“Where is the original?”
“Right here,” Genedi said quickly, handing it over.
“Who has seen this?”
“No one but you and me.”
“And the woman who wrote it,” Habur said. “And whoever gave her the information. Give me a name.”
“I don’t have one. She doesn’t share her sources with me. It’s better that way. It keeps us quiet. Very quiet,” he stressed again.
“Not as quiet as I can keep you,” Habur replied, a fleeting glint of light the only warning Genedi had before the blade was out of Habur’s belt and deep between his ribs.
It was difficult to kill a neneckt, and even more difficult above water when there was an extra layer of flesh to rip away from the core. But Habur had long practice, a sharp eye, and the cold-forged coral glass to aid him.
The part of Genedi that was not reeling in shock from the foreign sensation couldn’t help but approve of the efficiency of motion and immense strength required to drive the knife so very cleanly into his gut. He had always taken pleasure in a job well done, and even in the absurdity of his final thoughts, he couldn’t help but be satisfied.
The rest of him was screaming, his mouth silently gaping open as his breath failed him, a cold, cold burning spreading like treacle from his innards as the body and what was beneath it faded from the world.
Habur dropped him behind the desk, where no one could see the corpse unless they were looking for it. Poeling wouldn’t come in without being called, and speech was no longer in Genedi’s power. It might take until the following morning for anyone to realize he was missing, and by then Habur would be well on his way to discovering who was spreading rumors about red iron and Arran Swinn.
Genedi had no doubt that Agnise would be next on Habur’s agenda. The only question was what she would reveal before the end. It was deeply frustrating that he would never be able to figure out what he had uncovered that was dangerous enough to lead to his own murder. Nor did he like having to die on the land instead of under the waves, as was proper. The Sea Father would have to search to find him. The Sun Mother had clearly already turned a blind eye. He hoped there would be a nice a funeral. He hoped someone other than Poeling would show up.
Habur was long gone by the time Genedi died. The full-throated cries of the while gulls perched on the top of the high, sharp towers went unheeded as Tiaraku’s palace bustled and hummed with the activity of just another busy day, his empty shell staring outwards into the angry red glare of the sunset as the island sailed peacefully into the darkening skies.
***
Bartolo had never done well with anonymity, and his inconspicuous lodgings were starting to rub on his nerves. He had been cooped up in the tiny suite for days, with no company and barely an inch to move, and he felt too nervous about his unsavory neighbors to even think about soothing himself by examining and polishing the few coins he had been able to bring with him.
Johan had joined him, which was a small comfort. At least he wasn’t being forced to make his own meals – or worse yet, dine in a public house with dock workers, shopkeepers, laborers, and their assorted diseases. His manservant was sleeping in the storage closet at the moment, due to the lack of space, but his sullen attitude about the whole thing led Bartolo to think he probably deserved it. It would teach him a lesson about doing his duty cheerfully if he expected to be paid for it.
Luckily, Johan wasn’t the only one who had found him. Certain well-informed persons, most of whom were quite a bit more eager than his servant to benefit from Bartolo’s generosity, had gravitated towards him, as they always did. Their tales of the outside world had been his only source of entertainment and information during the long evenings, and what they said to him was worth far more than the gold he doled out in small but steady amounts.
The Siheldi had never been very active on Niheba, as a rule, but his informants had been bewildered to report that there had not been a single attack for more than a week. They seemed distracted and uncoordinated, unwilling or unable to strike at their usual victims. Sometimes their presence couldn’t be felt after sundown at all, which was practically unheard of.
Bartolo wasn’t entirely sure if this was cause for celebration or not. If the Siheldi were still musing over the value of their new capture, he might still have a chance to somehow steal Swinn away from them again. But if they were simply preoccupied with putting their plans into action, he had little luxury to be sitting idle.
Faidal must be found, Megrithe must be captured, and Swinn must be recovered, and his time to do so was quickly running out.
“What’s the news, then?” he asked a young woman whose name he had forgotten. There had been clusters of people whispering under his windows all morning, and his curiosity had gotten the best of him. He had risked a short walk down to the corner to speak with her, since no flower-seller would ever enter someone’s home to hawk her wares.
“Murder, m’lud,” she said with a wicked gap-toothed smile. “And a pair of right good ones, at that.”
“Go on,” he encouraged, dropping a coin between the plant stalks as he pretended to pick over the blooms.
“A lady of the Guild, they say, though don’t she’d of wished no one knew it,” the woman replied, digging out the shilling with nimble fingers. “Been selling secrets to the fish men and got her gullet good and gone for it.”
Bartolo was intrigued. The Guild had no official presence in Niheba, by the laws of the Treaty of Libourg, but its agents were everywhere. They mostly kept their eyes on the flow of trade, but those in higher places sometimes acted as intermediaries for humans who felt mistreated by the neneckt in authority.
Despite Tiaraku’s appearance of indifference to the working classes that swarmed his lands, he had more or less accepted the arrangement, and even devoted a handful of his staff to heeding such concerns.
The informal take on diplomacy usually worked quite well, but without the oversight of the official Houses on the mainland, it wasn’t unusual to hear that a Guild representative was quietly amassing a tidy little fortune by charging unsanctioned fees to promote someone’s cause or turn a blind eye to some unsavory dealing. But murder was an unusual end to such petty scheming, and in light of Bartolo’s own illicit activities, it was a bright red flag waving in front of his nose.
“What was the woman’s name?” he asked.
“Don’t know, guv,” the flower girl shrugged. “Happened in a tavern last night. Blood everywhere, they told me. A real splasher.”
“You said a pair of murders,” Bartolo said, trying to block out the image.
“Aye. The fish man copped it, too.”
“A neneckt was killed?”
“Coral knife, they said. One of ‘is own kind, in all liking hood. Stuck the bugger and left him to bleed.”
“Shit.”
“That too, I suppose,” she said, showing her blackened teeth as she laughed.
“Who knows about this?”
“Nearly everyone by now, I’d suspect,” she told him. “Got some of ‘em real upset, too. Can’t say the Guild ain’t encouraging it, but it got the chance to turn right sour. Folk here ain’t stupid. We won’t be having the guppies cutting Guild throats. We ain’t safe if we don’t even got that anymore.”
“I’ll take half a dozen of the lilies,” Bartolo said, paying triple their value before she wrapped the stems in a bit of twine and passed over his bouquet.
“Very grateful for your patroning, m’lud,” the woman said, and he nodded distractedly at her as he hurried away, scowling.
Habur was an idiot. He was worse than an idiot. He was a typhoon of thoughtless, stupid, impulsive, clueless lunacy stumping around on clumsy feet bigger than his infinitesimal brain.
It must have been him. There was no one else capable of that degree of mindless violence in defense of a cause he had no hope of truly understanding.
Not only had he just exposed Tiaraku’s counterfeiting activity to the whole of Niheba, b
ut he had gifted the constables of Paderborn an ironclad reason to come to the island and investigate the murder. But it wouldn’t be city constables who would demand access to Tiaraku’s hidden forges. It would be Guild inspectors in those uniforms instead.
The massive operation would be uncovered in a matter of days, and the neneckt would lose all of their trading rights with the powers of Rhior-Adril. Tiaraku would be forced to pay the heavy penalties involved with violating the Libourg Treaty. And if the neneckt refused to abide by the reparations agreement, there would be open war.
“Johan, where is that blind bastard?” he snapped when he had returned to his lodgings, tossing the lilies into the canal before galloping up the steps and locking the door firmly behind him. “I need Jairus here immediately.”
“You are in luck, sir,” Jairus said, standing up from a tall-backed armchair that had hidden him. “I thought I would come give you the news, but I see that someone has already done you the favor.”
“I was getting some flowers,” Bartolo said, shooting an annoyed look at Johan, who had just come in from the galley. Bartolo could have been dead if the surprise guest was anyone other than a friend, and the servant hadn’t been there to warn him.
“It’s too bad you didn’t bring them with you, then,” Jairus replied, wrinkling his nose slightly. “Lilies are much nicer on the table than in the gutter.”
“The canal, actually. What business is it of yours?”
Jairus shrugged. “Marcie is a good girl, if a bit easily taken with the bloodlust. She’ll have told you everything I was going to say already.”
“Then what good are you?”
“I can protect you if you’re next.”
Bartolo slumped onto a chair and rubbed the sweat off his brow. “Who was this Guild woman? Was she important?”
“Everyone is important, sir,” Jairus said mildly.
“You know what I mean.”
“Her name was Agnise,” he said after a moment, sitting down opposite Bartolo. “I frequented her establishment on occasion. Her mincemeat was worth the trip.”
“What was she involved with?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, sir. I wasn’t even aware she was a Guild contact until this morning.”
Bartolo looked at the young man carefully as he spoke, but it was hard to divine an expression in those peculiar, blank eyes of his. They were silvered over more completely than most neneckt – more like the clouded eyes of a poached fish, filmy and pearly from the inside – and it was impossible to tell if he was lying just by looking at him.
“Who was the neneckt that was killed?” he tried.
“His name was Genedi, sir. A liaison with some of the human trade associations, ostensibly, but I think it’s fair to say that he had other interests.”
“I have never met him,” Bartolo said. “But I have met the witless oaf who killed him. While it would give me great satisfaction to ream him out for it, I’d rather not come in contact with him again at the moment, if you take my meaning.”
“I understand, sir. Is this tied in any way to the neneckt you asked me to find? The one who was dealing in counterfeit?”
“Yes,” he said after a while, an idea forming in the back of his head. “In fact, Faidal is the killer I just mentioned. A nasty soul all around. I suspect he wanted to cover up his tracks so the Guild couldn’t investigate him.”
He was about to make a terrible gamble. Bartolo knew that he could not find Faidal on his own. Even his spider’s web of informants could only reach so far, and it would not be far enough to dig him out.
However, if the humans were really as upset about the murders as Marcie had indicated, the entire populace of Niheba would soon be on the lookout for the killer as soon as his name was known. If that name was Faidal…well, Bartolo would be very happy to see the neneckt torn apart by a vengeful mob before he could spill his secrets to anyone.
But there was a risk. If Faidal died and Megrithe Prinsthorpe somehow eluded him after her return to the island, Bartolo could be losing his only connection with the lost Arran Swinn.
There were too many boiling cauldrons and not enough lids. If Faidal was eliminated, Tiaraku might grudgingly thank Bartolo for saving his trade with the mainland, but that wouldn’t be enough to absolve him of the mistakes he made with Swinn. He would have to start over again in the hunt to recover the gemstones, control the Siheldi Queen, and regain the sea king’s favor. It would be doubly difficult, now that he had turned all his former friends against him…but there were worse things to work with than a blank slate.
“I need to get a message to the palace,” he said out loud after thinking for a while. “To someone named Habur. Can you do that for me?”
“Tiaraku’s clansman?” asked Jairus.
“Yes. He is absolutely not to know where I am. Under no circumstances. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir. I can go right away.”
“Not you. You’re too conspicuous. I will write a letter for you to give to Marcie. Tell her to hire a messenger boy. I will watch from the window as you do so,” he said pointedly, only realizing after he said it that the blind man was unlikely to sneak a look at the missive himself before handing it off.
“As you say, sir,” Jairus replied.
Bartolo took some time to carefully word his message before scratching it down on a piece of parchment. Habur was a touchy soul, and there was no telling what he might take from the letter should Bartolo leave an opening for misinterpretation. The written word carried less weight than a face-to-face scolding, but he had to make sure Habur understood that he must disavow all involvement with the killings and blame Faidal instead.
“Here,” he said eventually, sanding the wet ink and folding it securely. He had no sealing wax, but a dripping candle did just as well in a pinch, and he pressed his thumb deeply into the warm little puddle, holding it there as the heat faded into his skin.
He did indeed watch Jairus from the window as long as he stayed in view, craning his neck and pushing his nose against the glass, which kept him in sight until just before he reached the corner.
Bartolo had asked Habur to capture Faidal alive if it was possible, and kill him as quickly as he could if it wasn’t. Knowing Habur, the latter was significantly more likely than anything else.
Bartolo rarely questioned his decisions, but he was pinning his life on this one. He couldn’t just wait for the Prinsthorpe woman to arrive and hope that the Warden’s cryptic predictions would work in his favor. He would have to use all the tools that remained at his disposal, as meager as they were.
“Johan,” he called, sitting down at his writing desk again with a fresh sheet of paper. “Make sure Jairus has gone his way, then go back to Marcie and give her this, for what good it’ll do me,” he commanded, scrawling a short message that he sealed as before. “I want her to bring me everything and anything she learns, no matter where from. Nothing is too small, do you hear me? Someone has got to know something I can use.”
CHAPTER SIX
For the second time in as many weeks, Megrithe was making the long and uncomfortable journey to Niheba. After more than seven days at sea, delayed in the Bay of Burlera by a squalling storm that wouldn’t quit, she was incredibly eager to make landfall again.
She had been horribly seasick, her lingering weakness combining with the tossing waves to disastrous effect. She had kept to her cabin, which was more than a little short of being a palace, but at least it had kept her from having to deal with Durville too much.
The embarrassment had been overwhelming. Despite the lack of any evidence against him, Megrithe had put Durville in prison for attempting to murder her while colluding with Arran during their foray into smuggling. The Tortoise’s sailing master had not been very pleased to see her when she showed up at the Old Gaol, not even after she paid his fees and signed her name to his release, a clean shirt and a flagon of good wine in her hands to serve as a peace offering.
But when she had explained
Arran’s troubled situation, Durville had slowly come round. He had taken her to the dry docks to see the Tortoise, levered up on her side to expose the shocking gash that had nearly doomed her.
The shipwrights had taken Arran’s money and put it to good use, however, and the hole had been neatly patched over with clean, bright oak, shaved and smoothed to perfection. Durville explained to her that there was still plenty of work to be done if the little ship was to withstand a long journey, but at her insistence – and with a great many of her coins – he had spoken to the workers and refocused their attention on the essentials. She had no interest in making sure everything was pretty. She just needed it to float.
They had soon left Paderborn’s dismal shores behind them, the bows pointed north and west towards Niheba. Megrithe had purchased a new red iron medallion with some of her Guild earnings, and she kept it curled tightly in her hands when she wasn’t clutching the edges of a basin and losing the few bits of dry bread she had been able to force down.
The unpleasantness of illness was compounded by her mounting trepidation, creeping deeper into the crevasses of her mind with every passing night. She was keenly, constantly aware that there was nothing but the thin skin of the ocean’s surface between her and the watery underworld that haunted her splintered dreams. She could get no proper sleep, but spent the nights tense and wakeful, staring at the thick, gnarled timber overhead as the moon crept silently across the dim marble of the sky, expecting at any moment for the Siheldi to take advantage of their exposed, helpless prey.
She knew very well that a building on land offered no more protection from the spirits than the wooden planks that surrounded her, but there was something a lot more comforting about the quiet solidity of a brick-lined room than the swinging, creaking canvas hammock-bed that was such a trouble to get into and so very hard to leave.
“Do you mind if I come in?” Nikko called quietly through the door, unsure if she had managed to fall asleep.
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