“This place has nothing to do with the plague, alright? My vigiles are as busy as yours, trying to hunt down a…” Harion snapped his fingers in search of a word and gave up. “They’ll find something.”
Kadra considered the coincidence. Harion had ignored the first few victims in Aelius’s Quarter. Now, he was here. If it was an act, it was a brilliant one. This man didn’t have that capability.
Harion’s sly grin faded at Kadra’s silence. “I’m well enough to do my job, godsdammit. No one cares about a couple rubs when we’ve three hundred dead. People want answers. You can only blame the Grains Guild so much. Cassandane’s lies aren’t holding.”
Kadra hid a smile. Six months as Tetrarch and Harion still couldn’t conceal how new he was to power. His improved verbiage, crisp vowels, all of it mimicry of a position he knew he hadn’t earned. So, he construed everything as an attack and rushed in, teeth bared so tellingly.
Kadra spared a glance for his companion, now stirring awake.
Following his gaze, Harion snickered. “That one’s mine.”
“Stones Guildmaster Albanus would disagree.”
“Not much the fat oaf can do about it when his daughter’s smitten. The courtship’s nearly over. You can’t blame me. It’s a bad time to be a Tetrarch, and the Guilds have always weathered everything.”
Kadra’s lips quirked. “How many of her rubs have you paid for?”
“Enough to secure the marriage. Best coin I’ve spent.”
“Her betrothed agrees.”
Harion’s chest swelled. “Little premature for titles, but yes. The announcement’s coming soon.”
Kadra grinned. Most people fell into two camps when they caught that rare occasion. They flinched. Or quailed. Harion was among the latter. “I refer to her engagement to Clay Guildmaster Septimus’s son. The marriage is in two weeks.” His smile broadened. “A Guild alliance.”
The smugness slid off Harion’s face. “You’re lying.”
“But you would know that.”
The Petitor-turned-Tetrarch twisted his armilla around and paled atzosta’s glow. “She wouldn’t,” he said after a long look in her direction.
“She’s drained her father of coin and patience, and unfortunately, Septimus’s son has inherited the family tightfistedness with aurei.” Kadra noted as the girl tottered to her feet, looking distinctly alarmed. “You must have seemed gods-sent, paying for everything.”
“Fuck off!” Harion reddened. “She isn’t sold off yet. If I secure her, thenI’llhave blood ties with the Guilds, and the Tetrarchy’ll be under my fucking feet.”
Kadra nodded. “If.”
Leaving the sputtering man to his folly, he made for the atrium’s only decor, a thick tapestry in the peristyle. Behind it, was a staircase to the den’s bowels. Descending, the iron tang of blood hit him in seconds.
The cellar door stood ajar, a sanguine handprint on the handle sending trails to the ground. In their haste to flee, the dealers had turned on each other. The victors had thrown the bodies in a corner, the blood on the walls already frosting in the cellar’s cold. Murder not plague.
A leftover candlestick cast a glow over the sacks by the bodies. The den’s owner had been busy. At least a hundred thousand aurei in powder.
He slit a sack, snow-white chunks trickling out like wet sand. That had been part of the allure at first. Whitesleep didn’t require the months of curingthat blazeleaf did. Venom could be reduced to powder and concentrated in days, and there was no need for anything as conspicuous as ingestion or inhalation for effect. One rub on the eyelids for relaxation. Two for relief from aches and pains for a day. Three for euphoria. Five for respiratory distress.
Jaw tight, he dipped a knuckle in and inhaled. A familiar stench burned the back of his throat. Sweet, some users would profess. So sickly that they smelled it for hours after use. But this batch had a sour note that he knew well.
He eyed the wriggling bodies with yellow venom sacs emerging from within the sack with interest. A corner of his mouth curved in an empty smile. One answer and a renewed question.Who?
A familiar tread sounded on the stairs.
“Mind the blood,” he called absently as Cato gingerly toed the door open and swallowed at the pile of corpses. “Our dealers added themselves more charges. The product’s infected with beetle larvae.”
“Wrath and Ruin, is that how the plague’s been spreading?” Cato hurriedly stepped back when a larva landed on the floor. “What isthatdoing in whitesleep?”
A connection that had baffled even Sarai. And the same one that he had known since the horreum.
“Boil beetle venom is the main ingredient in whitesleep.”
