Savedra didn’t realize she’d pressed a hand to her mouth until she tried to take a breath. “How did you find out?”
“Varis found the poison years later and told me. I was his only ally with Alena so weak. It was her brandy that was poisoned, which only made it worse. And by the time we stopped it, it was too late for her health.”
“What did you do?”
Nadesda’s smile was chilling. “We poisoned Tselios. And we stood over him as he choked and vomited his life out. He had plenty of enemies, and we were only children. No one accused either of us.” Her smile faded. “Alena died less than a year later, and Varis came to Erisín. He wanted… I don’t know what. Justice for his mother, recognition from Nikolaos. Anything. But the king paid no attention to him at all. There was no use in causing a scene-no one remembered by then. No one cared. And then he was sent to Iskar, and by the time he returned Nikolaos was dead. So there was never a chance for more.”
She leaned back in her chair, shoulders slumping. “And now he sees you, another mistress to an Alexios forced aside by a royal marriage. Nikos may not be anything like his grandfather, but that hardly matters to Varis.”
Savedra didn’t cry. She’d trained herself out of the habit too well. But her eyes ached like bruises as she looked up at her mother. “Does it matter to you?”
“Oh, darling.” Nadesda knelt beside her, holding her close and pressing Savedra’s face to her soft shoulder. “Darling, you can’t go on like this-it’s tearing you apart.”
“You’re right,” she whispered against Nadesda’s collarbone, inhaling the comforting scent of perfume and warm skin. More right than she knew. “But what else is there? And that doesn’t answer my question.”
Nadesda drew away, pulling Savedra up as she stood. “Your happiness does matter to me. And I do think Nikos would be a better king than his father, at least in peace. But the people who most want Mathiros off the throne don’t want to simply replace him with his son.”
“What can I do?”
“I don’t know. What will you do?” Her mother’s dark eyes were serious now.
“If I expose Varis it will only bring trouble down on the whole house. Don’t think I don’t know that.” She didn’t glance at the window, at the lightless bulk of Sphinx House. She didn’t need to. “I am a Severos, Mother, no matter where my other loyalties lie. But I can’t let him assassinate anyone. I’ll talk to him. Maybe I can make him understand.”
“Maybe you can.” The sadness in her voice belied the words. “Saints be with you, then.”
Varis’s housekeeper didn’t want to admit Savedra, but wasn’t prepared to deny a member of the family. Since his carriage was visible around the back and lights burned in the upstairs windows, she could hardly claim he was out visiting. She stammered something about the lord being busy, but Savedra broke in with her brightest smile.
“It’s all right. I won’t stay long. I’m sure he won’t mind. I can see myself up.” She turned toward the sweeping marble stair before the woman could argue.
Savedra tried to marshal her thoughts as she climbed. What could she say to him? Surely she could sway him. He’d been her doting uncle all her life, and Nikos couldn’t be held accountable for his grandfather’s sins. And Ashlin-Her throat tightened at the thought of the princess. Ashlin didn’t deserve to suffer for a political marriage she didn’t even want, but it was rankest naïveté to think that would stop anyone who desired her out of the way.
The library door stood open a crack, spilling a bright sliver of gold across the hall. The hinges didn’t squeak as she laid a careful hand on the wood. But her greeting died unspoken as she looked inside.
A woman stood on a stool in the center of the room, surrounded by lamps. A tailor crouched at her feet adjusting her hem, his mouth glittering with silver pins. A beautiful woman, to judge by the figure wrapped in white silk, but her face was veiled, dark hair carefully pinned up.
Savedra froze in the doorway, pulse quickening in her throat. In her turmoil over Nikos and Ashlin, she had almost forgotten Phaedra. Or whoever Varis’s mysterious book-stealing friend truly was. She nearly fled to regroup, but her toes scuffed on the edge of a carpet and Varis turned.
“Vedra.” For the first time she could remember, he didn’t look happy to see her. He covered it quickly, though, pulling on a smile and bowing over her hand. “Hello, darling. You’ve caught me at a rather inopportune moment, I’m afraid. Which is what happens when one doesn’t announce oneself. Or knock.”
“Inopportune? Like the time Mother walked in on you with the twin contortionists?” Her smile ached as she held it in place.
“Acrobats. They were acrobats. And not, I might add, doing anything unusually acrobatic at the time. Your mother likes to exaggerate that story more than it deserves. She didn’t knock either, as I recall. Besides, I’d much rather be walked in on doing something worthy of gossip. This hardly qualifies.”
“Mysterious women are always worthy of gossip.” She curtsied toward the woman on the stool. “Forgive me for interrupting.”
The woman waved a hand dismissively, earning a tsk from the tailor. “Not at all. Few things are more boring than standing still for hours at a time. And now I’m curious about these acrobats.”
Her voice pricked the nape of Savedra’s neck, soft and husky and oddly familiar. But not, as she’d imagined from Iancu’s description, Sarken; this woman’s native tongue was Selafaïn. The words were casual, the woman’s face not quite turned her way, but she felt the weight of her stare like a hand. Her arm throbbed beneath her sleeve. Did they know?
“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 pain
ed, 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?”
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