Page 85 of A Weave of Lies
She rolled her eyes, then mulled over it, dragging her fingertips across her lips. “Well … I wouldn’t feed him at all.”
Estevan leaned on his desk and hummed attentively.
“If I, a witch, offered you a bite of a nice, big, red apple, Inquisitor Velten … would you take it?”
A sly smile spread across his lips, one corner raising higher than the other. “Depends on the ‘apple’ in question. We are talking figuratively, or literally, or …?”
“Hypothetically,” she declared with a pointed look, “most people would say no, or say yes and not eat it. Or give it to someone else who wasn’t the intended target. If I wanted to poison someone, I wouldn’t take that chance. I would—well, everybody knows the difference between a cure and a poison is in the dosage.”
“That is certainly not common knowledge,” he replied. “Only an herbalist would think like that. Or an apothecary.”
“Indulge me,” Semras parroted his words back. “Medicine is costly. People don’t usually share their own, so … that’s what I’d use. I’d mess with their salve or tincture, or ‘mistake’ one ingredient for another, more lethal one. I might even try to use a poison with similar effects to my target’s current symptoms in order not to raise suspicion.” She hummed, musing. “What else …?”
Estevan whistled. “I know who not to consult if I ever have a rash.”
“Spare me the thought of your rashes. Hmm … I think that’s all I can think of without more context, but medicine would—” She halted, face blanching. “Are you asking …? Is that why you suspect a witch has killed your victim? He had taken a witch’s remedy?”
Eyes sparkling, Estevan grinned and nodded slowly. “Have you ever been told you are delightfully clever?”
She groaned. “Have you ever been told you are shameless? How can you talk with such levity when lives are at stake?”
“Lives are always at stake wherever I go. It becomes a mere formality after the first few dozen. Now …” The inquisitor grabbed the vial he had taken from Maraz’Miri and dangled it in front of her eyes. “Show me your skills. Tell me what poison this is.”
Semras snatched the bottle from his hand, then examined it. It was made of brown glass and sealed with a small cork. No label identified it, except for a small glass-smith mark etched with acid beneath it. Opening it, she carefully sniffed its contents. It smelled of some combination of fruit and spice, possibly added in to hide its true nature. Or maybe not; many plants hid deadly toxins behind their pleasant smells.
“I’ll need my kit,” she said.
Thedeskhadbeencleared, and its contents piled onto a nearby bookcase shelf to make space for the witch’s paraphernalia. Estevan’s files and papers were now safe and far away from the flame lit beneath her small portable alembic.
Crouching to face it, Semras wove the fire to her desired temperature.
The inquisitor loomed behind her, watching her process with great interest. “It would have been faster had you used gas to heat it up,” he commented.
“Perhaps, but I don’t want to recklessly use something I know nothing of.” The witch took the vial and dropped some of it into the alembic. “When I weave the threads of the Arras, I can see them unraveling elsewhere. That is the nature of our world. We create nothing; we just change them. This ‘gas’ you enjoy takes a toll even if you can’t see it. I won’t use something I don’t know the price of.”
The flame’s heat increased, and the room grew a little colder.
Estevan raised his hands in surrender. “Point quite taken.” Sitting back down on his chair, he drummed his fingers on the desk, then grabbed some papers to shuffle through them. A minute of silence passed before he hummed. “I should tell you more about the case, shouldn’t I? The victim is Eloy Torqedan, seventy-three years old. An important number for witches, if I am not mistaken.”
Semras clicked her tongue. “I could do without the commentary, Inquisitor. I am trying to work here.”
Her request was swept aside with another one of his hums. “A long-standing member of the Inquisition,” Estevan recited from the paper in his hands. “He was an inquisitor until his retirement from the field ten years ago and had served as a tribunal since then.”
Curiosity won over her desire for some peace and quiet. “What’s a ‘tribunal’?” she asked. “You make it sound like a title.”
Tilting the poison vial onto a smaller plate, Semras counted its drops. She sniffed them, then took down several notes on a piece of paper next to her. “I always thought it referred to a group of people.”
Estevan leaned against the back of his chair. “It used to, back when the Inquisition was boasting thousands of members. Since then, it has been reduced to a title. A tribunal is a single ecclesiastical judge for the Inquisition now, made even more prestigious for their growing rarity.”
“Aren’t inquisitors judge, jury, and executioner already? That’s how my Elders described you, at least. What’s left to judge once you’re done?”
Estevan scoffed and muttered ‘left to judge’ under his breath. “We demand accountability precisely because we do not want wild inquisitors needlessly harassing the innocent. A tribunal reviews the cases of inquisitors to ensure there was no mistrial or corruption. Or, well, unprofessional behaviour.”
Semras peered at him from behind the bottle. “I am sure your methods have never attracted a single censure,” she said mockingly.
Estevan laughed, and the witch returned her focus to the tests, trying to ignore how mirth had pleasantly creased the corners of his eyes. After observing the liquid’s colour and consistency, she jotted it down.
“Oh, I have had plenty of complaints thrown at me, yet the tribunals have never put me under any formal sanction. Think what you will of me, witch, but I do try to act as ethically as I can … although I will admit that I am no Inquisitor Callum.”
