House of Sand and Secrets by Cat Hellisen Page A

the Casabi. The docks are bustling with wherrymen and dock-workers and supervisors and carts and nillies and stray dogs and pickpockets and beggars; a riot of colour and stink. Tea-bells and shouts and the crack of sails and the thump of cargo. Some distance from the worst of the mob the roads branch out and narrow, leading to the storage district. The warehouses are jumbled together like a child’s abandoned collection of wooden blocks. Some tower high, others spread out, others seem to do both at the same time, with levels precariously balanced at odd angles. The Pelim warehouse is one of those, with small useless balconies jutting out on the highest floors. A worker leads me through the bizarre labyrinth until I find Jannik in a small study filled with ledgers and musty paperwork. He is dishevelled and sitting cross-legged on the floor before two vast piles of rotting yellowed papers.
    “Enjoying yourself?” I say to him.
    He looks up, eyes wide in a face streaked with grime. He manages to recover from his surprise at my presence with barely a blink. “I hate whoever last ran these offices. Six months and I’ve made barely a dent in the records. The ones that hadn’t been tossed in the river, that is.” He sets down the papers neatly, straightening the edges before he stands. “Can I help you with something?” he says, as if I am some client who has stumbled into a place they shouldn’t be.
    “I paid a visit to the Splinterfist rookery,” I tell him.
    “Ah.” His face is closed. “Why would you want to do that?”
    “To find out what I could about the dead vampire.”
    He fiddles with the books on his desk, setting them so that their spines are just so. On the top of the pile is a small volume bound in blue-dyed leather, the name picked out in gold lettering. The book is almost shiny in its newness. Traget’s Melancholy Raven .
    “I thought you already had a half-dozen copies of that.” I point to the slim book of verse.
    He shrugs, and runs his fingers on the soft edges, folding them in a little under the pressure. “I bought it as gift,” he mumbles.
    A sharpness stabs through my stomach, and I wince. A gift. For someone with a beautiful cruel smile and lying eyes, I suppose. “Pity the poor fool who has to slog through that just because you think it’s a work of genius.” All that rot about crossing deserts and climbing mountains and slaying dragons for his one true love, when in truth Traget was an asthmatic university head who fell in love with a Minor House daughter and had to woo her with words not deeds.
    “It is a work of genius.”
    “Hmm.” If a collection of love-sick poetry makes one a genius, then I suppose Jannik is not wrong. I shake my head in pity for whoever Jannik has decided to gift with his affections. I don’t want to think about who it might be, all I know is that knowing this much is a slap. I blink rapidly. I’m always so blind, so stupid, always the last to realize what’s going on around me.
    This is what happened before, with Dash and Jannik passing that damn Prines’ Mapping the Dream between them like it was a heart they had to share. They did more than that. Jannik had fed off him, was more than emotionally bound to him. He could track him through the city, could feel the flavour of Dash’s moods. I wonder what it is like to be so caught up with someone that you can taste the food they eat, dream their desires. I shiver. When Dash and I were together, could Jannik feel that – every sigh and whisper?
    Did he know and hurt? Jannik felt Dash die. Jannik felt his pain and he lived through it anyway, but somehow I never considered it would be the same with pleasure. I was so caught up in my own misery for what I had lost, I tried not to consider everything I took from Jannik. Another thing my brother had the measure of – how selfish I am. That was the last time. I will never take from Jannik again. No matter what it is I want.
    “Jannik?” I make myself say.