The Bone Palace - Amanda Downum [7]
“Speaking of distractions,” Khelséa said with a grin, “I saw your minstrel friend in the Garden tonight. Maybe I should take him in for questioning.”
Isyllt snorted. “Is that the only way you can start a conversation with a man?”
“Better than calling them from their tombs.” The inspector unlatched the carriage door and held it open. “Let me know what you find. I’m sure it will be interesting.”
Isyllt smiled. “This job always is.” She pulled herself into the carriage and Khelséa shut the door. The horses’ hooves clattered against the cobbles as they carried her across the city.
The driver stopped one street from the Garden and Isyllt climbed down. She pressed a tarnished silver obol into his hand and a whisper of forgetfulness into his mind.
The ring swayed heavy against her chest as she walked. A treat for the gossips and rumormongers, certainly, but she doubted the scandal would grow teeth. The king had been campaigning in the north since spring, and the crown prince had enough to keep him busy without visiting—or murdering—prostitutes. This was likely an old ring stolen or lost, fallen into careless hands.
She just needed to convince herself of that.
Nights in Elysia—or Oldtown, as it was more often called—weren’t quiet, especially in the Garden; music spilled from taverns, voices raised in song and anger and drunken confusion. Hooves and carriage wheels clattered against stone and visitors and residents still walked the streets. Some looking for fun, others going home after late shifts. Isyllt remembered the rhythms, though she’d lived elsewhere for fifteen years.
With Forsythia’s empty eyes fresh in her mind, she noticed the differences too. More pale faces in the crowds, fair hair flashing beneath caps and scarves. When she listened to the voices instead of letting them wash over her, she heard the curious mix of clipped, heavy words and musical trills that marked Rosian, much more prominent than the usual Assari or Skarrish curses. The smell of cabbage and beets wafted from vendors’ carts and drifted from open windows—Cabbage Town was the vulgar name for the refugee neighborhood otherwise known as Little Kiva. Fifteen years ago, the sounds and scents and flavors had been Vallish.
Her parents settled in Oldtown when she was seven, fleeing civil war in Vallorn. Not quite the slums, but as much as refugees could afford. When plague killed them four years later, Isyllt had drifted into the tenements and rookeries of Birthgrave, where an obol would buy you more than eight murders on any given night and orangecoats vanished at sundown. The majority of bodies dragged from the southern river gate came from Birthgrave. After surviving nearly five years there, she’d hardly balked at necromancy and the “good service” of a Crown Investigator.
Climbing roses covered the Garden’s crumbling walls, worming into moss-eaten mortar. The scent of the last autumn blossoms reminded her of the Sepulcher, but it was better than the usual street stink. Light glowed through windows and leaked under doors; lamps burned on street corners. Since the Rose Council formed over a century ago, the Garden had been a safe haven for those who lived and worked within its walls. It was safer to be a whore in a Garden brothel than a shopkeeper in Harrowgate. Most nights, anyway. The flowers here had thorns, if customers presumed too far.
The reek of death hit her when she turned the corner onto the Street of Thistles. Not a real smell, not blood and bowel, but a tingle of otherwise senses, a chill down her back. But not as strong as it would have been if someone had died here.
News had spread; the street was too quiet for the hour. Isyllt followed