Chapter 56
Quin grinds the end of his cane into the floor; my soldad, tied to his belt, swings like a ticking clock.
It spurs me into harried speech. “They didn’t get lucky. The poison is releasing slowly. They’ll all die.”
“Is there a way to prove this?”
“Gelidroot feeds off a dead body. After four days, the veins in a body become visible. If the person has consumed any, the veins will be green.”
“The grandmother is still in the constabulary.”
I shake my head. “We don’t have time to wait until she gets to the right stage of putrefaction. We must find out how long the refugees have, and start working on the antidote.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I’m convinced these cases are connected. The redcloaks sweated the same poison onto the grass. So . . .”
Quin stares at me with a grim set to his mouth. “Without more evidence behind your suspicions, you’ll never get authority from the head constable.”
“What is the law in the face of life and death?” I say, grabbing a dark cloak.
A bark of laughter. “Do you remember everything?”
I dig around the table for useful cutlery, making a good ruckus of it. When my cheeks cool, I turn to him observing me and fast decide an extra fork might be useful. “You don’t have to come with me—”
A chastising whack meets the back of my head, and Quin passes me for the door. “I know where to go.”
The redcloak memorial ground.
Rows of trees overhanging rows of epitaphs. There are sentries walking the enclosing walls, making sure no one disturbs the dead soldiers’ peace. And from the shadows of tall pines, where I hover with Quin, I feel the mystic energy that comes from protective wards.
“Why so many measures? A single mourning ribbon has folk shaking in their boots.”
“Our people might have massive respect for the dead, but our enemies do not.” Quin grimaces.
“Soldiers from the southern kingdom slipped in as merchants, gathered in Hinsard, and quietly raided the memorial grounds for redcloak uniforms. They killed many of our men unawares with their disguise. After that these wards were placed along with sentries to keep watch.”
“I suppose that means sneaking in is a wee bit dangerous.”
“A wee bit.”
Putting aside ‘kill on sight’, even if the sentries only captured us, we’d be in trouble.
Quin would surely lose his position as a constable and be thrown in prison, and I’d end up with him after harsh interrogation about poisoning the refugees—possibly as Nicostratus’s accomplice, which would throw him into the cells as well.
It won’t matter how much I deny it, they’d have caught me exhuming bodies.
That’s enough. It would close this headache of a case.
My stomach tightens and Quin eyes me questioningly. I let go of his sleeve that I unconsciously gripped and whisper, “Lives are at stake.”
He nods and shifts his robe, pulling the fabric higher up the side of his throat. Was that a flash of bruised skin?
I stare at the concealing fabric, urging it to move, but before it can, the two on-duty guards disappear around a wall and Quin hauls me with him over dew-kissed grass, to wrought iron gates adorned with circling wyverns that shimmer in the silvery moonlight.
I tell myself to focus on them, not Quin’s neck—
He pushes his cane into my grip, and a soft glowing ball of magic steers my attention down his throat to his hands.
He quietly curls his fingers around iron bars, and the mystic ward shivers.
A wave of light briefly shines over us, illuminating his determined face—and the edge of the mark on his neck—and the ward peels open.
I startle at the squealing of hinges.
“Hurry,” Quin says.
I edge through the narrow gap, and he hobbles in silently after me, the gates closing with a muted clink.
Before us is a sea of moon-speckled epitaphs, sitting under breeze-ruffled oaks.
We slink through their shadows deep into the grounds.
Quin leads the way, pausing occasionally behind trees, one hand gripping my arm as if readying himself to fly off with me at any moment.
Though I imagine the rest of the wards would not make the escape go unnoticed . . .
We sneak around a small crypt, and the air suddenly stills in a way that has me shivering. Quin looks over to ask if I’m alright, and before I can nod stiffly, voices shatter the silence. “Must’ve misheard. Or it was a rat.”
Quin instinctively pulls me back behind the trunk of a large oak, hand balling with magic. My heart pounds in time with the thump of nearby footsteps.
“If that rat shows ‘imself, I’ll stab it right through the heart.”
“If I don’t get there first.” They laugh, and clomp past us. “Let’s head back to the others.”
I hold my breath until Quin nods us forward. I follow on with an erratic pulse to an exposed area of stone epitaphs that eventually turn into wooden ones. There are no trees to hide behind back here, and that knowledge weakens my knees. “I’m hiding behind you if they come back,” I say.
Quin smiles in the dark, and I suddenly lose all sense of gravity.
I bite down on a sharp cry as Quin catches me with gusts, stopping me from stepping straight into a gaping hole in the earth.
He sets me beside the dug-up loam and snaps his cane quizzically around the pit.
I shiver as I peer over the edge. It’s a cold, rectangular void that not even the almost-full moon dares to reach into.
“Ah ha,” Quin says.
I wait for more, but he only gives it to me after a beseeching lift of my eyebrow. He gestures to the wooden epitaph that lies upturned in the grass. “This grave belongs to one of our murdered redcloaks.”
I look from the epitaph to the pit to Quin.
Gusts lift and drop Quin carefully into the pit and he pushes the coffin lid aside with his cane.
I peer down to where he casts light for me to see.
The coffin is empty.
I slither into the pit beside him and check again, as if this time, a body will miraculously appear. “Someone beat us to it?”
Quin feels the upturned soil in his hand. “Recently.” He magics us out of the pit and one glance around me reveals there are other disturbed graves. My prickling senses tell me who those must belong to.
Quin observes the area with a tightened jaw and a glimmer of caution in his eye.
“Do you think that whoever did it is close?” I ask.
“Possibly.”
“How do they expect to escape, trundling bodies through the wards?”
A grimace. “Let’s check the other coffins.”
It’s only a few steps to the next yawning pit of earth and Quin swiftly settles us into it.
The space is narrow for two; moist soil clings to our clothes as we position ourselves and push off the lid.
It rumbles, and reveals a body dressed neatly in uniform.
The clothes are bright and clean against the pallid skin of his hands and face. “They didn’t take all the bodies?”
Quin funnels fresh air into the pit to blow away the stench of decay. “The guards from before might have hurried them off before they could finish the job.”
“To our luck. Could you produce more light? Hold it above his chest.”
Quin does as instructed, and I fold up the redcloak’s sleeve to inspect the veins at his wrist. I grab Quin’s hand and steer the light closer. “As I thought,” I say grimly. “Green.”
I swing off my knapsack, peel open the fabric and pull out a knife and a fork. I clutch them in either hand, eying one and then the other.
“Did I not feed you enough today?”
I jerk my head up to Quin’s horrified-yet-bemused expression. “I don’t have magic anymore, remember?”
His gaze drops to the utensils. “What exactly is the fork”—I stab the soldier’s wrist, puncturing the vein; Quin finishes thinly, “Never mind.”
I lift the fork and use the knife to smear the thickened blood over all the sides. I start counting the seconds. It takes four minutes before I see the result I’m after.
Quin watches patiently, curiously, and I lift the fork for him to see clearly. “The metal had corroded, that’s why I brought the fork. The properties of gelidroot in blood change after death, and—well, look. The coagulated blood turned the brown corrosion green.”
“What were you counting?”
“How long it took to change colour. It helps me calculate when the root was ingested.”
“Which was when?”
“The soldiers have been dead for four days, but the poison was in their blood for at least four days before that. The refugees ate the porridge two days ago, which means they’ll start to die in another two days—if we don’t find a cure.” I snap my head up. “We should—”
Brilliant light flashes overhead. We look up and the wards around the memorial grounds flash again, temporarily revealing their dome shape. The sound of distant shouts has us stiffening. “Someone’s tried to cross the wards. They used the wrong spell.”
Quin grabs hold of me and in seconds we’re gusted onto the grass above, where he pulls me into a crouch behind an epitaph. “Can’t ride the wind—too exposed.”
We can’t run for the same reason. “The guards won’t miss these exhumed graves a second time.” There’ll be no hiding in the shadows of their pits.
“Looks like I’ll have to expose my identity,” Quin says gruffly.
I chuckle and slap a hand over my mouth. Quin stares at me like I’ve gone mad. “I was afraid of getting caught,” I say. “I imagined us both imprisoned, set for the gallows at dawn. Sort of forgot you’re actually important.”
Quin stares at me, shaking his head, and flicks my temple.
I grab his sleeve at a sudden, sickening thought. “What if they’re your uncle’s men? What if there are too many?”
He pins me with a raised brow. “Hide behind me.”
From the shadows of the large oaks comes the cracking of twigs underfoot, coming fast. My gaze sweeps urgently back to Quin, and snaps to the darkened pit. The one with the empty coffin . . . I grimace, toss Quin’s cane into the pit, and tug at him. “Forgive me, your majesty.”