His jaw flexed. “Please forgive me, sir, but I am under orders to keep this matter private. This family matter.” Which meant that Remath had ordered his silence, and nothing short of my dangling him off the Pier would make him talk. Perhaps not even that; he seemed the stubborn type.
I rolled my eyes. “You know as well as I do that only magic could cause such a horror. A scrivener’s activation gone wrong, or perhaps they aggravated one of my siblings.” Though I doubted that. Any godling was capable of such a thing, even the ones with gentler natures, but I could think of no godling who would. We killed; we did not desecrate. We respected death. To do otherwise was an offense to Enefa, and probably Yeine, too.
“I cannot say, sir.”
Stubborn, indeed. “Why did you say it was dangerous?”
He looked hard at me then, to my surprise. Not angrily, though I was pestering him and I knew it. He had the most remarkable gray eyes. Rare in Sky, and almost unheard of among Maroneh, though he looked brown enough to be fully of that race. Probably part Amn, if he was Arameri.
“As you said, my lord.” He spoke softly but emphatically. “Only magic could have done such a thing. This magic works on contact.”
He lifted his chin in the direction of the bodies’ faces, which were still visible as the soldiers worked to wrap the loose limbs. I peered closer and realized that what I had taken for just more decay was something different. The blackness of their faces was not rot, but char. Not faces at all, in fact: each of the dead mortals wore some sort of mask over their features. The masks had burned so badly as to fuse with the flesh, leaving only eyes and a line of jaw of the original faces.
Then the soldiers were done bundling. Six of them set off, carrying the bodies slowly between them. As they reached the palace entrance, a phalanx of servants emerged, carrying cleaning implements and censers. They would cleanse the forecourt of its taint quickly so that no highblood would know such horror had ever lain here.
“I must make my report to the Lady Arameri,” said the captain, turning.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
The captain paused, looking wary, and by that I guessed he’d heard something of my reputation. I grinned.
“No singsongs, I promise,” I said. “No games or tricks. You’ve done nothing to offend me, so you have nothing to fear.”
He relaxed minutely. “Wrath Arameri.”
Definitely Maroneh, with a name like that. “Well, Captain Wrath, since you’re going to tell the lady I turned up here, anyway, you might also tell her that I’d be happy to assist in determining the cause of… this.” I gestured vaguely at the place where the corpses had lain.
He frowned again. “Why?”
“Boredom.” I shrugged. “Curiosity killed the cat. I’m too old to play with toys now.”
A flicker of confusion crossed his face, but he nodded. “I will convey your message, sir.” He turned on his heel and left, heading into the palace, but he paused on the steps and bowed as a slim, white-clad figure appeared in the entryway. Shahar.
I followed him more slowly, nodding to the servants out of habit (which seemed to startle them) and stopping at the foot of the wide steps. Shahar wore a simple morning robe of plush white fur, and a forbidding expression that made me hunch sheepishly, out of long habit.
“I awoke to find you missing,” she said, “and since I’m now judged on how well I serve your needs”—oh, marvelous, just the lightest glaze of venom on those words; she was very good—“it became imperative that I find you before completing any of my other, many, duties. I was at a loss, however, until I was informed of this incident. I knew you would be wherever there was trouble.”
I flashed her my most winning smile, which made her eyes even colder. Perhaps I was too old for that to work anymore. “You could simply have called me,” I said. “Like you did two nights ago.”
She blinked, distracted from her own anger so easily that I knew she wasn’t that upset. “Do you think that would work?”
I shrugged, though I was less nonchalant about it than I let her see. “We’re going to have to try it sometime, I suppose.”
“Yes.” She let out a deep sigh, but then her eyes drifted to the servants now assiduously attacking the soiled area around the Vertical Gate. One of them was even cleaning the gate itself, though carefully, using a clear solution and taking great pains not to step on any of the black tiles.
“You knew them?” I asked. Softly, in case she’d cared for them.
“Of course,” she said. “Neither was any threat to me.” As near a declaration of friendship as it got with this family. “They managed our shipping concerns in High North and on the islands. They were competent. Sensible. Brother and sister, like—” Deka and me, I suspected she would have said. “A great loss to the family. Again.”
By the bleakness of her expression, I realized suddenly that she was not surprised by the manner of their deaths. And her wording had been another clue, as had Wrath’s warning.
“I’m hungry,” I said. “Take me somewhere with food and eat with me.”
She glared. “Is that a command?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not forcing you to obey it, so no.”
“There are many kinds of force,” she said, her gaze as hard as stone. “If you tell my mother—”
I groaned in exasperation. “I’m not a tattletale! I’m just hungry!” I stepped closer. “And I want to talk about this somewhere private.”
She blinked, then flushed—as well she should have, because she should’ve caught my hints. Would have, if her pride hadn’t interfered. “Ah.” She hesitated, then looked around the forecourt as if it were full of eyes. It usually was, one way or another. “Meet me at the cupola of the library in half an hour. I’ll have food brought.” With that she turned away in a swirl of fur and whiteness, her shoes clicking briskly on the daystone as she walked.
I watched her walk away, amused until I realized my eyes were lingering on the slight curves of her hips and their even slighter sway, thanks to her stiff, haughty walk. That unnerved me so badly that I stumbled as I backed down the steps. Though there were only servants to see me—and they were carefully not looking, probably on Morad’s orders—I still quickly righted myself and slipped into the garden as a cover, pretending to look at the boring trees and flowers with great fascination. In truth, however, I was shaking.
Nothing to be done for it. Shevir had gauged my age at sixteen, and I knew full well what that age meant for mortal boys. How long before I found myself curled in a sweating knot, furiously caressing myself? And now I knew whose name I would groan when the moment struck.
Gods. How I hated adolescence.
Nothing to be done for it, I told myself again, and opened a hole in the ground.
It did not take long to reach the library. I emerged between two of the massive old bookshelves in a disused corner, then made my way along the stacks until I reached the half-hidden spiral staircase. Kurue had built the library’s cupola as a reward for those palace denizens who loved the written word. They usually found it only by browsing the stacks and sitting quietly for a while, losing themselves in some book or scroll or tablet. It made me obscurely proud that Shahar had found it—and then I grew annoyed at that pride and more annoyed at my annoyance.
But as I reached the top of the staircase, I stopped in surprise. The cupola was already occupied, and not by Shahar.
A man sat on one of its long cushioned benches. Big, blond, dressed in a suggestively martial jacket that would have looked more so if it hadn’t been made out of pearlescent silk. The cupola’s roof was glass, its walls open to the air (though as magically protected from the winds and thinner air as the rest of the palace). A shaft of sunlight made a churning river of the man’s curly hair, and jewels of his jacket buttons, and a sculpture of his face. I knew him at once for Arameri Central Family even without looking at the mark on his brow, because he was too beautiful and too comfortable.