Page 114 of Flames and Blood

“They sat the council to discuss the funeral,” he says to the wall behind me. “The Aldrake told them how it was done. The party went out on the second day. It came in through the lower gate after dark. She looked at the body herself and said it was her daughter.” He puts the jug down. “You didn’t hear that from me.”

That gives me something new to work with.

I take everything out of the pack, lay it on the bed, and go through it in order. Three passports in three names, a driver’s license, a folder of border cards. What’s good, what’s stale, which name I can still use where. Money, both places. The notebook. I write down what I know, because I think better when it’s written down.

A grave with a woman in it who isn’t her.

The Aldrake looked at the body and said it was her daughter. That’s the most important detail I have. Whoever did this managed to convince Kalli’s mother she was looking at her daughter.

The party went out on the second day and was gone three days. That’s two clear days to bring up a body, dress her, and leave her where the search would find her.

Her grandmother’s ring was on its hand.

I read it back.

It isn’t enough. There’s an innocent answer for every line of it. I’ve seen stronger cases than this fall apart in a week.

You can’t work it from here.

That’s the part that takes me all morning to admit, but I know it because I’ve spent three nights trying. I’ve walked the passages. I’ve found the gate and stood on the ledge. The rest is closed to me. Everybody in this clan is somebody’s cousin, and nobody in this place would answer a question from me that wasn’t about the weather.

I’m the help. The help is leaving.

There’s nothing I can do for her up here anyway. The answers are not in this mountain. They’re out there where I know how to work the system.

I put the pack back together.

You can’t just leave her.

I push that thought away because that’s exactly what I have to do. Kallista Ondrathe has a life up here. People who care for her. A future I’m not part of.

I go up at dusk, when the light’s off the outer stairs.

The mountain is busy. People in every passage carrying things—cloth, planks, crates going up on shoulders. Two men come the other way with a table between them, and one of them says “Mind, mind,” to the other and not to me.

Nobody stops me.

I go up four levels and along two passages and out into a hall full of people, a pack on my back and a coat over my arm. Not one person asks me where I’m going. Two of them stand aside for me. One’s a girl of about sixteen with an armful of white winter flowers, and she puts her back against the wall and looks at the floor until I’ve gone past.

Days in this building, and I can walk out through a room full of people, and not one of them seems to notice it. The vampire who brought the Heir back is already part of the scenery.

The Aldrake’s steward finds me at the inner gate, which means somebody did tell her, and fast.

“You’re leaving.”

“I am.”

“Wait here.”

She comes herself. She’s dressed for the evening, and she’s got about two minutes. She doesn’t waste any of it.

“You didn’t name a figure,” she says.

“No.”

“Then I have.” A leather envelope, folded twice, held out. “It’s more than a regular client would have paid you and less than I’d have gone to. Take it, please, and don’t thank me for it. I’ve had a long day of people being gracious.”

I take it.