12. 11 #2
“Six weeks ago,” I replied. These were details I’d confirmed with Davian; backstories and timelines that were fairly vague. There was no real reason for a sunner to suspect I would be feeding false information, because I barely had any information anyway.
Saskia wasn’t really who we wanted to know about.
“What did she say to you? Six weeks ago?”
“She seemed entirely the same,” I said wistfully. “Smiling, happy. Normal.”
At this, Petros stopped writing. He paused, and licked his lower lip. “We interviewed Saskia’s family. They said she was struggling with her faith. That she had been for some time.”
Interesting. Saskia had been uncertain about her House and her God before she went missing. Could it have been someone inside the House itself that saw her as a problem?
I nodded as if in complete agreement. “Yes, of course. But that had been the case for a while! Other than that, she seemed the same.”
Petros scanned my face, then nodded. “Where do you think she is?”
“She must have run away,” I said, sadly. “To where, I could not say. Maybe she had taken a lover?”
Petros huffed. “Have you been on the Dythic Spit?”
“No,” I said, my cheeks warming.
The Spit was an outcrop of land pushing into the sea from the coast of Dytho.
In high-tide, the sand bar was partly submerged, making the raised rocky piece of land at its end more of an island.
But in low-tide you could walk across. The Spit itself was home only to the House of the Sea and the House of the Moon, positioned across from one another, and a small guard post.
Petros put the quill down and leaned back. “I visited it as Aseem’s personal escort. One day before Saskia went missing.”
“The day before?” I echoed. That was interesting. Aseem, the Leader of the Sun, was there around the time she went missing. Who else was on the Spit that day?
Petros stared at me, dampening his lip. He covered so much of the table. “It’s quite a hard place to run from.”
“There are boats, no?”
Petros cracked his neck. He was trying to make out my character. I was still trying to make out his, so I could best design mine to suit it. “Bella, are you aware that our current theory is that Saskia is dead?”
“Yes, but it can’t be true. She wouldn’t harm herself.”
Petros looked at me. “And what if another had harmed her?”
I said nothing, only looking at him with a horrible concern, as if I had never imagined that this missing girl could have been murdered. “Who would do such a thing?”
He picked up his quill again. I noticed now a meanness in him.
Every shocked noise to come out of me seemed to empower him.
Emboldened by my fear, or enjoying his ability to impart new information, I wasn’t sure.
“You should know, Bella. We are currently searching the section of the Adrisus near the House of the Sun. No one at the House saw her leave the grounds. Drowning is our best guess, but there’s no evidence to suggest that she would have drowned herself. ”
I lifted my hand to my mouth, covering it with the white silk glove. I didn't have to fake the sympathy and horror in my eyes, though I did exaggerate it. Drowning seemed an awful way to go.
“She would never hurt herself like that,” I said.
The information he had already provided was helpful.
She had gone missing without leaving the House grounds, which implied someone was guarding its entrance.
The Spit was the only entrance to the two by land; that did not preclude the use of a boat to access, or escape from the Houses.
But something about how he had looked at me after the boat question made it seem like they had ruled that out, too.
And there was the matter of Aseem’s invitation to the Spit the day before.
Petros had volunteered it, so clearly he didn’t think it was incriminating.
Maybe it wasn’t, but it was part of the picture of that week.
Was it easier for Saskia to slip away if there were a number of guests?
Petros gave me an expression of practiced sympathy, but his eyes were glinting with something else. “I’m sorry.” He enjoyed this. He enjoyed shocking me.
I breathed quickly, imitating some hysteria. “But no one would kill a devotee, so she must still be alive somewhere.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure.”
I raised my eyebrows, still breathing in shallow gulps. “What do you mean?”
Petros twirled the quill in his hand as he waited to deliver the line that would surely alarm me. I watched the golden symbol of the Sun God, Akaur, catch in the limited light. “Another devotee went missing a few months ago. Another woman.”
I gasped. “Surely not! Sir, I can hardly believe it.”
“We believe she was murdered.”
“Murdered?” I repeated, and he nodded.
I already knew we were talking about Davian’s wife. This wasn’t new information, and yet he believed it was, and had given it so freely.
I got the impression that he so rarely got the excuse to brag about his job.
I was the perfect captive audience to his macabre retelling of the events, and he was grateful for the company.
He was the perfect person to be sitting across from me and yet when I lowered my hand to my lap, my fingers shook.
That was no longer forced. The man had set me on edge.
I tried to wield it into concern, and not fear. “How terrible. Two missing devotees? You can’t believe they're connected.”
“Three, I suppose,” he said, whilst watching my face with interest. “A man from Agriculture ran off a while ago. Nothing suspicious was found. His wife says he ran off with another woman.”
He shrugged that one off, and I could tell even he thought that story was boring.
Still, Davian had wanted to know if anyone else was missing, and this was the first new person he’d uncovered. I shook my head as if confused. “When was that?”
“Months ago. Maybe four or five months, if I had to guess,” he said, waving his hand to suggest he was already done talking about it. “I don’t go out there, I’m a city man.”
“I agree. It’s so much more diverting,” I said shyly. His dark eyes fixed on my mouth. I bit my lip and redirected us. “But I cannot believe anyone would harm a devotee. Do they have no fear for the Gods?”
“It is bad,” Petros grunted. “We had a murder of one of the Merriment children in winter. But we found the man who did that one.”
The cold feeling that settled over me and the colour leeching from my skin was entirely real.
Every devotee of Merriment was a child. Those who were allowed into his care were usually those without parents or carers, and his gift provided a roof over their head and a place of safety and learning.
His gift was the freedom for a child to play without the shackles of adult misery often thrust on the homeless youth.
Of all the blackened marks of former devotees, only Gigysus’ marks, usually found on the feet of his chosen children, weren’t seen as evidence of falling from his favour.
It was a natural part of his rotation of devoted children; a symbol of the end of his parentage and their debut into the world as young men and women.
“What happened?”
“Nasty stuff. Not for a lady’s ears,” he said. I could tell he wanted to say more, and I could tell the details of the crime were on the tip of his tongue. I waited, despite the urge to agree with him. Then he shrugged, and straightened in his chair. “One of the Dytho’s finest madmen.”
I shook my head and looked down to my lap. “That’s horrible.”
“That fucker is downstairs.”
“Still alive?” I asked, glancing up.
He shrugged.
I paused, uncertain of where to go next. Petros looked down at his paper, where he had barely written anything, as if remembering why we were here, too. What we were supposed to be discussing.
“And there’s no way he could have hurt S-Saskia?” I asked, trying to show she was my primary concern.
“Nope. He was under lock and key down here.”
Petros seemed more reserved now, more focused. I wanted to bring him back, see if there was anything more he could tell me.
Someone from Agriculture had run off, probably for an affair. A child from Merriment had died, but months before Davian’s wife, and they had caught the perpetrator. Neither of those seemed to fit the bill. Only Saskia had a similar profile: missing for no good reason.
I leaned forwards. “Do you think Saskia killed herself?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time a devotee of the Sea had drowned themselves. Trying to return to Pleiidus,” Petros said, almost callously.
It was a cruel summation, and I let the words hit how he wanted them to. I let my eyes show the hurt and the grief, while I pulled together what I knew of the Sea.
Pleiidus, the Goddess of the Sea, who protected us all from the wrath and torment of floods and swells.
With her dress made of shells and seafoam hair, she rode the back of horses formed like the crashing waves.
As with the Moon, most of her chosen devotees were women, though she had a male Leader presently, and she received prayers from all who lived their lives on the coasts and lowlands of Craetos.
Petros waited for my reply.
“But if she was struggling with her faith?” I suggested. “There must be another explanation?”
He dampened his lip again. “You wanna know what I think, Bella?”
I didn’t want to, really. The look in his eyes was unpleasant, and it held the heat of his Sun God. But this could be the clue we needed.
“Please, Petros,” I said, staring at him without flinching.
“Maybe it’s the same guy who killed our girl.”
I blinked, not comprehending. “Your girl?”
“The other devotee who went missing recently. The woman I mentioned before,” he said. “She was from the House of the Sun.”
Again, the emotions that came to my face were entirely my own. Why hadn’t Davian told me his wife was a sunner?
“Oh, I see.”