Windsinger

by A. F. E. Smith

  ‘Here she is,’ Rawleigh announced. When she’d first heard their request, she’d taken it for granted that she would stay in the room whilst the interview was conducted; it had taken all Ree’s tact to convince her that if the maid did know anything, she might be more willing to open up if she were alone. Now, Rawleigh gave Ree and Penn a searching glance before saying reluctantly, ‘I’ll be down in the laundry if you need me again.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Ree said as the housekeeper left the room, then gave the maid an encouraging smile. ‘Please, sit down.’

  The girl did so, sinking onto a low footstool opposite the armchair as if her knees would no longer support her. She looked scared. It was the coats, Penn thought. He and Ree and the maid were all much of an age, young people who in another time and place might have sat down and talked to each other without any constraint – or rather, Ree and the maid would have talked, while he drifted away into the places his mind still went when faced with the need to produce inconsequential chatter. Still, it would have been pleasant enough. He probably would have enjoyed it, even, as long as he knew himself to be among friends. But as soon as he put his arms into a Helmsman’s striped coat, he became something else. A symbol. People didn’t look at him and see a socially awkward young man. They saw power, skill, authority. The fact that he still felt like a socially awkward young man had no bearing on the matter.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Ree asked the maid.

  ‘Sia.’

  ‘I’m Ree. This is Penn. Don’t mind him, he always looks like that.’

  Penn realised he was frowning, and hastily smoothed it away.

  ‘Do you know why we’re here?’ Ree asked.

  ‘N-no …’ Sia shifted a little on the stool. ‘Because the ambassador died?’

  ‘Yes. He was murdered. And we need to find out who did it.’

  The maid wrapped her arms around herself. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Ree said. ‘We just need to ask you some questions …’

  It was one of those situations in which Penn felt thoroughly uncomfortable. He wasn’t good at coaxing information out of people; he couldn’t see beneath their skin as others apparently could, to the hopes and fears and feelings that were written there as clear as newsprint for those who knew how to look. Ree had turned out to be one of those people – she was talking in a friendly way to the maid at this very moment, calming her anxiety as easily as turning off a tap. He could understand why Ree was here. What he couldn’t work out was why Caraway had sent him.

  Probably to learn how it’s done, he thought mordantly.

  ‘So all we need you to do is tell us what happened that afternoon,’ Ree was saying. ‘Is that all right?’

  Sia nodded. Her arms no longer formed a barrier between herself and the rest of the world; her hands sat loose and relaxed in her lap. That was probably a good sign.

  ‘A Helmsman asked me to attend Lady Ayla in the library,’ she said. ‘She was there with the ambassador. She asked him what he’d like to drink, and he said taransey.’

  ‘Tolino was the one to suggest taransey?’ Penn asked, and Sia shot him a quick glance.

  ‘Y-yes.’

  That’s probably important. Particularly if the poison turns out to have been in the bottle all along. He wrote it down in his notebook.

  ‘And then?’ Ree prompted the maid.

  ‘And then I went back to the kitchens to get it. First me and Hana fetched a bottle of taransey from the cellar –’

  ‘Hana?’

  ‘She works here too.’ Sia shuddered. ‘None of us like the cellar. All them shadows. And rats. So Hana said she’d come with me.’

  ‘How is the taransey stored?’

  ‘There’s a rack for it. Square thing, lot of holes. The bottles lie on their sides. You can’t store taransey upright or it’ll spoil.’

  ‘How many bottles are down there?’

  ‘Maybe twenty? Not sure, but the rack is nearly full. Dusty, too.’ Sia added with a touch of mild reproach, ‘The bottles don’t need replacing so often, now that Lady Ayla is in charge.’

  ‘So then what?’

  ‘We grabbed a bottle from the rack and took it back upstairs.’

  ‘Did you notice anything unusual about it?’

  Sia shrugged. ‘It looked like a bottle of taransey. Though I suppose …’ She paused a moment, eyes unfocusing briefly in thought, before concluding, ‘I suppose it wasn’t as dusty as the rest of ’em.’

  Interesting. Penn wrote that down, too.

  ‘What then?’ Ree asked.

  ‘When we got back upstairs, I put the bottle on a tray and took two glasses from the sideboard. The good glasses, the crystal ones. And I carried the whole lot through to the library.’

  ‘You didn’t look away from the tray at any point after that? Or put it down, say to open a door …’

  ‘It didn’t leave my sight,’ Sia said with blunt certainty. ‘And if I had to put down a single tray to open a door, I wouldn’t be very good at my job.’

  ‘So then what happened?’

  ‘I asked Lady Ayla if she’d like me to pour the drinks. She said no, so I left.’ Sia shrugged. ‘And that’s it.’

  ‘Do you know what happened to the bottle of taransey afterwards?’ Penn asked. It was one of the things Captain Caraway had asked the Helm to find out. Sia nodded.

  ‘I went back into the library to tidy up after Lady Ayla and the ambassador left. The half-empty bottle was on the table. It should’ve gone in the drinks cabinet, but that hasn’t been used since the old Firedrake’s day. The key’s been missing for years. So …’ Her gaze dropped, a blush tinting her cheeks. ‘I locked it in the drawer of the old desk in the corner. I figured if I was the only one who knew it was there, it would be safe enough.’

  Probably meant to retrieve it for herself when she was sure no-one else had missed it. Still, Penn noted it down without question, because at least it was one thing they could tell the captain. Then Gil and Resca would be able to test the remaining contents of the bottle, which would answer the question of whether it had held the poison.

  ‘Thank you, Sia,’ Ree said. ‘I think that’s –’

  ‘Hold on.’ Penn frowned down at his notes. He’d written S/H to cellar, took bottle, S put on tray, S took glasses from sideboard, S carried to library, but there was one thing missing. ‘Did you take the bottle of taransey from the rack yourself? Or did Hana pass it to you?’

  ‘I … lemme think. Hana took it down. She was nearest.’

  Does that matter? I suppose it might. Penn lifted his head, and he and Ree exchanged glances.

  ‘Can we speak to her, too?’ Ree asked.

  ‘It’s her day off. She’ll be in tomorrow, though.’ Sia grinned. ‘She always does the breakfast service for Lady Ayla and her family. She likes seeing the children.’

  ‘All right,’ Ree said. ‘Thank you, Sia. We’ll talk to Hana tomorrow.’

  They all stood up. Sia bobbed them a curtsey, which made Penn shuffle in awkward discomfort. She opened her mouth as if she might be about to say something else – but in the end, she simply nodded, before leaving the room.

  ‘That’s why the captain sent you,’ Ree said as they walked back towards the library, which the Helm were currently using as a base for the investigation. Penn frowned.

  ‘Why?’

  She smiled. ‘For your relentless logic.’

  ‘You’re cleverer than I am.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said, after giving it due consideration. ‘Differently clever, maybe. I leap about. Sometimes I make connections that way. But you …’ She elbowed him in the ribs, though not hard. ‘You see the holes in things.’

  ‘So you think it’s important? That Hana took the bottle from the rack, not Sia?’

  ‘Definitely,’ Ree said. ‘I mean, there are only two possibilities, aren’t there? One is that both glasses were poisoned, because there’s no way anyone could have poisoned just one and known for c
ertain it would be given to the ambassador. If that’s what happened, Sia must have done it herself, because no-one else had any control over which two glasses she took. And it’s not as if anyone else could have slipped poison into them later, either. She said they were in her sight the whole time.’

  ‘She could have lied about that.’

  ‘Yes, but why? If she’s innocent, there’d be no reason to. And if she’s guilty, it would be far more to her advantage to lie the other way, and invent a moment at which someone else could have done it when she wasn’t looking.’

  Penn nodded. ‘All right. So the second possibility is that the poison was in the bottle, in which case the person who made sure the poisoned bottle was selected was Hana, not Sia. Though without speaking to her, it’s hard to know how damning that really is.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She might simply have taken it because it looked cleaner than the others.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Ree said doubtfully. ‘But putting a poisoned bottle in a rack with lots of others and assuming that someone would take it first because it wasn’t as dusty would be a very chancy way to commit murder.’

  ‘That’s assuming it was meant to happen the way it did,’ Penn replied. ‘And I don’t think we can assume anything yet.’

  ‘No.’

  Silence fell between them. Ree was looking solemn again, even a little unhappy, as if she hadn’t gained nearly as much from their interview with Sia as she’d hoped. For once in his life, Penn found himself actively wanting to make conversation, in order to distract her from her worries, but unfortunately there was only one change of subject he could think of. Still, even if it made her angry, that was probably better than sad. Probably. To tell the truth, he wasn’t at all sure which she’d prefer. But he took the plunge anyway.

  ‘So … have you seen your parents again?’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘I found them waiting for me yesterday when I came off duty. My father had the cheek to ask if I’d calmed down.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I swore at him. Obviously.’

  ‘Obviously,’ Penn echoed. Ree shot him an irritated look.

  ‘Well! We’d just found out about Tolino’s death being murder, so I was in no mood for their nonsense. My father said they’d call on me in a couple of days and he expected me to have a civil tongue in my head by then.’ She grimaced. ‘Something to look forward to.’

  Penn didn’t reply. He knew what it was like to be pushed into doing something by a parent. He also knew what it was like to make a stand against it. Tell them you won’t do it, he’d advised Ree. If they disown you, that’s their choice. Yet it was a lonely path to take, with plenty to lose along the way. Penn might have defied his father, but he’d lost an entire family. His mother, who sent him a secret letter from time to time but didn’t dare visit him because your father is still very angry, dear, I don’t want to upset the applecart. His two younger brothers, who no doubt were growing up hearing all about the iniquities of Tomas Caraway the murderer, just as Penn himself had done – only now, Penn was part of the story. Part of the debt to lay at Caraway’s door. A traitor who no longer deserved a name, who’d turned against his own kin to serve under the captain he’d sworn to kill.

  Sometimes, in the middle of the night, Penn worried about his brothers. The older, Conor, must be a young man by now. A new receptacle for their father’s bitter hatred. One day, he might arrive in the city with revenge in his heart – against Caraway, against Penn himself. And what if Penn couldn’t stop him?

  What if he could?

  If he had to choose between his captain’s life and his misguided brother’s, he wasn’t at all sure where the blade would fall.

  ‘You have siblings, don’t you?’ he asked Ree.

  ‘A brother and two sisters.’

  ‘And you won’t lose them if …’ He didn’t know quite how to finish the sentence, but Ree shook her head as though she’d understood anyway.

  ‘There’s nothing to lose. I barely see them. They’re too busy with their houses and their children.’ With a sidelong glance, she added, ‘But I’m the youngest. It’s different for you.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Feeling responsible.’ She shrugged. ‘But there’s nothing you can do about it, Penn, honestly there isn’t. You just have to hope your brothers grow beyond your father. Like you did.’

  ‘But I nearly didn’t,’ Penn said. ‘You know that. I came this close –’ his finger and thumb hovered next to each other – ‘to making a terrible mistake. Anyone can become a murderer, if enough hate is poured into them.’

  ‘If you’d wanted to kill Captain Caraway, you would have. You didn’t do it because you’re better than that.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Penn said miserably. ‘I think maybe it was just because I hadn’t been indoctrinated long enough. I was fifteen when my cousin died and my father began plotting revenge. Nearly a man already. But Finlay, the younger of my two brothers … he was only seven. By the time he’s old enough to come to the city, he’ll have been soaking up bitterness for more than half his life. What chance does a child stand, against that?’

  Ree slipped her arm through his, giving it a squeeze.

  ‘I want to give you some wonderful advice,’ she said. ‘Something that can solve this for you. But I don’t think there is anything, is there?’

  Penn shook his head. This was one reason why he didn’t like making conversation: it could take you too deep, too quickly, into places you were trying to keep hidden from yourself.

  Admittedly, he’d succeeded in distracting Ree. Though she still wore a frown, he suspected it was now on his behalf rather than on Ayla’s. Yet that wasn’t any better, was it? He should have been more like Zander, and said something to make her laugh. Instead he’d given her something else to worry about, as well as bringing things into the daylight that he usually kept for the darkness of the seventh bell. As friends went, he was utterly useless.

  ‘Here we are,’ he mumbled, jerking his head at the library door ahead of them. Yet as he reached out to open it, Ree touched his arm.

  ‘Penn. It’s all right, you know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Telling me things. That’s what friends are for.’ She smiled at him. ‘And thank you for trying to take my mind off it all, for a little while.’

  She could read him as easily as she read everyone else. Shaking his head, Penn followed her into the library.

  NINE

  Alone in his laboratory, Miles did his best to focus on research. Yet where, before, his ideas had flowed freely and he had seen the shape of what he had to do, now – when it was urgent, when it really mattered – his fingers were slow and his brain slower.

  Come on, he told himself. You have to do this. You have to! Otherwise you will be letting them go to war unprotected. But the more he thought about that, the more the panic swirled inside him and the harder it was to think about anything at all.

  Finally, giving up, he walked away from his experiment bench and stared wildly around the room as though it might reveal undeniable evidence of his perfidy. Bottles and glassware stared back at him, glinting greyly in the light from the high, barred window. Ayla was due at the laboratory any moment, to consult him on the matter of the Kardise ambassador’s death. And he had nothing to offer her except lies.

  I could give her a hint, he thought. Lead the investigation to the right place, and the Enforcers would never know I had done it …

  But the tiny flare of hope died as quickly as it had arrived. If Mirrorvale and Sol Kardis fail to go to war for any reason at all, the faceless man had said. Which meant that Miles couldn’t give anything away. He had to choose his words carefully, or Art would die.

  Though he was expecting it, the knock at the door startled him. He forced himself to straighten, to ignore the pounding of his heart. ‘Come in!’

  ‘Good afternoon, Miles.’ Sure enough, it was Ayla. She pushed the door closed behind her and leaned o
n it, as though trying to shut the world out.

  ‘Lady Ayla,’ he said. ‘You are well?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘No. Of course not. Why would you be? I mean –’ Stop talking, Miles. He spread his hands and smiled helplessly at her.

  ‘You know why I wanted to speak to you?’ Ayla asked. He nodded.

  ‘You are investigating the Kardise ambassador’s death.’

  ‘To be honest, I’m not even sure you can help me. But you’ve helped me so much in the past …’

  She sat down abruptly on the floor, reminding him with bittersweet clarity of the times they had spent together working on the collar that now kept her safe. Not daring to speak, lest his voice betray him, he followed suit.

  Traitor, his relentless conscience threw at him. She trusts you. She is your friend. She took you into her home, gave you a job, and this is how you repay her?

  He expected Ayla to keep talking, to ask all her questions, but she was equally silent. She looked tired, Miles thought; tired and afraid. Regret burned inside him until he wanted to stand up and confess everything – but he couldn’t. So instead, he prompted her gently, ‘Lady Ayla?’

  ‘Sorry.’ She looked up, forcing a smile. ‘Miles, how much do you know about poisons?’

  ‘Enough to be of some use, I should think,’ he said. ‘That is how the ambassador died?’

  ‘Yes. Someone gave him zephyr.’ Ayla sighed. ‘I wouldn’t trouble you with it, but I couldn’t get the answers I needed from Gil.’

  ‘Really? But surely, as a physician –’

  ‘He told me all about its effects,’ Ayla agreed. ‘And that there’s no known antidote. But I already knew those things. I grew up learning about poisons.’ Her mouth curved downward. ‘There’s no denying it, Miles: I was very well placed to kill the ambassador, should I have wished to do so.’

  I am afraid so, Lady Ayla. That is the point. He waited a moment before asking, ‘What do you need to know?’

  ‘Gil told me that the only way of administering zephyr is in food or drink. But I remember learning about plenty of poisons that work by touch, or by inhalation … is it possible that Gil is mistaken?’