It had taken six days to locate the den attended by Lucanus and Junia of Edessa’s now-notorious plague case. During that time, eight hundred Edessans had fallen. Three hundred dead. Five hundred in a state that the Order called madness-struck, screaming of reckonings, eyes, and laughing skies to the despair of healers. All could trace a tenuous exposure to whitesleep.
The drug’s ubiquitous use was no surprise to him. It had been made for pain, and Ur Dinyé had no shortage of that commodity. The Tetrarchy’s decision to ban it shortly after it entered the streets eleven years ago, had furthered curiosity, then popularity, leading to a network of dealers and middlemen funneling it across the land. Inevitable.
Drug use wasn’t a symptom of society’s ills but an effect, and he, of all people, had no right to condemn it. Yet,thisdrug and this beetle in his city at a dangerous juncture was a fourfold coincidence too many.
Kadra didn’t believe in coincidences any more than he did in omens.
Night hid the small army of vigiles stationed around the domus. A fresh smattering of snow masked Gaius’s nervous tread.
“It’s supposedly owned by a minor noble, but the Hall of Records lists him as long dead.” He passed Kadra the purchase records for the domus. “If the beetle plague’s spread began here, then the culprit’s covered his tracks well.”
“Nothing stays hidden for long in Edessa.” Kadra considered the den’s double-door entrance. “Our priority is the mechanism of spread.”
If those inside the den were merely addicts, then the drug’s correlation to the beetle plague was incidental. However, if what he found within that den resembled the countless, crimson-drenched scenes sweeping Edessa, then death and madness had spread via whitesleep. A trail that invariably led to Komis.
Tension tightened his jaw. It couldn’t bethem. The past was a closed book to him in most respects, but he’d kept an eye on Komis and its going-ons. Successive Praetors had insisted that there had been no sign of them in eleven years. Yet, unease curled beside the agony radiating down his spine. The past was close tonight.
Gaius made an annotation to the deed on the presence of the corpse. “Is there any other rationale I should record for our breaking and entering, Magus Supreme?”
Kadra indicated the road-salt glinting off snow. At least a sack had been poured from the pillars framing the doors to the road.
Gaius snorted. “You’d think they would realize that it gives them away.”
“Unlikely.” Prolonged use of whitesleep dulled more than vision. Loss of smell set in after a year. Limited motor function crept up after a few more. A den-owner could flood the damned roads with salt, and their unseeingpatrons would still be none the wiser as to how their feet stayed on the ground when they staggered out.
“To think that the drug outlived Clan Kader.” Gaius rolled up the deed. “They must be screaming in their graves at the lost profit.”
Kadra reasoned that whichever of the Ten Hells Clevsin was in undoubtedly had him on a worse rack of torment than that.
His vigiles circled the domus, reporting no guards and a boarded-up back door. There’d be a sentry behind the main doors then.And a dealers’ exit.Examining the snowcapped foliage behind the domus, he spotted the bare stretches that spoke to an underground passage. They hadn’t replanted the shrubs after filling in the ground above the tunnel.
“Head to the tunnel’s exit,” he ordered his vigiles. “I’ll go inside.”
“Should I accompany you?” Gaius looked sheepish at Kadra’s raised brows. “This is a dangerous time. The plague claims more every day, and the Order say that you and Sarai brought Ruin here. Frightened mobs do frightening things, and you’d face blame if you defended yourself.” Unspoken yet evident in his torn glances were the events at the Unraveling.You’ve already died once, his eyes said.
“I died on purpose, Gaius. A repeat performance isn’t in the cards.”
The other man looked uncertain but cleared his throat. “Certo. We’ll have the dealers indicted right away.”
Kadra sighed wryly as he left.Ten hells, how I’ve fallen.A year ago, none would have dared fear for his safety. The concern didn’t rankle—he was only a man. Yet, his enemies needed the reminder that he wore the appellation loosely. Or Sarai would always be in danger.
He examined the den for a Warder’s runes that would trigger traps upon an outsider attempting to gain entry. Finding none, he raised a hand, and a bolt of lightning spread branches over the front doors.
Smoke spiraled high, to the blissful ignorance of the users within but not to their ever-watchful suppliers. In minutes, surprised yells sounded down the road, announcing a scuffle between his vigiles and the drug dealers exiting the tunnel. His people would endeavor to secure them all,but some would vanish in the chaos and reemerge in a wine-soaked xann, hawking product to the mix within. Rebirth and reinvention were a dealer’s true professions.
He was proof.
Inches from the conflagration he’d made of the doors, he could almost hear Sarai’s voice. Brow furrowing, she would have searched his eyes, always confused at his stillness before entering a den.
“Does it trouble you?” she had asked one night. “Seeing people so hollowed out?”
His nod had been another brick of omission in his tower of illusion. Because it was always here, outside a den that he sensed the vibrations in his foundations, rippling like seconds on a water clock, warning him that the façade of his life was long overdue to crumble.
He pulled his gaze from the patch of cold where she should have been standing and raised a hand. Fire relinquished the door, hissing across salted snow until only smoke remained. He kicked down the charred wood and entered.
A blur of motion greeted him. He sidestepped as the sentry lurched onward, driven by the force of his momentum.
Slipping behind him, Kadra wrenched the blade from the man’s hand and shoved it into the easy give of his gut, clamping a hand over his mouth as he slit it back and forth. The man’s bloodshot eyes strained, muffled screams beating uselessly against Kadra’s palm, intestines sucking at the dagger when Kadra pulled it out and stuck it into his neck. His eyes fell shut on a croak for mercy.
