“I’d have let her stay on the branch,” he mutters as a parting shot, then departs into the house.
Droo reappears. Her short yellow hair is sticking up from her head. It’s an odd style for an Elf.
“You know why Lithias was arrested? He tried to start a fight with the blacksmith over a poem. How ridiculous. He’s been like that for weeks. Just one irrational action after another.”
Droo studies Makri as we take the walkway towards the Tree Palace.
“Are your toenails really golden?”
“Of course not. I’ve painted them.”
Droo, unfamiliar with the concept of painted toenails, is impressed. “Did it hurt getting your nose pierced?”
“Not really. But it was sore when the Orcs ripped it out during a fight.”
“I wanted to get my ears pierced, but my father wouldn’t let me. It’s calanith for Elves to pierce their bodies.”
I hasten to change the subject. Makri has an unfortunate habit of wondering out loud about getting rings put through her nipples and I never like to hear this sort of thing.
“How long has Lithias been acting strangely?”
“Months. Of course, he never did act entirely normally. That’s why I like him. But recently he’s just been out of control.”
“You know he’s been taking dwa?”
Droo’s face falls. “I told him it was stupid.”
I ask the young poet if she knows whom he buys it from, but she says that she doesn’t. Nor does she know who has been bringing it to the island.
“I stayed well away from the whole thing.”
I’m not sure if she’s telling the truth, but I let it pass. Halfway to the Palace we come across an Elf I recognise. It’s Shuthan-ir-Hemas, Avula’s favourite juggler. She’s lying on the wooden pathway, sleeping. Her juggling kit is strewn around her in disarray.
“Oh dear,” says Droo, who obviously recognises the symptoms. So do I. You can’t walk around Twelve Seas without stumbling over addicts lying unconscious on every street corner, but I never thought I’d see it spreading like this among the young Elves.
We have some difficulty getting in to see Lithias and are denied access till Makri sends a message to Lady Yestar requesting permission as a favour to me. She smiles smugly.
“You’d be lost without me, Thraxas.”
“I can’t think how I ever managed. Okay, let’s question the errant poet.”
Lithias’s cell is as clean and airy as was mine, but Lithias, unused to incarceration, is slumped in despair by the wall. When he sees Droo he leaps to his feet with a cry of joy and they embrace. I let it go on for a few seconds before getting down to business. I ask Droo to leave us alone. She departs unwillingly, promising Lithias that she’ll wait for him.
“Lithias, I have some questions for you. Answer them, let me sort things out, and nothing much will happen to you. If you refuse to answer, Lord Kalith will be down on you like a bad spell. It’s going to dawn on him soon how large a problem he has with dwa and I get the feeling he might just exile everyone who’s touched it.”
Lithias hangs his head.
“I can’t tell you anything,” he says.
“You have to. Otherwise you’ll be banished from Avula and Droo’s mother will marry her off to the silversmith’s son.”
This gets to him. “The silversmith’s son? Has he been hanging around Droo again?”
“Like bees round honey. And if you ever want to get out of this cell, you better talk to me. I want to know everything about the dwa in the sacred pool and I want to know everything you can tell me about Elith-ir-Methet, Gulas-ar-Thetos and his brother. Start at the beginning and don’t stop unless I tell you to.”
Lithias begins to talk; what he has to say is very interesting indeed, and long overdue. It turns out that young Lithias has been filling himself up with happy juice for the past three months, since a friend of his, another young poet, told him that if he wanted to have an experience that was worth writing a poem about he could show him how.
Lithias never wrote any poems. The drug made him too crazy to concentrate on poetry. “It felt good at first. After a while I didn’t like it so much, but I couldn’t stop.”
He claims that only ten or so Elves were regular imbibers of the mixture of dwa and Hesuni water, but even so I’m surprised that such a thing could go on unnoticed right in the middle of the island. Lithias claims that they didn’t actually have to go to the Hesuni Tree as the supplier would bring the mixture out to a clearing in the forest where he’d sell it to the Elves. Fairly cheaply, it seems, which would be standard behaviour at first. They’d soon find the price was on the way up.
“Who brought it to the island?”
Lithias doesn’t know. He’s frustratingly vague about the details and claims not even to know the identity of the Elf he bought it off.
“Would you recognise him again?”
Lithias shakes his head. “He wore a cowl and stood in the shadows. I never saw his face. Everything was very secret.”
“It might have started off as a secret, but these things never stay that way. Earlier today I stepped over the unconscious figure of Avula’s best-loved juggler and she wasn’t making any attempt to hide what she’d been doing. How did Elith get involved? Was it through Gulas?“
Lithias doesn’t know. He thinks that Elith was already taking dwa when he started.
“She was always hanging around the Hesuni Tree because she had a passion for Gulas. They were lovers before his father’s death made him the Priest. He didn’t want to be Priest, but he didn’t have a choice. So they weren’t meant to see each other any more, but I don’t think they ever stopped. I used to hear some gossip about it. Lasas was never happy about it.”
“Lasas? His brother? Why not?”
“Because he was in love with Elith as well. It drove him crazy that she was in love with his brother. Didn’t you know that?”
[Contents]
Chapter Sixteen
Makri is waiting for me outside the cell.
“Learn anything?”
“Yes,” I reply. “But nothing I like.”
Lady Yestar appears as we approach the rear entrance to the Palace. She dismisses her attendants and greets us in her amicable well-bred manner and asks me if I still have hopes of clearing Elith, to which I reply that I do. She looks at me in her farseeing manner.
“You do not,” she says.
“Well, I’m still going to try.”
Yestar turns to Makri. “How is my daughter progressing?”
“Quite well.”
“I notice that she has been very tired when she returns home at night.”
“We’ve been practising hard.”
“I also notice that her clothes are torn, her eyes are red and she has been in need of the services of a healer.”
Makri shifts a little uncomfortably. “We’ve been practising hard,” she repeats.
Lady Yestar nods. “Please remember that Isuas is delicate. I do not really expect that she could ever win a fight. We will be grateful if you simply manage to strengthen her up a little.”
“Absolutely,” says Makri. “That’s precisely what I’m aiming for.”
Isuas trots out of the Palace. While not exactly the eager young Elf of a few days ago, she shows no sign of giving up and greets Makri brightly enough, and they depart.
“You might be pleased to learn,” Yestar tells me before I go, “that both Deputy Consul Cicerius and Prince Dees-Akan expressed some satisfaction that you and Makri were in my favour. Of course, I have not explained exactly what Makri is doing for me.”
“I am pleased. It might get them off my back.”
Lady Yestar smiles as she digests this unfamiliar phrase. “From their previous conversation, I’d say there had been every danger of them ‘getting on your back’ in a, eh. . . .”
“In a big way?”