She removed the undergarments from Churian’s mouth, sitting on the bed next to him. “What is your name?”
“Churian Dorlani,” he answered fearfully.
“What is your most embarrassing secret?”
His eyes widened, but he answered immediately. “I once let out a fart at a fancy dinner party. Poo came out with it. I blamed the dog.”
Kizzie rubbed at her nose to cover her smile. Well, the shackleglass definitely worked. She tugged on the gloves hiding her silic sigil. “Do you recognize me?” she asked.
“No,” he answered.
“Good. Did you participate in the murder of Adriana Grappo?”
Churian’s eyes grew wide. He began to tremble, struggling as if against invisible ropes, his body unwilling to disobey Kizzie’s direct command. His mouth opened, closed, then opened again as he fought the sorcery. He chewed on his tongue – not enough to bite it off, but enough to draw blood. Kizzie lost patience and pulled out her stiletto, pressing it against his throat for added incentive.
“Did you participate in the murder of Adriana Grappo?” she asked again, more forcefully.
“Y-y-yes,” Churian answered.
Kizzie gazed down at him, frowning. “Well. Damn.” She had expected this answer – the Breadman seemed like a reliable witness – but she still didn’t like it. “Why did you do it?”
Churian licked his lips, glancing over Kizzie’s shoulder as if to search the room for help. Sweat poured off his brow. Finally he said, “I was ordered to by my grandmother, Aelia Dorlani.”
“That’s it?” Kizzie asked. “You were ordered to?”
“You don’t say no to Aelia.”
Aelia was the matriarch of the Dorlani guild-family and widely considered a sadist. Saying no to her was akin to saying no to Father Vorcien – except she would kill you herself, rather than have an underling do it. Kizzie’s uneasiness grew. If the Dorlani were behind the killing and word got out, it could start a guild-family war. They had enough enemies, and the tiny Grappo guild-family was well-liked enough, that it wouldn’t take but hours before enforcers were gunning each other down in the streets. “Do you know why she wanted Adriana dead?”
“I don’t. I…” Churian hesitated, then spat out, “I didn’t want to! I didn’t even know Adriana. Why would I kill her? But Grandmother said to.”
“So you followed orders.” Kizzie sighed. That was not nearly as good a lead as she’d hoped. It wasn’t like she could slip into the Dorlani estate and do something similar to Aelia. Piss, even asking to see Aelia would raise suspicions, among both the Dorlani and her own family. “The other killers. Were they also ordered there by your grandmother?”
“I don’t know.”
“Guess.”
Churian’s eyes twitched. The blanket beneath him was soaked with sweat now. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“We met anonymously, just before the killing. Everyone was wearing masks. I … recognized one of them. My grandmother would not have sent a Magna for a public killing.”
A cold finger seemed to creep up Kizzie’s spine. A Grent agent, a Dorlani, and a Magna. Glassdamn, this was a conspiracy! Conjectures began flying around inside her head, and it took all her willpower to silence them so that she could properly work. “Who was it?”
Churian had stopped trembling. He was nothing but resignation now, his whole body looking slack and exhausted from trying to fight the shackleglass. “Glissandi Magna.”
Another guild-family cousin. Kizzie chewed on her lip, considering. “Don’t move,” she ordered Churian, withdrawing to the sitting room, where she could pace and think.
Was this a real conspiracy? Were the guild-families and the Duke of Grent somehow working together? Had Capric lied to Demir about that captured Grent agent? It all seemed so impossible, but so did the idea that agents from three major powers had come together for the murder.
Kizzie vacillated on what to do next. While Churian was considered little more than a bureaucratic nobody within his own family, Glissandi had actual power within the Magna. She was as close to the main family as was possible without being an actual daughter. Fiercely independent, quite rich, and with connections all over Ossa, Glissandi would be a difficult target.
But it was also Kizzie’s best lead.
She walked to the door. “You definitely didn’t recognize anyone else?” she asked.
“I didn’t, I swear!” came the answer.
This was becoming more dangerous by the minute. Once again, Kizzie found herself wondering if she should just return Demir’s money and swear off the job. Just a day and a half had passed. She could probably back out. If she did, the question of what had actually happened would haunt her for the rest of her life. What’s more, she would miss her chance at reconnecting with Montego.
Something else about this whole thing was bothering her. Assuming Capric was telling the truth about the Grent agent, then at least two of the six killers were patsies. They were killers but not conspirators. Neither of them knew why Adriana Grappo needed to die.
Glissandi might.
Kizzie tossed her stiletto up into the air and caught it deftly by the blade between two fingers. Glissandi Magna. She would be difficult to corner alone, but not impossible. Certainly easier than Aelia Dorlani.
She forced herself to stop worrying. The politics wasn’t part of her job. All she had to do was get the facts back to Demir. If he wanted to start a guild-family war, that was his problem. Kizzie would have to hide her involvement in all this from her family, but if they somehow found out then she would have plausible deniability. They were, after all, the ones who loaned her out to the Grappo.
She returned to the bedroom once more and tapped Churian’s bare chest with the flat of her stiletto blade. “I’ll give you two choices,” she said. “You can either sell all your worldly possessions by noon tomorrow and board the next ship to Marn, or I can tell Baby Montego that you took part in the killing of his adopted mother. Which do you choose?”
The trembling returned, and Kizzie quickly caught a whiff of the scent of piss. “I’ll leave!” Churian said. “I’ll be gone. I … I … I won’t talk to another soul. I won’t even sell anything. You’ll never see me again.”
Satisfied with the answer, Kizzie leaned over and plucked the shackleglass from Churian’s ear. “If you try to follow me, I’ll kill you. If you try to find out who I am, I’ll kill you. I’d lay there for a few minutes after I’m gone, if I were you. I promise that if you haven’t disappeared by noon tomorrow, Baby Montego will be visiting you by dinner.”
She left that threat, letting herself out of the apartment and then leaving by the same side door that she’d tricked the doorman with earlier. It was around ten o’clock. Perfect time to get a drink. She would need it if she was going to figure out how to fit the next piece of this puzzle without getting murdered by Glissandi Magna’s bodyguards.
14
Lechauri was true to his word, and by morning Demir’s office was filled with files on the Ivory Forest Glassworks. He enlisted Breenen, Montego, and even the hotel’s master-at-arms, Tirana Kirkovik, to comb through everything. He did not tell them why they had to extract Thessa, just that it needed to be done. He could afford little time, and he himself focused on the owners of the Ivory Forest Glassworks.
“I don’t mean to complain,” Tirana said quietly after several hours of reading, comparing notes, and discarding useless information, “but do you do this sort of thing a lot?”