“It took many years to come up with a dilution that is subtle enough for the Fleshers not to notice,” Yelles says. “Sons and daughters of my own Guild gave themselves to the experiment—for we had to be sure the addiction could be reversed.”

“How many years?” the Fisherman asks curiously as her unseeing eyes glance in Yelles’s general direction.

“Since he destroyed my sister, Lady Kamelia, and enslaved her children.” Yelles’s voice is sharp and raw. “When the Tiger came to me and offered me a fortune if I would make him a brew of the poppy so strong it could force any man to his bidding, I was too young, too greedy, too naïve. I made it and sold it to him, thinking it none of my business what he did with it. And he used it on my own sister, to destroy her and her Guild.” His eyes shine with unshed tears. “And when we saw what he had done …” He shakes his head mournfully. “We were weak. He had allies, slavers, a hundred ships in our ports. Could we have gone to war with them and prevailed? Our duty was to protect our Guilds, to protect the Court. That is what we told ourselves to justify doing nothing.”

He turns his eyes to me.

“Then one day a Cat with a back scarred in stripes came to me saying that she was going to kill the Tiger and set all the Sisters free. She asked for my help. How could I refuse?”

He waves a hand over the barrels of sake. “We have been diluting the poppy the Tiger buys for two years. According to our studies, the Sisters should be coherent enough not to fight you if you reason with them. Some may remember who they are. Most will not, having been too long under the poppy’s sway.

“And if the Cat fails—which is likely,” he says, giving me a measured look, “then all the blame for the dilution of the drugs will be placed on her. My sons will swear she broke in and tampered with the bottles alone.”

“No,” says the Fisherman. And there is so much force in that single word that we all look up. “She is asking us to attack a Guild. She stands here among us and admits to planning the murder of a Lord of the Miracle Court. We should drown her in shackles of iron in the name of preventing a war and be done with it.”

30

What the Lords Said

“There are nine Guilds, nine Lords. Yet the Sisters’ seat lies empty and a false lord, a slaver, sits among us!” Yelles shouts, fists clenched and fire raging in his eyes. “The Miracle Court was not created to protect those who trade in the flesh of the Wretched, and yet we have allowed it. It’s time we correct our failure.”

“Brave words from a man who has been fiddling with bottles in secret,” the Fisherman parries, not a whit impressed.