Chapter Twenty
"I have a lead, witch."
Pasiphae sighed in defeat, pulling the plug out from the sink.
"Do you, now?" she entertained at Psyche, who spoke to her from the balcony.
"Don't get all high and mighty. Come look."
Pasiphae closed the necklace back around her neck aggressively, drying the chain with the edges of her cloak. There had been a complete dead connection. Wherever Circe was, she hoped her sister was okay.
"What is it?" Pasiphae asked, picking off a dead leaf that was still stuck on her clothing. By the time they had found their way back yesterday, she and Seth were wearing more undergrowth than fabric on their bodies. The leaves clung on strongly, just like the foul mood latched to her brain.
Seth had also proceeded to search every accessible inch of the palace for Naeyrs, but she had disappeared without a trace.
"See that?"
Psyche pointed vaguely into the distance.
Pasiphae gave the faery an incredulous glance as she stepped outside. "No, I really don't."
"The—" the faery stabbed her pointer finger, "—curved building over there."
"What are you talking about?" Pasiphae leaned over the balcony's banister, narrowing her eyes to focus. "Oh, wait, I think I see. What about it?"
Psyche gave another aggressive thrust of her finger. "I've been watching the movement coming in and out for the past hour. There are massive successions going in. Hardly any coming out."
"I'm not sure how that's a lead." Pasiphae picked off another dead leaf tangled in her hair, frowning. "What do you even do everyday? I've never asked."
"I stare at buildings in the skyline," Psyche replied drolly.
"Must be a long day."
Psyche went rigid all of a sudden. Pasiphae thought that perhaps the faery had had enough, and was about to start swinging knives at her, but Psyche exclaimed, "There, again!"
A dark blur sped through the sky and into the rooftop of the curved building. If Pasiphae had blinked, she would have missed it.
"You can conclude absolutely nothing from that," she said.
"I can conclude," Psyche countered, "that something is deeply strange about that building."
"And if it's just casual Khotadian crime completely unrelated to the Somnus?"
Psyche crossed her arms and tilted her nose up into the air. "Nothing is ever unrelated here."
Pasiphae rolled her eyes.
"I think you've been stuck inside a bit too long," she said. "When Seth returns from his excursion, I recommend you ask for— is that Kalis?"
Psyche started from the abrupt switch. "What? Who?"
"By Callistra," Pasiphae exclaimed, peering into the gardens. "It is. Kalis!"
The small silhouette with the bright cloak looked up. Kalis' face was half-bathed in moonlight, half in the shadows, staring up in blind confusion.
"What are you doing?" Pasiphae called down.
"I don't know," Kalis said. Her response was simple, but her words ran together, slurred in a way that Pasiphae almost thought the human consort was drunk on substance. "The door was unlocked at ten o'clock. The door is never unlocked at ten o'clock."
"But why are you here?" Pasiphae questioned. "In the gardens?"
"Aethel must be in trouble." Kalis's arm gave a hard jerk under her cloak. Her neck twitched shortly after. "I shall find him."
Pasiphae blinked at the human girl, brow furrowed.
"Witch," Psyche muttered under her breath, "I think she's on a Devil's Breath overdose."
"You can overdose?" Pasiphae exclaimed, jerking within her collar.
"If you are human, there is a limit," Psyche hissed in response. "But the flowers she wears are far from enough."
Pasiphae wondered what the chances were that Warin was involved in this, and that it had some connection to their investigation. She wished it would. Then maybe she could go home.
"It's ten o'clock, it's never ten o'clock, my gods and all above..." Kalis started muttering.
"Hold on," Pasiphae called, but Kalis didn't seem to hear. Pasiphae climbed onto the banister and jumped, her tough boots squishing into the grass.
She hiked up her dress from the strangely runny earth—soft, as if there had been a downpour of rain. Patches of mud flew up with every step she took.
"Kalis, let's get you back into your room, okay?"
Kalis went supernaturally still.
All the goosebumps raised on Pasiphae's skin.
"Saf?" Psyche called wearily. "Saf, you may want to—"
Kalis' head jerked up to the sky, ramrod straight, like it was being seized back. Her entire being moved along with her, shoulders and knees locking, a marionette on strings that tensed with intention.
And then:
An ear-shattering sound tore through the gardens.
As Kalis crumbled to the ground, Pasiphae desperately tried to place where the screech was coming from, but in that instant, she could register nothing except that it had to be outside the palace walls. Not a beat later, the sound had already driven her to her knees, sunken deep into the mud as her hands clasped around her ears.
The piercing noise drove deep into her head—shearing through tissue and splitting apart veins—until it hit her core, inducing the strangest feeling of floating.
As quickly as it had begun, the sound was gone.
Pasiphae removed her hands from the vise-like grip she had over her ears. Blood stained both the insides of her palms. As a breeze blew by, she felt it still trickling from her ears, tracking down her neck. She could hear nothing save for the apparition of a ringing. She stumbled to her feet, tracking soft mud all along the flimsy layers of her long dress.
Dimly, Pasiphae registered Psyche waving her arms as a signal on the balcony. Her mouth was moving, but Pasiphae couldn't hear past the remnants of screaming in her head. Such terrible screaming.
It had been a scream.
Her ears cleared with a rush.
"It's a banshee!" Psyche was croaking. "Find who it is!"
Stumbling over her own feet, Pasiphae sprinted off.
She had a dream like this once. The dark was closing in, thick and velvety, smelling of ash and coldness. Her legs wouldn't move correctly, dragging one after the other like she was wading in thick syrup, but the moment she tripped—fragile fingers first—time would speed up again, quickly and bizarrely until she was nothing but organic compost left behind to nurture flowers in the ground when the next century rolled round.
Pasiphae reached for the front gates with the world spinning. She almost collapsed on the drawbridge, sucked in with the rest of the crowd that stampeded from all directions. A yell—a command—sounded from close by.
Warin emerged in his scarlet overcoat.
Pasiphae tried to slip away, but she was surrounded.
"I want two separate lines," he boomed, and the rest of the royal guards snapped to attention. Pasiphae found herself jostled into single file, staring straight ahead into the blond hair of the consort in front of her. Sweat gathered at the back of her neck.
She stood on the tips of her toes, struggling to see what was happening.
"Cordon the area off," Warin was saying.
Pasiphae was staring intently as he directed the task to another guard, who turned around and caught her eye with a vivid familiarity.
Deaths. She had forgotten about Arthur Conllivion and the mess she made with that situation. Fortunately, he said nothing, and hurried off with his task.
She waited in their neat and orderly lines for so long that her legs began to tire. The mud on her knees moulded the dress to her skin, and when she lifted the fabric, her legs had begun to collect purple splotches from the lack of movement.
The moon was at the apex of the sky before a guard allowed the lines to dissipate, and Pasiphae hurried back to their room, barely able to stop herself from breaking out into a run. She got the wrong door on her first three attempts, since they wouldn't open under her hand, but the fourth door she tried gave way with ease, the system recognising the fingerprints that Seth had configured in.
"Did you see who it was?" Psyche demanded the moment Pasiphae walked in. The faery's gaze was fixated intensely on whatever was happening outside, though she had retreated from the balcony and shut the sliding doors securely.
"No," Pasiphae replied, throwing off her cloak. "About a hundred other people were trying to get a look as well and the guards stopped me. First jinn, then witches, now banshees. I'm starting to think Khotadi is starting to diversify it's Unseelie country label."
And especially since banshees were arguably still fae, that meant one lurking around Khotadi had to either be Unseelie by blood but loyal to Seelie, or Seelie by blood and turning to the Unseelie. One or the other, it meant another spy to worry about—a spy who also happened to be a harbinger of death.
"They were insanely close by," Pasiphae remarked, touching the inside of her ear. Her finger came back with flecks of dried blood. "The scream could have come from right outside the walls."
"Aren't you curious who the scream was for?"
The question stopped Pasiphae cold. "Who?"
Psyche finally pulled her eyes away from the glass. "Look."
Pasiphae approached the doors, pressing her fingers against the cool surface. Down in the gardens, exactly where she had left her, Kalis was lying on her back, her eyes open.
***
Pasiphae leaned her forearm up against a tree trunk, panting for breath.
"Seth," she gasped. "Seth, surely you can find them yourself."
"In case you've forgotten," Seth said, backtracking a few steps to where she had stopped, "you are here to lie for me."
As if Pasiphae could forget. With that statement, it was like the overhead trees loomed in closer, blocking out the circle of fading moonlight. The night had brightened a few hues, signalling 'morning.' By now, Kalis' body would have been moved and incinerated.
"I can lie for you once you find the banshee," she seethed through gritted teeth. "Your magic is the grater to my organs' cheese."
Seth was scanning the clearing. "I am sorry," he said absently. "I—" Seth paused. "Do you even have cheese graters in Medeis?"
"We're not that savage," Pasiphae muttered, gingerly pressing her torso. Bruises had started forming along her stomach just from the magical effects. "Look at this," she winced, lifting the hem of her loose shirt. "You better have healing cream."
Seth grimaced at the sight.
"I'm not the biggest fan of this method either," he said, meeting her eyes, "but we need to get ahold of this banshee before Morgana does."
Pasiphae sighed. He had panicked earlier, immediately coming to the quickest conclusion. Whether Seelie by blood or Seelie by loyalty, they would know the Seelie Court. They would know him.
"Because we can't have them telling Morgana who you are if it comes to it, right?" Pasiphae said aloud. "Poof, goodbye Saulaces, hello Deaths." She looked up at him. "Who, exactly, are you, anyway?"
"If I told you, I'd have to kill you," Seth replied, his eyes latched onto something. He broke off into a jog.
Pasiphae was left in the clearing, leaning up against the trunk with her face twisted.
"I can't tell if you're kidding!" she called after him.
He had already disappeared, his faint outline swallowed by the darkness in the trees.
The waxing moon hovered at an angle in the sky, hanging from the edges like a crooked oil painting.
"I thought you said their magic was in the forest," Pasiphae remarked when she caught up to Seth. They had reached the eastern edge of the forests that surrounded the palace, coming up against a hill overlooking the coastal urban centre. Neon lights that had become strangely familiar blinked up at her.
It was strange how all paths led back to this section of Khotadi. The rest of the country that spread along the back of the palace may as well not exist.
"It was," Seth said, holding up his tablet against the city. "Now it's moving." The lines began configuring, changing from a birds-eye view to a road-side depiction, painting miniature versions of the buildings below them.
A silver notch blinked at the bottom corner of the screen, sending off thin waves every so often. Seth closed his eyes and summoned another burst of magic. Pasiphae held her breath, only exhaling sharply when he was done. The silver spark onscreen crawled higher and curved to the left.
As if using magic wasn't bad enough, Pasiphae had to watch Seth use it on an electronic device. She shuddered.
"What?" Seth asked, noticing.
Pasiphae made a noise at the back of throat. "So unnatural."
Seth seemed amused. "Get with the times. Come on."
He took off down the hill in a dead sprint, his darkly-coloured peacoat blending right into shadows. Pasiphae had no fear of losing him. All she had to do was follow the source of her pain.
She clutched at her bleeding ribs and skidded down the hill.
"Hurry," Seth called back. "It's stopped!"
Pasiphae ducked her head as she entered the sprawl of the city, hiding behind her hair. She paused next to Seth, who had planted himself firmly in the middle of the street.
"You're not exactly being conspicuous," she muttered, right as the sharp noise of a whistle sounded behind him.
Pasiphae's still sensitive ears protested.
"Hey!" a guard snapped. "You're blocking the landing area."
I told you so, Pasiphae thought.
"Please excuse us," she said, taking care to flatten her accent. She didn't have to fake her wince as she bent down to rub her ankle. "I got a cramp. We'll be on our way now."
The guard nodded, satisfied, and waved them off.
Pasiphae glared at Seth and pinched her nails down around the flesh connecting his shoulder to his neck, dragging him away. He barely noticed, his eyes locked on the screen.
"Over there," he hissed, jerking his chin.
Pasiphae shuffled them into a small alleyway, illuminated under a blinking sign advertising bedding. The green glow reflected back in their faces eerily as they crouched beside the trash cans, watching the area that the screen had identified banshee magic to be coming from.
It wasn't exactly magic that the tablet could track, Seth had explained earlier when they set out in a rush, but rather the emptiness. Banshees became such creatures when they strayed from their Courts, snapping the tether to their magic. With their magic gone, so too was their lifeline, and they crossed into a state of being that couldn't be constituted as wholly alive. They lived half in another intermediate dimension before Deaths, and if any magic—whether the minuscule amount from a human or the large amounts from a faery or witch—crossed over in the process of a life ending viciously, it caused banshees such distress that a scream was the natural release. Without having known that there was a banshee nearby, it would have been impossible to tell what the tablet could pick up on. But in knowing what they were looking for and how close the banshee was, it would appear that Seth could send out magical pulses to pick up on cold spots.
Pasiphae thought that while such a talent was useful, it was also horrifying.
"See anyone you recognise?" Seth whispered.
"Please remember my Court interaction has been limited to our room and human consorts," Pasiphae whispered back.
"A few of these are Court nobles," he continued, choosing to ignore Pasiphae's unhelpful remark. "Lower, though, so it wouldn't be obvious that they're skipping out on the palace."
A carriage rumbled past then, splashing dirty water up at the pair of them as it drove over a puddle.
Disgusted, Pasiphae stood, shaking off the liquid. This was the second time tonight she had been covered in something less than appealing, and she was running dangerously low on sleep.
"Seth," she said. "Kalis died from an overdose of Devil's Breath."
He gave her a look askance, unable to figure why she was bringing this up. "Yeah?"
Pasiphae tapped her fingers against the wall. "You have a stash of Devil's Breath. I keep smelling it whenever you return from an excursion."
"Of course I do." Seth confirmed the fact like it was the simplest statement in the world. "The powder form isn't hard to come by, and they confuse the consorts who catch you spying in strange places."
"That wasn't my question, Seth."
"You didn't ask a question, Saf."
Pasiphae crossed her arms. "Did you have anything to do with Kalis' death?"
Seth paused for a moment. "No," he said, and Pasiphae exhaled slowly.
"I almost wish I did, though," he added. "Just so I would know what happened. But it's as much a mystery to me as it is to you."
He seemed sincere.
Pasiphae focused back on the scene before them. "Why don't we go sit down?" she asked.
It looked like an outdoor food market, though most tables held strange contraptions that fae leaned in to inhale from every so often in their conversations.
"It's a drug restaurant," Seth said.
"A what?" Pasiphae spluttered. "Surely you just made that term up."
"A drug restaurant," Seth repeated. "That's exactly what it is. You sit down and you order drugs."
Pasiphae touched a finger to the bridge of her noise. These fae were honestly going to be the Deaths of her.
"Has the pinpoint on your screen moved?" she asked, smoothing over her revolted expression.
"Still blinking." Seth tucked away the screen. "Our banshee has to be someone sitting down. Memorise all the faces."
Pasiphae hopped from one face to the other, almost wanting to roll her eyes. The urge disappeared as quickly as the blood in her face.
Pasiphae reached out and grabbed Seth's sleeve, stopping him from getting up.
"By Callistra," she swore in a rush. "Does that girl look familiar?"
Seth arched an eyebrow. "Which?"
"In the corner," Pasiphae hissed, pointing, "with the black clothes."
Recognition dawned in his face. "She was the informant on the video," he whispered. "Lauha Hollblood."
Lauha was almost out of sight in the very back, her slightest frown directed at the air in front of her. She didn't seem to be inhaling anything like the fae around her, only drinking a pale green liquid in a glass. As they watched, a silhouetted figure took a seat opposite to her.
Her companion wore a large, shapeless cloak and a hood over their head as they hunched over the table, concealing any detail of their identity.
"The Unseelie Court tortured and killed someone close to her for information," Pasiphae whispered, smug. "What are the chances she would still be loyal to Morgana?"
"Slim to none," Seth replied. "I still need to talk to her."
Pasiphae's eyes widened, grabbing onto his wrist again. "Wait!"
Seth hurtled back with her steel grip, landing onto his backside with an oomph. He shot Pasiphae a hard glare.
"You're welcome," she hissed. "Look!"
The concealed figure stood and lurked out the restaurant, ducking their head within the cloak. But Pasiphae and Seth had gotten a good look as the white-blue glow of the restaurant sign illuminated hair so blond it had hued into silver.
"Well, well," Seth muttered. "What could Warin be doing meeting with a banshee?"
"You don't know that she's the banshee," Pasiphae corrected.
Seth eased the screen out from his coat again, waiting as Lauha slowly got up and left a few loose coins on the table. She stuck her hands into her pockets and left the restaurant, her boots clunking heavily down the opposite way which Warin had left.
"On the contrary," Seth said, "I do."
The blinking on the screen had moved, tracking down the road in leaps.
He stood. "Let's head back."