would be easier. “I don’t know. I have the choice of hurting you or hurting Nikos.”
“You love him. I understand.”
“I love you too. But I never expected this.”
It was Ashlin’s turn to laugh. “Neither did I. I only wanted a friend. I’ve never had many. Which is my own fault, for being a prickly sharp-tongued bitch. Then I met you, and you should have hated me but you didn’t, and you were clever and funny and beautiful and I was so bleeding
grateful
—” She shook her head. “I never imagined it would turn into something more, but now it has and I don’t know what to do. I’ve seen things like this before. I know how ugly they can turn. If—If you want me to go—”
Savedra wanted to scream, to laugh until she wept; her mother and Thea Jsutien between them couldn’t have concocted so clever a scheme. All it would take was a bit of jealousy and heartache to undermine the already strained marriage and send Ashlin home to Celanor, leaving Nikos embarrassed and obliged to remarry. And he still couldn’t marry her. What would the Jsutiens offer, she wondered madly, if she sent Nikos to Ginevra after all?
It felt like she moved through water as she crossed the room and cupped Ashlin’s cheek in one hand, like trying to run in a dream. “I don’t want you to leave. But I don’t
want you to be miserable if you stay, either.” The softness of the princess’s skin sent a shiver up the length of her arm. Even dyed, her hair was finer than Nikos’s, the freshly trimmed tips prickly.
Ashlin turned her head and pressed a chaste kiss on Savedra’s palm, and then a lingering one on the hollow of her wrist. “I’m not drunk enough for this.”
Savedra laughed breathlessly, though it wasn’t funny. Wine, she’d learned, was usually how the princess nerved herself for marital obligations. She thought of her parents together, their easy affection and quiet, obvious devotion, and felt a pang of grief that something so simple should elude so many.
She might have argued that it was that grief that made her tilt Ashlin’s head back and kiss her. Grief and lingering horror, the need to feel warm and safe again. She might have said that, but it would have been a lie.
This time was slower, tentative and exploratory and still awkward. The fit of their bodies was strange and unnerving, but an improvement over Savedra’s clumsy and adolescent encounter with a girl from Arachne twelve years ago. That had been the last time she’d lain with a woman, until Evharis.
“I don’t usually worry about pregnancy,” Savedra said after a long silence, “but we have to.” Pragmatism dulled the pleasant tingle in her limbs, but she couldn’t ignore it.
“There is the possibility that I’m barren,” Ashlin said, not quite meeting her eyes. “And wouldn’t that be irony fit for an opera. I could have joined a mercenary company after all, and spared everyone grief.” She squeezed Savedra’s hand as she said it.
“It could also be Nikos.” It felt like a betrayal to say the words aloud, but he had acknowledged the chance himself after the second miscarriage. In the dark, in fact, in a scene much like this. She swallowed a bitter laugh. “It’s not as though I’ve borne him any bastards to say otherwise.”
They lay quietly for a while, with the weight of secrets and costs like a blade between them.
“You should go,” Savedra said at last, because someone had to.
“I should.” The shadows hid the princess’s face, but the hurt in her voice was clear. Savedra held herself still and silent while Ashlin dressed, though she ached to reach for her, to call her back.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last, as Ashlin turned to the door.
“So am I,” the princess whispered. Then she was gone.
Savedra wanted to press her face against the pillow and cry herself to sleep. But she was too much her mother’s daughter for that. Instead she rose and opened the windows to the damp and frigid night, then turned to the bottle of brandy on her dressing table. The first glass went down her throat in a single searing gulp. The second she carefully dashed across the soiled sheets. She changed the linens herself, awkwardly hauling a fresh set across the wide bed. When that was done she ran herself a bath and scrubbed away the scent of Ashlin’s skin. Next, wet and shivering in the drafty room, she opened the doors of her shrine and lit a stick of incense to Saint Sarai.
By then dawn was a pale blue wash against her windows, and she ached to the bone with fatigue. She sealed the room again and crawled into her cold bed. The scent of smoke and sandalwood and brandy chased her into the dark, and haunted her through alien dreams.
T
he dawn chimes found Isyllt in Inkstone, climbing the broad steps of the Justiciary. The hour of tenderness, the first terce was called, but the only tenderness she felt was her bruised and sleepless eyes. White marble soared above her, painted rose and gold with sunrise—fluted columns holding aloft the pediment and its statues. Meant to be historical figures, but everyone looked the same carved in stone; she preferred the gargoyles crouching on the Sepulcher across the square.
At the top of the stairs Isyllt met a young constable fumbling with her keys. Smaller police stations around the city stayed open all night to collect rowdy drunks and careless criminals, but the central office closed with the evensong bells like any respectable bureaucracy. The girl did a hasty double take when she saw Isyllt.
The front room was tall and broad, lit by high narrow windows and many lamps, which the young Vigil moved to light. The space was meant to intimidate more than
welcome; past it desks lined the walls, and doors and halls led to the offices of senior Vigils. Other Vigils began to trickle in, muttering and joking and lighting braziers for tea. Isyllt couldn’t imagine having to face so much garish orange at the start of every day.
She must have looked worse than she realized—the young constable brought her the first cup of tea, and was so solicitous that Isyllt wanted to bite her. She smiled instead, though it made her face ache, and took the tea and offered chair and settled to wait for Khelséa. She was staring, she knew—at the ceiling, the Vigils, the leaves swirling at the bottom of her cup. All her thoughts were dark, ugly things with cutting edges. Better to think on nothing and let the noise of the Justiciary wash over her.
The noise was little better: accusations, reports of theft, reports of people missing, tearful demands for aid. No one came to the police with pleasant tidings, after all. Many of those who came asking for help were Rosian; many of them left unsatisfied. Isyllt had an abundance of sympathy at the moment, so much so that she very nearly flung her teacup down and screamed.
Khelséa’s arrival saved her an embarrassing scene. Isyllt hadn’t seen the inspector since she left St. Alia’s, though they’d exchanged notes and Khelséa had assured her she was well. Watching her now, Isyllt knew it for a lie. Pain carved lines around her eyes and mouth and a notch between her brows, aging her years in only days. She walked slowly, deliberately, glancing from side to side as though she feared attack, and every so often she touched a chair or table as she passed, surreptitiously steadying herself.
“You said you were fine,” Isyllt said in greeting, lifting her eyebrows.
“I am. I will be,” she amended. “The physicians said it will be at least another decad until my ear heals. The pain I can handle, and even the poor hearing, but I keep losing my balance.” She tilted her head as she spoke, turning her good ear to Isyllt and keeping her eyes on her deaf side.
“What did you tell the other Vigils?”
“A fast infection. I’ve had to endure everyone’s advice and grandmothers’ hedge-magic remedies ever since.”
“But only out of one ear,” Isyllt said helpfully. It earned her a laugh and a slap on the arm.
“What about you? You’re not looking so well-rested yourself.”
“I’m—” She shook her head with a snort. “I’m not fine. But I’m working, and I’ve learned something. We need to talk.”
“All right.” Khelséa redid her top two coat buttons. “You can buy me breakfast, then.”
They ate griddle cakes and mulled cider at the Black Holly tea shop across the plaza, and Isyllt explained about Forsythia’s murder and the haematurge.
“She’s done this before. She may have done it again since. There will be other bodies for us to find. More young women, probably.”
Khelséa snorted, mopping up cream and preserves with a bite of cake. “Do you know how many young women end up in the river with their throats slit? And hardly any of them are fit to autopsy by the time we haul them out. How will you tell the difference?”
“Thaumaturgical residue. I know the taste of her magic now. Look for victims like Forsythia—throats slit left-handed, no other wounds. She may be mad and murderous,
but it doesn’t sound like she tortures them. She has a vampire working with her, but he didn’t feed on Forsythia first.”
She lowered her voice as a pair of women wandered past, though they were too engrossed in an account of someone else’s romantic pursuits to pay any attention. Perfume trailed after them, peach and citrus and honey-sweetness.
Citrus. Isyllt set her mug of cider down without drinking. She’d smelled that bitter orange note before—first on Savedra, and only a few hours ago on Kiril. And if that was the same perfume Forsythia had smelled—
“Where does the fashionable perfume come from this season?” she asked Khelséa.
The woman blinked. “Kebechet at the Black Phoenix. I bought Gemma a vial of her oils last month. Her shop is in Panchrest Court. Why?” she asked as Isyllt reached for her purse.
“I’ve smelled her perfume. If I can trace it…” She counted out coins. “Search the morgues—I’ll meet you when I’m finished.”
Khelséa’s eyebrows arched. “I get wet corpses and you get perfume?”
“I bought you breakfast, didn’t I?”
“You’ll buy me a month of breakfasts for this.”
“I’ll start a new expense account.” Which, of course, she couldn’t, not since Kiril had ruled the investigation closed. She kept her good hand from clenching, brushed it quickly against Khelséa’s dark fingers instead. “Thank you.” She turned before the inspector could respond, bolting for the nearest carriage.