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 room, the noise and stink of spilled beer rising through the floorboards. “You want me summoning ghosts in your inn?”
He didn’t budge. “You’re a professional, aren’t you?”
She couldn’t argue with that either. “Fine. But you’ll not breathe a word of anything we hear to anyone. Not even the Roses. Neither of you,” she added, glancing at Dahlia, who had curled into the shadows of the opposite corner. The girl was very good at staying silent and still.
Mekaran nodded slowly. “My oaths don’t require me to report all the details. If it will help find Lori’s killer.”
Isyllt studied the room. She could cast a circle and go for theatrics, but it would be ridiculous given how the floorboards gapped. Instead she shed her cloak, leaving it puddled across the foot of the bed, and removed the exorcist’s kit from her skirt pocket. It served just as well for summonings.
“Latch the shutters,” she told Dahlia, sinking cross-legged onto the floor between the bed and table, “and douse the lamp.” A tiny bit of theatrics never hurt.
Darkness filled the room as the flame died, broken only by the light slivering between the floorboards and through the shutters. It retreated again as she conjured witchlight, settling in the corners thick as tar.
“Sit facing me,” Isyllt told Mekaran. “Since you’re so eager to be my focus.” She opened the kit and drew out the scrap of silk tied around the lock of yellow hair. The cold light didn’t flatter Forsythia’s shade of blonde.
He sank to the floor, the creases on his brow drawn stark and black. “What do I need to do?”
“Keep still, and hold this.” She set the lock of hair on his palm, and his fingers convulsed around it. Next she laid her mirror between them, directly under the floating light.
“Ilora Lizveteva. By flesh and memory I call you, and by the name of your birth.”
A shiver answered; the woman’s soul wasn’t yet lost. But neither did she respond. Isyllt repeated the invocation. This time the shiver was stronger, a wordless denial. Something opposed her, something that smelled of sorcery and cinnamon, rust and copper. Blood, and blood magic.
Despite many superstitions, necromancy and haematurgy had little in common. Blood had just as much to do with life; Isyllt’s magic began when the last red pulse slowed and cooled. But any street witch or charmwife knew how powerful blood was in spellcasting. She slipped a scalpel from her kit and stripped her gloves off with her teeth.
The blade traced a cold line down her palm, beside the scar of the wound that had broken bone and severed tendon. Heat followed a heartbeat later, and crimson raveled across the creases of her palm.