The Bone Palace - Amanda Downum [115]
“Did you know what Whisper gave you?” Isyllt asked, sitting in the opposite chair. Dahlia drew closer, crouching unobtrusively on the floor.
“The ring, you mean?” Forsythia fingered the neckline of her gown again. “I knew it was a precious thing, something the likes of us don’t come by honestly. I knew better than to wear it or show it to anyone. But it was beautiful, and a gift, so I couldn’t bear to part with it.” The hollows of her eyes turned to Isyllt. “If I had, would you even be here?”
Isyllt had no answer for that, and sipped her wine to rinse the bitter taste away.
“Have you seen Whisper?” Forsythia asked.
“Yes.” The bitterness was inescapable. “He’s dead too.”
Forsythia made a noise between a choke and a sob, one pale fist pressing against her chest. Grey coils of smoke drifted toward her, into her, solidifying her and filling in details; the ragged lace at the neck of her dress was visible now. “Was it you?”
“No.” She didn’t see the need to explain more about her involvement. “He was… half-mad with grief for you. He wanted to find your killer. He was going to tell me why he robbed a royal tomb, but didn’t get the chance. Did he tell you?”
“He told me lots of things. He liked to talk, after.” She crossed her legs, and Isyllt almost mimicked the gesture. “Most of what he said I didn’t understand—he talked about the tunnels, about how strange the city was to him, how he missed the wind and the rain. He brought me other gifts, sometimes, bits of jewelry or ribbons, scraps of lace. I asked him once if he stole them—not from anyone who missed them, he said. I guessed then that they were grave-goods. I suppose it should have repulsed me.” She shrugged defensively. “But no one else brought me gifts like that, for the joy of something beautiful.”
Dahlia stirred, hugging her knees to her chest. “Was he kind to you?” she asked softly.
“Yes.” Forsythia shifted in the chair; the upholstery buttons were no longer visible behind her. “He was a monster—I knew that. But he was always polite. He always asked. And he was so cold, so clean. I couldn’t stand the stink of men—sweat and beer and onions, foul breath. Sometimes I dreamt their stench soaked into me and I could never scrub it off.” Her hands closed in her skirts convulsively. “The blood was nothing compared to that.”
She shook herself and sat up straighter. There was color in her cheeks now; she might have passed for a living woman to anyone who didn’t know better. “I’m sorry. You asked me about the ring. He talked about a woman—a sorceress, I think. He and his friends worked for her, or with her. He could be… vague. I never wanted to press him—I didn’t think it was any of my business. He said—” She frowned in concentration. “He said she would help them change things, to walk in the streets again. And once he said… they had to find her a body. I didn’t want to know anything else about that.”
Even after Azarné’s warning, the reminder chilled her. Why was Kiril protecting a demon? She had freed a demon once herself, a little voice reminded her—but, she argued back, he hadn’t been in the habit of murdering women for their blood.
“Did he say her name, or the names of any of his friends?”
Forsythia shook her head. “Not the woman’s. He mentioned the other vampires, though—they all had false names, like us flowers. It made me laugh. Myca, I think one was. And Spider. Something like that, anyway.”
She knew better than to be angry, but it simmered beneath her breastbone anyway. That he had played her from the start she might forgive—it was, after all, a danger of her work—but the ease with which he’d betrayed his fellow vrykoloi galled.
“Does that help you?” Forsythia asked. Her black eyes robbed her face of expression, but her hands plucked nervously at her sleeves.
“Yes. Thank you.”
“You’ll find them? The ones who killed me? The ones who killed Whisper?”
“I will.” Satisfaction or not, this was a promise she meant to keep.
That night, Kiril sought Phaedra