“What sort of goods are not coming in?”
“The special sort.”
He was going after their aphrodisiacs and drugs. One of the Garden’s lures was providing a touch of the rare and forbidden. They stayed away from harder drugs, but they did dabble in lighter stuff that Rellas restricted or heavily taxed. Their shipments were smuggled in.
“I assume that you’ve tried changing the schedules and routes, and it made no difference?”
Galiene nodded. “It seems Elaut wasn’t our only traitor.”
“Someone is talking to Hreban, and you want to know who.”
“Yes,” Galiene said.
“Have you narrowed it down?” I asked.
“Wesla, Orrem, and Arale,” Galiene said. “They are the only three who knew of the new shipping changes. We’ve questioned all of them and all of them deny it. We cannot detain all three of them indefinitely. The Garden would grind to a halt.”
“Nor can we afford to lose the next shipment,” Hade said.
Wesla was their bookkeeper, Orrem was the head of security, and Arale was the one who took over the Garden after Hreban took Galiene. Right.
“Before we go any further, let’s talk compensation,” I said. “I need to borrow your mage. I have a magical item, and I need to know what it does.”
Galiene glanced at the mage. He nodded.
“Done,” she said. “What else?”
I took the basket from Everard and set it on her desk.
Galiene lifted the cloth and stared at the twenty bars in four different colors all stamped with a small shell design. Gort had carved the stamp for us.
“What am I looking at?”
“Soap samples. I’d like you to use them in the Garden to see how they perform and how your clients like them.”
“Very well,” Galiene said.
“It’s Arale.”
Galiene and Hade shared a look.
“How do you know?” Galiene asked.
“Orrem was born to a horrible father, who took his frustrations out on Orrem’s mother, his sisters, and him until Orrem grew large enough to put a stop to it. He abhors violence against women and sees himself as a protector. He would never ally himself with someone who sought to kidnap a child from her mother.”
He also led the raid on Hreban’s compound and was blinded in one eye. There were a couple of scenes from his point of view, and I had gotten a good glimpse inside his head. His thought process toward Ulmar was very straightforward: hate and then more hate.
“That leaves us with Wesla and Arale. Wesla is devoted to both of you, but in particular to Galiene. She likely spent the last few days looking ashamed, and that’s because she did do something, but it wasn’t connected to Hreban.”
“What do you mean?” Galiene asked.
“Bring her here, and I will show you.”
The mage departed and returned a couple of minutes later with a blond woman. She was slender, around twenty years old, and the guilt on her face was so obvious, it wasn’t even funny.
“Wesla!” I loaded steel into my voice, doing my best impersonation of Shana. “Do you know who I am?”
She shook her head.
