Painted devils, p.23
Painted Devils, page 23
“Madame Treasury says you kicked him out,” I say.
“Of course she did,” Jenneke says with a look of disgust. “No, it was a rowdy night. He was at the bar one minute and gone the next. He owes us a hundred gilden; it’d be madness to just toss him into the street before he paid.”
I lean forward. Maybe Erwin Ros is being held captive for another reason entirely. “I’m sensing some bad blood between you and the Treasury.”
Jenneke scoffs. “Madame has been trying to strong-arm me into selling her the Green Sleeve for years. She wants to control both sides of the street, gate it off so people think they have to pay their way through in spintz. Did you know that’s how she pays her workers, in spintz? They can use the tokens to pay board and upkeep at the Treasury and to buy cosmetics and dresses at the shops she owns. But if they want to cash out for Almanic coin—”
“It costs most of their paycheck,” I say grimly. “We met Agnethe at the docks.”
Jenneke sighs. “And Madame only hires girls who can’t read her contract. Marien didn’t tell me, or I would have warned her and her sister. If the girls lose their flat, I can let them both stay here, but that’s all I can afford right now.” She grimaces. “Being out a hundred gilden makes things tight.”
At that, Emeric sits up a bit straighter. He fishes in his coat and pulls out a small card, then extends it to Jenneke. “I have a request. This is a prepaid courier token addressed to the local prefect outpost. If Madame approaches you again about selling the Green Sleeve, will you send this in?”
Jenneke takes the card. “You think she’d exploit the situation with Erwin?”
“I think it will help to know her next move,” Emeric says nebulously. I suspect we’re at the same hunch: Erwin Ros’s disappearance has nothing to do with the Grace Unending and everything to do with Madame forcing a competitor’s hand.
“You’re welcome to look around anywhere that isn’t, well, in use.” Jenneke smirks. “Or, since that was a very unconvincing imitation of newlyweds, if you have any questions about other things…”
“We’re good. It wouldn’t hurt to check the place, though.” I stand and head for the door, only to realize I’m on my own.
Emeric is still sitting on the couch, ears burning, eyes fixed on the coffee table. He seems to extract the words from somewhere below his sternum with an enormous amount of difficulty: “I … have a question.”
There’s a dreadful silence. I realize he’s waiting for me to leave.
“Oh. I’ll, uh. Go look. Looking for. Clues.” I rush out, closing the door a little too hard behind me.
Is it me? Am I doing something wrong when we’re together? I have to be. Why else would he not want me there?
Oh gods. All of a sudden I can’t stop hearing Jenneke say “hands-on tutorials.”
“Love me a man in uniform,” Marien says. She’s leaning on the staircase balustrade. “You’re a lucky girl, you know that?”
“I do.” I make myself push off the door, even though all I want is to rip it open and know what it is I’m ruining.
Ruining. That’s right. “Before, you said those cultists had been by earlier?”
“Horrible wretches, all the way out from Hagendorn. Went and banged on every door in the Sünderweg, looking for a girl and…” She slows, catching on. “Oh. What do they want with you two?”
I peek around a curtain. The blond man is still outside with the others, glowering at the door. It doesn’t make any sense; I told Hagendorn the Scarlet Maiden herself sent me on this trip. I don’t know why Leni would tell them any different—or why they’d believe her over their god.
“I don’t know,” I say, “but I think we’ll need that back exit after all.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BEAUTIFUL
When we return to the Jolly Magistrate in the early afternoon, Joniza is lounging in the little garden partitioned off for tavern patrons who want to eat in the sunshine. She takes one look at the red chalk splattered over us both and bursts into laughter. “What kind of mess have you gotten yourselves into now?”
I figure Emeric and I can take a quick detour before we clean up and figure out how to extract Erwin Ros. “Cultists,” I tell Joniza by way of explanation as I walk over. She nods sagely. “You look like you’re having a better day than we are.”
Joniza raises a glass with a fancy little floral garnish. “Baba knows a decorator here who always makes a big purchase. This time he’s apparently committed to a project large enough to clean out most of the caravan.”
“So Meister Bajeri can start the return trip early?”
“And if we leave in the next few weeks, we can use the summer pass through the Alderbirgs down south, instead of going around.” Joniza grins. “He’ll make it to Sahali with plenty of time before Fatatuma’s due date. We might even stop in Minkja so he can meet Bastiano.”
I remember every long trip Bajeri made through Sovabin, every time he saw how we lived there but didn’t say a word in judgment. “I think he’d like to see you happy.”
“Hm.” Joniza peels one finger from her glass to point at me. “You’ve gone and gotten insightful on me. Maybe this cult thing isn’t so bad.”
“No,” Emeric says sourly, trying once again to brush red powder off his coat. “It is still extremely bad.”
A head pokes around the doorway leading into the tavern: Agnethe. My stomach drops. We still haven’t figured out how to get her paid.
“Please congratulate your father for me,” I tell Joniza. “We’ve got to go handle something.”
We head over to Agnethe. “Did you try the apple cake?” asks Emeric, pulling out a chair at an empty table. Agnethe nods as she sits across from him, fidgeting, but doesn’t speak. “So,” Emeric starts, “we went to see Madame Treasury.”
I plop into the seat next to him. “She’s horrible.”
A flicker of relief darts through Agnethe’s expression. I understand why; when you say a powerful person has wronged you, it’s always a coin toss whether others will decide it’s easier to pretend they didn’t hear.
“When you signed the contract to work for her, what did she tell you it said?” Emeric asks.
Agnethe’s face twists as she tries to recall. “That I’d earn a white penny every day I worked for her. Then she asked me to sign and said it was all right that I couldn’t write my name.”
“Was anyone else there?”
“No.”
“Did she say anything about paying you in spintz? Or a fee to change them out?”
“Not until I asked for my wages. Then she said I was in…” Agnethe’s brow wrinkles deeper. “Administration forfeit?”
“Administrative forfeiture?” Emeric’s brow gets a matching divot as Agnethe nods. “That’s not … I’m afraid that was a lie. Administrative forfeiture is what happens to someone’s property while they’re serving a prison sentence. Their assets belong to the local government until their sentence is over. In the meantime, they can be sold to anyone for the same amount as the most recent annual tax. But it has nothing to do with wages, or your contract.” He leans back. “I have bad news and good news on that front. Part of your contract does say that if you’re caught spying, you give up your right to any unpaid wages.”
“But I wasn’t spying,” Agnethe protests. “I didn’t know…”
“No one in their right mind would have agreed to that contract if they knew what was in it,” he agrees. “Unfortunately, she claims someone witnessed her read it to you, which I don’t believe, but it makes it your word against theirs. And the city guards like her quite a bit. That’s the bad news. The good news is that this seems to be a pattern with her, and it’s very illegal. If we can find others she’s done this to, you can band together and file a civil petition, which I suspect you’d win. That would force her to pay you not just your wages but also fees for putting you through this.”
“How long would it take?” Agnethe asks.
Emeric pauses, the cold hourglass of reality draining to clarity for him. The Godly Courts have the luxury of time—and the literal Low God Time, in fact—on their side; a trial can be summoned in a breath, the rulings dispensed in the next. The only delay is in preparing the case. Time, however, makes no exceptions for the courts of mortals.
“It could be weeks, maybe months,” Emeric admits. “Miss Jenneke did say she could take in you and Marien—”
“But you won’t need it.” I put a hand on his arm, then reach for my satchel.
This was always going to be the best answer. I know how employer schemes work; they’re a lock of their own kind. No one puts a lock on a door to keep it shut. They put the lock there to make it too hard, too time-consuming, for the wrong sort of people to get through. Madame waives her fees for the guards, she fakes her contracts, and she pays in her made-up money, all so she can draw out fights against girls like Agnethe until they can’t afford another round.
I find a handkerchief by touch, then one of my larger rubies, and fold it into the cloth. Then I lower my voice. “Put your hands on the table, together, palms up.” Agnethe does. I set the handkerchief in her open hands. “Listen very carefully. Do you feel that stone? Put this in your pocket like a normal hankie, and don’t let that stone fall out.”
“What is it?” she whispers as she obeys.
“The rent you owe,” I say matter-of-factly. “Do you know where to find a jeweler in Welkenrode?” She nods. “Good. Go to them—not one in Rammelbeck—so no one here sees you. Tell the jeweler your uncle won that in a card game last night and wants it appraised. They will almost certainly make you an offer. Don’t accept less than ten gilden—” Her eyes go very round until I frown. “I mean it, ten and not a gelt less. If the offer’s too low, say you have to ask your uncle and start to leave, and they’ll increase it. Put the money in the hankie so no one else sees, and take that straight to your landlord to pay your rent, then put what’s left somewhere safe.”
“B-but how will we pay you back?” Agnethe asks unevenly.
I give her a wry smile. “By learning your letters, so no one can get you into a contract like that again. Go now, so you’ll be done with all this before dark.”
Emeric waits until Agnethe’s left the courtyard to say, “You shouldn’t have to do that.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I sigh. “But what am I supposed to do, let her get kicked out of her home?”
He puts an arm around my shoulders. “No. It’s just … very generous. And you shouldn’t have to be.”
I lean my head on him. “I’m tired,” I say quietly, “of watching the empire make a thousand more girls like me, every day.” Then I stand. “I’m going to go wash off this mess.”
Emeric pushes to his feet. “Same. I’ll use the common baths. I think you more than deserve the tub in the room.”
I do not bother with even a procedural objection on our way upstairs. I haven’t had a private bath since I left Castle Reigenbach, and now that the prospect’s on the table, I might knife-fight to keep it. Emeric seems to pick up on that, because he gathers a change of clothes and a towel and exits our room with remarkable expedience, shaking rose petals out of his hair as he goes. The petals dissolve after an hour anyway, or we’d be up to our ankles by now. We learned the hard way that they rain from the ceiling every time the door opens and closes.
I shuck my own clothes and wait in a towel while the tub fills up. The clerk was right to brag about the plumbing. Visually it may be a nightmare, but in terms of engineering, it’s a triumph to have steaming hot water spill from a wall spigot shaped like a chubby-cheeked imp.
As I wait, I mull over the Treasury and whether I actually could burn the place to the ground without Emeric catching on. Or without getting Erwin Ros killed. I might be taking this all too personally, considering I keep hearing echoes of Irmgard in it all.
There’s a full-length mirror in our room, and an urge digs at me like a splinter. I walk closer, turn around, and look over my shoulder as I let the towel slide down my back.
The view is still as terrible as I remember. Once, I tried to romanticize the marks as thorns, like I might wield these scars and keep the world at knife’s length. After Irmgard fouled the salve, they healed in knots of mottled gray and purple, not thorns but the barren fingers of a dead tree.
My own voice burns in my ears: No one will ever want me.
I throw the towel over a chair and climb into the tub before I have to look at myself a moment longer.
Irmgard I can’t do anything about. I left her to rot in a dungeon in Minkja. Madame Treasury, on the other hand, is overdue a reckoning, and it’s one I’m going to enjoy handing to her.
There’s a shelf nearby laden with the tinctures, soaps, and perfumes the clerk promised yesterday. After I empty one bottle into the tub, rose-scented foam starts bubbling up. I shook off as much of the chalk as I could earlier, but I still go for a vigorous scrub. Too much of today has left me feeling dirty. When I’m done, I let myself slide down until the water comes up to just beneath my nose, and watch the red silk curtains of the tub’s own canopy shiver in the draft.
It helps me to keep the metaphor going and think of these puzzles like locks. The Treasury is no different; I just have to be careful about choosing my picks. At the end of the day, I don’t need revenge, I don’t need money—I need Erwin Ros alive. And Madame knows we’re looking for him. If I back her into a corner, she’ll use that against me.
I’m toying absently with the edge of the canopy when the door opens and Emeric walks in. “I was just thinking—OH.”
“SORRY,” I yelp, yanking the curtain around the tub, but I’m very certain he got a complete and unabridged look at my frontal, well, everything.
His uneven voice carries through the fabric. “I thought you’d be done already, I’m so sorry, I’ll go downstairs—”
“No, it’s fine,” I babble, “I took too long, I’m done now, you can stay.”
“If—” His voice cracks. I hear the door shut, then a brief curse as rose petals spew from the ceiling. “Vanja, if you’re not comfortable with me seeing you undressed, that’s perfectly all right.”
My toes curl in the bathwater. Part of me does want that, does want to feel his gaze go everywhere his hands already have. Almost everywhere. “That’s not … exactly it.”
There’s a moment of quiet; the frenetic energy twists into something more pensive. Then he says, “May I make a guess?”
We were always going to have this conversation. I still want to sink under the water’s surface. I make myself say, “Yes.”
Careful footsteps approach the curtain, and then I hear him sit on the floor by the tub in a shuffle of fabric. Somehow his voice is grave and soft all the same. “I think you may be afraid … of me seeing your back.”
My throat closes off. Of course he knows; of course he’d cut to the heart of the matter. I’m just wasting both of our time. Miserably, I draw the curtain back.
He’s facing away, arms outstretched and propped on the knees he’s pulled to his chest. Even if he were to look, from this angle, the walls of the tub are high enough to hide everything below my shoulders.
“There are so many girls out there,” I tell him, my voice scratching on nearly every syllable. “Pretty ones, who aren’t this—damaged. And they’ll be better to you than me. I know what I am. You’re too damn smart to not know it too.”
Wordless, Emeric gets to his feet, picks up my towel from the chair. He unfolds it, holding it lengthwise, his eyes averted as he returns to me, saying lowly, “Come here.”
I’m too startled, too overwhelmed to second-guess. I stand and step into the towel, let him fold it around me—then hold in a squeak when he lifts me up and carries me to the bed. Butterflies practically erupt beneath my belly. “What are you…?”
But Emeric only sets me on the edge of the bed. Then he sits beside me, taking my hands in his. “I’m—I need to say something. I’m going to try not to make a mess of it.”
This is it, the part where we both pretend I’m passable the way I am, pretty enough with his spectacles off. Maybe I just wanted to hear that lie.
“We’re not pretty people,” Emeric says.
That I did not expect.
He’s fighting off a grimace as he continues, “That sounds bad. I mean—there are people who you look at and immediately know, on a purely objective level, that they’re beautiful. And I don’t think that’s either of us. In fact, I’m pretty sure anyone who meets me spends the first five minutes convinced they’re being haunted by a census ledger. But…” His shoulders give an awkward little hitch. “You seem to like me nonetheless. I don’t know why. But I have to believe you see something I don’t.”
I’d object, but I’m too busy trying to wrap my brain around the fact that Emeric feels this way in the first place.
“And if you were to ask me if I think you’re beautiful…” He releases one of my hands to twist a damp lock of my hair between his fingers. “I’d say sometimes the sun hits your hair when I’m tying your ribbons, and it looks like it’s burning, and I feel like I’m going to catch fire too. And sometimes, when you smile, it feels like my heart is going to explode—” I can’t hold back a watery grin, and he exaggeratedly clutches his chest. “Enough, please, it can’t handle this kind of strain—”
I shove him, but now we’re both laughing. “Stop.”
His tentative grin sobers a little as his fingers trace over my shoulder. “In Minkja, when the pearls first worked on me, really worked, do you know what I wanted more than anything in the world? I wanted to snap the string so they’d never take your face away again, and—” Emeric’s voice catches, turns throaty as his fingertips skim my collarbone. “I couldn’t stop wondering if every one of your freckles tastes the same.”
“Oh” is the best I can manage, because I think I want him to find out.
