“Having the remnants of such a draught on you while standing over a dead mage’s body—a body with its magic ripped out—is damning.”
“You can’t rip someone’s veins out just by drinking a draught!” He blinked. “Can you?”
“No. You still need a spell or chain. You don’t have the ability, so you’d need a weapon to channel it.” Noble tapped a finger. “Which is why you haven’t been executed yet. The murder weapon—they don’t have it.”
“What weapon tears veins out?” Kennen whispered.
Noble turned to me. “Would you like to wait around the corner?”
The body. He wanted to ask about the body. I gripped my skirt. “I’ll stay. I daresay I’ve seen more blood in the kitchens than Kennen has in his life.”
Noble’s gaze was narrow and piercing. Probing. “Fine.” He turned to my brother. “What did the wound look like?”
“Slices. Narrow ones. Sharp ones.” He shuddered. “A butcher carving a fine cut. And her skin around the edges looked gray. Hollow. Like she was...emptied.”
“The screech of a cat, you said. What kind?”
“Like one being gutted.”
I put a gloved hand over my mouth. Noble asked about the blood splatters—were there any patterns? Any weird smells or other sounds? Residual magic? Spells still active?
“There was something—like ink and wax. Like reading the post. And a weird dullness. But my head, the draught. She was face up.” Kennen shuddered. “Covered in blood. I couldn’t make out her features. She seemed older, though. I don’t know why—dress? Hair? I don’t know.”
“There was nothing identifiable about her?”
“No.” He took a couple of quick breaths in succession. “Her face was…given the same treatment.”
Kitchens or not, I didn’t want to imagine the scene. The accounts of the previous victims had assuredly been sanitized in the papers, and even then they had sounded horrific.
“There was nothing else? Anything near the body?”
“I don’t know. Everything happened so fast. I don’t know,” he whispered. “I had just wanted to help my family. I had just wanted to bebetter.”
I grasped his hands through the bars, my throat tight. The suppression wards pushed down on me as my magic automatically surged—trying to dosomething. “We’ll fix this. I promise.”
“You and Ferris?”
“It is half past.” Noble held up his pocket watch toward me. “We need to go.”
“Just hold steady. Don’t antagonize the guards.” I clutched his hands.
“We must leave,” Noble’s smooth, deep voice said. “Donottry to cast a spell.”
“Mari?” I didn’t know what Kennen was asking. His hands held mine in a death grip.
I couldn’t bring myself to let go.
“Don’t leave me here.” A thump sounded on the outer door.
A hand touched my back. I looked down at my brother’s hands joined with mine. The hand against my back urged me to move. The weight of a thousand ships descended as I let go.
“Ipromise.” My eyes stayed locked with Kennen’s even as I let Noble hurry me through the door. “I promise!” The look on my brother’s face as we rounded the corner etched itself in my mind. Forlorn. Hopeful. Miserable. Innocent.
I followed Noble blindly. He gave me an unreadable glance. I returned it woodenly, shock and despair coating my emotions. He knocked on the locked door and the lock disengaged.
Edgar’s grumpy visage came into view. “’Bout time.”
We followed him back through the corridors.
