13 Web in the Ashes #4
“Because that isn’t what you nor any of your predecessors told me in your letters when I asked just that,” Kadra finished. Homicidal intent supplanted his fury when the other man rallied. Kadra watched Ythras’s mouth move and decided that it would be the first thing he sliced from him.
“She pays well for her privacy. She runs the Institute there.” Ythras pointed at the building midway up another of the Drust Mountains. “Twitchy thing though, so I doubt you’ll get much sense from her.”
“On the contrary,” Sarai said pleasantly, “she made a great deal of sense in Edessa.”
Shock cleaved through Kadra with such force that his ears rang.
He staggered inwardly, then felt his mouth part.
Knew he was asking Sarai how and when she had seen Dalvia.
Knew he was being unaccountably terse. Yet, he heard nothing beyond the bells tolling in his head to announce that he had been too late, that the reckoning the madness-struck screamed of in Edessa had reached him, and that he had missed more than he ever thought possible.
The tangled skeins that he and Sarai had been attempting to unweave threaded themselves into an ugly tapestry in his mind.
The Clan had always been careful to restrict their dominance to the north and the underworld, aware that they wouldn’t survive a direct battle with the Tetrarchy.
It was why he had allowed himself to believe that Noceo wouldn’t risk something this bald-facedly bold.
Most people don’t look closely at the world, Clevsin’s cool tenor hissed from memory. To reign forever, you must stay in the shadows. Being a figurehead sets you up to topple.
Rage moved like an ice floe down his burning spine. Noceo.
He had thought he’d understood the extent of Noceo’s strengths and ambitions. Had kept careful watch on the institutions where his brother could seek to amass power. Yet, as their last meeting had shown, they hadn’t known each other at all.
“Luckily, it’s too cold for maggots now,” Ythras continued to ramble, “but you should have seen it during the summer months. The Month of Radiance, the entire city reeked.”
Anger boiled in Sarai’s eyes. “This has been happening since the Month of Radiance? Over five months, and you couldn’t have sent a single letter saying it was this bad?”
“What for?” The Praetor rubbed camphor oil under his thin nose in an effort to block out the stench of death. “Edessa’s focus will always be Edessa. The north rallies around its own. It’s unfortunate that our troubles have reached you, but you wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“We’ve received more than your troubles.
” Kadra kept his voice cool with inhuman effort, stepping over a lump of what looked like snow, blood clots, and congealed vomit on the street.
“A drug den in Edessa came into possession of a hundred thousand aurei worth of whitesleep rife with beetle larvae. You wouldn’t happen to have heard anything of that, would you? ”
Ythras’s eyes twitched. “Of course not!” A void winked to life by the Praetor’s mouth, skeleton hands reaching out.
Kadra tilted his head. Lies were interesting things to the gods.
Ythras swallowed, unaware of the otherworldly hands scraping off a sliver of his tongue.
“I have a close hand in Komis’s affairs, Magus Supreme, but we’re firm on ensuring that no drugs—”
“Every Praetor within Komis has received a hefty share of drug profits since Clan Kader first roosted here. You work with the underworld to supplement your salary, and the only reason I’ve let it stand is that manufacturers would go too far underground if I didn’t.”
Surprise spilled across Sarai’s face. She glanced at Ythras and saw the truth of it in the sweat gleaming on the man’s temples.
The man stuttered, “Even if that were the case, I don’t understand the relevance—”
“Boil beetle venom is the main ingredient in whitesleep.”
Ythras’s mouth closed. Opened. Let out a croak. Méherre had gone perfectly still, eyes unreadable in the dwindling light. And Sarai’s expression altered from bewilderment to startled understanding, as though she were seeing him fully for the first time.
“Will you tell me that it’s a coincidence that the land’s hub of whitesleep production is also its worst affected by beetles?” he asked, tone soft and lethal. “Or shall we be honest with each other, Praetor? Did you look the other way until it was too late?”
As he had. With the north and with the dregs of his family.
Ythras’s scoff was the death rattle of a man clinging to his defenses.
“Whitesleep is a profitable venture, isn’t it?” Kadra’s steps were soundless as he advanced. Not one vigile stood in his path. “Your tongue can lie, but your ledgers won’t.”
“You have to understand—”
“Who paid for your silence?” Sparks snapped to life around him. “Who paid for the answers in your letters to me?” His muscles coiled with bloodlust when the man shrank back, mouth widening to deliver an answer that was as much a deathblow.
“You said it too.” Ythras’s gulp belied the defiance underpinning his voice. “The same people who’ve owned every Praetor in Komis.”