Chương 76: Book 2, Chapter 15: Hidden Truths

The guards' eyes went blank. The man's hand froze halfway to his saber, and the woman's jaw hung slack, her gaze fixed somewhere in the distance. It worked exactly as it had on Iris, except Clara felt considerably less guilty about doing this to people she had no connection to. As long as they don't get Memory Voids. Clara waved her arm to Conrad, Warren, and Luisa.

"Now." They uncovered their ears and came forward, eyeing the two motionless guards with suspicion. Clara pushed the side door—which was unlocked, thank the Goddess—and they went inside. She pulled the door shut behind them. A breath later, muffled through the wood, she heard the woman outside speak in a puzzled tone, "What was I…?"

"Wasn't someone here?" asked the man.

"Doesn't look that way." Then nothing. Just the ordinary shifting of two people who had no idea they'd missed the last thirty seconds. Good. They're fine." Fiat lux," Clara chanted quietly, and her wand brightened the space around them—a long, colorless hallway. They continued forward in silence, trying to get far enough away from the guards before speaking. After almost a minute of walking, Clara stopped and finally let herself breathe.

"Casewell. What was that?" asked Warren.

"I already told you. Sound magic."

"I didn't see your wand light up," said Luisa.

"How did you learn to do that?"

"I read a lot." Clara started moving again without waiting for Warren to assemble the objection she could already see forming on his face.

"We don't know how much time we have, or if there're any guards inside. Let's learn what we can, then get out."

"I would like to register my opposition to this," he said. But he followed. They continued until they came upon a set of heavy double doors to their left, near the end of the corridor. Conrad opened them, and they entered the warehouse's main room. Countless sacks were stacked in disciplined rows down a central aisle, and the air was so thick with spice that Clara's eyes watered. Pepper. Cardamom. Cinnamon bark in bundles as tall as a man. A whole pallet of saffron boxes.

"For all Secondos lied about, Anis Clovos was certainly a real merchant," Warren murmured, picking up some spilled cumin and rubbing it between thumb and forefinger.

"The traders in Dunvarrach would weep with jealousy to see this much stock in one room."

"It seems Master Clovos earned his reputation," Clara said.

"All that talk of his 'standing' wasn't just politeness."

"If the front is this profitable, one has to wonder what's in the back," Luisa said.

"Back?" Clara asked. Luisa nodded.

"Impressive as it is, this wouldn't account for the tonnage those workers described."

"Hmm." Conrad tapped his chin.

"I think this room doesn't run the full length of the building—it looked longer from the outside." Clara looked around. They're right. There has to be more to it. The four of them walked to the end of the aisle, where the rows stopped against an interior wall of mortared stone that looked newer than the others. There didn't seem to be a door that led further in.

"A dead end," said Warren, though he didn't sound convinced of it.

"No." Luisa's statement had a certainty to it.

"Lord Conrad?" He had already stepped past her and was rapping his knuckles along the stone, head tilted, listening. The sound was dull until, a few feet from the corner, a flatter note came in response.

"This part is hollow." Could this be some sort of elaborate trick door? One of those bricks you had to push in to move forward in an escape room? Probably not, with this world's level of technology. Luisa pulled out a wand from her sleeve. It had a dark walnut handle and a rose quartz on the tip." Aperiantur oculi mentis." Right, it could be some magic mechanism. Clara followed Luisa's lead and used the same spell, her ametrine flaring in response.

The room lost its color and gained that translucent night-vision overlay she'd come to know.

"There." Luisa crouched and pointed at a brick low on the wall, near where Conrad had knocked. Clara could see a thin thread of light, no brighter than an ember. The signature of a magical enchantment. Luisa pushed. The brick sank half an inch into the wall with a soft click, and somewhere behind the stone a counterweight shifted and dropped. A section of the wall swung inward on a pivot. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. The smell came first. Warren grimaced.

"What in the Goddess's name…" It was the very opposite of the pleasant smell of spice—a thick reek of waste, like unwashed farm animals. Clara held her nose and stepped forward. The back room was a long, windowless hall. The floor was packed earth strewn with filthy straw, with rotting food scraps and waste lying around. Near the entrance sat a cold brazier, an iron rod laid across it. Iron rings ran along the left wall, connected to short chains that ended in open manacles. Human-sized manacles, specifically.

And on the other side of the room, holding pens that looked more like jail cells. Conrad scowled so deeply it made his usual face look pleasant in comparison. Was this really what it looked like? Clara didn't want to believe it. Goddess, let it be anything but that. She let the illumination spell fall again and readied a different visualization, one she'd cast before, on a wet cobblestone in Westwick.

"Casewell? What are you doing?" asked Warren.

"Making sure. I'll use a spell that can reveal traces of blood. Ubi ferrum sanguinis latet, luce responde." The pull came at once, much greedier than even the one from the magical vision, dragging warmth out of her chest and down her arm through the wand. Her breathing grew progressively heavier as the magic was drained from her. Fortunately, Clara was no longer limited to the paltry amount of stored energy she'd had the last time she cast this. The spell spread across the room.

Faint blue dots appeared, scattered across the ground. A handful, then a dozen, then more than she could number. Then there were smears—full palm prints on the walls, choppy lines in the earth. The manacles shone where wrists had worn themselves raw, and the iron rod near the entrance might as well have been a light stick. But brighter than all of those was a small mound of packed earth. Clara carefully toppled it with her foot. Underneath it was a rotting, severed hand. She gagged.

"Goddess preserve us," said Luisa, who'd gone completely rigid. Conrad took her hand. Clara recalled the book on Byzottoman history. The Empire had abolished slavery at cannon-point decades ago, in an expedition led by Bel's grandmother with a mix of humanitarian and dubious economic motivations—all in all, a fairly standard tale, analogous to many happenings in early modern history. She had simply filed that knowledge under 'worldbuilding'.

To her, the slave trade was an abstract concept, something from the history books of both her world and this one. Safe to say, it no longer felt abstract.

"Arcadia's armada didn't stop the slave trade. It just pushed it behind a wall, covered by the scent of spice," said Clara.

"Disgusting." Conrad clicked his tongue.

"I wager this is how Anis was so prosperous."

"Great-grandmother was too merciful, and her treaty was clearly not enough. I will propose urgent action once we return to the Esperança." Luisa's fist was clenched, and her scowl was even deeper than Conrad's.

"The armada must rectify this mistake."

"With all due respect, Lady Luisa, that is too hasty a judgement," said Warren.

"We don't know how sanctioned this is. If it's just one illegal trader or many, and if the authorities are overlooking it on purpose or not. Ending an institution that lasted hundreds of years is not something that can be done in an afternoon—Arcadian slavery was of an even larger scale than the one practiced by the Byzottomans, and we had our own prolonged underground slave trade for decades after abolition despite the government's best efforts. We must, at least, let the trial play out." He looked at Clara.

"But political consequences aside, as far as the trial is concerned, this changes everything. And not necessarily to our advantage." She thought about it. The very first hole they had poked in Justan's accusation was that Pedro lacked a motive. That there was no reason for an Arcadian high noble to come all the way here to murder a random spice merchant. But Pedro was a member of House de Bragança, which led the Arcadian abolitionist armada that had sailed against the Empire decades ago.

And Anis Clovos was a slave trader. They made their way back to the embassy, using the same 'sound magic' trick to escape from the warehouse unseen. They had searched the place a bit more, just in case there were any slaves left behind that they could save, but clearly the 'merchandise' had been moved elsewhere. Conrad and Luisa went off to find Bel and relay what they'd discovered—and Clara earnestly hoped that didn't lead to a new declaration of war—while she and Warren went up to the study to discuss the case.

She sank into an armchair near a cooling crystal, grateful for the artificial chill against the back of her neck. Warren sat across from her, a heavy look on his face. At first, they sat in silence, each processing their own feelings about what they'd seen. Clara tried her best, but she couldn't get the nauseating sights out of her mind.

"Do you think Lord Pedro knew about the slave trade?" she eventually asked.

"It's possible. It would explain why he got involved with Anis—perhaps he intended to expose it." The idea of a high noble travelling undercover to expose the slave trade in another country bordered on the absurd. But considering Pedro was Bel's father, Clara couldn't rule it out. It did sound like something the Braganças would do.

"Then there's Prince Sellem," she said.

"If we're thinking Pedro was meeting with Anis about the slave trade, then Sellem may be involved, too. Which would also explain why he didn't want to show himself in court."

"That is a possibility," said Warren.

"But, unfortunately, one we have no proof of. We can't directly accuse a Byzottoman prince of slave trafficking, in front of two of his siblings, when all we have are implications. And if we carelessly bring up slavery, we hand them a motive to attach to Lord Pedro and embarrass the Empire in the process. It will be an extremely delicate trial, one where every sentence must be carefully weighed. Which is why you should withdraw." Clara sighed.

"This again? No. I will stand in court tomorrow, whether you like it or not. Have you forgotten I'm the one who exposed Secondos?" Warren rose, clasping his hands behind his back and staring off into the night through the window.

"What we found today changes the nature of this case entirely. It is no longer a question of a poisoned merchant, which was sensitive not because of its subject matter but simply due to Lord Pedro's position. Now, it involves the slave trade, a binding international treaty, suspicions on at least one prince, and an increasingly high likelihood of military action."

"And you're saying I'm too tactless to handle it."

"While I do think your finesse has room for refinement, especially when it comes to etiquette and presenting ideas to a higher-status audience, I am not making a comment on your skills—simply on the reality of where you stand. I said this earlier. My rank affords me protection, a measure of consequence the Empire would think twice about incurring. You do not have that, and you cannot afford to make yourself an overt enemy of the Sultan-Basileus or Prince Justan, who is well known for his ruthlessness. I won't…"

She wasn't surprised, in fairness. He'd been winding toward this all day, actually even longer. All his interactions with her since they'd boarded the Esperança had been tinted with this patronizing shade of concern. And Clara was done with it.

"You won't what?" He glanced at her, hesitating to answer.

"Go on, finish what you started."

"Isn't it obvious? I mean that I won't let you keep risking yourself, Casewell. You should not have even gone to the investigation today! What if you got hurt again?"' Let' me? Fuck you. She glared at him.

"I think it's about time we had a long overdue conversation, Righton."