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Lin cleared her throat. “Ji-An brought me,” she said. This was mostly true. Ji-An had brought her to the Black Mansion, if not to this particular room. “But she had an errand to do.”
“Probably had to kill someone,” said Ciprian, and shrugged when the Ragpicker King gave him a dark look. “What? She’s very good at it.”
Lin thought of Ji-An’s cool eyes and graceful movements and supposed she was not surprised. Someone like Ji-An would clearly do more than simply fetch wayward physicians for the Ragpicker King.
“So you’re the physician,” the Ragpicker King said.
“Not feeling well, Andreyen?” Ciprian inquired.
“A touch of gout,” said his companion, looking not at Ciprian but at Lin, the same amusement playing around his mouth. So it seemed clear he had a name—Andreyen—but Lin could not imagine thinking of him that way. Even up close, he seemed more like a child’s tale than a living man. A figure one might follow down a dark road, only to discover he had vanished where the street turned. A golem made of clay and shadows, with bright-burning eyes.
“Ciprian, I’ll notify you when your shipment arrives. And by the way, I can guess who those several ships belong to.”
Ciprian grinned ferociously. “I’m sure you can.” As he left the room, he passed Lin, his shoulder nearly bumping hers. He paused for a moment. He had the sort of gaze that seemed to weigh heavily, Lin thought, like a too-familiar hand on the shoulder. “You’re awfully pretty to be a doctor,” he said. “Or to be Ashkar, for that matter. Quite a waste, all those girls locked up in the Sault—”
“Ciprian.” There was a sharp warning in the Ragpicker King’s voice, and the amusement had left his face. “Go.”
“Only a jest.” Ciprian shrugged, dismissing Lin as easily as he’d noticed her. She waited until his footsteps had faded from earshot before turning to the Ragpicker King.
“Do you really have gout?”
“No.” He threw himself into a worn armchair. She wondered how old he was. Thirty, she’d guess, though he had the sort of face that seemed ageless. “And I didn’t call you here because I need a physician, Lin Caster, though I am glad to see you’ve come. I wasn’t sure Ji-An could convince you.”
“Because you’re a criminal?” Lin said. Ji-An had said he didn’t mind the word, so why not be honest?
“No, because I’ve been told she has an off-putting manner—though I’ve not noticed it myself.”
“She told me you saved her life,” Lin said. “Perhaps she’s nicer to you.”
“She isn’t, and I wouldn’t like it if she was,” he said. “So you’re the physician who healed Kel Saren?”
“How did you know that?”
He spread his hands wide. They were very long and pale, like the legs of a white spider. “Knowing things that happen in Castellane is a significant part of my occupation. Ji-An had told me she did not think Kel would live, that his injuries were too great for him to survive. What I want to know is—did you usethatto heal him?”
“Use what?” Lin said, though a part of her guessed what he would say.
“That brooch.” He pointed with a languid hand at her shoulder. “Or, to be more specific, the stone inside it.”
Her hand flew to her shoulder. “It’s only a bit of quartz.”
“No.” He pushed his chair back until the front two legs came off the ground. “That is what the jeweler in the market told you. But it is not the case.”
“How do you know—”
“He works for me,” said Andreyen. “He identified the stone as soon as you brought it to him, and sent a messenger to the Black Mansion. Ji-An went to fetch you.”
Lin could feel her cheeks begin to heat. There was nothing she hated more than the feeling she had been manipulated.
“I have eyes in the Palace,” he went on. “I knew you had healed Kel; that youalsohad a Source-Stone, I did not know. I assumed you knew what it was. That you used it in your medicine. Though—” He let the chair fall back down with a thump. “You are also Ashkar. This sort of magic is forbidden to you. It is notgematry;it is the very opposite of that. Source-Stones were invented by King Suleman, the enemy of the Goddess.”
“You know a great deal about our beliefs,” said Lin tightly.
“I find them interesting,” he said. “It is because of your Goddess, the lady Adassa, that there is no more magic in the world—save the low magic your people practice. I have always felt that if we were to find our way back to High Magic, it would be throughgematry.There is some key there that will unlock the door. But what you have there—the Arkhe, the stone—that is a remnant of HighMagic. It holds a piece of the world before the Sundering.” He narrowed his jade-green eyes. “So how did an Ashkari girl get hold of such an object, as priceless as it is forbidden?”
Lin folded her arms across her chest. She was beginning to feel the same way she did when the Maharam questioned her—a certain rebellious instinct to snap, to push back rather than answer. But this was the Ragpicker King, she reminded herself. As casual as his current demeanor was, that did not mean he was not dangerous.
She had seen a crocodile attack a seal in the harbor once; the water had been still and smooth as glass until the moment it broke suddenly into a boiling froth of thrashing and blood. She did not think it would be wise to lie to the Ragpicker King. One did not become the Ragpicker King without an excellent instinct for when others were prevaricating.
