undying legion 01 - unbound man (33 page)

Oh, for the gods’ sake.
“Fine,” she muttered, marching over and yanking the door open. Ufeus stood in the corridor, Brielle hovering behind him. “What is it?”

Ufeus glanced over her shoulder. “We should talk inside.”

Eilwen took a deep breath.
Of course we should.
“Fine.”

“It’s Dallin,” Brielle said as soon as the door closed. “He’s dead.”

Eilwen shook her head, trying to recall the name. “Who?”

“Dallin Nourt. You remember. Our man at the Exadius company.”

Oh. Shit.
She looked from Brielle to Ufeus and back again. “Dead.”

They nodded.

Eilwen hesitated. “And, uh… not by us?”

“What? No!” Ufeus glared at her as if she had personally accused him of the man’s murder.

“Well, not
us
us, anyway,” Brielle muttered.

“Who, then?”

Ufeus stared over her shoulder in stony silence, refusing to meet her gaze, so Eilwen looked to Brielle.

“We don’t know,” Brielle said. “Apparently a Kharjik perfumer noticed him coughing up blood in an alley just north of the river. The perfumer sent his boy for a Quill fleshbinder, but they obviously couldn’t help.”

“All right. I’m going to have to take this to Havilah.” She’d been hoping to put off speaking to Havilah until she’d figured out what to say about her visit to Qulah’s, but news of a contact’s death couldn’t wait. “Do we know anything else?”

Brielle shook her head. Ufeus continued to stare at the wall behind her as if she hadn’t spoken.

“Very well. Thank you, Brielle. Ufeus, a moment.”

Brielle padded out, closing the door softly behind her. Eilwen sat behind her desk, stretching her bad leg. “All right, Ufeus,” she said. “Let’s have it. What’s your problem?”

Ufeus blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“You heard me. What’s your problem?”

Confusion flickered in Ufeus’s eyes. He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again.

“I mean it,” Eilwen said. “Tell me what’s bugging you. This is your big chance to say what you really think.”

“As you say.” Ufeus pressed his lips together. “If you must know, I don’t appreciate seeing you in that position. My position.”

“Yeah. Life’s not fair. But Havilah’s the boss, and we both do what he says. What else?”

Ufeus narrowed his eyes. His jaw worked, but he said nothing.

“Come on. You’re a grown man. I’d expect petty resentment from children, but not you. What else?”

Colour bloomed in Ufeus’s face. “Fine,” he snapped. “What in the hells are you doing here? You come in with no idea how this place works. You blunder about, ignoring my advice and burning one of our contacts. Then he gets killed, and you have the effrontery to ask if I arranged it! Me! That life is on you, Eilwen! And why is it I’m still doing everything I was doing before? What are you doing with your time, aside from hobnobbing with the masters? Tell me, Eilwen, what exactly are you good for?”

The onslaught of words piled against her like a breaking wave, the impact no less shocking for the fact that she had goaded Ufeus into them. Eilwen gripped the edge of the desk, her knuckles white. Ufeus glared through slitted eyes, his breath short. She closed her eyes and tried to gather her thoughts.

“You’re right,” she said at last. “I ignored your advice, and I shouldn’t have. You’re also right that I haven’t truly taken on any of the work you’ve been doing. That was the plan, but it hasn’t turned out that way.” She fell silent.

Ufeus raised his eyebrows. “That’s it?”

Eilwen hesitated.
Don’t involve Ufeus,
Havilah had told her. But he was involved. All of them were, whether they liked it or not. “That’s all I can say,” she said at last. “If you want to know more, you’ll have to ask Havilah yourself. And he probably won’t tell you either.”

He scowled. “That’s bullshit.”

“No. It’s not.” She stood. “I’m not going to thank you for doing your job. I’m going to expect you to keep doing it. Seems we both know that you’ll do it better than I could anyway.” She lowered her voice. “But one day soon I may ask you to do more, for the sake of the Guild. That will earn you thanks. And not just from me.”

“Really.”

“Really.” She gestured toward the door. “That’ll be all.”

The scowl on Ufeus’s face lingered, but without intensity, as though it remained only because he didn’t know what to replace it with. At the door he turned back. “What do you mean, for the sake of the Guild?”

Eilwen waved her hand in a shooing gesture. “Goodbye, Ufeus.”

He left, and Eilwen sagged back into her chair.
What exactly am I good for? Damn good question.
She was floundering, that was the truth of it. The investigation was a giant cloud of fog, and she was lost in its centre. Any ground she thought solid invariably turned spongy beneath her feet. She needed an anchor, some fixed reference point with which to take new bearings. She needed time to sort through her confusion, time to work out exactly what she knew and what she merely suspected.

But first she needed to go and see Havilah.

•

Havilah took the news more calmly than Eilwen expected. “Well,” he said. “It’s probably not surprising, all things considered.”

“But if they know Dallin talked to us, then they know we’re onto them.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” He eyed her contemplatively. “If you’re worried about yourself or Brielle, there’s no need. If they thought you were enough of a threat, they’d have done you at the same time.”

“Thank you,” Eilwen said. “That’s very reassuring.”

“There’d be no point, anyway. Not unless they knew who you’d told about it.”

“Yeah, unless they just wanted to make a statement,” Eilwen said, but her words lacked conviction. Whoever was running the operation seemed to be doing as much as they could to avoid making statements. “Brielle said a Quill fleshbinder was there when he died. I’ll see if I can track them down, find out what they saw —”

“Which will tell you what, exactly?” Havilah said, his mild tone pulling the sting from the interruption.

Eilwen blinked in surprise. “Well, I don’t know. I thought we were kind of interested in who might have killed him.”

“So we are. But this is not about chasing down every possible lead in the hope of striking it lucky. This is about getting the most information with the least possible exposure.” Havilah spread his hands. “If this conspiracy goes as high in the Guild as it seems, we’re only going to get one shot at taking it down. Give ourselves away too early and we won’t even get that. So, yes, there’s a remote chance the Kharjik perfumer said something to the Quill fleshbinder which would give us a clue as to who had Dallin killed. But there’s a much higher chance that you asking that question will put you in line for the same treatment.”

“I thought you just told me I didn’t need to worry about that.”

“Neither you do,” Havilah said. “So long as you don’t alter the equation by turning yourself into a threat.”

“So, what then?” Eilwen said, trying and failing to keep the nettled tone from her voice. “We just sit here and do nothing?”

“We wait. We watch. We use caution.”

Yeah, right up until we cautiously watch Vorace get killed. Or is that what you want? Is it you, after all?
She put her hand to her lips, not trusting her face to conceal her thoughts.

Havilah passed a sheet of paper across the desk. “Read this.”

Eilwen picked it up. “Kieffe’s autopsy. Finally.”

“Orom found evidence of bluespine in the man’s heart, or so he says. I don’t know how much you can really tell from a week-old corpse, even with sorcery, but there it is.”

“Bluespine,” Eilwen repeated. “A Tahisi poison.”

Havilah met her gaze. “That’s right.”

She nodded. “You mentioned it at the masters meeting, if I remember rightly.”

“I did.”

“An odd coincidence.”

Havilah made no response. He seemed relaxed, but there was something in his posture now — an awareness, perhaps — that hadn’t been there before.

She moistened her lips. “It seems our killer may have a link with Tan Tahis.”

He folded his hands on the desk. “Is there something you want to ask me, Eilwen?”

“Are you… Is it…” She coughed, angry at her treacherous tongue, and all at once the anger swallowed her nerves. “Did you kill them?” she demanded. “Are you playing me, Havilah?”

“No.” He held her eyes, his regard neither aggressive nor defensive, but an offer to look and be satisfied. His expression was calm, assured, and guileless.

At last, she looked away.

“Talk to me, Eilwen,” he said gently. “Tell me what’s going on.”

She bowed her head. “I went to Qulah’s,” she said.

“The Emporium.”

“Yes,” Eilwen said. “Kieffe had been there. The first part of his order is waiting for him in the warehouse right now.” She drew a long, unsteady breath. “It’s cannons, Havilah. Qulah has boxes of Tahisi cannon barrels just waiting for Kieffe to pay for them, with more on the way. A lot more.”

For a fleeting moment, Havilah’s calm expression slipped. “Cannons. You’re sure?”

“I saw them myself. And there’s more,” Eilwen said, suddenly desperate to lay everything out. “Kieffe was going to pay using Tahisi coin. Or he was thinking about it, anyway. It sounded like he hadn’t decided.” She buried her hands in her hair. “Where does someone here get enough Tahisi currency to lay siege to a city?”

Havilah’s attention was no longer directed at her. He stared into space, his thoughts turned inward. “The weapons may not be meant for Kieffe,” he said slowly. “Probably he was nothing more than a middle-man.”

“We need to go back to Qulah’s,” Eilwen said. “We need to find out exactly what Kieffe told him, maybe take delivery of a cannon and see if —”

“No! Were you even listening a moment ago?” Havilah’s eyes bored into hers, pinning her to the chair. “Everything I just told you about minimising our exposure now counts tenfold. This is bigger than the Woodtraders, Eilwen. Nobody buys weapons on this scale without a very specific plan for using them.” His mouth twisted in distaste. “Someone in the Guild senses an opportunity, I suspect. A chance to advance their own ambitions by hitching a ride on somebody else’s. I doubt the purchaser of these goods even cares who leads the Guild.”

“But we care,” Eilwen said. “Don’t we?”

The Spymaster’s expression softened. “Yes. We care.”

“So what do we do?”

“You do nothing,” Havilah said. “Do not go back to the warehouse. Do not speak to Qulah. Continue investigating Kieffe’s death, but tread lightly. Have you interviewed any of the other masters yet?”

“No,” she said, feeling foolish. “I wanted to find out as much as I could before talking to anyone who might be involved.”

But Havilah nodded. “Better,” he said. “And who do you suspect?”

“Caralange. Laris.” She hesitated. “And you.”

He tilted his head. “Still?”

“Well. Not so much, now.”

Havilah gave a slight smile, and Eilwen had the sense of a matter being laid to rest, just as she had on her return from Spyridon. She’d struggled to find the word for it before, but this time she knew what it was, and the thought brought an unexpected tightness to her throat.

Forgiveness. This is what it feels like to be forgiven.

“I spoke to Pel,” Eilwen said, dragging her attention back to the Spymaster before she could embarrass herself further. “If Kieffe wasn’t working for Laris, the only real alternative is Caralange.” She shrugged. “Phemia’s an old woman. She’s given her life in service of the Guild. And Soll…”

Havilah nodded. “Phemia has neither the energy nor the inclination to mount something like this. Soll doesn’t have the imagination. And Caralange, I think, lacks the subtlety.”

Eilwen frowned, considering. Maybe he did, at that. “You think it’s Laris.”

“The Trademaster supplies most of Soll’s coin, the majority of Phemia’s goods, and a decent chunk of my intelligence. She’s got far more opportunity than anyone else to mislead us all. And she’s been butting heads with Vorace over the direction of the Guild ever since he pulled us back to the Free Cities, in the wake of the
Orenda
incident. I’ve been waiting for her to pull something like this for years.”

“Wait. You’re telling me you suspected Laris right from the start?”

Havilah folded his hands. “I did.”

Eilwen stared. “Then why didn’t you just say so? Gods above! I thought we were supposed to be on the same side. Why make me run around in the dark like that?”

His expression was almost sympathetic. “Why do you think?”

Because you weren’t sure I’d hear it. Because you needed me to get enough distance to see it for myself.
Havilah watched as her understanding dawned, the compassion in his eyes confirming the truth of her inference. As she stared back, a second insight crashed in on the heels of the first.
That’s why you picked me. You wanted someone with an in to Laris and her people, someone who could get you to her.

You cold-blooded son of a bitch.

Havilah leaned forward. “Do you remember what I told you the first time you sat in that chair? I said I needed people who could be uncompromising in the Guild’s service. Sometimes that’s hard, for you or for someone else. But it’s not about either of us. It’s about the Guild.”

He paused, eyeing her expectantly. Eilwen tried to speak, but her tongue seemed frozen in place. She managed a rough nod.

“Good,” he said. “Now, suspicion is all well and good, but we need proof. And we need to gather it carefully. Are you with me on this?”

Havilah’s the boss, and we do what he says.
The words rang in her ears. She’d said them to Ufeus not even an hour ago. And it was even more than that. This role — this chance to serve the Guild like she should have served it years ago — it was hers because of Havilah. Because of his authority. The two went together. Either she accepted that authority, or she gave up this chance to do something right and found some other way to spend her life.

Gods, Havilah, all I wanted was to trust you. Why do you have to make it so hard?