Florus grimaced. “I was hoping to bring up bloodshed after you’d had breakfast.”
“Edessa has no such qualms. Please speak freely.”
The cheerful warmth on his face guttered and died. “The north has always held extremes, Petitor Sarai. Our lowlands border the vicious Xaromand Desert and taste the whip of both sand and snow, and this mountainous upper north sees a thaw that barely lasts two months. We Praetors of the upper north were foolishly glad that our locales were too cold for the beetle plague to reach us. But Death found a way to balance his scales.”
Sarai closed her eyes, a frisson of fear coiling in her gut. “You believe that these murders weren’t the work of people? The innkeeper said otherwise.”
His spoon cut a wide swathe through his oats as he stirred them listlessly. “What I know, is that, five months ago, dozens in my town andneighboring upper northern locales began falling to whitesleep. At first sight, the deaths seemed to be overdoses. Powder crusted around the eyelids, blue lips. Every healer agreed. The other Praetors and I feared it was a new formulation of the drug—our streets being no stranger to Komis’s creations. Until the perpetrators starting confessing.” Florus’s aged brow pleated in a wince. “I have seen much in both halves of my life, as Cleric and Praetor. But there is little that can prepare you for throngs of placid,normalfolk offering you the same misty-eyed explanation for why they killed another.”
Her spine went taut, alarm thrumming along its length. “Being?”
“That theycould,” he said simply. “That they finally realized that theycould.”
Gooseflesh pebbled her skin at the memory of the womenfolk’s blank features the previous night. “I saw the same in Arsamea. The culprits seemed to be in a dreamlike state. Could it not have been the drug?”
He shook his head. “None of the killers—gods help me, what a word for such ordinary people—partook of it. They merely used it to murder. Our regional Petitors verified that for each corpse.”
Death, boil beetles, and whitesleep across the country.She thought back to Kadra’s most recent finding. Méherre had made brief visits to Edessa over the course of the last sixteen days to update her on his investigations and returned with news that the beetles had entered the city via whitesleep tainted with larvae.
“Were there no beetles involved in this at all?” she ventured hesitantly.
“Not one larva or lesion on any of the culprits or their victims.” Florus’s genial features whitened with strain. “I’ll freely admit that I’m at a loss, Petitor Sarai. I don’t think there’s any stopping this. I’ve searched for links between the perpetrators to no avail. They just happened to all live in the upper north and held exceedingly personal motives for the murders.”
She set down her spoon appetite gone. “How so?”
“I did some asking around.” Méherre broke in, taking the seat at the third side of the table. “Every single one of the killings was a case ofretaliation against someone who’d been tormenting the killer for a while. Professional jealousy, harassment, the sort of slow, indirect wounding that the law doesn’t entirely punish or is too slow to. Can’t blame people for seeing to their own security. I don’t see what the crime is.”
Sarai’s response collapsed into a sharp inhale. “Innocentsdied because of those women in Arsamea.”
Méherre’s features turned serious. “And they’ll be punished for scapegoating the village’s poor. But Sal Flumen’s folk don’t seem to have been as spiteful.”
“Therein lies my difficulty.” Florus set down his empty bowl, folding his fingers into a tremulous basket, then unweaving them to grip the lip of the table. “The town has but one prison, and it now holds over a hundred. Most have waited months to know if they’ll be sent to the mines or suffer a hanging. Other locales have chosen between those mandated punishments, but I like to think that the Corpus Juris Totus isn’t entirely devoid of pity.”
So, this is an issue of determining judgment.She frowned. Why didn’t he seem as interested in finding the cause? “Aren’t you worried that these killings will continue? You said it’s been five months since—” She quieted as the rest of his explanation finally registered. “Five months?”
The Praetor’s brow smoothed, worry descending into something that looked awfully like pity. As though he’d been waiting for the reaction and found it unfortunate that she had proven him right. “Since the Month of Radiance,” he confirmed.
She stared. “Is there a reason you didn’t write to the Tetrarchy?”
He held her eyes steadily. “What would they have done, Petitor Sarai, while your capital was in chaos? Your newest Tetrarch ran off that month, impeached by Aelius’s people. What time and resources would the Tetrarchy have spared for us? Even now, you’re here because of Edessa’s tumult, not our own.”
Stung, she curled her hands around her cooling bowl of porridge in a bid for calm. “I also came because a village Ihaterequested my aid. I would have done the same if any Praetor had asked!”
“But would the south have forgiven you for it?” Florus said with a gentleness that held no rebuke. Yet, it dug claws into her anyway. “You would have regretted coming after a few months when their protests and insults worsened. We all understand Edessa well. We’ve served its needs too long not to.” He split his gaze between her and a point past the inn’s open doors.
She glanced over her shoulder and winced at the Guild wagon trundling into Sal Flumen’s town square. The coat of arms of the Wines and Spirits Guild—a shield with an ornate chalice as its charge—draped the wagon’s sides, two Guildsmen casting bored glances at the amassing public from the coachman’s seat.
The few puzzle pieces she held melted into a single, dark realization. “It doesn’t matter to you if these whitesleep murders continue across the north or south. You want to exonerate the culprits.”
Méherre’s dark gaze arrowed between them, turning thoughtful as she propped a boot on the table.
Florus’s shock of white curls bobbed as he chuckled. “I’d heard you were blunt, Petitor Sarai. Some deaths,” he mused, “are judgment from the gods. You saw the eyes of those responsible, I’ll warrant.” He pulled a satisfied breath at her flinch. “Far be it from me to punish the human hands carrying out their work.”
Chilled, she shrank back against her seat at the memory of the Arsamean woman’s irises engorging to swamp her sclera, just like Junia’s had in Edessa. “The Elsar wouldn’t interfere with a land so closely. I’m the last person who’ll condemn the use of violence, but the law allowed for remedies for these people. They didn’t have to resort tohomicidium!”
“But the law’s remedies forgive too easily. Wasn’t this more expedient? The wrongdoer blotted from life without their victims having to watch them meander and fail through supposed rehabilitation.” For the horror of his words, Florus’s smile held only eager benevolence.
Fear settled beneath her skin like a too-deep splinter.Has everyone in the north gone mad?“Don’t people deserve the chance to change?”
