Traitor's Moon

cover of fitted leather had been left on the clothes chest, ready to receive the dead man’s ashes for the journey home.
    â€œA not-so-subtle hint that my people don’t let their dead linger,” Seregil noted, pointing at the jar. “We’re lucky he hasn’t already been carted out to a pyre somewhere.”
    â€œI’m not sure ‘lucky’ is the word I’d have chosen,” Thero replied, recoiling at the smell.
    â€œDamn this warm weather, eh?” Seregil muttered, wrinkling his nose. “Let’s get it over with.”
    He spread the fingers of Torsin’s right hand and inspected them. He heard Thero suck air and hold it as he pried open the clenched left fist. Perhaps he wasn’t as hardened to all this as Seregil had supposed.
    An excited gasp quickly followed, however. “Look at this!” Thero exclaimed, pulling a tangled clump of fine threads free of the wrinkled palm.
    Seregil took it and smoothed the strands out on his palm: red and blue silk, knotted into a small tassel identical to the one Alec had found on the envoy’s hearth two weeks earlier. “It’s from a sen’gai. See here? There’s a bit of cloth still attached above the knot.”
    â€œA sen’gai? But those are the colors of Virésse!”
    â€œSo they are.” Seregil returned to his inspection of Torsin’s other hand with a sardonic grin. It was still bloated from lying in the water, but with the aid of a lamp he finally located a small puncture wound on the fleshy part of the palm just below the base of the thumb. He pressed the skin, and a globule of dark blood oozed out.
    Thero drew a silver knife from his belt and gently scraped it up.
    â€œThink there are any apaki’nhags slithering about in the Vhadäsoori?” asked Seregil.
    â€œI very much doubt it. That doesn’t look like snakebite.”
    â€œMore like a needle or thorn puncture. Nyal must be right about the numbing effect of the poison. This went deep.”
    â€œSo the poisoner followed him to the Vhadäsoori when he leftUlan’s house,” Thero speculated. “Judging by this, they struggled. Torsin grasped at his attacker, pulling that bit of fringe from his sen’gai in his death throes.”
    They were interrupted by Alec’s noisy entrance. “We found it!” he announced triumphantly. “There’s a tiny mark on her left hand, between the first and second fingers.”
    â€œBut I looked there,” Seregil exclaimed. “How did you find it?”
    Alec touched the dragon bite on his ear. “This gave me the idea. When we couldn’t find anything, I tried rubbing lissik on her skin to bring out any breaks and there it was. It’s marked for good now. The flesh is beginning to go white around it, too. Nyal says that’s a sure sign.”
    â€œWell, we just found something similar on Torsin. And this.” Seregil passed Alec the tassel. “Thero’s speculated that Torsin’s murderer followed him from the banquet, and that Torsin grappled with him and tore this from his head cloth. What do you think?”
    Alec picked at the shred of cloth, then shook his head. “This was cut, not ripped. See how the weave is still straight? With this loose-woven cloth, the threads would be all ragged if anyone pulled on it hard enough to tear it. I’d say this was sent as a token, like the last one. Maybe Torsin went to the Vhadäsoori to meet someone. A Virésse.”
    â€œPossibly,” said Seregil. “But if Nyal is right about how the poison works, he was dying before he got there. Then again, judging by the difference in the symptoms he and Klia have shown, it was probably his lungs that killed him, after all. The poison just hastened the inevitable.”
    â€œWhat I felt from the Cup of Aura bears that out,” Thero agreed. “Still, he couldn’t have known how ill he really was, or he’d have asked for help getting home.”
    Alec held up the tassel. “If we’re right about this being a signal, he may have had reasons for wanting to go out alone.”
    Seregil examined the puncture again. “If this is apaki’nhag venom, then he was most likely poisoned at the banquet. If he and Klia were poisoned at roughly the same time, which seems likely, then perhaps our poisoner miscalculated its effects, given Torsin’s condition.”
    â€œMaybe they even