“I’ve made no secret of my knowledge of herblore,” Mia replied. “The difference between a remedy and a requiem can be as little as half a dram. And if we’re taking tally, my meal was dosed too.”
“Then how comes it you were not poisoned with the rest of your fellows?”
“I didn’t eat my dinner,” Mia spat.
“The second time in as many months you’ve dodged a suspicious meal.”
“Have you looked under Furian’s bandages?” Mia demanded. “It’s fucking sickening. The smell would put a scabdog off its meal, let alone the sight.”
“And so you just happen to give your draft to my dog and watch him die? Then just happen to have the ingredients to save the lives of your fellows?”
Mia turned to fully face Arkades, teeth clenched. “You accuse me of this? Poisoning an eleven-year-old girl?”
Arkades ignored her, turned to Leona. “I say if we seek a serpent among us, begin with the one who best knows poison, neh?”
Rage took Mia then, bright and blinding, and she took a step toward Arkades with her fists clenched. The big man rose with that surprising speed, shoulders squared, chin low. She could feel his growl in her chest.
“Try,” he said. “Just try…”
“Executus, enough,” Leona snapped. “Crow is champion of this collegium. She already stands atop the mountain. What in the Everseeing’s name would she gain by murdering all my Falcons, let alone Maggot besides?”
“What would anyone gain?” Magistrae asked, looking around the room. “If we seek the killer, first we must find the motive. How does anyone profit from this?”
“Your father would profit, Domina,” Mia said.
Leona shook her head. “He would not dare…”
“Think on it,” Mia replied. “He owns all your debts. You owe him coin that you simply don’t have. How have you made up your shortfalls to creditors in the past?”
“… I am still working the figures,” Leona replied.
“Aye,” Mia nodded. “But even with the Whitekeep purse in consideration, have you pondered any way to conjure over three thousand silver pieces that doesn’t involve selling at least a few of your gladiatii to Pandemonium?”
Leona looked to Arkades, then to Magistrae.
“No,” she admitted.
“So what happens if all your gladiatii are dead and you’ve none to sell?”
“Then I lose everything,” Leona said. “The magni. This collegium. Everything.”
“Is your father the kind of man who murders to get his way? And would it be so hard for a man with that much money to hold sway over one of your guards? Or perhaps someone even closer to you?”
“Impertinent wretch,” Arkades spat. “Just what are you implying?”
“Only that there’s two kinds of loyalty,” Mia replied. “The kind paid for with love, and the kind paid for with silver.”
“Domina, this—”
Leona held up her hand, cutting her magistrae’s objection off at the knee. She turned to her houseguard captain, her voice cold with command.
“Gannicus, I want every bedchamber in the keep searched. Every chest, every cupboard, every crack. You and your fellow houseguards will search by threes, and you will not search your own belongings, am I clear?”
The captain slapped a fist to his chest. “Aye, Domina.”
Gannicus spun on his heel, gathered the other houseguards and marched across the yard. Scowling dark, Arkades cast one last look at his murdered dog, the murdered girl, and began limping after them.
“Where are you going, Executus?” Leona asked.
“… To assist the search, Domina.”
“Gannicus has the matter in hand. Take Finger and gather firewood for a pyre.” She glanced briefly at Maggot’s body. “It would not do to allow them to linger in this heat. They must be sent to the Hearth, and the gentle keeping of Lady Keph.”
Looking Arkades up and down, Mia could see his pupils were dilated, his breathing quickened. Fight-or-flight instinct kicking in.
“… he fears…,” came the whisper in her ear.
But finally, as always, the executus bowed.
“Your whisper, my will.”
*
Mia had never smelled a burning body before.
She’d smelled death, certainly. The noxious stench of sundered bellies. The sweet, high perfume of decay. But until she stood in the courtyard of Crow’s Nest, listening to dry wood crackle and snap over the song of the sea, she’d never smelled a funeral pyre. She’d read stories as a child—grieving lovers or orphaned children, sending their loved ones off to the hereafter atop a pillar of flame. There was a kind of romance to it, she’d thought. Something fierce and bright and enduring. But the books never talked about the smell. The burning hair and boiling blood and blackening skin.
It was hideous.
They’d laid Maggot atop the firewood that Arkades and Finger had gathered, Otho beside her. It wasn’t the grandest bier ever created, but they’d used all the fuel the kitchen had, stacked in neat rows over three feet high. The pair were wrapped in simple cotton shifts, faces uncovered to the sky. Dona Leona spoke quiet prayers to the Everseeing over their bodies. A wreath of flowers was placed upon their chests. A small mahogany coin beneath their tongues.*
And then, they were set aflame.
Most of the gladiatii held their grief back, but Bryn was weeping openly—this was the second funeral she’d attended in a week, all the wounds from her brother’s loss torn open and bleeding fresh. Sidonius was the only other gladiatii to let tears fall, those big brawny shoulders heaving up and down. Mia wondered at the riddle of him, that brand on his chest, the lecherous buffoonery, all at odds with the fellow who’d spoken with such adoration of her father, and tried to comfort her in the dark.
The flames burned brighter, the smoke rising into the blinding sky. The crash of distant waves. The cry of circling gulls. Dona Leona’s plaintive prayer to Aa.
With the rites spoken, Leona hung her head, walked solemnly from the pyre. Mia watched her trudge across the yard, the smoke stinging in her unbandaged eye. She knew now Leona was a product of the violence she’d grown up with, that at their hearts, the two of them weren’t so dissimilar. If Mia’s childhood had been a different one, it could just as easily have been her sitting as mistress of this keep. But a part of her couldn’t help but blame the dona for this. If only this collegium didn’t exist, if only Maggot had never been sold here …
No. You have no time for “if only” …
Leona stepped up to the verandah, just as the guard she’d placed in command of the search returned from inside the keep. Mia watched them sidelong, Gannicus speaking softly, glancing to Arkades. He handed what looked to be a folded piece of fabric to his mistress, and Mia’s stomach turned.
“Arkades?” Leona said, turning to her executus.
The man looked up from the burning pyre. The same fear she’d seen in the infirmary lingered in the man’s eyes.
“Mi Dona?”
“Explain this,” the dona said, holding out her hand.
Clutched in her fingers was a silken underslip, edged with fine lace.
The gladiatii turned to stare, the pyre still blazing in the background. Arkades looked to the warriors he’d trained, his expression darkening. He could barely meet Leona’s eyes, his voice edged with shame.