Chapter 23 Two Witnesses
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Two Witnesses
“I heard the screams and went running,” Riv Minarin finished, folding her arms over her black Mage Practer cloak and casting a defiant stare in Auria’s direction. The second eyewitness from the Broad Row murder seemed far less nervous than the first.
After the rather public altercation with Saffron, Auria had thankfully found the lost witnesses tossing back flamebrandy shots in a tavern next to the portari gate. She was now interviewing them individually in a small interrogation room at Order headquarters.
She sat opposite the witness, sipping at a flask of c?nnafyr she’d brought from her mothers’ house. “You were in a pleasurehouse. How did you know the screams were nefarious?”
“They weren’t screams of pleasure, or even of kinky pain. It sounded like someone was being brutally tortured.”
“So both you and your sexual partner ran upstairs.”
“Yes, that’s right. We had the same instincts.”
“And when you got to the top of the stairs, did you turn right or left?”
Riv paused to consider this, closing her eyes as though painting the pleasurehouse’s layout on the back of her lids. “Neither. Straight ahead.”
Auria scrawled shorthand notes down on a fourth sheet of parchment. “What did the crime scene look like when you arrived?”
“It’s all such a blur. The room was strewn with rose petals and fur blankets, and there was an upturned bowl of half-eaten strawberries on the floor. The body was on the bed, contorted with pain but clearly dead. The window was open, and I saw a flash of white cloak as the suspect leapt out.”
Auria’s detective’s instincts snagged on two parts of this statement, but she tucked the suspicions away until the right moment. “What did you do next?”
“I ran over to the window while my companion rushed to the body. The white-cloaked mage who dropped into the alley was short, tanned, bald, and barefoot. He sprinted away in the direction of Parlin Place.”
A neat testimony, answering several questions before Auria needed to ask them. “And did you attempt to cast any spells to prevent the suspect’s escape?”
“No, my magic isn’t very strong—I was lucky to scrape the Mage Practer certificate.”
Auria’s heart rate picked up as a theory formed in her mind. “And how did you feel at that point? Were you fearful? Confused? Shocked?”
Sloppy, Auria chastised herself. Don’t put words in their mouth. Let them find their own.
“I was surprised how calm I felt in the moment. I suppose you never know how you’re going to respond to something like that until you’re in it.”
“Who summoned the Silvercloaks?”
“My companion did, upon realizing the victim was deceased.”
Interesting, Auria thought.
Someone was lying.
“And did you recognize the victim?”
“No, they were not known to me.”
“What about the suspect?” Auria sipped again at the delicious cinnamon-sweet coffee, praying it staved off the fresh migraine bulging behind her eye sockets. “Were they familiar to you?”
“Not at all.”
The answers were growing shorter, less certain, as though Riv had veered off the edge of a known map. It made note-taking easier, and suspicions sharper.
“And were you and your companion the only patrons of Anila’s to attend the scene, or were you merely the first?”
“The only. I went to find Anila while we waited for the Silvercloaks to appear—my companion stayed in the room with the corpse.”
“Was this something you agreed upon, or did you leave without a word?”
A short beat. Riv’s gaze flicked over to a large wall-mounted mirror and back to Auria. “We agreed upon it. Porak was happy to stay behind.”
Porak Zemni, the other eyewitness, was a Tarsan immigrant with a profoundly large appendage. He spent approximately ninety-four percent of his waking life in pleasurehouses. Were he not a Ludder, his magical well likely would’ve been full enough to hold the Great Wards alone.
“Happy?” Auria raised her eyebrow. “He wasn’t worried the suspect would return to the scene of the crime?”
Riv shrugged. “You’d have to ask him that.”
“Did you have a prior relationship with Porak?”
A faint blush of pink appeared on the apples of Riv’s cheeks. “We met for the first time that evening.”
“Did you notice anything unusual at the pleasurehouse prior to the screams? Unexpected sights, sounds, body language? Any conflicts, large or small?”
“No, nothing like that.”
They were nearing the end—for now. Auria couldn’t wait to leave the room and tell Jebat what she suspected. “Anything else you’d like to tell me?”
A tight, too-pleasant smile. “No.”
Gathering her notes, Auria rose to her feet, silver cloak falling around her ankles in silky waves. “Thank you for your time. Let me have a quick word with my colleague—he might have some follow-up questions.”
Jebat was waiting for Auria in the second room behind the wall-mounted mirror.
“Well?” he asked, a stack of papers clutched to his chest and a mug of ambertea in his hand.
Auria paced wildly, the excess coffee making her feel like she might either bite a horse or smash the moon.
“Something isn’t sitting right. While the eyewitnesses both relay the approximate shape of events in the same way, there are discrepancies.
They each stated that the other summoned the Silvercloaks, for example.
And then, when I asked whether they agreed one should go looking for Anila while the other remained behind, one said they did agree and the other said it was spontaneous.
It’s possible one of them is misremembering, but…
I don’t know. Especially earlier on in the questioning, there was an air of performance, of rehearsal, to their accounts.
Identical turns of phrases. Such a blur and a flash of white cloak as the suspect leapt out. ”
Jebat sipped at his tea, the dangling jewels of his septum ring clinking against the porcelain rim of the mug. “What are you suggesting?”
Auria stopped abruptly, swirling on her heel to face him.
“The witnesses could have been planted. I was so sure that when I lost them on Broad Row, they were going to be killed. Karvas warned me that the Whitewings would send someone to assassinate them, and with the suspect still at large in the area…it seemed miraculous when I found them unscathed. But what if they were unscathed because the Whitewings wanted us to find them?”
The lines on Jebat’s forehead deepened. “Why would the Whitewings plant witnesses to incriminate themselves? Why wouldn’t they say it had been a scarlet cloak fleeing through the window?”
“To keep it as close to the truth as possible. To minimize the chance of being contradicted by genuine witnesses, but without enough accurate detail for a conviction. Switching up certain information where they know they have scope to do so. Saints, if only Dematus would allow truth elixir in the interrogation room.”
Jebat scoffed bitterly. “As long as there’s corruption inside the system, those involved will do anything to ensure they aren’t incriminated.”
Auria crossed to the mirror and studied Riv through the one-way glass. The black-cloaked Practer was humming a folk song about large appendages. “I’d love to look at the witness reports from the other Broad Row murders. Go through them with a fine-tooth comb and—”
“Marriosan,” Jebat interrupted, with an air of apology. “The autopsy results came back on the victim. There was a Bloodmoon loyalty brand over their heart.”
Dread sank into Auria’s stomach. “A targeted attack?”
“Ordinarily, this might not be enough to suggest as much. The victim was still clothed when they died, so it’s unclear whether the suspect knew what lay beneath.
But two of the other victims this week were wearing dark red cloaks, and another was a known Whitewing.
This is a clear feud between the whites and the Bloodmoons. ”
Auria stared up at the ceiling. “Which means…”
“I’m sorry, Marriosan. Karvas insisted we take you off this case.”
She tossed her careful notes onto the floor with a petulant scoffing sound. “But the whites and the scarlets are so embroiled at this point that it’s going to be impossible for me to find a Whitewing case clearly delineated from—”
“I know, I know. You have every right to feel frustrated. But you can still be of immense importance to the Whitewing operation. There’s a location within your patch that’s seen a lot of white cloaks coming and going of late.
I’d like you to stake it out for at least a month, gather as much intel as you can.
Then deliver a report on whether you believe it to be a drophouse or headquarters of sorts. ”
“Fine.” Auria gestured to the mirror on the wall. “Enjoy unpicking the rest of this yarn. I almost had it.”
Jebat bowed his head, and she sensed from his expression that there was something else.
“What is it?” she asked, fear darkening inside her like a storm cloud. A little over a month ago, Aspar had told her, in a conversation not unlike this one, that her grandfather had been found murdered at the hands of a Bloodmoon. What terrible news was Jebat steeling himself to tell her?
He gave her an odd smile.
“Nissa Naszi is awake.”