Liar's Moon (11 page)

I shook my head. “You know I was using you too.”

“Then I guess there’s no hope for me
after all.” But the grin lingered, infectiously, and a moment later, I had it too. Still shaking my head, I doled out the remaining contents of my basket, pies, beer, charred ledger page. Durrel stared at the bounty like a starving man confronted by a feast so large he can’t fathom where to start eating. He rose from the cot and came back to the table.

“Food first,” I said firmly, passing
him a pie. “Aunt Grea made these for you particularly, she expects a full report on my return, and trust me, Aunt Grea is not someone you disappoint. So eat up.”

“Aye, mistress,” Durrel said. He broke into a pie willingly enough, but his fingers and eyes kept straying toward the manifests, until I shoved everything else aside and spread them across the table.

“Does any of this mean
anything to you?” I asked.

He gave a mumbled affirmative, leaning over the papers and dropping crumbs everywhere. I showed him the charred scrap from the empty warehouse office.

“Well, this is Talth’s handwriting,” Durrel said, brushing the burnt paper smooth. “And these look like dates. The other numbers might be, I don’t know, ships’ registries? Look, here’s a repeat. And another.”
He turned the paper to me, and I saw what he saw, the same number matched up with several different dates.

“See if it’s in the manifests,” I said, and Durrel laid the papers carefully in order, combing through them swiftly with his broad fingers.

“What else did you see at the docks?” he asked. “Ships, people, cargo, what?”

“I don’t know. Barris was there — thrilled to see
me
, by
the way — and they were loading royal cargo onto a ship. Food and weapons and cloth for the army.” I couldn’t quite keep the disgust out of my voice, and Durrel looked up at me, eyes serious.

“Go on,” he said. He’d marked one notation on the manifests with the edge of the beer bottle’s curved bottom, another with a crumb of piecrust.

“Well, I got into a fight with a dockhand over oranges,
and he told me they were waiting for some ship called the . . .” Pox, what was it? “
Belprisa
. Some Talancan vessel.”

“Talancan? Are you sure?”

I nodded. “Why?”

Durrel sat back. “We have a commercial treaty with Talanca,” he said slowly. “They trade freely with Llyvraneth, even during the war; their ships go through the embargoes, and —”

“And they’re not searched,” I finished.
Durrel was nodding. I felt a little thrill of heat. “It’s easy enough to disguise a ship’s origin,” I said. “False flags, a forged registry . . .”

“How easy?” he asked.

“I could do it.”

An altogether strange expression passed over Durrel’s face. He laid down the manifests and just
looked
at me, his face a mixture of surprise and — delight?

I fidgeted in my seat. “You do understand
I’m not really a jeweler’s daughter, right?”

He laughed suddenly, quick and surprised. “Since I met you,” he said. But he was grinning. “Forging ships? That’s . . . well, I’ll just bet you have some stories to tell.”

“Milord, you have no idea.” And we sat there, watching each other across the dingy, cluttered table, in the sputtering, tallowy candlelight. It softened the too-thin contours
of Durrel’s face, and made his charcoal-colored eyes look very bright. I grew uncomfortable with the intensity in his gaze and looked away, back to the documents. I heard Durrel sigh once and shift through the papers. After a moment, he gave a low whistle.

“Celyn, look,” he said, turning the singed ledger page toward me. “This here, where it’s burned away? This could say
Light of Yraine
,
which is listed on the manifests. If I’m reading this right, it looks like they were carrying cargo worth nearly forty thousand crowns.”

“That’s not what they reported to the harbormaster.” I showed him the manifests, where the
Light of Yraine
, seagoing carrack, was registered as leaving Gerse on that date with a cargo valued at only ten thousand crowns. We stared at the records together,
then flipped through them hastily, searching for other ships’ names in the manifests that might match the ledger page. We came across three more — the
Calthor
, the
Ponvi
, and the aforementioned
Belprisa
— all carrying cargo vastly more valuable than what the manifests showed.

“Forged ships’ registries? Unreported income? Burned records? What’s this all mean?” he said.

I looked up from
the records. “There’s something on those ships they don’t want anybody to know about.”

“But what?” Durrel said. “There’s no way to tell from these documents, except that the values don’t add up.”

“Cwalo thought it might be smuggled magical artifacts for the black market,” I said. “But these sums we’re talking about are much too large.”

Durrel’s voice was low and grim. “Well, whatever
it was, it got Talth killed.”

I lingered in Durrel’s cell a while longer, until the pies and the beer were long gone. We swapped wild stories, laughing over his nobbish adventures with Raffin, my near misses on the job in Gerse, as well as a few sweet shared memories of his cousin Meri, managing to keep the conversation well clear of Talth or war or murder. I felt curiously light and silly leaving
the Keep, and I could not chase away the image of those deep-set gray eyes or that contagious grin.

We had made good progress with the stolen records. We now knew for certain
something
suspicious was going on with Talth’s business, and I was trying to decide what my next step should be, along the path leading to the real murderer. On my way home, I stopped back at Grillig’s junk shop, wondering
how much I’d have to spend this time for information. If he even had any.

“Glad you made it back here,” he said by way of greeting. “Getting worried you weren’t going to show again.”

I leaned on the counter. “Do you have anything for me?”

“Maybe,” Grillig said. “I asked a few quiet questions, and I might have heard about that . . .
merchandise
you were interested in.”

“The
Tincture of the Moon?”

“Hist!” He waved me frantically to silence, even though we were the only ones in the shop. “I told you, even the
name
of that stuff is outlawed!”

“Then who’s been breaking the laws lately, Grillig?”

He scowled, but bent closer to me. “Apothecary up in the Temple District. I hear he’s the man to see if you have a rat problem.”

“That’s it? Where did you
hear this?”

“Like I’d tell you that. Nobody’d ever talk to me again.”

“You would
love
that,” I said. Grillig shrugged, but I couldn’t get him to tell me any more. Fair enough; how many potioners’ shops could there be in the Temple District?

The day had turned rainy, puddles collecting in the damp streets and making the city seem cooler and gloomy. The Temple District sat in the
Second Circle at the heart of the city, where there used to be six churches ringing a round courtyard. Now the ancient chapel to Mend-kaal had become a storehouse for municipal records, and the temple of Sar had been razed entirely. The only ones still standing were the Celyst building, its congregation more thriving than ever, and the temple to Zet, its gilded façade still maintained by generous
contributions from the city’s noble population. Planted between those two, as grand as its neighbors in its own inebriated way, was Tiboran’s house of worship, a massive tavern, theater, and inn known simply as the Temple. I hadn’t been down here in months, not since a glance around the area told me nothing had changed here except me.

Since Grillig hadn’t given me more specific directions,
I spent a fruitless hour poking around the back streets of the district, looking through apothecary shops and accumulating stains on my shoes I didn’t want to contemplate. Finally I rounded a corner where Temple Street collided with a nest of tangled alleyways, and saw what I’d been seeking, a shadowed storefront with a begrimed sign hanging outside, showing a mortar and pestle. The red snake twining
around the base of the mortar told passersby something important about this potioner’s shop: They were authorized to carry poisons.

A bell went off as I opened the door, and the sunlight disappeared behind me when it swung shut. It was dark inside, cramped and tiny — a big man could stand in the aisle and nearly touch each opposite wall, if he didn’t crack his head on the low ceiling first.
In the dim light, I made out neat rows of shelves holding bottles and boxes and pottery jars, all with dusty, illegible labels. At the sound of the bell, a bespectacled man with a balding head shuffled down the shelves behind the counter and peered at me. His sharp, pinched face and wide, unblinking eyes gave him the look of a mouse. I stepped up to the counter and dipped a hasty sort of half curtsy.

“Yes?” the potioner inquired, staring me up and down. “I’ve not seen you before.”

“No, I, uh — I work at one of the big houses on Castle Street.” I pitched my voice shy and low, shook up my syllables to the unrefined accent of a serving girl. “My mistress sent me here for something to kill the rats.” I waited — Castle Street was a long way from here; how suspicious would he be?

“You look like a strong girl,” the shopman said finally. “I’m sure you have no trouble dealing with rats.”

I didn’t let him see the sigh, but dug in my dress for one of Lord Ragn’s gold coins — how much money would a fine lady give her servant to bribe a shopkeeper? “My mistress says she wants it done clean.”

The man regarded the coin for a moment, not touching it. Finally he said in
a low voice, “How big a rat are we talking about?”

And here I thought I was going to have to give him a little push. Instead, I looked around furtively, as if anxious, and swallowed.

The potioner regarded me a moment, and then palmed the coin and began rustling under the counter. He brought out a ragged, clothbound book and cleared a space for it. “There are a dozen things that will
effectively deal with a rat problem,” he said conversationally, heaving open the book. It looked like an herbal, handwritten notes beside drawings of plants and addenda scrawled in the margins. “The question is, how long do you want it to take, and whether you want it, you know, to look natural after. Take monkshood, for instance. Very fast acting, but violent. Distasteful.” He gave a little shudder
and flipped through the pages. “Or nightshade. A tidier death, but trickier — it’s hard to get the dosage just right.”

I stared at him. What if I
had
just come in after rat poison? What would he sell me then? I watched the pages turn, but as he pulled his finger down the menu of toxins, the bell on the door rang, and somebody shoved it open.

I jumped a little — fair enough, I was supposed
to be a nervous serving girl plotting a murder with her mistress — but the shopkeeper barely looked up. He pushed the herbal my way and turned to deal with the other customers, a pair of older townswomen who regaled him with detailed complaints of their rheumatism and flux. I only half listened, browsing through the book and its pictures of herbs, powders, anatomical diagrams, celestial symbols.
. . . I had a passing familiarity with such a volume, having assisted Lady Nemair in her stillroom during my tenure at Bryn Shaer.

Even so, I nearly flipped right past it, a color drawing of the shadowy gray full moon of Marau, ringed by a pearly halo. The artist had left out the bright dot of the Nameless One, the tiny moon that follows close behind her father, god of the dead. But that
hardly mattered, because he
had
included a title, in bold stroking letters.
Tincture of the Moon of Marau.

And a recipe:
By the full light of Marau, dissolve in three parts strong red wine, one white pearl and one black. Distill until Marau has turned to new, and strain. Add to this solution three grains of blue monkshood, a drop of quicksilver, and a full measure of ground silver. When Marau
is full again, heat over low flame until the liquid glows with moonslight. This decoction may be mixed with any liquid and will retain Marau’s power, but it will be especially potent when returned to the liquid of its birth, red wine.

I read that paragraph over and over, feeling a frown start to form. Silver, pearls, and red wine — stupid and expensive, but not really harmful. Quicksilver
and monkshood, though, were deadly. This was a nob’s poison. I could only imagine what such a dose would cost. Did this guy have any? Did I want to know the answer to that?

I didn’t have a chance to decide; the other customers left and the shopkeeper scurried right back to me. I had flipped back a few pages, my thoughts clamped down hard.

“Well?” the shopkeeper inquired. “Have we decided?
Maybe a nice preparation of alum?”

I looked around the room and took a deep breath, my finger still lodged in the herbal. “I think my mistress was looking for something a little more exclusive. Exotic. Expensive.” With the slightest emphasis on that last word, I turned the book to the page with the recipe that had killed Durrel’s wife.

The shopkeeper paused for a moment. “That will
take some time to prepare,” he said finally. “A month, at least. Can your mistress wait that long?”

A month. Did Durrel have that long? What if the Ceid started pressing for a decision from the king? What if they got tired of waiting? I just bit my lip and nodded. And then I remembered that I didn’t actually want any of the stuff myself; I was trying to learn who else might have bought some.
How was I going to get this guy to tell me
that
?

“Of course,” the potioner continued thoughtfully, “I may have some left from the last batch.”

“The what?” I said sharply, forgetting to be the timid servant.

“The last batch.” The apothecary turned back to the shelves behind him and wheeled a ladder into place in front of one glassed-in case. Climbing up, he teetered at the top as
he fumbled for a ring of keys at his belt. “It’s surprising you’d come in and ask for this, you know. It’s very uncommon; I don’t think I’ve made up more than one or two batches since I was an apprentice. And I’ve kept shop here for near thirty years.” He reached inside the case and drew out a dark bottle, held it up to the light, shook it a bit. “And then, I get two orders in one summer. Extraordinary.”

That was one word for it. I could think of another
.
“Really?” I said, trying to sound merely conversational. “Who bought the other?”

The potioner seemed to dislike what he saw in the jar, and climbed back down to the counter, shaking his head. “Oh, some fellow. I hadn’t seen him around here before. I’m sorry, I’ll have to make new.” Consulting the herbal, he quoted me a price, asking
if my mistress would pay. If the poison wasn’t potent enough, the price was.

“How much will that buy?”

The shopkeeper showed me the bottle, a brown vial about the size of my hand.

“And how many, erm, rats will that dispatch?”

“This should fix you up nicely,” he said. “It only takes a little” — he held up a smaller vial, no bigger than my thumb — “for your average-sized vermin.
It won’t work
fast
, mind you, but it gets the job done.”

I could feel myself getting breathless even now, and I wasn’t really going to buy anything. I’d had it right from the beginning — a nob’s poison. Who had spent so much to ensure Talth Ceid such a pricey and rarified death?

“That price is fine,” I said faintly. “This other customer, who was he?”

The potioner looked nearsightedly
into the distance, frowning. “Nobody I knew. Definitely not one of my regulars. Young fellow, I think. Had a girl with him, tall, pretty. Not like you.”

I stared hard at him for a long moment, feeling suddenly cold. “Describe them.”

“Well, he was just your average rich lad, noble, at a guess. Quiet. Wore a sword and a big ring, a bowing dog, if I remember aright. She was the looker.
Put me in mind of Zet, she did, with all that golden hair and height on her.”

“And they bought this poison together.” It was hard to get the words out.

“Well, they
ordered
it together, but if you ask me, it was the lady what wanted it. But when it came time to pick it up, he came back alone.”

I turned without thanking him, something fluttering loose in my chest, and wandered out
onto Temple Street, nearly into the path of an oncoming oxcart. They’d ordered it together — the young nob with the bowing dog on his ring, and the tall blonde who looked like Zet. I felt sick. I knew that bowing dog all too well. It was the seal of the House of Decath.

I was such a fool! The arguments, the evidence, the witness . . . it had all been there, if I’d only
looked
at it.

Koya and Durrel had bought the poison to kill Koya’s mother, and then Durrel had gone and fetched it home again.

My friend Durrel Decath was almost as good a liar as I was.