Chapter Nine
Once I am out of sight of Dinah, I use my sleeve to retrieve the leaves from my shoe and secure them in my bag. My heart drums, half with elation, half with fear, as I’m careful not to touch them. The last thing I want is to injure myself now, after all I’ve been through to get them.
I’ve succeeded.
After everything, I’ve got Rula her hemlock. Her poison to kill this bastard before he can hurt anyone else. Before another young woman like Talia becomes nothing more than a headstone in the earth. Now, I just need to get it to Rula before the night is over.
As helpful as it was for Dinah to allow me out of the garden through the wall, there’s still the old woman’s cloak I left by the entrance to the sewers.
There’s no way I can not return it – not after she gave it so willingly – and it’s only a slight detour to pick up the item from where I left it by the drain.
It’s quick enough to grab, and I don’t bother putting it back on. The guards don’t care about people moving out of the rings, and I don’t want to soil it with what is undoubtedly an increasingly awful stench.
Foul odour aside, my adrenaline remains high from my success, and I have to constantly fight the urge to check on the hemlock leaves and focus on getting back.
The quarter moon is low in the sky. Going to all this effort only to miss Rula’s midnight deadline is unthinkable.
The tavern in the fourth is busier than when I left and from the upturned chairs that scatter the space, at least one fight has broken out since I was gone.
A shudder of memories ripples through me. My father was never one to start fights, I’ll give him that, but that didn’t mean he didn’t get caught up in them often enough.
Countless times he’d stumble home, blood streaming down his face, so numb from alcohol he was entirely unaware of the gaping gashes that littered his cheeks and brows, and I would have to sit there, cleaning out the wounds and trying to ensure Kay didn’t see him in such a state.
I’m sure no other woman who grew up in the courts has used her sewing skills on skin more than on fabric the way I have.
Pulling myself back into the moment and grateful that I missed whatever brawl took place, I scan the space for the old woman, determined to leave before the next one starts.
‘You looking for Ailia?’ I jump at the voice behind me and turn to find a barmaid with deep red hair and yellow eyes looking at me. ‘You’re looking for Ailia, right? She said you’d come to give her the cloak back?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I respond after a moment of confusion. Ailia. It’s not a name I’ve heard before, but given that the old woman was more than a little unique, it fits, somehow, for her to have a unique name to match. ‘Thank you.’
I take the cloak and hold it out to the barmaid, though she doesn’t take it. Instead, she nods to a table with an upturned chair.
‘Ailia said you should wait for her. That she wanted to speak to you.’
My stomach twists. I don’t have time to get embroiled in a conversation, not when I need to get back to Rula, nor do I want to. This Ailia may have done me a favour, but there was something about her that caused the skin on the back of my neck to prickle.
‘Sorry, but I can’t stay,’ I tell the barmaid, dropping the folded cloak on the table next to us.
‘She said I had to insist.’
‘Then explain I insisted harder,’ I reply, turning on my heel only to throw the last words over my shoulder. ‘And tell her thank you.’
Most likely the old lady just wanted someone new to regale with her tales of the past, the way lonely people so often do.
And it’s not as if I begrudge her that – I can’t imagine what it must be like to know that most of your life is behind you and what remains ahead is likely full of pain and heartache – but there are plenty of other people there she can talk to.
And I have a pressing engagement for which I cannot be late.
The cold is hostile, but it has its advantages, encouraging me to take a swift pace, although when I’m outside the walls and back in the slums, I realise my next issue. The market is locked down for the night, and unsurprisingly, Rula doesn’t give out her home address.
Does she expect me to hunt her down? That seems unlikely, considering it would raise questions as to why I’m looking for her.
Still, I head to where the market is set up during the day. While there’s no sign of Rula, I spy Jack leaning against a wall, his breath fogging in the air as he blows on his hands, trying to keep warm. When his eyes land on me, he offers a swift jerk of his head. Apparently, I have to follow.
‘You took your time,’ he says as he ushers me down a side alley. ‘Been waiting there for hours. Shit, you stink.’
I don’t bother replying as I’m too tired for small talk. Thankfully, he doesn’t press the matter. We take several turns down increasingly narrow alleyways, our footsteps muffled by the cries and drunken wails coming from inside the homes around us.
‘Wait here,’ he says eventually before disappearing down the next turning.
I do as he says, shivering in the cold, until a familiar corpulent figure – made all the more rotund with the excess of furs draped over it – appears in front of me a few minutes later.
‘You can leave us.’ Rula’s voice is a low bark at Jack, who scurries away without question, leaving me and the virago alone, somewhere in the depths of the slums.
I’d really started to think I knew my way around the place over the last few moons, but it’s a hive – a living organism that’s constantly shifting and growing. Hopefully, Jack’ll appear to show me my way back home, else I’ll have to keep wandering around until I end up somewhere I recognise.
‘Did you get it?’ she asks me.
I nod and pass her the bag, which she undoes with exceptional deftness considering her gloves, though when she glances inside, she wrinkles her nose at the contents.
‘I tried to get more,’ I explain, ‘but they got confiscated.’
Her eyes widen with shock as her gaze springs up to meet mine. ‘You were seen?’
‘And then some,’ I admit, ‘but by a friend. She wasn’t willing to let me walk out with the hemlock, but I got a few when she wasn’t looking.’
‘And you’re sure this will do the job?’
‘Positive.’
Rula’s mouth twists. ‘Great,’ she says, shoving the bag back into my hand. ‘Then I guess you’d better start brewing. He won’t stay in the tavern forever.’
‘What?’ My entire body jerks as if she’s just struck me. ‘No, I just had to get this to you. That was the deal.’
An all too familiar smirk twists Rula’s lips as she looks at me with raised eyebrows. ‘What do I know about brewing a poison? Brewing of any sort? No, you must do it for me.’
My head shakes repeatedly, though not fast enough to mute the rushing of blood behind my eardrums. She wants me to make the poison.
If I do so, I’ll be even more complicit in killing a man.
‘That wasn’t our arrangement,’ I whisper harshly.
‘Perhaps you didn’t listen clearly enough,’ she suggests, a dark twinkle in her eye. ‘Of course, if you want to leave now, I know plenty of young women who would love a job in the fifth—’
‘No, no, it’s fine.’ The words spill from my mouth before I can stop them. This is not what I agreed to, but what choice do I have? I’ve come this far. If I don’t brew the poison for her, she’ll just find someone else who will. Rula will get her poison, but Kay will be without a job.
It would all have been for nothing.
I try to swallow the lump that’s forcing its way up my throat. I guess I’m going to be more involved in this murder than I planned.
I wonder if the Goddess would have left those leaves stuck to my shoe if she’d known.