Of the Suleviae, the Sulevia Sceadu was most feared, for there were few places the Night Breezes could not reach to carry back whispers. Or to do as they did now, abandoning furred and feathered forms to create the miniature outline of a room occupied by two people. One writing, the other drinking. Shadows without colour, the page empty of script beneath the moving pen, for this was a representation of the surfaces touched by the wind.
“Can I see the man writing in more detail?” Rian asked.
The image changed, so that only the desk remained, with its faintly-smiling writer intent on the black page. He was very thin, with a curling mop of hair.
“I think I’ve met him,” she said, slowly. “Reddish hair, and talks very rapidly. One of the auction house people? Yes, he came to run over the details of the auction with me. So.” She stopped, for it was confirmation.
“Ready for your revenge, Wednesday? Will you hit them with your little stick?”
Rian stared at Makepeace, then down at the wrapped sword she’d forgotten she was holding. “I don’t particularly care what happens to him. What’s necessary is proving that Aedric and Eiliff did not die from their own incompetence, so their legacy is their achievements, not an ignominious death. That’s what will make the difference for their children.” She paused. “No, that’s not entirely true. Killed, jailed, brought to justice somehow, but the most important thing is still proof.”
“That’s the aim—” Makepeace began, then stopped as Princess Aerinndís held up a hand.
“…and get out,” the wind whispered. A woman’s voice, diction slurred. “We’ve got back as much as anyone could hope to. I don’t care what they’re offering for the rest.”
“You’ll care when your cut runs out, Min.” Like his face, the man’s voice was familiar. “If we can get our hands on the last of the big pieces, the bonus will see us swimming easy until you’ve drowned yourself in that rotgut.”
“No bonus is worth the risk. The plan was get it, sell it, fade. We were idiots to ever agree to try and get it back.”
The wind’s image changed to show the room again, tiny figures to match the voices as the man blotted his writing and stood.
“You won’t get far calling Dane an idiot.”
“Dane’s half the problem! She’s changed, Penry. Something’s been off with her all summer. And this thing with the masks has spiralled into an obsession. Ever since that Alban came along, she’s lost all sense.”
Makepeace raised his eyebrows at that, glancing at Rian.
“Got twice the money for the same haul, that’s what we’ve done,” the man said briskly, stooping with a key to unlock what must be the safe. “You need to stay out of your cups, Min. You’ve washed away your stomach.”
“I’ll be wash-eaagh!”
A third player had bounded onto the darkling stage. Massive shoulders, heavy head, an enormous clawed paw batting the woman from her chair. The bull-bear.
“What in—?” the man began, but Rian did not see his fate, for Princess Aerinndís had reacted immediately, the three-tailed mare and two stags snatching the eavesdroppers from their roof and hurtling them over the street and through the doors of a warehouse two buildings down, the heavy wood shattering like glass as they blasted past.
Stacks of crates blocked their view across the cavernous interior to an office tucked into the corner. As the three Night Breezes rode close to the ceiling, Rian saw the panes of the office’s windows were shattered, the exposed interior painted with orange and gold. Fire.
Set on her feet outside the remains of the internal door, Rian looked hastily for the bull-bear as a flurry of dark hares darted through the blaze, causing it to roar higher as they snatched objects—and two bodies—out into the main part of the warehouse. Meanwhile, wind hounds leapt in every direction, vanishing out to the street.
“Nothing else in the building but a few rats,” Makepeace said, as he stomped on one of the books rescued from the blaze. “No sign of how it got in or out, let alone where it went to.”
“It went nowhere,” the Crown Princess said. “It neither came nor left; it simply was.”
The winds returned, heavy with moisture, and tossed a sizeable portion of the Tamesas over everything, leaving acrid smoke with a fishy undernote. Princess Aerinndís dropped to one knee beside one of the two bodies, and Rian saw to her horror that the person was still alive. A woman wearing knee-length trousers and a sleeveless tunic striped with red and white where the cloth had been shredded in parallel lines, the exposed flesh so deeply gouged that she looked like she had fallen under a plough.
“…hurts,” the woman said, clutching at the hand offered to her.
Eyes wide, she was breathing in little gasps, the noise harsh and desperate, and Rian found that her own hand was at her throat, remembering the effort, the pain, and the sinking certainty that nothing could be done.
Makepeace knelt on the woman’s other side, shaking his head as he did so. He made no attempt to try to feed her his ka and blood. Even a Thoth-den would hesitate to try to save such a badly mangled woman: the risk of creating a ghul was too great.
Then he said: “Attend me.”
That was too much, and Rian turned away, forcing her thoughts to a more useful response. The fire had been thoroughly doused, leaving the office a damp mess, but there were sections barely touched. Lifting a still-lit fulgite lamp onto a box, Rian found a tumbled ledger and a stump of pencil, and made quick work of two portraits.
The woman was talking, a thready but unemotional whisper. She didn’t react to Rian’s approach with the lamp, brow smooth as she gazed steadily at Makepeace’s face.
Makepeace glanced at the ledger Rian held out to him, then took it and held it up for the injured woman to see.
“Do you know these people?”
Calmly, the woman looked at the pages, then said: “The Alban. Has Dane—”
And then she closed her eyes and died. Of course.
TWENTY-ONE
The Crown Princess lowered the dead woman’s hand so that it rested over the terrible wound, and then gently closed the woman’s dimmed eyes. Her own hand was covered in blood, and she used it to draw on the still forehead three circles around a central dot to represent the first island of Annwn.
“May you find your path,” she said formally.
“And may we find Dane,” Makepeace said. “Whoever she might be. Perhaps we can ask your Alban,” he added to Rian.
Rian drew a long, calming breath, taking sudden violence and death and setting them in a place that would not interfere with larger goals. “I can’t even guess which of them she recognised. I thought I might even be eliminating them, showing her those portraits.”
“I admit that I’d dismissed that pair as suspects, particularly the brother, since I’d questioned him under trance.” He frowned down at the ledger. “Guileless and guiltless and yet, apparently not.”
Princess Aerinndís stood. “God-touched resistance?”
“The most likely reason, though that would make Lyle Blair an extraordinary actor—one whose emotions match the falsehood he’s telling. We now seem to be overwhelmed with god-touched possibilities: the possible truth-diviner, whatever that beast is, and someone who may perhaps be able to resist my abilities.” He began picking up the various objects the winds had pulled from the fire and examining them.