City of Towers_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [63]
“What about the woman with the basilisk eye in her palm? How’d that happen?”
“Well, Old Hila was a war widow—and lost both her sons in battle as well. I remember having dinner with her at Teral’s a few months back. She was surprisingly energetic and spent most of the time complaining about Breland feeding us table scraps after destroying everything we have. I remember arguing the point with her. As I was saying last night, it’s not going to do any good to hold onto that sort of anger.”
“And then she turned you into stone?” Jode said.
“No. And I’m certain her hands were normal then. She’s a seamstress. I remember seeing her with that bandage a few weeks ago, but I assumed that she’d cut herself in her work.”
This troubled Daine. “So much for this being an effect of the Mourning. So you’re saying that sometime over the last month, she had a basilisk’s eye stuck in her palm?” He looked at Lei. “I know they say ‘if you can buy it, you can buy it in Sharn,’ but I didn’t realize that extended to living body parts.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing, Daine.”
“Hmm. What about that girl with the stone teeth? Could the two be related?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” said Lei. “I’ve never seen such a focused petrifying effect before.”
“There’s no connection,” Greykell said. “I met Olalia the first time I had dinner with Teral, and that was almost four months ago. I think she really is a casualty of the Mourning. We’ve seen a lot of horrors come out of our homeland. There are at least six people in the infirmary in far worse condition than she is.”
“Jode … you seem to be the expert on changelings,” Daine said. “They reshape their own bodies, right? Could a changeling twist someone else’s body … plant a basilisk’s eye in Hila’s hand?”
“No.” Jode and Lei answered at the same time. They looked at each other, and Lei continued. “Changelings have a very limited ability to shift their appearance. A changeling couldn’t even place a functioning eye in its own palm, let alone an eye with magical powers. It’s like dragonmarks—a changeling can place the design on its skin, but it doesn’t actually get the powers of the mark.”
“All right.” Daine rubbed his forehead. “Let’s go over this one more time. We’ve got a group of people in Sharn with aberrant dragonmarks, which channel dangerous energies. One member of this group is a former guardsman, who can kill people with a touch. He starts working behind the back of his new friends. In the process, he begins dealing with either Hugal or Monan, who may or may not have been a changeling at the time. Monan—if it was Monan—has his own group of friends, the acid-spitting-extra-eye-and-claw club. We have dinner last night. Monan discovers that Jode has the Mark of Healing and that we are looking for Rasial. He proceeds to gather together a group of his friends and attacks us. Why?”
Lei spoke up. “Rasial might not have anything to do with it, actually. Clearly these people are twisting their bodies in unnatural ways. That’s got to be dangerous work.” She looked over at Greykell. “Have there been any mysterious deaths recently?”
“Disappearances, certainly … but it’s not the safest place or time to be a Cyran.”
“Implanting monstrous organs … I imagine that for every working basilisk eye you end up with a corpse. Whoever is doing this may simply have wanted Jode’s services to keep their subjects alive. The real question is how many more of these people are out there. Did we encounter all of them last night, or are there more?”
“I imagine Hugal could tell us that,” Daine said.
“We’re looking for him,” Greykell said. “The Sharn Watch tends to ignore us. Either we’re not worth their time or they’re afraid to enter the district. Believe what best suits your ego, but I’ve pulled together a few friends to help maintain order. We’ll see if we can turn him up for you.”
“Thank you, Captain Greykell.”
“I told you, I’m done with that.