The man nodded jerkily and abandoned his post to do Mikael’s bidding.
Chapter 11
* * *
THE YEARGROUP’S BARRACKS were divided, one large room for the boys, one for the girls. Shironne walked up and down the girl’s quarters room several times, trying to create a map of it in her mind. This was a place where Mikael’s knowledge of the Fortress didn’t extend, so she couldn’t pick it out of his mind. She had to do this on her own. The long room had two doors, one at the far end and one in the middle of the room. Tabita’s bunk was the farthest from either door, in what they called the dead zone because not as much air circulated there. It smelled a bit stale in that part of the room, tired wool and many bodies. Not too unpleasant, though. “Why are you so far from the door?”
Tabita spun out a hint of vexation, not aimed at Shironne. “New girl doesn’t get much choice.”
Tabita’s bed was only three away from the back wall, and all of those three were empty—save for the one that was now Shironne’s. “Even though you’re the Second?”
“I could push for a bunk closer to the door,” Tabita admitted, “but balance within a yeargroup is important. More important than having a shorter walk to the toilets. Something for you to keep in mind.”
In other words, don’t cause problems.
Shironne hadn’t missed that Tabita assigned her the bunk one closer to the wall. That put her even farther from the door, but also left Tabita between her and anyone who might want to play pranks on her. Possibly because Tabita was also an outsider here, she seemed inclined to protect Shironne.
Shironne wasn’t going to take that for granted.
The others were all currently in a history class, for which Shironne was grateful. It would give her time to get used to these surroundings without the distraction of two dozen curious minds around her. Even Family-trained minds could be wearing. Tabita, whom Shironne suspected was a strong sensitive, understood that.
Once Shironne had a basic grasp of the shape of the dormitory room, she went back to her bunk and felt the shelves above them. “What goes here?”
“Books, which you don’t have, and personal items that you’re not too concerned about losing. Things that are on the shelves tend to be passed around. I would suggest keeping uniforms or anything precious in your chest.”
Things left on the shelves were vulnerable; Mikael knew that. Shironne tucked away that bit of information. There was a chest at the end of the bed already, feeling of pine and sawdust. It was newly made. Shironne could feel the hands of the maker on it, though, as well as those from several people who’d handled it already. She didn’t have much property now, as most everything was back at the house on Antrija Street, but she could stash her crystal in there, since she didn’t seem to need it now.
“So, the toilets,” Tabita said briskly. “Let’s do that next, and then I’ll take you to our commons.”
That promised to be a trial of its own.
* * *
Mikael met Kassannan at the old hotel’s doorway. The surgeon had brought a pair of orderlies with him to take charge of the body and transport it to the army hospital’s morgue. “Why send for me?” Kassannan asked bluntly.
Mikael gestured toward the sticky stairwell. “When asked, I’m going to state that the army is allowing me to use its more convenient facilities to aid in the Daujom’s investigation of the attack on Madam Anjir’s household.”
Kassannan regarded Mikael with narrowed eyes. “Did you tell Dahar that?”
Dahar was walking Madam Anjir through the legal aspects of adding her to the rolls of the House of Valaren. He could have left that to a legal advisor, but Mikael was sure Madam Anjir appreciated Dahar doing it himself. “Dahar is busy trying to get his sister’s family settled in the palace, working out the legal end of adding them to the Valaren.”
Since Madam Anjir was currently a Larossan citizen, the male members of her family could force her to return to their control and even to marry someone of their choosing. From what Mikael understood, while they had earlier agreed privately not to do so, now that the Royal House of Valaren had become publicly involved, they wanted a share of that house’s wealth in return for raising a Valaren cuckoo among them. To save face, was how Mikael understood it.
“I’ve heard they’re forcing negotiations.” Kassannan shook his head, eyes rolling. “And are they moving Shironne to the Fortress?”
“Already done,” Mikael said. “Miss Anjir will be available to the army upon request but won’t be allowed off palace grounds without quarterguards accompanying her.”
“She’ll love that,” Kassannan said sarcastically.
Mikael didn’t argue. Shironne valued her independence.
After asking the orderlies to wait in the building’s small foyer, Kassannan followed Mikael up the stairs. “Do you plan on bringing her down to the morgue to look at the bodies?”
“I can’t request a brown’s help on an investigation,” he reminded Kassannan. “You do have the other body—Karemen—don’t you?” He’d figured the army had collected that body. Speed usually trumped the fact that the police held jurisdiction in a death instead of the army.
“Yes, but I heard we were just holding it for the Daujom,” Kassannan said with no hint of sarcasm now. One of the nice things about Cerradine’s people—most had been raised by the Family and, like Messine and Pamini, were trained to keep their emotions off their face. That made it easier for them to lie if needed. “It’s pretty straightforward what happened to him, though.”
“You’ll find this one interesting,” Mikael told him.
When Kassannan stood next to the displaced bed and gazed down at the body in question, he did look intrigued.
“Any thoughts?” Mikael glanced back at the doorway, wondering if his second witness had arrived yet.
Kassannan let out a huff of air, irritation seeping out around him before he stifled the reaction. “You and I both know what this is, Mr. Lee. We just can’t be sure who did it.”
The surgeon had the knowledge of how to create such injuries and had been a melee fighter once, but Mikael couldn’t sense any guilt in his reaction. “Pamini thinks the message is meant for Faralis, with the killer counting on the police picking up this body.”
Kassannan’s lips pressed together. “Probably correct. Problem is, do we want the police commissioner to get this message?”
“Yes,” Mikael said. “I want him to be scared. If he’s looking over his shoulder for whoever did this, then he won’t be watching for the Daujom to come after him.”
Kassannan swept one hand toward the body. “So we leave him here?”
Mikael shook his head. “No. I’d like to know if Miss Anjir can tell us anything about this killer, so we need to take it into custody.”
“And therefore you need me to request her assistance. And how do you propose getting the news to the police commissioner if the army has the body?”
Mikael sensed a wave of curiosity and urgency, heralding the approach of a newcomer. “Mr. Lee, what have you got for me?”
A young Larossan man with medium brown skin and eyes so dark they seemed black, Joio Dimani had worked with the Daujom before, but his main source of income came as a writer for the Seychas Weekly. Over the last few years, he’d been extremely helpful to Mikael, who’d given him some excellent leads on stories in return. “Something that might be a little dangerous,” Mikael told the Larossan man. “A favor for the Daujom, for which we’ll offer a favor in return.”
Dimani gave him a quick smile. “I want an inside lead on what happened at the Anjir household, and an interview with Madam Anjir.”
While some writers might see this as a chance to make money, Dimani’s writing usually came from a desire to foster justice, and Mikael trusted the man to be discreet when it came to the Anjir family. “I can’t promise the second, but I’ll give you the first. What tipped you off that the Anjir household is involved here?”
Dimani let out a
bark of laughter and raised three brown fingers. “One, the Daujom is involved. Two, it’s being whispered all over the city that Madam Anjir and her children have been removed to the palace. Three, old women are claiming that Madam Anjir is one of the prior king’s by-blows, which would neatly explain the Daujom getting involved.”
Since that was all true and soon to be very public, Mikael didn’t hesitate to verify it.
“So what do you need me to do?” Dimani asked.
“I need you to interview the police commissioner.”
The writer’s lips twisted upward in a cautious line. Faralis loved to be interviewed, so that wasn’t the problem. “Regarding?”
“A body that we’re about to show you. I need you to ask Faralis specifically about the note left on the man’s chest.”
Dimani’s mouth pursed, his eagerness dimmed. “Is it blood magic again?”
Dimani had been Mikael’s inside voice on the murders the previous month and had published several articles over that series of deaths, introducing the fact that the deaths were part of a blood magic ritual. That ritual had involved carving the proper word on the chest of the victims, followed by cutting them deeply enough to ensure that they bled out. “Nothing like that this time,” Mikael promised. “This is far more mundane.”
Chapter 12
* * *
BEFORE LUNCH, TABITA took time to introduce Shironne to each of the other girls in the yeargroup individually. The yeargroup had come back from their history class, their curiosity barely contained. Shironne tried to pin names to individuals as she greeted each one, but after meeting several, she’d become lost.
Individually, they weren’t bad. Their minds were far more disciplined than the Larossans Shironne passed on the street every day. It was the sheer number of minds in the same area, like the difference between the gabble of a single goose and an entire flock.
“My head is hurting now,” she whispered to Tabita when she decided none of the others were near her bunk.
“My apologies,” Tabita said. “We’ve got one left, and she’s the worst. I don’t think putting her off is a wise start.”
She could hear the last girl approaching them, her emotions strong and hard, a mocking feel to them. Shironne flinched back.
She was never going to be able to survive among the Family if she couldn’t handle the members of one yeargroup. And she hadn’t met the boys in the group yet, either.
I can do this. I need to do this.
She reached out in her mind, seeking that corner where she could always find her tie to Mikael. He was busy doing something slightly improper, something that had to do with a dead body and with her, although he wasn’t thinking in terms clear enough that she could make out what was running through his mind. She wished futilely that he was nearer, that she could draw on his calm, his ability to control his emotions.
And then she felt his recognition of her, as if he’d turned and seen her waiting for him.
Are you all right? A wave of concern accompanied those loud words in her mind. He knew what she was doing today. That it would be hard for her. He worried over her now, words floating in his mind, not quite distinct, but he was far away from the Fortress, in the city somewhere.
She had no way to talk back to him. He wasn’t sensitive enough to pick up her thoughts and could only grasp her emotions if he was close. Or asleep.
If he’d been asleep, he would know how near she was to panicking.
Shironne held in the brittle laugh that tried to work its way past her lips. She wrapped her fingers around the crystal stashed in her pocket, trying to force her mind into order.
And then a wave of his calm overtook her, wrapping her in its grasp like a blanket, protecting her from all the other minds that tore at her. She stayed there for a moment, clutching that blanket about her. It reassured her, far better than any piece of stone. After a time, she let go and brought her mind back to awareness of the busy room about her.
She sensed a trio of girls nearby, perhaps sitting on the same bunk. They were curious but not unbearably so, and Shironne couldn’t quite tell their minds apart.
Others had already left the room, probably heading up to the mess on One Down. That left only a handful of girls moving about in the barracks room, making small noises. None were fretting over the stranger in their midst. Not loudly enough that Shironne could sense it, at least.
And there, to the left, was the other girl, the one she hadn’t met. Strong willed, with a cloaked mind, thinking hard of something distant.
“Shironne, this is Maria,” Tabita said, her voice flat and hard.
The final girl’s attention turned to Shironne, cold and disdainful. Irritated. Impatient, a reaction that the other girl seemed to push at Shironne.
Shironne weighed what she sensed between the two girls: guardedness on Tabita’s part that suggested she had something to fear from the other, and a forced disdain on Maria’s side that made Shironne suspect Maria had reason to dislike Tabita. She saw herself as powerful, and Tabita as an interloper. Perhaps Maria had been the Second before Tabita came to live here.
If I make a friend of Tabita, I’ll be making an enemy of Maria.
That wouldn’t work the other way around, though. She could try to make Maria her friend, and Tabita would understand her reasons for doing so.
Shironne sought that calm spot she’d had before, that refuge in Mikael’s mind. It was still there, still safe for her. She drew on his confidence and forced herself away again.
“So, this is what a touch-sensitive looks like,” Maria said coolly. “How . . . interesting.”
Shironne made a half bow in the direction of that voice. “It is my pleasure to meet you.”
“Well,” Maria responded and then walked away, measured footsteps sounding on the floor.
“She’s part Anvarrid, isn’t she?” Shironne asked when the other girl had walked away.
“Yes,” Tabita answered. “How do you know?”
“Um . . . I’m beginning to be able to sort it out, the thing that makes Anvarrid sound different to me in my mind. They . . .” She tried to come up with a description that made sense. “They excel at pushing their emotions at people. They do it in a way Larossans can’t. I don’t know why.”
That set Tabita’s mind to whirling. “Does that make it hereditary?”
She was truly interested in the answer, Shironne decided, seeking knowledge rather than an advantage to push. “Most of the people who work in Colonel Cerradine’s office can do it to some extent,” Shironne said “Not all. My mother can.”
“What about Eli?” one of the other voices asked, reminding Shironne that she and Tabita weren’t alone here. “Has she met Eli yet?”
That last query was addressed to Tabita, not her, but Shironne answered anyway. “I’ve met him before today. I visited here about a month ago, so I met him briefly then.”
“Aha!” a second voice from the bed said. “You’re the Larossan girl Mr. Lee took down to the cold rooms for some reason.”
“Yes. I was there to . . . um, view a dead body.” She’d been there to touch it, actually, to glean what remained of the dead woman’s memories. But most people found the idea of dealing with a corpse unsavory. “Elder Deborah took me down there later to view a second one.”
That set off eager whispering from the trio on the nearby bed.
“Did you meet Gabriel?” Tabita asked.
The other girls shushed, making Shironne suspect Tabita had gestured for them to do so. “Yes, I did.”
A flare of exasperation came from Tabita. “It would have been easier to send him to meet you then, rather than Eli. Eli hates having his schedule disarranged. But of course, Gabriel chose not to mention it, so . . .”
Shironne remembered Gabriel as friendly, with a humorous streak that Eli completely lacked. “Why do you say of course?”
“Gabriel’s destined to be a chaplain,” one of the trio said. “Everyone knows that.”
And
chaplains had to keep secrets.
Tabita had escorted Shironne to the quartermasters’ hall on One Down earlier to procure uniforms and other garments, a satchel, and various necessities. They’d made their way then to the infirmary to ask for a schedule for Shironne’s duty shifts there and followed that with a long walk all the way to the back of the Fortress where the chapel lay. The chapel also served as the refuge on that level, the place to go whenever something dire happened. She’d been introduced to the head chaplain there.
Tabita sighed. “The chaplains want to meet with you regularly. I forgot to add that to your schedule.”
Did everyone want to talk to her? “Why?”
“To talk about your talent,” Tabita clarified. “None of them have ever spoken with a touch-sensitive before, I assume. But they’ll probably wait a few days to make certain you’re comfortable here, that you’re fitting in.”
Because fitting in was all-important inside the confines of the Fortress. That was why Mikael wasn’t allowed to live here, because he was so loud. None of the yeargroups wanted him.
“We’re going up, Tabita,” one of the trio announced. The sounds of moving fabric and footsteps accompanied Shironne’s sense of them moving away. She rose, figuring that Tabita needed to go as well.
“You did the thing where you faded away again,” Tabita said as she rose. “Before Maria spoke with you, I mean. You were losing control and you went away, then you came back calmer. How did you do that?”
I wish I could tell her. “I can’t say.”
A faint hint of frustration came from Tabita, but she tamped it down. “Should I take your hand?”
Shironne rose. “Ah, no. Let me try to get up to the mess myself.”
That offer elicited a flash of approval. “What do I do?”
If Tabita went ahead, Shironne would simply be able to follow her sense of the girl. She was familiar enough with Tabita now to sort out her thoughts from others. “If you don’t mind going slowly, you could stay behind me, to correct me if I get too far off course.”
In Dreaming Bound Page 9
