“VenDell?” Wax guessed, putting his bullets away. The kandra was wearing a new body, but the creature’s air was distinctive.
“Indeed, Lord Ladrian,” VenDell said, entering the room and undoing his satchel. “You’ll forgive me for letting myself in.” He set a piece of paper on the table beside Marasi. “This is for you, Miss Colms.”
“What is it?” she asked, wiping her fingers on a napkin that Steris materialized as if from nowhere.
“A note recovered from the site of your engagement with the Set,” VenDell said. “LeeMar recovered it before the other investigating constables could notice it.”
“Wait,” Marasi said. “You have kandra among the constables I don’t know about?”
“Several,” VenDell said.
“Who?”
“Cassileux, for one. LeeMar took over her life about sixteen months ago, after the real woman died in that raid on the Nomad Gang.”
Marasi’s jaw dropped. “But… Cassileux and I hadlunchlast week!”
“Yes, she keeps an eye on you,” VenDell said.
“She didn’t tell me!”
“Should she have?” he asked absently, then sniffed at the biscuits that Allik offered him. “How horrible.”
“Aw,” Allik said, his shoulders slumping.
“I’ve told you, Master Allik,” VenDell said. “I am a carrion feeder, and strictly carnivorous. These… creations… would not suit me. But if you are interested, I’ve been considering putting up good money for one of your masks.”
“What?” Allik said, hand going to his mask, which was still up on the top of his head. “My mask?”
“There has been discussion among the kandra lately,” he said, “about your masks. Many of us think they are as integral to your natures as hair or nails—virtually a part of your skeleton. As such, I have decided to start collecting them for future bodies. Do you have any for sale?”
“Uh…” Allik said. “You’re an odd man, yah?”
“I’m not a man at all,” VenDell said. “I’ll leave you with an offer; let me know if you’dentertain some negotiations. I would only require the mask after your death, of course. If you persist in spending time with this group of people, that might not be far off.”
He walked toward Wax next, then held out his hand. “May I see it, please?”
Wax sighed, then turned to the safe box where he’dbeen setting up his experiment. He took out the trellium spike and presented it to VenDell, who held it up toward the light.
“I thought you couldn’t touch those,” Steris said from the table beside Marasi.
“You are mistaken, Lady Ladrian,” VenDell said. “This is not a kandra’s spike, so touching it is not taboo.”
“I’m not going to let you take this one,” Wax warned. “It needs to be studied.”
“Unfortunately,” VenDell said, “I have no intention of recovering it, so we won’t get to see if you could actually prevent me or not.”
“You don’t want it,” Wax said, “because it’s not a kandra spike? Unlike the ones that belonged to Lessie, which you stole from us.”
“You gave those up willingly.”
“I was not in an emotional state to do anything willingly,” Wax said. “I still want to know how much that metal—trellium—had to do with what happened to her.”
“The way Paalm… acted was a direct result of her decision to remove one of her spikes,” VenDell said. “The trellium spikes may have exacerbated her ailment, but were not the root cause.”
“Harmony implied otherwise to me.”
VenDell turned the spike over in his fingers and didn’t reply. Instead he nodded toward the safe box. “What are you doing here?”