Avery stared down into her glass, disinterested.
Esteri leaned forward on the bar, ducking her head to move into Avery’s eyeline. “That’s because of you, you know. Our lives—fey and mortal alike—are better because ofyou.” She waited for a beat before pulling back. “Fine, be stubborn. As always.” She took a deep sigh. “You asked me about sympathetic magic with a delayed trigger activation. Now, I haven’t had a lot of time—”
“About that,” Avery interrupted. “I know how the delay was achieved.”
Esteri’s ears flattened again, disappointed that the answer had already presented itself. “Really?”
“Thanks to your pettier half, I had a chat with…” Avery stopped, remembering Fiore’s insistence that she not mention she’d seen Bimo Shinwell. “…someone more familiar with banned magic.”
Esteri’s eyes sparkled knowingly, and Avery remembered Fiore’scomment that there were no secrets between them.
“He believes these masses of herbs were meant to be partial fetches.”
“Fetches? So, he—thispersonis hypothesizing that this charm would attempt to fool the human body in the same way that a fetch’s purpose was to temporarily take the place of the human it was made to resemble, and…” Her expression darkened. “Jumalauta.”50
“A very nasty way to die,” Avery confirmed.
“So the ritual would swap these fake organs with the real ones. Due to the nature of the spell itself, since they are mimics and not the real thing, they would inevitably fail days later, causing an extremely painful death…” Esteri blanched.
“That would appear to be the method.”
“Do you know why they aren’t failing automatically?”
“Bi—cause it is possible, as my unnamed source suggested, they may be sealed with some kind of healing balm or spell.” Avery finished her wine and caught sight of her friend’s expression. “What are you thinking?”
“Have you considered…” Esteri stopped and chewed on the thought a moment longer before starting again. “I mean, is it possible your killer didn’tknowthey would fail?”
“What do you mean?”
Esteri poured them both more wine, the scent of cinnamon and citrus rising from the hot beverage. “Well, creating fetches has been a banned practice for quite some time, not a lot of information can still be easily found about it—at least not onthisside of the veil. And looking at this now in this context, I wonder if the circle you found might have been a healing circle.”
Avery blinked at this suggestion. “That’s ridiculous. You can’t use healing magic to cause harm.”
“Tsk, you can’t use healing magic toknowinglycause harm. There were no incisions, no outside marks. It fits.”
“Essi, they died slowly and painfully from organ failure.”
“True, but that doesn’t mean that was theintention.If—and I realize this is a very big if—butifyour thief didn’tknowthese fetches would ultimately kill the host, they could have utilized healing magic because the intent would be to keep the patient safe. It wasn’t about harming them, it was about obtaining the organs without harming the host.”
The look Avery donned was nothing short of skeptical.
Esteri persisted. “If this were about revenge, why this method? There are many ways to achieve that kind of torture that wouldn’t require the lengths this person has gone to. Even if it were purely about organs, there areeasier waysto obtain organs.”
“I am uncomfortable with the confidence in which you stated that fact.”
“And yet I am right, so…” Esteri took an unbothered drink of her wine. “Why this method?”
“It was suggested these specific organs were chosen for a particular reason. Possibly to gather information.”
“Suggested bywhom?”
Avery averted her eyes and irritatingly, somehow, by that alone, Esteri read her.
“So Iona thinks a haruspex may be at work?”51 Esteri’s nose wrinkled in demonstrable disgust, though whether it was in response to Iona or haruspicy was not clear. “Divining from the organs of humans? Why?”
“Gathering information on Eira, perhaps.”
“Ah, you mentioned her name a few times with Saga. Who is she?”
