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  She looked back, frowning. “This sort of behavior certainly won’t encourage the Holy Mother to look upon you more favorably. Go get the coach.”

  I ignored her, turning to Doctor Linas, who’d paused upon the front steps. “Doctor. Does the asylum have a shrine or other place of worship?”

  Her brows lifted. “Yes.”

  “Might I make use of it?”

  “For what?” The words were clipped and clinical.

  “I find myself in need of the goddess’s counsel, and feel the need to pray for temperance.”

  Mardhalas scoffed.

  The doctor considered over the course of several slow blinks. “Through there.” She pointed to a pair of sliding wooden doors, just off the foyer.

  “Thank you, Doctor.” I said it as politely as possible, restraining the slurry of emotions roiling in my stomach. Something boiled over, though. I turned on the High Exorcist. “And thank you as well, Miss Mardhalas. I don’t—”

  The slam of asylum’s front door cut me off. The High Exorcist had left, taking with her my life as a priestess.

  7

  EXPERT WITNESS

  LARSA

  I loathed Caliphas’s rare, cloudless days, but my new headwear was already proving worth the price. My eyes, though excellent at night, were poorly suited to the day’s glare. Normally they’d force me on a course ducking from awning to alley. This morning, I angled the hat brim against the dawn and chose a route based on expediency rather than the sun. Cutting through the city’s cluttered outer districts, I passed from one outlying community to another.

  The Thorenlys’ surviving vampire visitor hadn’t survived for long. He’d been of little help, and violent enough that I had to drag him into the light without learning much of use. He was from Ardis and, along with his compatriot, was delivering a message for Grandfather. A message that he’d somehow managed to lose during their gory debauch at Thorenly Gardens. As for whom the message was from or why they had stopped outside the city, he refused to say. I didn’t give him the time to think better of it.

  The constabulary arrived at Thorenly Glen over an hour later than I’d expected. Aside from dealing with the house’s last guest, it gave me the opportunity to take another few moments with the sitting room portrait. My painted twin wasn’t exactly identical. Aside from the simple fact that I’d never sat for that painting and had little clue as to whom the other occupants might be, there were flaws in the details—a freckle here, something that might be a scar there, her pierced ears. Regardless, it fell far outside the realm of coincidence.

  I considered visiting the Old City and asking Grandfather what he knew, but there were still avenues that might hold answers—answers to both the portrait’s occupant and Thorenly Glen’s ruin. I also wasn’t in any mood to deal with my extended family’s tedious criticisms. Returning to Whiteshaw and Diauden seemed little better—he’d doubtlessly have some other priority of national concern to distract me with. No, I’d pursue my own answers while there was still an obvious path to follow. Even if it did lead to one of the more unpleasant addresses in Caliphas: Havenguard Asylum.

  It was a prison. Certainly the guards and warden of the place didn’t refer to it as such, but whatever they chose to call it, walls and bars made it a place to forget the bothersome and unwanted. I’d heard plenty of stories that painted the asylum as something worse, and maybe it was, but what humans did with their own didn’t concern me. The city guards who’d discovered Thorenly Glen’s only survivor, Lady Ellishan, had taken her here.

  It was nearly noon when I banged on Havenguard’s iron-banded doors. I explained my reason for coming to the brute in white who answered. He didn’t look like a doctor, especially with a scuffed baton dangling from his belt, but he asked after my relation to their patient. I had none, of course, and he tried to close the door on me. My boot held it open. His hand went to his baton. Mine nearly went to my sword’s grip, but instead I gave him the least sour smile I could muster and retrieved my iron badge. On it glimmered a variation of Ustalav’s national emblem, but rather than sixteen stars surrounding the royal tower, a lone ruby star glimmered from the tower’s height.

  In shades of royal purple, this was the mark of the Royal Advisor—a post of authority that Diauden had held through the reigns of three monarchs. In black alone, though, as my badge was, it was the mark of the Royal Accusers: the noble ignoble, the untitled to be obeyed, the gilded knives—in short, the Royal Advisor’s agents and sometimes assassins. Few beyond the capital’s constabulary and nobility across the country would have any reason to recognize the difference, but for the common folk it rarely mattered. Everyone in Caliphas knew someone who knew someone who had impeded an agent of the court and was never seen again, or who gave assistance and found all their problems mysteriously solved. We low-blooded agents rarely did either, but the wariness served us—and those we dealt with—well. Diauden didn’t select for patience, after all.

  The burly guard’s gin blossoms faded several shades toward matching his coat. He threw the door wide, muttering apologizes and promises to fetch his superior—promises he promptly fulfilled, disappearing up a stairway. I waited. The glass eyes of a lion sculpted into the stair’s newel followed me as I made a circuit of the room’s displayed torture devices and meaningless accolades.

  They kept me waiting longer than most would. At times like this, my annoyance made me realize I’d grown accustomed to certain perks of my position—like not waiting on commoners. Or was it waiting on any human? Maybe I had more of my grandfather’s blood than I liked to think.

  My frown wasn’t entirely intended for the prim woman descending the stairs, but that changed as soon as she matched mine with her own. Buttoned from collar to waist, her narrow coat fell without a wrinkle. Every tightly pulled charcoal hair seemed as deliberately placed as the thin glasses resting high on her nose. She held herself too stiffly. Halting on the last step, she stood just above eye level.

  “Your insignia, please.”

  I searched for insult or arrogance in her quick, level words, but didn’t find it. Her insistence wasn’t unreasonable. Still, I didn’t like being given orders. Pursing my lips, I retrieved my badge and stepped close enough to hold it out to her. She reached to accept it, but I didn’t release it. She hardly glanced at it. She was staring at me.

  I lowered my brows. “Is there a problem?”

  “You’re not human.”

  I matched her stare, consciously seeking out the weight of the weapon at my hip. For the lack of surprise in her tone, though, she might as well have been noting the weather. If there was a judgment in her words, she hid it expertly.

  “No.” I didn’t normally acknowledge my mixed heritage to strangers—anyone for that matter. Of course, they typically didn’t notice. “Is that a problem?”

  “I’ve yet to decide. What is your business here?”

  This wasn’t going the way it usually did. “I’m investigating a matter of importance to the Royal Advisor. Who are you?”

  “Doctor Linas, assistant administrator.”

  The doorman brought me an underling? Bothersome. “I’ll see the administrator, then.”

  “That won’t be possible.” Still, no pride—no emotion at all—tinged her words.

  She certainly couldn’t say the same of mine. “Why?”

  “Doctor Trice is in surgery for the majority of the day. Interrupting him will jeopardize lives. I am authorized in every capacity to act in his stead. I can assist you in whatever business you have.”

  I wasn’t accustomed to dealing with someone’s second, but she certainly seemed capable enough.

  “What is your business?” She did know how to push.

  I relented only as much as I needed to. “A woman was brought here last night—Ellishan Thorenly. I need to speak with her.”

  “Do you intend to drink her blood?”

  Her question pierced my gut, and something hot and red welled up there. I twitched and restrained it. The
question had been as concisely blunt as every other statement, but that didn’t make it any less outrageous. Never had a human asked me such a thing—at least, not without tears or other blathering.

  “Excuse me?” I responded slowly, careful not to let anything boil over quite yet. I’d see how far down this path she’d tread.

  “You’re a dhampir. You need blood to survive. Have you come here to drink this woman’s blood?”

  Dhampir: it wasn’t a word I heard often. Most humans didn’t know it, or conflated it with a host of other bogeymen. Most full-bloods prided themselves on more creative slurs. In any case, it meant half-vampire—one born with a measure of a vampire’s poisonous power. Being born, and thus being alive, made dhampirs distinct from spawn—individuals killed and made the undying slaves of full-blooded vampires.

  And the doctor was correct in her observations.

  I held her gaze. If it had borne even the hint of a judgment—of an attack—I wouldn’t have bothered restraining my temper. As it was, she seemed earnest and utterly naive. I didn’t imagine her patients typically valued etiquette.

  “No.” I answered clear and unmistakably.

  “I don’t—” she didn’t finish her reply. Her eyes wandered away from me, some thought having interrupted her. After a moment they returned. “This is a matter of state business, then?”

  “It is.”

  “I can’t allow you to interview the patient alone.”

  “Is this a rule you enforce on all visitors?”

  “Yes.”

  Fine, then. “Lead me to her.”

  “Wait here.” She’d already shown me her back, moving down the hall to a pair of sliding wooden doors. She slipped inside and closed them behind her. Only the stairwell’s lion heard my annoyance. Was it roaring or laughing?

  Ignoring the obnoxious sculpture, I paced the room, counting the wasted moments, eventually turning enough laps to forget I was counting them.

  When Doctor Linas returned, someone who certainly wasn’t another doctor followed. The woman lagging behind sniffed and swallowed hard, adjusting robes spiraling through a spectrum of bruised shades. She wore an askew amulet: a wooden whorl, the emblem of Pharasma, goddess of common deaths. Soft layers of mousy hair fell past her chin, ending in jags like the tail of her cometlike symbol. They framed a face that looked too young, her nose an upturned button, her eyes a matching her hair. Black enamel covered her nails.

  “Is this also an asylum rule?” I didn’t hide that I was insulted. Pharasma was hardly friendly to the living, but stirred her followers in open crusade against the undead. That left me—straddling the border between life and undeath—at the crux of an awkward theological question. Thus far I’d avoided learning the church’s official stance, as well as the silver blades and searing divine magic I expected accompanied it.

  “No.” Linas either didn’t notice or didn’t care that I’d taken offense.

  “Just for me, then?”

  “Yes.” At least she was honest.

  The priestess brushed a wave of thin hair from her flushed face, avoiding looking at me with eyes still moist at the corners. Fantastic. What was she, some mourner?

  “You’re here to make sure I don’t hurt anyone?” I glared at her, suddenly very aware of both her and Linas’s exposed necks and wrists.

  The priestess opened her mouth, failed to speak, and promptly shut it. She was more successful on the second try. “I don’t know anything about that,” she said in a mostly steady voice as she shot Linas a glance. “The doctor only asked me to assist her. Should I be concerned?”

  “I’m not. But I suppose we’ll defer to the doctor’s professional opinion.”

  “Indeed.” Doctor Linas barely paused in the entry, hand touching the wooden lion’s upraised paw as she started up the stairs. “Please, follow me.”

  The asylum’s lacquered wood facade dropped away soon after we reached the top of the stairs, but hardly proved all the stories of the place true. Past heavy doors and a checkpoint of toughs dressed as doctors we entered the wing for female inmates. I’d expected a cacophony of screams and hysterics. Instead, whispers and only an occasional whimper crowded a hall of bars and padded stone. The anticipated tangles of naked halfwits and throwbacks were also nowhere to be found. Instead, things appeared quite orderly. Tiny windows on evenly spaced doors looked in upon patients reading, praying, or calmly at work on simple flower and yarn crafts.

  Zigzagging through the angled hall, Doctor Linas ignored the nods of several men and women in coats matching her own, eventually bringing us to a door with the number 72 embossed in brass.

  Doctor Linas unlocked the door. “While the patient has suffered only minor cuts and bruising, her age and lifestyle left her quite unfit for such exertions. The effort, night’s exposure, and shock of whatever initially set her upon the road have left her physically and mentally exhausted.” Turning to us, she held the door’s handle. “I’ve imposed no safety restrictions upon the patient, but do nothing that might upset her or force her to further exert herself. You will have to keep your interview brief—ten minutes at the maximum. However, I cannot promise she will be able to answer any questions you put to her.”

  “You’ll be waiting here, then?”

  “Miss Losritter and I will accompany you. I cannot leave a patient unsupervised.”

  I thought to argue—something about royal security—but relented. Who knew if anything would even come of this? And even if anything did, who did a doctor and a priestess have to tell?

  I nodded, and she pushed upon the door.

  Wrinkled sheets and loose gray features lay seamless and still, crushed beneath a pile of starched blankets. A mostly hollow mouth leaked upon the pillow. If breath still passed the old woman’s colorless lips it was drowned by the sounds of surf through the curtained window.

  The living fear and hate my people because we are touched by death. Some who call themselves my aunts and uncles recall when Caliphas’s walls were still made of wood—and Grandfather was old when the forests that furnished that wood were nothing but saplings. But never have I known any of my kind, even the most starved and feral, to be as ripe with death as a human giving way to age.

  Doctor Linas knelt to touch the fragile form mummified within the bed. For a moment she almost sounded like a normal person, her curt monotone replaced by a breathy whisper as she repeated her patient’s name. Against my expectations, the woman moved, deep creases unfolding to reveal glassy eyes. Confusion, panic, and understanding flickered across her face before it settled on indifference.

  “Lady Thorenly, I’m sorry to wake you.” Doctor Linas’s whisper rose a deliberate step. “Someone is here to see you.”

  “My husband?” Her voice sounded like damp lace squeaking across dusty porcelain. She raised herself on shivering elbows.

  “No, my lady, an emissary of the court.”

  “That’s somewhat better, I suppose.” The old woman squinted toward me, brushing flattened hair from her face. Her eyes and lips rose in a dreamy smile. “Ailson, I knew you’d come.”

  I looked to the doctor, then the priestess, but their expressions held the same questions.

  “I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me, Lady Thorenly. My name is Larsa. I’m an accuser in service to the crown.” I stepped closer so she might see me better.

  She bobbed her head slowly, smiling on. “You always come when I’m in some sort of trouble. It’s a good thing Father isn’t here to see what a terrible older sister I turned out to be.”

  “Lady Thorenly, do you know where you are?” My hopes of learning anything useful from the old woman were swiftly deteriorating.

  “You’ve changed your hair.” She reached out weakly, her hand all gristle and bone. I recoiled without thinking. She frowned. “I don’t like it. Makes you look like you don’t know any better. And your clothes—what are you now, someone’s driver?”

  “My lady,” I insisted, aware that both Doctor Linas and the priestess�
�s eyes were on me. “I need you to tell me what happened at your home last night. Why you were found on the street, and all the details of the attack.”

  She blinked. “Attack?”

  “Yes. Tell me what happened at Thorenly Manor last night.”

  She looked at me intently, but didn’t seem to see. “Oh, is this another one of your adventures? Tell me, are you writing this all down? I haven’t—”

  “Lady Thorenly!”

  She rambled on, ignoring my raised voice. If the doctor had some tonic or salts to reawaken reason in the aged, she didn’t offer them.

  Fine. I had my own methods. I reached to grab the old woman’s shoulder. The priestess’s hand was up and in the way, pointing, as if for a moment’s indulgence.

  “Lady Thorenly, it sounds as though you’ve had a trying experience.” The Pharasmin spoke as if to a child. “How are you feeling this morning?”

  The old woman squinted past me. “Like I’ve been left on the drying rack overnight. Is there a window open? It’s so chilly and dry in here. Call the girl for some water, would you, dear?”

  “Of course.” Doctor Linas was moving before anything was asked, squeezing out of the small room to exchange whispers with some subordinate in the hall. The priestess waited. I indulged her approach.

  A moment later Linas returned and a chipped ceramic cup passed from doctor to priestess to patient. Lady Thorenly drank slowly, one sip at a time lest she drown on a gulp larger than a raindrop. After minutes of slow slurps and gasps, she held the cup out.

  The priestess put it aside. “Better, m’lady?”

  “A bit.” The noblewoman’s voice was gaining a measure of the arrogance I expected from the city’s wealthy.

  “I’m glad.” The Pharasmin squeezed past me, kneeling at the bedside so the patient could see her better. “We’ll let you rest or help you ready for the day in just a moment, m’lady, but before that, I have to ask what you remember of last night. We—and your sister—are quite concerned.”

  “Last night …” She paused, her gaze wandering. “It’s difficult …”