Antonia walked a few paces forward, looking straight into Sidony’s face. “I am trying to tend more to the living, to get to know them and let them get to know me. They deserve to believe that I’m not only interested in getting my hands on their corpses one day. I do what I can to assure them of that, even if it’s … how did you describe it? ‘Reveling with the hypocrites’?”
She glided past Sidony into the entrance hall.
“Wait upstairs. I’ll make sure our man finds you,” she said, before disappearing into the party.
Sidony couldn’t understand Antonia’s desire to ingratiate herself with the people of Nevarra City. If she could have it her way, she would leave the vapid creatures to fend for themselves, put them miles behind her on the road out of Nevarra. But she’d be lying if she said she didn’t understand Antonia’s feelings of regret: regrets like unfinished business, an assassin slipping through her fingers—or words she’d never gotten to say to a dead man down in the Necropolis.
She considered slamming the door as she entered the party, but that would draw too much attention.
* * *
Men and women excitedly hurried past Sidony as she ascended the wide staircase. Upstairs, the party was even livelier than it was below: styles of music from instruments she’d never heard filled each room she passed; laughter and cheers erupted from tables of card games. Couples danced and men slapped each other on the back, and everywhere she looked was another rich spread of food and drink.
Sidony moved to the outer edges of the raucous crowds. Enormous portraits in gilded frames loomed above her as she kept close to the walls. She spotted an empty, out-of-the-way oriel with delicately paned windows that would serve as a quick escape if things turned desperate.
It was the perfect place to wait for Antonia’s so-called scandal-maker. The rowdy guests were too preoccupied to notice an unaccompanied woman keeping her distance from the entertainment, glowering at them as they danced and embraced and strolled, watching their faces for any sign of who she was looking for.
Hours passed in that corner without any sign from the secret dealer, or even Antonia. No one had even glanced in her direction. Her frustration at once again losing control of the search was suffocating.
Inhaling sharply, she turned and glared down on the street below, considering her next move. Dozens of candles burned at the base of that repulsively opulent Tylus Van Markham statue, casting a dim glow where she had hidden earlier that evening. There, just beyond the reach of the candles’ light, barely visible, was a figure, standing as still as the statue itself.
She could feel magic radiating from the dark form, cold sensations of death that, even from this distance, made the hair on her arms stand on end. She watched the shadow where it lurked, waiting for it to move.
“Sickening, isn’t it?”
Sidony tore her eyes away and turned. A young man dressed in an ornately patterned coat looked past her to the street below. Her face twisted into a frown, and the man laughed.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “I was talking about that irritatingly ostentatious statue. I would wager Tylus Van Markham never found an occasion to pose like that.”
Sidony turned her back and looked down again. The dark figure had disappeared, and she felt her body tense in annoyance. The man behind her didn’t seem to notice. Or he didn’t care.
“I’m so sick of seeing that pretentious shrine. We can’t even walk the streets in peace without the Van Markhams’ constant desperate reminders that their station is far above our own. If they lived in the present, like the rest of us, maybe they’d have more to contribute to the country than plotting against every other noble family in between drunken alley spats.”
“I don’t give a shit about the Van Markhams,” Sidony threw over her shoulder.
The disgust dripped from his voice, “A Pentaghast woman, then?”
Sidony barked out a laugh. If only the Pentaghast woman responsible for her being here could see this.
“No,” she snapped as she faced him. “I am not a Pentaghast woman. And I am not a Van Markham woman. I have more important things to concern myself with than that centuries-old pissing match.”
“Interesting.” The man smirked. “Right now, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in Nevarra who thinks anything is more important than that.”
He rubbed his chin and asked, “When our frail king is gone, with no one to succeed him, do you think the Pentaghasts and Van Markhams will continue their squabble over the rightful heir in spirited discussions, behind closed doors?”
Just as she started to tell him she’d grown tired of his manifesto, her eyes leapt to his crimson gloves as he tugged at their cuffs. Expensively made, like the rest of his clothes; anyone could tell, even at first glance. Intricate stitching in the shape of a quill bloomed from the seams.
Although Henrik had never prepared her for interacting with them, he had heavily emphasized learning about the royal families of her country: their tumultuous histories, their acrimonious rivalries, their ever-changing status within the king’s court. As much as she had tried to resist the lessons, many details still managed to sink in. Enough, at least, for her to know that a quill was the heraldry of House Reinhardt: a minor family, but one of the oldest in Nevarra. The branches of their family tree stretched into the neighboring Free Marches and into Orlais, but they never held much influence over their own nation.
“No!” the man continued, oblivious to her silence. “They’ll drag their war into the streets! Good people will fight and die for arrogant families who have no interest in listening to the rest of us.”
Damn it, Antonia, Sidony thought as she searched the crowd for an opening to escape the chattering windbag. Too much time had been wasted. She’d have to find a way forward in her pursuit, without the scandal-maker’s help.
“And the longer they bicker, the longer the kingdom has no heir … the longer they allow those damn Mortalitasi to circle the king like vultures, whispering in his ear…”
Sidony’s eyes snapped back to the Reinhardt lord. A man drunk enough—or stupid enough—to shout accusations that the death mages were ruling the kingdom through manipulation was a man who might let slip rumors about a Mortalitasi assassin’s plan to remove a noble from play … if he wasn’t a target himself.
“With no heir, the throne will sit empty, just waiting for those damned death mages to slither in and—”
A man quickly walking past them bumped into Reinhardt, cutting off the next part of his commentary. The glass he’d been holding fell to the ground. A servant appeared, as if from nowhere, to collect it and disappeared just as quickly.
“The Mortalitasi?” Sidony prompted in an attempt to regain his attention, impatience eating away at her.
“Yes, Nicolas, tell us all about those terrifying death mages, tell us all about how they’ve infiltrated the king’s chambers, how they’ve made themselves the secret rulers of Nevarra!” a mocking voice rang out as a pair of graceful hands brushed off Reinhardt’s jacket and straightened his shirt.
“I was about to.” Reinhardt scowled as he batted the man’s hands away. “But it seems there’s not much left to say, now that you’ve blurted it all out, Cyrros.”
Cyrros laughed, and Sidony glared at the interruption. He was dressed as well as most of the noblemen here, almost as lavishly as Reinhardt. His thick, honey-colored curls were slicked back in a way that almost fully hid the tapered point of his ears. An elf in such finery, mocking and touching a member of old Nevarran nobility, and no one batting an eye—this was someone welcomed with open arms and stacks of gold in circles fueled by secrets and scandal.
“Nicolas, you’re neglecting your other guests.” Cyrros wagged a scolding finger at Reinhardt. “You shouldn’t deny the rest of them your grand vision for the future of Nevarra.”
He turned to Sidony and offered his arm, smiling. She folded her arms in response, and his smile widened into an unsettling grin.
<
br /> “No?”
He pulled his arm away.
“Well, if you’d prefer, I can certainly let you get back to enjoying Lord Reinhardt’s captivating opinions, but someone tells me you and I have business to discuss.”
“My drink’s gone anyway,” Reinhardt grumbled as he took his leave.
Cyrros extended his arm again, and Sidony took it. The red stone in the ring Antonia gave her glinted in the crook.
They walked with purpose, pushing through the crowd at a brisker pace than the meandering strolls of the other guests. Their faces lit up as they saw Cyrros approach them; many nodded their regards, and a few even bowed.
Sidony glanced sidelong at his beaming face. He acknowledged each and every soul they passed with the knowing smile of kindred spirits sharing a secret. What did he know about them? Anything at all? Were they just potential customers—or potential marks?
“Are you allowed to call every noble in Nevarra by their first name? Or is there something special between you and Lord Reinhardt?” Sidony asked.
Cyrros chuckled as he saluted a woman with the tallest hair Sidony had ever seen. “I’m allowed to call anyone by any name I want,” he said. “If I get it wrong, no one ever corrects me. They’re afraid to.”
People were intimidated by Sidony for many reasons—because she was an agent of the Inquisition, because she was a mage no longer chained to any Circle of Magi, because she was a woman far from what one would call approachable—but no one had ever been so scared that they couldn’t correct her when she was wrong. This elf had power that made people who should fear nothing tremble in his presence.
“We shouldn’t stay out in the open like this. There are lots of eager ears around. Besides mine,” he said with a wink.
He steered them to an unoccupied alcove and planted himself in front of her, his back to the party, his hand against the wall, and his outstretched arm barring her from flight. To the guests outside, they would have looked like any other couple taking advantage of the alcove’s privacy.
“I saw you earlier, at the window. You looked like you were waiting for someone,” Cyrros said. “It couldn’t have been Nicolas—you looked like you could hardly wait to snap your fingers and light his pompous ass on fire.”
“And how would I do that?” Sidony replied, as flatly as possible.
“I’m certain a mage as skilled in necromancy as you could figure something out. Probably something even more imaginative than flame, I’m betting.”
Sidony pursed her lips. Antonia.
Cyrros laughed. “I’ve worked with plenty of mages; the lot of you all have the same tells. There’s a certain … draw that you all just haven’t figured out how to hide.”
“Have any of the mages you’ve ‘worked with’ been Mortalitasi?”
He narrowed his eyes. “I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure, no. Not in the way I’ve worked with other mages. But I get an earful about them. Almost daily.
“You heard Nicolas. Every fool in Nevarra has an opinion about the Mortalitasi. Half the people think they were sent by the Maker himself to save the kingdom from civil war; the other half will tell you all about their ‘secret rituals’ and ‘mind-control experiments.’”
Sidony rolled her eyes. “Very interesting. But I’m … looking for a particular death mage.”
Cyrros raised an eyebrow and waited. Sidony huffed.
“Someone in the Grand Necropolis wrote to me. He said … he made some very serious accusations against another Mortalitasi. Now he’s dead. I need to know if someone is responsible for that.”
“And what’s stopping you from marching down into their lair and interrogating every one of them until you find what you’re looking for?”
“I tried, but…” Henrik’s twisted face flashed through her mind and the words died on her tongue. “It doesn’t matter. Whoever did this has to be stopped.”
“Stopped? From doing what?”
Sidony scoffed. She’d hoped to avoid telling him anything more than what she’d led Antonia to believe, but she needed options. And he wasn’t one of them; if she played her cards right, she could tell him the truth without alerting the assassin that she was coming.
And maybe if he understood that the lives of the people who provided his employment were the ones at stake, he’d be more likely to help.
“One of them—a Mortalitasi—is planning to murder a noble.”
Cyrros started to say something and stopped.
His mouth pressed into a line and his head ticked to the side. “Planning?” he asked. “I think you’re too late to stop them. Several times over.”
“What?” Sidony bit out, irritation spiraling inside of her.
“Four nobles dead. In the past week,” Cyrros said as he crossed his arms. His jovial demeanor had faded, replaced by a stern and contemplative look.
The annoyance flooding through Sidony turned to anger. At every turn was a reminder of her failure to do her duty.
She narrowed her eyes at Cyrros and snapped, “And? What proof do you have that these nobles were killed by a Mortalitasi?”
“None,” he replied unabashedly. “They died by”—he ticked each method off on his fingers—“a hunting mishap, two falls, and in one poor sod’s case, too much wine. Deaths like that aren’t exactly uncommon in wealthy Nevarran houses, and if the family believes it was an accident, the city guard won’t investigate.
“But,” he turned and looked out over the guests, to where Reinhardt was spilling something from his cup as he addressed an enraptured group of partygoers, “if these ‘accidents’ happen within days of each other, to nobles who are notorious for speaking out against the king’s Mortalitasi advisors, and the Mortalitasi keep carting off the bodies before anyone can get a good look at them … it’s hard not to take notice.”
He faced her again. “And when a mage shows up on your doorstep, saying she’s hunting a noble-killing Mortalitasi, it’s hard not to get suspicious.”
“And how are you so acquainted with the details of these deaths?”
Cyrros laughed. “Antonia told you who I am, didn’t she? What I do? There isn’t much I don’t know. And when I know someone is targeting my clients … I won’t sit and wait for it to happen again. Especially not when the Maker himself sends such a capable woman to help me—”
Before Sidony could answer, the sound reached her: a scream, just barely audible over the deafening sound of the party. Over and over, like someone having the life pulled from their body piece by piece.
Sidony shoved Cyrros out of the mouth of the alcove and tore into the crowd. She shouldered her way past the drunk and foolish guests stumbling around her, searching for the direction of the scream.
“Mage!”
Cyrros caught up to her just as she reached the landing of the grand staircase. He snatched her arm, turning her around to face him. “Was it something I said?”
“Stop it,” she hissed, knocking his hand away from her. “Listen.”
All around them, mouths began murmuring in ears; heads turned in all directions as others started to notice the sound. Gawkers leaned over the railings and pointed down to the floor below.
She turned and hurried down the steps, across the main hall, weaving in and out of the gaps left open by the huddling guests.
The screams turned into wails, bouncing from the walls of a dark corridor avoided by the guests. Sidony turned down the hall and saw her: a young, terrified maid pulling at her own hair and howling into an open door. By the time she reached her, the girl had collapsed.
Sidony stepped over her crumpled body, her boots clicking on the polished marble as she peered into the room beyond. The lavishly furnished sitting room was dark and silent; there were no signs anyone had been here except for a sputtering flame in the fireplace, and the dead man facedown in the middle of the floor.
* * *
“Poor Nicolas is absolutely beside himself.”
Sidony closed her eyes against the sun’s reflection
on the water and sighed as they walked past another dock. “If I were forced to choose between eating that rat over there and being considerate of Nicolas Reinhardt’s feelings, I would eat the rat.”
“Come now.” Cyrros laughed. “Have some sympathy! Someone was murdered in the man’s home last night!”
“Exactly,” Sidony spat. “You saw the body, the state it was in.”
Something had been done to it, something that gave it the same sickly, twisted appearance as Henrik’s corpse.
“And Reinhardt threw me out with the rest of the gawkers when I tried to get a closer look,” she continued. “Forgive me if I cannot manage to harbor any kindness for him.”
After Reinhardt had unceremoniously tossed out everyone from the party, the servants had ushered the discontented guests into the streets with the assurance that the death was merely an unfortunate bit of luck. An accident—the same thing the families of the other victims were desperate for everyone to believe.
“He does have appearances to keep up,” Cyrros said, as if he could read her thoughts. “It will go badly for Nicolas if the most powerful people in Nevarra think he allows assassins to strike under his own nose. Better for them to believe old Lord Hildebrand simply overexerted himself with that maid, and let his house deal with the scandal.”
“Last night, I couldn’t get Reinhardt to shut up about the Mortalitasi. Now that his ego is involved, suddenly he has no interest in stopping them?”
“That’s what these people do, mage.” Cyrros fell into step beside her and cast her a sidelong glance.
“Before long, the throne of Nevarra will be free for the taking, and when every royal-blooded family from here to Cumberland thinks they have a chance at it, they’ll do anything to increase their chances. Right now, being nobility in this kingdom means knowing everything that could bring down your rivals—but more importantly, it means controlling what your rivals know about you.
“Besides, Nicolas runs his mouth so much about the Mortalitasi, he’s bound to have a target painted on his back already. That target will get a lot bigger if he starts accusing one of them of murder. Best leave him to his delusions and let us figure out who’s behind this. Starting with finding this ambitious little bastard who thinks he can get one over on my client.”
Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights Page 22
