The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [117]
Melia glared at him. “What are you getting at, Durge?”
“I see it now,” Lirith said. “If you attacked one of the most popular gods, then certainly all the other gods would band together to hunt you down, no matter how afraid they were. But if it’s the least-loved gods who are slain, the despised and the envied, then what is there to unite the gods? The killer need not fear a hunt. Which means—”
Lirith’s words ended in a gasp, and Durge gave a grim nod.
“There is nothing to keep the murderer from killing again,” he finished.
Now Melia rose, her small hands clenched into fists. The kitten jumped to the floor with a yowl of protest. “No, the gods would not be so callous. This is madness!”
Falken laid a hand on her shoulder. “Is it, Melia?”
Slowly she sank back into her chair. A sigh escaped her.
“Forgive me, Durge,” she said quietly. “It’s just that you spoke a truth I did not wish to hear. I suppose in a way I knew it myself. I do love all my brothers and sisters, but even I must admit their love for one another is not so universal. You are right—there are those who are likely not filled with sorrow at the news of Ondo’s demise. Or Geb’s.”
The kitten settled again on her lap, and she stroked its fur with slender fingers.
“But this leaves us exactly where we started,” Aryn said. “What do we do now?”
Melia looked up, and Falken raised his head, his gaze expectant. Both Aryn and Lirith were silent. All at once Durge realized that everyone was looking at him. A jolt of fear coursed through him—followed by a peculiarly warm sensation.
“We must find out who stands to gain the most from the deaths of Ondo and Geb,” he said. “If we do that, then logic dictates we will have found the murderer.”
“And then what do we do?” Melia murmured.
But that was a question to which Durge had no answer.
“Come on,” Falken said, his gruff voice breaking the silence. “We have work to do.”
39.
Lirith walked through the Fourth Circle of Tarras and tried not to feel that this was the place she had been searching for all her life.
You are being foolish, sister. You no more belong in Tarras than you do in ancient Malachor. It is merely that it reminds you of Corantha, that is all.
Certainly the Free Cities had much in common with Tarras. So many things—white sun on white walls, the yellow, perfumed blooms of lindara vines, the songs of women as they carried their burdens from market—reminded her of the streets of Corantha, but without … those things she would not care to dwell upon.
And if you think Tarras lacks for brothels, sister, then think again. There are decadences bought and sold in the light of day in this city that even in Corantha are hidden in the fastness of night, if they can be found there at all.
It was true, but even that thought could not weigh down the sensation that buoyed her heart. Every large city she knew of—yes, even cold, craggy Barrsunder in Embarr—had its equivalent of the Street of Scarves.
All the same, it was only the Street of Scarves in Corantha that held pain for her—the street on which she had found herself at the age of eleven, a lost and desperate child, her parents murdered before her eyes by thieves. But her mother had always wanted to see a great city, and her father had never denied his beloved anything. They had packed the wagon, had journeyed from their little home in the green hills of southern Toloria. And after that first night in the city, when the family made a wrong turn down a shadowed street and moonlight glinted off cold steel, Lirith never saw any of them again.
The parents were left to bleed and die in the gutter, but everything was for sale in the Free Cities, and the child had been more valuable to the thieves alive. Screaming, they had taken her … and had sold her to Gulthas.
There had been no ravens on the Street