“I appreciate your cooperation with the investigation,” she said. “Thank you for your help.”
Li Ming hesitated for a moment before rising. “There is one last point,” he said. “You know of Minister Zhao, I believe?”
“From the Queen of the Southern Lands’ court? I wasn’t acquainted with him, but I knew he’d been assassinated recently.” Irene chose her words carefully. “Given that the Queen of the Southern Lands is involved in this peace effort, his death just before this conference makes me wonder if there’s a connection.”
Li Ming nodded approvingly. “Indeed. He was one of the nobles who strongly supported peace. Mei Feng is attending instead of him, on behalf of her queen.”
This news corroborated her suspicions about Minister Zhao’s death. “We wondered whether the Blood Countess might have murdered him too. And Mei Feng has agreed to answer questions from Vale.”
“That is a logical deduction. But it grows more complex when one tries to work out how a Fae could reach so far into our territories.” Li Ming twitched a shrug. “Minister Zhao was poisoned. The fruit that he ate was never traced, so we don’t know who sent it. Mei Feng knows more than I do, as they were part of the same court.”
“Why wouldn’t Mei Feng talk to Mu Dan about it, given that dragons prefer to keep such matters between themselves?” Irene asked.
“For much the same reason that I didn’t talk with my brother,” Li Ming said. “Their mothers were sisters. But they themselves have not been fond of each other for a long while now. It is a pity when such strife arises within a family.”
He gave Irene a small courteous bow. “Until later, Miss Winters. As I said, I trust your discretion.”
* * *
• • •
Irene made her way downstairs by a separate route from Li Ming’s: she had no wish to answer awkward questions. It was about two o’clock in the afternoon: she’d lost time somewhere in her confrontation with the Princess. That was an occasional hazard of dealing with powerful Fae.
She needed some fresh air and some time to think. Wrapping herself up in a fur cape (courtesy of Bradamant’s efforts to provide an appropriate wardrobe), Irene stepped outside, under the shelter of a canopy, and looked up at the sky. The snow had eased off to leave grey rolling banks of cloud in sole occupation of the sky, and the wind had calmed to barely a whisper. Drifts of snow filled the crevices of masonry and lay along the windowsills, but the streets and pavements themselves had been kept mostly clear by traffic and pedestrians. Ridges of dirty slush showed here and there, moulded from Paris grime and frozen in place.
She now had almost too much information. Prutkov had his own agents in Paris and was setting Irene and her team up to “discover the evil Countess.” This wasn’t a huge surprise, but it was a depressing confirmation. And did he have anything else going on besides that? The existence of one hidden scheme suggested the possibility of others. The Princess feared there was treachery afoot. Which there probably was. And according to Li Ming, Ren Shun might have done something unethical while following his lord Ao Ji’s orders—or while doing what he thought Ao Ji wanted him to do. Which raised new possible questions about why Ren Shun might have been murdered. Could this have been triggered by the peace conference, by inter-dragon politics, by family matters, or by a combination of the three? Questions had been raised that would involve a lot of research into the dragon’s private life, and probably nobody would be prepared to answer them. Plus there was the business of who killed Minister Zhao and whether there was a link between the two deaths. And Irene and her team wouldn’t be the only ones looking for a connection there. Mei Feng wasn’t stupid. None of the participants in this conference could be described as stupid.
And then there was Herodotus’s Myths. Assuming it actually existed and that it wasn’t just a red herring, a detail dreamed up as part of an elaborate frame job on the Library. If Prutkov was wrong and it was significant enough to bribe a Librarian, then what secrets might it hold? How important could it be?
In addition, Mu Dan was Mei Feng’s cousin, part of her family, and hadn’t wanted to tell anyone. Could their issues have something to do with Mu Dan’s independence from her dragon clan?
Irene stared out at nowhere in particular, as a new possibility fell into place. Li Ming had suggested that dragon monarchs and the great families didn’t always have the same priorities. Were the kings and queens trying to make an end run round the power structure of the families in order to get this treaty in place? Was that why an independent investigator, like Mu Dan, had been brought in? And was Kai an unfortunate low-born son, or a useful independent playing piece—without inconvenient maternal family connections—sired for later advantage?
She regretted getting Vale and Kai into this. No, that wasn’t fair. This sort of situation was Vale’s meat and drink; if she’d tried to talk him out of it, he’d have insisted on coming anyhow. However, it was her fault for bringing Kai into the situation. If anything happened to him . . .
Instinct made Irene break her chain of thought and pull herself back to the here and now. Someone was watching her.
She let her gaze drift casually across the wide street in front of her, trying to identify the source of her unease. The waiting cab-drivers, perched atop their cabs, warming their hands inside their coats or eating pastries? No, none of them seemed likely. A group of middle-class women hurrying back from lunch to their place of work, their wide-shouldered jackets flapping as they walked briskly, their skirts damp at the hem from snow and slush? No, they were preoccupied with their own business. The newspaper vendor across the street? The gendarme watching the hotel in what he thought was an inconspicuous way?
Or was it the grey cat nearby, sitting like a statuette with her tail tucked around her paws, watching Irene with an unblinking gaze?
Irene weighed the possibilities. Then she turned towards the cat and spread her hand in an open gesture, as if to say, Your move.
The cat unwrapped its tail from its paws and stretched, back arching as if it had discovered a dozen extra joints and meant to use them all. It turned and began to walk away from Irene down the pavement. It had gone a dozen steps before it paused and turned back on itself again, mouth opening in a silent beckoning mew.
This was the sort of situation where operatives who went off on their own deserved everything that happened to them. It might be—no, it probably was—nothing but a lure into a trap. But some traps had to be sprung, just to find out who or what was behind them.
Irene crossed to the gendarme, keeping half an eye on the cat. Fortunately it seemed disposed to wait. She reached into her purse and pulled out a five-franc piece, offering it to him. “Please do me a small service,” she said. “Please have the note I’m about to write taken into Le Meurice and given to the lady Mu Dan—the hotel staff will find her.”
“Of course, madam,” the gendarme agreed. It was good money for the job, and he wouldn’t have to leave his post for more than a moment. “The note?”
Naturally Irene had pencil and paper in her purse. She pulled them out and scribbled hastily, Following a beckoning cat down the rue de Rivoli westwards—will try to leave messages or markers if I change direction. Irene. She folded it and passed it over. “A thousand thanks.”
“A small matter,” the gendarme said gallantly, clicking his heels together as she turned away.
The cat was still there. Irene wondered if its mistress had been able to see everything she’d just done. She also wished she’d been able to call for more backup. But Vale and Silver were both out, Kai was with his uncle . . . and to be honest, she wasn’t sure that she trusted Prutkov any more. Mu Dan was her best option.
A couple of blocks along, the cat turned right, up the wide rue des Pyramides—then left again, and then right again, picking its way along the street with the same careful precision as a normal cat, but barely pausing. Irene managed to le
ave a couple of messages with street vendors or gendarmes, but she didn’t have time for more than a scribbled couple of words. The cat was in no mood for delay. And Irene knew enough of the geography of Paris to be certain that the cat was leading her away from the central district of wide streets and broad avenues and frequent gendarmes, towards the rougher back streets and more shadowed alleys.
This was hardly a surprise. But she couldn’t stop now.
All right, technically she could, but then she’d never find out what was going on. Besides, she reassured herself, if the Countess had simply wanted her dead, then there were simpler ways to do it.
Empty clothes-lines dangled from the windows of the latest back alley. Not even the most desperate housewife would hang washing outside in the current weather. A group of ragged boys huddled round a can of burning coals, bundled up in multiple layers of tatters and oversized coats. A couple of them called out to Irene as she hurried past, offers to act as a guide or show her the wonders of Paris. She knew that she was out of place here. Her cape, dress, and hat had been intended for the best hotels in Paris, not for this area. This was one of the places where families crowded into the same building, six to a three-storey house, where artists could only afford hired attics, and where even in the middle of winter, the gangs who called themselves Apaches lounged on street corners and sneered. She was an obvious target.
But at least the cat had finally come to a stop. It sat down next to a battered doorway in one of the buildings and began to lick a paw meditatively.
“Thank you,” Irene said politely as she drew level with it, slightly out of breath. “That was quite a walk.”
The cat ignored her.
The building was old—these were parts of Paris that had endured over centuries, and been added to rather than rebuilt. Grey stone bricks and flaking cement showed underneath the slush, and slate and tile roofs gleamed wetly as the snow melted; they had no insulation to keep the heat inside, and the cold seeped in with every breath. A battered sign that might have depicted a wine bottle hung beside the doorway. She could smell tobacco, sweat, black coffee, beer, and wine. A soft buzz of conversation came from inside, barely audible through the worn, knife-marked planks of the door.
She could feel eyes on her, waiting to see what she’d do next. The Apaches on the nearest street corner were watching her, as uniformed as any military force in their striped jerseys, neckerchiefs, and red sashes. The boys around the can of coals stared at her. Even the cat had finished with its paw and had fixed its wide eyes on her.
Carefully Irene opened the door and stepped inside.
A rush of smoky air greeted her and made her blink. The room was sunken, several steps down from street level, and it was full of people. Men, mostly. They crowded around their tables, nursing pipes and glasses, conversing in a low drone of argot French. The few women who were present were curled up against their male companions, with shawls drawn round their bare shoulders, nursing small glasses of spirits. A couple of servers circulated between the tables and the bar at the far end of the room, but otherwise the place was static, as drowsy as a bear’s den in winter. And just as dangerous.
To her left, a cat mewed. Irene glanced across and saw an elderly woman, so wrapped in faded shawls that she was barely more than an outline, seated at a table on her own. A black cat was sprawled on the surface in front of her. There was a single spare chair at the table.
Irene took a moment to review the situation. Allies non-existent, enemy in front of me, potential foes to either side.
But she walked across to the spare seat and set one hand on the rough wooden back. “May I join you?”
“I’ve been hoping that you would,” the old woman croaked. Her face was wizened, dry with age, but there was the sense of something corrupt underneath, and her eyes gleamed like a spider’s. “I have some questions.”
CHAPTER 20
“It would be nice to hope that we can have a free and full exchange of information,” Irene said, sitting down. She offered her gloved hand to the cat to sniff. “Should I be assuming there’s a third party present?”
“My lady’s only watching,” the crone said with a rasping chuckle. “She sent me out to do the talking. Poor old Dorotya, her feet aching, her back aching, but never a moment’s rest when her beautiful mistress needs fresh blood . . .”
“Fresh blood?” Irene asked blandly. She could feel the coldness of fear slowly oozing up her spine, but she had no intention of showing it.
“Did I say the wrong thing? I mean fresh information. A lady likes to know what’s going on, but she can’t go traipsing all around the marketplaces and taverns herself, now, can she? No, she says, Katarina, where are you, girl? Katarina, you be a good girl and go out and ask some questions of that nasty little bitch who threw brandy all over me yesterday.”
“Katarina?” Irene tried to think where she’d seen the crone’s face before. There was something familiar about it.
“Dorotya. Katarina. Maybe Ilona. An old woman like myself loses track of that sort of thing. You’ll come to understand it yourself when you’re a bit older, dearie, assuming you ever get there.” The crone peeled her lips back to bare a gap-toothed smile. “Now, are you going to be sensible?”
“I’m prepared to talk,” Irene said carefully. “I can’t commit myself to anything more until I know what the stakes are.”
Dorotya took a slurping swig from her tankard of beer. “Fair enough, dearie. You are nicely spoken, I must say. I suppose even the gentry can be polite when they’ve got something to gain by it.”
“For what it’s worth, my mother and my father were honest working people,” Irene said firmly. So what if they were stealing books? For Librarians, that is honest work.
Dorotya sniffed noisily. “You can say what you like, dearie, but I know what I see and what my mistress sees, and you’re wearing silk and dealing with royalty. In fact . . .” She sniffed again, and there was something more feral to the noise this time. “I can tell you’ve been keeping exalted company on both sides. Now isn’t that interesting?”
Irene suppressed the urge to lean away. “Let’s get down to business. What do you want to know?”
“My lady and I want to know who killed a certain dragon,” Dorotya said. “We hear you’re looking into it yourself, dearie. Perhaps you’d like to tell us all about it.”
Irene blinked. This certainly wasn’t the question she’d expected. “May I just check which dragon you’re talking about?” she temporised. “I mean, so many dragons, so many possible murders.”
“Now that’s the sort of thing I like to hear.” Dorotya cackled approvingly. “That’s the spirit, dearie! But you know who I’m talking about. The one that they found stabbed in Le Meurice.”
Irene spread her hands. “I arrived just two days ago. I don’t know who did it. It wasn’t me.”
Dorotya put down her tankard and raised a finger. There was a scraping of chairs from behind Irene, and the sound of men rising to their feet.
Irene didn’t need Vale’s deductive skills to tell her she was in trouble. But there was something liberating about this. She was surrounded by known enemies, not politics. And she didn’t have anyone to worry about—apart from herself.
She smiled.
“I’m not sure you understand quite how serious your position is, dearie,” Dorotya said. “You’re in a lot of trouble here. I think you should be grateful for the chance to spill your guts to a nice mother confessor. You wouldn’t believe how many young ladies have shared their last words with me.”
“I bow to your experience. But I’m rather hoping these won’t be my last words.”
“Well, my little lambkin, I’d say that the ball’s in your court on that one.”
The approaching feet were right behind Irene now. She restrained her urge to turn around. The impression of nervousness, however accurate it might be, would onl
y weaken her position. Besides, her memory had just come into focus. “I remember where I saw you before,” she said. “You were at the morgue.” Another piece of memory clicked into place. “You nearly tripped me when I was chasing those fake gendarmes, when they ran for the sewers!”
“Now, with a memory like that, you’ve got no excuse for not telling me everything.” Dorotya nodded to one of the men behind Irene. “If you’d be so kind, my precious?”
A thin braided cord fell across Irene’s line of vision, coming to rest against her neck, and the man standing behind her pressed close against her chair, drawing the garrotte tight enough that she could feel it through the fabric of her high collar.
“Now, my sweet,” Dorotya said, returning her attention to Irene. “Can you think of any little details that you might possibly have left out? As a favour to me?”
“When you put it that way . . .” Irene was fairly sure that she wasn’t in immediately lethal danger yet. But that could change with a moment’s tightening of the cord around her neck. “Since you were investigating the morgue yourself, I assume you know the dragon was stabbed from behind.”
Dorotya nodded. “With a good knife too. None of this modern rubbish. You need a nice sharp piece when you want to be sure you’re tickling someone’s heart the first time, and not getting caught up on a rib.”
Irene sighed. “The problem, Madam Dorotya—and you, milady countess—is that at the moment I’m still investigating.” She decided that it wouldn’t hurt to share a few of the basic details. “We’re aware that the gentleman went out for a walk, alone, on the night of his murder. We know his body was found in Le Meurice the next morning. Unfortunately, we’re still trying to trace what happened in between.”
“That’s all?”
Irene raised a finger to tentatively touch the cord round her throat, testing to see if she’d be ordered to keep her hands on the table, but nobody said anything. That meant she had leeway. “Let me put a card on the table. Your mistress the Countess has been accused of the murder.”
The Mortal Word Page 27
