The mask of mirrors, p.20
The Mask of Mirrors, page 20
“Because Indestor controls the Vigil,” Tess murmured. With Ren’s help, she levered Sedge to his feet. The kitchen bench wasn’t much more comfortable than the floor, but leastwise he wasn’t rump-down on the cold flagstones.
“Didn’t mean to get caught in it,” Sedge grunted as he settled onto the bench. “But—well, I got stupid. Essunta toughs ran into some Fiangiolli, got challenged, claimed they were chasing the Rook.”
Ren smacked his good arm. “You got hurt trying to see him?”
“Can’t let my own sister outdo me, can I?” He gave her a lopsided grin. “Din’t see so much as a black glove, though. Kinless bastards probably made it up to cover why they were on Fiangiolli ground. I got bashed into a wall, and these days all it takes is somebody looking at it wrong for this thing to pop.” He touched his shoulder gingerly and hissed.
“Don’t be poking at it.” Tess batted his hand away and started rooting around for what she’d need. Water, cloths, enough fabric to make a sling; a needle and some of her precious silk thread in case he needed stitching. “Fool boy doesn’t have the sense the gods gave a goose,” she muttered as she laid out her tools and got to work patching him up.
Ren ran the tip of her tongue across her lip, that look she got when the wheels were turning, handing items to Tess by reflex when she called for them. Tess filled the silence, scolding Sedge for all the scars he’d picked up while they were apart, but he shrugged them off like they were no matter.
By the time Tess had Sedge stitched and washed, Ren had reached a conclusion. “I told Donaia that Vargo would help us against Indestor. I said whatever came into my head, anything to keep her from throwing me out on my ear—but if Vargo truly digs into Indestor’s business, maybe I can make it true. I need only to figure out a way for Alta Renata to have heard about this. And find out how Novrus is involved.”
“And meet with Mede Attravi, and get Fulvet to give you that charter, and Donaia to scribe you into the register before we’re out on the street,” Tess said briskly. If she didn’t take charge, these two would be at it all night and never get a wink of sleep between them. “Not one of those problems is being solved this evening. Better to face them fresh come morning.”
Sedge’s nails rasped through his stubble. “You en’t far wrong,” he said, the words opening into a jaw-cracking yawn.
Tess fixed him with her sternest eye. “You’re staying here. We’ve broth and bread enough, you’re warmer than any blanket, and I want to check that arm come morning.”
“After twisting it so hard tonight?” Sedge traded an amused look with Ren.
“Aye,” Tess said, pushing food on him and a second serving on Ren. “And if you don’t annoy me past buzzing, I might even make you a harness to keep it from popping off the next time someone glares at it.”
8
Pouncing Cat
Duskgate, Old Island: Apilun 6
“What about this one?” Leato held up a Luyaman-style torc with its wires bent into the shape of two Quarats interlocked as Noctat. “Quarat for wealth, Noctat for—”
“We all know what Noctat is for, Leato.” Giuna giggled and made a face to match the one Leato directed at her.
Sibiliat poked through the display. “That’s such a boring design, though. Now these…” Mouth compressed to mute a cheeky grin, she lifted a chain with octagon-engraved clamps at either end, each link etched with a variation on Tuat.
Giuna touched one of the clamps, frowning in puzzlement. “What’s it used for?”
“Cloak clasps,” Leato said, snatching them away and giving Sibiliat a quelling glare.
Pretending to ignore their antics, Renata let her attention drift across a tray of rings displaying the basic numinata. One fingertip brushed a heavy Sessat sized for a man’s hand. This outing was pointless; she was too low on funds to purchase anything that couldn’t be pawned, and most of the brokers she used didn’t deal in numinatrian pieces. There were legitimate sellers for that.
But Sibiliat kept insisting, and Giuna wheedled, and by the time Leato added his voice, Renata realized it would be more obvious if she kept refusing.
Sibiliat sidled up to her, too warm. Too close. “This must all seem so provincial to you. Perhaps we should try Eastbridge? You still haven’t bought anything, and there’s a jeweler near Nightpeace Gardens I recommend.”
Renata edged away under the guise of examining a set of bronze seals, the sort inscriptors used to stamp foci into wax plugs, wrought with the names of gods in the Enthaxn script. “If I need something, I can always commission it.”
“But the one in Eastbridge sells antiques,” Sibiliat said. “Wouldn’t you like to see those? I believe your mother owned a few like them.”
She’d been pressing the point all day: Letilia’s jewelry, her numinatrian pieces, whether Renata knew them or had them or cared about them. The same song she’d been singing since the day of the dance lessons. And Renata, it seemed, wasn’t the only one who’d noticed—nor the only one irritated by it. “Why do you care so much about my cousin’s jewelry?” Giuna snapped.
There was a dead silence. Leato was taken aback. And Renata…
“If you have a question for me, Alta Sibiliat,” she said, with sharp-edged courtesy, “then ask it.”
Sibiliat’s rigid posture held a moment longer. Then she rubbed one weary hand across her face. “I’m sorry. I should have been honest from the beginning. But yes… there is something.”
She squared her shoulders and faced Renata. “I don’t suppose you ever saw among your mother’s jewels a bronze medallion inscribed with three Tricats? A simple thing, not very elaborate. It’s an Acrenix family heirloom, a gift to her from my father, Ghiscolo. A… promise between them, if you will. When I heard you’d returned a ring to Era Traementis, I found myself hoping you might have our medallion as well. Or at least be able to reassure me that Letilia still has it—that she didn’t fling it into the river as she left.”
So that’s what you’re after. Renata knew the piece; she’d swept it into her sack along with everything else in Letilia’s jewelry box the day she and Tess fled Ganllech.
For an instant, she considered it. Return the heirloom, get Sibiliat’s gratitude… but no. Why squander that leverage now? Better to keep her main rival hoping, and only satisfy her desire later.
“My apologies, Sibiliat, but I’ve seen nothing of the sort.” She softened her denial with a sigh. “Though it’s entirely like Mother to keep such a thing. I’ll send a letter to inquire. Not to her, of course, but to our housekeeper. I’ll let you know when I hear back.”
Frustration flickered in Sibiliat’s eyes, quickly suppressed. Giuna moved to her side, one hand touching Sibiliat’s elbow; Renata gave them privacy, striding out of the store and across the embankment lane where the West Channel flowed. Winter’s grip smothered the usual stink from the water; the breaths she took were cool and clean.
Along the quay below the boardwalk, a flotilla of skiffs—the sort that usually ferried passengers across the channels—had been roped together to form a temporary market. A variety of dories, dinghies, and scows painted in clan colors abutted the skiff walkways, their hulls filled with baskets of fruits and rice and river mollusks, or draped with coarse-woven silks and linens. Smoke rose from low-set grills piled with skewered crabs and delta fowl. The air rang with hawkers’ cries in an amalgam of dialects too knotted to untangle.
Leato appeared at her side, leaning on the embankment wall without thought for his gloves or sleeves. “That was kind of you, cousin. Thank you.”
“The kindness was for your sake. And Giuna’s. Are they still inside?” Renata peered past Leato’s shoulder to the closed door of the shop.
“Giuna took her for coffee. And either an apology or a scolding—I’m not sure which. Possibly both.” His lips twitched in a battle between smile and frown. “I wish I could figure out if Sibiliat’s just toying with her.”
“What would you do if she was?” Sibiliat might have cast herself as Renata’s rival, but she was the Acrenix heir. If her affection was real, and went as far as marriage, it would go a long way to recovering the Traementis fortunes—without the threat posed by House Indestor.
Leato’s head dipped, but she doubted he was studying the bustling skiff market below. “I wish I could do something, but it’s Giuna’s choice.” His golden hair half veiled his eyes as he glanced up at Renata. “Isn’t it?”
His look begged for permission to interfere in Giuna’s courtships—an interference Renata was half tempted to indulge in herself. But she couldn’t afford to attract more of Sibiliat’s attention, much less her ire.
Smoke from the skiff market, unctuous with the aroma of roasting fat, rose to tickle her nose. Her stomach answered with an audible gurgle, and she clasped hands over it in embarrassment. “My apologies. I ate very little before our outing.” Only some porridge that was more water than rice, but she could hardly admit that to Leato. “My stomach is inconveniently delicate before fifth sun.”
Laughing off his previous mood as though it had never been, Leato took her arm and led her down the nearest river stair. “Good thing it’s almost seventh sun now. Enough of Seterin culture; let me introduce you to something uniquely Nadežran.”
He supported her hand for balance as she made the small hop from stair landing to skiff, then kept his hold as they meandered along the gently rolling lanes of the impromptu flotilla, past knotted thread charms and pots of curly-headed mums, their bright blooms almost blinding in the gloom of the day. She waited while he haggled over a pair of roasted devil crabs with a Vraszenian man so dark he must have hailed from Pražmy, in the southernmost reaches of Vraszan.
Accepting her skewer, Renata pretended to watch Leato for how to eat it, only breaking the reed in half to crack the crab’s shell after he demonstrated. They had to remove their gloves to pick out the steaming meat. Renata unaccountably felt her face warming at baring her hands to him, at seeing Leato’s bare hands in turn. His skin was soft, pale bisque, his short nails buffed to a polish. “I’ve certainly never seen anything like this,” she said, forcing her gaze away and ignoring a flutter in her stomach that had nothing to do with hunger. “But what makes it uniquely Nadežran?”
“It’s a Charterhouse thing. You need a license to operate a shop on the Old Island or the Upper Bank, and most of those licenses go to people with Liganti ancestry. But a shop is defined as ‘a commercial establishment with a fixed premise,’ so that doesn’t cover wandering sellers, or—” He waved his skewer at the weave of skiffs and boats, and the crowd of common Nadežrans picking through the river traders’ wares. “I assume you’ve seen Staveswater, out past the Turtle Lagoon?”
She’d seen it every day of her childhood, from Lacewater’s shore. The jumble of stilt-houses and houseboats was the largest Vraszenian-dominated enclave outside Seven Knots, and entirely controlled by the Stretsko gangs. Ren doubted even Vargo could get a foothold there.
“That collection of shacks? I saw it when my ship sailed in, but I assumed it was the remains of a flooded islet. You mean to say that people live there?”
Grimacing at the implied condemnation, Leato said, “It used to be bigger when I was a boy—spanned both sides of the lagoon. But Mettore throws the inhabitants in jail for any reason he can find, then gets Fulvet to tear the structures down as uninhabited. And the people there give him lots of reasons.”
She turned away, pretending interest in the traders’ wares before her true feelings escaped her grasp. The pretense became truth as she fingered cloth thick with colorful embroidery, hammered copper jewelry from the southern Toču Mountains, intricately carved flutes made of bored and fire-hardened reeds. Leato plied her with more food, most of it on sticks, but also steamed buns filled with sweet custard and a soup she had to drink quickly to keep it from leaking out of its oiled paper cup. The tang of lemongrass and pepper stayed on her lips long after the cup was tossed into the river.
The traders and skiffers were all Vraszenian, panel coats and braided hair, but most of the shoppers wandering the floating walkways had the stamp of Nadežrans born; even those clearly of mixed ancestry wore skirted coats and beaded surcoats, their hair loose or bound with ribbons. Renata and Leato stood out as the only nobility in the crowd, earning them some stares, but also the eager attention of every trader they passed. Cuffs not only meant money; they meant gullibility. Which was why Renata’s hand instinctively moved to protect her surcoat pocket when a scowling youth with crimson Stretsko beads clacking in his braids shoved past her.
But he hadn’t been going for her pocket, and Renata’s defensive shift dislodged the stack of broadsheets tucked under his arm. They scattered across the skiffway, several of them blowing into the water.
“I’m sorry,” she said, hot with shame. “I thought—” Despising herself a little for her reflexive suspicion, she stooped to help the young man gather the papers, but straightened again at the hatred in his glare.
“You’re not wanted here, chalk-face. Take your bloodstained coin and go.” Crumpling the stack of papers to his chest, he lost himself in the crowd.
Renata glanced down at the sheet clutched in her hand. It was tightly printed text, the ink so feathered on the cheap rag paper that it was difficult to read. But with the context of the boy’s words and braids, the essence was clear enough. It was a screed against the Cinquerat, the noble and delta houses, and anyone else with “foreign” blood in Nadežra. The sort of thing that would get anyone caught with it arrested by the Vigil.
Crumpling the paper into a wad, Renata tossed it into the river just as Leato finished a purchase and turned back to her.
“Cousin, you must try this,” he said, offering a hollowed-out section of reed.
She knew what was in the reed before she touched it, the scent curling around her like a blanket. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, letting the aroma ease the self-disgust that shook her at the Stretsko’s words. He didn’t know her, didn’t know what she was doing. If he did, he’d likely applaud her for pulling one over on the cheese-eaters. But when she opened her eyes and found Leato watching eagerly for her reaction, it was hard to recall why she should take pride in that.
Before Ren could bury those thoughts under one of Renata’s smiles, a commotion from the riverbank sent a ripple through the unsteady ground of the flotilla. The trader who’d sold Leato the chocolate began swiftly untying the ropes that bound him to the skiff walkway.
“What’s happening?” she asked, as other traders began doing the same. Shouts rose up from the wharf side of the market, and then something much stronger than a ripple rocked their skiff, sending the reed tumbling from her hands and into the river. Leato caught her with a strong arm around her waist before she could do the same.
Ren clutched him close, cold with sudden fright. There was a reason she’d never liked the river markets. She couldn’t swim—and in a freezing river, wearing the heavy underdress and surcoat of a noblewoman…
“I have you,” Leato said in a low murmur. She could taste chocolate on the breath warming her cheek. “It’s the Vigil. Mettore throwing around his weight again.”
He set her on her feet, but kept his arm tight around her as he turned to the woman casting lines off their section of walkway. “You, skiffer! I’ll give you ten forri and the protection of my house if you get us away from this.”
Most of the skiffers and river traders were doing just that, spreading out across the channel like ducks fleeing a barge. But Renata saw more than a few people, most of them fair-skinned Nadežrans, struggling to swim ashore after being unceremoniously knocked into the water by a skiffer’s long pole.
The skiffer eyed Leato and Renata, pole raised as she weighed her options. Not far away, the hawks were dragging people off boats and out of the water. Only when Leato held out a fist of forri did she relent, swiping the coins from his hand and sinking her pole into the river to push them to safety.
Glancing back over her shoulder, Ren looked for the Stretsko, but all she saw of him was a school of sodden broadsheets floating downriver.
Froghole, Lower Bank: Apilun 8
Winter had its teeth deep in Nadežra’s flesh, but that didn’t stop Yurdan from sweating like the delta fens in summer. His eyes were too wide, pupils devouring the muddy blue, and he didn’t blink enough—but he kept his wits enough to talk, and that was what mattered.
“I—I see things,” he stammered, pointing one trembling finger at the walls of the old lace mill. “It. Them. Staring at me. The walls are watching. This whole fucking city is made of eyes. Everywhere I look, they’re looking back at me. And they don’t blink.” He squeezed down on himself, eyes and fists clenched shut, arms wrapped tight around curled-up legs. “Masks have mercy—is that what happens? Places like this, all the bad shit that happens, all the shit we do… this is what we leave behind.”
“He’s starting to make less sense,” Vargo murmured to Varuni, who was taking notes. To Sedge he said, “How long is it now?”
Sedge was kneeling by Yurdan, ready to act if something went wrong. He had Vargo’s pocket watch in one hand, and took his eyes off Yurdan long enough to glance at it. “Not quite two bells.”
Vargo slowly spun a half-filled glass vial between his fingers, watching the darkly iridescent powder inside slip from one end to the other like delta silt. He’d assumed Hraček’s death was an attack on his organization, maybe by one of the Stretsko knots, his main rivals on the Lower Bank. But as autumn slipped into winter, he got reports from across the city—Froghole, Kingfisher, all down the Lower Bank, and even on the Old Island—of other people turning up bleeding like Hraček. Not Vargo’s people; members of other knots, or even ordinary citizens. They all had one thing in common.
