Seven Dials is a red herring. Darius, upon first arriving in Luxana, had figured that one out fast. The quarter’s streets might be narrow, twisted things, all cramped storefronts and cobblestone, but they hide a proud history. Residents who can trace their homes and livelihoods back hundreds of years, passed down from generation to generation—some to the very end of the Great Quiet itself. Newcomers tend to be seen as interlopers, regarded by their neighbors with an air of suspicion or assumptions of overreaching themselves. But this sort of ferocious pride results in the plebs of Seven Dials comporting themselves with a stronger sense of propriety and duty than most in the lower castes, and Darius can appreciate that.
Maybe that’s why, of the seven merchants licensed to sell water hemlock within Luxana’s city walls, he’s picked Persie’s Apothecary and Compounds to investigate first. The people of Seven Dials may not be the type to get caught up in schemes and murder, but that’s exactly what would make them such a good cover.
The list wasn’t hard to get his hands on. Water hemlock’s a regulated substance, the basis for all kinds of illicit and toxic brews. The clerk at the Ministerium of Records knew better than to ask what he wanted it for, and Darius tries to shake the queasiness in his stomach at that as he turns his uniform collar up. Tries to shake the feeling that he’s doing something wrong. Using his office to get into places where he shouldn’t be.
He isn’t.
He isn’t.
Kopitar told him not to investigate Naevia Kleios or her familia, and he isn’t. Not yet, anyway. He’s following his gut a different way. Because parcae was the method of Alexander Kleios’s murder, and he’s allowed to look into its source.
The apothecary’s an unassuming brick storefront, squeezed between a textiles shop and a townhouse. Impressively dilapidated, it has the distinct air of having been in business for an extraordinary number of years. The little bell over the door tingles when he enters, and when the bored girl at the counter looks up from her book, she goes pale at the sight of him.
“I’m looking for Tobin Persie, is he in?” he asks, glancing around. The girl’s eyes widen, but she hops off her stool at once, disappearing into the depths of the shop.
Just as narrow as the storefront would suggest, the apothecary shoots down so far it’s almost impossible to make out a back wall amidst the clutter. Row upon row of tiny stoppered vials, bunches of herbs hanging from the ceiling, enormous jewel-toned bottles of witch hazel and echinacea and marshmallow root—and at the center of it all, a jacquard couch of faded mauve and small rattan table, set with a steaming ceramic pot. Tazine, probably. Darius can’t stand the stuff. There should be a standard recipe, at least—you never know how it’s going to taste.
The girl reappears then, beckons him to follow.
“Persie can come to me, I think,” he tells her.
She bites her lip, a hesitation, then proceeds to flap her hands about in a bizarre series of motions. Darius can’t understand what she could possibly mean by it, but he understands at once that questioning, almost hopeful look in her eyes. “You’re a mute.”
It’s not a question, but the look of relief that breaks out across her face is an answer all the same. It rankles, being ordered around by a defective girl of no more than fourteen—and a serva at that, he notes as she tucks a lock of hair behind her ear—but they’re also wasting valuable time. Going rogue doesn’t come with an open-ended time frame. There’s only so long before Kopitar catches on that he isn’t following the Revs’ trail anymore. So Darius lets her lead the way through the twisting labyrinth of tinctures and tonics, barrels and shelves. A large tank of live lizards sits at the back of the far wall when they finally come to it, next to a closed door that the serva girl motions him through.
Persie’s backroom is significantly more ordered than the front, and Darius thinks he understands. The shop retains an aesthetic of organized chaos to create a desired impression for customers, but a man’s workspace must function foremost for the sake of utility.
“My apologies,” calls a smooth, fruity sort of voice, sounding out from somewhere to the left. “We don’t often entertain new clientele. Our customers generally know Janet and her limitations, and she them and theirs. By and large most of them don’t mind storming back here shouting for me if they must.”
The man at the workbench is enormous, his girth sheathed in a giant apron, protective goggles strapped over his eyes. Small burns run the length of his forearms, well-muscled despite advancing age. He doesn’t turn around, bent intently over a mortar and pestle as he is, although the serva Janet signs out a new message to him, pressed directly into the palm of his hand.
“And yet,” says Darius, as Janet exits the backroom, shutting the door firmly in her wake, “you don’t seem to have those limitations.”
The apothecary adds more seeds to the stone bowl. “No, I don’t,” he says. “Again, I’m very sorry, officer, but this tonic is . . . time-sensitive in nature. Active ingredients, you know.”
“Mm,” says Darius, and pushes down his annoyance. “You are Tobin Persie? Owner and proprietor of this establishment?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“You must do well for yourself here, to employ a serva. Albeit a defective one.”
“What Janet lacks in speech she makes up for in a keen mind and a delightful sense of humor,” he responds, voice easy as ever. “It’s not my niece’s fault that her mother is a fool who lost everything.”
Well, that would explain it. Darius’s regard for the man, already tenuous, plummets in an instant. So much for the hard-working plebs of Seven Dials. Persie adds a dash of yellow liquid to the powdered seeds.
“Have you had any break-ins recently?” Darius asks, deciding they’ve wasted enough time on pleasantries. “Anything stolen?”
“Not that I recall.”
“How about that you don’t recall? Something you might have noticed . . . skimmed off the top?”
“Can’t say there’s been anything.”
“I’d understand,” Darius presses, leaning against the wall, “if there had been—and it was a regulated substance—why you wouldn’t want to report it to the Publica. Something like water hemlock, maybe?”
“Water hemlock?” And there’s nothing in Persie’s voice that betrays nerves or even false surprise, just curiosity. Still, he hasn’t so much as made eye contact, and it’s starting to prickle unnaturally at the back of Darius’s neck. By now, the remedy’s turned to a brown paste. “No, nothing of the kind. Why, have there been other incidents? Should I be worried?”
“If there had been, it’d hardly be the Intelligentia looking into it.”
“I suppose that’s true. Must say, that’s a relief. Water hemlock’s one of my best sellers.”
Darius blinks. That, he hadn’t expected.
“Excuse me?”
Persie just hums a nod, leaning all the more intently over his work, and Darius has no idea what to do with that. He’s seen the books. He’s seen them, in the Ministerium of Records. “But you haven’t sold any in three months,” he says. “Water hemlock’s regulated, the Imperium requires—”
“The Imperium requires that I report purchases of regulated substances in excess of reasonable need. In the case of water hemlock, that means two ounces and above. I’m afraid that, were I required to inform the Imperium about purchases of any quantity smaller than that, my bimonthly report would fill the pages of a very large book.” There’s a thread of laughter in Persie’s voice at that, but Darius is the furthest thing from amused.
“‘Reasonable need.’ Is that a legal term?”
“It’s the Imperium’s term.”
“What reasonable need can a person have to distill parcae?”
“Parcae?” Tobin Persie all but laughs, squeezing drops from a pipette into the decanter and watching the curling fumes. “Great Terra, no. Most buyers are just looking for a quick fix the day after an unprotected . . . night of passion, if you catch my meaning. A pinch steeped in tea takes care of the whole situation, with no lingering health effects to the woman or threm—well, the woman.”
Darius stares at the apothecary’s enormous backside, the pieces falling into place, and not at all in the way he’d hoped. “Birth control.”
“Just so. Most of my customers in the market for water hemlock are just young ladies feeling a little foolish. Or their servae. They’re not murderers.”
“I think it’s my job to decide that,” Darius snaps, annoyance flaring again so bright he almost forgets that he’s trying to keep Persie at ease.
This was a waste of time. Chasing the thread of water hemlock at all is a complete dead end, if what Persie’s telling him is true. There could be hundreds—no, thousands—of people in this city alone with built-up stores, acquired in small doses over time. And the pressure in his temple starts to mount again at that, the realization that if he’s going to do this, really do this, really defy the explicit instructions that Kopitar—and, more alarmingly, Consul Palmar—gave him, then it’s time to go to the source. It’s time to investigate the Kleios familia properly, delving into the family’s movements and opening up servae case files and—
And.
Servae.
“These small purchases,” he says, the sudden flash of a new thought. “Do any of them come from patrician familias? Anyone who buys on a regular basis?”
And for the first time, something other than jovial serenity percolates under those safety goggles. Discomfort. “Oh,” says Persie, decidedly less at ease. “Well . . . I mean. This apothecary has been in my family for a very long time. A very, very long time, and we enjoy the patronage of many who value their privacy as a matter of discretion. . . . I wouldn’t like to say . . .”
“Well, I’d like you to.” He doesn’t bother masking the ice there. Persie clearly responds to authority over friendly questioning, and anyway, Darius’s mind is already seven steps ahead.
“Yes,” Persie responds. “Yes, of course. . . . But please understand. Water hemlock is a crucial ingredient to a wonderful variety of at-home remedies. Migraines, ear and sinus infections, a means to mitigate the pains of menstruation and post-natal—”
“Have you ever sold water hemlock to the Kleios familia?”
A long moment passes. Then, setting his jaw, the apothecary nods, tight. And Darius’s gut flips. That voice in the back of his mind whirring, saying closer, closer.
“How often?”
“Monthly. They have a standing order.”
“And who comes to pick it up?”
“A serva. The majordomo puts the order in.”
Persie removes the decanter from its flame. Closer.
“What’s his name?”
“Who, the domo? We’ve never—”
“The serva. The serva who collects water hemlock for Breakwater.”
“Oh,” says Persie, removing his protective gloves. “Well . . . gracious, I wish . . . I don’t know. I’ve never exactly had a chat with her, you see.”
“A woman. What does she look like?”
“Most unfortunately, Chief General, I couldn’t tell you that, either,” he responds, lifting away his goggles and finally, finally turning around to face Darius. His pale brown eyes, however, covered in milky cataracts, linger somewhere just above his left shoulder.
Blind. A blind witness.
This has got to be some sort of cosmic joke.
“So,” says Darius, icy disbelief hardening around his gut. He’s so close. He’s so close he can fragging taste it. “A strange woman who you don’t know and can’t see said that she was a Kleios serva. She does this in order to purchase a regulated substance from you on a regular basis, potentially accumulating enough over time to eventually distill a deadly poison, and you just . . . believed her.”
The smile that grows on Tobin Persie’s face is not patronizing, and it’s not arrogant, but it is unmistakably condescending. As though Darius should really know better than that.
“Give me a little more credit than that,” he says, bafflingly kind. “You’ve just watched me concoct flumene whilst being interrogated, a serum that if mishandled might have caused a minor explosion, and all without missing a step.”
To drive the point home, he plucks a tiny bottle from the row to his left, stoppered and filled with the same pale blue liquid. Flumene. Truth tonic. Red-code regulated and hardly permitted in the hands of a common pleb. But there on the little label, identically affixed to each tiny bottle, is the unmistakable seal of the Imperial Consul of Roma Sargassa. This is no common pleb, but an apothecary under the protection and patronage of Cato Palmar himself.
Persie winks at his dismay. “I know my way around an authentic patent of identity,” he says. “I wouldn’t have survived very long if I didn’t.” And then he turns and shouts, “Janet!”
In all of half a second, the serva girl—Persie’s niece—is back, pressing another series of hand signs into her uncle’s palm. They go back and forth like that for a moment, and Darius doesn’t know if he should interrupt the flow of conversation.
But then Persie smiles. “The serva you’re looking for is in her late thirties,” he says. “Maybe early forties. Pale skin, blond. Ynglot, Janet thinks. Looks like she might have a broken nose.”
Darius feels it then, lighting somewhere in his solar plexus. There. A lead. The thrill of the chase. He knew there was something here. He was right.
“Thank you,” he says, already halfway out the door. “Thank you so much for your time.”
Only, then—“One minute, officer. Janet has a name. The serva you’re looking for is called Una.”