brother killed Sendoa.”
She sat very still, waiting. No point denying it, after all. If she had to, Kacha could get out of here with no problem.
A sudden smile from the priest. “You aren’t your brother though. While the guild still wants you found, the church has no quarrel with you even if the prelate does. All your truths are well kept here; nothing goes beyond these walls except to the Clockwork God. What is it you were wanting?”
“Sendoa. I… I’m not sure whether Vocho killed him.”
The priest raised an eyebrow. “Not sure?”
Something about this priest, with her calm smile and attentive look, made Kacha want to spill it all out, every last thing. It’d been inside too long, and she’d no one to tell it to. “I don’t think… OK, maybe he did.” The first time she’d really admitted the possibility to herself. “Maybe he did, but that’s not Vocho. He’s not a killing sort of man, unless he has to on guild business. Only then, I swear. But…”
“But you aren’t sure?”
She sat in silence for a long moment. Vocho was her brother, and she loved the annoying little sod, but… It always came back to but. Still, there was something more to this. Something Vocho hadn’t told her, perhaps didn’t know himself.
“You know they held a trial in his absence?” The priest offered her some water, but she declined with a shake of her head.
“They did?”
The priest reached out and patted her hand like she was about to tell Kacha someone was dead and was sorry about it. “Your brother killed him, there can be no doubt. For money, it looks like. Did you know about the gambling debts?”
“What?”
And then the priest told her the rest.
Interlude
Twelve years earlier
Kacha knocked on the door and waited.
She’d been in Guild Master Eneko’s rooms often enough before, but there was something about his note that had set her senses on edge. He’d used a note for starters, when it was more usual to send one of the first years, who took turns being messengers when they weren’t drilling basics or learning to read. Yet today a note via a boy she knew could hardly read yet. The note hadn’t said much – a summons to Eneko’s quarters with an aside that she tell no one where she was going. She’d folded the paper into little squares, hidden it in the pocket of her breeches and made for Eneko’s just past the dinner bell, when everyone would be in the mess.
It was probably nothing, but her hands were jittery as she answered the soft “Come in.” Maybe nothing – and maybe something.
Eneko stood watching out of his window, his back to her. Beyond him the sun was setting and faint cries wound up from the harbour along with the smell of salt and fish. The smell of home, though she’d tried to forget it. But it seemed that Eneko always smelled of the harbour, and of rich pipe smoke, even though he never smoked it.
She stood waiting quietly and at last Eneko turned with a faint smile. “Sit,” he said. “You aren’t in trouble.”
One reason for her jitters left, to be replaced by another, happier reason. The final test, when a journeyman became a master. They said it sometimes came like this – the test was different for everyone. But she was only fifteen, had only passed her journeyman’s a year ago. Still, she knew she was good, maybe even good enough. Eneko kept an eye out for her, watched her practise, gave her advice and praise, and she strove to be perfect for him and for Da. She had to be. If she wasn’t perfect, she was nothing.
She sat and tried not to jiggle her legs. Eneko sat down behind his desk and looked at her long and hard, in a way he never had before. She’d been in here so often that the other masters had commented, whispering she was Eneko’s favourite. She’d had a few barbed comments to that effect in the halls, but nothing she couldn’t handle – years of sparring and duelling, ignoring their taunts as they tried to unnerve her, had left her almost impervious. But all those times he’d never looked at her like this.
Eneko picked up a little statue and turned it, over and over, in one hand, an exercise to loosen the muscles in his wrist after a long-ago injury and something he did when he thought.
“Do you trust me, Kacha?”
She frowned, and her legs