Guildmasters vied for who could shout the loudest. Assignation of blame had always been the dominant way to play the game that was politics, and these fools now jousted in earnest.
“You mean to say that his mountain girl’s been behind it all?” Ioratius roared.
“Trouble goes where this woman does. Two Guildmasters dead, two Tetrarchs dead, plague sweeps the land. People screaming about fucking eyes and laughing skies! All in under a year. And she’salwaysrunning around, puzzling it all out for us simpletons! What did she trade Lord Death forhislife?” Etilia jerked her chin at Kadra.
In the face of terror, the north had looked to power. Battling the same, the south looked to religion. Neither understood that both were arrayed against them. Neither understood that they danced on a puppet master’s strings. Neither understood that they were wasting his damned time.
He took in the words still being volleyed across the table and raised a hand.
The pressure in the ballroom dropped sharply. A hum throbbed in the air, the foreboding precursor to a lightning strike. A warning and a promise.
Irate roars morphed into panic. The land’s wealthiest businesspeople fell to the ground, crawling under the table to join Harion, who had gotten there first. Dalvia shrank back with a scream as sparks hissed around her. Cassandane gave him a wary look.
“Sit.” Kadra uncorked a fresh wine bottle. His fingers drummed the table to the tune of the pulsing air as the terrified group scrambled to find their chairs.
Verentia shrank back against the wall. “Irefuseto obey these coercive—” She paled as a spark scorched her sleeve and sat down immediately.
He considered them all in the silence that followed. “Guildmasters, Inquisitor, let’s do away with the playacting. You’ve been searching for a pretense to supplant my Petitor and I since Aelius’s much-deserved end. All tonight has proven is that you’re willing to trust an unknown book and an equally unknown woman if they say what you want to hear.”
Verentia sputtered incredulously. “Is that your defense? That she’s lying?”
Kadra curled his fingers. Filaments of lightning formed and broke around the table. “Sarai submitted to a public Hearing. The least your source can do is submit to an Examination.” He angled his head at Anek’s grim figure. “It’ll only take a moment.”
Dalvia’s gaze frantically latched onto the door when Verentia turned to her expectantly. His lips curved in sardonic amusement. So, the Inquisitor didn’t know that her source was lying.
Cassandane stood. The granite in her eyes said that she had reached the end of her long rope of patience. “If not now, then please do liaise with my Petitor to make the arrangements. And should the Guilds withhold their labor inanyway,” she yelled above the resulting furor, “the Tetrarchy will fill that gap. The north will cross our palms with coin, not yours. We may not have your distribution network. But we aren’t without power.” She nodded at the suddenly pale faces around the room. “Tibi gratias agofor attending tonight. The Tetrarchy has spoken.”
The room didn’t empty quietly. Dalvia was the first to flee, followed by Verentia, who graced Kadra with a parting look of loathing. The wine in Kadra’s bottle sunk lower as Guildmasters raged, attempted to bargain with Cassandane, and finally stormed off with Harion trailing behind them.
This hadn’t been the opening onslaught. Far from it. He knew the game, and he knew Noceo. This was too simple an attack for a man who would have been behind the two bounty hunters waiting for Kadra in that whitesleep denweeksbefore he had arrived.
No, Noceo’s first direct move would be ugly. Explosive. He might even have Coerced several lightning magi to attack Edessa.
Kadra grimly drained his wine bottle, then went downstairs in time to watch ornate Guild raedae speed away from Delran Tower. Numbness drowned the ever-present line of fire burning up his damaged spine. Old wounds.
Cassandane leaned against the opposite wall. “The Inquisitor, the Guilds, even the skittish Clanlady Dalvia, everyone at that table was hiding something. I can’t see a pattern. It’s wave upon wave of chaos.”
He had thought the same at first, but the strings were clearer now. He was close to seeing the web. He only needed to anticipate where the spider would appear. “Someone’s making them all dance.”
“You have a guess, don’t you?”
“I do. I’m waiting for a move.”
Cassandane stared. “And you won’t tell me?”
There was no telling if Noceo had gotten to her. “Not yet.”
“Is your guess why you’ve left Sarai in the north?”
He tipped his head to one side and studied her with unflinching intensity, searching for proof that she was fishing for information to relay to Noceo. When her eyes remained clear, he nodded.
She considered the wall beside him. “Do you think things would have gotten this bad if you were Head Tetrarch?”
“No.” She was better suited for the mantle. “I’d prefer not to receive even more complaints from irate parents.”
Cassandane released a sound that was both laugh and groan. “Gods, I nearly strangled you at the graduation.” Her tension eased. “At least you’re less bloodthirsty these days because of Sarai. A year ago, you’d have followed at least one Guildmaster home to splatter his guts across the interior.”
Kadra wasn’t ruling it out just yet. “They know little. Our puppet master has been very careful.”
