HYDRA

26

“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU THINK she’s innocent!” Penelope slammed a dusty bottle of alcohol onto her kitchen table. “She slipped something into my drink!”

“No one forced you to drink it,” Hetty pointed out. “It could have been poison instead of a sleeping draught.”

“I was being polite.” Penelope popped open the bottle and began to pour its contents into the glasses. Hetty’s glass got enough to wet the bottom, but Penelope filled hers with a substantial amount. “Eunice took a cup and I had to do the same. Maybe that’s why she wasn’t that upset. Eunice did offer to stay with Marianne for a bit. Better person than me. Stars, Marianne has been rude to us for ages. You know she’s the source of all the nasty gossip around town?”

“I know that.” Hetty tapped her fingers on the glass. “It’s my fault. I ruined our friendship.”

“You certainly did not,” Penelope said. “If your leavings and goings bothered her, she should have told you a long time ago. She just let things turn sour on her because she likes playing the victim!”

“I know you never liked her,” Hetty said. “Was there any reason why?”

“Do I need a reason?” Penelope asked, swishing the contents of her glass. “I’m sure somewhere deep down she’s a good person. I just didn’t meet that particular side of her. Besides, didn’t you tell me a story once about travelers on the road to Timbuktu?”

“It was not Timbuktu.” Hetty wet her lips with a taste of the sweet wine. “It was a place that exists no longer, from the time where scholars visited the Great Library of Alexandria and caravans crossed the Silk Road.”

“See, Timbuktu works.”

Hetty shushed Penelope. “This story crosses lands near a desert where a traveler picked up companions along the way. Some were by chance. A merchant whose mule could no longer walk, a pair of sisters whose parents perished along the way, and more in unlucky circumstances. Some were needed to strengthen numbers, such as a librarian with a treasury of knowledge and a former soldier who carried swords from his commission and none of the honor. They traveled together and for some time, but they would not all reach the same destination. For while they were true companions for the journey, there were places that not all could go.”

“Friends,” Penelope concluded for Hetty, “they may stay in your life always, but there may come times for them to go separate ways.”

Understanding why Penelope had brought up this story, Hetty considered her own words. “You think this applies to Marianne?”

“Oh,” Penelope said, reaching over to fill her glass once again, “you don’t want to hear my thoughts about that!”

As they chuckled over this, a knock on the door drew their attention.

It wasn’t just a simple knock, but a cascade of knocks that didn’t stop until Penelope opened the door.

Sy rushed inside, nearly knocking his cousin over. He bent over the table, gasping for air and yet trying to talk all the same.

“Sy,” Penelope exclaimed. “What’s wrong? Is Rosabelle ill again? I have some potions prepared for her.”

“Not Rosie, something else,” Sy managed to say as he looked up. “I need you to find—Hetty!”

“Are you looking for me?” Hetty asked.

“Something happened at the forge. You must see it!”

Sy could have said more then. He could have even explained. But Hetty wouldn’t have heard it. Her glass shattered on the floor, splashing the droplets of liquid against her boots.

Sy’s words were vague, but in them Hetty saw a stream of nightmares that robbed her of sleep all week.

She stood not bothering with questions.

“Show me.”

Penelope went with them to the forge. Quietly following, asking no questions but carrying with her a few healing potions, just in case.

Hetty appreciated the thought. But as Sy scrambled to explain, Hetty suspected they wouldn’t be needed.

“I don’t know where else to turn. I probably shouldn’t have left, but I couldn’t stay there longer without doing a thing more,” Sy said when they arrived at the tightly shuttered building.

Sy led them not through the shop or into the interior, but around back to the separate shed used to store the tools. The spare tools, Benjy had told her once. The large tools that didn’t fit in the shop or the ones they didn’t use often. But when Sy opened the door, there was more than just tools inside.

There was a man lying on the ground, his eyes staring, unseeing, into the great beyond.

And she knew him.

Alain Browne laid at her feet.

Behind her, she heard a cry from Penelope as she stumbled backwards.

It should have sounded louder to Hetty’s ears, but it was just dull background noise.

Hetty cursed herself for not going around to his apartment yesterday. She should have tried harder at the excursion to speak to him. She should have questioned him more strongly about how and when he found Charlie’s body and what else had happened that night. She should have found out what Alain lied about and learned if that lie risked bringing trouble. Now that knowledge was locked away for good.

“When did you find him?” Hetty asked as she looked for any signs of the Serpent Bearer cut into his chest.

“Not too long ago. I went back here looking for a tool,” Sy said. “I’m the only one here today.”

Hetty looked up at these words.

“Benjy hasn’t been here?”

Sy looked away. “I haven’t seen him.”

There was something else that he wasn’t telling her. Something that had him seeking her out instead of Benjy. It should have been Benjy that Sy went running for, not her.

“So you were looking for a tool and found this man,” Hetty said. “Was the door locked?”

“No. Nathaniel forgets, and sometimes on rainy nights we get people sleeping back here. At first I thought this man had done the same, then I saw—” Sy gulped. “Then I knew he wasn’t just sleeping.”

Hetty followed the younger man’s gaze back to Alain. She had been focused on his torso and missed what she should have seen in the first place.

A circle the size of a teacup, impressed into the left side of his skull.

“There’s only one hammer with that shape,” Sy whispered. “And Ben’s the only person who can hold it and hit his mark.”