Light. The smallest things suddenly loomed so large when they could not be obtained. Light. Something to read. Freedom to walk where she wanted. Freedom from the terror of torment and death at the hands of a mad king. Gifts that most people scarcely knew they had, but which Qinnitan would value more than all the gold in the world.
But at the moment, she just wished she had a lamp…
An idea came to her then—horrifying, but impossible to dislodge once it had arrived. Pigeon moaned in his sleep and squeezed her arm as though he could sense what she was thinking, but Qinnitan scarcely noticed him. The ship rose and fell at anchor, its timbers creaking softly as she lay in the lightless cabin with the boy clutched to her, scheming how they would either escape or die.
Daikonas Vo had been up before the dawn, as was his wont. He had never needed much sleep, which was a good thing: the house of his childhood, with its constant coming and going of male visitors and its drunken parties, had never provided much.
He had spoken with the ship’s captain as well as the optimarch, the leader of the soldiers on the ship, waking them both in their cabins before the first light of dawn had touched the clouds overhead and impressing on them that it would be hard to say which would be worse for them if anything happened to the girl while he was gone—the wrath of the autarch or the anger of Vo himself. Neither man liked him, but then what man did? What was important was that he had the autarch’s commission. Even better, he had seen the glimmer of fear in both men, better hidden in the captain’s angry stare than in the optimarch’s (who only outranked Vo himself by a few measures) but still there, still visible. He trusted that fear even more than he trusted their fear of the autarch. Sulepis was indeed fearsome, but he was far away. Vo was right here and he wanted them to remember that he would be coming back by nightfall.
He clambered up from the boat onto the dock and walked away without looking back, leaving the rowers to shake their heads and make the sign of pass-evil. Vo reveled in his unpopularity. It was one thing back in his own troop, when he had to live with the same men for years. He had not wished to provoke such enmity that they might all decide to band together and stab him in his sleep. But aboard ship, where he was outranked by several and had only his commission from the autarch to command respect, he wanted to keep them all at arm’s distance. The greatest threat, after all, came not from obvious enemies but from purported allies. That was how people could be caught off guard. That was how kings and autarchs were assassinated.
Agamid rose up before him in three points, the trio of hills that were its fame, that looked down on the port city nestled in the foothills below the highest hill and that sprawled all the way down to the edge of the broad bay. Even at dawn the place was bustling, its roads full of wagons coming up from the docks toward the bazaar with the morning’s catch of fish and the first goods from the trading vessels that had docked during the night. Oxen lowing, men calling to each other, children screeching and laughing as they were chased out of the way—it was exactly the kind of lively scene that made Vo wish some kind of massive ice storm would descend from the north and freeze everything, cover all the lands in a blanket of cold silence. That would be worth seeing! All these yammering, pop-eyed faces struck motionless like fish in an icy pond, and nothing to hear but the sweet, inhuman song of the wind.
Vo made his way from market stall to market stall, asking the owners where he might find an apothecary called Kimir, whose name one of the sailors had remembered from an earlier voyage and a bad case of the pox. Some of them were angry to be interrupted in their preparations for the day by someone who did not even mean to spend money, but a look into Vo’s cold eyes quickly made them respectful and eager to help. At last he found the shop in a row of dark, vine-tangled houses a few hundreds steps up the first hill, at the back edge of the bazaar.
The shop itself was exactly what he had expected, ceiling cobwebbed with strings of hanging leaves, flowers, fruits, branches, and roots, floor covered with baskets, boxes, and clay pots, some of them stopped with wax or even lead. Beside the table against one wall stood a chest that was taller than a man and had dozens of tiny drawers, by far the most expensive piece of furniture in the room. Perched beside it on a stool was a lanky, bearded older man in a dirty robe who wore the black conical hat common in this part of the world. He looked up briefly from the contents of the drawer he was examining when Vo walked in, but did not otherwise greet his new customer.
“You are Malamenas Kimir?” Vo asked.
The old man nodded slowly, as if he had only just realized it himself. “So they say—but then, they say much that is untrue as well. How can I help you, stranger?”
Vo pushed the door closed firmly behind him. The old man looked up again, this time with mild interest. “Is there anyone else in the store?” Vo asked.
“Nobody else ever works with me except my sister,” said Kimir, smiling slightly. “And she is older than I am, so if you mean to rob me or murder me I don’t think you have much to fear.”
“Is she here now?”
The older man shook his head. “No. Home with a bit of a pain in her back. I gave her a mild tincture of cowbane for it. Excellent stuff, but it promotes belly cramps and flatulence so I told her not to bother coming in.” He tilted his head, stared at Vo like a bird viewing something shiny. “So. I repeat my earlier question, sir—how can I help you?”
Vo moved closer. Most people could not help shying back from Daikonas Vo when he approached them, but the apothecary seemed unmoved. “I need help. There is… something in me. It is meant to kill me if I do not do what my master wants. I am doing my best to serve him, but I fear that even if I do, he may not cure me.”
Kimir nodded. He looked interested. “Ah. Yes, the kind of employer who might do such a thing to guarantee results from his underlings is not necessarily the sort you trust to be suitably grateful afterward. Is it by any chance the Red Serpent Root he forced you to eat? Did he say you had two or three days before the poison would kill you?”
“No. I have had this in me for months.”
“Could it be Aelian’s Fluxative? Did he warn you under no circumstances to eat fish?”
“I have eaten fish many times. There was no such warning.”
“Hmmm. Fascinating. Then you must tell me exactly what happened…”
Daikonas Vo described what happened in the autarch’s throne room, although he did not mention the identity of his master. As he described the death agonies of the autarch’s cousin, Kimir’s eyes widened and the old man began to grin a wide, yellow grin.
“… And then he told me that it was in my wine as well,” Vo finished. “That if I did not do as he wished, the same thing would happen to me.”
“And no doubt it will,” said Kimir, rubbing his hands together. “Well, well. This is quite wonderful. This gives every sign of being the true basiphae—something I had never thought to see in my lifetime.”
“I want it out,” Vo said. “I do not care what it means to you. If you help me I will reward you. If you try to trick me or betray me I will kill you very painfully.”
Kimir laughed shortly. “Oh, yes, I am certain you would, Master… ?” When there was no reply the old man stood. “No one would waste such an… encouragement as that on an unimportant servant with an unimportant task, and no one who could find, afford, and employ the basiphae would hire a clumsy servant. Oh, I am quite convinced you are a very good killer indeed. Sit here and let me inspect you.”