Chapter 5 #2
He looked so expectant that all I could do was blink. A hand shot through the bars to grip my arm. “Mari? Ow!” He yelped, snatching his hand back and holding his fingers in pain.
Noble’s hand fell from my arm before I even realized he had pried Kennen’s grip free.
“What was that for? Who are you?” Kennen asked, sucking one suspiciously clean finger into his mouth.
“Do you really expect us to believe you are that clueless as to why you are here?” Noble asked.
Kennen looked bewildered. Poor boy had never been the brightest tulip. “I’ve been falsely arrested, and Mari has come to save me?”
There was so much hope in his face that I hated to be the one to ruin it.
“Yes, your sister has come to save you,” Noble said, surprising me. “Little though you seem to deserve it.”
Kennen’s eyes widened. He’d always made friends easily, unlike me. “I didn’t kill that woman. No one can believe I did.”
“Not only do they believe you killed her, but they think you mutilated two others as well.”
Perhaps he wasn’t the quickest, but Kennen wasn’t terminally stupid. Comprehension turned to horror. “They think I’m the Vein Ripper?”
I moved to touch him and Noble shifted his position accordingly. “Kennen, you are in real trouble. Were you truly not aware?”
He chewed his lip. “I thought they were keeping me away from the real villains. The guards mostly avoid me. Do they really believe I’m...? Does—” his voice lowered. “Does anyone else know?”
“Yes.”
“No.” He obviously read all that I wasn’t saying in my one word reply.
“You need to tell us everything, Kennen. It’s the only way we can get you released.”
“We need to hire a negotiant!”
I compressed my lips. “We did. It’s not enough for you.”
I had read the laws as I’d promised myself. Noble had been right, damn it.
“But then, what is going to happen to me? What am I going to—”
“Answer our questions, for a start.” Noble’s tone was cold, but he didn’t look as completely unapproachable as he had that first night. “What were you doing around the White Stag when you were arrested?”
Kennen sent me a questioning glance, his face a mirror of the sharp planes and dark-circled brown eyes I had sported before Rosaire’s hearty stews.
Though unlike me, his wide eyes made him look comically innocent.
I had a vague stirring of hope that a jury would see him that way too. I nodded encouragingly in response.
He ran a hand through his dirty hair, making it stand on end. “Ferris and Mari were fighting again that night. I had to get out.”
The flare of hope shot into guilt.
“I walked for a while. Passed a number of empty taverns—no action in any of them, no friendly faces. But I had a few gold to spend.” He looked at me with a grimace. “So I headed east.”
Ferris had distributed pocket money with the new clothing and items we couldn’t afford—part of the reason for the fight in the first place.
“Did you buy anything? Did anyone see you?”
“No.” But his gaze turned shifty. “There was a raucous tavern. I could see it from a block away. Looked perfect for...er, anyway, it looked perfect. So I headed for it. Wasn’t three strides to enter when I heard a noise.
Like the tap of metal against stone. Someone screamed, ‘You!’ Then there was this weird sound—like the screech of a cat. ”
His eyes pinched together. “I walked toward the sounds. A woman was...lying there. I reached down, then everything went black. I woke up in a puddle of blood with a knot the size of a grapefruit on the back of my skull.”
“Did you see anyone else? Anyone nearby?”
“No. Must have heard me coming. Hurt like the devil when I woke. I couldn’t stop moaning. Then I saw the body.” He shivered. “Lying there, right next to me.”
“How long do you think you were out?”
“Don’t know.” He scratched his head, flattening one section and making another stand further on end. “Maybe twenty minutes? Was about ten when I left the house, and I heard a guard say it was half past eleven as they were locking me up.”
“After you woke up and saw the body, what did you do?” Noble asked.
“I touched her arm. It was so…cold. I tried to warm her. I didn’t know what to do.
I just sat there, looking at her, skull pounding.
Then this man came barreling down the alley and tackled me.
Just kept yelling. Wouldn’t listen to a word I said.
They had me shoved into this rathole not twenty minutes later.
” He kicked a piece of straw. “They think I’m the Vein Ripper. Unbelievable.”
He paused, his eyes widening. “Spirits.” He looked as if someone had just struck him again. He started frantically patting at his wrists, his chest. “The Vein Ripper hit me. He could have done anything to me!”
“His victims have all been women so far. I doubt you were quite his style, even with that shirt,” Noble said.
Kennen looked down at his overly frilly shirt in bemusement. “Who are you?” he asked in honest confusion.
“Someone your sister hired.”
“The negotiant?”
“No.”
He looked at me. “Marietta?”
“I made an agreement with him.”
The cogs turned. His face flushed from stark white to angry red. His fists clenched the bars of his cell. “How dare...” His voice trailed off as his indignation turned again to confusion. His gaze took in all of Noble’s...everything.
I wasn’t in the same physical class as Gabriel Noble. It was obvious to anyone with eyes.
“To do...what?”
“Help.” I responded somewhat more tartly than intended. I didn’t know if I was more upset with my brother thinking I’d sold myself or that he thought there was no way Noble would have purchased me.
“How—”
“Your sister answered your question.”
Kennen’s jaw closed with an audible snap.
Noble’s eyes narrowed. “Now, tell us what you deliberately left out of your tale.”
“What he left...Kennen?” He looked at his shoes, shuffling his feet, buckles clicking against the bars and upending straw. “Kennen?”
Noble was less patient. “You used dark magic. Why?” Dark—
“It wasn’t—I didn’t hurt anyone!”
No, oh, no. “Kennen, what did you do?”
“Nothing!” But he had never been good at lying.
“Touching the body alone would leave some traces of darkness,” Noble said, tapping a finger almost lazily on his crossed arm. “But not the amount that was registered on the report.”
My heart sank. “Kennen...what happened to the gold?”
He shifted, shoulders rising to his ears. “Mari, you still on about the pocket money? I swear, that’s all you—”
“Kennen!”
“I bought a draught!”
The bottom dropped out of my stomach. “What kind of draught?”
His shoulders fell. “One of enhancement. It would solve all our problems!” He gripped the bars. “If we only—”
“You know those things don’t work! They are the work of conmen and—”
“Ferris said if we could find an augment or enhancer—”
“Kennen! That’s dark magic!”
“It shouldn’t be dark magic! It only affects my own magic!”
“It’s illegal!”
“Being born lesser should be illegal!”
Noble snorted.
“Did you take it, Kennen?” His expression answered my question. “You had dark magic in you—on your hands, in your mouth!”
“I know,” he whined. “But I didn’t kill anyone!”
“Augments and enhancers can be used effectively in the reverse.” Noble examined his fingernails. “They can drain magic from another in order to augment the caster.”
Kennen went white. “But I didn’t, I wouldn’t—”
“Having the remnants of such a draught on you while standing over a dead mage’s body—a body with its magic ripped out—is damning.”
“You can’t rip someone’s veins out just by drinking a draught!” He blinked. “Can you?”
“No. You still need a spell or chain. You don’t have the ability, so you’d need a weapon to channel it.” Noble tapped a finger. “Which is why you haven’t been executed yet. The murder weapon—they don’t have it.”
“What weapon tears veins out?” Kennen whispered.
Noble turned to me. “Would you like to wait around the corner?”
The body. He wanted to ask about the body. I gripped my skirt. “I’ll stay. I daresay I’ve seen more blood in the kitchens than Kennen has in his life.”
Noble’s gaze was narrow and piercing. Probing. “Fine.” He turned to my brother. “What did the wound look like?”
“Slices. Narrow ones. Sharp ones.” He shuddered. “A butcher carving a fine cut. And her skin around the edges looked gray. Hollow. Like she was...emptied.”
“The screech of a cat, you said. What kind?”
“Like one being gutted.”
I put a gloved hand over my mouth. Noble asked about the blood splatters—were there any patterns? Any weird smells or other sounds? Residual magic? Spells still active?
“There was something—like ink and wax. Like reading the post. And a weird dullness. But my head, the draught. She was face up.” Kennen shuddered. “Covered in blood. I couldn’t make out her features. She seemed older, though. I don’t know why—dress? Hair? I don’t know.”
“There was nothing identifiable about her?”
“No.” He took a couple of quick breaths in succession. “Her face was…given the same treatment.”
Kitchens or not, I didn’t want to imagine the scene. The accounts of the previous victims had assuredly been sanitized in the papers, and even then they had sounded horrific.
“There was nothing else? Anything near the body?”
“I don’t know. Everything happened so fast. I don’t know,” he whispered. “I had just wanted to help my family. I had just wanted to be better.”
I grasped his hands through the bars, my throat tight. The suppression wards pushed down on me as my magic automatically surged—trying to do something. “We’ll fix this. I promise.”
“You and Ferris?”
“It is half past.” Noble held up his pocket watch toward me. “We need to go.”
“Just hold steady. Don’t antagonize the guards.” I clutched his hands.
“We must leave,” Noble’s smooth, deep voice said. “Do not try to cast a spell.”
“Mari?” I didn’t know what Kennen was asking. His hands held mine in a death grip.
I couldn’t bring myself to let go.
“Don’t leave me here.” A thump sounded on the outer door.
A hand touched my back. I looked down at my brother’s hands joined with mine. The hand against my back urged me to move. The weight of a thousand ships descended as I let go.
“I promise.” My eyes stayed locked with Kennen’s even as I let Noble hurry me through the door. “I promise!” The look on my brother’s face as we rounded the corner etched itself in my mind. Forlorn. Hopeful. Miserable. Innocent.
I followed Noble blindly. He gave me an unreadable glance. I returned it woodenly, shock and despair coating my emotions. He knocked on the locked door and the lock disengaged.
Edgar’s grumpy visage came into view. “’Bout time.”
We followed him back through the corridors.
“We’ll head for Coroner’s Court,” Noble murmured. “See if we can’t discover more than your brother could recall.” His tone was the tiniest bit warmer than he’d ever used with me before.
Edgar shook his head in front of us. “Won’t do you much good. They burned the body,” he said over his shoulder.
Noble stopped in the middle of the hall. “They what?”
Edgar turned and nodded grouchily. “They did the examination and then got rid of the body. Fastest I’ve seen.”
Noble’s eyes narrowed. “Suspicious.”
“Nah, probably just trying to keep the masses from panicking.”
“From what? It’s not like regular folks would see it.”
“No, but the longer they drag out an investigation, the worse it will be. Clean everything as quick as they can—maybe it will pass from public memory.”
We were Kennen’s only chance.
“Frank still there?” Noble asked.
“I thought he was done with his tasks?”
“He is. Doesn’t mean I can’t pay an old friend a visit.”
Noble smiled charmingly, but Edgar just mumbled. “Better not pay me any visits once we’re done.”
Noble and Edgar engaged in a brief, coded conversation as we exited, but I didn’t listen. Couldn’t concentrate. My mind was going again at full speed.
“His groaning,” I said, when Noble rejoined me on the sidewalk. “It was Kennen who Penner heard. Not the victim. The victim was already dead.”
Noble nodded. “While I’ll agree that would match Penner’s story, the killer had no reason to leave your brother alive.”
I shuddered. “Maybe he needed someone to take the fall.”
“Perhaps.”
“You still believe Kennen guilty?”
The seconds ticked by.
“No.”
Half the fleet of ships were lifted from my shoulders, leaving only five hundred weighing me down. “Thank you.”
“I am not the one who needs to be convinced.”
“I beg to differ. You were clearly convinced of his guilt before we came today.”
“I was clearly convinced of nothing. I wasn’t convinced of his innocence. That is what you objected to.”
“Was not.”
“Don’t be petulant,” he said, head tilted.
I gasped. “I’m not petulant.”
Another walnut appeared from his pocket as we continued to walk. “He was only after the woman from the beginning.”
“What?” I replayed the conversation. “You think my brother was left alive because the killer was after the victim specifically?”
“Your brother heard the woman say, ‘You.’ She knew her assailant. That would lead me to question whether all of the attacks are targeted.”
“Instead of random mages caught by a crazy man?”
He shrugged, turning the nut between his fingers. “The watch thinks they are random. Most of the public does as well. I have been too busy to pay attention these last few weeks.”
“But you think the women were targeted?” It made sense. It fit.
He shrugged again. “I don’t know what to think, but today has given me much to ponder.” He gave me an unreadable look and continued to rub his fingers in a circular pattern around the nut’s edge.
I didn’t know what to say to that, or how to respond to the feelings coiling in my stomach. I paced alongside him as we walked home, gritting my teeth every time we passed a drooling admirer.