this Harka Bey, whatever it is, really must be from the palace and around the
Beysa, right? The closer they are to the Imperial blood the more fish-eyed they
are, right? And while I was talking to her a snake, one of those damned red
mouthed vipers, crawled up out of her clothes and wound up around her neck,
lookin’ at me as if its opinion was the one that really mattered. And the other
one – the one who came forward after the test – her face was shiny and purple!’
‘Then she should be fairly easy to identify if she’s the one who killed your
sister.’
Cythen froze on the stool, searching the past few days, the past few months for
any slip of the tongue when she might have let him know what Bekin was to her;
that she pursued the killer of a Red Lanterns courtesan out of anything more
than outrage or simple compassion.
‘Molin told me,’ Walegrin explained. ‘He was looking for a pattern.’
‘Molin Torchholder? Why in the name of a hundred stinking little gods should
Vashanka’s torch know anything about me or my sister?’ The anxiety and guilt
transformed themselves into anger; Cythen’s rich voice filled the room.
‘When Myrtis asks Lythande and Lythande asks Enas Yorl and they ask for a
specific person to escort the corpse from pillar to post then, yes – somehow
Molin Torchholder hears about it and gets his answers.’
‘And you’re his errand boy? His messenger?’ She had touched a sore point between
them in her anger, and by the darkening of his face she knew to regret it. Back
in the first days of chaos after the Beysib fleet heaved over the horizon, Molin