Miles shook his head. ‘Zephyr must be ingested. It has no effect on the body otherwise.’
‘All right,’ Ayla said. ‘Then assuming Gil and Resca are correct about the time of death – and they both assure me they are – the only thing Don Tolino consumed was taransey. So the poison must have been in there.’ She massaged her temples. ‘And this is where I really hope you can help me, Miles, because I can’t see my way through it. The poisoner couldn’t have known which glass would go to whom, so the zephyr must have been either in both glasses or in the bottle. A sealed bottle, but that’s almost beside the point. Because the point is, I must have swallowed just as much poison as he did, and yet I didn’t so much as feel nauseous!’ Her laugh had a wild edge to it. ‘It’s not hard to see why the Kardise don’t believe a word I’m saying.’
Guilt gnawing at him, Miles waited. She took a deep breath, drawing the appearance of calm around her like an embroidered robe, and began to ask him questions.
‘Is it possible for a person to be naturally immune to zephyr?’
‘Not that I am aware of.’
‘Is there an antidote that Gil might not know about? Something I could have eaten, or –’
Yes. Yes, I discovered it and I gave it to your enemies. Miles swallowed over a dry throat and managed, ‘Gil was correct, in that respect. There is no known antidote.’
‘My collar, then. Is it possible that the collar protected me from the effects?’
‘In creature form, perhaps,’ Miles said. ‘But in human form, I doubt it. We have tested you with poisons from time to time before, Lady Ayla, but I am still working on protecting you from them. The collar has to be calibrated individually for each one, and that work is not yet done. And since zephyr is so easy to detect, it was not high on the list. Still, it is possible …’ But he stopped, because Ayla was shaking her head.
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘I’d forgotten, but I took off my collar when Tolino and I sat down in the library.’ Her lips twisted in acknowledgement of the irony. ‘It was an attempt at friendship.’
They sat in silence for a time. Then Ayla said, in a tone of voice that suggested all too clearly that she was clutching at straws, ‘I don’t suppose that during your testing, you gave me enough small doses of zephyr that I built up an immunity to it?’
‘If I had asked you to consume zephyr, you would have noticed it straight away,’ Miles reminded her. ‘As I said, it was not high on the list, mainly because I assumed you would detect its presence well before you needed to be protected from it.’
‘Usually I would. But apparently not when it’s in a bottle of taransey.’ Ayla sighed. ‘So where does that leave us? It’s impossible for someone to have poisoned the ambassador without poisoning me. And yet someone did.’
If you would just stop trusting me, you would see the answer. The words almost slipped out; it was only by calling his loved ones’ faces to mind that he kept them back.
‘I am sorry I cannot be of more help, Lady Ayla,’ he said instead, and meant it. She gave him a tired smile.
‘It’s all right. I just need some new ideas.’ She tipped her head back to rest against the door, closing her eyes. ‘If you were going to poison the ambassador and frame me for the crime, how would you do it?’
Miles stared at her, unable to find a single word of reply. Think. Make a joke. Make something up. Think! But even as he opened his mouth to say something, the gods knew what, Ayla shook her head.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That wasn’t a fair question. Ignore me.’
‘No need to apologise, Lady Ayla.’ Then, knowing the answer but unable to stop himself asking the question, ‘So what will happen now?’
‘If I can’t satisfy the Kardise that I had nothing to do with their ambassador’s death, I fear it will be war.’
‘Would that be so bad?’ Miles asked, trying to assuage his own burning guilt. ‘You are strong, now. The Kardise have no way to defeat you.’
She looked at him blankly, as if he had just said something very stupid. ‘But people will die, Miles. What does being invincible matter if I can’t protect my people?’
‘I thought –’
‘A single Changer creature can defend Darkhaven. A single Changer creature can’t win an entire war. The blood of every person whose life is lost will be on my hands.’ She ground the heels of her palms into her eyes and muttered, ‘I should have lied after all.’
‘What?’
‘Tomas said I should have lied to the Kardise, and he’s right. I should have.’
Miles had never seen her so overset. For the first time, the sheer magnitude of his crime dawned on him. He’d thought about the people he cared about, Art and the Nightshades and the young Helmsmen he’d first given training in firearms, and dismissed the rest as minimal losses. By focusing all his guilt on the abstract act of betrayal, he had been able to ignore the real and terrible consequences of his silence. Let Mirrorvale and Sol Kardis go to war with each other, he’d been told, not Send people to die. And yet, on some level, they were one and the same.
He couldn’t create collars for everyone. He wasn’t even sure he’d be able to create them for those he loved most. The blood of every single person whose life was taken by a Kardise gun would be on his hands, not Ayla’s.
‘But don’t worry,’ Ayla added. ‘I won’t send Art to the battlefield, much as we could use his experience. I’m selfish enough to want to protect the people I love most, so he can stay here with you and Tomas.’ She smiled sadly. ‘They won’t like it, but I think they’ll obey me all the same. Because if the worst happens, and I don’t come back, someone has to protect the children until they come of age.’
Miles nodded, feeling sick to his stomach. It was what he’d hoped for, and indeed relied upon – that Art would be needed in Darkhaven and thus be kept away from the battlefield. Yet now, truly appreciating for the first time that someone would have to die, he realised that such a hope had been unbearably self-centred.
‘I am sorry, Lady Ayla,’ he said. ‘More sorry than I can express. I wish … I wish it did not have to be this way.’
‘So do I.’
They sat in silence for a while. Miles could only guess what Ayla was thinking. His own head spun with guilt and regret. He wished he could stop time, freeze it somehow, so that he would never have to face the consequences of his decision. Yet finally, Ayla sighed and got to her feet.
‘I’d better go.’ She frowned at him, as though seeing him properly for the first time that day. ‘You look tired. I hope you’re not working yourself too hard.’
‘I am so close to a breakthrough, Lady Ayla. And if I could just get these collars right –’ He didn’t need to finish the sentence. They both knew what that would mean for the coming war. Desperate hope sparked in Ayla’s eyes, but somehow she managed to shake her head and smile at him.
‘It would be wonderful, of course. But I can’t have you killing yourself over it. You’re too important to me for that.’
Miles didn’t trust himself to speak. He nodded mutely, and Ayla put a hand on his shoulder before turning for the door.
‘Thank you, Miles. As always, you’ve been a great help.’
Once she’d gone, Miles lowered his head onto his knees and let out a long, silent cry of despair. I am sorry, Ayla. I am sorry.
He had only told one lie. But that was bad enough.
Even after leaving Miles, Ayla couldn’t stop thinking about him. There was no denying that if he could produce a reliable collar for the protection of ordinary people, the threat of war would be far less severe. She wanted that as much as she’d ever wanted anything. Yet she had been polite when she’d told him he looked tired: he looked terrible. Red-rimmed eyes, a newly lined face, with a hint of grey beneath the ochre-brown of his skin that implied long nights of wakefulness. She’d never been sure how old he was – perhaps around thirty? A fair bit younger than Bryan, anyway. Older than her. But he looked like he’d aged a decade in the past
few days. Clearly the possibility of war had hit him hard.
It’s hit us all hard, she reminded herself. Let him work. If he can find the solution, it will be worth the sacrifice. Such cold-heartedness didn’t sit well with her at all, but she had no choice. War had a way of rendering individual lives meaningless.
By far the best thing she could do would be to stop it happening at all.
To that end, she went straight to the library. Tomas and Giorgi were both in there; she could hear their raised voices from the other end of the corridor. She wanted to find out if they’d located the leftover taransey yet, but she had to draw on every bit of willpower she possessed before she could make herself open the door. At the start of the investigation yesterday, when they’d come to ask her about it, Giorgi had as good as accused her of disposing of the half-empty bottle in an attempt to cover her tracks. Who knew what he’d accuse her of today?
The men were over by Florentyn’s old desk, facing each other across it much as she’d once faced her father. Her physician and the Kardise doctor were also in the room, off to one side as though trying to avoid being drawn into the argument, and a couple of Helmsmen lingered near the door. All of them looked uncomfortable.
Tomas straightened up and saluted at her entrance. Giorgi gave her a bare nod. Between them, on the desk, stood a half-empty bottle of taransey and a glass containing a finger’s width of the amber liquid.
‘Is that –’ she began, and Tomas nodded.
‘The maid had locked it in a drawer for safekeeping.’
‘Have you tested it?’
‘Gil and Resca have, just now. There’s no doubt it contains zephyr.’
‘Well, then,’ she said. ‘That proves this was a crime aimed just as much at me as it was at Don Tolino, since we shared the bottle. I don’t know how I managed to escape unscathed, but surely the important question now is who put the poison there, and how they did it without breaking the seals.’
‘I made a similar suggestion to Giorgi,’ Tomas agreed. ‘But he insists we should have different priorities.’
He was furious. Perhaps as angry as Ayla had ever seen him, though he was just about holding it in check. She wondered exactly what Giorgi had been saying about her before she entered the room.
‘If a person is untouched by a deadly poison,’ the Kardise aide remarked, ‘the obvious conclusion is that they failed to consume any of it.’ For the first time that afternoon, he looked directly at her, eyes dark and cold. ‘It is easy enough to pretend to share a drink of friendship, Lady Ayla. Particularly in a room with no witnesses.’
Right. All right. But maybe there’s a way to prove it …
She walked over to the desk. Miles had said it was impossible to be immune to zephyr – but Miles didn’t know everything, surely? It had to be worth a try, if only to rule out a line of investigation.
Tomas frowned when she picked up the bottle. ‘What are you doing, Lady Ayla?’
‘We need to know if zephyr doesn’t affect me for some reason.’ She didn’t look in Giorgi’s direction, wishing he wasn’t there. If it had been the Helm alone, she could have asked Tomas about this instead of telling him. But in front of the Kardise, they had to be overlord and captain, not partners. So without waiting for a reply, she topped up the glass.
‘Ayla …’ The dropped honorific would have told her the level of Tomas’s unease, even if she hadn’t been able to hear it in his voice. ‘This could kill you.’
‘I’m sure Lady Ayla knows exactly what she’s doing.’ The double meaning in Giorgi’s words was clear. He thought it was all a ploy. No doubt neither of the possible outcomes would satisfy him: if the poison affected her, it would prove she didn’t drink it last time, whereas if it didn’t, it would prove she’d already known there was no risk. But Tomas needed as much information as possible – and she desperately wanted the truth.
Ignoring Giorgi’s sneer, she sniffed the taransey, then let it touch her lips. Just like last time, she detected nothing unusual. A hint of spice, a touch of sweetness, a subtle bitter aftertaste – was that the zephyr? – and, most of all, strong alcohol.
She lifted the glass a second time, but stopped before it reached her mouth. What if this does kill me? What if everyone is wrong about the limited effects of zephyr on a Changer?
It’s less than I drank last time, she reminded herself. There can’t possibly be enough poison in there to cause me serious harm.
With a flick of the wrist, she gulped the contents down.
‘I will let you know the results of this experiment,’ she announced directly to Giorgi, summoning all the chilly formality she employed when people tried to use her age, her size or her gender as excuses to treat her with less respect than she deserved. She couldn’t look at Tomas; the concern on his face was too raw. It won’t kill me. It won’t.
Without another word, she headed for the door. According to Gil and his Kardise counterpart, it had been the best part of two full bells before the poison had taken hold of the ambassador. She would just have to wait and see what it would do to her.
TEN
Ree and Penn were meant to be on shift together, but – like the day before – they’d been pulled off their usual duties to help with the murder investigation. They were about to go to the library for their orders when a young Helmsman caught up with them and directed them to one of Darkhaven’s small receiving rooms instead. When they got there, they found both Caraway and Ayla waiting for them.
‘You won’t report to the library any more,’ Caraway said. ‘You’ll report to me here, every morning and every evening. The Kardise are being …’ He paused, obviously choosing his words carefully, before concluding, ‘Intractable.’
‘They’re convinced I’m guilty and they won’t hear of anything that says different,’ Ayla added. She looked even paler than usual, and dark shadows lurked beneath her eyes. ‘I’d almost say they’re determined to slow this investigation down until it reaches a standstill. And we can’t let that happen.’ She shivered, pulling her robe tighter around herself. ‘We only have a week.’
Ree frowned. ‘Are you well, Lady Ayla?’
‘Zephyr poisoning,’ Ayla said. ‘I wanted to prove a point, so I drank from the poisoned bottle. I’ve been up all night.’ Her lips curled in a wry smile. ‘Captain Caraway isn’t very pleased with me for endangering myself, but I think it was worth finding out what would happen.’
‘It was,’ Caraway said. ‘But it wouldn’t have been if you’d died.’
‘According to the accepted wisdom, zephyr doesn’t kill Changers. I was almost certain it was safe.’
‘Almost.’
They looked at each other with identical expressions of affectionate exasperation. Ree ducked her head to hide a smile.
‘So you’re not immune to zephyr,’ Penn said – and Ree had to hide another smile at his total obliviousness to any kind of emotional interaction. ‘But the zephyr was definitely in the taransey, and you drank the taransey before without any effect …’
‘Which means something must have stopped it working on you before,’ Ree concluded. ‘An antidote.’
Ayla nodded. ‘But there isn’t one. I was taught that myself, and both Miles and Gil agree.’ She sighed. ‘The only logical explanation is that I’m a murderer.’
‘There’s another explanation,’ Caraway said firmly. ‘And we’ll work it out. But for now … Ree, Penn, you’ll be setting aside the question of Ayla’s temporary immunity, and focusing on how the poison got into the taransey in the first place. We already know the bottle must have been tampered with, but the seals on those things are bloody complicated. Not just anyone could open a bottle of taransey, add poison and reseal it without leaving any sign of the intrusion.’
‘So if we find out how, we might find out who?’ Ree asked.
‘That’s right.’ Caraway handed Penn a half-empty bottle of liquor. ‘It’s been opened again since, of course, but I’m hoping that if you take this back to the distille
ry, they’ll be able to tell you how it was done.’ He held out a letter. ‘You’ll also need this. Ayla’s signed it and added her own seal. That place is guarded better than Darkhaven, and they don’t usually open their doors for anyone less than the overlord herself. I’d go in person, but I don’t suppose I’d be at my best in a place like that – and besides, it should be a simple enough job.’
Ree wondered briefly if it troubled him, working on a case that centred around poisoned liquor. He’d handled the bottle without any sign of discomfort, and that oblique reference to his own past relationship with alcohol had been made with the same self-deprecating honesty he brought to all his dealings with the Helm. All the same, the metaphor must cut too close for him to approach it with total equanimity: a precious drink, with poison at its heart.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said, tucking the letter away in an inside pocket. ‘We’ll do everything we can.’
Ree would have expected the distillery to be located in the first ring, somewhere in the industrial quarter with all the other factories, but in fact it was in the second. Not on the busy eastern side, either, with its noisy smiths and smelters and the constant rumble of the tram line. It was tucked down at the end of a secluded street, surrounded by hundreds of little workshops where the finest artisans plied their trade.
‘Says a lot about how they see themselves,’ Penn muttered.
Ree tore her gaze away from the most beautiful, intricate piece of jewellery she had ever seen: a golden bracelet in the shape of a firedrake with the tip of its tail in its mouth, every scale individually shaped and carved, with tiny rubies for eyes. Earlier she’d been caught by a series of exquisitely detailed paintings of Mirrorvalese flowers, each no bigger than her little fingernail; and before that, a bubble of the thinnest, most delicate glass supported by a stem so slender it must surely be about to snap. It was hard not to get distracted in this part of the second ring.
‘Sorry?’
‘The distillery.’ He gestured at the tall, barred gates that were the only way in. ‘They’re not manufacturing a product. They’re making art.’
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