The woman in the havah laced her fingers before herself, inspecting Veil.
“Look,” Veil said, “just tell me what the information will cost me.”
“One can’t buy,” the woman said, “what isn’t for sale.”
“Everything is for sale,” Veil said, “if you ask the right way.”
“Which you’re not doing.”
“Look,” Veil said, trying to catch the woman’s eyes. “Listen. My kid sister, she—”
A hand fell on Shallan’s shoulder, and she looked up to find an enormous Horneater man standing behind her. Storms, he had to be nearly seven feet tall.
“This,” he said, drawing out the i sound to an e instead, “is my spot.”
He pulled Veil off the chair, tossing her backward to roll on the ground, her cup tumbling away, her satchel twisting and getting wound up in her arms. She came to a rest, blinking as the large man sat on the chair. She felt she could hear its soul groaning in protest.
Veil growled, then stood up. She yanked off her satchel and dropped it, then removed a handkerchief and the knife from inside. This knife was narrow and pointed, long but thinner than the one on her belt.
She picked up her hat and dusted it off before replacing it and strolling back up to the table. Shallan disliked confrontation, but Veil loved it.
“Well, well,” she said, resting her safehand on the top of the large Horneater’s left hand, which was lying flat on the tabletop. She leaned down beside him. “You say it’s your place, but I don’t see it marked with your name.”
The Horneater stared at her, confused by the strangely intimate gesture of putting her safehand on his hand.
“Let me show you,” she said, removing her knife and placing the point onto the back of her hand, which was pressed against his.
“What is this?” he asked, sounding amused. “You put on an act, being tough? I have seen men pretend—”
Veil rammed the knife down through her hand, through his, and into the tabletop. The Horneater screamed, whipping his hand upward, making Veil pull the knife out of both hands. The man toppled out of his chair as he scrambled away from her.
Veil settled down in it again. She took the cloth from her pocket and wrapped it around her bleeding hand. That would obscure the cut when she healed it.
Which she didn’t do at first. It would need to be seen bleeding. Instead—a part of her surprised at how calm she remained—she retrieved her knife, which had fallen beside the table.
“You’re crazy!” the Horneater said, recovering his feet, holding his bleeding hand. “You’re ana’kai crazy.”
“Oh wait,” Veil said, tapping the table with her knife. “Look, I see your mark here, in blood. Ur’s seat. I was wrong.” She frowned. “But mine’s here too. Suppose you can sit in my lap, if you want.”
“I’ll throttle you!” Ur said, shooting a glare at the people in the main room of the tent, who had crowded around the entrance to this smaller room, whispering. “I’ll—”
“Quiet, Ur,” the woman in the havah said.
He sputtered. “But Betha!”
“You think,” the woman said to Veil, “assaulting my friends is going to make me more likely to talk?”
“Honestly, I just wanted the seat back.” Veil shrugged, scratching at the tabletop with her knife. “But if you want me to start hurting people, I suppose I could do that.”
“You really are crazy,” Betha said.
“No. I just don’t consider your little group a threat.” She continued scratching. “I’ve tried being nice, and my patience is running thin. It’s time to tell me what I want to know before this turns ugly.”
Betha frowned, then glanced at what Veil had scratched into the tabletop. Three interlocking diamonds.
The symbol of the Ghostbloods.
Veil gambled that the woman would know what it meant. They seemed the type who would—small-time thugs, yes, but ones with a presence in an important market. Veil wasn’t certain how secretive Mraize and his people were with their symbol, but the fact that they got it tattooed on their bodies indicated to her that it wasn’t supposed to be terribly secret. More a warning, like cremlings who displayed red claws to indicate they were poisonous.
Indeed, the moment Betha saw the symbol, she gasped softly. “We … we want nothing to do with your type,” Betha said. One of the men at the table stood up, trembling, and looked from side to side, as if expecting assassins to tackle him right then.
Wow, Veil thought. Even cutting the hand of one of their members hadn’t provoked this strong a reaction.
Curiously though, one of the other women at the table—a short, younger woman wearing a havah—leaned forward, interested.
“The murderer,” Veil said. “What happened to him?”
“We had Ur drop him off the plateau outside,” Betha said. “But … how could this be a man you would be interested in? It was just Ned.”
“Ned?”
“Drunk, from Sadeas’s camp,” said one of the men. “Angry drunk; always got into trouble.”
“Killed his wife,” Betha said. “Pity too, after she followed him all the way out here. Guess none of us had much choice, with that crazy storm. But still…”
“And this Ned,” Veil said, “murdered his wife with a knife through the eye?”
“What? No, he strangled her. Poor bastard.”
Strangled? “That’s it?” Veil said. “No knife wounds?”
Betha shook her head, seeming confused.
Stormfather, Veil thought. So it was a dead end? “But I heard that the murder was strange.”
“No,” the standing man said, then settled back down beside Betha, knife out. He set it on the table, in front of them. “We knew Ned would go too far at some point. Everyone did. I don’t think any of us was surprised when, after she tried to drag him away from the tavern that night, he finally went over the edge.”
Literally, Shallan thought. At least once Ur got hold of him.
“It appears,” Veil said, standing up, “that I have wasted your time. I will leave spheres with the barkeep; your tab is my debt, tonight.” She spared a glance for Ur, who hunched nearby and regarded her with a sullen expression. She waved her bloodied fingers at him, then made her way back toward the main tent room of the tavern.
She hovered just inside it, contemplating her next move. Her hand throbbed, but she ignored it. Dead end. Perhaps she’d been foolish to think she could solve in a few hours what Adolin had spent weeks trying to crack.
“Oh, don’t look so sullen, Ur,” Betha said from behind, voice drifting out of the tent alcove. “At least it was just your hand. Considering who that was, it could have been a lot worse.”
“But why was she so interested in Ned?” Ur said. “Is she going to come back because I killed him?”
“She wasn’t after him,” one of the other women snapped. “Didn’t you listen? Ain’t nobody that cares Ned killed poor Rem.” She paused. “Course, it could have been about the other woman he killed.”
Veil felt a shock run through her. She spun, striding back into the alcove. Ur whimpered, hunching down and holding his wounded hand.
“There was another murder?” Veil demanded.
“I…” Betha licked her lips. “I was going to tell you, but you left so fast that—”
“Just talk.”