Chapter 9 #3
“Yes. Castus chose us to be his confidants, of all people.” Ippeas glanced around the sotbar. “But we must speak quietly now! If my father hears mention of this, he’ll have my damned head.”
“What can you tell me of the relationship?”
“Well, I knew it was insane! And I knew they met once a month. But did he worry about what would happen if they were discovered? About the possibility of clan war? No! No, he worried instead that he couldn’t bring her gifts, for she was just as rich as he was.
He spent his idle days thinking up silly things to give her.
Flowers. Trinkets. Shows of affection.” A resentful frown briefly coursed through his face.
“Such are the things the prime children may worry about, I suppose…”
“And no one else knew, besides you two?” I asked.
“No,” said Ippeas.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m certain! If they had, the two of them would have had their backs flensed from whipping! Especially Castus. Our family has been through so much, but then to betray us so with a daughter of our enemies?”
I debated what to ask next. I wondered first and foremost how Zansay and Castus had been infected with the guiding web, and had then been so carefully conditioned for the murder.
But there seemed to be no simple way to do this without indicating that the two had been poisoned—and that would bring up a whole host of questions I had no desire to answer.
Ippeas continued: “Castus eventually let slip they were actually trying to run away, perhaps to the wilds. And that was when I knew…”
“That he was really in love,” sighed Fotia. “For Castus loves his comforts and would normally never abandon them for anything. Yet for her…”
“What a state we are all in!” said Ippeas. “Of all the girls he had to pick, why did it have to be her? It’d have been a finer thing for him to try to marry the goddamn statue of Mistress Panus!”
I looked to Fotia, confused.
“Daljeni saint,” she explained. “Her statue is over in the woods.”
“Ohh,” said Ippeas, taken aback. “Is…is your brother not…”
“I told you this!” said Fotia. “My family was not observant! I’ve been clear about this many times!”
“You have not,” said Ippeas, stung. “You almost never talk about your home, Fo.”
I sensed they were about to drift into some familiar squabble and raised a hand. “Was there anything strange about the relationship?” I asked. “Or his behavior?”
“What, besides that Cas was full of insipid foolery?” said Fotia. “No.”
“For Castus, I think…Well,” said Ippeas. “It was more than love, even. It wasn’t just running away with a girl. It was also just running away.”
“From what?” I asked. “From this curse I keep hearing about?”
“Perhaps. But I also think he was running away from that house. My house, I suppose. It is no cheery place now. It hasn’t been for some time, since the deaths of my cousins.”
Now we came to it.
“What about them?” I asked. “I know only a little of it. Your father wouldn’t even speak on the subject.”
“That doesn’t shock me. Many are convinced we’ve committed some secret evil and invited the ire of the fates.
It causes him no end of grief.” He took a quick sip from Fotia’s cup.
“The first was my eldest cousin, Lyimo. He went missing one morning, three years ago. They found him drowned in a stock pond in our northernmost spreads.”
“There was no sign of violence?”
“No,” he said. “Many thought it was the work of our enemies, at the time. But no. Lyimo’s body was whole and fair.”
“Did he act strangely in the days before?”
“No, no. He was something of a peacock, a proud, gay thing. He’d just been put in the marriage market, so to speak, and enjoyed being plied with many gifts and favors. He was often more than a little drunk more than a little too often.”
“But he wasn’t melancholic or distracted?”
“No, he wasn’t. But Sagma and Gevma…they were so terribly tormented, in their last days.”
“Sagma was the one who hanged herself?”
“Yes. She hanged herself in the pavilion where she and Lyimo and I played so often as children. She did display a great sorrow beforehand, an incurable sadness. It was Lyimo’s death that affected her so, I thought.
They were very close.” Another weary sigh.
“But it was Gevma’s death that hurt us the most, I think, for we’d all suffered so much already. ”
My eyes shimmered as I recovered the memory. “This was the boy dragged by his steed?”
“Yes. Fell off a destrier. But he was deeply disturbed and saddened the weeks before…I know he was not sleeping. He tottered about the halls of Aimafall as if a ghost.”
“Yes,” said Fotia quietly. “Like a person worn so thin you could see right through him.”
I frowned as I pondered this. There seemed to be no commonality between them all: for the first death, it had been a suicide with no melancholy; the second, a melancholic suicide; and the third, a similar melancholy, but an accidental death.
Perhaps Ana was right: this could be the work of the web, for only it could explain why so many different deaths had come to find such different people so rapidly.
I reckoned it would be an easy thing to condition a person to simply walk forward into a pond, and it would be even easier to condition any action that would get someone killed while riding a destrier.
The second, though: how would someone condition a girl into hanging herself?
The act of making the knot, looping the rope just so, setting up a chair to be kicked out from beneath you was no simple thing.
And, after all, a person could only do this act once.
How could they condition her to perform it?
“You see?” murmured Fotia to Ippeas. “There it is. He believes us. He knows Castus is innocent.”
I glared at her. “I’ll need more than this.”
“Then what will you need?” asked Fotia.
“I need to hear from Velona Armenta herself.”
Ippeas pulled a face like he’d just bitten into a turned scallop. “Ohh…I wish you’d not ask that of me. Madam Velona is…not well.”
“What is not well?” I asked.
He grumbled for a moment. “Velona is…struggling with the loss of her children.”
“That’s understandable. But I sense there’s more.”
Ippeas glanced at Fotia. “This isn’t something we discuss much outside Aimafall. In fact, it’s somewhat forbidden for us to speak of outside the family seat.”
“By who?”
He pulled another face.
“Your father?” I suggested.
“Yes. He is seneschal. He protects the interests of our house, so…” He sighed. “Madam Velona thinks very hard about inheritance these days. She is convinced that some…some force in the world, perhaps the ancient Daljeni spirits themselves, are plaguing her for some past misdeed.”
“And her lack of wellness has something to do with…warding against these spirits?” I asked, still puzzled.
Ippeas glowered into the table and said nothing. Finally, Fotia said, “No. Madam Velona is attempting to produce more heirs to her line.”
I stared at them. There was a very long silence.
“F…fertility treatments?” I ventured.
“Yes,” said Ippeas reluctantly.
“I…see,” I said. “And—how old is Madam Velona?”
“A little over sixty,” said Fotia.
“And the treatments are very difficult,” said Ippeas. “Very bad for her body, mind, and spirit. Yet she persists.”
I considered that, slightly aghast. Despite all the arts of the Apoths when it came to stem and leaf and shaping flesh, managing fertility and reproduction was devilishly difficult.
It was one thing to change a being’s nature, but manipulating the miracle of gestating new life was simply too sensitive, too unpredictable—and too damaging to both mother and child.
Only the very, very wealthy could afford it, and it still only offered dismal success rates, and a high chance of pain, afflictions, and death.
Ippeas raised a hand. “I don’t wish to speak on this anymore. I know little of my aunt’s state now. I am…not as favored by her as others.” A shadow flitted over his face at that. I made note of it. “But Fotia is. If you truly think speaking to her would help, she might be able to assist.”
“I could, yes,” said Fotia grimly. “I’d tell her my own brother is investigating her son’s case. That may make her willing to speak to you. If you think such a thing could aid Castus, of course.”
How strange it was, to hear that my sister was so esteemed in so powerful a house. “I do think so. If you can do that, I would be grateful, sister.”
“I can guarantee nothing,” she said. “She’s got a fondness for me, but that’s not the same as influence. I’m but a drover still.”
“If you call upon Aimafall tomorrow,” said Ippeas heavily, “we will see what can be arranged. But I still am unsure what speaking to Velona can do—unless you mean to solve this entire curse upon my family.”
With a frown, I produced my engraver’s satchel, slid out the vial of lilac aroma, and took a sniff, anchoring this conversation in my memory.
It was a common act for me, but when I looked back I saw both of them watching me, anxious and disturbed.
In a mere second, I had gone from a confidant to something very different.
Much like a porpoise swimming alongside a school of fish, we could see commonalities shared among us, but it was clear I was very different.
I cleared my throat. “I thank you for this,” I said. “I’ll take your leave, and report all this to my superior.”
“You want to go?” said Fotia, surprised. “But we just sat down together.”
“You wish to socialize now?” I said. “After we’ve spoken of such death and sorrow?”
“Well, we could talk of something else,” she said crossly.
“All right.” I looked at Ippeas. “What are your conditions for marrying my sister?”
“Din!” said Fotia, outraged.
“I understand gentry marriage contracts are very different from those of common folk,” I continued. “I am most interested in learning what language will be applied to your union.”
“M-mine will be a far cry from complex,” said Ippeas, coloring again. “Since I’m not of the prime clan.”
“All right. Then it will be simple. So—why have you not married already?”