The Princess Who Tamed Demons (14 page)

Reluctantly Linn brought his eyes up to meet
mine. The librarian's face was turnip red. The
bookworm-cum-investigator vibrated with agitation, and I blithely
ignored it. What could I say? As a Queen surrounded by servants who
saw me at my best and at my worst, I no longer had the same
hang-ups about my body. The world was exhausting enough without
pretensions of shame and body image to buffet the
waters.

"Helga, will you bring me my favorite blue
robe?" The servant girl vanished on silent feet, and I turned my
attention back to Linn.

"So. News?" I folded my arms and
waited.

"Yes. Less complete than I would like, but it
is game-changing." He stepped closer to me, peering back and forth
as if concerned who might overhear.

"I think I know the key to finding out who
tried to have you killed."

"Really? What is this key?"

"Not 'what,' but 'who.'" He stroked his beard
as his whiskers seemed to twitch, reminding me of an inquisitive
cat. "Think back to Vizier al-Sham's letter."

"The letter to his wife and family. What of
it?"

"I am convinced that his wife Fasima may be
the crucial key to all this. We need to go to the village of Asmyra
to speak with her."

Helga appeared behind me and opened the blue
robe for me to insert my arms. I tied the robe tight around my
waist, covering myself as I saw the librarian visibly relax. I
thought I knew where Linn was going with this, but I had to be
sure.

"Okay…so what angle are we investigating here?
You think his family was threatened, and that Vizier al-Sham's
false confession was the result?" It wasn't too much of a stretch.
It had occurred to me before, but I had assumed that focusing on
the Mosques would be more productive.

"Not exactly. Yes and no."

"Why the hedging? Can you talk straight with
me or not?"

Linn sighed, his bulbous eyes scanning the
large bathing pool, clearly not pleased with the chamber's
echo-inducing acoustics. "Meet me in the courtyard behind the
Library. I will have tea prepared. It will be safer for us to talk
there."

Tea. It could be blazing outside, and the
librarian always insisted on sharing a cup of hot tea. I shrugged.
"As you wish. I will see you shortly."

I swiftly returned to my suite and dressed in
a summer gown of bluish-green with peach accents, the pearl around
my neck giving the ensemble an ocean feel. Drake would have
commented on it. He had never seen the ocean, and since I had, he
had often asked me about it. What did the crashing of the waves
sound like during a storm, he had asked. Whenever I described it to
him, his face had always turned so engrossed, as if he were living
vicariously through me.

"Where are you Drake?" I sighed, hating being
apart from him. Then the practical side of me reasserted itself. I
had a scheming killer to catch.

By the time I entered the courtyard behind the
Library, Linn already had tea saucers and cups perfectly arranged.
He poured the freshly heated tea into our cups, each teacup
enlivened by a painted phoenix swooping down on unseen prey with
outstretched wings. He had even thoughtfully placed a few
honey-glazed crackers next to my cup. My rumbling belly soon
informed him that I had indeed skipped lunch after my sparring bout
with the knights. I gratefully dunked the first cracker in the tea,
trying to eat at a polite pace rather than inhaling it.

"I hope you'll forgive my bluntness earlier,"
I said.

Linn rubbed at the shiny skin on his bald
head, which was free of the scarf for once. "Hmm?"

"About seeing me…you know." I paused, unable
to help myself. "Please tell me you have seen this before." My one
hand made a circle over my chest, hopefully communicating my
intent.

Linn's face blushed a little, but he laughed.
"Yes, Najika. No, I am not the stereotypical library bureaucrat
chained to his books who knows nothing of the fairer
sex."

"You have seen a woman naked then? Besides
me?" I teased, unable to keep the amusement from my voice. Linn
made a rude gesture, annoyed in this adorable way.

"You are very difficult to work with
sometimes, you know that? Yes, I have seen a woman naked before.
Once upon a time I was even married." A shadow of pain clouded his
face, and immediately I regretted teasing him. I found myself
reaching across the table and covering his hand with
mine.

"I am sorry, Linn. Forget I brought it up. I
did not mean to…."

"To cause me pain. I know," Linn said, shaking
his head as if to ward off unpleasant memories. "We had more than a
few good years together, Xuya and I. I have no regrets." He met my
eyes, a nostalgic wisp tinting his stare. "War has a way of hurting
far more than just the principal combatants. I found this out the
hard way as a young man." He looked away, and I yearned to know
more. "That is all I will say of it, except that in some ways you
remind me of her."

I sat back and cradled my teacup, taking the
first soothing pull of the mind-cleansing liquid. Normally small
talk wasn't my thing, but the way Linn responded to flattery when
it came to his tea selection, it was like the most effortless way
to make a certain someone's day.

"Mmm. This is delicious. A hint of mint
cloves. Not bad. Different than last time, and I see you brought us
different cups too."

Lin nodded, pleased that I had noticed. "Yes,
these phoenix cups are for the highest-ranking officials in the
Great Amir's palace. One of the councilors consented to let me
borrow his set when I informed him that I would be drinking with
the Queen of the Black Kingdom." He gave me a wink. "You should see
what the poor lower-level bureaucrats must drink from." His voice
brimmed with pity.

"Now you've piqued my curiosity. Do
tell."

Linn leaned forward as if he were telling me a
state secret. "They must drink from a cup painted with a flightless
bird pecking at insects along the dusty ground. It is called the
'quail's rank' cup. Such hideous, awkward birds. No elegance
whatsoever." Linn seemed to take anything surrounding tea drinking
so seriously that I wanted to laugh. Instead I dipped another
honey-glazed cracker into my tea.

"In my homeland there is a special tea-dueling
ceremony involving exactly what you are doing now. It is considered
a kind of sport, actually. Sometime perhaps I will teach
you."

"I think I would like that," I said. Somehow
during this investigation I was starting to consider Linn as more
than just a temporary partner. Somehow the term 'friendship' seemed
to be sneaking into our relationship. Yet we had already wasted too
much time on chit-chat. I put on my
Let's do this
face and
tried to refocus the tangent-prone librarian back to the task at
hand. "So, Linn, tell me what you couldn't tell me before. Why do
you think Fasima is the key to everything?"

Linn took a sip from his teacup, setting it
down on its saucer with a delicate clink. He took a deep
breath.

"I may have been getting ahead of myself.
Let's back up for a moment. Salib has been blowing me off, so over
the past few days I pulled a few favors and tried using some of my
other contacts, including some of the servants who feel indebted to
me—thanks to my prior detecting skills previously used on their
behalf, of course—"

"Yes, Linn, I'm suitably impressed. Can you
give me the
short
version? Some of us are still young, you
know."

He shot me a withering look as he wrapped it
up. "More importantly, my contacts helped me track down
which
Mosques use the homru herb in any of their
ceremonies." Ahh,
that
herb. The herb which had
shape-changed me into an animal and nearly made me the main course
at the next banquet.

"And?"

"And there are only three temples that use it.
The Mosque of the Twin Caliphs, the Mosque of the Twin Falcons, and
the Mosque of the Twin Moons."

My mouth quirked. "Ghayth turns up again like
a bad coin flip. So the bastard lied to me?"

Linn shrugged, his thumb rubbing unconsciously
against the smooth porcelain. "Not necessarily. A Mosque of his
size, with nearly 10,000 adherents….he does not perform every type
of ceremony. A Mosque of that scope has a council of junior level
Verse-preachers underneath Ghayth, and these would have broad
latitude to decide smaller things which the leading Verse-preacher
might not wish to busy himself with." Linn scratched his forehead
with a sigh. "That does not, however, mean that Ghayth was
not
lying. We have only his word to confirm what happened
after we were rendered unconscious by the attack with the
blowguns."

"Exactly." I scratched my fingers along my
hairline as I wracked my brain for ideas. "Whoever sent those men
after us might also be the one who tried to have me
killed."

"This is the problem. We don't know. It could
be another faction in play."

With an exasperated huff, I said, "Well, what
do we know?" I snapped my fingers as one line of questioning became
clear. "Did you cross-check those three Mosques to see which ones
have servants working in the palace?"

Linn grinned. "I was just about to get to
that. Yes, and it reduces our institutional suspect list to two.
Only the Mosque of the Twin Caliphs and the Mosque of the Twin
Moons have servants working here in the palace who I cannot vouch
for. These are servants who are either relatively new or work in
such specialized positions that I have had little personal contact
with them."

"Good, so at least we've narrowed something. I
mean, I know that this is still relying on likelihood rather than
certainty."

"True. It is possible that someone from
another Mosque stole the herb. But the value of the herb is well
known, it is usually kept in a very secure place, and I think this
unlikely. We can return to it later if necessary."

I took another sip of tea, admiring the birds
in the tree above us. How I wished to be as carefree as them,
chirping away.

"As a little girl, reading about judges and
investigators, I always thought that they had to move from one
ironclad piece of evidence to the next."

Linn chuckled. "Stories are one thing, reality
another. Most investigators don't have the luxury of foolproof
evidence. We 'follow the breadcrumbs,' as the saying goes, which
doesn't mean that we don't use logic. It just means that we have to
calculate odds and possibly take risks. Which brings me to the main
reason I wanted to meet with you."

"I take it this has something to do with
Fasima al-Sham, the Vizier's wife?" I leaned forward, all
ears.

"Just so," Linn said. "She has to be the key,
although I cannot fully explain why. During our trip to the Mosque
of the Twin Moons I saw her with her two children. They passed us
in one of the back alleys.

My eyes narrowed. "Wait. How can you be
sure?"

"I recognized her children from when I met the
Vizier's family last year. There was only one woman with them in
the alley. Although she was veiled, I can say with near-certainty
that it was Fasima. Few mothers would let their children go with
another woman, not without an escort by at least one male relative
as custom dictates. The woman who passed us also walked with a
limp. Fasima was injured by an ill-tempered horse when the Vizier
and his family visited Tajma's market several years
ago."

I let that sink in. "Okay…so why does that
make Fasima the key?"

"Because, given Vizier al-Sham's letter to
Fasima, we know she was living in her village with the children.
Now ask yourself this question—if you were her, why would you rush
toward the very city where your husband has just been executed and
had his head displayed above the city gate in public
disgrace?"

"Is it possible that she had the bad timing to
come visit her husband right before the attempt on my
life?"

"Even if that were true, once her husband had
been openly disgraced, she should have left the city immediately.
She has not. Why?"

I shrugged, partly out of my element here.
Linn knew Tajmari culture and its intricacies better than I did.
"It does seem strange."

"Ah, but it is more than strange. In the Gold
Kingdom dishonor ruins a family. Any right-thinking woman would
have chosen the complete opposite of what Fasima has done. She
would have kept herself removed from the capitol, for years if need
be, to spare her children and her family from the dishonor. By
coming to or just remaining in the city she exposes herself and her
children to more than just hate-filled gossip. Many of the
Mosque-followers have a grudging respect for the Great Amir, even
if he does not follow the Two Creators' teachings. Fasima risks
real violence if a pro-Amir activist decides to seek retribution on
the family of the disgraced Vizier."

The web of politics in the Gold Kingdom
continued to surprise me, and now it had sunk to new levels. The
fact that the Gold Kingdom's culture seemed okay with this idea of
linking the crimes of one man to destroy his innocent wife and
children…it made me itch to hit something. If we humans were still
evolving, then we had a
long
way to go. Even the trolls and
the ogres were not so brutal, at least not in that way.