“Rich enough to wear Cassian velvet.”
Lukan raised his eyebrows.
“Aside from the Kamori councillor in the Commons? I don’t know. An ordinary provincial rich enough for velvet should be well-known, though.”
A high-and-mighty in the Imperial Commons Council orchestrating the murder of a lowly dye shop worker? An impossible notion to begin with, but Cain made an effort to remember who the Kamori councillor was. The councillor for Arland was a rich landowner, and Cain knew him only by name. Not even a councillor’s shadow would grace the likes of this neighborhood.
“Did you know that Fienna died this morning?”
“Fienna? The friend you always talk about? What happened?” Lukan’s tone was serious, but his hands continued to polish his mugs and glasses.
“She drowned in the Apathos.”
“Huh.” Lukan’s hands left the mug he was polishing and rose to stroke his beard. “I do seem to recall there’s one rather rich personage from Kamori. Yes, you’re probably not aware of her since she’s a merchant who comes and goes, not a woman of the Capital in the strictest sense.”
As Cain emptied the other half of his glass, Lukan in a low voice told him about a merchant named Gladdis. A woman who sourced local goods from not only Kamori but the whole of the greater Lontaria region to sell in the Capital, which meant she had also been to Arland and Ledon. Cain remembered that Fienna’s boss used to travel to that region with a great merchant.
“She has a monopoly license on five types of goods from the three provinces of Lontaria, according to a Kamori boy who comes here from time to time,” Lukan said with a note of envy, and then pointed at the bottle he’d poured from. “I think that is one of her imports.”
Monopoly licenses didn’t grow on trees, being among the most coveted privileges in the world. Such a merchant was guaranteed to have connections in one of the ministries, or even the Senate itself.
The woman sitting next to him had her face turned away, as if considering the bottles of spirit behind the bar, but was clearly eavesdropping. Cain watched her from the corner of his eye as he took in the information about Gladdis. He had a feeling he should avoid meeting her gaze directly. He pressed down on an impulse to run out of the tavern.
“Quite a big name for a provincial,” Lukan continued, “rumored to have been a close friend of a senator. Her residence here is more like one house out of many, it’s a mansion by the docks. No doubt she keeps a similar place in each of the seven cities of the heartland, as well as in the three provinces of Lontaria.”
“Where is she now?”
“Who knows? She stays at that mansion when she’s in the Capital. But she only drops by from time to time these years, I’m sure it’s just her servants there now.” Lukan explained the way to Gladdis’s house at the docks.
“Thanks.” Cain lifted his glass to finish his drink but there wasn’t a drop left.
“So, you think that Kamori merchant killed Fienna?”
“I don’t know yet.” Cain placed money on the bar and got up. “When I find out, I’ll let you know.”
The outside air was chilly. Closing the sliding door of the tavern, Cain adjusted his spectacles and glanced back at the bar where he’d been sitting, and his eyes met those of the woman in black. He quickly looked away and made haste down the long and dim alley toward home.
5ARIENNE
The corridor was blindingly white. It was impossible to tell right from left or up from down. It seemed like the only things that existed were Arienne’s body, the old and heavy iron door she had just come through, and a translucent door some distance ahead of her. There was also a drumming in her ears—her own heartbeat. It was the only thing she could hear.
Arienne was afraid. Ahead, somewhere, was the Power generator. Her professors had taught her about the generators for six years across many different courses, but they had never touched on the most important things about them: How did they generate so much of the Power? Could the dead body of a sorcerer go on making the Power indefinitely? If they were generating the Power after death, could they really be said to be dead? Arienne suspected the professors themselves did not know the answers to these questions. They never explained why the people of the Empire accepted the use of Power generators without so much as a frown. People whowould flinch at the sight of a corpse, much less a magically preserved one, had no issue with Powered machines harvesting their crops and scrubbing their sewers, knowing full well what they were made of.
The Power generators were inscrutable things. Not wanting to become one even more desperately than not wanting to die, Arienne found herself here—in the small hours of the morning, following a strange, unknown voice, breaking the unbreakable rules.
Upon closer inspection, the door ahead turned out to be a semitransparent layer. At the tentative touch of her palm, the layer undulated like the surface of a calm lake and her hand sank through. The undulation widened until it was large enough for her entire body to pass through.
After the brilliance of the corridor, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimly lit generator chamber. The door that had been translucent a moment ago was, from the other side, so black it was almost invisible. Arienne closed her eyes. Instead of the thumping of her own heart, which had felt so loud just a moment ago, there was a low and uninterrupted hum. The sound of the Power generator. The poets described it as an endless song, but it reminded Arienne instead of the deep rumble of the volcano in her homeland. People there had called it the sound of the sleeping dragon.
What slept here was not a dragon but the body of a sorcerer. And not just any sleep but an endless sleep, eternal and yet devoid of rest, a most uncomfortable and fitful sleep… Arienne shivered in revulsion.
As her eyes adjusted, she took in the room, which was cast in a cool violet light. Violet was the color of sorcery, and the chamberwas full of the Power. Before her were two coffins of dull metal resting on stone platforms.
The coffin on the left was the source of the faint light that filled the chamber. It was wrapped in chains, and there were runes engraved along the chains that glowed. This was the one powering the Academy. In contrast, the coffin on the right was dark, illuminated only by the glowing runes on its neighbor’s chains, maybe a reserve generator or a broken one. Arienne was trying to read the inscriptions on the coffins to determine which of them was Eldred’s when the voice spoke.
“The one on the right. The one that is dark and inert. That is the Power generator Eldred.”
She turned to the coffin on the right and took a deep breath. Now for the spell to move the coffin—the spell that was stronger and trickier than any she had attempted before. As she began to conjure the necessary images in her mind, the voice spoke again.
