Stunned, Sarai tottered against the desk.He’s actually doing it.
She turned to Kadra and paused to find him looking amused. “He’ll regret that soon.”
Anek whistled, Méherre and Harion behind them. “I’ll say. Word at the Academiae is that no one has any idea what to do with him seeing as he’s of no use during stormfall.”
Harion snorted. “People won’t abide a useless leader.”
Méherre gave him a speaking look.
“Very funny,” Harion said sardonically. “But this is all terrible for everyone’s bottom line. The Guilds are excellent for business, but your idiot brother isn’t. If I’m going to suck any toes, they had better be on powerful feet.”
Anek’s brows rose in unison with everyone else’s. “I’ll leave you to that fetish. Why don’t we target that Bridger of his? Clanlady Dalvia. Jumps at her own shadow.”
Cassandane’s gaze slitted. “Women like that sicken me. She’s a Bridger and True Illusionist. She could have melted into a crowd, altered her face, and found freedom. Instead, she plays the trembling victim to Noceo’s usurper.”
Sarai thought back to the way the men in Aelius’s Quarter had spoken of Dalvia and Kadra’s comments that she cared for Noceo. “Some cages aren’t so simple. And she’s done much good at the Am Semni Institute.”
Méherre looked faintly startled. “She’s flawed, of course,” the Bridger said slowly. “But freedom probably seems less tolerable for her in a country constantly at odds with itself. It could be that she wanted the power to reshape it so that everyone was truly free.”
Cassandane sank into a visitors’ chair, pouring herself a glass of water. “That doesn’t excuse her complicity.”
“Everyone in this room has blood on their hands.” Méherre shrugged. “To have power is to lose the moral high ground. There will always be someone to argue that you could have used it better.”
The lines in Kadra’s brow deepened. “The north would be right to say so.”
Sarai squeezed his hand at the tinge of guilt in those words. He absently kissed her knuckles, prompting Anek to gape and accidentally bring her foot on Cassandane’s instep at the uncharacteristically affectionate gesture.
A barrage of stifled curses later, Cassandane massaged her smarting foot. “Still, by the gods, it isn’t as though we didn’t try to curtail the Guilds’ abuses. We—”
A fleeting sense of familiarity struck Sarai, like she’d stumbled upon a fragment of a grander whole just within reach. She gripped it, stared, and stilled when its meaning coalesced. “I think I have it!” She cut off a startled Cassandane. “Power. Morality. Abuse.”
“Are we composing poems?” Harion muttered.
“There’s a pattern here after all! If we look at this from north to south, Sal Flumen to Edessa, then…” She widened her eyes meaningfully. Anek looked bemused.
A broad smile broke the firm line of Kadra’s mouth, the same dark knowledge dawning in his eyes. “Well done.”
Beaming, Sarai rapidly detailed their discovery that unconsciousness was a prerequisite for being madness-struck. “So, I think—”
“Let’s see if I have this right. It doesn’t matterhowthey fall unconscious, but once they’re there, they go mad.” Harion scowled. “Does this god hate drugs?”
“No.” Kadra pulled in a satisfied breath. “They hate people.”
Every head swiveled toward him. Midway through her water, Cassandane choked. “What?”
Anek blinked. “I never thought I’d have something in common with our tormentor.”
Méherre stared thoughtfully at Kadra. “Why do you say that?”
“The whitesleep murders centered around abuse.” Kadra propped a booted foot against the wall, reclining into the shadows. “The boil beetle plague asked for the south to behave morally toward the north.”
“And the first set of madness-struck victims were members of a powerful Guild, operating a secretibezden,” Sarai finished. “I’m willing to bet that we’d find more than a few unsavory deeds if we investigated our madness-struck victims. This god hates a very specific kind of asshole.”
Anek crossed their arms. “A strong sense of justice in a god?”
“And a mechanism of unconsciousness and hallucination. What could go wrong?” Harion sourly muttered.
“Will it be enough to narrow them down?” Méherre wondered.
