Traitor's Moon

32 SNAKES AND TRAITORS

Seregil woke groggily to the sounds of an argument. He'd been dreaming of the Cockerel Inn again, but this time he'd been sitting on the roof.

Stiff and disoriented, he sat up and looked around the dim hall to get his bearings. He'd stayed with Klia until Mydri had chased him off, then made a makeshift bed out of two chairs out here. He hadn't expected to sleep, yet here he was with a stiff neck and one leg numb to the hip. The night lamp was guttering, and faint light was showing at the windows.

The argument in question was being carried on in Skalan outside the front door. Limping over, he looked out to find Nyal facing several Urgazhi sentries. Corporal Nikides and Tare were resolutely blocking the door. A few steps below, the Ra'basi interpreter looked tired and apologetic, but determined.

"It's Captain Beka's orders," Nikides was saying. "No Aurenfaie except Bokthersans are to be let in. When she comes back—"

"But the rhui'auros said Seregil sent for me!" Nyal insisted.

"Which rhui'auros?" Seregil demanded, sticking his head out.

"Elesarit."

It wasn't the name Seregil was expecting,

but he played along. "Of course. It's all right, Corporal. I'll take charge of him."

As soon as the door had swung shut behind them, he grasped the Ra'basi by the arm and pulled him to a halt.

"What did this rhui'auros say, exactly?"

Nyal shot him a surprised look. "Only that you required my services."

"And that I'd sent for you?"

"Well, no, now that I think of it. I just assumed—"

"We'll sort that out later. Where have you been?»

"Ra'basi tupa. With all the confusion here, I thought it best to stay out of the way. I left word for Beka with Sergeant Mercalle, in case I was needed."

"She's still out keeping an eye on the Haman."

"Of course. Is Klia—?"

"As far as I know. Let's go see."

They met Saaban i Irais coming out of the bath chamber. He was dressed for riding, and looked as if he hadn't slept much, either.

"A bad night," he told them. "Alec is with her now. My riders and I can leave as soon as he's finished."

The dhima lay like an upended turtle against the far wall. Klia had been moved next to the central bathing pool, and wet cloths were draped across her forehead and wrists. Mydri and Adzriel sat next to her, each grasping one of her hands. Alec and Thero stood over them, hollowed-eyed and solemn.

"Sweating only made her breathing worse," Mydri explained worriedly. "I've purged her, given her herbs, sang the six songs of purification; nothing seems to help."

"By the Light!" Nyal went down on one knee beside Klia and inspected her hands and feet. The discoloration was darker and had spread up her limbs.

"Has she opened her eyes at all, or moved?" asked Nyal.

"Not for hours."

"Then I think you must be wrong about when she was poisoned."

Seregil gave the Ra'basi a sharp look. "What do you know about it?"

Nyal shook his head Wonderingly. "I don't know how it could be, but this has all the signs of an apaki'nhag bite."

"A what?" asked Mydri.

"It's a snake," said Nyal.

"I thought there weren't any snakes in Aurenen!" Alec exclaimed.

"Not on the land. Apaki'nhags are sea snakes. There are a number of different types."

"Apaki'nhag. 'Gentle assassin? " Seregil translated.

Nyal nodded. "So called because its bite is painless, and because the effects of the venom don't appear for hours in most cases, sometimes not even for days. Shellfish divers often grab them by mistake among the weeds, not realizing they've been bitten until they fall ill later. I've seen it often enough among sailors and fishermen to know the signs. It's good you removed that." He gestured toward the dhima. "Sweating only drives the poison deeper into the body."

"A water snake? She was wet when I found her," Alec told him. "Emiel said she'd stopped to drink—"

"No, Alec. Apaki'nhag are saltwater creatures."

"Where are they found?" asked Seregil.

"Along the eastern coast. I've never heard of any south of Ra'basi."

"Ra'basi, Gedre, Viresse, Golinil," Seregil said, ticking likely places off on the fingers of one hand. "And let's not forget Plenimar."

"Plenimar?" said Alec.

"I'm not ready to rule them out just yet. Whether or not they did the actual poisoning, they've raised it to an art and wouldn't be above selling both the poison and the means of best using it. They have as much reason as anyone for wanting Klia to fail."

"If you're right, then she may not have been poisoned by something she ate but by something she touched," said Thero, concentrating on more immediate issues.

"Something that touched her, more likely," Seregil corrected, examining Klia's cold hands. "It's the mark of a two-legged serpent we're looking for. You say the victim doesn't feel the bite, Nyal?"

"That's right. The snake's teeth are quite small, and the venom deadens feeling. Ra'basi healers sometimes use a very dilute form of it in salves."

"A needle or small blade concealed in a ring is a favorite toy among Plenimaran assassins." Seregil pushed the sleeves of Klia's gown back to inspect her arms.

"This venom, Nyal, would it affect someone who's already ill more quickly? " Thero asked.

"Yes, with the old or infirm, it's nearly always fatal within—"

"Torsin!" Seregil exclaimed, looking up at the wizard. "Alec, keep looking for marks."

He and Thero took the stairs two at a time to the envoy's chamber. Cold lamps sparked to life at the wizard's command.

The dead man's face had lost its leaden hue, darkening already to the mottled greenish pall of dissolution. The rigor had passed and someone had straightened the limbs, bound up the slack jaw and eyes, and blanketed the corpse with fragrant herbs. Neither these nor the resinous smoke from the incense pot could mask the heavy stench. A round, salt-glazed urn with a cover of fitted leather had been left on the clothes chest, ready to receive the dead man's ashes for the journey home.

"A not-so-subtle hint that my people don't let their dead linger," Seregil noted, pointing at the jar. "We're lucky he hasn't already been carted out to a pyre somewhere."

"I'm not sure 'lucky' is the word I'd have chosen," Thero replied, recoiling at the smell.

"Damn this warm weather, eh?" Seregil muttered, wrinkling his nose. "Let's get it over with."

He spread the fingers of Torsin's right hand and inspected them. He heard Thero suck air and hold it as he pried open the clenched left fist. Perhaps he wasn't as hardened to all this as Seregil had supposed.

An excited gasp quickly followed, however. "Look at this!" Thero exclaimed, pulling a tangled clump of fine threads free of the wrinkled palm.

Seregil took it and smoothed the strands out on his palm: red and blue silk, knotted into a small tassel identical to the one Alec had found on the envoy's hearth two weeks earlier. "It's from a sen'gai. See here? There's a bit of cloth still attached above the knot."

"A sen'gai? But those are the colors of Viresse!"

"So they are." Seregil returned to his inspection of Torsin's other hand with a sardonic grin. It was still bloated from lying in the water, but with the aid of a lamp he finally located a small puncture wound on the fleshy part of the palm just below the base of the thumb. He pressed the skin, and a globule of dark blood oozed out.

Thero drew a silver knife from his belt and gently scraped it up.

"Think there are any apaki'nhags slithering about in the Vhadasoori?" asked Seregil.

"I very much doubt it. That doesn't look like snakebite."

"More like a needle or thorn puncture. Nyal must be right about the numbing effect of the poison. This went deep."

"So the poisoner followed him to the Vhadasoori when he left

Ulan's house," Thero speculated. "Judging by this, they straggled. Torsin grasped at his attacker, pulling that bit of fringe from his sen'gai in his death throes."

They were interrupted by Alec's noisy entrance. "We found it!" he announced triumphantly. "There's a tiny mark on her left hand, between the first and second fingers."

"But I looked there," Seregil exclaimed. "How did you find it?"

Alec touched the dragon bite on his ear. "This gave me the idea. When we couldn't find anything, I tried rubbing lissik on her skin to bring out any breaks and there it was. It's marked for good now. The flesh is beginning to go white around it, too. Nyal says that's a sure sign."

"Well, we just found something similar on Torsin. And this." Seregil passed Alec the tassel. "Thero's speculated that Torsin's murderer followed him from the banquet, and that Torsin grappled with him and tore this from his head cloth. What do you think?"

Alec picked at the shred of cloth, then shook his head. "This was cut, not ripped. See how the weave is still straight? With this loose-woven cloth, the threads would be all ragged if anyone pulled on it hard enough to tear it. I'd say this was sent as a token, like the last one. Maybe Torsin went to the Vhadasoori to meet someone. A Viresse."

"Possibly," said Seregil. "But if Nyal is right about how the poison works, he was dying before he got there. Then again, judging by the difference in the symptoms he and Klia have shown, it was probably his lungs that killed him, after all. The poison just hastened the inevitable."

"What I felt from the Cup of Aura bears that out," Thero agreed. "Still, he couldn't have known how ill he really was, or he'd have asked for help getting home."

Alec held up the tassel. "If we're right about this being a signal, he may have had reasons for wanting to go out alone."

Seregil examined the puncture again. "If this is apaki'nhag venom, then he was most likely poisoned at the banquet. If he and Klia were poisoned at roughly the same time, which seems likely, then perhaps our poisoner miscalculated its effects, given Torsin's condition."

"Maybe they even intended for suspicion to fall on the Haman the way it did," Alec speculated. "It was no secret that we were hunting with them."

"And yet here we have evidence of the Viresse," said Thero, indicating the tassel.

"And they traffic with Plenimar," said Alec. "I'll bet you a gold sester that if we find the device our murderer used, it will be Plenimaran."

"I'd back your side of that wager," Seregil said. "I'll ask Adzriel if she can smooth my way to searching the house of Ulan i Sathil. Thero, if I do find the object used, you might be able to divine who used it."

"Or the missing warding charm," said Alec.

"What?" asked Seregil, eyes narrowing.

"He's missing a warding charm," Alec told him, pointing at the dead man's left wrist. "Torsin had a warding charm just like mine, remember?"

"It was to warn of ill-wishing, wasn't it? I see yours is gone, too."

"It's a long story, but I know Torsin still had his a day or two ago. I remember seeing him fiddle with it when we were greeting visitors on the final day of mourning."

"If we could find that, it could tell us who poisoned him," Thero said hopefully. "I've been talking with our Akhendi friends. People of that clan can sometimes sense details from the spent charms."

"He could have taken it off, in which case it's probably here somewhere," said Seregil.

A thorough search of the room turned up nothing, however.

"Maybe he lost it," Alec suggested, giving up. "Or someone took it. I say we look for it at Ulan i Sathil's house." He held up the tassel again. "They certainly have reason to want Klia out of the way, they had her and Torsin in easy reach, and they'd know about that snake poison."

Seregil tapped a finger against his lips, frowning as another thought occurred. "The same might be said of most of the eastern clans. The Ra'basi, for instance."

Alec groaned. "Oh, Illior, are we back to that again?"

"Back to what?" asked Thero.

"Maybe nothing, except that I haven't quite trusted Nyal since we met," Seregil explained, taking little pleasure in the thought. "The Ra'basi aren't exactly neutral parties in the negotiations, and as Alec just pointed out, they'd have knowledge of the poison in question."

"Anyone could have known," Thero pointed out.

"Yes, but who else has come and gone here freely from the start? With the exception of the Bokthersans, what Aurenfaie has had closer contact with Klia and Torsin?"

"And Beka," Alec added unhappily.

"But he's the one who alerted you to the poison!" Thero exclaimed.

Seregil shrugged. "He wouldn't be the first murderer to cover his tracks by bustling in helpfully after the damage is done. He's been everywhere Klia has the past day or so. He knew Torsin was ill, and how the poison worked."

"But that seems like all the more reason not to tell us what it was," Alec insisted. "Go slowly with this, Seregil. Accusing him falsely won't hurt just him. Think of Beka."

"Yes, but what about his tragic romantic attachment to Amali a Yassara? You once said you thought I disliked him because he was too much like myself. If you're right, we have good reason to distrust him. How many times do you suppose I've ingratiated myself with a mark, or gotten into a place to spy by way of the bedchamber?"

Alec gave him a humorless smirk. "More often than I want to know about, obviously."

"The Akhendi could be his next targets for all we know," mused Thero.

"I say we keep quiet until we have more proof," Alec warned, still doubtful. "Beka's already given orders to keep out anyone but Bokthersans. Can't we let it go at that for now?"

"We're a long way from making any accusations yet," Seregil admitted, running a hand back through his tangled hair. "In the meantime, I don't want him to guess we suspect him. Just make certain he's not left alone with Klia."

"All the same, there are still too many other possibilities," said Thero. "If Klia and Torsin were both poisoned at the Viresse banquet, which seems as good a theory as any, then it narrows our field of suspects down to—"

"Just about everyone in the whole damn city," Alec finished for him. "There were hundreds of people there."

"Except Emiel i Moranthi," said Seregil.

"We're standing on smoke," Alec muttered.

"Yes, we are," Seregil agreed. "But this is a start toward something more solid." He took a last look at Torsin's hand; with the dark blood cleaned away, the puncture mark was practically invisible again. "I want you to keep this discovery to yourselves for a while. Act as if you think his death was a natural one."

"What about Nyal?" asked Thero.

"Tell him we found nothing. If he or someone else knows otherwise, sooner or later they may let it slip." Arranging the dead man's

hands on his chest, Seregil turned for the door. "Let's go see what our helpful Ra'basi is up to now."

They didn't have far to go. Emerging from Torsin's room, they met Nyal and Mydri in the hall, accompanying Klia as she was carried to her bedchamber on a litter.

Dread washed over Seregil, seeing the pallor of death in her face. Only the slight rise and fall of her chest showed she still lived.

"An infusion of black tea steeped in brandy may help her breathing," Nyal advised. "Otherwise, there's little to do but keep her warm and wait for it to run its course."

Looking up at Seregil, he raised an expectant eyebrow. "Was Torsin poisoned, do you think?"

"No. It's as we thought, a failure of the lungs."

The Ra'basi seemed to accept this. Even as he surreptitiously watched him, however, Seregil felt a twinge of regret, thinking again of Nyal's kindness to him after his ill-fated walk in Haman tupa. In spite of everything else he might suspect, somewhere along the way, he'd begun to like the man.

When Klia was settled in bed, Alec showed them a tiny spot of blue between her fingers. Even with the lissik, it was just a pinprick surrounded by a patch of bleached flesh.

"It's spreading," Nyal said, frowning as he pressed at the white skin.

"This is what apaki'nhag bites look like?" asked Seregil.

"Yes, but not until after the person has already sickened. The venom slowly kills the flesh around the bite. This area will turn black soon and may have to be cut away, if she survives."

No wonder they'd missed the bite on Torsin, thought Seregil. Not only was the hand bloated from being in the water, but Torsin had died too quickly for the telltale signs to appear.

"If?" Alec croaked. "But she's made it this long—"

Nyal placed a hand on his shoulder. "There are many kinds of apaki'nhag, some more venomous than others. The symptoms are the same, only the result differs. Some victims survive unscathed. Others are left blind or crippled."

Seregil pressed a hand to Klia's moist brow, then bent close to her ear. "No matter what happens, I'm not leaving Aurenen until I know who did this to you, and why."

He straightened and looked at Nyal a moment without speaking.

"What is it?" the older man asked.

"This is a dangerous time for us here. Your own clan may fall under suspicion before I'm finished. Will you stand by us?"

"As long as I can act with honor," Nyal assured him earnestly. "What of Beka's order, though? I'm not even supposed to be here."

"Keep to the barracks for now. I'll sort it out when she gets back. If you need to go out, be sure to let someone know in case Mydri needs you."

"I'll do whatever I can." With a last sad look at Klia, Nyal went out. Seregil counted to three, then peered around the doorframe in time to see the Ra'basi meet Sergeant Mercalle and several of her riders on the back staircase. They spoke briefly, then Nyal continued down.

Seregil stepped out to meet Mercalle.

"We're here to relieve Rhylin," she told him.

Mydri came out to join them. "Seregil, would you ask one of the cooks to send up a honey poultice, hot water, and clean rags? I'm going to do everything I can to save that hand."

Kheeta hurried up the front stairs. "Is Alec here? Saaban and the others are waiting out front."

"I'm here," Alec said, coming out to join them. "I'll be there in a moment."

"You'd better wear your sword," Seregil said.

Alec glanced down in surprise. "I've gotten out of the habit. It's upstairs."

Seregil clasped him by the shoulder. "Good hunting, tali, and be careful."

Alec smiled slightly. "I was about to say the same to you. I've got the easier task, I think."

"Probably. I doubt Ulan will be glad to see me again so soon."

He watched Alec out of sight, then went out the back way toward his sister's house.

Alec retrieved his sword belt from the bedpost and buckled it on as he hurried back down. In his haste, he nearly fell over Beka, who was sitting alone on the stairs just below the second-floor landing. She shifted closer to the wall but remained where she was, the picture of exhaustion.

"When did you get back?" he asked.

"Just now. I'm on my way up to see her, but I needed a moment alone. This seemed as good a place as any."

"There's no change."

"So I heard. It's good news in its way, I guess."

"Have the Haman done anything interesting?"

"Not a thing. Steb told me about Seregil's run-in with Emiel last night. Is he all right?"

"Oh, yes. Seems more his old self than he has for days, in fact." Alec hesitated, then said quietly, "About Nyal—"

"You think he has something to do with all this, don't you?" She looked down at her clasped hands.

"Seregil does, but so far it's just a hunch."

She sighed. "I've asked him to come back to Skala with me."

Alec blinked in surprise. "What did he say?"

"He asked me to stay. I can't."

"Are you—I mean, I heard—" Alec broke off, feeling himself blushing.

"Pregnant?" Beka favored him with a dark look. "Heard about the bounty, did you? It wasn't an order, just an opportunity. Kipa and Ileah think they may be. It's not the road for me." She yawned suddenly, pressing a hand over her mouth. "You'd better get moving."

"And you'd better get some rest." Alec started down, then paused a few steps below her and reached to grip her by the knee. "Just— well, be careful."

She gave him a sour scowl. "I'm not love blind, Alec. I just hope Seregil's wrong."

"So do I."