The Bone Palace

Isyllt finally asked, licking spiced salt and lemon off her fingers.

Dahlia looked up from her nearly empty trencher, muscles working along the curve of her jaw. She scrubbed a sheen of oil off her mouth with the back of one hand. “I found someone who knew her. Who knows her name.”

A true name, along with the lock of hair now safely tucked into her kit, might be enough to conjure with. “Will your contact talk to me?”

“He will. But he wants to know that you’ll do something.”

The protesters-Rosian and natives both-were yelling about justice and wrongs, about the law’s disregard; she didn’t appreciate the reminder. Some onlookers shouted encouragement, others heckled and jeered. Go home, some called, and the increasingly familiar cabbage- eaters.

Isyllt frowned at the grease-stained bread in her hands, breaking off chunks and tossing them across the cobbles. Brown clouds of birds descended on the morsels. “I want to find Forsythia’s killer. I want to stop him. But I can’t promise you justice.”

Dahlia laughed bitterly. “If you did, I’d know you were lying.” She devoured her bread in quick, methodical bites and dusted her hands on her skirt. “Meet me at the Briar Patch tonight, after the Evensong bells.”

She vanished well enough without sorcery.

The protests in Archlight weren’t the only ones. Isyllt passed more crowds on her way through Elysia-angry Rosians demanding attention, and locals trying to ignore them or shout them down. Of Vigils she saw very few.

Civil unrest wasn’t enough to scare away the Briar Patch’s custom. The tavern was packed, and a wall of noise and heat rolled over Isyllt as she opened the door. Ciaran played elsewhere, replaced onstage by a trio of hennaed women singing bawdy songs and dancing with pantomimed drunkenness. The crowd knew all the words, or invented new ones with enough conviction that it hardly mattered.

Isyllt slipped in just before the cathedral bells tolled. She wore a plain grey dress and dark cloak instead of her usual leathers, with soft knit gloves to hide her hands. It was a guise that would avoid certain kinds of attention, but might attract others. Luckily the drunks were far more interested in the charms of the performers than in a skinny woman lurking in the corner. Even Isyllt couldn’t look away when one dancer teetered on the edge of the stage, pinwheeling her arms and leaning so far forward that only a scrap of lace kept her breasts from spilling out of her bodice. A dozen hands stretched out to steady or grope her, but she twisted away with an almost accidental grace, stumbling into her nearest companion instead and sprawling them both across the boards in a tangle of curls and petticoats.

Amidst the shouts and laughter she heard coughing and sneezes, sniffles drowned in sleeves and handkerchiefs. Sickness had its seasons, as with everything. Cholera and bronze fever in the warm months, influenza in the cold. Influenza had claimed the lives of more than one childhood acquaintance, but she had never loathed and dreaded it like the summer plagues. From the cholera that took her mother to the fever that claimed Lychandra and nearly Kiril with her, illness was the one thing that left Isyllt helpless and useless-she would face vampires and murderers over that any day.

A quarter-hour after the Evensong faded, Dahlia emerged from the kitchens. Catching Isyllt’s eye, she nodded toward the back stairs. Isyllt followed, narrowly avoiding being soaked with beer when a table toasted too enthusiastically. Someone groped at her skirt and she was hard pressed not to break his wrist as she dodged.

Dahlia unlocked a room on the second floor and kindled a lamp on a narrow table. A hard wooden chair and an equally narrow bed were the only other furniture, all grey with age. A cheap room for the night, not the sort of place to bring clients. Isyllt put her back to the unwindowed wall and waited for her contact.

She wasn’t particularly surprised when Mekaran walked in. The peacock wore black tonight, snug leather trousers and a long silk jacket. His bootheels tapped softly on the hollow boards, nearly lost in the clamor rising from below. His face was stark and beautiful under white powder and kohl, and the lamplight glowed in his sunset hair. He closed the door behind him and turned the lock.

Isyllt raised her eyebrows. “So you could have answered my questions when I first came round, and saved us all some time?”

“I don’t hand out my friends’ names to necromancers, even when they’re dead. Especially when they’re dead. I’ve heard enough empty promises from the marigolds. But Dahlia thinks you really mean to help.”

“I mean to catch Forsythia’s killer, and make sure he doesn’t do it again.”

“Ilora,” he said after a long silence. “Her name was Ilora, though she tried hard enough to forget it. What is it you think you can do with that?”

“Find her ghost, I hope. She didn’t linger with her body, nor where we found it. But since she was killed elsewhere, she may not be lost beyond the mirror yet. And if I can find her, perhaps I can find her killer.”

He cocked a painted eyebrow. “So it wasn’t that demon lover of hers? The vrykolos?”

“No. He didn’t know who did it, either.”

“Didn’t?”

“He’s dead now too.”

Mekaran’s lip curled, then tightened in a frown. “I want to say good. But perhaps I shouldn’t. Lori cared for him, as repulsive as I thought it.”

Isyllt sank onto the edge of the bed. The sheets were clean, but still musty from a succession of too many bodies. “Tell me about her.”

The wariness returned. “Why do you care?”

“The more I know, the easier it will be to find her.”

He began to pace, lithe as a caged cat. “She was Ilora Lizveteva once. From Gamayun.” Grey eyes gleamed as he glanced at Isyllt. “My mother was from Sirin-different provinces, but both sacked by the Ordozh. They met when Lori first came to Erisin. My mother asked me to watch out for her. I tried.”

He hesitated, with the pained look of one on the verge of breaking a confidence. Isyllt waited silently, trying not to fidget as the bed frame ground into her sacrum through the narrow mattress.

“Lori was raped on her way to Selafai. Not by the Ordozh, but by other refugees. My mother always told me how the Rosians set great store on virginity. It has power, whether kept or given freely, and hers was stolen in exchange for blood and bruises. I tried to help her, but it marked her deep. When she learned how the flowers give up their old names and take new ones…” He shook his head. “She wanted to be Daffodil, like me-thank the saints someone else was already using it. I don’t think I could have stomached that. I tried to talk her out of coming to the Garden at all, but so many of her people-of our people-end up here. The lucky ones, at least, who don’t sell themselves in filthy alleys in Harrowgate. And Lori was beautiful-all her scars on the inside. I tried to look after her.” He folded his arms across his stomach as if he could ward off his failure.

“You’re more than an innkeeper,” Isyllt said.

Mekaran unbuttoned one sleeve and rolled it up. Sinew and lean muscle flexed under pale skin. He held out his arm to show her the underside, and the black mark branded there: a rose, with barbed vines twining beneath it. “Do you know what this means?”

She’d never seen the mark before, but anyone from Elysia had heard the stories. “You’re a thorn. An enforcer for the Rose Council.”

“I thought I could help her. Keep her safe.”

Raucous laughter rose to fill the silence.

“Is that enough for you?” Mekaran asked. He straightened his sleeve with precise, exaggerated movements.

“I think so. Thank you.” She stood, careful of her elbows in the narrow corner.

Mekaran shifted his hips, planting himself squarely in front of the door. “You’re not doing this without me.”

Isyllt’s lips tightened. “This is an investigation, not a public spectacle.” She withheld the word Crown, and so kept it from being a lie.

“This is Rose Council business. The Roses don’t like it when their flowers are murdered, and they know better than to trust your authorities. And,” he said with a narrow smile, “if I understand your sorcery, you’ll have better luck with me here. I knew her, after all.”

Isyllt snorted, but couldn’t dispute the truth of that. “Here?” A wave of her hand encompassed the narrow