things into account. As a mother I want you to be happy with your prince, but as archa I have other well-beings to consider too.”
Savedra continued combing for a moment, then gave up and twisted her hair into a thick knot at her nape. No one whose opinion she valued would care what she looked like right now. “Just remember, schemes that hurt Nikos will hurt me as well.”
“None of us can stop the world from hurting those we love. The best we can do is be there to ease the pain.” Her mother draped the white silk across Savedra’s lap and went to the bathroom; water gurgled, and she returned with a damp cloth. “So wash your face and go to your prince. You could have made worse choices, even if he is an Alexios.”
Savedra couldn’t help but smile at the approbation-the strongest an archa of House Severos might ever grant their ancient rival. “Mother, can’t you leave us out of your machinations?”
Nadesda rarely frowned, but her beautiful face stilled with sadness. “Even if I could, others won’t. I can only promise to spare you any suffering that I can, and to keep you innocent of anything that might compromise you.”
Savedra wanted to argue. Wanted to scream. But she was too tired, too empty. More than anything she simply wanted to go to Nikos. Her hands tightened on the washcloth till water dripped onto the dress in her lap. She’d need a new one made, anyway. The palace would be awash in white for a year.
“Thank you,” she said at last. Then she began to scrub away the clinging smoke, and the ghosts of tears she hadn’t yet shed.
CHAPTER 1
In the Sepulcher, death smelled like roses.
Sachets of petals and braziers of incense lined the marble halls and scented oil lamps burned throughout the long vault, twining ribbons of rose and jasmine and myrrh through the chill air. Meant to drown the smell of blood and rot that crept from the corpse-racks in the walls, but death couldn’t be undone so easily. The raw copper scent of recent violence teased past the sweetness, creeping into Isyllt Iskaldur’s sinuses as she studied the dead woman on the slab.
Blue-tinged lips parted slightly, expressionless in death, but the slash across her throat grinned, baring red meat and pale flashes of bone. Barely enough blood in her to settle-some clotted like rust in brass-blonde hair, pasted damp-frizzed tendrils to her cheeks. Lines down her ribs showed where corset stays had pressed into flesh. Her clothing, cut away by competent, uncaring attendants, was shelved in an oubliette of an evidence room upstairs.
Isyllt crossed her arms beneath her breasts and shivered in her long black coat. “Where did you find her?” Her breath trailed away in a shimmering plume; spells of cold etched the stones.
“In the Garden,” Khelsea Shar said, “in an alley just after dusk.” The police inspector lounged against the wall between corpse-drawers, a short, dark woman in the garish orange coat of the Vigiles Urbani. Frescoed vines and leaves swirled behind her-the builders had tried to make the room cheery, but no amount of paint or plaster could disguise the death that steeped these stones. “She was cold and stiff when we got there.”
Isyllt frowned at the dead woman, brushed a finger against a lock of yellow hair. A prostitute, then, most likely. A foreigner too, from the coloring-Vallish like Isyllt, perhaps, or Rosian. Refugees from Ashke Ros crowded tenements and shantytowns in the inner city, and more and more turned to the Garden for work.
Isyllt pressed gently on the woman’s jaw and it opened to reveal nearly a full set of tea-stained teeth. Her elbows were still stiff, knees immobile. Rigor had only just begun to fade. “A day dead?”
“That’s our guess. It was raining when we found her, and she was soaked, but there were hardly any insects. The alley is visible from the street-she couldn’t have lain there all day.”
“So dumped. Why call me?” The Garden was the Vigils’ jurisdiction, unless the Crown was somehow involved, or the crime was beyond the city police. And while pride insisted that the Vigils’ necromancers weren’t as well trained as the Arcanostoi or Crown Investigators, Isyllt knew they were perfectly competent. She bent over the white stone table, examining the wound. The knife had nicked bone. The killer was strong and sure-handed-left- handed. “What can I tell you about this that you don’t already know?”
“Look at her thighs.”
The woman’s legs tapered from flaring hips to gently muscled calves and delicate ankles. No spider veins or calluses on her feet-chipped gold paint decorated her toenails. Flesh once soft and supple felt closer to wax under Isyllt’s careful fingers. Death whispered over her hand, lapped catlike at her skin. The cabochon black diamond on her right hand flickered fitfully, ghostlight sparking in its crystalline depths.
She ran a gentle hand between the woman’s thighs, tracing the same path as a dozen customers, a dozen lovers. But this time there was no response, no passion real or feigned. Only stiffening muscles and cold flesh.
No wounds, no bruises. No sign of rape. No violation but that of the blade.
“What am I-” She paused. On the inside of the left leg, near the crease of the groin, she touched a narrow ridge of scar tissue. More than one. She pressed against stiff flesh to get a better look. Old marks, healed and scarred long ago. Teeth marks. She found the same marks on the other leg, some only recently scabbed.
Very sharp teeth. Isyllt knew what such bites felt like.
“Do you think this had anything to do with her death?” She kept looking, but found no fresh wounds.
“Maybe.” Khelsea reached into an inside pocket of her coat and pulled out a folded piece of silk. “But this is why I called you.”
Isyllt stretched across the dead woman and took the cloth; something small and hard was hidden in its folds. She recognized the shape of a ring before she finished unwrapping it.
A heavy band of gold, skillfully wrought, set with a sapphire the size of a woman’s thumbnail. A rampant griffin etched the stone, tiny but detailed. A master’s work. A royal work.
“Where was this?” A knot colder than the room drew tight in her stomach.
“Sewn inside her camisole, clumsy new stitches. Her purse was missing.”
A royal signet in a dead whore’s clothes. Isyllt blew a sharp breath through her nose. “How many know?”
“Only me and my autopsist.” Khelsea snorted. “You think I’d wave something like this in front of the constables?”
Isyllt stared at the ring. A woman’s ring, but no woman alive had the right to wear it. She looked down at the body. A sliver of blue iris showed beneath half-closed lids, already milky. “What was her name?”
“Forsythia.”
Not a real name-at least she hoped it wasn’t. Not many mothers branded their daughters with a prostitute’s name at birth.
Isyllt dipped a finger into the gaping wound, licked off coagulated blood and fluids. Khelsea grimaced theatrically, but the inspector’s nerves and stomach were hard to upset.
Cold jellied blood, bittersweet and thin with rainwater. No trace of illness or taint, nothing deadly save for the quantity spilled. The taste coated Isyllt’s tongue.
“Forsythia. Are you there?”
No answer, not even a shiver. Her power could raise the corpse off its cold table and dance it around the room, but no ghost lingered to answer her questions. She sighed. “They never stay when you need them to. She might be wherever she was killed, though.” She nibbled the last speck of blood from under her fingernail.
Gently she pushed back Forsythia’s kohl-smeared eyelids.
Isyllt hoped for the killer’s face, but instead she found a sunset. Clouds glowed rose and carnelian as the sun
