“Start with the troops inside the city,” Hobin said. “They seem to be the most unhappy. And then maybe . . .” He turned one of Durrel’s sheets of paper around and started sketching a quick, crude map that swiftly became Gerse’s western wall and the lands around it. “Maybe the Third Artillery, here.”
Durrel leaned forward to study Hobin’s map. “If those troops were to mutiny, that would leave the Green Gate undefended, right?” He pointed to a gap in the city wall, and the wide road leading to the heart of town. “Prince Wierolf could practically march straight down High Street and knock on the king’s door before anyone could stop him.”
We all fell silent, staring at one another. “Would it work?” My voice was a whisper.
“My dear, I think we are obligated to try,” said Cwalo.
Lord Hobin looked grim, but he finally nodded. “If it brings the war to a swifter close, it will mean less bloodshed in the end. I would prefer either your prince and his friends turn around and go home, or that Gerse throw open her gates and welcome them with open arms, but since neither prospect seems likely to be forthcoming, I must lend my support to any action promising to end the conflict sooner.”
Berdal was scowling a little, obviously uneasy at the idea of deliberately brewing disquiet among fellow soldiers, even if they were the enemy. “How do we do it, then?” he said. “Convince the other side to mutiny? Right now there are just grumbles, complaints. I’m not sure even this bit about barracks pay is enough to spark a real flame.”
“Well, then, lie to them,” I said. “Tell them something they’d get really mad about.”
While we pondered the possibilities, Cwalo called for another bottle of wine, passing it around the table. It stopped at Rat, who turned the near-empty bottle over in his hands, picking at the edges of the label. “Shoddy workmanship,” he said mournfully. “Even the labels are going downhill these days.”
That sparked an idea. I plucked the bottle from Rat’s hands. “Let’s take away their wine,” I suggested.
Hobin looked momentarily horrified, but Durrel and Cwalo leaned forward, appreciative smiles turning up the corners of their mouths. Berdal’s grin widened. “Tell the lads their ration’s been cut off because of money shortfalls? It’ll be the end of them.”
“It’s going to take more than a rumor to make them rebel,” said Rat.
Cwalo’s lip quirked. “I think among the six of us, we can probably manage to exert some influence over the movement of wine in this city.”
“Plant the rumor, forge a letter or two to the wrong people, and then delay a key shipment by a few days. Rat? What do you think?” I said.
“I think it’s despicable,” he said. “But the vintners in the Third Circle have the army contracts. I’m sure they could be persuaded to let a few of their barrels go to a higher bidder, but they’d want some protection.”
“I’m not entirely sure that can be arranged,” Hobin said. “This is still a war we’re playing with, my boy.”
A shiver went up the back of my dress at the scope of what we were proposing, but the conversation continued, long into the evening, as we fine-tuned the plans. The prince would have to approve the scheme, and establish a time frame for setting it in action, coordinating his troops’ movements with the rumor we were intending to plant among the Green Army garrisoned in the city. But we had the means to set it all in motion from inside Gerse’s walls.
When we finally said our good-byes that night, Cwalo gave me a quick, firm hug. “Lass, you have a gift, you do, though Mirelle will swear I’ve corrupted you.”
“Thank you for bringing me,” Durrel said to me as we walked out into the night. “Even though I know you only did it to keep me out of trouble.”
“And to meet the Cwalo. They’re almost like family. What would your father think of you dining with rebels and plotting a mutiny?” I added softly, and Durrel’s expression went closed and hard once more.
“My father the Ferryman? Ask me if I give a damn.”
I looked into the night sky. Tiboran had gone into hiding, but Zet was rising, fierce and bright, and I wondered how the goddess of war would like her brother the trickster interfering in her domain. And would Wierolf want to end the war by trickery? Suddenly I felt bone weary of death and deceit, but it seemed every step I took these days carried me deeper in.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
We met again the next day, Berdal, Rat, Durrel, and I, in a back room at the Temple, to work through our parts of the plan. One of the critical components of the scheme was producing an accurate enough map of Gerse and her defenses to send to the prince. Wierolf had been exiled from Gerse as a child, and current intelligence would be vital to any engagement in town. But when the war had started, Astilan’s troops had stormed bookshops and printers and private collections across the city, seizing every map they could find and burning them all in a great public bonfire in Market Circle, lest any make their way past the sealed gates to the enemy. Durrel had a quick and accurate hand, and a good memory, and between us — with occasional input from Eske — we put together a sketch of the town walls and her main streets and gates, as well as the locations of the Green Army troops stationed throughout (thoughtfully provided, for the public service, by Lord Hobin).
“You’ll want to hold that carefully,” Eske remarked to Berdal. “That’ll not be an easy thing to take out of the city, and woe if they catch you with it.”
“Oh, they won’t,” Rat put in. “Digger has a plan.”
I explained how Cwalo had contributed a case of local Gelnir wine, which could pass unmolested through the city gates and roadside checkpoints, and how, with the application of a little egg white and lemon juice, the backsides of the innocent-looking wine labels would become a secret patchwork map that the prince could reconstruct back at his camp, “when he holds the labels up to a flame.” I used the table’s candle to demonstrate how the fire warmed the hidden ink and made it visible.
Eske’s wide smile signaled her approval of this scheme, which involved the three things Tiboran loved best: wine, secrets, and deception.
Durrel was focused and intent, and I was relieved he’d found some distraction from the mystery of his father’s involvement in smuggling Sarists. I would have liked Cwalo’s opinion on the matter, but Durrel had made me promise not to mention it until we knew more for certain. In the meantime, I was getting even more concerned about Raffin’s lingering absence. Rat had turned up nothing, and even Lord Hobin had made a few discreet inquiries after a fellow lord’s son, to no avail. Rat tried to sound casual when he broke this news, but I felt a current of concern beneath the words, and it made the skin on my neck tighten uncomfortably. What had happened to him? I couldn’t believe how much I longed to see a Greenman step casually out of the shadows and pin me into a conversation, and I was starting to be worried that I might actually have to do something about it.
As for our plot to foment rebellion among the king’s troops, Berdal had taken the first steps already, drunkenly announcing to his new soldier friends that the next thing they knew, old Bardolph would be cutting off their wine supply. It had produced the expected cries of outrage. I’d caught Eske’s look of momentary alarm at that, but eventually she’d grinned wickedly behind her mask of night-dark satin spangled with silver stars. I’d been prepared to forge a quartermaster’s report declaring the new ration, but it turned out to be unnecessary; Lord Hobin, after all, was a minister of war and had legitimate access to any documents we’d need, and he assured us that a “clerical error” like a misdirected wine shipment would bring very little risk to him. Berdal was still officially furloughed from the prince’s army, but Lord Hobin had smoothed his passage licenses through the proper channels so he could depart the city freely, and he’d be leaving us again in the morning.
I said my good-byes to him that night, wishing him health and good speed. He’d offered to carry a letter to Meri, but what news would I send? Durrel has been accused of murder? He and I are fugiti
ves for breaking him out of prison, and Raffin Taradyce has been swallowed by the Inquisition. And as for your Uncle Ragn — I just shook my head and said, “She knows what I wish for her.”
Durrel was left alone at the table, still scribbling doggedly on a stack of papers, and I peered over his work as I slid in across from him. He was making a list of figures. Two hundred thousand crowns, one entry said; the price of his marriage settlement to Talth Ceid. Sixteen hundred sovereigns — a vast figure whose value I wasn’t even certain of — for the farm at Favom Court. Another eighty sovereigns for Bal Marse.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” he sighed. “Nothing. It’s pointless. It doesn’t matter.” Durrel set down the pen and rubbed a hand over his bleary face. “If he needed the money — Why didn’t he just tell me?”
“He didn’t want you to worry. He probably knew you’d do something like this.”
“He didn’t trust me.” There was a weight and conviction to those words, like a stone rolled into place that wouldn’t budge again.
“No,” I said, but Durrel pushed the papers aside and bent his head wearily to the tabletop. “I talked to Karst,” I said tentatively.
He gave a bitter laugh. “Did he explain their operation to you, then? How they chain women and babies in the cellar of the home I shared with my wife?” I heard a dark slur to his voice that wasn’t all drink.
“Your father is not a Ferryman!” I said with a fierceness that startled me — maybe because I was afraid I was lying. “We’re not done here, you know. We still have to find proof that Karst killed —”
“Why?” He interrupted me. “We’re not learning anything good.”
“Because this isn’t right,” I said. “None of it. Your father is a good man, and you don’t belong here. What’s your plan? To camp out in the Temple the rest of your life? You’re not Tiboran’s — you’re not built for all this lying and sneaking around.”
“You’re right,” he said, standing up abruptly. “But apparently you are, so go ahead, Celyn, go off and dig up more dirt from my life.” And he pushed aside a chair and stalked away toward the stairs, leaving me standing alone in the little back room.
When I got back to Bargewater Street that evening, almost the last person in the world I wanted to see was waiting for me. Koya’s boatman, moored at the landing in the Davinna Koyuz, turned his gaunt, sepulchral face to me and solemnly intoned, “My mistress requests your company at Cartouche this evening.”
I still hadn’t recovered from Koya’s last salon, and I hardly relished the prospect of another night in that smoky fleshpot. But I was still fuming from that stupid, pointless argument with Durrel, and I didn’t feel like going straight back to home and bed at the bakery, where Werne’s grain sat patiently in the pantry, its very presence a silent rebuke. So I climbed willingly into the skiff and let the gloomy boatman carry me across the city.
Tonight the party was all upstairs, as I was told in a languid hand gesture by a lazy footman, and I let myself up into the inn section, drawn along by the seductive music and the rising heat gathered in the upper floors. At the end of the hallway, one of the private rooms had its doors thrown open to the corridor, spilling smoky shadows into the passage. A single lamp teased the chamber with hazy light, and a lute player crooned out a sophisticated melody that concealed ribald lyrics. Koya was at the center of a cluster of lively, laughing attention, draped elaborately across a padded bench, eating some sort of confection from the fingers of a slight, well-dressed boy kneeling beside her.
“Celyn!” she called out gaily as I crossed the threshold into the room. “Andros, give my friend a taste.” Her eyes were hooded and indolent, and she looked plump and well-stewed and ridiculously pleased with herself.
The slim, young man rose and held out one of the sweets he’d been offering to Koya. “No, really — that’s all right,” I said, ducking away from him.
“Oh, you’re so boring,” Koya said. She rolled up from the bench and took me by the shoulders. “You need to learn how to relax, Celyn. Loosen up a little —”
Apparently she meant that literally, because she actually gave the laces of my bodice a tug and began pulling my kirtle open. Glaring at her, I swatted her hands away and hastily yanked them closed again. “Koya!”
She ignored me utterly. “Oh!” she said suddenly to everyone gathered around her. “I know what you would like — come with me!” With a swoop of arm she gathered her blue velvet cloak to her and dragged me off before I could argue, before anyone from her cluster of admirers could follow. Babbling a stream of one-sided conversation I barely followed, she led me from the crowded room and up a narrow flight of back steps.
“Koya, where —” I began, but gave it up and just stumbled after her.
“. . . Durrel the most boring person I knew, but you may be even worse!” Still dragging me by my dress and chattering loudly, Koya stepped off the stairs into an empty hallway of low light and plush, patterned carpets, checking up and down the passage. “There,” she said, closing the stairwell door behind her. “Now we can talk privately.” Her voice was low and serious — and sober.
“What is this, Koya? What’s going on?”
“That’s what I was hoping you’d tell me.” All traces of the overly buoyant Koya had slipped away, like she’d stepped out of a too-warm cloak.
“You’re not drunk,” I said stupidly.
She gave me that indulgent, patient Ceid smile. “I’ve found a mask useful, at times. Not always, but on occasion it serves its purpose.”
“Which is what, exactly?”
She ignored that. “Did you think the Ceid just wouldn’t notice that Durrel disappeared from prison? Celyn, don’t underestimate the family. If they find him, they will kill him.”
“Then they won’t find him. And you can tell the family that we know who killed your mother. It’s a man called Karst, and —”
“Karst?” She sounded uncertain. “Do you have proof?”
“Not yet.” I couldn’t very well tell Koya about the footprints in Talth’s bedroom. But if she knew anything . . . “Did you know your mother was involved with Ferrymen?”
“Yes,” she said after a long moment. “Not at first, of course, but — yes. And you think that’s what got her killed?”
“You had to have suspected something.”
She hesitated, lifting one graceful arm to adjust her wrap. “I can’t talk about this.”
“Damn it, Koya —” I broke off. She stood there before me, tall as a young man, that blue velvet draped over her shoulder — and I had it at last. “You’re working with Lord Ragn,” I said. It was Koya I’d seen on the docks that night, dressed as a stable hand and carrying a pistol, her velvet wrap discarded on the bench at Charicaux.
“Clever girl,” she said, a faint smile flickering to life again. “I told him you’d figure it out. But it isn’t what you think. We’re not Ferrymen. We’re just in a position to help people, sometimes.”
“Desperate people. Sarists. Magic users.”
She was nodding urgently. “People like you. Like Lady Merista. And Geirt.”
“Geirt?” At once I remembered that afternoon at the warehouse, the strange, strong urge I’d had to touch Geirt’s arm, and the surprise I’d felt when nothing happened. “Geirt’s missing.”
“No she’s not.” That Ceid smile again.
“I see.” I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or concerned by this revelation, that Lord Ragn had spirited away the witness who might identify him as the man in Talth Ceid’s bedchamber. “How did you get involved? I’m guessing Talth didn’t raise you to rescue refugees.” I didn’t entirely believe her yet, but I wanted to keep her talking.
She gave one sharp laugh. “Hardly. Her only interest in a Sarist would have been how she could make a profit from him.” She shifted her wrap and continued, “About a year ago, one of Mother’s housemaids became pregnant. I found her crying in the Bal Marse kitchen one day, and she to
ld me she was afraid of what would happen to her and the baby.”
“Sent to the Celystra.” It was the usual fate for ill-gotten babes and their mothers; just how Werne and I had ended up there, in fact. I shoved that thought from my mind. “Did you know she was magical?”
“No, that was just brilliant dumb luck. I found her a post in another house, but it wasn’t far enough. She needed to get out of Gerse. And I knew that the Decath had a property outside the city, and so one day I simply asked Lord Ragn if he could help her. He’d always been kind to me, the few times I’d met him with Father.
“So he sent the girl to Favom Court.” Koya paused, remembering. “I couldn’t stop thinking about her, how brave she was. And how I had, for the first time in my life, defied my mother. And for such a noble cause! It was intoxicating. After that, it was almost easy. A neighbor’s footman asked about the girl I’d sent to Favom; his cousins were being watched by Greenmen. Ragn found them jobs in Brionry. And it’s been like that ever since. People just find us, and we help them move on. And more than that! Some of the people we’ve saved have gone on to join Prince Wierolf’s army.”
“All right, so you’re running your own operation,” I said, still a little skeptical. “In defiance of the Ferrymen.”
“Yes! And don’t you see how important that is! Those people who fall into the Ferrymen’s clutches, Celyn, there’s no hope for them. They keep them like prisoners until they work off their debts. And when they can’t work them anymore . . .” She swiftly drew a slashing fingernail across each wrist, pantomiming severed hands, the punishment for accused Sarists, under the cruel method of execution used inside the Celystra. Their hands were cut off and burned, their eyes put out, their skin flayed, their bodies finally hung upside down in a public circle to bleed to death as Goddess-fearing Gersins watched in smug, satisfied horror.
Koya swept up her skirts gracefully and paced the narrow passageway. “Everything was going smoothly until my mother died. I think something’s gone wrong, but Ragn won’t tell me.”
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