Cato’s head whipped up from the sacks, jaw agape. “Is that how the plague’s been spreading?An ingredientgone rabid?”
“Partly.” An insensate user wouldn’t notice a larva burrowing in. “But beetles and whitesleep alone can’t explain the raving. This isn’t our murder weapon.”
“Something that causes immense blood loss and shared hallucinations? Sounds like a nightmare.” Cato shuddered, examining a sack. “Can the healers still use any portion of this?”
“No.” Diluted whitesleep was a powerful analgesic, so Kadra had made a practice of donating the spoils from den raids to healers across the country. But the larvae made that a risk. “Venom’s already leaked in.”
The people upstairs were in for hell once they sobered and found patches of their memory gone.
“I’ve never understood how you can tell.” Cato sniffed the powder and coughed. “How’d you learn about whitesleep’s ingredients?”
Eleven years ago. “An unwilling source.”
“A useful one. Perhaps our scholars can create a safer version. Eleven years of that drug ruining people.” He shook his head. “Didn’t it hit the streets just after Othus found you?”
Kadra paused while lifting a sack. Pain burst in his spine. “Yes.”
The older man’s face creased in thought, still trying to put together the sparse pieces he’d been given back then, when his husband had suddenly brought home a northern boy and announced that he was adopting him. Othus had never been able to explain it beyond repeating the same answer, looking equally baffled at himself as he’d said it.“I had a feeling. Seeing the boy on the streets, I knew that there was greatness in him and that I could bring it out.”
Even at death, he had never guessed at the lie that had been perpetuated on him.
Kadra’s jaw tightened as he hefted another sack. The past was too damned close.
“Drenevan, as helpful as this find is, it doesn’t take us far with the public when they’ve already been told to blame the Grains Guild,” Cato wrung his hands. “We’re no closer to identifying a culprit, let alone how they’re doing this. Meanwhile, no one can enter or leave Edessa, and the Order’s fomenting suspicion that you’re Ruin’s scion.”
A more interesting appellation than the ones he generally got. “Sarai’ll send for me when she finds something. In the meantime, patience remains to our advantage.”
“I hope you’re right. All those poor people screaming of laughing skies and eyes.” Cato took the sacks from him with a shiver. “I’ll get these on a wagon for disposal.”
“There’s a body upstairs too.”
“And another in that lightning cage of yours. Gaius is handling them. He’d probably prefer if you dissipated the cage.”
Kadra spared a thoughtful glance at the ceiling, now drumming with footsteps. “I seem to have acquired a mother hen.”
“Try an entire coop. Sarai was firm in her instructions to watch over you. Your vigiles are taking no chances when half the city’s turning against you.” At his exasperated sigh, Cato clicked his tongue. “No one’s forgetting the Unraveling in a hurry. You may be Magus Supreme, but you can’t blame them for fearing that you’ll die, when you already did.”
Ten hells. “It was forhersake.”
“Remind me how she feels about that again?” Cato kicked the cellar door open with a pointed look. It slammed shut.
Kadra blew out a breath. “I was fearsome once.”
Heading upstairs, he frowned at the scorch mark where the hunter had stood in his lightning cage. A glance around the atrium revealed no sign of him in the queue of bleary-eyed whitesleep users being checked over by healers for removal of any larvae in them.
“Everything’s taken care of.” Gaius swept in cheerfully. “An Inquisitor heard of the den and dropped by to pray for their souls, but he’s more irritation than hindrance.”
“What of the hunter who was here?”
“The dead one? Burning outside.”
The unease that had sought purchase in him for hours hooked deep. “He was dead?” Kadra repeated evenly.
“Certo.Didn’t you dissipate the cage for that reason?”
“Describe him.”
“A knife through his chest. Thought you were making an example, leaving him on his knees like that, half burnt.” Worry flared in Gaius’s eyes at Kadra’s sudden stillness. “Was that not the case?”
