Arc 4: Chapter 4: Ties That Bind
Rosanna Silvering, Empress of the Accorded Realms, paced before the window of her private office. The morning sunlight piercing through the glass seemed to catch on her fair skin, and gave the anger in her emerald eyes a glint like green fire. She wore a blue dress threaded in silver and sashed with samite, and the gold-and-silver tiara on her brow seemed to burn like a halo where the morning light caught it.
I still wore the rain-and-blood soaked coat from the previous night. I hadn’t bathed, or slept. I stood in the shadows near the door, waiting for the Empress to speak.
Rosanna paced to one side of the huge window, brought her ring-burdened hand up to her lips as though to chew on her thumbnail, then caught herself before she could indulge in the old habit. She spun on me instead, her jaw tight.
“Explain.”
She said nothing else, and the ensuing silence hung in the room like the aftermath of a thunderbolt. I took a breath and began to speak in a calm tone, touched with a slight rasp from weariness.
“We knew the Priorguard had been investigating a dye maker in one of the guild quarters. They were chasing a lead on the materials some of the city's artists have been using, thinking they might be continental imports — potentially compromised. Cursed.”
Rosanna’s regal features shifted into a frown. “Were they?”
I shrugged. “We know the larger guilds in the continent use Devil Iron and other dangerous materials. Evil paint seemed a stretch, but something has been making members of the city’s renaissance movement go mad. It wasn’t a bad lead, once we knew what they were looking for.”
Infernal influence aside, I knew that the demon Yith’s personal mark very closely resembled a type of beetle used for red paint — hence the name Carmine Killer. And more artists had turned manic, even violent, in recent weeks the same way the lady Yselda of Mirrebel had.
Oraise was onto something. I just couldn’t shake the feeling he had more pieces to the puzzle than I did.
“After some digging,” I continued, pushing aside my private thoughts, “we found out that one of the larger dye makers had been struggling with theft. Turns out one of his apprentices had been stealing from him to conduct a private practice in his home. Kid was an aspiring Anselm.”