Shifting Loyalties

by Melissa McShane

  “Yes. Sometimes we don’t find anything, and not all our clients are willing to pay for our time when we don’t return with a prize.”

  “That seems unfair,” Felice said. Her voice was the same quiet alto Sienne remembered. She didn’t look at Sienne, just at her soup, and Sienne shifted uncomfortably, as if her sister had slapped her instead.

  “It’s just the way it works. You learn quickly which clients are reliable, and they learn the same about you. We have a good reputation, and that translates into a steady income. Not all scrappers can say that.”

  “I thought you were a wizard. Why didn’t you teach somewhere?” Liliana piped up.

  That was a little too close to subjects Sienne would prefer not to address. “I—”

  “That’s enough pestering Sienne,” Mother said. “Why don’t the rest of you tell her what you’ve been doing? She hasn’t seen you in over a year, after all.”

  Sienne had never been more grateful to her mother for anything. “Yes, please do,” she said. “Alcander, are you still studying law?”

  “For my sins, yes,” her brother said. “It’s still interesting. Next year I have to choose a field to focus on. I’ve been thinking, inheritance law.” He flicked a quick glance at Felice. Sienne realized she hadn’t asked if the rest of the family knew about the other reason they’d come to Fioretti. Alcander did, at least, and she could imagine her parents discussing it with the whole family. Whatever their faults, Pontus and Clarie Verannus had always believed in family unity, no matter the crisis.

  “I think it sounds boring. If it were me, I’d want to study criminal law,” Erianthe said. Her chestnut hair, exactly the same shade as Sienne’s, was falling down over her forehead as it always did.

  “Are you going to be a law-speaker too?” Sienne asked. Her sister was, what, sixteen now? Erianthe had never shown interest in anything but horses, but times changed. She wondered how Erianthe would react if she knew Sienne had ridden a unicorn. Not that she’d been in a position to appreciate it.

  Erianthe nodded. “I’m off to school in two months.”

  “That’s great! I hope you like it.”

  “I keep telling her it’s a lot of boring reading, but it hasn’t dissuaded her,” Alcander said with a grin, “so I have to conclude she’s serious.”

  Sienne leaned back as a servant removed her empty soup bowl. Another servant placed a delicious-smelling beef roast in front of her father, who took up knife and fork and began to carve. “And Quentinus is making a name for himself as a gardener,” he said.

  Sienne turned in surprise to Quentinus, whose dark olive skin was unusually flushed. “Oh,” she said, unable to think of anything else to say. She’d always thought of Quent as the dumb twin, prone to sticking his foot in his mouth and then laughing awkwardly about his mistakes in a way that made everyone around him uncomfortable. “Um…does that make you Papa’s favorite child?”

  Everyone laughed. Quent said, “I’m not allowed to touch the roses. But I have my own garden at the estate, and I’m working toward establishing my credentials so I can maybe take on commissions someday soon.”

  “That’s…” unexpected “impressive. I never would have guessed any of us would follow in Papa’s footsteps. I don’t have a black thumb so much as a black fist.”

  “It’s hard work, but I like it.”

  It was fortunate her parents didn’t have any foolish prejudices against their children working, like some nobles Sienne had grown up with. They were too poor for such scruples. Of course, she thought, looking at Felice’s elegant gown that probably cost three times as much as her own dress, poor is a relative term, when it’s the nobility.

  “And Phebe and Liliana are still being tutored at home,” Mother said.

  “But I want to go away to school like you did, Sienne,” Phebe said.

  Mother tensed. Papa said, “We’re still discussing it. School is costly.”

  “Yes, but you did it for Sienne and Erianthe, and I can’t see why you won’t do it for me,” Phebe pouted.

  “Wizards need special training to make the most of their abilities,” Papa said, “and law-speakers must be accredited at one of only a few institutions. You don’t have anything you’re burning to study. Your needs might be as well met at home as anywhere else.”

  “I’m as old now as Sienne was when she left,” Phebe said. “If we don’t decide now, it might be too late.”

  “I had many classmates who didn’t start at Stravanus until they were fifteen or sixteen,” Sienne interjected. “You still have plenty of time.”

  “Just because you like Sienne better than the rest of us,” Phebe said in a low voice.

  “Phebe, don’t talk nonsense. You know your father and I don’t have favorites. We love you all equally,” Mother said. Phebe ducked her head, but Sienne could see her scowl. It was a lie, though. Her parents might love all of them, but Sienne was under no illusions about her relationship with her mother. She took another bite of roast and tried to enjoy it.

  “Felice, you’ve been quiet. Did you…” Alcander’s voice trailed off.

  Felice fixed him with her hazel eyes, chewing placidly. She swallowed, patted her lips with her napkin, and pushed back from the table. “I feel rather unwell,” she said. “I think I should retire.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Rance said. He sounded unexpectedly eager.

  “No, I’ll be fine. You shouldn’t interrupt your meal for me.” Felice rose. Her gaze went from Alcander to Sienne, and Sienne once again felt awkward. She made herself sit up straight and return her sister’s regard placidly. This was not her fault. She had nothing to feel guilty about.

  “But your sister’s just returned! Don’t you want to…that is, I’m sure the two of you have much to talk about,” Mother said.

  Felice shook her head, the minutest movement. “Some other time,” she said, and left the room. Rance looked like he might follow her despite her instructions, but in the end, he remained seated.

  An uncomfortable silence descended over the table, heavy and oppressive like wet wool. Finally, Sienne couldn’t bear it any longer. “You said Liliana has a dress for tomorrow night,” she said. “What’s tomorrow night?”

  “Liliana’s birthday party,” Papa said. “You should come. There will be so many people who’ll want to see you.”

  “I didn’t want a party here,” Liliana said. “I wanted a party at home with my friends. This one will be stupid.”

  “Don’t be rude,” Mother said. “And you know we had to be in Fioretti for the celebrations. You were the one who chose not to delay your party until after we returned home.”

  “I don’t see why we couldn’t have two parties,” Liliana pouted. “Marinna had two parties.”

  “Marinna is a spoiled brat,” Erianthe said. “And so are you.”

  “Mama!” Liliana said, bursting into tears.

  “Liliana! Control yourself! And Erianthe, apologize to your sister immediately.”

  “Sorry,” Erianthe muttered.

  Sienne felt laughter, unexpected and light, bubble up inside her. She covered her mouth, but it emerged as a giggle that set everyone to staring at her again. “I’m sorry,” she said, “it’s just that everything’s so normal still, even with everything that’s happened. I didn’t know I missed it until just now.”

  Papa chuckled. “What, missed the bickering and pouting and tears?”

  “And the laughter and the jokes.” Sienne laughed again. “I shouldn’t have left like that. I missed you all.”

  “Not enough to do the right thing,” Rance said, undeterred by a quelling look from his mother-in-law.

  Sienne’s laughter vanished. “I had my reasons,” she said, aware that they’d been bad reasons.

  “Rance, it doesn’t matter,” Papa said. “What matters is that Sienne is back, and everything can return to the way it was before.”

  A sick feeling started in Sienne’s stomach. “But I’m not coming back,” she s
aid. “It won’t be the way it was before. I have a new life.”

  “But you’re the heir,” Alcander said, his brow furrowing. “You’ll need to return to Beneddo to start learning what you need to know to rule the dukedom someday.”

  “I’m not the heir yet. There’s still…anything might happen.”

  No one spoke. Rance pushed back from his seat. “I’m going to check on Felice,” he said, and disappeared out the door.

  “I thought Sienne had to be the heir,” Phebe said. “Is it a wizard thing, or a scrapper thing?”

  “Both. Neither,” Sienne said, feeling a little desperate. “I don’t want—”

  “This isn’t a conversation for the dining table,” Papa said. “Right now we’re going to talk about other things. Sienne, I think you should bring your…companions, is it? Bring your companions to the party tomorrow night. We’d love to meet them, and it’s a perfect opportunity.”

  “All right,” Sienne said, grasping this conversational change like a drowning man clutches a rope. “Is it formal dress?”

  “It’s a fancy dress party,” Liliana said, suddenly enthusiastic. “I’m going as Kitane the Warrior!”

  “Like half the city,” Erianthe murmured. Liliana glared at her.

  “That sounds fun,” Sienne said. “We’ll come. I’d like you to meet them.” And she could introduce Alaric to her parents. She couldn’t decide if she was eager about it, or terrified.

  Giles looked ecstatic at the prospect of meeting real scrappers. Alcander said, “It’s at the park north of here, at seven o’clock. Liliana will demand a present. She always does.”

  “I do not!” Liliana bit her lip, and added, “But I do like presents.”

  “Understood,” Sienne told Alcander.

  “Then it’s settled,” Mother said. “I look forward to meeting your friends, particularly your…Alaric.” She didn’t look pleased. She looked like she’d bitten into an orange and discovered too late it was a lemon. Sienne smiled pleasantly at her. So Mother wanted a chance to judge Alaric, did she? Well, Sienne didn’t need her good opinion. Fortunate, since history told her she was unlikely to get it.

  7

  The strange potential clients had taken rooms in a lodging house on the south side of Fioretti, in a neighborhood rapidly sliding into poverty. “I don’t know how they can afford to hire us, if this is the lodging their purse allows,” Sienne murmured to Alaric. The streets smelled strongly of burned meat and animal waste ripened by the true summer sun, but the men and women thronging the streets didn’t seem to be breathing through their mouths as Sienne was. Anniversary fervor had struck this neighborhood as well; every other door had a forsythia wreath, or one studded with red berries. If the forsythia was a little wilted, or the berries wizened, it didn’t dampen anyone’s patriotic spirit.

  Alaric led them down a side alley that opened on a courtyard paved with cracked stones. A weathered fountain at the center tinkled merrily as if unaware of its surroundings. High above, lines of laundry blocked the sunlight, making the courtyard cool and pleasantly dim. Children ran past them, screaming in some game. Their screams faded when they saw Alaric, their eyes growing wide and their small mouths falling open in astonishment. Alaric kept walking without acknowledging them, then suddenly turned on his heel, crouched, and said, “Boo.”

  The children shrieked with delight and fled, glancing over their shoulders at the big man. Alaric watched them go. “Funny how they’re the same wherever you go,” he said. “This place isn’t as grindingly poor as it looks, or they wouldn’t have the energy to run.”

  “Have you seen true poverty, then?” Perrin asked. He, too, had his attention on the fleeing children, and Sienne thought he looked wistful. They probably reminded him of his own children, forbidden to him by his father and an unjust law.

  “In Concord, the free city,” Alaric said, turning to walk on. “It’s a hard place to live and doubly hard on children. I can’t think of anything worse than a child so abused and starved he’s afraid to do anything but hide.”

  “That sounds terrible,” Sienne said. “I feel guilty now at resenting my younger sisters. I had to help care for them when they were infants, and I thought it was the worst punishment my mother could have devised. But I still loved them. Even Liliana the brat.”

  “It’s her birthday party we’re going to tonight, right?” Dianthe said. “It sounds strange, adults attending a child’s party. Is that normal for the nobility, Sienne?”

  “Yes. All our birthdays used to be excuses for our friends’ parents to come together and drink my father’s wine and bitch about taxes, or gossip about who was sleeping with whom. And half the people our own age who came were only there because their fathers were landholders under the duke. Sometimes the parties were fun, but mostly I spent mine trying to avoid Laella Tavenus, who only wanted to be my friend because I was noble.”

  “It’s awfully short notice for fancy dress. What are you going as?”

  Sienne hooked her arm through Alaric’s. “We’re going as the Old Man of the Mountain and Sylvie Dell. Simple, but recognizable, and I only have to cast camouflage to make us look good.”

  “Creative,” Perrin said. “And with the advantage that it declares you openly a couple. At least, I presume you see it as an advantage.”

  “You presume correctly,” Sienne said. “I don’t want my parents thinking I’m ashamed of who I am, and Alaric is part of that. Also, he flatly refused to go as a wisp.”

  “I’m not built like a wisp,” Alaric said in his deepest voice.

  “But I could have made our clothes glow…oh, now I see how stupid that idea was.”

  Dianthe laughed. “I’d love to see Alaric glow.”

  “You’re going to wait a long time for that,” Alaric said. “This is the house. Second floor, third door on the right.”

  The lodging house smelled of boiled cabbage, an almost pleasant scent after the stink of the streets. The door opened on a long, narrow hallway lined with doors that hung crookedly in their frames. Somewhere nearby, a dog barked, startling Sienne, who wouldn’t have thought animals were allowed indoors. Someone coughed, a hard, rattling sound that made her chest ache in sympathy. A door opened as they passed, and a small child, naked except for a breechclout, stared up at them with dull eyes. Sienne remembered what Alaric had said about poverty and quickly looked away, then made herself look back, wishing she had some way to help even as she felt grateful as never before for her own upbringing.

  Narrow, splintered stairs at the far end of the hall went up into darkness. There were magic lights in the stairwell in unbreakable glass bulbs, but they were dark, and from the dust Sienne judged they hadn’t been tended in months. The stairs creaked even under her slight weight and groaned terrifyingly under Alaric’s feet, making Sienne want to step lightly. Though her friends had been here the day before, and the stairs hadn’t broken then…which might mean they were just waiting for their moment.

  Sienne fingered her spellbook and thought about casting drift on Alaric, making him light as a feather, but then they’d have to tow him up the stairs to keep him from floating away. She left her book in its harness and tried not to think about how much falling would hurt.

  The second floor looked the same as the first, except for a grimy window at the far end of the hall. Alaric went to the third door on the right and knocked. Presently, it opened. “Ah. Please, come in,” the tall man said. He stood beside the door as they filed inside and stared openly at Sienne. She pretended not to notice.

  The lodging was a single room with two narrow beds with iron frames flanking the one window. The whitewashed walls were peeling, and flakes of the stuff scattered across the worn rag rug between the beds. Through the open window, Sienne saw the walls of the building next door. It was almost close enough to touch. A rickety table with a single drawer stood next to the door, atop which was an enameled basin and pitcher.

  The room made Sienne feel uncomfortable. She’d taken rooms worse
than this in the weeks before coming to Master Tersus’s house, but those had only been temporary. The knowledge that some people lived like this all the time reminded her that even at her lowest point, she’d had a better home to return to. The people in this neighborhood had no such escape.

  Another man rose from the bed where he’d been sitting. “My lady, thank you for coming,” he said. He had skin darker than usual for a Rafellish and hair only a few shades lighter than his skin, and his accent was unfamiliar. He gestured toward the man who’d opened the door, who resembled him closely, though his eyes were hazel instead of dark brown. They both looked to be in their late twenties. “My name is Jaceus Adorno, and this is my cousin Lucan. I’m sorry we can’t offer you a seat.”

  “We won’t stay long,” Alaric said. “We’re all here. Make your proposal.”

  Jaceus stepped forward, his eyes on Sienne. “Lucan and I come from eastern Rafellin,” he said. “Our family and a handful of others settled near the Bramantus Mountains, near the border—or past it, we’re not entirely sure. It might be in the Empty Lands. At any rate, the settlement is thriving. But there’s a problem. There’s a ruin some ten miles north of the settlement, not a big one, but it’s mostly intact. And there’s something living in it.”

  “How do you know?” Dianthe asked.

  “People have gone there and not returned. You know how young men and women are, convinced they’re immortal. It’s become popular among the younger set to dare each other to go to the tower, even after the disappearances. Some of those who return report strange lights and noises, and others have watched their friends enter the ruin and not come out again. Our leaders have forbidden it, but there’s always someone…anyway.”

  “And you want us to clean out the ruin,” Alaric said.

  Jaceus looked up at him, clearly startled that Alaric had spoken. “That’s right,” he said. “The settlement keeps expanding, and the best and most fertile land is in the direction of the ruin. So far, whatever’s there hasn’t attacked us, but who knows what will happen if we encroach on it?”