Page 14

CHAPTER

Fourteen

T HREE HOURS LATER, Neema was back on her feet. Eight, she felt terrible, but she was up.

She had woken with Pink-Pink walking over her face, and Benna calling from the living room, “High Scholar, sorry, Citizen Kraa! Breakfast!”

Neema had been dreaming of flaked pastries filled with sweet roast pork, the special ones Chef Ganstra made on Festival days, sprinkled with sesame seeds and glazed with honey. Coming down from her sleeping platform in her stolen overalls, she found that he’d baked a batch for her as a goodbye present. The smell had wafted into her dreams, along with the freshly brewed coffee.

“Is that Pink-Pink?” Benna asked, as Neema descended. He was clinging possessively to her head. “You found him! I’m so happy.”

Neema fell on the pile of warm pastries.

“I think some of those are meant for the journey,” Benna said, and then, shortly after, in a bright voice, “never mind.”

Neema poured herself a second bowl of coffee. “Did you talk to Grace about the dress?”

Benna’s eyes lit up. She pulled out a gingham bag filled with tiles and dropped it on the table. It sounded heavy.

Neema opened the bag. “What the Eight?”

Benna was beaming. “Nineteen silver tiles. Yay!”

“How did you…”

“I know you said start at twelve, but when Citizen Eliat got back she was…” Benna swayed, and crossed her eyes. Blind drunk.

Neema retrieved three of the octagonal silver tiles and held them out. When Benna drew back, she persisted. “Please. You earned them.”

Benna hesitated, then took them. “Thank you,” she said, serious for once.

Neema drained her coffee and got to her feet. The room tilted, then steadied. The food had helped, but she felt bruised and hollow, and her senses had been pulled out of shape. Sounds thudded through her, and her vision was distorted. Certain comforting smells overpowered the rest—the coffee, the food, her books.

“I need to speak with Contender Rack,” she said, rubbing the heel of her palm into her forehead. “Could you pack a few things for me? They can send the rest on later.”

Benna was nodding enthusiastically.

“And Pink-Pink, where’s Pink-Pink?” She turned a circle, looking for him.

“Citizen Kraa . ” Benna pointed to a spot above Neema’s head.

“Oh.” She’d forgotten he was up there; she’d mistaken him for an ominous sense of doom pressing down upon her. “Thanks. He needs feeding. Would you mind?”

“I would love to,” Benna sang, as if feeding cockroaches to a temperamental chameleon was the only job she had dreamed of her whole life.

Praying that she would find Gaida in a forgiving mood, Neema hurried up to her apartment.

The door to the antechamber was open. Stepping through, she collided with Gaida’s servant. He was fretting, pressing his thumb into the centre of his palm in an effort to soothe himself. Contender Rack hadn’t called him in yet, and it was way past dawn. He didn’t know what to do. “I’m not supposed to disturb her,” he said, pushing his thumb deeper into his palm.

“But…”

But the sun was up, and Gaida was due on the parade ground within the hour, for the Revelation of the Dragon Proxy. She couldn’t miss that—it would be an unforgivable, diplomatic snub.

“Where’s Generic? Sorry, Janric ,” Neema corrected, when the servant looked baffled.

“They’re all at breakfast, citizen.”

They shared a tired look. The Raven contingent existed for exactly this reason—to take care of their contender and make sure everything ran according to plan.

“What’s your name?” Neema asked him.

“Navril,” he said, and pressed his ear to the door.

She did the same. She could hear the repetitive clack of a clockwork fan turning the air, nothing else.

“She could be meditating,” Navril said. “If I interrupt her…”

“It’ll be your fault if she does badly today,” Neema guessed. She sighed into the door. “I’ll go in first. I have to speak with her, and I don’t have much time. If there’s any trouble, you can blame me. Say I insisted.”

Relief flooded Navril’s face.

She tapped lightly on the door, then cracked it open. A waft of Gaida’s perfume hit her—sweet honeysuckle and vanilla. She opened the door further.

The interior was dark.

“She closed the shutters,” Navril said, smothering a smug look .

“Mosquitoes.”

“I tried to warn her.”

Neema entered the apartment. Now it made sense. Gaida had wanted to “wake with the sun,” but the reality of being bitten half to death must have drawn her back inside. Shutters pulled tight and no servant to wake her—no wonder she’d slept through. The place was pitch black.

This is what happens, Neema thought, when you try to live poetically. She called Gaida’s name. Nothing. “Hand me the lantern,” she said to Navril.

The screened-off living area was in an even worse state than the night before—a discarded guitar with a broken string, spent glasses and sticky marks on the furniture. The melancholy remnants of the afterparty. The sensible option would have been to host the party somewhere else, but Gaida had always been like this, her cell at the monastery had been just the same. She had to be at the centre of things, just as Neema had to be at the outer fringes.

Even with the lantern, it was hard to navigate through the mess. Neema tripped over a pile of books, knocking them under the table.

“She doesn’t let me tidy,” Navril grumbled.

Neema was listening hard, head tilted to one side. The sliding books should have woken her, surely. But the room remained still, save for the clacking ceiling fan. She revised her theory. “I don’t think she’s here.”

Navril looked hopeful.

This was promising. If Gaida was already on her way to the parade ground, Neema had the perfect opportunity to hunt for Yaan Rack’s report and destroy it. No begging for mercy required.

She had reached the shutters. The day bed near the balcony was empty, but it was evident that Gaida had slept there. One of the cushions was dented like a pillow, and she’d dragged a sheet down from her sleep platform. On the floor, tucked under the day bed, was a half-spent pot of tea, the empty cup smeared with bright red lipstick. To be thorough, Neema climbed halfway up to the sleeping platform and peered over the top. “She’s not here,” she called down to Navril, confirming it.

He put a hand to his chest and breathed out a long sigh. “Thank the Eight.”

From her vantage point on the steps, Neema could see that there was a degree of order to the chaos. One area spilling over with clothes and scarves, disgorged from an antique chest. Another area given over to training weights and a stretching mat. In one corner, stacked boxes of papers. Her breath caught.

“I was supposed to collect a folder,” she said casually as she climbed back down the platform ladder. “Maybe I could take a look around.”

She couldn’t have asked for a less-interested servant. “Good luck finding anything in this dump,” Navril muttered, leaving her to it.

Neema held the lantern up to a mantel-clock. Ten past six. It would take a quarter hour to reach the boat from here, at a run. She’d have to be quick. Daylight would help. Sliding open the shutters to the east balcony, she winced as the sun dazzled her eyes.

Something odd. Something not right.

Her exhausted brain took a moment to catch up.

Six large, painted terracotta plant pots had been arranged in a rough circle. Well, so what? Afterparty high jinks. Turn away. You don’t have time for this.

Except they looked suspicious, as if the tall ornamental grasses were forming a barrier around something in the middle.

It’s nothing . Go back inside.

There was a smear of red on one of the pots. And there, a palm print. Whoever had moved the pots had blood on their hands.

They cut themselves, it doesn’t matter. Don’t look. This isn’t your business. Go back inside and find the folder. Catch the boat and go, get as far away from here as you can.

Don’t look.

She looked.

Of course she looked.

Gaida was lying on her front inside the circle of pots, dressed in her contender’s uniform. She looked peaceful, head turned to one side, eyes closed, lips parted. Sleeping. There was a knife in her back.

Neema shifted one of the pots and kneeled down. She wasn’t dead, she couldn’t be. The Dragonscale, it’s showing you things that aren’t there. The knife isn’t real; you’re imagining it.

Neema touched Gaida’s shoulder. “Gaida. Gaida, wake up. You’re late for the Festival. Gaida please. You need to wake up.”

She didn’t stir. She wasn’t breathing.

Neema touched Gaida’s neck, searching for a pulse. Her skin was cold. Neema shuddered, and withdrew her hand. This was true, this was happening.

She sat back on her heels.

Who would do this?

A terrible thought invaded her mind.

Did I do this?

Could the Dragonscale have taken hold while she was sleeping, and brought her here to confront her enemy? Had it released in her a deep, ugly desire? Kill her, and save yourself. Could she have resisted the urge, under its influence?

But the blade. Where had that come from?

She stared at the plain wooden hilt, worn smooth from handling. An old cook’s knife, nothing special…

No—it couldn’t be.

Taking a deep breath, Neema reached out and touched the hilt. It wasn’t enough. She would have to… Another breath, and then quickly, before she could change her mind, she pulled the blade from the wound. There was a soft sucking sound as it came free.

And there it was, etched into the steel, the one thing she was praying not to find: the Tiger’s eye sigil. Hurun-tooth, the Blade of Peace. Ruko Valit’s dagger. Blood trickled down the blade. Neema stared at it in horror, thinking of the curse she had read about only a few hours before.

A phrase rose unbidden in her mind—a line from the Scriptures. When the Tiger’s eye weeps blood, then shall the Eight Return.

A soft breeze riffled the grasses in the terracotta pots. Clouds scudded across the blue sky. Such a terrible thing, on such a beautiful day.

Neema felt the air thicken, as if some deep incipient power was gathering. They are coming, they are coming…

A fly landed on the wound in Gaida’s back, breaking the moment. The world started up again. The tick of the clock, the whirring fan.

Nothing was coming. Ridiculous.

Facts. Gaida was dead, stabbed with the Blade of Peace. The Eight had not Returned because they weren’t real. The curse was a story, nothing more.

Neema brushed the fly away. She didn’t know what to do with the blade, it didn’t feel right to drop it on the ground. And so, swallowing back her revulsion, she slotted it back as she had found it, and somehow that was the worst part of all, as if she were murdering Gaida a second time. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. It surprised her, how sorry she was. In spite of everything. All that life, all that energy, snuffed out for ever.

In the waiting area, where Neema had sat the day before, Navril was sorting the books into neat piles. “Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked, still tidying. When she didn’t answer he turned, and saw her face. “What’s wrong?”

She had to force the words out. “Contender Rack is dead.”

Navril stared at her, speechless.

Seeing him like that snapped Neema from her own shock. There were protocols for this. There were protocols for everything. She took the books from his hands and pushed him towards the door. “Vabras. Tell the Hounds, we need Vabras.”