She nodded. Twelve here, three at the Northern Gate, four in the Drowning Square. And two others she hadn’t heard about.
Toran leaned close to one body, studying the man’s face. He frowned then swiveled to examine the next corpse. Seconds passed before he stepped back. He kept stepping back until he stood in the middle of the circle of trees.
He craned his head one way then the other. “Do you see that?” He beckoned her forward.
She followed his hand, stepping close enough to smell the musky scent of his sweat alongside hints of something sweet like powdered doughnuts.Goddess, she loved doughnuts. In the chaos of the other day, she never did get some with Suri.
“Here,” he said, positioning her so she stood in the same spot he’d been in. “See?”
Nes turned in a careful circle. All the corpses had their eyes open and their mouths shut. All stared up at the sky with empty expressions.
“This is where she stood,” she said. She glanced down at her feet and the trodden grass beneath them.
“Not just that,” Toran said. “Look at how each of the guards fell—straight backward. They were converging on her when they were struck. Not one of them turned away from the Witch to check their fellow guard. Each kept his attention on her up until the second he died.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means this is where she killed them. All of them,” he explained. “At the same time.”
A dozen armed guards killed at once. That spoke of a level of power she hadn’t expected. Far more than what had been needed to kill three already incapacitated guards.
But it was more than that. Because the guards weren’t the only casualties in the Holy Triad.
All twelve trees surrounding the Prime Fountain were dead. Black and charred, their branches brittle, their leaves shriveled or turned to ash.
She stepped out of the circle of bodies. The magic she’d followed here was gone. But there was something else missing. Where before this area of the city had always felt brimming with strength, had always made her feel alive whenever she passed by, it now felt like a void. She placed a hand against one of the burned tree trunks.
“The magic from the trees,” she said. “It’s gone.”
Toran sucked in a breath. “No one knew,” he said. “The magic on these trees was the most carefully guarded secret in the city. The King’s Guard has a special unit whose job it is to remove the magic lichen from these trees and dispose of it so addicts like Kile Pinyak don’t desecrate this sacred space. But you knew,” he whispered. “Didn’t you?”
Of course she knew. With the city infested with magic, it was nearly impossible to find one specific person among thousands. But it was not impossible to find an unmoving source. She’d long ago logged where magic resided within the city. And the trees in this area had sheltered more magic than even Phineas’s distillery—a distillery she knew well, given that she’d just stolen from it to fill her flask with diluted magic.
She swallowed. Phineas had been right. There was no one like her. Nobody else could have known about the magic in the Holy Triad.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Toran said. “Why would the Witch kill the trees?”
She pressed a hand more firmly to the bark. There was nothing left. Though she would never call magic a friend, part of her still felt saddened by the emptiness.
The answer was obvious. “Their magic.”
Toran ran a hand through his hair. “You think the Witch didn’t want to give the guards a chance to fight back?” He blew out a harsh breath. “That she thought they would try to fight magic with magic?”
She hummed. It was possible. But unlikely. If their attacker knew anything about Orlonea, then she wouldn’t fear a magical counterattack, especially from a bunch of guards who enforced the laws against magic consumption. She had to have another reason. Nes simply couldn’t fathom what.
She crouched down beside a corpse, studying the spot where his back met the tree trunk. “Maybe these will help tell us what is going on.”
With care, she pulled one of the bodies away from the tree. At the tree’s base, a symbol had been carved into the bark. Though notidentical to the one found among the debris in the Drowning Square, this symbol felt similar, as if crafted by the same hand.
“I’m willing to bet this symbol is on every one of the trees here,” she said. “Have you ever seen it before?”
Toran bent close, studying the lines. He shook his head. “No, and it’s different from the one the other day. Do you know what either mean?”
“No.” She straightened and grimaced, hating herself for her next thought. “But I know someone who might.”
13
Nes
