Bone Palace, The - Amanda Downum Page 0,63
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 Erisín. 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