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  That meant Mikael still had to sign in every time he came down here, but she wouldn’t. Odd, given that he was Family-born, and she was not.

  She could tell that in a small corner of his mind he resented that.

  Mikael always fought to be pleasant, to be happy, so his loudness wouldn’t cause hurt feelings among the sensitives or corrupt what they called the ambient. But there was a small corner of his mind where he wasn’t happy, where he wasn’t content, and she was the only one who knew. He hated being separated out from the Family and not having a yeargroup.

  He missed the togetherness of a yeargroup, a concept beyond her experience.

  Tabita’s hand settled on Shironne’s sleeve and the other girl tugged Shironne down an echoing tunnel, away from the sentries. “Where did you go, just now?” she whispered.

  Shironne felt her cheeks flush. Whenever she reached out to touch Mikael’s thoughts or memories, other sensitives lost their perception of her, as if she ceased to exist. “I can’t explain.”

  “Cannot?” Tabita asked. “Or are you not allowed?”

  “The latter,” Shironne admitted.

  Sensitives echoed each other’s emotions and responses. Somehow when she and Mikael were together, they reflected each other so closely that they shut all the other sensitives out. It was the reason Mikael’s excessive broadcasting had eased. Now he was broadcasting only to Shironne most of the time, making him far more popular with the sentries and quarterguards.

  Tabita didn’t like her answer but let the subject drop. “Do you know where we are?”

  There was a difference in the sounds, an open space ahead of them rather than a confined tunnel. “The archway.”

  She caught the scent of Tabita’s woolen uniform as the other girl leaned past her to place a palm on the not-stone of the archway. Shironne could hear the Fortress speaking to the other girl, although she couldn’t make out the words, like something overheard in the distance. “Did you understand what it said?”

  That provoked curiosity from Tabita. “Can you?”

  “I couldn’t understand what it said to you,” Shironne told her, “but I did hear it. I can understand what it says to me. It’s not speaking Anvarrid, though. I just pick up its meaning.”

  “Ah. So that’s why the Engineers want you to work with them; you understand it, but they only speak Anvarrid.”

  A lie. Tabita knew that wasn’t true, even as she said it. It was one of those polite fictions that kept life running smoothly, like telling Cook her tunic wasn’t too tight, even if it was.

  It was an old and closely held lie, she gathered from Mikael’s mind, that idea that no one spoke the old languages of the Fortresses any longer. Any member caught speaking their native tongues would be breaking the treaty between the Anvarrid and the Six Families. They were supposed to be turned over to the Daujom for prosecution. But there had to be people who could speak to the Fortresses in those languages in order to understand what the Fortresses needed done to keep them working. The Oathbreakers, the engineers designated to speak with the Fortresses, lived in constant violation of the treaty.

  Mikael didn’t know that any Oathbreaker had ever been prosecuted, but the Engineers had to be circumspect. It was a risk. . . .

  “You just did it again,” Tabita said.

  Shironne shook her head as if that would clear away any ties between her and Mikael. She reached out for the wall, another spot where endless hands had touched, with oil and dirt and other things she preferred not to consider. That jarred her firmly back to her true surroundings. The Fortress greeted her, its words falling into her mind, warm and reassuring.

  It welcomed her and called her Olsen, recognizing in her that tiny amount of Family blood that she bore through her mother’s father’s line. That had baffled her the first time until she learned that Olsen was the original name of the Lucas Family. They’d adopted the name Lucas to honor the Anvarrid lord who’d changed them from farmers into an army the Anvarrid king would value.

  Apparently, no one had ever informed the Fortress of the name change.

  Shironne stepped inside the Fortress itself. Despite being far underground, the air moved gently across her face, carrying almost nothing on it, unlike the soot-filled air in the city’s early winter outside. It was strangely scentless here near the entry archway. That wasn’t true in other spots, she recalled.

  “We’re on One Down,” Tabita began her explanation. “Most of the services of the Fortress are on this level—the commons, the mess, the infirmary, library, chapel, quartermasters—they’re all here.”

  “I’ve been to a few of those,” Shironne said. “And I know about the chevrons on the walls, too.” The chevrons on the wall—two rows at waist height that indicated either the way out of the Fortress or the way to the refuge—had proven useful on her last visit here, giving her some idea where she was headed in these wide, too-similar hallways.

  “Hmmm,” Tabita responded. “We have to move forward. There are others wanting to get through.”

  Shironne allowed Tabita to lead her out into that first vast area—the commons.

  To Mikael, the Fortress was monochromatic, with gray walls, gray floors, and glowing ceilings that provided the light within its depths. No paintings or tapestries, no wallpaper. There were, in some places, geometric designs painted in shades of gray and black that were meant to give the unruly minds of children something to concentrate on. This place was overly familiar to Mikael, hardly worth noticing.

  To Shironne it was different, a place where inexplicable breezes blew, pleasantly free of soot and smoke. Where the walls hummed to themselves, air and water moving through them like a human’s veins.

  Legend claimed the Fortress was alive, and she believed it.

  Chapter 10

  * * *

  THE CARRIAGE FROM the royal stables carried Mikael and Pamini to the edge of the low town. The palace stood on the highest point in Noikinos, the escarpment under which the Fortress was buried, and the coach made its way down through the city toward the banks of the Laksitya River, a far less desirable part of town. The neighborhoods nearer the palace were primarily buildings that either predated the Anvarrid invasion, or those that came afterward in the Anvarrid style, easily identified by their arches and domes. As they moved down toward the poorer parts of town, though, the architecture became strictly Larossan: smaller buildings of stone with steeply pitched roofs that shed snow properly.

  Along the way they chatted about Pamini’s coworkers in the army’s office for investigations and intelligence, most of whom Mikael knew well from prior investigations he’d helped with. On either side of the carriage, the city was abuzz with activity, people wanting to get their work done before it snowed again. Winter in Noikinos was like that, wetter snow than they’d had in Lee, and breaks between the storms to give people a chance to keep their lives and businesses in order. He rather appreciated that. Pamini found his comment laughable, but then again, she’d never endured a winter in Lee Province.

  As it wasn’t advisable to show up at a criminal’s doorstep in a royal conveyance, Mikael sent the carriage to wait in the courtyard of a nearby inn, and he and Pamini walked into the low town. At least they were still north of the main sewage outlet into the river, which saved them the worst of the smell.

  Pamini wasn’t drawing any strange looks, but he was. He was the one out of place here.

  Family didn’t often have cause to be down in the city. While his uniform bore the marks of the Daujom—trim marks worked in black soutache on his black uniform jacket—most Larossans wouldn’t recognize their meaning. His hooded overcoat obscured most of the trim marks anyway.

  Pamini walked close to the walls of the houses and buildings. They finally stopped next to the door of a run-down stone building of three stories that might have once been a hotel. Mikael suspected it still served a similar function, renting rooms longer-term to people who couldn’t afford better. Pamini caught his eye while he was still several
feet away and gestured toward the poorly carved front door with a nod.

  She pushed the door open and stepped inside only a second ahead of him. When he crossed the threshold after her, Mikael’s eyes watered with the smells. Pamini coughed into one hand and walked toward what was clearly a reception area. A series of mismatched wooden chairs stood against one wall, and a worn rug lay on the floor between them and the tall counter. A wiry Larossan man waited behind that counter, his worried eyes fixed on Mikael’s black coat. His plain servant’s tunic and dark trousers made Mikael suspect he wasn’t the owner of this building.

  “I’m hunting for Jusid,” Pamini began. “Aman Jusid.”

  Content to let her deal with the man, Mikael read the hand-painted sign that stood on one end of the counter that said guests were not to cook in their rooms. Given the smells of spices and the lingering aftertaste of rancid oil on the air, that rule was routinely ignored.

  “Let me look,” the man said quickly. He glanced at a large book that lay atop his counter. “He’s in twenty-three.”

  Pamini thanked the man and walked past the counter without even a bow. She mounted the stairs, and Mikael followed, cringing when his hand found a sticky spot on the wall.

  “Oh, stop it,” Pamini said when he paused, shaking his hand.

  Mikael grimaced. “It’s disgusting.”

  “You don’t even know what it was.” She gazed down at him, an impatient twist to her lips.

  “I don’t need to know,” he said. “It’s not supposed to be on a stairwell wall, whatever it is.”

  Pamini laughed. “Picky.”

  “Sorry.” He hadn’t been, not until he met Shironne and her overly sensitive skin. Now every bit of dirt that clung to him seemed excessive. Frowning, he wiped the hand on his trouser leg, far enough down that he wouldn’t accidentally swipe a clean hand over it later.

  Number twenty-three was halfway down a dimly lit ochre-painted hallway. Mikael rapped on the door and waited. When no one responded, he closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to catch any emotions from inside. Nothing reached him, which didn’t mean much. Even with his sensitivity returning, he wasn’t a strong sensitive.

  Pamini lifted her tunic to draw out a knife from the pouch at her waist. Mikael was gratified when the door latch opened at his touch. He caught Pamini’s eye and pushed the door inward only to flinch back when the odor of stale blood assaulted his nostrils.

  He did feel Pamini’s reaction then, a hint of dread. Apparently Pamini didn’t deal well with corpses. “Why don’t you wait here in the hallway and guard the door?”

  She cast a scathing glance at him and stepped inside, knife ready. “The cooking . . . that’s probably why no one’s noticed the smell of blood.”

  The body wasn’t hard to find. The rented room wasn’t much larger than Mikael’s quarters in the palace, with only a low metal-framed bed and a rickety-looking table and chair on the opposite wall under a window. Someone had tacked a faded red blanket over the window, likely an effort to keep out the cold. Mikael tugged in it, and the tacks gave way. The blanket fell to the ground with a puff of dust. A wave of cool air radiated from the window, but it also let in enough light that Mikael could clearly see Jusid’s body on the floor between the bed and the wall. Blood smeared the ochre wall, dried to a sickly brown. “Help me move the bed away,” Mikael suggested.

  Pamini grabbed the far side of the narrow bed and managed to drag it over a few feet by herself. “Now what?”

  Mikael knelt next to the body. “Well, he didn’t do this to himself.”

  Aman Jusid was young and healthy-looking, if thin. His dark skin had faded enough in death to take on a greenish cast. The blood trail coming down the wall led roughly to where his head lay on the floor. Mikael gazed up at that smear. The plaster on the wall was damaged in more than one place. “Whoever did this slammed the man’s head into the wall several times.”

  “Did you dream this one?” Pamini asked, coming around the bed to gaze at the body.

  “No.” That was strange, since he often dreamed the deaths he later investigated—violent, intimate dreams where he was inside the victim as they died. “I hardly need the help of a dream to figure this one out.”

  A slip of brown paper left atop Jusid’s chest made sure of that. Don’t touch the girl, it said. A short shaft of bone extended from Jusid’s right forearm, thrust right through the skin. It wasn’t an exact match for the wound Melanna Anjir sustained but was similar enough that, combined with the man’s head being bashed against the wall, it left little doubt. This was intentional.

  “Is this some sort of blood magic?” Pamini asked, distaste rolling off her like a fog. Her face didn’t reflect that, though, a facet of her Family upbringing.

  “No, simple vengeance.” He glanced up at Pamini. “This is a near match for Melanna Anjir’s injuries.”

  Pamini’s brows drew together. “So the girl in that note is her, not Shironne? Huh.”

  In a city where hundreds of children were bruised and battered every day, where Perrin had been attacked and Shironne abducted, someone had gone to lengths to punish the man who’d injured the youngest sister, Melanna.

  Mikael licked his lips. “The more apt question is who knew how Melanna’s arm was broken? That’s a pretty specific injury. I saw it. I would guess her arm broke crossways when she hit the wall, and then her hand hit the floor as she fell, causing her wrist to twist and forcing the bone out through the skin like that. Imitating it so closely required knowledge of how to hurt people.”

  Pamini grimaced. “Who knew about her injuries?”

  “Me,” Mikael said, rising. “Filip Messine, Deborah Lucas, Aron Kassannan. I don’t know if there was anyone else who got a look at her before the bone was set. Perrin herself, but she was hysterical.”

  “One or both of those men intended to rape her,” Pamini said, sounding defensive. “The girl had cause to be hysterical.”

  Mikael raised his hands to forestall her protest. “Not my point. I only meant that she wasn’t observing the scene for details. That lets me eliminate her. That leaves me, Messine, and Kassannan as the ones most likely to have done this. You might be able to eliminate me, once we have an idea how long he’s been dead, since the colonel and I were traveling.”

  Pamini tapped the corpse’s bare foot with her shoe. “Stiff. Is he cold?”

  “I am not going to touch him,” Mikael said with a shake of his head. He wasn’t squeamish about bodies unless he’d dreamed their deaths. Then it was too personal. In this case, he simply didn’t want to ruin the scenario the killer had set up in this room. “Who do you think the note’s intended for? Not whoever finds the body. It’s for someone expected to know who the girl in the note is.”

  Pamini crossed her arms over her chest. “Police Commissioner Faralis? Police pick up this body. Word of it gets back to him. The pigeons hate stuff like this.”

  The Noikinos City Police wore uniforms of dove gray, the source of that unfortunate nickname. Shironne’s father, a city alderman, had been close friends with the police commissioner, yet when Anjir’s involvement in a child-trafficking scheme had come to light a few months past, Faralis hadn’t stood by his crony. Shironne’s father had hidden at his mistress’ house, only to be stabbed by the mistress herself. That wound, left untended, led to blood poisoning and a rather unpleasant death for Anjir.

  Despite being suspected of involvement in the crimes himself, somehow Faralis had completely escaped any charges. The advantage of being the police commissioner, it was widely believed.

  Mikael rubbed a couple of fingers across his forehead. He didn’t have any business trifling with a Larossan body. Larossan deaths fell under the jurisdiction of the police. He couldn’t just walk away and pretend he hadn’t seen anything, either. “We can tell the man at the front desk and get the police in here.”

  Pamini scowled. “I can’t be seen here. Not if I’m trying to get a job in Faralis’ household.”

  “Th
ere’s got to be a back way out of this place,” Mikael told her. “Find it.”

  Pamini headed for the hallway, intent on getting away before Mikael brought the police in. She paused at the door, though. “Talk to Filip.”

  Not for a moment did Mikael believe Filip Messine had killed this man. He’d known Messine for a couple of years now, and the young man wasn’t the sort who committed murders. Not even in a passion. No, this was something else altogether. But if Pamini suspected Messine had something to do with this mess, her insight was worth consideration.

  Then again, this death wasn’t within the Daujom’s jurisdiction. I should report it and walk away.

  Mikael gazed down at the body, mouth tight. Jusid was Larossan, not even military, but he was guilty of attacking a member of the Royal House. His death eliminated a witness. The question to be asked was who, in turn, eliminated him. The person who’d arranged to have Shironne Anjir stolen from her house? Or someone else?

  Pamini seemed to think the police commissioner was behind Shironne’s kidnapping. It made sense. There had been paperwork done to commit her, and Faralis could have been the required second witness for her father. If the accusations that he’d been involved with Anjir in the child-selling scheme were true, then Faralis would have the contacts to find a buyer for a young woman with Shironne’s talents.

  Mikael could easily understand the police commissioner having Jusid killed. But if that were the case, why the note? Merely to throw confusion on the issue? He surveyed the broken plaster on the wall. Whoever had repeatedly slammed Jusid’s head against the wall was taller than the average Larossan. Taller than Messine, certainly. Taller than me.

  Mind made up, Mikael left the room, closed the door behind him, and went downstairs to talk to the man at the front desk. “Your renter is dead,” he began.

  The Larossan man paled dramatically, mouth gaping.

  “He has been for some time,” Mikael clarified. “Perhaps a day. I need you to get someone to run a message to the Fortress for me.”