Page 68 of Silvercloak

“Maybe you did,” Saff said evenly. “But I was the only one in the baths.”

Vogolan rose from the bed and strolled slowly over to where she stood in the doorway. “Are you telling me it was coincidence that Captain Elodora Aspar, the very woman who gave evidence against you at your trial, just so happened to be in the baths at the same time as you?”

“I have a loyalty brand.” She swallowed hard, heart thudding, and forced herself to meet his hateful gaze. “If I’d done anything to betray the Bloodmoons, I’d quite literally be dead in the water.”

A scoff, raspy and rough. “You know, Filthcloak, I’m not a religious man. I believe most things to which the pious ascribe divine meaning are simply random chance. Coincidence. Yet thiscoincidenceis a stretch too far, even for me.”

Saffron’s mind rerouted, remapped, seeking the least treacherous patch of terrain.

“Fine, you caught me. I despise that woman for what she did to me.” She spoke coolly, calmly, as the kingpin and his son did when discussing cold-blooded murder. “I went to kill her, if you must know. After slitting Neatras’s throat, I realized it isn’t that hard. But when I got there, Aspar had already left. Happy?”

A flimsy, unconvincing story. Aspar’s death would have been the easiest murder to solve of all time—clear motive, a bathhouse entry parchment with both their names on it. But Saffron was thinking on her feet, and sometimes feet were clumsy.

“Delighted.” Vogolan’s breath reeked of stale tobacco tea. “Do you know what else makes me delighted?”

Saffron said nothing, only glared.

“Gelato.”

The singular word, coupled with the self-satisfied sneer on his face, was enough to make her blood run cold.

He grinned grotesquely. “You see, our kingpin does so love banana cream pie gelato. And so I thought to myself, why don’t I pay a visit to Papa Marriosan myself? Kill two ravens with one rock?”

No.

“Papa Marriosan works out of the Arollan Mile shop on Oparling afternoons, serving the customers himself. Such a humble, hardworking man, is he not? And so I swung by, for some banana cream pie.”

Saffron couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.

“Although … perhaps I should start at the beginning.” Vogolan twiddled the edge of his gray moustache. “Earlier this morning, I found Auria Marriosan. Lovely little thing, isn’t she? Such interesting scars. So innocent-looking, but such a bad temper, my my.”

“What did you do?” Saffron asked coarsely, dread pooling in her gut.

“I only asked her how the search for Nalezen Zares was going. Just to coax her along, offer some gentle encouragement. To remind her of the stakes, as such. And the curious thing was, she had never heard the name before in her life. Not even under the influence of truth elixir.”

Saints.

Saffron hadn’t ever told Auria the name.

And now …

Vogolan’s jaw twitched. “Which led me to think one of two things: either she was a remarkable liar … oryouare. Perhaps you never asked for her help at all. Perhaps you invoked her name to buy yourself time—to weasel your way out of this mess before you ever had to get her involved.”

Saffron shook her head fiercely. “No, that’s not it. I couldn’t find Auria that first night, so I asked a different contact. So that I’d get the information faster.”

One tiny detail—the omission of a name—was unravelling everything.

Reroute, recalibrate, readapt.

Vogolan sighed emphatically. “I do find myself hoping that isn’t true. Because that would make what I did to Papa Marriosan this afternoon rather unfortunate, indeed.”

He searched every inch of her face, savoring her reaction. His expression was almost …aroused.He wanted to see her squirm, and she would not give him that gratification. Instead, she met his slimy satisfaction with squared shoulders and a hateful stare.

“I’m actually rather proud of it,” he said silkily. “You do quickly run out of different ways to kill people, in this line of business, and when you do the same thing over and over again, it does grow tiresome. But gelato cones make fantastic weapons, when jammed so far into an eye socket that the brain weeps out the ears.”

Somewhere deep in her belly, a wounded animal let out a roar.

Sweet Papa Marriosan, with his jovial laugh and his potbelly and his famous, glorious ice cream.

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