A familiar signature scrawled across the bottom, a so-called witness. Thratia Ganal.
And Pelkaia’s revenge had cleared the way for her. Made it easier to take power.
Trembling, she shoved the folded papers into the waistband of her son’s pants and laid her forehead against the support timber of the shelves. The sel covering her face shimmered with the contact, but no one nearby was alive to see it.
Galtro and Faud weren’t negligent then, just cowards. Had they still deserved to die?
She wanted nothing more than to dive back into those files, to spend the night digging up any hint of a name who’d had a hand in what’d been done to Kel. But she couldn’t be caught here, surrounded by so much death. Couldn’t let innocent mine workers find her, witnesses that would have to be wiped out.
She shook herself. There was little she could do now, save escape. Take this knowledge with her. Strike back, and this time – this time – at the arachnidan hand that deserved it.
Just one more name.
Chapter 21
Banch loomed at Ripka’s side, his breath coming in irritating snort-gasps through the handkerchief he kept shoved up against his nose. As much as she wanted to scold him for it, she really couldn’t blame him. The four corpses had been left sitting no more than a half-day, but even in the cool interior of the Hub the desert heat had set them to festering.
Corpses. She had to keep thinking of them all as corpses.
“Those are Thratia’s men.” He heaved out between cut-short breaths, and she wished he hadn’t bothered. Whatever had happened here, she had no idea how to deal with it. She was numb to the core, her mind stilled by the chilling of her heart. Galtro was dead. That three of the four corpses were Thratia’s people brought her no comfort.
She had hoped the watchers found dead in the hallways of the Hub would be the worst of it. A sad little hope. A cruel hope.
Two watchers hovered nearby, awaiting direction, the shock of finding their fellows dead still fresh on their young faces. Their presence pressed against her, spurred her to say something. Anything. She was their watch captain. She was supposed to be in control.
“Check the bodies of Thratia’s men for any weapons which may have inflicted the wounds we have thus far discovered,” she ordered.
The two watchers snapped to it, their eyes bright and eager. She was jealous, in a way. To have something specific to do – to have an order given to you – seemed like such a luxury now. Try as she might, she could not shake the feeling that Galtro would rise at any moment from his cold, sticky pool and tell her it was all a stupid joke, or a terrible mistake. Her stomach felt hollow, her voice without command. She kept her hands clasped behind her back to hide their tremble.
“You think Thratia had a fourth man here, one who got away?” Banch asked.
She shrugged, mind feeling sticky-slow, unable to catch up with reality, let alone speculate upon the past. “Could be. But why leave the bodies of his fellows behind?”
“Maybe he couldn’t get rid of them quick enough.”
“Maybe.” Couldn’t he stop asking her stupid questions? She had no answers. He knew that.
“You’re not buying that, though,” Banch persisted.
“No,” she grated.
“Well?”
His prompting jolted her. Ripka forced herself to survey the wreckage of the room for the fifth time since she’d set foot in it. It was her job. She was good at it. She would find the answers.
For Galtro, and her fallen watchers.
She had no real way of knowing who died first, but the way Galtro sat with his back against the wall marked him as different than the rest. The three were all looking away from him, their bodies angled around a point within the record shelves. It didn’t make sense to her that Galtro would deal all three of them killing blows and then slink over to bleed his last against the wall.
And then there were the footprints.
There weren’t many, and most were smudged beyond recognition, but a single set stood out amongst the uniformity of Thratia’s people. A pair of work boots – quality, sturdy construction by the tread of them – had left a set of prints behind that didn’t match up with any of the feet still in the room.
“I think they were all surprised. Every last one of them,” she murmured, drawing a raised eyebrow from Banch.
“Captain!” Watcher Taellen poked his head around a shelf, face bright with the rush of new-found information. “Looks like there’s some files missing back here.”
“Good work, Taellen. Take note of all the files near it and the nameplate on the box.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Thratia’s voice threatened to cut away what remained of Ripka’s sense of calm.
The would-be warden strode into the room, her lips curled to one side and her arms crossed low over her stomach. Thratia surveyed the remains of her men and got her gaze stuck on Galtro just long enough to make Ripka’s gut twist. Ripka fought down an urge to rip Thratia’s eyes from her sockets and leave them staring up at Galtro’s corpse for good.
“Pardon, Thratia, but we are in the middle of an investigation here. I understand you may have known some of the men involved, but it is our prerogative to get to the bottom of this mess,” Ripka said, feeling her own hands curl into fists at the small of her back.
“May have known? Watch captain, these three fine souls were some of my best. I sent them along to keep an eye on Galtro after I heard those terrible rumors of a doppel, and look what that got them. You back there!” She jerked a finger toward Watcher Taellen and his partner. “Leave what you’re doing and get out here.”
Skies bless them, her two rookies lingered, hands hovering near the handles of their cudgels, just at the edge of the shelf. They’d stopped what they were doing all right, but not out of any desire to obey Thratia. They were wary, knees tensed and shoulders squared, waiting for direction.
“I am sorry that you lost good men, but the situation is such that I must ask you to leave.”
“Ask me to leave?” she snorted. “You got it backwards, watch captain. Seeing as there’s no longer any competition for the wardenship, I’m within my rights to assume control of all warden duties until such a time as the election can be properly held. Isn’t that right, Callia?”
Ripka startled as she caught sight of the Valathean noble standing two short paces behind Thratia. Callia was a willow-thin woman of impressive height, her overstretched limbs swathed in a flowing, silken material that Ripka suspected was far too unbreathable for the desert clime.
A girl approaching her blossom years hovered in the imperial’s wake, wrapped in the same sky-blue silks her mistress wore, a folded parasol tucked under one small arm. The girl’s complexion was lighter than her mistress, betraying deeper Catari intermingling than either Thratia or Callia. Ripka assessed her as the imperial’s pet sensitive, and gave the girl a tight nod. The girl didn’t even blink.
Callia broadcast an air of authority that made Ripka’s skin prickle. She kept her hands folded before her, calm and ready, her face impassive. A small pang of jealousy reared in Ripka’s chest as she noted the smoothness of the Valathean’s shadow-dark cheeks, unworn by the desert sun, but her jealousy faded as Ripka took in the woman’s profession.
Over Callia’s fine silks she wore a long white coat, the hem of it just grazing the tops of her knees. Ripka swallowed and resisted an urge to step back. Whitecoats were the empire’s special investigators, though Ripka knew they preferred to call themselves researchers. What in the sweet skies was Thratia doing with a whitecoat on her arm? Had the doppel been telling the truth – did Thratia seek a purge for Aransa? It made no sense.