“Ah.” Jev looked away.
Was that disappointment in his eyes?
He probably hadn’t meant her to see it, but it stung. She didn’t want to be anything but honest, and it wasn’t that she loathed the idea of children. She just wasn’t sure there was a way to dedicate herself to this new career and also make children work. Her gort leaves would all wither and die if she had to stay home to raise babies and give up her job. She also hated the idea of being dependent on someone else, which she would be in that situation. She loved that she’d made her way in the world from nothing to something. Even if that something wasn’t now what she’d always expected it to be.
A crack sounded, and a shutter across the room flew open. Zenia jumped before her mind caught up to her reflexes. Just the wind.
Jev frowned as the shutter banged in the gale—wasn’t there glass over the window?—and walked over to fix it. He stuck his head out and looked down, then grunted.
“The panes rotted and the glass fell out at some point. It’s shattered in a dozen pieces down there.” Jev tugged the shutter closed again.
“The stable looked to be in good repair. Maybe we should sleep there.”
“I’d laugh, but you sound serious.”
No need to mention that she was currently sleeping in a stable…
“I’d gladly take horses for roommates if it meant the ceiling wouldn’t collapse.” She shuddered at the memory of the last time that had happened, the very recent last time. Her gaze drifted upward. The cottage ceiling was made from wood, not stone, but those large beams would crush a man—or a woman—if they fell.
Jev followed her gaze. “I can see where you’d worry about such things. I promise to fling myself protectively atop you if one of those beams comes down.”
“What if it lands on you?”
“I will have nobly sacrificed my life to save yours. This is what zyndar are supposed to do for women.”
“So I’d be pinned under a beam and your dead body? That sounds like the reality might be less noble than inconvenient.”
“You’re a hard woman to please, Zenia.” Jev smiled. “Would you truly sleep with a horse?”
“Not with. In the stall adjacent to, as long as it’s clean.”
A faint moan came from the ceiling, and Zenia eyed the beams again, wondering if her concerns were more founded than she’d realized.
The fire snapped, and a spark burned her back. She yelped and jumped away, swatting at her clothing. The flames twirled and writhed in the hearth, almost appearing like hobgoblins performing a sacrificial dance around a fire pit.
She shook her head at her imagination and shifted a mesh screen in front of the firebox.
“Are you all right?” Jev stepped up beside her, resting his hand on her lower back. “I can see the singe mark.”
“I’ll be fine as long as you don’t see flames leaping toward my hair.” She could feel the warmth of his hand through her clothing.
“No, your hair is safe.” He lifted a hand to stroke it. “And almost dry.”
“That’s good,” she murmured, distracted by his touch.
He let it linger, running his hand down her dark locks again.
She shouldn’t stand there and allow it. Just as she shouldn’t have agreed to go on a picnic with him. There were too many reasons why the two of them as a couple made no sense.
But her body betrayed her and she leaned closer, her shoulder brushing against his chest. She didn’t look up because she worried that would lead to a kiss, and she wasn’t ready for that again, not when kisses could lead to other things. Like finding out if a bed in either of the bedrooms was dry.
“My parents worked when I was a kid,” Jev murmured, surprising her.
She forgot her decision not to look up and found herself gazing into his dark eyes. “What?”
“My father is incapable of not working, and my mother had a business. She wasn’t one to sit idly around the castle and let people attend her needs. She went out and sold my grandmother’s tapestries and other textiles, and she handled the books along with our accountant. My parents were around, of course, but my brother and I spent a lot of our time with tutors and nannies. When you’ve got a castle full of reliable people, it’s not that imperative that a mother spend her entire day with her children.”
“Oh,” she whispered, realizing now why he was telling her this. Or did she realize? He wasn’t suggesting that could be a solution for her, was he? “That’s not reality for most mothers. Most people don’t have castles full of people happy to work for them.”
“I do.” He’d stopped stroking her locks, his hand coming to rest on the back of her neck, and his fingers massaged her as his eyelids drooped and he gazed at her through his lashes.
“Isn’t it…” By the founders, that felt good. “Your father’s castle?”
“He shares.”
“Even with commoners?” She lifted her eyebrows.
His forehead furrowed slightly, making her suspect he wasn’t thinking that clearly. Maybe he was simply saying what he thought she would want to hear. If he were truly to suggest marriage one day, would she consider it?
“There are stories of commoners marrying zyndar,” he finally said. Vaguely. He didn’t intimate that his crusty father would be amenable to the idea.
“Stories,” she murmured, telling herself she should step away instead of gazing at his eyes. His lips. The way they’d parted slightly, as if to invite a kiss. Or in preparation to give a kiss. “It hasn’t happened to anyone I know.”
She couldn’t even remember any newspaper articles about it happening in her lifetime. The stories were all old, almost legend. Who knew if there was any truth to them? The classism in Kor ran deep, and the majority of zyndar truly seemed to believe they were too far superior to commoners to ever consider taking them as anything other than mistresses. She was far more familiar with that scenario. And it wasn’t a role she had any interest in filling.
“How many people do you know?” His smile returned, and he wriggled his eyebrows.
He was handsome when he did that. Appealing. Kissable.
“Not that many,” she replied, banter easier to handle than dealing with truths and reality. “There aren’t many who want to befriend inquisitors.”
“Sounds lonely,” he murmured.
The simple words resonated almost painfully with her, and she suddenly felt he understood far more than he let on. That he understood her.
“Yeah,” she whispered.
Jev shifted closer, lowering his mouth. Her last chance to step away, to return to a semblance of professional distance. But her body didn’t want that. She didn’t want that. She lifted her lips and pressed them to his.
Memories of sitting on the couch in Dharrow Castle came to mind, of his gentle touch as she tugged her robe down to her waist so he could smooth that salve over her bruised skin. She’d been in pain, too injured to find anything romantic in the gesture, or so she’d thought, but her body had responded to his touch, tingling with awareness and pleasure everywhere his warm fingers brushed.
And it tingled again now as he eased closer, one hand continuing to massage the back of her neck, the other coming around her waist, pulling her against him. For the first time, she felt the length of his body pressed to hers, how lean and hard he was underneath his clothing. Her cheeks flushed with heat as she remembered him standing naked next to her in Iridium’s lair, naked and… beautiful. She wriggled closer as she returned his kiss, opening her mouth, wanting more of him to touch her. All of him.
A thunderous knock hammered at the door. They sprang apart, as if they both knew they’d been doing something wrong. Maybe they had been. But for a moment, Zenia stared at Jev, her eyes locked to his, and he stared back.
The knock came again, and they broke eye contact. Jev strode to the door, looking like he would clobber whoever had interrupted them.
Zenia silently admitted the interruption might be a good thing. When she st
ood close to Jev, her body seemed to forget what her mind wanted. She wouldn’t forgive herself if she let her passion sweep her off her feet and she ended up sleeping with him. She hadn’t even thought she was someone who could be swept up by passions. Maybe, after their visitor left, she would reconsider her thought to sleep in the stable. Or the carriage. Being in here with Jev and a bed seemed to be tempting fate.
“Yes?” Jev asked.
Zenia turned her attention to the door and stepped closer, trying to see past his broad shoulders. She expected Dr. Nhole or perhaps a servant bringing food, but a cloaked man stood there, water dripping from his hood. Or her hood? The shadows hid the face.
“I have a message for you,” came a man’s deep voice from inside the hood.
Unease sank into Zenia’s stomach like a rock. This didn’t sound like anyone from the Nhole residence.
Jev looked down at a sealed envelope and accepted it. “From whom?”
“I don’t know. The person paid the fee. That’s all that matters.”
“What fee? For delivery? How did you know I was here?”
The man was already backing off the porch. Jev frowned and lunged after him, reaching for his arm. He was fast, but the cloaked man was equally fast. He sprang backward off the porch and landed with a dagger drawn.
Jev stopped. “Who are you?”
“A messenger, nothing more. If you attempt to touch me again, you’ll feel the cold kiss of my blade.”
“Uh huh.” Jev folded his arms over his chest. “Your blade won’t kiss very well if you let it rust in the rain.”
The downpour had dwindled, but a heavy mist still fell. A horse farther back on the path shook its flanks, flinging away moisture.
“It’s been wet numerous times, and it’s known zyndar blood.” The man backed toward the horse, keeping his eyes on Jev until he reached it. He sprang onto the animal’s back without using saddle or stirrups, and his agility reminded Zenia of an elf, or at least someone with elven blood. But he parted with, “Watch the night, and the night will watch you.”
She recognized the phrase, but it wasn’t until the man rode through the back gate, a gate that hadn’t been open earlier, that she remembered who used it.
“That’s the parting for the Night Travelers,” Zenia told Jev. He didn’t turn and come back inside until the man disappeared from sight.
“That’s another criminal guild in town, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Long ago, they were the dominant one, but that was a century or more in the past. They’re more niche now, not trying to control the entire underworld of Korvann, but they’re known for having excellent assassins available for hire. No questions asked. They’ll also do other tasks. Including message delivery, I suppose. I never tried to hire them.”
Jev eyed the soggy yard and dark outbuildings before closing the door. “Would another guild use them? Or are they more often used by normal tax-paying subjects that have grievances they want settled? No questions asked.”
“Some of both, from what I’ve heard.”
Jev broke the seal and drew out a letter. There weren’t many lines on it, and it didn’t take him long to read. He held it wordlessly out to her.
“Stop your search or Targyon is next,” she murmured.
Not surprisingly, it wasn’t signed.
11
At the first hint of daylight, another knock came at the door, this one lighter than the guild messenger’s booming pounds from the night before. Jev hurried from the bedroom he’d taken so he could answer it before Zenia stirred. The storm had abated during the night, and the cloaked man hadn’t returned, but Jev hadn’t relaxed or slept much. Partially because he’d been wondering who had known to send a message to them out here and partially because he’d been thinking about Zenia.
After the threatening message had been delivered, she’d hurried to claim a bedroom and said she was tired and would go to bed early. Jev wondered if he had offended her or assumed too much, even though she’d seemed happy enough to kiss him. She was more complicated than women he’d known in the past—he always sensed that she was conflicted about whether she wanted anything to do with him or not—but he thought, if he could figure her out and win her affection, she would be worth it. He believed she was someone honorable, someone who wouldn’t break promises, even if he had to sail off to fight in another war.
And she was a beauty, haughty chin tilt and all. He had trouble believing she hadn’t had dozens of men willing to risk the ire of an inquisitor to court her.
The knock sounded again, and Jev opened the door.
The rain had stopped, and birds chirped from the branches of trees in the soggy yard. Dr. Ghara Nhole stood on the damp porch, a wrap pulled tightly around her shoulders.
“I think I found your disease.” She held up a thick, leather-bound tome that looked to be a hundred years old. At least.
“Come in.” Jev stepped back and gestured her toward a wobbly table near one of the windows.
There wasn’t yet enough daylight to read by, so he lit a lantern. A soft thump came from behind Zenia’s closed door, so he assumed she had heard the knock and would be out soon.
Ghara glanced through the open doorway that led to the rumpled bed he had used. “My mother will be pleased you two didn’t sleep together,” she said dryly.
Jev didn’t know what to say to that—certainly nothing encouraging—so he merely lit a second lantern and brought it over to the table to add light.
“She was put out with me for sticking you two out here.” Ghara brought the book over and opened it to a bookmarked page.
“Why did you?”
“I didn’t want your captain snooping around my laboratory in the middle of the night. I could tell she was someone who would do that.”
Jev couldn’t argue with the statement. “Do you have something in there to hide?”
“No, but I don’t like people touching my things.”
Jev debated if he believed that. Ghara’s demeanor was less icy this morning, but he didn’t know if he should read anything into that. Except that her chill seemed more toward Zenia than toward him. He did not know why, not when he had been the one asking most of the intrusive questions.
“Here it is.” As Ghara touched a picture on a page, Zenia walked out.
She nodded to him as she came over. Like him, she wore her clothes from yesterday, and she looked to have combed her hair with her fingers, but she was still beautiful. And determined. As soon as she spotted the open book, her gaze sharpened, focusing on it like a hawk swooping down on a field mouse.
Ghara glanced at Zenia but didn’t acknowledge her.
“What is it?” Jev bent over the picture, a blob-shaped drawing with tiny dots in it.
“The cause of what is called, in the local vernacular, Mountain Illness. The diagram is impressively detailed considering the microscopes of the time were little more than magnifying glasses. I suspect it was further magnified with the help of a dragon tear. It is a spirochaete bacterium found in lakes and ponds in our Erlek Mountains and possibly in mountain ranges on other continents too. This sample came from a lake about two hundred miles from Korvann. It’s a common bacterium that, when ingested, can quickly multiply and spread beyond the digestive tract to cause multiple organ failures. It’s seen often in wolves and wild cats that frequent the mountains. Some recover, their immune systems effectively destroying the bacterial intruders, and some don’t. Humans who ingest these bacteria are also susceptible. There’s less data on them since humans are less likely to suck down stagnant algae-infested water, the typical breeding ground for bacteria. There’s a note here that says it’s very rare for it to develop in fresh, running water.”
Jev gripped his chin and continued to stare down at the page. The text under the diagram said what Ghara was summarizing in stuffier and more academic verbiage.
“Ingest?” Zenia asked.
“Ingest. I haven’t studied the organism myself, but according to this, it’s
not passed by skin to skin contact or by breathing it in the air.” Ghara turned to the next page. “It says here that some animals tolerate it and feel little more than mild digestive distress. Others die swiftly and develop the pustules under their fur, as the princes apparently displayed.” She pointed farther down the page to another drawing, an illustration of the skin markings on an animal with a patch of fur removed.
“So some people, some bloodlines, might be more susceptible than others?” Jev asked.
“It is possible. The Alderoths may have a particularly low ability to fight off the bacterium. But it’s also possible other people would have died if they had been infected. Since it had to be ingested, someone has to have put colonies of the bacteria in food or water intended for the princes.”
“The castle has royal food tasters, doesn’t it?” Zenia asked.
“Yes, but unless the princes were diligent in using them, someone might have slipped something in. Especially if someone was close to them, a regular presence in the castle. Someone trusted.” Jev tugged at his beard. This new information changed much. If it wasn’t a virus, then they were looking for someone with a motive and access to the princes rather than a mad scientist. They had to treat this more like a poisoning than the spreading of a disease.
“How could someone have known the princes would be susceptible?” Zenia asked.
“A good question,” Jev said. “I looked through some books about the royal family the other night, but I barely made a dent in the pile. I’d thought—or a source of mine thought—there might have been a precedent, other Alderoths that died from the disease—”
“Bacteria,” Ghara corrected.
“—bacteria. If it was recorded somewhere, and someone chanced across the information, it could have presented an opportunity. Less damning than poison, if someone were to be caught with a vial of lake water, and, perhaps more importantly, slower acting. I assume?” Jev looked at Ghara.