CHAPTER FOUR
I t would be difficult,” Kel said, poking at his noodle soup with a ceramic spoon, “to regard this evening as an unqualified success.”
“Perhaps a qualified success?” Merren suggested.
They were in Jerrod’s favorite noodle shop on Yulan Road in the heart of Castellane. After Kel had descended from the rooftop across from Raimon’s house, he’d found the others waiting for him impatiently in the carriage. Broken glass littered the street in front of the house where Raimon lay dead, and they were all eager to be gone as soon as possible. As soon as Kel slid into the carriage, Ji-An took off at speed; this time, no one complained about her driving.
They’d finally stopped at a public cistern, where Ji-An leaned against the carriage as the others washed the blood off in the lukewarm water. Merren scrubbed ineffectually at the dried scarlet flecks on his hands until Jerrod, wordless, tore a strip of cloth from his own shirt and used it to scrape Merren’s hands clean.
Kel had frowned as he explored the gash along his own neck with his fingers. It was longer than he’d realized, and though it was shallow, it had soaked the strip of cloth around his neck. It seemed to have stopped bleeding, but he didn’t like it. A mark he’d have to explain at Marivent was inconvenient at best.
Merren said, “Who do you think killed Raimon?” He lowered his voice. “Not the Vigilants?”
Jerrod snorted. “No. They knock your door down and arrest you; they don’t shoot at you through a window. Someone wanted to shut Raimon up before he talked to us.”
Ji-An tugged thoughtfully at her braid. “Which might mean someone followed us from the Caravel. Did you find anyone on the roof, Kellian?”
“That was some brilliant Crawling by the way,” Jerrod noted. “Getting up and down that wall so quickly. Must be all that Sword Catcher training. Most of my gang couldn’t have done it.”
“Shut up, Jerrod. I want to know if Kel found the assassin on the roof,” said Ji-An. Her glance at Kel said: You saw something, didn’t you? Kel thought of the figure in black, outlined against the curved rooftops of the Ruta Taur: faceless, almost voiceless.
“Let’s not talk here,” Kel said. “We’re exposed on the street, given the attacker’s expertise with a bow and ability to track us.”
“I know where we can go to talk,” said Jerrod. “Yulan Road.”
“Wonderful,” said Merren. “I love noodles. Though I’ll be needing my hand back, Jerrod.”
Expressionless, Jerrod returned Merren’s now-spotless hand to him.
They had been to the Yu-Shuang Noodle House often in the past three months; Jerrod still liked to meet colleagues and informants there, and Ji-An and Merren liked the food. As did Kel, who realized as soon as he entered that he was starving. The scent of garlic and steaming pork hung in the air like a fragrant cloud.
The staff knew Jerrod, and once everyone had ordered, they waved him toward the booth in the back where he usually held court. Ji-An had come in last, having paused on the road to fix a broken lace on her boot. Now she made a face at Merren, who had just made his comment about considering the evening a qualified success.
“What part might be considered successful?” Ji-An demanded, licking her spoon. She had an incorrigible sweet tooth and was consuming a pudding of egg custard, dusted with sugar. “The part where our one connection to the Gallery slaughter was assassinated while we were questioning him? The part where we had to flee before the Vigilants came?” She sounded resentful, though not of Merren; Ji-An wasn’t one who enjoyed running from a confrontation.
“While we were questioning him, not before we questioned him.” The night’s events didn’t seem to have spoiled Merren’s appetite. He was on his second plate of vegetable dumplings, lightly dotted with carmine splashes of hot oil. He licked his thumb and said, “We did learn some useful things—”
“There is something I have to tell you,” Kel said.
“You’re arresting us all in the name of the Arrow Squadron?” said Jerrod.
“What— No, of course not. Have you been expecting me to say that?”
“Every time I see you,” said Jerrod. “I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“Jerrod, you have an untrusting personality,” said Kel. “It’s about the killer who shot Raimon.”
He told what he knew—not just what had happened tonight, but the first time he had seen the Dark Assassin, on the rooftop of the Shining Gallery. How he had seen that the crossbow bolts were the same, with their characteristic gray-and-black fletching.
“Why didn’t you tell us before?” demanded Ji-An. “About what happened during the Gallery slaughter?”
Kel shrugged uncomfortably. “I didn’t like that they’d spoken to me as if they knew me. Like they did tonight. I felt... implicated, I suppose.”
“You are implicated,” said Ji-An. “But that isn’t the same as responsible.”
“I felt as if I should know who it is,” Kel said, hand tightening around his cup of rice wine. “Or at least I should have a good guess. But I don’t.”
“Lin,” said Merren, his voice warm, and for a moment Kel thought Merren had lost his mind and decided the Dark Assassin was Lin. Then he realized Merren was, in fact, greeting Lin Caster, who had just arrived, wearing her gray physician’s tunic, her bright hair tied at the back of her neck with a ribbon. Over her shoulder was her medical satchel.
“What are you doing here?” said Kel. “Not that I’m not glad to see you.”
“I sent for her,” said Ji-An, and Kel realized she had not, in fact, paused outside to fix a broken bootlace. “I didn’t like that cut on your neck. It looks as if someone’s tried to slit your throat.”
Kel touched a hand to the gash on his neck and winced. “That was... thoughtful.”
“It’s not that I care about you,” said Ji-An. “It’s that I don’t want you to fall under suspicion at the Palace.”
“Clearly.” Kel spoke gravely, shifting over in his seat to make room for Lin, who settled herself beside him and began examining his neck.
“It’s a very clean cut,” she said. “Not bad, but something very sharp made it.”
“Glass,” offered Merren.
Lin darted a look at Kel with worried green eyes, but didn’t ask what had happened. “It’s just above the artery. A bit deeper and...”
“I would have bled out,” said Kel, “rather dramatically, on a rooftop. An unpleasant surprise for the homeowners.”
“Nonsense,” said Jerrod. “You’d never have made it up to the roof in your weakened state.”
Ji-An ignored their banter. “Someone who could follow us like that person did, without us noticing, is very good at what they do. I don’t like it.” She tapped her nails against her teeth, looking thoughtful.
Lin, having told Kel to hold very still and not talk, had taken out a salve from her bag and was brushing it along the cut on his neck with her fingertips. It stung like the contents of a wasp nest.
“It won’t hurt for long,” Lin said. “And look—the cut’s already closing. By the time you get back to the Palace, it’ll just look like a scratch.” She was leaning in close to him, smelling pleasantly of soap and crushed leaves. Kel was sure he stank like rain gutters and sweat. He closed his eyes to let the sting fade as the others filled Lin in on the evening’s activities.
“Montfaucon wanted his lover to fight a boxer who was dressed like a bear?” she said at one point. “Why?”
Nobody seemed to have an answer for that, and the conversation moved on. After Lin had screwed the lid back onto her salve jar and put it away, she said, “I’m sorry to hear of that man’s death.”
“Raimon? I would not weep for him,” said Jerrod. “He almost certainly knew more than he was admitting about the Gallery attack.”
“I don’t know if he did,” said Kel. “He sounded genuinely bitter against those he felt had tricked him and his friends. Which leaves us to ask: Who hired them?”
Ji-An pushed her empty bowl away. “Let us consider what we do know. Raimon was paid to hire a group of criminals he’d met in the Tully years ago. Most had been released, but under order of exile, which is why nobody has noticed they were missing. They were already in hiding. The criminals believed they were supposed to frighten the Sarthian Princess, not kill her.”
“So he claimed,” muttered Merren. “That poor girl.”
“I thought you hated royals.” Jerrod looked bewildered.
“I don’t want them murdered, ” protested Merren.
Jerrod shook his head. “I really don’t understand your politics.”
“Stop.” Ji-An made a shushing motion in their direction. “These criminals, his Tully band, didn’t believe they were on a suicide mission. They thought they were going to escape.”
“Right,” said Kel. “Which means they had no real passion for punishing Sarthe; they did this for money, at the behest of a group whose motivations we do not yet know. Old Gremont was part of this group, but regretted it before his death. The mercenaries were not so much the guilty parties themselves as tools in the hands of the guilty parties.”
“Well, we got a name, if only a first one,” said Merren. He had finished his dumplings and regarded his empty plate sadly. “Magali.”
“There is a Magali who works for the Alleynes,” said Lin. “I remember taking note of her name. It’s unusual.”
“Not that unusual,” Kel said sharply. “There’s no reason it need be Antonetta’s housemaid.”
Lin raised an eyebrow at his vehemence.
“And yet,” said Jerrod, his dark eyes thoughtful, “there is—was—a Magali who used to frequent the Maze in order to borrow money from some of the less scrupulous lenders. She had a gambling habit. More of a problem than a habit. Bets on the games in the Arena. Didn’t care who was fighting—crocodiles, humans, giraffes—she’d place a wager on it.”
“There are giraffe fights in the Arena?” said Merren, eyes wide. “I love giraffes. They always look surprised to be up so high.”
“Shut up, Merren,” said Ji-An, turning to Jerrod. “Why didn’t you mention this before?”
Jerrod shrugged. “Like Kel said, there’s more than one Magali in the city. I hadn’t thought about her for a long time, but what Lin said reminded me, as this Magali bragged about having a job up on the Hill. I never quite credited it, but it sounds like she was telling the truth.”
“If it’s the same Magali at all,” said Kel tightly.
“Does this mean the Alleynes are our malefactors?” said Ji-An. “Since Magali is their servant?”
“It’s quite early to decide that,” said Lin. “I doubt the Alleynes have much idea what Magali gets up to in her spare time. Antonetta certainly doesn’t.”
She smiled reassuringly at Kel, in a way that made him glance away quickly.
“I didn’t realize we were all such admirers of the Alleynes,” said Ji-An. “One of us is going to have to talk to this Magali person—”
“I need to speak to the Legate first,” said Kel, and everyone looked at him in surprise. They all knew of Jolivet’s role in their investigation, but Kel rarely mentioned him and had certainly never invoked him before as a reason for delay.
“I suppose,” Jerrod said, “if we’re starting to circle this close to one of the Charter Families, the Legate will have to know.”
“The Alleynes do seem as if they might not be trustworthy,” said Merren. “They are allying themselves with the Gremonts.”
Kel said nothing. He didn’t quite trust his voice in the moment.
Lin said, “I assure you, marrying Artal Gremont was not Demoselle Antonetta’s choice.”
Kel could hear Antonetta’s voice, soft at the back of his head. Do I want to marry Gremont? No. If I escape wedding him, will the next man my mother selects be just as bad? Most likely.
Most likely not, Ana, he thought now. He was not certain it could be worse, and he felt wrenched and sick inside. If he were someone else, he could offer Antonetta another option. Though he supposed it was the height of presumption to assume she would want to marry him, even if desperate.
Lin glanced at him before turning back to Merren. “I’m a little curious that Raimon told you so much so willingly. Did you put something in his wine, Merren?”
Merren blushed. “Of course I did,” he said, and Kel recalled Merren fussing with the decanter. He felt a mild annoyance with himself; he ought to have guessed, as Lin had. “My own mixture. It forces—well, inclines —one to tell the truth.”
“That was a clever thought,” said Jerrod, and smiled at Merren. He had a way of smiling, Kel had noticed, that seemed unique to Merren; he certainly never smiled that way at anyone else.
Ji-An stretched and yawned. In fact, they were all exhausted, and they wearily gathered up their things before leaving the spiced heat of the noodle shop for the humid night outside. Kel offered to walk Lin to the Sault gates—he needed to return to the Caravel to retrieve Asti, regardless, and he knew Lin would more easily avoid trouble from the Vigilants if she was accompanied.
As for the Dark Assassin, Jerrod and Ji-An both agreed that someone with skills like that must be known in the criminal underworld; Jerrod, seeming aggrieved that he did not already know who it was, promised to seek out answers among his connections. “Being able to Crawl is one thing,” he said, “but to aim like that is another. They shot Raimon through the heart from a rooftop across the street. Not many can do that.”
He sounded almost admiring.
“Remember,” Kel said, “we are trying to catch this person before they kill again, not trying to hire them, Jerrod.”
Jerrod grinned, the moonlight winking off his mask. “We caught you and then we hired you.”
“You didn’t hire me; Andreyen did. And I don’t think they’d make a good ally.”
“You’re just taking it personally because they tried to kill you,” Jerrod said with a grin.
“No,” said Kel, thoughtful. “They didn’t. That’s the odd part. They could have killed me easily enough. But they said I was of use to them.”
“Well, that’s ominous,” said Ji-An. “Try not to be too useful, if you can.”
Kel smiled crookedly. “I’ll do my best.”
It was Third Watch now, and the moon had set. The streets of Castellane were dark, and as quiet as they ever got. They were not deserted, as Kel walked Lin home through the lamplit shadows of the curving streets, but those abroad at such a late hour seemed to know it was a hushed time. The costermonger pushing his cart did not whistle; the maidservants on their way to light the morning fires at the noble houses where they worked did not chatter among one another. Even Kel, when he spoke, did so in a low voice.
“I suppose,” he said, “I should not ask what it is like.”
“That depends on what it is,” said Lin, a little amused. It was not like Kel to be oblique.
“Being the Goddess,” he said. “I was thinking on it in the noodle shop. We summoned you so casually for healing, and yet—you are not simply the healer you have always been, are you?”
“No, I am,” she said. “I am that person. I am just also... something else.”
She had tried to explain it to Kel and the others in the Black Mansion, the day after it had all happened. She had been honest in what she told them: In her desperation to get her hands on books in the Shulamat in order to heal her friend, she’d made the claim that she was the Goddess whose return was prophesied in the lore of the Ashkar people. It would be temporary, she had told them, and they should not consider it in dealing with her, for it was a thing that would matter to Ashkar only, and they were not Ashkar.
None of them had really batted an eye—save Andreyen, who had peppered her with questions, mostly about the books they both wanted—yet here was Kel, suddenly curious.
“Did Mayesh say something about it to you?” she asked. They were walking west on the Ruta Magna, and in the distance she could see the harbor, or rather the abrupt end of the city that signaled the place the sea began. The horizon was a single blue band, ocean and sky united. As a child, she had wished she could leap from the walls of the Sault into that blueness—that limitless expanse that seemed to promise an unimaginable freedom. And she had wondered, too: Was the Goddess, somehow, on the other side of that light? In her own limitless expanse, but of darkness, closed off from the world Lin knew?
“I asked him about it,” Kel admitted. “He made it clear he had no plans to discuss it with me.” He looked a little abashed. “Did I do wrong?”
It was interesting that abashment came easily to Kel; Lin could not imagine the Prince seeming sheepish or unsure of himself. Two boys, raised in the same room, side by side, so close in looks, and yet so entirely different.
She wondered what would happen if she were to ask Kel about Conor. Was the Prince pleased about his engagement, the coming alliance with Kutani? Did he know the Princess at all? Had they exchanged letters, portraits? She felt a little wrench in thinking of it, of Conor admiring the famously beautiful Princess. Perhaps he could not wait for her to arrive. Perhaps he was counting the hours, the minutes.
She forced her mind away from those thoughts, though not away from the Prince entirely. Kel had said Prince Conor had changed; that one sentence refused to leave her. Changed in what way?
But the Prince was a topic that Kel did not like to discuss. He saw it as a sort of betrayal; he was already torn enough over keeping his activities in the city hidden from Conor. Prince Conor, she reminded herself. Kel might call him by his first name, but it was not her place to do that.
The Prince was not the only topic Kel Saren avoided. Lin had not missed the way his careful pleasantness turned to tension whenever Antonetta Alleyne was mentioned. When it had been suggested that the Alleynes might be implicated in the Shining Gallery plot, Kel had gone stone-faced, which for him was the equivalent of an apoplectic fit. She wondered what he would say if she told him she saw Antonetta often, that they even spoke of him sometimes, and that Antonetta was as flustered by mentions of him as he seemed to be by mentions of her?
But what would be the point? A Sword Catcher could not marry, and Antonetta was committed to Artal Gremont. She and Kel were similar in that way, Lin thought: They lived within walls both real and imagined, bound by the expectations and plans of others. And as for whose faces they saw when they closed their eyes at night, they kept that to themselves.
“No,” she said. “No, you did not do wrong, though I could have told you Mayesh would have sent you packing if you asked him anything.”
Kel pushed his dark curling hair off his forehead; there were light scratches, probably from flying glass, at his left temple, and small nicks and tears in his fine clothes. “It wouldn’t be the first time the Counselor has kicked me out of his office for asking troublesome questions.”
Lin laughed. Kel was good at that, making her laugh. “The whole business— It’s hard for me to talk about, I suppose,” she said as they passed a candlemaker’s shop. Candles had been left alight in the window overnight, an advertisement for the merchant’s goods: fat white pillars and braided, multicolored tapers burning softly behind the glass. “Not because it is forbidden or because I am ashamed, but...”
“Because though you are pretending to be something you are not, you still feel a responsibility.”
Lin nodded. “I walk around the Sault, and I can tell the others are seeing me—but also seeing someone else in my place.”
“Yes. You behind the Sault walls, me behind the walls of Marivent—and here we are, of course; too bad. I was enjoying our talk.”
Indeed, as if he had conjured them up by speaking of them, the walls of the Sault loomed over them. They were not quite close enough for Lin to see who was guarding the gates, but the ever-torches burned in their holders on either side, as they always did. In their light, Kel’s eyes were very gray. She recalled him saying they had once been another color, before they had been changed to look like Conor’s. She could not help but wonder what color.
He said, “I have always wondered what it says over the Sault gates. I’ve seen the words before, I am sure of it. But I cannot recall where.”
“On my grandfather’s medallion, perhaps,” Lin said. “The one he wears as Counselor. They are in our Old Tongue.”
“I thought all Ashkar spoke the same language?”
“We do, though accents, dialects, can differ.” Lin was thinking of her parents, of the bits of Shenzan and Malgasi and Hindish incorporated into the near-incomprehensible trader’s patter of the Rhadanites. She had never learned it herself, nor the written language of signs and symbols that only the Rhadanites could read. It had always been Josit who was interested in all that. “But there is a difference between the language we speak daily and the words of prayers and songs. Words like Sanhedrin, or Shekinah, are in the Old Tongue. Over the gates is written our Great Prayer. Oqodemshe, thān Ashkar, Mayyam khaf, anokham miwwod. ‘Hear, oh Ashkar, She is One, She will return.’”
“So the Great Prayer speaks of the Goddess. But what does that mean, She is One ?”
“It means we do not believe in many Gods, as you do,” Lin said. “We believe only in one. It is what makes us what we are, that faith. And so the words of the Great Prayer are a safeguard. They are etched into amulets worn against the skin, woven into clothing, inked as tattoos. In times when the Ashkar have had to hide who they were, they were often written on strips of paper cunningly concealed inside a pen, or an earring, or the heel of a boot. As long as you carry the Great Prayer with you, she protects you. And you never forget you are Ashkar.”
Kel was silent for a moment. His face was grave in the light of the ever-torches.
“I never knew any of this,” he said at last. “I have known Mayesh all my life it seems, yet I did not know this.”
“We are not meant to tell such secrets to malbushim. I have come to know my grandfather better these past months, and to understand that while he speaks for the Ashkar at Marivent, he does not speak of us at Marivent.”
“No,” said Kel. “He is an interesting man, Bensimon. I do not think there are many people for whom he lets down his guard.”
“I think I am like him in that way,” mused Lin. “But around you, around Merren, Ji-An, even Andreyen and Jerrod—they do not care if I call myself Goddess or Queen of the Harbor or—or Princess of Potatoes.” Kel grinned. “They know who you are, too,” she added, “Sword Catcher.”
“That they do,” Kel said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must rescue my horse from a brothel. Not a sentence I ever thought I’d have to say aloud. And for the Gods’ sake, don’t tell Mayesh about any of this,” he added, turning to go. “He’ll have my head, and play boules with it on the Palace lawn.”
By the time Kel returned to Marivent, the sun was beginning to rise over the Narrow Pass. Having brought Asti to the stables and rubbed her down with a few handfuls of hay (she was quite resentful about having been left behind at the Caravel, and snorted when he tried to give her an apple), he discovered a note from Jolivet tucked inside the feed trough, which simply read, I shall expect a full report tomorrow.
Kel tore the note into small pieces, scattered them, and headed for the apartments he shared with Conor.
He was already rehearsing the version of the evening he planned to share with Conor. He would keep it as close to the truth as he could. Not only was that the safest way, but it also assuaged the part of his conscience that stung like a cut when he had to lie.
He would tell him about Montfaucon, Kel thought as he entered the rooms, and the boxer dressed like a bear, and Esteve’s interest in Beatris Cabrol. That he had talked with Silla. Or perhaps he would not mention her. That Conor had not slept with her was a surprise—but it had been the night of that miserable party at the Roverges’, hadn’t it, and Conor had been wretched at the time. And, Kel thought, it really was none of his business.
The rooms were cold, the fire having burned down in the grate, and dark, too. The only illumination was the dawn light that spilled through the windows like thin blue milk. Conor was at his desk, as he often was these days, but as Kel came closer, drawing off his gloves, he saw that the Prince was asleep, cheek pressed to the topmost of a pile of papers, as if he’d laid his head down for just a moment and fallen asleep instantly.
Kel hesitated. In sleep, Conor’s face was wiped clean of tension and consideration, and he looked as he had when they were boys. Not innocent, or wicked, either, but curious and expectant. As if there were much to look forward to. Kel could still remember what he had thought the first time he had seen the Prince. I want to be like him. I want to walk through the world as if it will reshape itself around my dreams and desires. I want to seem as if I could touch the stars with light fingers and pull them down to be my playthings.
He knew better now. The world did not reshape itself around anyone. No matter how powerful you were, there were forces more powerful than you would ever be. It was true in the city and on the Hill.
He laid a hand on Conor’s shoulder, felt him begin to stir. “It’s me,” he said. “Con. You’ve been working too hard.”
Conor sat up, rubbing at his eyes. “A Prince’s duties are never complete.”
That’s not what you used to think. But Kel did not say it aloud. He merely slipped an arm around Conor’s back and said, “Come. I’ll help you to bed.”