by Sam Hawke
I glanced up. “Yes, someone else from the committee was complaining about that the other day,” I said, thinking back to the little group of frantic committee members I’d dodged after that particularly tense Council meeting. “They were worried about how they were going to manage the ceremony with half their members out if they didn’t get better soon.”
Kalina squinted at a little note beside the first of the pox cases, in Thendra’s handwriting. “‘Unsure of diagnosis at this time,’” she read out. “She’s not sure it’s pox?”
“Huh.” I stopped what I was doing. I suddenly felt very aware of my breathing, yet I felt strangely calm.
“What is it?”
“It’s just … burning pox is pretty distinctive. I only know one thing that presents like it but isn’t,” I said slowly. “If you got them handling false goaberries they’d get a rash with hives that look pretty similar to the pox. And it’s burning, incredibly painful. They’ll be in the hospital for weeks if they handled the juice.” The beginnings of an understanding were creeping up on me. I took a breath, got my own composure steady. I needed not to chase the thought too hard and lose it. “The one thing we can be certain of is what happened to me. Whether it was impromptu or the assassin deliberately lured me to the Hands, either way, why did they do what they did?”
Kalina leaned back, thoughtful. She started to tuck her hands behind her head but flinched and stopped; her arm was still bound and the nasty gouges from the bird must have still hurt. “If the plan had worked, if you’d been caught with Tuhash’s body like they hoped, what would have happened?”
“I’d have been under investigation by the determination council, for starters.”
“And if a formal investigation was indicated, you wouldn’t be free to wander around in public, acting like everything was normal. If their plan had worked, you might not be in jail but you certainly wouldn’t be attending public events. Even if you weren’t formally accused, the Talafan contingent will be at the closing ceremony, and it makes sense you wouldn’t stand right there in their faces. Maybe that’s why, out of every drunk they could have pulled out of the masquerade, they chose a Talafan one.”
“All right, but that’s where I am anyway, isn’t it?” I tried to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “If they wanted me out of the way, it worked. I’ve been stuck here for days because we thought that was the right thing to do.”
“But why out of the way and not dead? Dead is easier. If you’re causing them trouble, why bother discrediting you when they could just kill you? Because if you were dead,” she answered herself slowly, “imagine what would have happened. Would your best friend in all the world, your brother practically, be heading out to the closing ceremony tomorrow?”
I blinked. If I were dead, Tain would be in deepest mourning. “No. Of course he wouldn’t.”
“Then what if that’s what they wanted. For you to miss the closing ceremony, but not Tain.”
I poked the list with one finger. “Honor-down. Lini, I think you’re right. There are going to be people missing from the ceremony planning staff. Maybe at least one Order Guard who was meant to be on security.” I flexed my hands in turn, the count almost forgotten as my gaze skidded over the papers before us, rapid and anxious, but almost exhilarated; it felt like we were on the edge of understanding. “They’re planning something, and it’s got to be at the closing ceremony. Could they be inciting a riot? Another miniature rebellion? We didn’t notice the signs last time, but they knew how to turn people against each other, all right. They were bloody experts at it.” There would be thousands of people packed into the arena. Had things really gotten so bad again between the classes without us noticing? Even with all of the steps we’d taken? “How in all the fortunes could we guard against something like that happening?”
“It would distract everyone,” Kalina said. “Create chaos. Having some key staff out of the picture will make it harder to control the event.”
“Or,” I muttered, thinking, “it’s the opposite. We’re worrying about riots and things that could go wrong on a big scale, but think about this: the closing ceremony is the only event Tain can’t, or won’t, skip. And he’ll be visible, they’ll know where he’s going to be, but the opposite won’t be true; half the bloody city is going to be packed into the arena, anyone could hide. If the assassin, or whatever he is, and the Hands are working together, the fortunes only know how many people they’ve got at their disposal.”
“You’re saying this time it really could be an assassination,” Kalina said grimly. “Because this time you’re not supposed to be there, so it’s not a setup for you. What if they’re really going to try to kill Tain this time.” She took a hard breath. “He’ll be in the viewing box, with all of the representatives from the other countries. They’ll have armed guards, all of them, they got special dispensation from the Council, remember? If one of them, or more than one of them, is behind this…”
I stood abruptly, took a step, having forgotten my sore ankle, swore, and caught myself on the windowsill. “We’ll tell him he can’t go.”
“We can try,” she said doubtfully.
“We’ll bring this to the blackstripes and the Order Guards. If they agree there’s a threat, they won’t let him go, or they’ll cancel the whole thing.”
She shook her head. “And how would that look? He can’t tell our supposed allies he suspects one of us might have financed our own civil war and might still be working against them. Besides, it’s his big event, Jov. He’s worked himself to the bone for this. I think he thinks—” She stopped, a strange, worried shadow passing over her face. “I think he thinks the country’s legacy, and the new Council and everything he’s worked for, will be kind of cemented, if this karodee is a success.”
“Well, he should be less concerned with his legacy and more concerned with living long enough to have one,” I retorted. “One thing at a time.”
She gave me a funny look, her brow furrowed, her eyes searching, as if I’d misunderstood her, but after a moment she shook her head and laid a hand on my arm. “Assume no one is going to agree to cancel the ceremony unless we bring absolutely watertight evidence about what’s going to happen. Let’s concentrate on getting Tain not to go. If we sound paranoid they’ll dismiss us, so we need to simplify this, find the most convincing bits of information to take to them to show them there’s a real threat.”
“They have to listen,” I said, but I could already see their faces. The polite incredulity. The tolerance. The dismissal. “Lini, I just know there’s something wrong, and I don’t ignore that feeling anymore, not ever, not ever again.”
I realized I was sweating, breathing heavily. My sister’s hand shifted from my arm to my forehead, testing temperature. “Your skin feels hot,” she said, frowning. “Maybe we ought to have Thendra look at you again. You don’t seem well and we don’t really know what those drugs could have done to you.”
“I’m fine. It’s probably the strain of being cooped up here.” It came out sharper than I’d meant it to, and I regretted it when hurt slid across her features. She knew better than anyone what it was like to be cooped up involuntarily, and complaining about my brief stint made me something of an entitled baby. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right. Look, I don’t think we should ignore the instinct, either. We just need to work through it first though. There’s no point bursting into the Manor demanding we cancel a ceremony people have spent literally months planning without being able to offer a firm threat. They won’t listen to you.”
The anger dropped from me and I slumped, deflated. “I know.” They hadn’t listened about the assassin and they weren’t listening about the dead spirits on the estates, or the spread of Void, or anything else that upset their illusion that the mistakes of the past were over and the country was safe. They wanted to believe Aven had somehow funded all her machinations herself, had forgotten or ignored her admission in front of witnesses that she was an agent of another party.
But here in front of us, fractured as it was, was evidence another move was being made against us. “We’ll prepare something, and we’ll make them listen.”
INCIDENT: Poisoning of Warrior-Guilder Ana Stefevo
POISON: Poison rookgrass
INCIDENT NOTES: Warrior-Guilder Ana collapsed and suffered a series of convulsions at site of battle with White Taskjer tribe (Doran). Several senior officers suffered similar but less severe effects, traced to consumption of roasted bindie; contents of stomach revealed distinctive yellowed flesh suggesting bindie consumed poison rookgrass. Tactical disadvantage of incapacitation of key officers suggests Doranite infiltration of camp. Warrior Guild to conduct own internal investigation in search of spies.
(from proofing notes of Credola Tasuri Oromani)
12
Kalina
“They didn’t listen.”
Even if he hadn’t said it, I’d have known it from the visible combination of anger and exhaustion written on my brother’s face as he slumped into the apartment. My heart sank. Maybe I should have gone, I thought guiltily. Even if I’m not a Councilor, maybe it would have been taken more seriously coming from someone else.
“Who came to the meeting?” I asked, clearing some space between Dija and me at the table. Dija glanced nervously at Jovan as he sat, but had the presence of mind to quietly pour him a tea, which he took gratefully.
“Captain and Second of the blackstripes at the start,” he said, voice hollow. He took a long sip. “And Moest showed up near the end, and then a few of the karodee committee. Tain was the only one not looking at me like I was the simple child in the room who needed to be accommodated. They made a show of listening, but they just don’t believe it.” He hesitated, looking at Dija, then glanced around the room. We were alone, Sjease having agreed to take today as their day off, and the rest of the family having gone out with some of their Telasan friends this morning.
“It’s just us here,” I reassured him, but his gaze lingered on his apprentice, uncertain. I knew he was feeling guilty about what she had seen and done on his behalf. Had Etan felt this way, I wondered suddenly, when he had trained us? Had there been a point where the games and tests had become so serious he had worried it was wrong to involve children? Most of those early skills had felt more like games than traumas: stay unseen in this room for an hour; find out the name of a popular singer’s favorite pet; steal a letter from a pile for delivery, causing a slight and a fractured relationship between two families, and ultimately prevent a particular business deal. I had never felt any reluctance on his part, and on mine I had wanted so desperately to be useful, to earn the right to honor on my own behalf, even if only a private renown between my Tashi and myself. But it would have been different with Jov. Proofing was more dangerous than my quiet arts, and the training required punishing the body again and again. It could not have been easy for Etan to do that to his beloved nephew, not even with the best and most honorable of motives. He had given his life and his devotion to Chancellor Caslav and his family, but he had loved us.
Jov caught my eye and I sensed his reluctance to speak in front of Dija. He might have to poison her, because there was no other way to teach the ways of our family’s art, but she didn’t need to be embroiled in politics at this stage, nor did she need to grapple with the mystery of Aven’s financier and their apparent grudge against our country. She could be young, a little longer.
But stubbornness was an Oromani trait if anything was, and Dija squared her little jaw and asked, her voice small but firm, “Is there going to be another attack on the Chancellor?”
He looked surprised, then cross, then worried, all in the space of a few breaths. Then he sighed. “Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, we think so, Dija. There’s been a range of poisonings, we think, of people who are involved in the closing ceremony, maybe to make it easier for them to get someone in position for whatever they’re planning. And we think the reason I was attacked and then set up was to make sure I didn’t come.”
She swirled the tea in her cup around in a manner reminiscent of how Etan used to do it. “And they didn’t listen? The Chancellor doesn’t believe you?”
“Of course he believes me,” Jov replied sourly. “And he told them so. But he thinks they can keep him safe anyway, or at least he’s willing to pretend he thinks that. The committee head looked like she was going to faint when I suggested we cancel the ceremony and just formally end the karodee at some smaller, private event.”
I bit back the curses springing to my tongue. I hadn’t really thought they’d be willing to cancel the event, but hearing it dismissed out loud was still painful.
“They kept saying they’ll look into things, take all our concerns seriously, and they’ll take precautions, but … I don’t know, Lini. Either they never really believed Aven wasn’t working alone or two years of peace have made them complacent. They’ll be on the lookout for an assassin but I couldn’t really make them understand we could be dealing with an entire criminal gang.”
I frowned. “Did they say anything about the dead man?”
“Directly? No. But they’d absolutely heard about it already. Even little Erel was giving me some funny looks. One of them made a bit of a snide comment and Tain took it head-on, said he thought rumors to that effect were part of a pattern of discrediting me. No idea if the Captain believed him or not.” He shook his head. “So much for the honor of the Oromanis, eh? Famous the country wide for uncovering a conspiracy, but fortunes forbid anyone should listen to us when we’re warning them about another one. You’d think,” he said, acquiring a knife and stabbing into a piece of cold meat with unnecessary vigor, “all that bloody fame would at least earn us the right to be taken seriously when we’re trying to save lives.”
But there, of course, was the paradox. The careful actions over time, the poisonings, the unnatural good luck in our political and business life had done their work in sowing suspicions about my brother’s true nature; the irony was by identifying the deaths and injuries as suspicious, they already had evidence of a thoughtful, careful planner. Yet presenting these actions as part of a conspiracy rather than a random series of events was scoffed at, called paranoid.
“What changes are they making, then? Presumably Tain reassured them you were to be listened to on this. Right? Is he staying away, at least?”
He scoffed. “No, you were right. He wouldn’t hear of it. You said it yourself, he’s too invested in this going well.”
“Do you think…” I stopped. I’d tried to bring this up yesterday, but even then I’d not been able to properly articulate what had bothered me. There were just things Tain had said, impressions he’d given off, that unsettled me in an indefinable way. “He worries me sometimes. He’s so focused on the karodee, and he said something to me about Merenda, about her being accepted as Heir…”
Jov looked up sharply from his food. “What about Merenda? She seems competent enough, and Tain likes her.”
“He said something about not wanting her to have to deal with what he dealt with. Being thrown into a disaster and having to be a Chancellor in a crisis instead of one in peace.”
He looked at me, a deep line between his eyes. “What’s he worrying about that for, of all things? We can’t control now what the country will look like in forty or fifty years. We have to focus on our problems now. He’s got enough to be going along with.” He drained the last of his tea. “Chances are Merenda won’t ever have to rule anyway. Her daughters are going to join her here next year, and it’ll likely be one of them who eventually joins the Council.”
He’d missed my point. I opened my mouth to explain that what worried me was Tain seeming to see only far ahead enough to contemplate a position of stability, as if that were the end of the line. As if that were the end of his line. But instead I pressed my lips together again. There was no point sharing that particular anxiety with someone who already carried too many. “If he’s going, what are they doing to protect him then?”
/> “They’ll change the route they take tonight. And Tain will show up for the obstacle course final but not move up to the box until after that’s finished, so he’ll approach from an unexpected area.” He sighed. “It’s not enough. He’s still going to end up in that viewing box and there’s only so many ways of getting there, and none at all I can guarantee won’t be blocked.”
“What can we do?” Dija asked. I was proud of her composure even as I worried about it. Jovan must have felt the same way because he looked at her more warily than appreciatively.
“You don’t need to do anything,” he said. “I’m going to have to break it to your mother and grandmother that all of you should stay home tonight. I’ve got no idea what will happen, but if we can’t have the bloody thing canceled then at least you can stay safe here. But in the meantime, you’re going to go to the craft markets this afternoon with your aunt, same as we promised.” He stabbed another piece of meat and scowled at it. “And I am going to search my papers another time to see if I can find anything we’ve missed that will serve as incontrovertible proof.”
Dija set down her cup, and a little tea sloshed out of it, the only sign of her displeasure. “I don’t want to go to the craft markets while the Chancellor is in danger,” she said. “I would rather help you. That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?” Her tone was polite, but there was a little of her frustration in that last sentence.
“This one’s bigger than you, little one,” I said gently. I, in any case, still wanted to go to the market, had banked on going to the market, because it was where I had asked Zhafi to meet me. “Jovan has told the Chancellor’s guard what we know. There’s nothing we can add unless we have more information.”
