She pulled a coin from her pocket and dropped it in his bowl. Metal rang against wood.
“Slow night?” she asked as the song finished.
“Police are bad for business.”
“So is murder.”
He leaned down and kissed her. “Murder is your business. You’re cold.” He packed the instrument carefully and stepped off the stage. One arm snaked around her waist and pulled her close. Isyllt let herself lean into his warmth for a moment, inhaling the smoky herbal scent of his hair.
“But why this murder?” he asked. “Wasn’t it just a slasher?” Dark eyes met hers-earnest, honest eyes.
Isyllt chuckled. “What do you know, Ciaran? Don’t make me torture you.”
“I thought you were working.”
The kitchen door swung open and Isyllt disengaged herself. Dahlia emerged, followed by a tall man wearing an apron over the remains of brightly colored drag. He wiped flour off his hands and nodded a circumspect greeting.
Isyllt knew Mekaran Narkissos by reputation, though they’d never been introduced. He’d been Daffodil once, before he retired to run the tavern. Now he sang in flamboyant peacock shows, and fed and housed the Garden’s denizens.
“I’m Mekaran. And you…” Shrewd eyes studied Isyllt, and she could all but see him marking things off a list-white skin, black diamond, ruined hand. “You must be the Lady Iskaldur. You’re here with the marigolds.” The street slang for the orangecoated police was even less flattering when spoken by a former prostitute.
Isyllt fought a grimace; she should have spent more time studying illusion. “I’m not here at all, actually. But I would like to talk to you.”
Mekaran nodded slowly and gestured to a booth. “Sit down. Dahlia, bring us tea, please.” He glanced at Isyllt again. “And something to eat.” The girl bobbed her head and hurried toward the kitchen.
Isyllt raised an eyebrow. “Sheltering the girl?” She shed her coat and slid into the booth, resisting the urge to prop her elbows on the worn wooden table. She doubted she’d see her bed before dawn. Ciaran sat beside her, his thigh a line of warmth against hers.
Mekaran snorted, a silver ring in his nostril flashing. “Shelter a whore’s child? But yes, there are some things she doesn’t need to hear about.”
Isyllt met his dark grey eyes, still lined with kohl and glittering powder. “Things like slashers, or things like Forsythia’s clientele? The ones with sharp teeth.”
Mekaran cocked his head, birdlike. His hair was plumage, short and tousled and washed with pink and orange dyes that caught the light in sunset shades. No pretty cagebird, not with his height and muscle and weight of bone-more like an Assari terror bird.
“Not clients.” He leaned forward. “Forsythia didn’t bleed for money. But she had… a lover.” His mouth twisted on the word.
Isyllt raised an eyebrow. “The jealous sort?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. She didn’t bring him round to meet her friends. She never would have told me, but I saw the marks one day in the bath.” Dark eyebrows rose. “Is that why the Crown is interested in a whore’s death?”
Isyllt lifted a cautionary finger. “The Crown isn’t interested.” She thought for a heartbeat, then unbuttoned the high collar of her blouse. “I have a more personal curiosity.” She tugged the cloth aside to reveal a double crescent of white scar tissue where her left shoulder met her neck. You could never escape gossip, but sometimes you could misdirect it. When the innkeeper’s eyes had widened and narrowed again, she redid the buttons. “Did she say this lover’s name?”
“No.” Mekaran picked at a notch in the table with one painted nail. “But… Syth had been nervous for the past decad. Jumping at shadows. She took fewer clients, stayed in more often. She never told me why.” He looked down at his broad, olive-skinned hands. “I didn’t see her last night, or today. She might have been on her way here-”
He fell silent as Dahlia returned from the kitchen, a tray carefully balanced in both hands. In better light, Isyllt saw the girl’s worn and patched clothes, her peeling shoes and tattered stockings. Not starvation-thin, but whittled lean and lanky. As she drew closer, the smell of black tea and honey made Isyllt’s stomach rumble.
Ciaran raised heavy brows at the sound. “You should take better care of yourself, or you’ll end up on the other side of the mirror yourself.” He poked her ribs where they jutted under her shirt. His fingers trailed down to the sharp angle of her hip and lingered there.
Isyllt devoured three nut and honey pastries; after the second she couldn’t taste the dead woman’s blood any longer. Black peppered tea burned some of the death-chill from her flesh, eased the fatigue dragging at her eyes. Mekaran watched her eat and smiled when the plate was clean.
“Is there anything else you need tonight? I’ll listen around here.”
“Did you know Forsythia’s name?”
He frowned. “No,” he said slowly. “She was a refugee, I think. She didn’t like to talk about the past.”
An omission, if not a lie, but Isyllt didn’t feel like bullying him. She licked honey off her fingers. “If you hear anything at all”-she included Dahlia with a glance-“come to me, not the Vigils. Quietly.” She counted out coins, several times the price of tea and cakes; she’d need to start a new expense tally when she got home.
Mekaran nodded, unasked questions in his eyes. “You should come here more often-as a friend of Ciaran’s, at least. The Crown ought to keep its agents better fed.” He gathered Dahlia-and the money-and steered the girl back to the kitchens.
Ciaran’s hand slipped round Isyllt’s waist again. “You’re still cold. Come to my room and warm up.” His voice was smoke and wine, rich and dark. She shivered.
“Not tonight,” she said with a smile. “I’m working.” She took a last sip of tea, spices burning the roof of her mouth.
His brow creased in a frown. “You’re not going underground alone?” He’d known her for nearly sixteen years, and knew the sort of stupid things she was likely to do.
“Not now,” she promised. She bumped his hip until he moved aside. With a sigh she collected her coat, leather heavy in her arms. “First I pay a visit to the palace.”
The fastest way to the new palace was past the old. Nearly everyone was willing to sacrifice time to avoid it, but Isyllt tipped the coachman well enough to overcome his misgivings. She drew the curtains back in the cab as they passed. The night was already morbid; what was a little more gloom?
A wall had been built decades ago to contain the ruin-thick grey stone, tall and topped with warded iron-but the towers and domes were visible above it. White sandstone shone soft and ghostly in the cloud-tattered moonlight. By day the grime and decay of centuries were visible, but the night washed it clean as bones. The horses didn’t care about the view. Already they sped into a bone-jarring canter. Over the creak and rattle of wheels and springs Isyllt heard the driver curse.
By Isyllt’s standards it was a mild night. The breeze over the ruin only made her nape prickle and her ring itch. On bad days proximity to the palace would set a mage to retching, or leave their head throbbing for hours. And that was after decades of wind and sun and clean rain to ease the taint-she couldn’t imagine what it must have been like two centuries ago.
No one was entirely certain what had happened in the original palace. Everyone who had been in the throne room died-instantly, some legends told it, others slowly and terribly, but either theory was only conjecture. That they died was certainly true, and nearly everyone else in the palace as well, save those lucky few who escaped the maelstrom of furious magic and summoned spirits. Over the decades, the story had been built and layered and embossed to a tragedy worthy of a thousand stages.
The events leading up to the disaster were well-documented, or as well as two-hundred-year-old sources could be trusted. Tsetsilya Konstantin, cousin and purported lover of the crown prince, died from a fall down a flight of tower stairs. The prince, Ioanis Korinthes, fled the palace th
at night in a rage and returned several days later, no less wrathful and with a handful of sorcerers at his back. Who exactly might have pushed Tsetsilya-if pushed she was-and what words were spoken between Ioanis and his father, Demos II, could only be speculated. Ioanis’s involvement with a proscribed sect of spirit worshipers was also speculation.
However it came to pass, the barriers between the mortal world and the reflected world were ripped violently asunder, and a vortex of magic and hungry spirits emerged. Incursions into the palace days later found bodies charred, eviscerated, flayed, sucked to empty husks, and deliquescing in foul puddles. Intact corpses had already been possessed, as well as any survivors who hadn’t escaped quickly enough.
All the mages in the Arcanost couldn’t undo the damage, nor salvage the palace, though they held the city together through the terror. Demons prowled the streets even by daylight, and untrained mages and mediums went mad or catatonic. Magic fouled the air and water, and those too close to the epicenter contracted bizarre maladies. The once wealthy neighborhoods around the palace were deserted in weeks, never to regain their glory. House Korinthes never reclaimed the throne, and lost the rest of its power within a generation. Isola Alexios, a general at the time of the Hecatomb, had used the unrest to ease her way to power, and her family to the Octagon Court.
The city was never the same, but at least it went on, and learned to thrive all over again.
They turned off Desolation Circle, and Isyllt pulled the curtain shut. History was good for perspective-after a disaster like the Hecatomb, a dead prostitute and stolen ring and her own heartache hardly seemed so much.
The new palace, called the Azure Palace for its blue domes, was everything the old palace was not-colorful, sprawling, lush with gardens and orchards. Removed from the decay at the city’s heart.
The guards wasted no time when a disheveled sorcerer knocked at the door on the wrong side of morning, but escorted Isyllt inside. The prince’s page, a boy about Dahlia’s age who stared at her as if she might sprout wings and snatch him through the closest mirror, led her to a book-and map-lined study and ran to fetch his master.
Isyllt draped her coat over a chair and sank onto the soft upholstery with a weary sigh. Her eyes and neck ached, and she felt the cold and damp more keenly in her left hand. Her hair slipped free of its pins, trailing dark strands over her shoulders. She stared at the toes of her boots, wincing at the muddy prints she left on the expensive Iskari carpet. The air leaking through the shutters smelled of rain and roses and conjured the taste of blood into her mouth once more. She grimaced-death and decay might be her specialty, but she didn’t always like to be reminded.
A few moments later she heard footsteps and the door opened. She caught a glimpse of the page’s wide dark eyes peering around the corner, and then the crown prince of Selafai entered the room, a tea tray balanced on one hand.
Isyllt rose and bowed, the ring bouncing against her chest as she straightened; the spell was quiescent. Nikos Alexios came to her barefoot, wearing a hastily tied brocade robe over loose silk pajama trousers. Sleep still tousled his black curls and stubble darkened his jaw. He blinked at her, disconcertment comical on his handsome face-no one wanted to be awakened before dawn by a necromancer.
He shoved papers across the polished mahogany desk and set down the tray. “Lady Iskaldur. To what do I owe this unexpected visit?” He sat, and she followed suit.
She had known the prince for years, since she first became apprenticed to the king’s own sorcerer and spymaster; they were nearly of an age. Though never close, he greeted her at balls and social functions, and she and Kiril had dined with Nikos and his mistress-and later with his wife-from time to time. He looked so much like his dead mother, from his brown Archipelagan skin to his long-lashed golden brown eyes. Those eyes were wary as he regarded her now.
She took the cup of tea he offered, letting it warm her hands. An unlooked-for honor, to be served by the prince, but she knew it was nothing but habit, his ongoing efforts to be nothing like his father. His pleasantness and approachability weren’t a lie, precisely, but he did nothing without reason.
“I’m afraid I need to ask your whereabouts last night, and earlier this evening.”
He paused in the midst of spooning honey into his tea, then relaxed a little when she smiled. “Last night I was at the Orpheum Tharymis with Thea Jsutien and her husband. The Rain Queen is worth seeing, by the way, though their tenor was only adequate. Tonight I stayed in, hiding from my lovely harpy of a wife.” He made a wry face as he wiped up a stray drop of honey, and the gold marriage ring in his left nostril flashed. “Kistos saw me, and my guards, but of course they’d lie for me.” He offered her a smile in return. “Why? What might I have been doing?”
“Murdering a woman in the Garden.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Why me?”
She set down her untasted tea and pulled the chain from beneath her shirt. “Not you in particular-anyone who could have put their hands on this.”
He sucked in a breath as gold and sapphire glittered in the light. A nearly identical ring sat on his right hand. “That was my mother’s.”
Just the answer she’d feared. “You’re sure?” She held it out. “It couldn’t be some older ring that was lost?”
The spell tingled in her head as he touched the band, so faint she barely felt it. Nothing like its reaction to her or Khelséa. But if it was his mother’s ring, he might have touched it a hundred times.
He ran a finger along the gold; he had his mother’s long sandalwood hands. Many still felt the queen’s loss keenly after three years, but Isyllt suspected her grief was more selfish than most.
“I’m sure,” Nikos said. “This should be in her tomb.”
Isyllt’s aching eyes sagged shut. “Shall we go and pay our respects, Your Highness?”
She finished her cooling tea while the prince dressed, but all she tasted was bitterness and blood. Tomb robbers. The queen’s tomb. Hadn’t Lychandra’s death been painful enough, that they were forced to relive it now? Kiril might never have set her aside if not for that day. He would still be at the king’s side, at least, if not hers.
What would Kiril do when he learned of this? She could only thank the saints that Mathiros was in Ashke Ros and not here to receive the news. He was too sensitive to any mention of his wife-the desecration of her crypt would drive him into a rage.
Dawn bruised the eastern sky as they crossed the grounds and the palace came alive around them, servants starting their day and guard shifts changing. Today was an owl day, at least, auspicious for piety and offerings to the dead. Though most people preferred to save their piety for well after daybreak. Nikos fidgeted with his embroidered sleeves, finally shoving his hands into his coat pockets.
Crickets chirped in the garden as they followed the mossy flagstone path to the temple, and trees and banners rustled in the breeze. The air held the fragrance of the season’s last blossoms; soon the cold rain of autumn would turn sharp and bitter and give way to frost.
The domed temple rose over the trees, white marble ethereal in the grey light. The same Sindhaïn architecture as the dead palace, and the comparison made her shiver-maybe she shouldn’t have ridden past it after all. The temple doors stood always open, symbolic sanctuary and hospitality, but in truth every inch of the place was warded, and the comings and goings of the pious carefully watched. Old magic sighed in Isyllt’s ears as she crossed the tiled threshold.
Colored glass lanterns hung from the vaulted ceiling, scattering prisms of blue and green across the walls. An acolyte bowed to Nikos as the prince paused to collect a dish of incense and a lamp.
A hundred broad stairs led down into the catacombs, worn shallow from a century and a half of feet. Frescoes watched with stony eyes, saints and spirits and long-dead kings, darkened by passing hands.
The air chilled as Isyllt and Nikos descended, thickened with dust and incense. Their footsteps echoed down the passageway no matter how l
ightly they tried to tread. Witchlights burned at intervals, set into recesses in the walls. The shadows they cast were eerier than darkness might have been.
They passed sealed doors and open ones, shelves of sarcophagi set into the walls. Kings and queens so old Isyllt didn’t know their names. Many were empty, the intended occupants long turned to dust beneath the old palace, but a few coffins had been salvaged and relocated. Such catacombs riddled Erisín, though the tombs outside the palace were smaller, plainer affairs, and the temples closed their crypts except on holy days.
Some newer coffins were made of glass, to show off the preservation spells cast on their occupants. A flashy macabre custom, but it kept second-rate necromancers in business. Isyllt studied the dusty glass with amusement; Nikos kept his eyes on the hall ahead.
Finally they came to the Alexios family crypt and Nikos pulled out an iron key from a cord around his neck. The lock clicked and the heavy door opened soundlessly into darkness. Nikos paused to light his lamp, but Isyllt had already summoned witchlight. The pale glow sent their shadows crawling across the floor and up the walls, but did nothing to dispel the cold.
These sarcophagi were all stone-the Alexioi tended to conservatism. Nikos’ mother, the newest death, rested on a marble plinth in the center of the room. The likeness carved upon the stone lid was very good. Lychandra hadn’t worn that look of peace when she died, but by the time the body had been prepared she was serene. Isyllt had cleaned the queen’s corpse herself and cast the first of the preservation spells while Kiril recovered.
A smell distracted her from memories, the sharp scent of lightning. “Someone’s been here. It reeks of magic.”
Nikos sniffed and stifled a sneeze at the dust. He set aside his lamp and incense and crouched beside the chests piled around the plinth to inspect the locks. “Broken.” He made a face as though he wanted to spit. “Kistos could do a better job with a hair pin.” He stared down at the velvet-lined bottom of a gilded box. “All her jewels…”
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