“That would have been a monumental task even before the plague. It’s killed two and a half thousand and left another four thousand as little more than screaming vegetables.” The ice in Cassandane’s voice could have frozen the Chaboras River.
Guildmaster Etilia of the Wine and Spirits Guild tapped the table. “We’re tired of hearinghowit happened. Give us a solution. Edessa plunges deeper into chaos by the hour. Yet, instead of healing our madness-struck, you disparage our Guilds, humor the north, and even sent a Petitor meant to be servingusup there.”
An ill mood had him by the throat. It wouldn’t do to kill them all, but the idea was growing merit. Kadra trailed a finger down the stem of his glass. Snap it and he could puncture the Guildmaster’s eyes. End this fruitless game of words and hunt Noceo down. Yet, they kept talking.
“The Guilds are just as much the lifeblood of Ur Dinyé as the Tetrarchy,” snapped Stones Guildmaster Albanus, father to Harion’s erstwhile lover and apparently still heartbroken over the vase Sarai had shattered months ago. “If you won’t hear us, then we have no choice but to remind you of this fact by ceasing operation. You can posture all you want, but you can’t replace us.” He shot a glance at Harion, who cleared his throat.
“Perhaps,” he avoided Cassandane’s irate glare, “we should consider other… options.”
Kadra’s lips curved.Still being strung along in the hopes of securing that marriage.
“Absolutely not,” Cassandane grit out. A wave of Guildmasters rose to their feet to roar over her.
Kadra examined Delran Tower’s renowned domed glass ceiling. A wave of his hand, and lightning would shatter it. Shards would embed themselves in skulls, frightened eyes, outstretched palms that could shield nothing. A sea of clear scarlet. Every Guildmaster gone. And then, the Guilds would have to start anew. His hands curled around his glass.
“This plague’ssourceis thenorth!” Ioratius punctuated every word with a blow against the beleaguered table. “Penalize them!”
“They’re victims too!” Cassandane tugged at her collar with enough frustration that the uppermost button fell free. “That’s why Petitor Sarai undertook to journey there foranswers!”
“Or to hide after she began it,” Ioratius spat.
The room fell quiet. Cassandane’s grip on her glass turned white-knuckled. Harion gnawed at the inside of his cheeks. Behind Cassandane, Anek folded their arms with a glower.
Truly, an entirely predictable night.
“At last, we cut to the heart of the matter. Tell me, Inquisitor.” Kadra set down his wine and faced the only person in the room who hadn’t yet spoken. “Why are you here?”
Verentia straightened. “Because this land is not safe with you at the helm, Magus Supreme. The Guilds do not feel safe. People are dying and going mad. And at the center of it all are you and a girl who says she Summoned Death.”
“You’ve Examined her. She submitted to your Hearing. No divine strings pull at us from the shadows.” He allowed his voice to harden, pleased at the shudder that ran across the table. He had never been as talented as Noceo, but vocal control had come naturally.
Her eyes narrowed to dark slits. “You may not know.”
“How would you?”
The burgeoning silence had a weight to it, a texture of seething menace as sharp as a blade. It dragged long and deep over his skin in familiar warning that Verentia was building to a climax.
Her next words were not to him. “Please come in, Clanlady.”
Air hissed from him when the door parted warily. She entered as she always had, as though resenting that no one in the room noticed her and fearing that they would. Age and time had tautened her features, but Dalvia Am Semni still couldn’t look him in the eye.
“Inquisitor.” She inclined her head gracefully as the room exploded into a flurry of questions.
Cassandane rapped a hand on the table until everyone quieted. “Inquisitor, I tolerated your presence at this meeting as a concession to the Guilds, but you havenoright to bring an outsider to an internal—”
“You won’t say that when you hear what she has to say.” Malignant glee heated Verentia’s voice. “Tell them.”
Dalvia walked as a gazelle might into a den of vipers, a tome captured in the crook of her elbow. He tracked her with cold eyes as she set it down and parted its worn pages.
“Clan Am Semni,” she began in a voice as timorous as he remembered, “has collected and passed down much history. Older than the Guilds and the Tetrarchy.” She avoided glancing at either group. “As the head of the Institute, when plague struck Komis, I began looking for answers.” A skeleton hand emerged once from a void by her to gleefully prod at her lying tongue. “If a low-tier magus Summons a god, then there are only two explanations. That the god favored them, or that the magus is more powerful than they seem. In Petitor Sarai’s case—” She froze when Kadra began to drum his fingers against the table.
He found her eyes and held them in silent warning.Besmirch her, and I won’t spare you.
Something desolate burned in her gaze before she tore it away. “Petitor Sarai is no powerful magus. Meaning Death must favor her to have returned your Magus Supreme.”
“That theory’s borne out by the fact that Death’s allowed her to survive in unnatural circumstancestwicenow,” Verentia added with spiteful satisfaction. “And here’s the best part, Head Tetrarch Cassandane, the book says that where a god favors a mortal, they may simply decidenot to leave.” She beamed. “There is youranswer. Where it always was. Wherethe Ordertold you it would be.”
A sliver of a second. Then, chaos claimed the room.
