How does he know so much about drug production?
Kadra hadn’t even pressed Ythras for a name. He had simply whisked her off to Komis’s gates and demanded that Méherre take her to an entirely random,safe—he had stressed it thrice—inn and keep her there until his return from Edessa.
“You’re going home?” Sarai had asked in surprise while the vigiles and Méherre quickly occupied themselves with the sky and portions of dustysoil in an attempt to give them privacy in the open stretch of the Xaromand Desert outside Komis. “I’ll come with you.”
“It may not be safe there either.” His voice went guttural. “Sarai, I—” She had stilled when he’d cupped her cheek with breathtaking tenderness. In public.
She gripped his elbow. “What’s wrong?”
His cavernous eyes traced her with roiling turbulence as though he was trying to absorb her very essence. “You were right. Our culprit’s in Edessa,” he said grimly. “I would explain and take you with me, Sarai, but I’m out of time.” The muscles of his jaw bunched, standing out in stark relief. “If he finds you, even I may not be able to shield you. Give me two days to locate him, and I’ll come for you.”
She swallowed. “Willyoube safe?”
He’d threaded her hair through his fingers with a gravity that had chilled her. “I don’t know.”
“Err… Sarai?” Méherre drew her attention back to the present and to the fact that she had been tapping her spoon into her soup. Chunks of chicken puddled around the bowl.
Shit.Apologizing profusely to the innkeeper and cleaning up after herself, she left in a daze, vaguely conscious of the vigiles following her as per Kadra’s—again, thrice repeated—instructions. “I don’t understand men,” she said after a moment.
As she was referring to both their employer and the land’s Magus Supreme, the largely male vigiles exchanged awkward glances and shrugged. Méherre had no such compunction.
“He cut you out of the investigation and relegated you to Clanlady.” At her confused squint, Méherre explained, “They never got to fight in the monarchy’s wars but were stuck waiting for their Clanlords to return.”
The image burned for its accuracy. “He wouldn’t have done it without reason.”
Méherre’s disbelieving brow raise spoke for itself.But he didn’t share it.When Sarai opened her mouth, she raised both hands in surrender.“How about this? Yesterday, before your Magus Supreme dragged you from Komis, Ythras told me that they’ve an infected in custody who swears he saw the location of a nearby beetle swarm. Can’t speak—beetles got his tongue—but Komis could use the information. Can you Materialize it from his head?”
“Gods, of course. Anything to prevent more death.”
Méherre’s shrewd eyes narrowed, something almost pained touching them. “Don’t make me like you, Petitor.” At Sarai’s reciprocal narrow-eyed stare, she laughed. “I’ll Bridge you back.”
It hurt to see Komis’s streets so barren.
Sunset usually brought out a crowd in the north. They sat by fires, gossiping and drinking themselves blind. But the shops here were boarded up, windows shuttered in uninfected insulae.Not one child throwing snowballs.Anek would tell her that she cared too much and not to take it all so personally. But she had never known how else to respond upon seeing pain.
Ythras had been ecstatic upon finding that Kadra hadn’t come with her, then grown irate once she had made him submit to an Examination to prove that he wasn’t leading her into a trap. Despite passing it several questions later, he looked fit to erupt.
Sighing, Sarai quickly asked the vigiles to wait with Méherre by the city walls, assuring them that she’d be well. The worst the Praetor would do was bloviate.
He walked in front of her now, ignoring the wagons heading to the Am Semni Institute for Dalvia to aid the injured.
“Your volunteers are struggling,” she noted. “Can’t your vigiles help transport the infected?”
The men fencing Ythras blinked, eyebrows rising.
“Seeing to the ill is a woman’s job,” the Praetor explained slowly, like she was two. “You don’t see healers helping the vigiles on their patrols, do you?”
Not for lack of interest.She’d hoped that things would improve in the north after Cassandane became Head Tetrarch, but some biases ran too deep. Women and neutralii still couldn’t serve in the vigiles here, and the Tetrarchy couldn’t meddle in regional matters.
Her lips thinned. “Having a healer on patrol could be useful if your vigiles come across anyone injured.”
Ythras’s flat stare told her that he’d rather patrol the streets himself than allow that.
It was twilight by the time she reached Komis’s prison. Ythras was red-cheeked with cold when he knocked on the iron double doors.
“Hurry up, godsdammit!” he roared as vigiles fumbled with the locks on the other side. He burst in once it opened. “Is the farmer still sane? Good.” He whirled to her. “If he really saw a swarm settle in a field, then we need the location. The pupae molt at night and move into the city.”
“I’ll have it for you.” She noted Ythras’s exhausted features and wondered if he had meant for things to go this far when he’d accepted coin from… whoever the culprit was that Kadra knew. A person’s morality wasn’t easily categorized.
