The War God’s Favorite novel Chapter 59

The Smell of Rain
The next morning, everyone in the Palace was so busy with the preparations for the New Year Festival, Cassandra and her Prince were woken up early by all the outside ruckus. The young concubine, still tired, rolled over to his side, her head on his shoulder.
Despite his closed eyes, she knew Kairen was awake from his fingers gently stroking her hair. The previous night, Shareen had left early after grabbing Valeria and taking her to her apartments. Cassandra trusted her to get as much information as she could out of her younger half-sister, and had left with Kairen to avoid more trouble. The tension was high between the brothers, and she didn’t want to stay in Phetra’s presence longer than necessary. That woman made her too upset, it was like being in the same room as a venomous, cunning snake.
“Get up, sleepyheads!” Suddenly yelled a voice inside the room.
“Your Highness! You can’t barge in like that…”
Cassandra sighed from recognizing the voices. Kairen, too, sat up and glared at his sister, who was at the end of their bed, fists on her waist.
“Come on, I want us to get out of there before the whole Palace goes crazy.”
“It’s barely dawn,” sighed Cassandra, sitting up too.
She was glad she had slept in her nightgown instead of naked like most nights. Kairen, very unhappy about the unwanted morning call, was glaring at his sister with an annoyed face. She was good at ignoring him, though, and sat on their bed.
“I know, but we have to find what that potion is made of, who made it and your younger sister. Plus, we have to be back early for tea with Mother before the beginning of the celebrations. And you don’t want to be late for tea with my mother.”
Cassandra sighed. Indeed, Kareen had limited patience, but what Shareen ignored was that she was most severe about her own daughter’s lateness. Cassandra had never been late, but she could tell the Imperial Concubine would let it go a couple of times.
“Dahlia, could I get some tea, please?”
“Coming right away, my Lady!”
The servant left the room, and much to Kairen’s annoyance, Cassandra got up and started getting ready.
“What did you get from her?” He asked with a raspy voice.
All three of them knew who he was talking about. Shareen crossed her arms.
“Phetra ordered her to go get the potion, but she really didn’t know who that snake intended it for. But she said it was before Phetra knew you and Cassie were coming, so… She probably really didn’t intend to use it on you, not in the first place.”
“Then, the question is, who is pregnant?” Said Cassandra, while grabbing a pink dress out of the closet.
“Someone Phetra would want to lose their child. You would have been first on her list, I guess, but if it isn’t you, it has to be one of our brother’s concubines. What I don’t understand is why she would care since no dragon egg seems to have appeared yet…”
While she was relieved it wasn’t aimed at her, Cassandra was disgusted that Phetra would try to make someone lose their baby. Kareen had warned her many times about the greedy and jealous women of the Palace, but she could never accept it.
She put a hand on her own belly, growing a bit bigger each day. According to Kareen, she still had about four or three months to go before her son would be born. The Dragon tamers always came to the world early, but they would be healthy nonetheless. As long as she could endure one more week in the Palace, Cassandra could leave and have her son at the Diamond or the Onyx Castle.
Kairen took her by surprise when he came from behind, putting his arms around her.
“What are you worried about?” he asked.
Cassandra shook her head, giving him a quick kiss.
“It’s nothing. I will go to my herb garden and then outside. I’ll stay with Shareen and Dahlia.”
He nodded, despite his usual frown. If it wasn’t for his sister being with her, he wouldn’t have let Cassandra anywhere he couldn’t see her.
Cassandra finished brushing her hair and picked some accessories with Dahlia’s help before kissing her Prince goodbye. With Shareen right behind her, she walked up to her herbal garden and took the potion from Dahlia’s hands. The bottle was green, a bit more expensive than the usual apothecary goods. It had no other indication about any manufacturer, however. Dahlia and Cassandra spent some time studying the potion’s content, during which Shareen had to wait. The Princess wasn’t too good with patience, however, and started grumbling after only twenty minutes or so.
“Aren’t you done yet?” She growled.
“Almost, actually. There’s this scent I don’t recognize…” Said Cassandra, frowning.
“I don’t smell anything else, my Lady,” admitted Dahlia with a sorry expression.
To Cassandra, whose sense of smell was enhanced, there was definitely something else, though, and she couldn’t point out what. Nothing had come out of analyzing the potion’s thickness or color. However, whatever it was that she was smelling felt strangely familiar, something that went back to her farthest memories…
“Could it be… petrichor?”
“What the heck is that?”
“It’s… the smell of the rain,” said Cassandra, still baffled.
Shareen exchanged a look with Dahlia, both a bit doubtful.
“You’re telling me rain as a smell?”
“It’s more like the smell of the earth after the rain, actually. But the soil’s smell after the rain smells exactly like this… I just haven’t smelled that in a long time.”
It wasn’t surprising, considering how rare the rain days were in this country. The Dragon Empire’s Capital was hot, humid and suffocating, but except for a short rain season, it was as arid as a desert most of the year. They had to go to further cities, like Kareen’s City or the Shadelands, to see something else than dry soils and sand. The Capital relied mostly on the large wells and few rivers that came all the way down from the sea, but the water came from the earth or sea, not from the sky.
“That potion probably came from outside the Capital,” said Cassandra. “They didn’t make it in the Capital, the only reason would be that they must have found a better price having it imported from the outside… Someone must have bought a larger stock.”
“It actually makes sense. Valeria bought this potion in the red district, where they probably use that kind of potions often, for the prostitutes. If Phetra only asked her for an abortion potion, that child probably just went to the first place she thought of getting one…”
“So this is a dead-end?” Sighed Dahlia.
Both women stayed silent for a while. Cassandra felt like they were missing something, but she couldn’t say what. After a few minutes, her eyes fell once again on the green bottle, which she grabbed.
“Not necessarily… Why would they have put this potion in a fancy container like this one?”
“You’re right,” said Shareen. “If it’s from a large stock, the seller shouldn’t bother putting it in a green jade container. It’s like they knew who they were selling it to.”
“The order was placed beforehand,” concluded Cassandra. “Valeria was made to retrieve the potion by Phetra, but the seller knew it had been ordered from the Palace.”
“So, the seller knew his buyer,” said Shareen with a grin. “Now, we just need to find them… I’ll send one of my girls to see who sells those in the Red District.” (
Once Shareen was done giving orders, she and Cassandra agreed it was time they left the Palace to look for Missandra in the upper neighborhood. There was no reason for them to go back to the Red District to investigate the potion, but Cassandra was adamant about looking for her younger sister as soon as possible. Krai was nowhere to be seen, for now, probably gone hunting somewhere far from the current ruckus at the Palace.
As they left the Palace, Shareen couldn’t help but think about their earlier talk over and over again. Cassandra had taken her by surprise. Though she knew about her brother’s concubine’s exceptional knowledge in medicine, she was shocked to hear her talk so well about the usual trading habits of the Capital merchants. What kind of life had she lived, exactly? Common slaves didn’t get that much knowledge just with some observation. Under her weak and quiet appearance, that woman actually turned out to be even smarter than most of the concubines. No wonder their mother had taken a liking to her…
When they finally reached the neighborhood Cassandra had set to target first, the young concubine was a bit lost. Where to start? This wasn’t like the Red District, where everyone knew pretty much everything that happened next door. She tried to think of what to ask, and as soon as she found a shop, walked to the merchant.
The old man was speechless upon seeing the three women that had appeared, but Cassandra was now used to this kind of reaction.
“Excuse me, sir, could I ask you a few questions?”
“Of course, your Highness! Anything, your Highness!” Said the old man, immediately bowing as low as he could.
“Please get up, sir. You don’t need to bow… I wondered if you had seen any new shop opening in the neighborhood, recently? Like an apothecary, or perhaps southern medicine?”
“No, your Highness, not that I know of… Many merchants come and go, madam.”
Cassandra sighed, thanked the old man and left. Shareen, with her arms crossed, looked bored already.
“Why does it feel like this is going to take forever?”
“This area is considerably larger than the Red District, and my sister doesn’t want to be found by anyone either… I can’t even look for someone her name, she probably found a new alias to hide from the thugs from yesterday.”
Cassandra was right. Targeting the middle-class businesses meant they would have to search in a zone that was at least five times bigger than the Red district. Moreover, she had no name to give this time and only a rough idea of her sister’s possible whereabouts.
They had left early, but after four hours of walking around and asking as many people as she could, nothing happened. Cassandra had asked dozens of people, without ever getting anything concrete. The few known apothecaries had been established for many years, and no matter how many times she asked, no one seemed to have seen anyone that fitted the description Cassandra gave over and over again.
After a while, Cassandra started to feel the fatigue, her feet and backed ached. She had been so adamant about
looking for her sister, she had forgotten her pain until she couldn’t anymore. Shareen helped her sit in a chair of the closest tea shop, somewhere she could hide from the sun. Even for the first day of spring, it was too hot for Cassandra. She had spent terrible summers in the Capital, with a hard time coping with the heat. She truly wasn’t fit for extreme temperatures…
“Go order us something,” Shareen said to Dahlia, who walked away after a bow.
The place was crowded, but no one dared to even look at the two women. People were absolutely shocked and terrified at one glance on Shareen’s purple dress, and after a few minutes, they were truly isolated as all the nearby tables and chairs had discreetly scooted away from them.
“I can’t believe we haven’t found anything yet,” said Cassandra, disheartened. “I really thought that last apothecary might be her…”
“Well, unless your sister turned into an eighty-years old granny, it wasn’t. You still have one week in the Capital, you’ll be able to look for her until then.”
Cassandra truly hoped she would find Missandra before then. Dahlia returned with the two cups of tea, and they drank silently. Cassandra was touched that she had thought about ordering a verbena and lemon-flavored one for her, while Shareen had a black tea.
“I’m thinking, maybe I guessed wrong. Maybe Missandra already fled the capital, or she went to the poorer side.”
“Looking for someone inside the Capital is like looking for a needle in a haystack. And like you said, your sister made enough enemies to… to not… want… to…”
“Princess Shareen?” Asked Cassandra.
But Shareen’s face was quickly turning whiter, and she was obviously struggling to stay conscious. Her eyes were closing, and her words didn’t make any sense. She spilled her tea in a clumsy movement and, before Cassandra could react, fell on the ground like a dead weight.
“Shareen!”