“I do, if you ain’t already heard it. That Kyrin fellow you had me and me friends watchin’? He’s dead.”

“What killed him?”

“Don’t know, but he’s dead, all right. I seen through a window him all laid out with coins on his eyes, and women cryin’ over him.”

“Any sign of drysians?” asked Alec.

“Not that I seen and I watched fer a while, figurin’ you’d want to know.”

Seregil paid the boy and sent him off to keep watch through the night.

“Kyrin?” Alec exclaimed as they climbed the stairs.

“If Laneus was murdered, perhaps this is a reprisal. But what in the name of Bilairy is killing them? Not one of them has eaten at the other side’s table before they died. If it is poison, then they’re hiring professionals. I think we should go out, Alec, and do a little gossip collecting.”

Gossip spread quickly and it was soon common knowledge that Kyrin had been found dead in an arbor in his own garden, without a mark on him, or any clear sign of poison or magic, according to the high-ranking drysian who’d been called in. Apparently he’d just dropped dead like the others.

“Kylith, Laneus, Tolin, Alarhichia, and now Kyrin?” muttered Seregil as they rode home. “All cabal members, except Kylith, and Kyrin seemed to suspect her. And no sign of what killed any of them.”

“You really don’t think it was just age with Laneus and Kylith, at least? And Kyrin wasn’t young, either.”

“Too many deaths in one small circle in such quick succession, Alec, and not their wives, husbands, children, and so forth. It stinks of treachery.”

They spent the rest of that day making the rounds of what was left of Kyrin’s circle, offering condolences and subtly probing for more information. There were thinly veiled references to poison and enemies, but nothing definite, even from Reltheus, though he was clearly shaken.

Chapter 35 - From Bad to Worse

THINGS did not improve when two days later Kepi appeared with more bad news.

“Duchess Nerian’s dead,” Kepi said, perched on the rain butt outside the kitchen door, eating his latest free meal. “She was a friend of Duke Laneus, right? I seen her at his house plenty a’ times.”

“Dead how?” Seregil demanded.

“Way I heard it from one of the other boys, she was found in her garden this mornin’ strangled.”

Seregil paid him and sent him on his way. “Well, that certainly sounds like a reprisal, doesn’t it?”

An hour later Kepi was back with news that Earl Kormarin, a known friend of Malthus’s, was found bloated and floating in the inner harbor at the end of Crab Quay with a knife wound between his shoulder blades. According to Seregil’s assassin friend, Nerian and Kormarin were both commissioned killings: Nerian by Reltheus, and Kormarin by Malthus.