Probably because you’ve the tread of a ghost. “Inquisitor Silvus, how are you here?”
“Someone has to see to the dead. A bitter business, last rites over a mass grave, but that’s how the faithful honor them.” His eyes were pale as ice. A frisson of disquiet slipped down her spine when she met them.
“Justice seems like a more pertinent way to honor them.”
His veiled mouth grinned. “Like I’ve said, Petitor Sarai, we aren’t so different at all. Forest and trees. Your Magus Supreme unfortunately doesn’t believe the same. I had the dubious pleasure of speaking to him at the Academaie’s graduation, you know? I can’t say that I see the appeal. Elsar only know why a man like that wanted to be a Tetrarch of all things. Do you?”
Sarai sighed. “That’s because he—” Her mind came up blank.
A strange roaring thundered in her ears. Not the pound of blood, but of dread.Why did Kadra choose to become a Tetrarch?A man that brilliant, that powerful, could have been anyone. Why the judiciary, then politics? It couldn’t have been for her Fall. That had been nearly five years ago, and he’d become a iudex nine years ago. Why did she know so little about him?
Catching Silvus’s expectant gaze, she crossed her arms, grateful for the bracing cold. “I asked this in Edessa, too, but what do you have against Kadra?”
“Men like that have sins deeper than you can fathom. When those sins come calling, they aren’t the only ones who pay.” Silvus’s eyes clouded. “Have you not paid yourself?”
Sarai thought back to the self-hatred she often saw in Kadra’s eyes whenever she had a nightmare. “He knows the weight of his sins.”
“Yet, he has lost nothing while Edessa sinks into madness, Death-Summoner. At this rate, the city might kill him again for it.”
Blood fled her cheeks. Sarai’s chest pulled tight. She tried to slow her pulse, but there was no muffling the weight of this realization. It pulsed in her ears, a slip of his tongue, a truth he’d loosed too early, even as he kept talking.
“I’ll say it again. I don’t want to be your enemy. The Order, the Guilds, and Edessa are arrayed against you. Disengage from the Magus Supreme. Denounce him as the root of all this, and you’ll be left unscathed. No one truly wants your head. They’re after his, and you’re conveniently right in the way, Death-Summoner.”
Her vision blurred, like she was looking at the world from the bottom of a stream. “Inquisitor Silvus,” she managed a deceptive calm, “why do you keep calling me Death-Summoner?”
Surprise burst in his eyes for a fraction of a second before an insidious light flared in them. And suddenly, she knewexactlywhere she had seen those eyes before.
“Well, that’s that then.” A gloriously smooth voice replaced the ordinary baritone she’d been conversing with. Silvus—but had that ever been Silvus?—Noceo smiled broadly.
She stumbled back half a step when he spoke again.
“Run and this market dies.” He indicated the Guild wagons. A Guildsman unloaded the last of the amphorae and dusted his hands. “Amazing how much damage these Guildspeople can do despite only being Fifth- and Sixth-Tiers. Lightning magic is a marvelous thing. I almost wish I had more of it.”
“What do you want?” The wobble in her voice betrayed her.
“A few hours, no more. Then, I’ll return you here. You have my word.”
Panic flooded her like the tide. If she didn’t acquiesce, he would make good on his threat. She either died in this marketplace or died wherever he planned on taking her. This was no choice at all.
“Very well,” she whispered.
His gray eyes lit up. “Excellent. Dalvia?” Noceo directed a hand at a patch of space behind him. It wavered, color twisting and re-forming as Dalvia undid the illusion keeping her invisible. The long fall of her hair appeared first, glowing luminous in the sun. The marketgoers were too deep in their haggling and purchasing to notice.
A Bridger and True Illusionist. Sarai cast a final desperate look back at the market for her vigiles or Méherre. But what could they even do against Noceo’s voice? More likely that he’d already ordered them out of the way or worse. She swallowed as the air behind her split to reveal a snowy road leading up to an ornate metal gate.
A wintry gust wound around the ground, limiting the audibility of Noceo’s words. Yet, they struck her like a knife. “Welcome to Clan Kader’s manor, Death-Summoner.” Fear curled fingers around her chest when he turned toward the portal. “Shall we?”
She coerced air into her lungs and stepped forward. A gleam lit Noceo’s calculating eyes when she hesitated at the edge of the Bridge. “It’s perfectly safe. I won’t ask Dalvia to close it on you. There are better ways to kill you than a bisection via portal.”
She grit her teeth and returned his smile. “Attempt anything you’d like. Death and I are old friends. The consequences will be more yours than mine.” Turning from the hint of fear that crawled over his face, she crossed the Bridge. The air warped around them.
And they were gone.
A ferocious mountain wind whipped up the ankles of Sarai’s trousers. Intricate iron and steel gates yawned open ahead, the bars parting like jaws. And there stood Clan Kader’s compound, richly lit in the approaching twilight.
Unlike the south’s penchant for marble, the north favored brick. Clan Kader, it seemed, favored both. A central brick-and-marble domusglowered down at them, crowned with elaborate domed cupolas. Fire had gutted a large swath of the house but the façade still stood.
Twelve pilasters framed the wide entryway, boasting carved approximations of the Elsar, the minor pantheon of the Naaduir, and monarchs past on their capitals and entablatures. More windows than she had fingers and toes shone in the moonlight reflecting off the snow, some long-blackened by soot. To the left rose a tower that looked eerily like Kadra’s abode. No, she realized with shock, a replica of it.
