Liar's Moon

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  As the snapping silk unfurled, it revealed itself to be a device of a golden lion, silhouetted against the rising sun. Prince Wierolf’s banner.

  Eske was at my shoulder. “What do you think?” Today she was wearing orange to match, a shrieking concoction of flame and citrus, with a mask of spangled gold fur, and golden feathers tumbling through her wig.

  “Of the banner or your new assistant?”

  A wink. “Oh, he was too pretty to keep locked up in that room all day. Do you know he looked at my accounts and discovered a way to adjust our wine orders so we save six hundred marks a week? You keep that boy around, Digger.”

  “Um, I will,” I mumbled. “Where did the banner come from?”

  “Another friend of yours, in fact.” She gestured toward a figure seated across the circular bar, his back to us. “You’re filling up my common room with all sorts of tasty new company today, my girl. The Masked One is very pleased indeed.”

  I frowned, perplexed. I could count my Gerse friends on one hand, and half of them were already here in the Temple common room. Eske walked me around the bar and the stranger turned toward us — a tall, young man with dark eyes and hair, one arm in a sling.

  “Berdal!”

  At the sound of my voice, the Nemair’s groom and guardsman, now one of Prince Wierolf’s soldiers, rose from his seat and bent low to scoop me into an awkward, one-armed embrace. “Celyn! By the gods, you’re looking well.”

  “And you!” I said. “What happened? What are you doing here?” I gestured curiously to his injured arm.

  He gave a grimace. “Shot. At Cardoc Field a few weeks ago. It’s nothing, but I can’t ride and shoot with just one arm, so I’ve been furloughed.”

  I was brimming with questions to the point I didn’t know what to ask first. “How — what?”

  Berdal grinned. “Let’s sit.” He looked roadworn and weary, but intact and as robust as I remembered him, considering his injury. Better fed than many Gersins, certainly. Maybe some of the grain that didn’t reach the city had found its way to the prince’s army. “You told me if I ever came to the city, I could look for you here.”

  “I did?” I settled in across the table from him.

  “Aye, but you didn’t warn me of the size of the place — or the weather! By Marau, how does anyone live in this heat?” He plucked at the collar of his doublet.

  “Welcome to the south,” I said. I couldn’t help grinning. Berdal hailed from the Carskadon Mountains, and had kept up an infuriating jollity last winter when we were all snowbound and chilblained. “How is everyone?”

  “Very well,” Berdal said, but didn’t get to finish, for at that moment a cheer went up from the crowd. We looked up to see Wierolf’s banner fixed in place proudly at the gallery rail.

  “Well?” Eske had returned, and set a bottle of wine between us on the table.

  “What will you do if someone sees that?” I said.

  “But of course people will see it! Long live Prince Wierolf!” And she cried that last so loudly, in her echoing stage voice, that I flinched — but an answering roar rose up from the Temple’s patrons and Berdal’s booming voice.

  “Long live the prince!”

  “It looks good,” Eske said to Berdal. “I think we might just leave it up there permanently.” She was awfully nervy, I thought, to flaunt the prince’s colors so brazenly, and yet seeing my god’s temple displaying the enemy standard made me fiercely proud. Tomorrow it might have the Greenmen breaking fifty years of truce between Bardolph’s and Tiboran’s people, but for now, the Temple had just declared its allegiance.

  Durrel came down then and joined us, doffing his mask and looking curiously at my companion. I introduced them, and Berdal gave Durrel a brief bow. “I’ve heard many fine things of your family, sir,” he said. “It has been an honor to serve in the guard of your cousin, the Lady Merista.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Durrel said. He pulled over a chair, turned it wrong-way around, and straddled it casually. “Is my cousin well?”

  “Very well, milord,” Berdal said. “Indeed, better than well. She is a wonder.”

  Durrel gave a broad smile at that. “What brings you to Gerse?”

  Berdal’s own levity faded. He glanced around, carefully poured himself a drink. “Can we speak freely here?” he said pointedly to me.

  “Lord Durrel is a friend, and the Temple is as safe as any place in Gerse,” I said, and as if to punctuate that, the musicians in the gallery struck up a lively tune hailing Bonny Prince Wierolf. I heard the men laugh. “Or we’ll all burn together, I guess.”

  Berdal’s voice was low. “You know the front draws nearer to the capital. We have the support of Tratua, and we are gaining ground in the plains of Gelnir. The prince has sent me to seek out his friends in Gerse, to determine how quickly he may take the city.”

  I felt a chill wash over me.

  “So soon?” Durrel said. “It’s been less than a year.”

  “I think the king has underestimated how tired his subjects are of the present rule,” Berdal said, looking toward the banner he’d brought us. “We hoped to get word long before this, and His Highness was concerned when no one heard from you, Celyn.”

  There was no reproach in his voice, but I heard it anyway. I’d never promised to keep playing spy once I returned home, but I supposed that wouldn’t stop Wierolf and the others from hoping. “There’s little rebel activity in the city,” I said. “Just rumors, really.” I told them about the dead Greenman we’d discussed at Hobin’s dinner party, the purple handprint beside the body.

  Durrel nodded grimly. “There’ve been other stories like that,” he said, and I stared at him. “Attacks on the Guard, those purple marks left behind. Stuff that Raffin’s told me. They don’t publicize it outside the Guard.”

  “And what of your own people, milord?” asked Berdal.

  “Most of the gentry still openly support Bardolph — they can’t afford to do otherwise — and the Council has declared its fealty to the king. Those nobles suspected of nursing Sarist sympathies have been cast out of the city.” Or so heavily fined and intimidated they didn’t dare make a wrong move, if Lord Ragn’s tale this afternoon was any indication.

  “Everyone is too scared,” I said. “Bardolph is squeezing the city until it suffocates, and the people are too afraid to speak up. We might not have any organized resistance left, but I can’t see many ordinary Gersins lining up to oppose Wierolf.” I thought of the Greenmen and the soldiers patrolling every corner, the food shortages, the arrests and public executions and seizures of property. Even people who might be afraid of magic and Sarists on principle would probably welcome a change from Bardolph’s starving police state.

  Berdal took this in. “Who can speak for the city on this matter?”

  I glanced at Durrel, but he frowned. We were the wrong people to ask. “Maybe Eptin Cwalo?” I suggested. “He might know.”

  At the mention of Cwalo’s name, Berdal looked pleased. “Excellent. I remember Master Cwalo well. My lady trusted him completely.” He shifted his long body in his seat, looking eager to get moving. “I’ll be staying here while I’m in town. Celyn, do you think you could arrange a meeting with Master Cwalo and whatever friends he deems suitable?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Tell us more about the war.”

  Durrel and Berdal and I sat together for the next few hours, in the golden shadow of Prince Wierolf’s banner, as Berdal shared tales of our friends at the front. Through the Temple’s broad, open doors, I watched the day vanish and the night rise, until it was nearing time for our appointment at the docks.

  Finally we took our leave, promising to bring word when I’d heard from Cwalo. Durrel and I returned to his room and changed into dark clothing, more loans from Eske. I dressed in breeches and boots, my hair tucked into a man’s cap. A man and a woman walking together at night would be much more conspicuous than two young men, and Durrel was known to have left the Keep in the company of a woma
n, so this was an increased measure of protection for him. It was also just a little easier to go climbing about on docks if I didn’t have to worry about trailing my skirt hems in the brine.

  Durrel eyed me strangely when he saw me. “You look —”

  “Like your little brother?”

  He grinned down at me, his hair in his eyes. “Not by half.”

  “Well, you look like you’ve never dressed yourself before. Do I need to have Eske provide a manservant?” I shifted the laces on his jerkin so it hung properly. “You should have a sword.”

  “I believe I mentioned that,” he said. “Do you think Eske could track one down?”

  “No, I was thinking a real one. If we run into trouble, how are you at hand fighting?”

  “You have already extracted my promise to behave myself.”

  That would have to do. I’d just have to keep Durrel away from anyone who might take his sudden appearance on the Gerse streets as the opportunity to kill him.

  The rain that had blown through earlier had cooled the air, and the early moonslight tinted the deepening sky with rare summertime colors. Durrel loped easily along beside me, and I almost had to scurry to keep pace.

  “Do you wish you were out there?” he asked as we walked. “Fighting, I mean? In the war?”

  The question stung unexpectedly. “What about you?”

  “A Decath in the army? Perish the thought.” But he hunched into his black doublet, and I couldn’t see his face. “Gersin youths of my class never join the military,” he said. “Certainly not first-born ones. It is considered beneath our station to scuff about in the dust with the rabble and get our hands dirty. And where would my father have sent me? Which side do the Decath support? Impossible.”

  I wondered. Those peculiar payments to the Celystra, the visits from Confessors and Council members. . . . Which side did Lord Ragn take? “But what if you’d wanted to?”

  “I told you before, remember?” he said. “I’m not allowed to have thoughts of my own.”

  “What if you hadn’t wanted to marry Talth?”

  Another shrug. “He would have chosen someone else. But I could never have actually refused to go through with the match. Father had acted in the best interests of the family; what was I going to do? Throw that back in his face and disgrace the House?” He shook his head.

  “So that awful woman would become Lady Decath? Your father can’t have thought that was best for anybody.”

  Durrel made a sound that was half sigh, half bitter laugh. “We didn’t know her as well as we thought. I think we’re here.”

  We had reached the address Cwalo had sent, a quiet dock on the Big Silver, a few blocks away from the busier ports where I’d seen Geirt and Barris. The pier was empty and the property seemed abandoned, but a harbormaster’s station stood a few dozen yards down the shore, with a man on duty. We could see a light burning in the little hut.

  “This is a Ceid property,” Durrel said, looking it over.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I recognize the address,” he said. “And there’s this.” He strode to the edge of the pier, where a sigil had been burned into the boardwalk, the stylized initial of the House of Ceid. Gentry weren’t permitted heraldic emblems like the nobility, so Gerse’s wealthiest merchant families had turned their monograms into house symbols. I remembered the sign from Bal Marse, where it was tiled into the Round Court floor.

  “We should check the place out,” I suggested. There was a boat shed, but no warehouse; whatever cargo moved through this pier moved quickly.

  Durrel gave the boat shed door handle a jiggle. “Locked, of course.”

  Really, people just can’t seem to remember how handy I can be. I had the lock tumbled and the door opened before Durrel even registered what I was doing. I pushed past him into the shed while he stared at the lock. “I’ve seen you do that half a dozen times now,” he said, “and it still catches me by surprise.”

  It looked like an ordinary storage shed inside, just a single room cluttered with ropes and nets and broken oars. “There’s a chest here,” Durrel said, picking through the mess toward a heavy trunk on the floor near the back, buried under an assortment of sailcloth and pitch jars. “It’s locked too.”

  This was a strange place to hide anything, but Durrel’s box was completely out of character. With its shiny brass fittings and embossed leather top, it was too nice, too new, and too clean to belong here. Durrel hauled it up onto a bench, and a corner caught on something, a length of cloth that spiraled out behind the case as he dragged it across the shed.

  “What’s this?” I said, catching hold of one end. It was a string of flags, the small, colored pennants required by Gerse harbormasters to identify a vessel’s home port. “Brionry,” I said, fingering the triangle of blue-and-white silk. “Talanca,” a yellow-and-red-striped square. “Varenzia,” a white ground with a black lily.

  “Just like we thought,” Durrel said. “False flags to disguise domestic ships.” Scowling, he set the casket on the bench, and I popped the padlock holding it shut. “What is all this?” He sifted through a stack of papers inside. But I recognized them immediately.

  “Passports,” I said. “That one is from Brionry.” I pulled it out of the mix and carried it to the doorway, where some of the moonslight made it just possible to make out details. “I’m pretty sure it’s forged. The royal seal doesn’t look quite right.”

  “There’s more in here,” Durrel said. “And — sweet Tiboran . . .” He trailed off, but hoisted the other discovery high for me to see, a heavy leather purse, bulging with coins. He shook a couple into his hand. “Wait, these are all —”

  “Foreign?” I guessed, holding out my hand. A silver Brion coin, a couple of gold ones from Talanca, even Vareni money. “This must all be for the Ferrymen’s — uh, customers. New identification to get out of the country, and money to bribe the officials at their destinations.” So the Ceid’s mysterious secret cargo wasn’t magical artifacts after all — it was magical people.

  Durrel was silent, looking at it all. “Five hundred crowns,” he said softly. “That’s what she said. It cost five hundred crowns to ransom her father from the Ferrymen.”

  I didn’t remind him that Fei had invented that sum — and the father. I knew what he was thinking. A fee that large would be a lifetime’s savings for most Llyvrins, a price only the truly desperate would pay.

  “And that was just for the passage,” he said. “Another, what, five hundred for the passports?”

  “Maybe,” I said. Good forgeries were costly. “Assuming they don’t raise the fees on arrival, to cover delays for bad weather, or because they decided you ate more than you paid for.”

  “And if you can’t pay?” he said, coins raining through his fingers.

  “I don’t know,” I said, but I did. Fei hadn’t made up the story of cargo the Ferrymen had abandoned before delivery, all those people left to die or be captured by Greenmen. The dark look on Durrel’s face told me he knew as well.

  “I was married to —” He shook his head. “I almost wish I had killed her.” He flipped through the documents, pulling one from the stack. “We should take some of these with us for evidence.” He faltered. “What’s wrong?”

  I was frowning at the stack in his hand. “Documents like that are expensive,” I said. “If they discover that some are missing —”

  He drew in his breath as he realized what I meant. “They’ll take it from their clients. Damn, you’re right.” He hesitated, and I knew how reluctant he was to let go of any scrap that might prove his innocence. I came to his side and fanned through the papers.

  “Here,” I said, plucking free a badly worn paper in flawed Talancan. It was more obviously a forgery than the others, and since it was just an identification letter, not a passport, it wasn’t as valuable either. Durrel rolled it swiftly and tucked it inside his doublet.

  “Anything else?”

  I stared at the pouch of coins in his hand
, sorely tempted by the glitter of that gold Vareni scuto, but I shook my head. We packed up the chest and returned it to its square of dust on the floor.

  “What now?” he asked, brushing off his hands.

  I looked around, but it seemed we’d exhausted the storage shed’s clandestine contents. “Now we wait,” I said.

  “We need somewhere to watch from,” Durrel said. “Can’t see much from in here.” Outside, traffic on the river was starting to slow, and I wondered how long the harbormaster would stay in his little hut. All night, if it was also his home. Crouching low, we crept onto the docks, squeezing tight to the deep shadows along the sides of the outbuildings. Durrel pointed to a rowboat moored to the dock, partially covered in canvas. It had a deep enough hull to conceal us, and it was close enough to the water to give us a plain view of anything that happened. I gave a nod and dashed across the open dock toward the craft. Durrel hastened after.

  We stripped back the canvas and Durrel climbed down softly, barely making the boat bobble in the water. Once he was settled, I had second thoughts. That was a small boat, and I was a small person — but it was still going to be awfully cramped in there.

  “Something you’re waiting for?” Durrel’s voice was low, and I took one last hopeful look around the docks, but it was the rowboat or nothing. I eased down beside him, hotly aware of the thin sliver of space between us. If the boat rocked even a little, I’d be jostled into his lap. I clutched the rail, my forearm like a brace of iron.

  “Hey, relax,” Durrel said. “There’s plenty of room.”

  There wasn’t, but I couldn’t hold this posture all night, so I let out a small sigh and untwined my legs a little, until they were just barely nudging into Durrel’s knees. “Let’s hope they weren’t planning on using this boat to unload their cargo,” I said.