19. 18
The prison fell away behind me. Petros had taken the key from me, and clasped my hand with a knowing look.
I must have smiled and muttered something assenting, but I could hardly recall it.
Everything was happening too fast. There was so much I didn’t understand, and so much I hoped I had got wrong.
“Annie,” a voice called.
I froze, and turned to its source.
A woman. She stood by a carriage with no driver, across the path from the prison’s entrance. A woman in a tricorne hat and a military-style coat with brass buttons that covered her up to her neck. With a twinge of guilt, I realised I found it harder to recognise her so covered up.
But I placed her, in her beautiful flowing dark hair, strong tanned features, and those captivating, dark eyes. “Fella.”
The Samiscan gestured me over, and I dumbly obeyed.
Fella tapped the side of the carriage. “I’m here to pick him up.” She appraised me with a frown. “Did you find him?”
Of course, she had come for Davian. She must have followed when they took him from the House. And, of course, she assumed I would be here for Davian also. Because why else would I be visiting a prison?
Juven’s words swirled in my head. Nine must die. How many more deaths were coming, if this new actor was indeed trying to summon Ragnifort? Were all the women’s deaths for this purpose? Was someone merely trying to pass the deaths off as Ragnifort’s will?
It was too much, too confusing. There were so many options, and yet not a single answer. Who would want the God of Fire and the Forge back? He had been cast down from the Ten so long ago that I had no idea if there was anyone left alive who had prayed to him.
The answer, though, was the key to all of it. I could feel it. If I found out who had killed these women, I might find where Ragnifort was. I could get my life back. I could be an Ekrissian again, and maybe save some lives while I did it. Davian could find some peace.
I blinked as I realised I hadn’t answered Fella’s question. Did you find him?
“No,” I said. “They didn’t let me see him.” It wasn’t a lie. I frowned in the direction of the prison. “He’s taking the Oath.”
Fella didn’t react like I thought she would. She actually relaxed; her hand, once tight on the window of the coach, loosened, and her lips parted in a sigh. “Thank fuck.”
“What?” I barked, eloquently.
She allowed me a small smile. “They’ll finally leave him alone. Those sunning dogs have been hounding him for months. The idea that he had anything to do with Seera—” Fella shook her head. “At least, now, they will know he didn’t.”
Her relief was more reassuring than I thought it would be.
She was so convinced of his innocence. I realised there was still a part of me, a small one but present nonetheless, that was not entirely convinced that Davian was wholly unconnected to his wife’s disappearance.
I did not believe he had killed her, but if the sunners had put me under the Oath, and asked if I honestly believed that Davian had committed no offence… I would have struggled to answer.
But Fella was entirely relieved at the prospect. And even barely knowing her, it was a final stone pushed. A piece of resistance kicked aside. Especially after today. After Jusia. After Juven. I did not believe Davian had any connection to any of it.
“No,” I mused. “This wasn’t him.”
Fella’s eyes narrowed. “What do you know?”
“Nothing,” I replied, too quickly. Fella noticed it, and waited. Once more, I told her a part-truth. “It’s something I’d rather discuss with Davian himself.”
She nodded, and dropped the matter immediately.
I realised this was where the Ekrissian in me, and the Samiscan in her, overlapped in harmony.
We both respected discretion and privacy more than the average citizen of Dytho.
She leant back against the carriage, and pulled out her pipe.
She tapped the side of the door next to her. “Will you wait with me?”
“Sure.”
I followed her invitation and leant against the carriage door to her side.
Her fingers shook as she took her pipe weed from her coat pocket.
Dried tobac leaves. An expensive hobby, and one that was clearly a source of comfort for the Samiscan devotee.
She did not take her eyes off the prison door as she lit the pipe and sucked in, pulling the embers with the deep drag.
Then I noticed the paper holding the tobac, which she still clutched in one hand, had an insignia on it. A sword and dandelion, the blade and the weed. It was the insignia of the God of War, Zeonal.
It wasn’t just a military-style coat. It was a military coat. One of our own soldiers had worn that. No one particularly highly ranked, from the single arrow below the shoulder. But still.
“A gift from one of your patrons?” I asked, gesturing to her coat and paper.
She smirked, and then blew the smoke out. “From Camriel.”
I raised an eyebrow. Her lover and House Leader. “Did he serve?”
“He visited the fortress a few months ago,” she replied. Her expression faded into something more blank. “Nowhere better for a devotee of Pain and Death than a battlement.”
“Zeonal is Samiscus’ nephew, after all. They are Gods of the same blood.”
Fella did not reply to my comment. She only took another puff of her pipe, and stared at the door. Were she and her lover Camriel still fighting?
I stared at the prison door, too. There was far too much in my mind, and now the distraction of Fella’s conversation had fallen away, I found myself entirely overwhelmed by it.
I couldn’t stop thinking of her body. The white slab of it.
Once perfection, now bloated. Those sunners who would never see her like the person she had been.
She had been remade by her death into a wholly different type of spectacle. One she had no control over.
It was horribly unfair.
And Juven. A murderer of a child, by all accounts.
Mad, by the world’s perception. Locked in the darkness.
Any hope for an improvement to his mental state was as barred as the metal of his cage, trapped in that windowless corridor.
How could I trust a word from his mouth?
And yet, I couldn’t afford to dismiss it.
He had recognised the marks, where the sunners had believed them just some sick mutilation at the hands of a sordid Samiscan.
I had to believe it was true, that whoever had killed Jusia would now be targeting other devotees.
If not for myself, then for the safety of the rest of the devotees of Dytho.
We had to work out who had done it, before the next person was lost.
Fella pulled me out of my swirling pit of horror with a question so light of heart it nearly blinded me. “So, are you two just fucking, or it is more?”
If I had been eating, I would have surely choked. Instead, I just whipped my head to her. “Excuse me?”
“You heard, Annie.” She blew smoke into my face.
Just fucking. As if it was assumed that we were at least doing that.
And then, just. As if it was a thing two people did casually. As if that wasn’t the one act I had reserved for the eternal Garden, as if I hadn’t committed myself at fourteen to be pure for him. As if it wouldn’t tear away the one chance I had of returning to him.
I could not be taken in that way. Not by Davian, no matter how often the thought might have come into my head. No matter the imaginings that swept through me when I saw him sweating. Sometimes, I thought I didn’t even need to be fucked by Davian. But I wanted to see it.
No. For others, there might have been just fucking. For me, there never would be.
I knew I was blushing, but I hardly knew what to say. We weren’t fucking, but to deny it would somehow be a lie. Our intimacy had been fleeting, but not insignificant. If not for everything else, it would have plagued my mind far more than it should have.
And there was more to it, but not in the way she read into that.
I tightened my lips, and said nothing at all.
Fella raised a perfect eyebrow. “Wow, so you’re a proper Ekrissian, huh. You’ve never had a man, have you?”
I sighed, bored of this rhetoric from my patrons. “In most ways, I have.”
“Oh, I doubt that. But I like your confidence,” her smile grew across her mouth, reminding me of a lazy cat who got the cream.
Reminding me of Davian, regrettably. I only blushed more, remembering his wolfish grin after…
Well. After. Fella’s eyes flickered with amusement. “You didn’t answer my question.”
The horrors of the day didn’t allow me to play along. I spoke part of a truth that I doubted he would mind me sharing. Fella clearly knew about his wife already. “He’s trying to find out who killed Seera. He thinks I can help with that.”
Fella’s face fell, and I knew I had thrown cold water on the moment. “Oh.”
“He didn’t tell you?” I asked.
Fella tipped out the dregs of her pipe, and started to fill it with fresh tobac.
“When my friend brings a courtesan to a House like ours, I don’t tend to assume it is for an investigation.
” It was a fair point, and well made. Fella struck the fire paper, and took another long drag on the lit plants.
She gave me a sidelong look. “Have you learnt anything?”
I answered my question with one of my own. “Were you close? With Seera?”
“Yes,” Fella replied. Then, heavier. “Yes, I was.”
This wasn’t just the grief of a husband.
This was a grief of their House. A shared soreness they all felt.
But Davian barely spoke of her. She had been gone such a short time.
I realised I didn’t know how long they had been married.
If they were a love match. Surely, they had to be, if her father disowned her for it.
It shouldn’t matter. I shouldn’t have to ask. It was none of my business. The question faltered from my lips regardless. “Were she and Davian—”