The Fire Seer and Her Quradum by Raby Amy

Author:Raby, Amy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy romance
Publisher: Amy Raby
Published: 2015-03-23T16:00:00+00:00

∞

Mandir could tell that Taya had received a vision. There was a light in her eyes that told him she’d learned something—and he had the impression she wasn’t happy about what she’d learned.

Though deeply curious, he held his tongue as they walked through the hallway. Once in the guest room, he shut the door and went to the window, checking in all directions to make sure nobody was spying on them. “We’re alone. What did you learn?”

“It was Ilinos who turned out the dogs,” said Taya.

“Ilinos?” Mandir furrowed his brow. Truly, that was a surprise, and not a pleasant one. He’d have thought the murderer would be someone smarter and more sophisticated. Runawir, perhaps, or the backstabbing Shardali.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean he’s the murderer,” said Taya.

True, they needed to revisit their earlier assumption that whoever had turned out the dogs had murdered Tufan and Yanzu. Wouldn’t it make more sense if Ilinos had let the dogs out for another reason? Ilinos had tried to bully Setsi earlier that day and been humiliated and beaten by both Mandir and Tufan. Perhaps, since he couldn’t retaliate against them, he’d retaliated instead against Setsi by letting the dogs out. “It may be that he was just trying to get Setsi in trouble. The murderer could be someone else who’d planned the crimes and was just waiting for an opportunity to carry them out. When Ilinos released the dogs, his opportunity arose.”

“Or the murder could have been impulsive,” said Taya. “Maybe our murderer saw Tufan’s wine glass sitting in the kitchen unattended and decided, right then and there, to poison it.”

Mandir frowned. “If it was impulsive, why kill two people instead of one? And where did our impulsive murderer get the poison?”

“Tufan keeps nepenthe in his room,” said Taya. “We knew Tufan went out to fetch the dogs, and both of his guards accompanied him. The murderer needed only to go to Tufan’s room, take the nepenthe—”

“Through a barred door,” Mandir pointed out.

“Perhaps through a window, then.”

“Sounds more planned than impulsive to me. Is that scenario even possible? We don’t know if Tufan was away looking for the dogs at the time the cup was sitting unattended in the kitchen.”

“I don’t know. The poisoning could have happened later. This is why we need a timeline.” Taya went to her saddlebag, which Mandir had put away on a shelf, and pulled out a tablet and stylus. Sitting down at the table, she called a bit of water from the air and smoothed it over the tablet to wet the clay. “Ilinos...releases...the dogs,” she pronounced as she wrote the words.

Mandir admired the neatness of her letters, though she was terribly slow at producing them. “What’s next?”

“I’m sure there’s a lot missing, so I’ll leave some blank space. Next is Setsi tells us the dogs are out, followed by We go outside.”

“Then We see Runawir,” prompted Mandir. “We see Setsi luring a dog. We see Tufan calling his dogs.” He waited while Taya painstakingly wrote all that down, leaving space so that they could fill in other events between.

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