She gestured the coins clutched in his fist. “What if those don’t belong to the guards she’s killed?”
“Then whose would they be?”
“I’m not sure. The only way we’re going to find out is if you get your hands on that registry.”
Toran opened his fist and stared down at the coins before snapping his fingers shut over them again. “I’ll match the numbers on the coins to names in the registry. Once we know whose they are, we can determine how the Witch came to possess them.”
“How Damari came to possess them,” she corrected. “She’s not an animal. She has a name. Now that we know it, we should use it.”
He frowned down at her. “You want to humanize the Witch; why?”
She puffed out her chest. “She’s human, isn’t she?”
“Some would argue no, she’s not. That the magic inside her negates any humanity.”
She reached down to her hip, fingers trailing the outline of the flask beneath her shirt. “I’ve seen what magic does to people,” she said. “I’ve seen it pervert them, and I’ve seen it tear them apart. But even when tearing a person apart, that magic doesn’t change what they are. They’re human, with or without it. Is it so hard to believe the same could be said of Damari? That the magic might be separate from the girl?”
Toran’s gaze was like a brawlhouse pit, deep and full of energy. She couldn’t help but fall in.
“You want to think of her as a girl?” he asked. “Even though she murdered Captain Mikaud?”
She hadn’t thought he knew about that. Another surprise from Toran. She swallowed, and he tracked the movement along her throat.
“Isn’t that what she is? A girl from the north?”
“A girl from the north,” he repeated. “With a grudge against Orlonea’s King’s Guard.”
When she met his gaze, it was easy to see they’d come to the same conclusion. “Do you know any guards who recently returned from up north?”
He grinned at her. “Just one.”
She grinned back. Magic or not, one thing was suddenly stunningly clear. Damari was a girl bent on revenge.
16
Toran
For as long as Toran could remember, Kamias Square had been the busiest place in the city.
The market sat at the intersection of four main roads and three city sectors, with several bridges crossing the converging canals. Even without carts and carriages, traffic was tight and movement slow, but the people traveling between the Tap, the Gash, and the Bark never seemed to mind the congestion. They embraced it. The patrons of Kamias Square were content to take their time and browse, eager to spend their coin on necessity or luxury.
Toran let the crowd shuffle him along from stall to stall. He took in the wares without truly seeing them—brightly patterned scarves and glints of polished cookware and tightly woven handbaskets.
His stomach rumbled at the sight of doughnuts slathered with various jams. After staying up late searching the guard registry, he’d accidentally slept in and had missed breakfast. Fishing out a gadot, he tossed it to the vendor and picked a doughnut with blueberry topping from the tray. The first bite was heavenly. Still warm and sweet, but with that special tang only blueberries from Kimden offered.
He broke off a piece of the pastry. Slim fingers snatched it out of his hand before he could offer it.
“Oh, Captain.” Nes sighed contentedly, as if she could already taste the pastry. “How did you know I love doughnuts?”
Several days had passed since she’d brought him to the brawlhouse. Several days spent pondering Damari’s next move, wondering wherehe might find someone capable of deciphering the symbols they still knew nothing about, and rolling the coins Nes had given him between his fingers.
Damari had yet to kill again, but there had been several more Witch drownings. All innocent women killed for nothing. Of course, he and Nes seemed to be the only ones who had a problem with it.
Toran’s nights were consumed by a blur of numbers and names. The guard registry was twice as long as the prison records and nowhere near as interesting. It was excruciating work.
But the Goddess must have taken pity on him, because around midnight, he’d found a number matching one of the coins. And then, two names down, the number matching the second coin. The murdered guards had graduated in the same class.
It wasn’t coincidence. Both guards had graduated ten years ago, then joined the same legion. A legion whose captain had just returned from a mission up north.
