City of a Thousand Dolls (19 page)

He took off, a golden-brown streak against the grass.

“Dirty cheater,” Nisha muttered, then pounded after him.

Jerrit followed the outside curve of the hedge maze, and Nisha ran hard to catch up with him. Her feet felt light. As long as she had the cats and she could run, things couldn’t be that bad.

She put on a burst of speed and slammed into a figure coming out of the maze.

Something hard and rough struck her in the chest, and she fell. Her flailing hands met loose fabric as she hit the ground with her shoulder. Something jabbed into her hip. She heard Jerrit yowl with pain. Then a heavy weight landed on top of her. An elbow pushed into her windpipe, cutting off her air.

Fear gave Nisha strength, and she struck out blindly. Her closed fist hit skin and bone with a satisfying
crack
, and the weight rolled off her.

Gasping, she tried to sit up and brace herself for another attack, only to realize she’d barreled into Zann.

ZANN WAS ON the ground, surrounded by the wood she must have been carrying. Blood poured from her nose. Her face was streaked with dirt and sap. She stared at Nisha with blank, uncomprehending eyes.

“Zann,” Nisha said, stretching out a hand. “I’m sorry, I thought—”

Zann tried to wipe the blood from her face, but all it did was smear. She looked down at her bloody hand and gave a low moan.

Then, before Nisha could stand, Zann struggled to her feet and ran off, still bleeding.

“Zann!” Nisha called after her. “Wait!”

She tried to lever herself up, but a stab of pain in her left hand stopped her. She was lying on several pieces of wood and had scraped her hand on one of them when she fell. Angry red scratches punctuated with dark slivers of wood crisscrossed her palm. Blood oozed from the scratches and down her wrist.

Nisha!
Esmer ran out of the maze.
What happened? I heard Jerrit yell … Look at you!
She climbed into Nisha’s lap and licked her forehead with a rough tongue.

“I ran into Zann,” Nisha said. Her head hurt, and her shoulder and hand throbbed. “I think I punched her in the nose.”

Esmer hissed, kneading her claws into Nisha’s thighs.
I don’t blame you
.

Nisha thought of Zann’s face, covered in blood.

“I didn’t mean to,” she said, feeling the utter uselessness of her defense. “It was an accident. I thought I was being attacked.”

Esmer went back to licking Nisha as if Nisha were a dirty kitten.
Of course you did
, she sent.
All this running around after murderers has got all of us worked up. And it shouldn’t even be necessary
. She shook her head.

“Is Jerrit all right?” Nisha asked. “I think he got stepped on.”

He ran off
, Esmer said.
It’s just a flight instinct. He’ll be fine, if a bit embarrassed
. She sniffed at a patch of bloody grass.
That’s odd
.

“What is it?” Nisha asked. “What do you smell?”

Guilt
, Esmer sent with surprise.
Acidic, soul-eating guilt
. She shook herself as if she were wet.
Strange. It’s rare for human emotions to smell this strongly. Fear does, of course, but not the others. This has soaked all the way through....

It was strange, Nisha thought as she staggered to her feet. Zann had always made it very clear she blamed everyone else. What could she be feeling guilty about now?

Nisha was still pondering the mystery of Zann’s behavior when she turned around and started walking. The greenhouse was on the other side of the hedge maze, and she needed to go and get her hand bandaged. Esmer trailed her like a speckled gray shadow.

Inside the greenhouse, the damp heat embraced Nisha like a friend. She breathed, savoring the smells of tangy herbs, sweet blossoms, and thick green growth.

“Sashi?” she called.

Only humid silence answered her. Nisha thought briefly of trying to find a healer, then dismissed the idea. A healer would want an explanation, and Nisha wasn’t sure she had one. She could mix up the poultice herself.

Nisha gathered pieces of the herbs she needed along the way to her space on the workbench. She put the leaves onto her flat grinding tablet, then reached for her rollstone. It wasn’t there.

Nisha glanced around. She thought she had left the stone right next to the grinding tablet. Then she spotted the rollstone on Sashi’s part of the table. She must have borrowed it and forgotten to return it.

Nisha picked up the rollstone, a slender cylinder of satiny white marble. She was about to go back to her herbs when she caught a whiff of something.

The smell was gone too quickly to identify, but it made Nisha pause. A faint alarm bell clanged in the recesses of her mind.

She leaned closer to the bench and sniffed delicately. At first she smelled nothing. Sashi was a fanatic about keeping her bench clear and washed. Nisha sniffed along the length of the rollstone. There was a hint of herbs, but not enough for her to recognize the smell.

Ignoring her throbbing hand, Nisha looked over the workbench one more time, running her fingers over the wood of the table. This time she caught a flash of green, a tiny leaf caught in a crack.

Nisha pulled the leaf from its hiding place and rolled it in her fingers. The smell was as sharp and clean as the taste of frost on her tongue.

Clovermint.

Nisha remembered Sashi’s hand breaking pieces of lavender as she talked about Atiy’s death. Sashi, who worked regularly with poisons, who had could have gotten the key to the poison cupboard easily. Sashi had been rolling clovermint.

Confused and sick, Nisha rolled her herbs and mixed a poultice for her hand. Grabbing some bandages, she stumbled out of the greenhouse.

Was Sashi there?
Esmer sent.

“No,” Nisha said, swallowing. There was only one person left in the City she could trust to help her and not ask questions. “Maybe Tanaya can help me get these splinters out.”

Nisha walked blindly around the maze to the House of Flowers, her thoughts knotted in an endless tangle. Sashi needed a guide whenever she left the House of Jade. How could she have been involved in Atiy’s death? Unless the deaths weren’t connected after all. Could Sashi have sneaked the seeds into Jina’s snack bowl while the girl was asleep? But why? Was there a rivalry that Nisha didn’t know about?

No. It couldn’t be…

Nisha clutched at the bandages, feeling as if the world were tilting on her. How much of Sashi’s peaceful air was real, and how much was a mask? Could her friend really be a part of this?

Tanaya was kneeling on the floor of her room, painting an exquisitely detailed figurine of a dancer in midleap. She looked up when Nisha staggered in, and her smile of welcome shaded into concern.

“Nisha, what’s happened?” Tanaya sprang up and helped Nisha to her reclining couch.

Nisha sat, berating herself for jumping to the most obvious conclusion. Sashi was studying to be a healer. She wouldn’t kill. She used clovermint in her medicines all the time.

“Goodness,” Tanaya said. “What happened to your hand?”

“I fell,” Nisha said, pulling her thoughts back to the present. “I fell and scraped it badly. Sorry to interrupt, but I couldn’t bandage it by myself.”

“Don’t apologize, Nisha,” Tanaya said. “I’ve been stuck in this room all day. Of course I’ll help. Just tell me what to do.”

Nisha gave her careful instructions as Tanaya pulled out the slivers, then wrapped her hand with the poultice and clean bandages Nisha had brought. By the time she was done, the throb in Nisha’s hand had dimmed to an ache. It still hurt, but the pain was bearable.

“You poor thing,” Tanaya said as she finished tying the bandages. “You lie here for a minute and relax.” She leaned over Nisha to adjust a pillow. The ruby necklace at her throat glistened, and her sleek black-and-gray asar smelled of lavender.

“That’s a new scent for you,” Nisha mumbled.

“Do you like it? The girls from the House of Jade brought us some lavender today. I’ve never tried it before, but I was getting bored with the night-queen scent. Now you rest. I’ll tell Matron you’re helping me if anyone asks.”

“Thank you, Tanaya,” Nisha said. She was starting to feel the effects of her early awakening. Maybe if she just took a short nap, she could think more clearly.

Nisha closed her eyes, trying to push out the image of Sashi’s hands snapping the lavender twigs.

How long she dozed, she didn’t know. But a staccato knock at the door jerked her awake. Nisha sat up, trying to clear her fuzzy sleep thoughts.

Tanaya had changed into a gray-and-red asar and sat putting her hair up. “Enter,” she called around the hairpins in her mouth.

One of the Council House servants burst into the room.

“Matron sent me to find Nisha,” she cried. “Something terrible has happened!”

Nisha jumped up, forgetting the pain in her hand. “What is it?” she asked, a sick certainty in her gut.

“Another death,” the girl said, white-faced. “I’ve been looking for you all over. Matron said to bring you to—”

“The House of Music,” Nisha said, ignoring Tanaya’s puzzled gasp.

The girl shook her head and gave Nisha a confused look. “No,” she said. “Not the House of Music. It was the House of Beauty.”

Leaving Tanaya in her room, Nisha followed the servant girl out of the House of Flowers and down the short stone path that led to the House of Beauty. Confusion blurred her mind. She’d been so sure that the killer was going to the House of Music. Had the stolen asar been just to throw Nisha off the scent?

Nisha barely noticed the spotted shadows that darted after her as she stumbled along. Esmer had to yell to get her attention.

Nisha, slow down!

Are you all right?
Jerrit sent, shame coloring his voice.
I’m sorry I ran away. I felt your distress all the way across the estate
.

There’s been another killing
, Nisha sent in a tense burst of thought.
At the House of Beauty
.

Both cats reacted with stunned silence.

There was no way you could have seen this coming
, Esmer sent.
We did everything we could
.

It wasn’t enough!
Nisha snapped back, surprised by the quickness of her own anger. Leaving the cats to wait outside, she walked in through the front doors of the House of Beauty. The foyer was smaller than that of the House of Flowers, and more comfortable, filled with padded benches and paintings in soft colors. The air smelled of jasmine and lavender. And unlike the broad main stairs of the House of Flowers, the House of Beauty stairs were a graceful spiral, hung with lilies. Nisha climbed them, following the servant to an upstairs room.

A crumpled figure lay on the bedroom floor, a wide black stain stretching across the carpet underneath her. Nisha bit her lip.

It
wasn’t
enough. It wasn’t anywhere close to enough.

“NISHA, WHAT ARE you doing here?” Rajni, the Mistress of the House of Beauty, was standing behind her. Her slender hands were clenched hard, turning them the color of the White Mist.

“Matron sent for me,” Nisha said. “To help.” She gestured at the body.

“Indeed I did,” said Matron, appearing beside the trembling Rajni, looking pointedly at Nisha. “I wanted you and Josei to examine her first. Josei should be here soon.”

Confusion wrinkled Rajni’s smooth forehead. When Matron didn’t explain, the House Mistress turned to the servant.

“News of this … accident doesn’t leave the room,” Rajni said to the servant, her voice ragged with anxiety. “If I hear one whisper, one rumor about this, I will revoke your work permit and turn you out of the estate.”

Nisha cleared her throat. “I was with Tanaya in the House of Flowers when I heard,” she said. “Someone should probably tell her not to talk about it, too.”

Rajni frowned. “See to it,” she ordered the servant.

“Yes, House Mistress,” the servant girl said with a bow, perfectly submissive. “It will be as you say.”

“Yes, it will,” Rajni said, dismissing the girl with a wave. “This is terrible,” she said to no one in particular. “Nothing like this has ever happened in my House before.”

Nisha walked around the body, careful to touch nothing. The dead girl was huddled in on herself, little more than a heap of blue muslin and a tangle of dark-gold hair. Nisha’s nose twitched at the dry, metallic smell that soaked the room. The deep-purple carpet underneath the body was stiff and dark with blood.

A flash of white caught her eye. She reached out a hand, careful not to disturb the body, and drew a small folded piece of rough paper out from under the tangled hair.

There, on the front in black block letters, was her name:
NISHA
.

Rajni was talking to Matron, and neither of them was looking at Nisha. Nisha slipped the note into an inner pocket.

A hand touched her shoulder, and she jumped.

“She was stabbed,” Josei said. She had come into the room so quietly that Nisha hadn’t heard her. She sniffed, her sharp nose subtly tasting the air. “Smells like a stomach wound. She must have been stabbed in the gut.”

Nisha copied Josei, taking a deep whiff of the room. There
was
a foul, decaying tang underneath the blood smell, one that she hadn’t noticed before. She held her breath until the nausea passed.

Josei didn’t seem to notice. The Combat Mistress was feeling carefully under the body. “Is there a weapon here, I wonder? Ah, there it is.”

Josei reached under the girl’s hip and slid out a thin metal object as long as her hand. The tip of the object was shaped like a butterfly and set with deep-blue sapphires; it sparkled deep blue in the light from the window. The sharp, slender point was crusted with blood.

“That’s her hair ornament,” Rajni said, her voice thick with shock.

Josei raised one dark eyebrow. “It’s a dagger,” she corrected. “You arm your girls?”

“It’s more than a dagger,” Rajni said. “It’s a symbol. The girls here are not just beautiful, they are creators of beauty. They draw and sculpt, arrange flowers, paint. Beauty is the only skill, the only dowry they have. And beauty is not only to attract or impress. It’s also a medicine, a tool … and a weapon.”