by Sharon Shinn
“It’s possible,” he said. “There’s a bridge over the lake—small, sort of like this one—but they could have been standing on it together. Gotten into an argument and started to fight. They both could have tumbled over the side.”
I felt relief pour through me like a rising flood. It was such a logical explanation. “How very tragic that would be.”
“Not as tragic as murder,” he said dryly.
“What could you tell from this other man’s body?” I asked. “Did he look like he’d been in a fight, too?”
“It wasn’t a man.”
“It was a woman?” I exclaimed as if shocked. “Then— What do you suppose happened?”
Nico passed his hand over his face as if weary from too much thinking. I doubted he could be as weary as I was, though, or thinking any harder. “The scenario could have been much the same,” he said. “They were on the bridge. They struggled. Jamison tried to force himself on her and she resisted hard enough to send them both into the water.”
“That’s awful. Just awful,” I said. “Though it does seem to fit with everything I have heard about Jamison.”
“It does,” Nico agreed. But he sounded dissatisfied.
I tried to read his face in the dark. What was he not telling me? “Do they have any idea who the girl is?”
“Not yet. We’re asking around to see if any local women have gone missing. So far everyone seems to be accounted for.”
I let a note of doubt creep into my voice. “I suppose Jamison could have picked up a woman during his travels. Some country girl who was impressed by his fancy ways. He could have told her he would bring her to the city and set her up in a big house. But the more time she spent with him, the less she liked him.” I allowed myself a delicate shiver.
“Right. I have to admit that was my first thought, too.”
“And now you don’t think so? What changed your mind?”
He was silent a moment. He started playing with my hand again, toying with my ring, sliding it up to my knuckle, then pushing it back in place. “My uncle must have sent ten people to investigate Jamison’s drowning, and one of them is a man who studies dead bodies to learn how they died.”
“That’s gruesome.”
“I know. What must the conversations be like at his house in the evening? But he believes the corpse isn’t that of an ordinary woman. It’s an echo.”
For a moment, I absolutely could not breathe. Dear goddess, sweet holy spirit, have mercy on my soul. They knew. They knew. “Well, then, your mystery is solved, isn’t it?” I asked, fighting to speak in a normal voice. “If you can recognize her face—but how can you be sure she’s an echo and not an original?”
He nodded. “That’s the thing,” he said. “And I didn’t know it until now, either. When echoes die, they revert to some—the investigator called it some ‘primal undifferentiated state.’ Their faces become blank and their hair falls out and their bodies just become a torso and limbs. You can’t even tell if they’re men or women.”
I drew a sharp breath of relief, though I hoped he would think it was astonishment. “That’s unbelievable.”
“That’s what I thought. But my uncle confirmed it with two coroners in the city. So we have no idea who this echo belonged to.”
“Then how can you be sure it’s a woman?”
“Apparently the whole process of—of—reverting happens much more slowly if the body is in water. So her body is still that of a woman, but her features aren’t very defined. My uncle has decided this means we can’t be positive she’s an echo, and we still must look for other possibilities. But the investigator seems very sure.”
I shook my head, as if I couldn’t quite take in all the details. In truth, I was trying to figure out what to say. “Well. So. If she is an echo. And if she and Jamison killed each other—I can’t even think up a story that might explain how that happened.”
“I can,” Nico said, “but I don’t like it.”
“Tell me.”
Then he described what had happened that day as accurately as if he’d been standing there watching. “Jamison encounters a noblewoman and her echoes. He assaults her, she resists, and in the fight, he’s killed and so is one of the echoes. The others dispose of them in the lake and hope nobody notices.”
“It certainly sounds plausible,” I admitted, hoping he could not hear the pounding of my heart. “But I would think that would make your task very simple! Find the fine lady who’s missing one of her shadows.”
“Yes, and my uncle plans to do just that,” Nico answered.
I felt a sudden flicker of hope. “Your uncle must be pleased at this turn of events.”
“Pleased? Why?”
“If Jamison was killed by a noblewoman and her echoes, surely the queen had nothing to do with his death. Perhaps he will not feel so compelled to solve the crime.”
“Unless the noblewoman who quarreled with Jamison was a particular friend of the queen’s. Unless Tabitha asked this woman to pick a fight with Jamison. It’s unlikely, I’ll admit, but Malachi hasn’t lost any of his zeal for the case. In fact, he’s sending men to every corner of the Seven Jewels, checking on the well-being of every noblewoman with an echo.”
“That could take some time.”
“It certainly could.”
I remembered the conversation in the temple. “Although I suppose you could wait till Counting Day. Then you’d know who was missing an echo.” Naturally, I did not expect this to aid in his investigation at all, since I would accompany Marguerite to the temple in Prudence’s place. But—would the deception serve on that holy day? Did the goddess empower the priestesses to discern which echoes were authentic and which were merely pretend? I had to control a shudder as I quickly abandoned that line of thought. We had so many more pressing and immediate worries.
“I don’t think we need to wait until Counting Day,” Nico replied. “I think we have an answer much closer at hand.”
I sat up straighter, as if puzzled but trying very hard to understand. “What do you mean?”
He gestured toward the palace. “There are twelve women here who have echoes of their own. Most of them would have traveled along the Charamon Road on their way here. Most of them had some reason to dislike Jamison. Maybe one of them is the guilty party.”
“But—they’ve been here a week and everyone’s always been accompanied by the proper number of echoes. Haven’t they?”
“I don’t know. Who pays attention to echoes? Do you? Everyone just assumes they’re there, where they’re supposed to be. Do you go around counting every time you see a noblewoman? Do you even know how many echoes someone is supposed to have?”
“I—I’ve never really thought about it,” I said. “Until I started working for Marguerite, I was hardly around echoes at all.”
I was thinking furiously. He might be right—I had realized for myself that no creature in this city was more invisible than an echo. Since we had arrived at the palace, I had been counting echoes, but mostly because we were in such strange circumstances and I was trying to pay attention to every critical detail. But most nobles (with Marguerite being a notable exception) practically ignored their own echoes, at least in public venues. How closely were they monitoring those belonging to other people? The footmen who served the dinner tables paid more attention to the echoes than anyone else in the palace, but only because they had to synchronize when they poured wine and filled plates. Could they have said how many echoes any specific noble should actually have? Would they have given it a second thought if a noble who was supposed to have three echoes was suddenly down to two?
“I’m sure Cormac could tell you how many echoes everyone on his guest list ought to have—but I doubt he’s made sure that that’s how many showed up every night,” Nico said. “I mean, look at those girls from Banchura! Nine echoes between them. One of them could have been missing this whole time and no one would have noticed.”
“That’s true!” I exclaimed. I did
n’t feel guilty for casting suspicion on the triplets because I knew for a fact they hadn’t killed Jamison. “I’ve seen them walking out the palace doors like some kind of mob. No one could ever keep track of how many of them are together at one time.”
“And Lady Elyssa. I heard that one of her echoes has been missing ever since she arrived. Elyssa claims she was injured, but maybe she’s actually dead.”
Even less did I mind throwing suspicion on Elyssa. “Yes! How dreadful if Elyssa turned out to be a murderer, but—that does seem very odd.”
“Then there are the guests who showed up at the palace with only two echoes to their names,” Nico went on. “Maybe that’s all they ever had. But maybe they were supposed to have three, and everyone else failed to notice—or was too polite to speak up.”
“So that’s what you’re going to do now,” I said. “Investigate every one of Cormac’s guests.”
He nodded in the dark. “Quietly and carefully, not rousing anyone’s suspicions. We don’t even plan to let anyone know about the other body.” He kissed my fingers. “So don’t tell Marguerite.”
Once again, I was flooded with a terrible fear that he was laying an elaborate trap for me. He knows what we have done. He knows about our charade. He is trying to trick me into a confession. As casually as I could manage, I said, “Your uncle will be angry if he learns you have told me all this.”
“Probably,” he agreed. “But I walked from the temple to the flower market with Marguerite, and I was counting echoes, and I know there were three. So you’re the one person I feel I can trust.”
A delicate lure designed to make me relax? An honest and oh-so-sweet declaration of faith? Either way, I had to play along. My gut twisted as I thought of how bitterly I was deceiving him, how absolute my betrayal was. But my only other choice was to betray Marguerite.
I lifted my free hand to touch his cheek, slightly rough from a day’s growth of whiskers. “I’m glad you trust me,” I said softly. “I wish you didn’t have to spend your time thinking about such dreadful things.”
He captured my hand, brought it to his mouth, and then pulled it aside so he could kiss me on the lips. I bent into his kiss, my mouth as hungry as his own, my desire rising just as rapidly. Did I simply want to forget all the impossible tangles of my life, take a few moments to replace thinking with feeling? Did I want to complicate his emotions, cloud his thoughts, bind him to me with the oldest and most powerful of ties? I needed him to trust me, to believe in me, to want to protect me. I needed to seduce him.
Did he need to seduce me?
Or were each of us half in love with the other, drunk on the possibilities of passion, ready to tumble into blind infatuation? Was any of this real, or were both of us modeling love as a new costume in a dangerous masquerade?
He had nudged me down into a reclining position and shoved my skirts up around my waist. He was swiftly unknotting the strings of my underclothes, but I was just as busy with the laces of his trousers. I stroked his hard body through the thin layer of fabric, and he hissed with pleasure. Then he abruptly sat up and leaned back on his hands as if trying to make sure they weren’t free to come roaming back to my body.
“Really? Here?” he said in a breathless voice. “I thought you needed four walls and a bed.”
“It’s my preference,” I answered, plenty breathless myself. “But I can’t possibly let you follow me all the way up to my room, and I don’t know where you sleep, but I have to think fifty people might see us on the way there—”
“A hundred.”
“So I’m willing to compromise.”
I sat up and stretched forward for another kiss, but he pulled back. “It’s not right,” he said, more seriously than he’d spoken all night, and we’d been talking about sober topics, indeed. “Not that I’ve never had a girl in a hallway or a garden, but it’s not right. Not for you. You’re more special than that.”
He must have seen the look of devastation that crossed my face because he leaned in to give me another deep kiss, more reassurance than passion. Then he resettled himself and pulled me into his arms, my back against his chest. He locked his arms across my ribs, where no doubt he could feel the hammering of my heart, and bent forward to nuzzle my neck.
“I want to lie with you all night,” he whispered. “Love each other, then make each other laugh, and love some more. We’ll find the time for it, and the place. Just not tonight.”
I let him rock me against his body and drop kisses on my cheek, and I pretended I was pleased that he thought so highly of me. But part of me was terrified. Part of me thought he was holding back because he didn’t trust me; that he didn’t think his heart would be safe within my care. And all of me knew that he was right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Naturally, the first thing I did the next morning was tell Marguerite every word of Nico’s revelations and speculations. She sat on the sofa and shivered with an internal chill, but she didn’t break down and weep. I wondered if her visit with Taeline yesterday had fortified her unraveling spirit. Or if Taeline’s announcement that she was moving to Thelleron had broken her so completely that she had no tears left to shed.
“Let’s go to the temple,” she said quietly when I was done. “And then the flower market. We can’t change the past or direct the future, so we must try to get through the days the same way we always have.”
The visit to the temple was surprisingly soothing—to me, certainly, and I think to Marguerite as well. Patience and Purpose and I again sat a row behind Marguerite, and Taeline eventually took a seat beside her. They talked in low voices for nearly an hour, and I hummed softly to myself so I would not be tempted to listen. From where I was sitting, I could not tell if their fingers touched as their hands lay on the bench between them, but I hoped with all my heart that they did.
Marguerite seemed at peace as we crossed the city to the flower market, and she picked out only blossoms of white and red. “I want to wear the colors of Oberton tonight,” she said, toying with the bracelet on her arm. “A white dress and a black shawl and my beautiful onyx necklace. I want to remember where I come from and who I am.”
We spent the afternoon making headdresses—I did most of the designing, but Marguerite insisted on setting some of the stitches, and the echoes helped by feeding out rolls of ribbon and holding stems steady when something needed to be tacked in place. We kept to our color scheme but changed the gown Marguerite planned to wear when word filtered down that Cormac and Jordan would join the nobles for dinner.
“A black dress and a red scarf, then,” Marguerite said. “So we can show honor to the dead.”
Indeed, all the visiting nobles, and their assorted echoes, attended the dinner in similarly somber colors accented with their own favored jewels. As always, they first gathered in the drawing room to visit before the meal. Darrily looked magnificent, her dark skin and dark dress lightened only by the trapped fire of the opals she wore draped around her throat and braided into her hair. The Banchura triplets and their echoes were all arrayed in deepest blue, every gown an identical shade; the sapphires sewn into their bodices matched the fabric so perfectly the gems were only visible because they glittered when any of them moved. It was impossible to tell how many were actually present because they constantly shifted position as they whispered to each other or addressed the other guests or flagged down a servant to request a glass of wine. I tried to count the total of originals and echoes, but I kept losing track. I had no reason to suspect that there would be fewer than twelve on hand—but I was glad that it wasn’t easy to be sure.
After we had all been in the drawing room about twenty minutes, Cormac and Jordan stepped through the door, followed by their echoes. There was a moment of absolute silence while everyone turned to stare at them, and then, in a murmurous rustle of lace and silk, every noble dropped into a deep curtsey or a low bow. It was an acknowledgment not of royalty, but of grief—heartfelt on the princes’ behalf, I thought, if not on Jamison’
s.
Jordan merely nodded in response, but Cormac addressed the room. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m sorry I’ve been so preoccupied. I haven’t forgotten that you are all here at my request and deserve my attention.”
I thought the word attention was more of a threat than an apology, but that was probably because I felt nervous and guilty. Everyone else seemed to take his greeting as an invitation, and the nobles surged forward to cluster around the princes with soft words of welcome and condolence. There was a slow shift and churn as one or two people spoke to Cormac, then drifted away to address Jordan; others stepped forward to take their places. Jordan was far enough away from me that I couldn’t hear anything he said, but I caught the rhythmic litany of Cormac’s voice speaking the same words over and over: “Thank you … Yes, it is dreadful … No, we’ve learned very little … but thank you …”
I had to assume Cormac was at least as well informed about the situation as Nico. So the prince was lying to all his guests with as much cool nerve as Marguerite had been lying to him for the past week.
I decided that for the rest of my life I would always just assume that no one was telling the truth. Judging from my recent experiences, I would be mostly right.
When it was Marguerite’s turn to offer Cormac her hand and her sympathies, he managed to summon a smile. “You are wearing my favorite necklace, I see,” he said.
“It seems like such a minor thing,” she said. “But I thought if one small piece of beauty could lift your heart just the tiniest bit, I was duty bound to make the effort. I had no choice but to wear it.”
“A subject who is both loyal and kind,” Cormac replied. “That is a rare combination.”
“Oh, surely not. There must be thousands who match that description.”
Cormac’s smile widened a little. I thought perhaps this mild flirtation might be the first respite he’d had from rage and sorrow since the news about Jamison arrived five nights ago. “Loyal, kind, beautiful, and noble,” he corrected himself. “Shall I pile on more adjectives? Soon you will find yourself in a category of one.”
