Herb-Wife (Lord Alchemist Duology) (56 page)

"This
makes two paid attacks upon your wife, and if they're connected, not
many suspects."

"It
can't be Iasen." That didn't sound as firm as he thought it
should.

Thioso
looked inscrutable to Iathor's distracted senses. "Mayhap not,
Sir Kymus. But his dramsmen are with him. Some unwary comment
might've freed one to act without his master's knowledge, yes? Most
of your brother's men come from prison work-gangs."

"Not
debtors? I'd not known." Yet another reason his people had been
so edgy, when Iasen'd stayed at Iathor's house?

"I'd
time to check the records. I want to arrest his men for questioning,
Sir Kymus."

"He'll
need a guard to replace his." It felt as if something behind him
were crumbling, unseen. "You'll have a hard enough time getting
his men away from him, on both sides, without them fearing he's
defenseless."

"I
believe I can arrange that, Sir Kymus. If this Wolf here won't need a
purging, perhaps you could go check on your wife?"

Iathor
took a breath and deliberately put his suspicions out of his mind.
"Very well. I'll stop . . . interfering with
watchmen's business. If you could have the innocent men released
quickly?"

Thioso's
salute was small and casual, but oddly sincere. "I'll do my
best, Kymus."

The
ebb and flow of formality felt like shattering ice beneath his feet.
Iathor walked away, and felt slower than even his true years
should've made him.

Chapter
XXXV

J
onie
greeted Iathor when he came in, suggesting she'd left a servant to
watch for him. "Iathor! Everyone's all right," she said,
with a grasp of important details that would've sent his heart racing
if he didn't already know. "There was some matter with Bynae's
family, and they went by the Millwell warehouses of all places, and
some wretched bunch of savages tried to rob them! Dayn's put to bed,
and your wife's having a lie-down too. She looked truly awful."

Less
reassuring than he'd thought. "I heard. I needed to talk to the
guard about another matter–" (which he'd forgotten to do,
blight it, but Thioso might remember) "–and saw them bringing
in the men. One was marked with a defensive brew I'd made, a
paralytic."

Jonie
gasped. Iathor continued, "I questioned him with Tryth. They
were hired to attack Kessa. To kill her."

"Sweet
Earth and Rain," Jonie said, fingers against her mouth. "Go,
see that she's all right. I'll speak with Ietra and our steward."

Iathor
nodded, and went, with Brague following behind.
Some matter with
Bynae's family?

He
tried to be quiet, walking into the bedroom – but the bed was
empty. "Kessa?"

From
the servants' room, Brague called, "In here, m'lord."

He
hastened in. Kessa slumped against the edge of the cot Dayn slept
upon; Bynae sat next to her. Her dress was touching the folds of the
stained coat Kessa still wore. Bynae was looking up at him. Kessa
was . . . asleep? Feigning? He didn't want to startle
her, so soon after she'd been attacked, so he made himself not reach
out as he knelt before her. "Kessa?" That was too still for
sleep. He glanced at Bynae, something niggling at him. "Kessa,
we need to talk."

She
straightened, silently. Brague cleared his throat and handed Iathor
the envelope. Iathor nodded to him, realizing there was a matter
Kessa didn't
know
was less urgent, yet. "The Princeps
declined to become involved. But we must still talk. Brague can watch
over Dayn with Bynae." Iathor didn't know if Bynae'd been a
victim of the plot, or involved, but the coincidences bothered him.

Kessa
nodded (silent, silent, and disturbing) and stood before he could
offer his hand. He got to his own feet and reached for her, but
stopped himself. If she didn't want to be touched, he didn't want to
force her. "Here, let's go into the bedroom." He moved
toward it, looking over his shoulder.

She
didn't look up, but wrapped her arms around herself as she followed.
Her steps faltered; perhaps she'd been kneeling for some time on the
wood floor. Iathor held the nearest chair for her. "Sit?"

She
did, with a miserable obedience that made him wonder why
she'd
be guilty. That Dayn had been hurt? Or had to defend her at all?

Iathor
leaned against the bed, next to Kessa's chair, and tried not to focus
on the scents of blood and alchemy clinging to her. "I was going
by a guard station, after I got the letter, to arrange some matters.
I saw . . . Wolf, it was, the purple marking his
face."
I thought my heart would stop.
His voice seemed to
have. "I questioned him with Tryth. He's tolerant enough . . .
for numerous questions. I left Thioso there."

Kessa
just gripped her hands together, tightly, her skin pale in places.

"They
were expecting you." Iathor forced the words past his throat's
tightness. "The attack was meant to kill you."

"I
know. Wolf boasted of it." Her voice was toneless, neutral,
exhausted. It reminded him uncomfortably of when he'd found her
outside her burning shop, dying of the poison she'd used to escape
the hired near-rapists in Aeston.

He
gripped the bed so he wouldn't reach out to touch her hair.
"Kessa . . . Why were you there?"

"Bynae
said she'd word of a family matter. She needed to be there."
Still that even tone. Still staring at her lap.

"She
was . . . telling the truth?" He began to vow a
vicious fate upon the bleached girl if she'd lured Kessa into a trap.

"She's
blameless." Kessa's voice held a trace of intensity.

"Are
you sure?" Iathor asked. Kessa did have a soft spot for those in
need: a feckless apprentice who forgot his coat, a roof-rat used as
Shadow Guild bait . . .

"
Yes.
"
She clutched herself. "Blameless."

He
moved away from the bed to pace. He wanted to shake her by the
shoulders and demand everything she wasn't saying. "They were
waiting for you. They'd been hired. Kessa . . . What
do you
know
? What did Wolf say to you, that I didn't ask him
or didn't understand the answer?"

She
just shook her head, and he wanted more to shake her, or hold her
until the fear passed and the guilt lessened.
I wasn't there for
her.
He kept pacing. "Why won't you tell me? Blight, it was
unlikely enough that Wolf's arson and the other attack weren't
linked, but he said as much. Three separate incidents,
all
unrelated? Thioso doesn't believe it either. He's going to arrest my
brother's servants, see if they mistook some comment for . . ."
He stopped talking. Had he imagined that Kessa'd just tightened her
hands on her arms as she held herself?

It
was, somehow, like the quickening of a potion. From naught but
ingredients and potential, to a brew with its own effects. When he'd
sought her old dress, found she'd known her attackers had alchemy,
she'd answered his questions,
"No proof. Not worth upsetting
you."

"You
think you know," he breathed, trying to hold back the boiling
flood in his mind. "You think you know who it is, proof or not."

And,
at least, she didn't lie in her silence. He thought of other
questions she'd never truly answered. "It's linked to why
you . . . accepted my proposal." In the middle of
the night, after she'd escaped her attackers. After he'd found her in
front of her burning shop. After . . .

Kessa
raised her head, saying some quiet denial, some question of his
logic, but Iathor didn't hear it over the shouting in his mind.
"She's no maiden! You'll always wonder!"
Iasen, his
brother, had yelled as he left. And if that hadn't woken Kessa, had
she been awake before, close enough to hear?

"You
think . . . Not his servants. You think it's Iasen."
The ingredients separated out, becoming clear notes in the murky
whole. "He took the buggy. You knew they'd alchemy. You knew
what they intended. You heard him, leaving, that night. And. That's
why."
Why you accepted. Why you insisted on a conception
potion immediately.

She
was looking at him, eyes unhidden – and for once he didn't
flinch, too numb to react to her mottled brown and yellow irises.
"You did it to punish him," he said, and waited for her to
deny it.

Kessa
closed her eyes and turned her face toward the door.

Iathor
swallowed. "Kessa . . . He's just an idiot,
poisoned by this mess in Cym. He couldn't have known you made dry tea
with your own blood." He stopped, before he said,
Iasen'd
just hoped you'd take the blame for Darul's disminding, not Lairn or
the Vigor tea.
Not reassuring, and he wanted to reassure her.
Wanted to reassure himself.

Kessa
opened her mouth, slightly, but shut it with a little click, biting
down on the words.

Iathor
found himself against the wardrobe, digging his fingers against the
smooth carvings. "And . . . and he doesn't want
the position. Not really. He's never wanted it. He's . . ."
He couldn't remember what he was going to say. "Is that why? Is
that the only reason why?"

"Does
it matter?" Her voice was almost casual in its blank, level
tone.

He'd
once accepted that perhaps she'd never care for him (
in return
).
It hurt, though. "How could you? How could you use a child like
that? Don't you care for–for him at all?"

"What?"
A distant puzzlement.

"I
thought you'd at least care for your own baby." Iathor couldn't
tell if it were venom or blood in his voice.

"Why . . .
Why do you think I'd not?" She watched him through her hair.

"You
don't
use
a child!" he snapped. "Not if you care for
it!"

Kessa
turned her face down, her arms sliding as she hunched over, as if she
protected her flat belly from the world. "I'll go," she
said, and his terrible panic and rage almost drowned out how her
voice was small, as if she made some concession. His choked,
confused, angry silence let her continue, "Send me back to
Aeston. I'll go. You can tell everyone I died, you never need see
him . . ."

That
wasn't a threat. Iathor didn't know what it was, but not a threat.
"Why?" he asked. "Why would you–"

"You
don't want him." Her voice was rough at the edges and liquid as
tears in the middle. "Blood of your blood . . .
too much of mine, mayhap."

He
wanted to be angry at her, but . . . It was like
throwing a rock into the river, and he was too baffled to focus his
hurt. "Why do you say that?"

"You
just wanted to use him. For an heir. I thought . . . I
thought you'd want him as family." She wiped at her face with
the heel of her hand. "You can say we both died. I'll tell . . .
He'll not be trained, not even herb-witchery. He'll never know. Not
come back to make trouble."

"But . . .
my heir . . . That's not . . ."
The flaw in her logic was too vast to bridge. His objections fell
into the gulf.

"Is
that not
use
, then? I thought you'd love him, Kymus!" Now
her voice was ragged entirely. She pulled her legs up, curling around
herself. Iathor might've interrupted, but he saw brown skin and a
crusted, irregular line through a dark-edged rent in her dress. She
continued, "I'll go, I'll go. No one'll question not seeing me,
ugly half-breed. A year, you can say we died. Half-true, like as
not."

That
snapped his focus back. "
What?
What do you mean?"

"Rain's
own justice," she said into her knees. "Herbmaster'll not
find anything . . ."

"What?"
Iathor pushed himself away from the wardrobe, stepping over to her,
his hand on the back of her chair. She flinched, pressing her head
against her knees as if . . . as if, he realized, she
expected to be struck, and he wanted to be back against the far wall.
He tried to make his voice gentle, not harsh with confusion and
shocked, fearful concern. "Kessa, what are you talking about?"

"I'm
too thin," she said. "Too narrow in the hip. And the
potions don't work."

"Then
why . . . Blight it, Kessa, were you so sure my
brother ordered the attack that you'd risk
death
to spite
him?"

"Would've
happened anyway. Either he'd have
done
it, or I'd have been
caught. I'm no good with a crossbow, never even held shoulder-cannon,
and it'd all be the same. Except with you hating–" She broke
off. "No hope someone'd slit my throat before they opened my
belly for the babe."

For
once, Iathor could follow that line of reasoning, with guilt-stained
memories of their wedding night. A caught assassin. Brood mare or
execution, and perhaps the latter not permitted. And no expectation
of kindness . . . He broke away from that vivid,
painful thought. "But . . . You've no proof. He
couldn't have known anything but his own stupid biases. That's why he
was insulting, that's all. You didn't have to drink that blighted
conception brew. We could've waited till we found something that
would damp pain for you, make it safer." He paused again, drawn
back into her nightmare. "Blight it, Kessa . . .
How
long
have you thought you'd die?"