It probably didn’t help that things were so awful in this area. These were his people. There had been such a loss of life, so much destruction. It must have been hard on him. “I’m glad you’re here helping. This is so terrible.”
He ran a hand over his face and let out a tired sigh. “We arrive at places too late. I keep thinking that if we’d been here earlier, we could have stopped them.”
By “we” did he mean me and him? Or was he talking about his phratry brothers? “You can’t think that way. We’ll be there the next time.”
“And if we’re not?”
“We can only do our best and rely on the goddess for the rest.”
The barmaid returned with our drinks, putting them down in front of us. I thanked her and she hurried off to serve another customer. Xander took some coins out of his pouch and put them on the table. Then he took a long drink from his cup.
One of the coins rolled and fell off the edge. I leaned down to pick it up and noticed the red dirt that hadn’t been cleared away from the ground yet.
“Do you have any theories about the dirt?” I asked.
“None. Nobody seems to know anything about it.” His frustration was evident.
“Well, Lysimache said she spent a lot of time culling books and texts so that no one would figure out what she was doing.”
“Maybe after you’ve finished questioning her, I should take a stab at it,” he said before knocking back more of his drink. I pushed my beer over to him in case he wanted more. I didn’t think it would be a good idea for him to interrogate Lysimache because he might actually stab her.
“Io is coming up with a potion that will make her talk. She hopes to be done by tomorrow morning.”
He made a grunting sound and took my cup to drink. Lysimache had to know about the dirt since she had plotted with Artemisia. Although she had repeatedly told me at the temple that she didn’t know who Artemisia had pledged her allegiance to and didn’t care, she might have been lying. I supposed we would find out soon.
I would uncover what I could, but I also needed to make sure that I gave as much information to Xander as possible. “There are at least two different groups trying to kill me.”
He set my cup down and leaned toward me. “What do you mean?”
“The attack at the temple, the one with Io ...” I sucked in a deep breath, hoping that he would remember he had apologized for blaming me that Io had gotten hurt. “Those people did not have red dirt. And they were specifically looking for me. The Locrian maiden. They wanted me dead and they nearly succeeded. And the red-dirt attackers are also looking for me.”
His honey-colored eyes flickered over to my left shoulder, where I had been stabbed. Then his gaze returned to mine, watching me intently, but he didn’t say anything. And that was almost worse—the quiet before the storm.
When he finally spoke it startled me a little. “The red-dirt attackers are after the city as a whole.”
While I had told him about the pirates before, I hadn’t given him the entire truth. “The pirates on theNikos—that wasn’t random or an accident. They had come looking for Quynh and me.”
“How do you know?”
“The men that came down into the bottom hold—the ones you killed? They told me. They didn’t say who they were or where they’d come from, but they knew that we were Locrian and wanted to take us with them. They tried to present themselves as our liberators, but I could tell something wasn’t right.”
“Erisa,” he said. “We know that she’s behind one of those groups, if not both.”
“As you said earlier, we have to assume that she’s not working with the red-dirt enemies because they do seem intent on killing as many Ilionians as possible.” We had already discussed the possibility that she might be involved with that group, but it didn’t make sense. She would be left with nothing.
He nodded. “I hope Lysimache has answers as to how the pirates came looking for you specifically, because I can’t imagine how they could have known or why they would try to take you.”
That was true. How could an enemy we weren’t even aware of know who Quynh and I were? “Maybe they hoped to capture us so that Troas would be punished by the goddess for not doing the tribute race.”
“Perhaps.” Xander was like me in that he also didn’t like not having answers. “But how could Erisa have known who you were? That attack at the temple—there was no reason for her to kill some unknown woman from Locris.”
“That means she must have known exactly who I was. She was trying to prevent us getting married.”
“And what, because you believe that I knew who you were from the beginning, I must have told her?”
“No! Because you never would have shared that with her.” I knew that for an absolute fact.
“Do you think someone from Locris betrayed you?” He had that tone that indicated he was going to hunt someone down if I answered yes.
