by Andrew Rowe
“Kind of you to look after her feelings like that,” Lydia offered. Aladir looked frustrated, which Lydia understood – he had never been pleased by subterfuge, and he had been a part of a deception in the previous evening, even if only in minor ways.
Aladir crossed his arms and spoke in a sharp tone. “Her desire to avoid her family does not make her innocent. It could just as easily be a deflection – it just makes her family members look like suspects.”
“As they should. House Dianis as a whole is one of the most influential houses in the city. I don’t know anything of their background with House Theas, but they’re worth investigating.” Jonan took a deep breath. “But we should ask Vorianna what she knows first – she might be able to help us. And if she is guilty, which I doubt, asking her may give us a chance to find deceptions in her story.”
“We should be arresting her as a suspect and verifying her claims with sorcery.” Aladir stepped away from the wall, moving toward the door of the room. “We have enough information to indicate that, at a minimum, she probably deliberately let the assassins leave.”
Lydia shook her head. “That’s not a crime in itself. And arresting her may let the assassins know we’re close to finding them, especially if they’re from her own house.”
“How would they know? We can arrest her discretely.”
“Her father and sister are still staying at this household, actually.” Jonan groaned, rolling onto his right side. “Ostensibly to check in on me later today. If Vorianna is arrested, there’s a good chance they’d find out, unless you can just get her to walk out of the complex with you quietly without having anyone else involved.”
Which means they had access to Nedelya, Lydia realized. All three of the members of House Dianis were somewhere in this compound when Nedelya ended her own life.
“Let’s try talking to her first. Bringing in the city guard to arrest her – or anyone else – would make a scene, and I’d rather get information first. If she’s too evasive, we’ll try to get the guard to arrest all three of them at the same time.”
“Just tell her I’m awake and that we need to talk.” Jonan asked. “And hand me that other pair of glasses – the ones with the silvery rims.”
Lydia found the glasses he was asking for in the case and picked them up. The lenses were thinner, but as soon as she touched the glasses she could feel a familiar sensation – protection sorcery, mixed with something else – within the lenses.
“I’ll go get her.” Aladir left the room, closing the door behind him.
Jonan took the new glasses, putting them on and handing her the other pair to replace in the case. “So, how well do you know your partner?”
Lydia turned her head to the side quizzically. “Quite well. We trained together for years prior to my deployment to Orlyn. He’s a good friend and a hard worker. Why do you ask?”
“Because he was the first to the scene when Kalsiris was killed, but ‘failed’ to heal him. Then, he was conveniently absent when the assassins struck, but present at the manor during the time when Nedelya Theas killed herself. Does that sound accurate?”
Lydia tensed, tightening her jaw. “Technically correct. But he’s a career healer – and Kalsiris was his friend.”
“Right, giving him a degree of familiarity with the household, their defenses, and Kalsiris’ habits.”
“He’s not a travel sorcerer. I’ve checked his dominions myself – more than once. Nor is he a poison sorcerer.”
“He probably didn’t poison Kalsiris himself, I admit that. But if he arranged for himself to be present when the call for help came, he could make sure that no other healers reached House Theas quickly enough to provide life-saving aid.”
“All true. But I think you’re deflecting blame because you don’t want your friend to be connected.”
“You’re doing exactly the same thing.”
“One of us is going to be disappointed.”
“No,” Jonan lowered his head, “I suspect we both are.”
Lydia leaned back in her chair. “Is there anything you aren’t telling me? Anything at all you can think of that might be relevant?”
Jonan reached up, rubbing his forehead with his right hand and grimacing. “Let me think for a minute.”
Lydia searched her own mind as well. What other clues do we have? The note – can we tie that to someone directly?
And Jonan is thinking more clearly than we gave him credit for. How much of that earlier disorientation was pretense? If he suspected Aladir from the beginning…
But Aladir was going to tell Jonan about the note. I’m the one who stopped that – and if Aladir wrote the note, he probably wouldn’t want anyone else to know about it.
Unless Aladir had someone else write the note, or the note itself is an intentional distraction. If Aladir is actually the killer, he’d know exactly what to do in order to distract me and sow doubt in my mind. Resh, that’s bad.
“Vorianna implied that her sister was the one who made the poison – and Liarra did prove capable of treating it, at least to the extent that I’m alive. That could imply that Liarra was, in fact, familiar with the poison. Or she could just be talented at treating poisons.”
“That’s good, but it’s not enough,” Lydia considered. “Was there anything else that we could have missed? Anything strange?”
“Aladir asked for Liarra to come treat my wound, but her father came along. That wasn’t all that strange, given that it was late at night, but he wanted to inspect my wound first. When he first arrived, he talked about casting a stability spell on my arm to help with the process. But he only touched my arm the once – when he found the ice spell. And then he insisted it needed to be removed for Liarra to work, which seemed unusual.”
“So, he had proposed to help you with one type of spell, and then objected when a similar spell was already in place? That does seem odd. Do you think he cast something on your arm when he inspected it?”
“He might have.”
“Hold on, let me touch your arm.” Lydia leaned over, putting her hands on the arm near – but not on top of – the injury. “Dominion of Knowledge, measure the flow of essence within his body.”
Normally, she would have used a spell designed for identifying spell effects if she had a clear target to work with – but in this case, she wasn’t certain exactly what she was looking for.
Closing her eyes, she began to visualize the dominion essence within Jonan’s body. Powerful sources of essence burned brightly in his skull - his eyes were the most concentrated area of power in his body, but she could see from the rippling effects in their glow that they had been taxed to near their limit.
Most of the dominions she detected within his body were typical – blood, heat, and life in standard proportions. His life dominion essence was focused near his wound, which was unsurprising. He also demonstrated a greater than normal amount of flame essence, primarily concentrated near his hands – an indication that he had some talent at flame sorcery.
Searching near the wound, she found small rivers of foreign essence. More dominion essence of life, presumably from Aladir’s spells. Dominion essence of ice, from the spell that Vorianna had apparently used to stabilize him. And dominion essence of nature, which had apparently been used to treat the poison.
The scant remnants of the poison within his body were scattered among larger pools of essence of nature and water. Structurally, the remaining poison looked identical to what she had seen in Kalsiris’ body, but the surrounding dominions looked unusual. Examining the area more closely, she realized that the amount of water essence was bothering her – there was too much of it.
Lydia had ignored the water essence initially because the Dominion of Water was frequently used to treat poisons, and it also was found naturally within the body – but the proportion was too high to simply represent Jonan’s natural resource, especially since he was specialized in the opposite dominion.
Checking carefully, she found some o
f that water essence bonded to the ice essence – but some of the water essence was a freely floating stream, a separate spell effect.
What’s this other water spell connected to the poison? It shouldn’t be here. I don’t have a spell for digging deeper into the remnants of an older spell effect, but I could try adapting my identification spell and channeling it through this one…
Dominion of Knowledge, show me more about this trail.
Her mind throbbed with sudden pain and she fell backward in her chair, striking the ground.
Lydia’s vision was black for several moments, her mind blank in shock.
“Lydia! Lydia, what happened?”
By the time her eyes fluttered open, she was on the floor, her head in Jonan’s lap. She didn’t remember hearing him leave the bed.
“Talk to me, Lydia. What happened?”
She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember what had just happened.
“I…I don’t know.”
She did remember something, though – the spell. There was a spell, and she was reaching out to it.
“You were analyzing something – spell effects on my arm, I believe.”
Right. The spells.
“Help me up?” Lydia asked.
Jonan displayed his injured arm to her. “Still not in a great place to do that, sorry.”
She closed her eyes again. Her temples burned with fresh agony. Remember. What was the last thing –
A green-scaled serpent inside his flesh, tearing him apart from within. A hand reached down and crushed the serpent’s head. The body shimmered, the scales shifting to a yellow tinged with blue. It thrashed within the grip, wreaking havoc in the throes of its death – and then it was cast into the rocks, splitting apart into tiny fragments, gradually being worn away by the waves.
“The Dominion of Knowledge isn’t supposed to be vague,” Lydia complained. She kept her eyes closed, rubbing her head. The door to the room opened.
“I, um, are we interrupting something?” Aladir’s voice sounded alarmed – or perhaps a little embarrassed.
Jonan chuckled. “Nothing as intimate as it might look. She tried to analyze the wound on my arm and nearly fainted.”
“That’s odd.” She heard Aladir coming closer, as well as a second set of footsteps behind him. When she opened her eyes, she could see his hand reaching down toward her. She grabbed it, and he wrested her to her feet. “You figure anything out?”
“Yes,” she said, still feeling wobbly. “I’ve been making some bad assumptions.” She glanced toward the door, finding Vorianna. The young woman was wearing a simple shirt and trousers – no armor. But she did have a sword on her hip.
Vorianna looked exhausted.
“Can you please close the door, Vorianna?”
The other woman complied. “What’d you find?”
Lydia turned toward Vorianna. She didn’t make any hostile movements, but she already had her Comprehensive Barrier active, and her sword was not far from reach. “I believe you’ve been withholding information from us, Miss Vorianna.”
The Rethri woman folded her arms. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Lydia adjusted her glasses. “This was no ordinary poison – and I think you’re aware of that.”
Vorianna narrowed her eyes. “If you’re going to make an accusation, you can go ahead – I wasn’t the one who poisoned him. I couldn’t have been – he saw the crossbow bolt that hit him, and I was with him at the time.”
“To be fair, you could have poisoned the bolts at any time before the assassins arrived.” Aladir took a defensive position in front of Jonan, and looked to be inches from drawing his own weapon. Lydia wished he had stayed near the door to block the exit, but she was also confident that if an alarm was raised, Vorianna would have little chance of escape.
“Possible, but Dominion Essence doesn’t last very long in an unstable state. And, as Jonan knows, I was using my own water sorcery to make antidotes before the assassins arrived.”
Jonan nodded. “That part is true. But there are ways of stabilizing dominion essence, and I know you’re at least somewhat familiar with them.”
Vorianna looked at Jonan, giving him a hurt expression. “Like your ink, yeah. But if I wanted to kill people from House Theas, I’ve had better opportunities. You left me alone with Nakane just last night and she’s still plenty intact.”
“This whole line of conversation is sounding more accusatory than I wanted it to. I don’t think you killed Nedelya Theas – not after what I just saw.” Lydia folded her arms. “But I do think you know who did.”
Vorianna took a step back, closer to the door. Aladir tensed, looking ready to strike at any moment.
“I don’t know anything for certain,” the Rethri woman quickly glanced toward each of the people in the room and Lydia felt an inclination to believe Vorianna’s words.
“Let me tell you what we know, then. You told Jonan to have Aladir bring your sister, claiming she might be involved. I just took a good look at the remainder of the poison in his body – someone manipulated it before the nature sorcery effect eradicated it. Was that you?”
She shook her head. “No. I wasn’t strong enough – I don’t have much skill at water shaping. Just a little bit of water calling training, from when I was a little girl.”
“Why did you believe your sister may have had something to do with making the poison?”
The Rethri sorceress closed her hands into fists. “When I inspected the wound, I realized the poison involved components from multiple different dominions. That made it harder to treat, so all I could do was slow it down. I put up a wall to protect Maer, Jonan, and Nakane and went out to fight with the remaining assassins – and I chased the ones who were still standing away. I released all but one of the assassins I had captured. One that I recognized, though he did not seem to recognize me.”
Vorainna opened her left hand and wrapped it around her right fist. “Shivarin was Liarra’s bodyguard when she was a child. He’s served House Dianis for more than three decades. I remember him being kind and, above all, loyal. He was barely conscious when I found him – the cold from my prison had made him weak. I released him from the ice, but bound in him with my vision. I made him speak.”
“Loyalty. That’s what drove him to go – along with a dozen others – to kidnap the remaining members of House Theas. They would have spared no one. Most of them belong to some kind of organization. It sounded like a cult to me, but Shivarin wasn’t one of them. I couldn’t make him tell me who gave him his orders – his desire to protect his master was too strong for me to break in limited time. And so I freed him, but not without leaving a mark.”
“You planned to track him later,” Jonan noted. Vorianna nodded in reply.
“An organization. That’s progress, at least. Does this group have a name?”
“He called them ‘Disciples of the First.’ Unfortunately, since he was not a member, he didn’t know many details – but his impression was that this was primarily a political move. He would not have agreed to kill anyone. His belief was that the captured family members would be ransomed to Edrick Theas, but I believe it was intended to be a trap for Edrick.”
“I…know of that group.” Aladir looked downcast. “Though only in vague terms. Five years ago, when Lord Lorian Augusti was found dead in his home, and the man we arrested for the crime claimed to be a ‘disciple’ of that organization.”
“I remember that.” Lydia took a sharp breath. “Something…Wydman, I think?”
Aladir nodded. “Tyrus Wydman. He had been a petty thief, with no ties to any known criminal organizations, but he somehow bypassed significant sorcerous defenses to assassinate Augusti – who was a renowned duelist. By the time we caught Wydman, he was deep in the throes of substance withdrawal – ‘Ash’, I think.”
Lydia hadn’t been a part of that investigation, but Aladir had told her about it before. “Didn’t he claim that he could see the future?”
“Right. He said he was a Disciple of the First and a servant of the Shrouded One. He insisted that Augusti had to be killed to preserve the fate of the world.”
“Well, that certainly sounds ominous,” Jonan remarked. “But charismatic leaders often use sorcery to manipulate their followers and make them see things that aren’t there.” He gave Vorianna a meaningful look.
Aladir turned to Jonan. “That’s essentially what my commander said at the time. But, regardless of their leader’s actual capabilities, I believe this Shrouded One exists – as does his organization. Wydman could not have had the resources to perform an assassination of that level of complexity on his own, and his withdrawal symptoms made him sufficiently incoherent that he could not identify his cohorts. Even if he did identify someone, we couldn’t trust it to be anything other than a hallucination from his drug use.”
“That’s a cruel tactic, but I can’t say it sounds ineffective.” Jonan scratched his chin. “So, Vorianna, you believed your sister may have been a part of this group because of her association with the guard you interrogated?”
Vorianna nodded. “And because of her knowledge of obscure poisons. As I’m sure Aladir is aware, a doctor is one of the most dangerous possible assassins.” She took another step back. “But I can’t believe she would have done something like this knowingly. She’s never…she wouldn’t want to do anyone harm.”
Lydia nodded. “Let me ask you a question, Vorianna – or, let’s dispense with that for now. Rialla. That multiple dominion poison. Do you believe your sister has the capability to make something like it?”
“Yes, but she’d never—”
“Perhaps she wouldn’t have used the poison herself, but she may have made it, if only for research purposes. When I inspected the poison, I found that it had been altered before it was cured. The alteration to the poison made it appear to be the same as the one that had killed Kalsiris. I can think of no motive for altering the poison other than misdirection – someone wanted anyone who inspected the poison to believe it was the same type that the assassin used before.”
