The Lady Heiress (The Zero Enigma Book 8)

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  “I had no choice,” I said. “Just as you had no choice.”

  “Fine.” Ayesha waved her hand in dismissal. “Why have you called this meeting?”

  “He won’t stop,” I said. I gritted my teeth, then recounted how Malachi had treated me. The kneeling. The touching. How he’d made me kiss his boot. No one laughed. “He’ll keep going until he’s drained us dry, then expose us. And that will be the end.”

  “If he exposes us, we can expose him,” Marlene pointed out. “He’ll spend the rest of his life in prison.”

  “Yes, but our lives will be ruined,” Ayesha countered. “What does it profit us to see him in prison, if we go into exile ourselves?”

  “He may have enough influence to escape a blackmail charge, even if we do rat him out,” I said. I’d given the matter a great deal of thought. Malachi might be banned from polite society, but so what? He was already banned. “How many other secrets does he know?”

  Ayesha muttered a curse, just loudly enough for me to hear. “He could know everything.”

  “Yes.” I looked from face to face. “He has to be stopped.”

  Kate looked uncomfortable. “What do you propose to do?”

  “Stop him,” I said. “We raid his house, we destroy the papers and memory orbs and everything else he uses for blackmail ... and leave him powerless.”

  “He’s still got his memory,” Marlene pointed out. “He can spread stories from a distance ...”

  “He’d have no proof,” Ayesha countered. “As long as everyone involved keeps their mouths shut, and refuses even to deny that it happened, they can pretend it never did. There are so many insane rumours floating around that a few more won’t make any difference.”

  Particularly as Akin has his own reasons for keeping his mouth shut, I thought. He won’t want to admit he was hit with the kissing curse.

  “We have to capture or destroy the memory copying device, whatever it is,” Gary said. “It’ll make sure he can’t do it again.”

  “Right.” Marlene leaned forward. “Perhaps we should consider a more final solution.”

  I tried not to gasp. It wasn’t easy.

  “You mean kill him,” Kate said. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “If you don’t think so, leave.” Marlene scowled. “You say he’ll have no proof, but ... what if we’re wrong?”

  “Then we’re wrong,” I said. “But he wouldn’t risk putting his proof outside his control.”

  “We can’t be sure,” Marlene insisted. “We’re not the only people he’s threatened. Someone else might easily have contemplated doing the same thing. He could safeguard himself by leaving the evidence with a trusted friend or two ...”

  “He has friends?” Ayesha rolled her eyes. “But you’re right. We need to deal with him permanently.”

  I kept my face impassive, somehow. Malachi deserved to die. I was sure of it. I could never be safe, none of us could be safe, as long as he was alive. And yet, I didn’t feel right about issuing a death sentence. It would be better if we could find a way to wipe his mind once and for all, but ...

  “I think you’re forgetting something,” Kate said. “Right now, we’re the mice who voted to bell the cat. Sure, we need to bell the cat. But how are we actually going to do it?”

  I had to smile. “You’ll help us?”

  “I owe you,” Kate said. She leaned back in her chair. “But my father will be furious if this ends badly.”

  “A lot of our fathers will be furious,” Ayesha said, dryly. “We have shared so much together. We might as well share exile too.”

  Marlene grinned, suddenly. “They’ll be grateful, if we succeed. We might get a light sentence.”

  “Perhaps.” I cleared my throat. “Does anyone want to leave?”

  There was an awkward silence. No one moved to go. I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t have any real faith in my wards. I thought everyone would keep their mouths shut, even if they refused to involve themselves further, but ... I had no way to be sure. Too many people had too many secrets for them to be entirely trustworthy. Would Ayesha seek to make a private deal with Malachi? Would Marlene?

  “Thank you,” I said, quietly. “Like Kate says, we have to figure out how to bell the cat.”

  “I took a look at his wards, when we walked past his house,” Gary said. He produced a charms notebook from his pocket and started to sketch out a diagram. “As you can see, they’re fiendishly complex. No visible weak points. Worse” - he frowned as he diagrammed out the next section - “I think they’re tied to him personally. The servants are probably confined to their chambers when their master isn’t in the house.”

  “Does he have servants?” Kate studied the diagram thoughtfully. “He might not.”

  Ayesha made a rude sound. “Of course he has servants,” she said. “He’s spent the last umpteen years in a Great House. He’ll have a small army of servants at his beck and call.”

  “He has a driver,” I said. “I didn’t see any other servants.”

  “He’ll have them,” Ayesha predicted. “They probably just stayed out of sight.”

  “We’ll need to get a blood sample,” Gary said. “It’s the only way to attune ourselves to the wards.”

  I swore, feeling an icy hand clutching my heart. Malachi might not be as powerful a sorcerer as some of the others I’d met, but he was far from inept. His defences were tough, capable of handling almost anything we could throw at him. I dreaded what would happen if we tried to kidnap him and failed. He’d run, then reveal everything from a safe distance. My whole plan might be worse than useless. He would know what we’d tried to do.

  “We can’t catch him by surprise unless we get into his house and we can’t get into his house without a blood sample,” I said. My imagination produced a dozen schemes for obtaining a sample, each one crazier and somehow more impossible than the last. “We’re doomed.”

  “We could set fire to the house,” Gary said, doubtfully. “If we wove the right charms and potions into the blaze ...”

  Ayesha chuckled. “There’s another way to get a blood sample,” she said. “Malachi has a daughter.”

  “Three daughters,” I corrected, absently.

  “But only one who lives in the city,” Ayesha said. “Penny. Penny Rubén. She’s two years younger than me. There was some sort of scandal last spring in school that ended with her being stripped of her post as dorm monitor. She was actually booted down to lowerclassman.”

  “So?” It was meaningless to me. “What’s the point?”

  “Upperclassmen get the right to boss lowerclassmen around,” Gary explained. “To be kicked down to lowerclassman is ... well, it’s pretty bad.”

  “Social death,” Ayesha said. “Point is, Penny isn’t living with the rest of the family. She’s in a townhouse in South Shallot.”

  Kate eyed her suspiciously. “And you know this how?”

  “She’s a Rubén,” Ayesha said, as though that explained everything. “Keeping track of them is what we do.”

  “Right.” Kate shook her head in disbelief. “And can we use Penny’s blood to get through the wards? Wards, as you have just finished explaining, are tuned to one person and one person alone. Can we make it work, if we got a sample of Penny’s blood?”

  “Yes,” Gary said. “We’d have to strip the blood down to isolate her father’s ... contribution to her bloodline mix, but it’s doable. Once we were through the wards, they should think we’re authorised users and ignore us.”

  I nodded. “It should be workable.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Kate said. “What if you’re wrong?”

  “It makes sense,” Gary insisted. “The inner wards know we wouldn’t be inside the house unless the outer wards let us through, and the outer wards wouldn’t let us through unless we had permission to be inside the house. They should overlook us on the grounds we couldn’t have passed through the outer wards without permission.”

  “Fine.” Ayesha sto
od and started to pace the room. “How do we get our hands on the little brat? She’s been pretty much socially isolated since the end of term.”

  I blinked. “Her family isn’t watching over her?”

  “They bought her the townhouse.” Ayesha shrugged. “My guess is that they’re doing the bare minimum and nothing else. Whatever got her father kicked out probably impacted on her too. Akin never liked her ... I think he played a role in getting her demoted.”

  “That couldn’t have gone down well with his family,” Marlene said. “I’m surprised they didn’t tell him to help her.”

  “That’s why people think she did something really bad,” Ayesha said. “Perhaps she was involved with her father ... well, with whatever her father did. Or something. We simply don’t know.”

  “Perhaps we can ask her,” I said. “Later.”

  I tapped the paper. “We invite her to a party. Get her here ... get her nicely isolated, then take her blood. And then wipe her memory afterwards.”

  “Her father might have told her to stay away from you,” Kate warned. “Perhaps we should invite her somewhere else.”

  “Anywhere else, she’d know there wasn’t a party,” Ayesha said. “She probably reads the society papers.”

  “So we kidnap her from her townhouse,” Marlene said. “Can’t we do that instead?”

  “She’d have wards of her own, devised by her family,” Gary said. “And possibly an Object of Power.”

  “I doubt it,” Ayesha said. “But you’re right. We need to act discreetly.”

  “So we invite her here,” I said. “You invite her. Tell her to come here. We grab her the moment she arrives, then take her blood and hurry to Water Shallot.”

  “And then what?” Gary met my eyes, evenly. “If he’s in the house, the wards might realise he’s in two places at once and sound the alert.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “We have to get him out of the house,” I said. “How do we do that?”

  Kate laughed. “Invite him to a party?”

  “No.” Marlene grinned. “We send him a note, purporting to be from a servant with stuff to sell. Private letters, perhaps. Or something else, something that’ll let her take revenge on her mistress. He goes to get the crap and we walk in and trash his house.”

  “And what if he doesn’t leave?” Gary leaned forward. “He might not take the bait.”

  “Have Penny write the note,” Ayesha suggested. “Invite her father to the townhouse.”

  “We don’t know if Penny and her father are in contact,” I said. “My father didn’t contact me for six years.”

  Kate looked disturbed. “They’re in the same city.”

  “But her family might have ordered her not to contact him,” Ayesha said. “Or given her a flat choice between going with her father or remaining with the family.”

  “Better to keep it simple,” I said. “We’ll forge a note, telling him to meet the sender on the other side of the city. Poppy can deliver it. We’ll watch from a distance ... if he leaves his home, we move in and search the house. If he doesn’t ... we try again at a later date.”

  “Keeping Penny as a prisoner,” Marlene pointed out.

  “So what?” Ayesha looked dismissive. “It isn’t as if anyone will miss her.”

  “If you say so.” Kate didn’t sound convinced. “How long do we have?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “which is why we have to move as quickly as possible. Tonight, if possible. Get it done before something else can go wrong.”

  “Then we’d better start planning,” Gary said. He turned his notebook to a blank page. “Where shall we begin?”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The planning session lasted for hours. We went through the whole plan, each of us bringing our individual skills to the table and blending them together into a single whole. I knew better than to expect everything to go according to plan - there were just too many variables - but we covered every contingency we could imagine. By the time we broke up to collect our gear and return for the final act, we thought we were ready. I felt as if some of the old thrill had returned.

  This could still go horribly wrong, I reminded myself, as I paced my office. I’d sent a message to Penny, offering her a post as party coordinator. It had been Ayesha’s idea, but I had to admit it was a good one. If she’s in touch with her father ...

  I shook my head. Ayesha had told me everything she knew about Penny. It was hard to tell how much was reliable and how much was rumour and misinformation, but it was pretty clear Penny was socially isolated. She must have done something really bad to deserve such a harsh punishment. It wasn’t the end of the world, but ... to a teenage girl, it was probably worse. People would remember her demotion for years after she graduated and entered the real world. She’d be so isolated, I thought, that she’d jump at the chance to start crawling back into the limelight. And it was unlikely she was in contact with her father.

  There was a tap on the door. I looked up. “Come.”

  Jadish opened the door. “My Lady, the afternoon newspapers have arrived,” she said. She held a bundle out to me. “What should I do with them?”

  “Put them on the desk,” I said. I didn’t want to read the papers. I’d been jumping every time a messenger arrived, fearful he carried a message from Malachi. “Can you ...?”

  I stopped myself and met her eyes. “Jadish ... what do you want to do with your life?”

  Jadish stiffened. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, My Lady.”

  “Do you want to work here forever?” I held her eyes, wincing inside. It was hardly a fair question. The power disparity between us was too great. And yet, I needed to know the answer. “Or do you want to do something else with your life?”

  Jadish said nothing for a long moment. “I’d like to open a shop,” she said, finally. For a moment, she sounded like her old self. “Or become a seamstress. I’ve spent the last few years mending dresses and trousers and everything else.

  “After this is over ...” I swallowed and started again. “After this is over, I can try and get you lessons. Or help you buy a shop. Or something.”

  “That would be nice,” Jadish said. Her tone was so flat I was sure she’d heard the same promise before. From whom? My father? “If it happens, it happens.”

  I dismissed her with a nod, my thoughts grim. I’d taken what precautions I could, in the event of everything going badly. The money Ayesha had given me had been earmarked for the servants, if I died or simply never came home. They’d have a decent chance to survive and make something of themselves, even if House Lamplighter vanished. Jadish and Ellington and the others would live ... I brooded on the thought as the hours ticked by, wondering if I’d gone too far. I’d dragged Kate and Gary into the affair, too.

  There was no choice, I told myself. I needed their help.

  I put the thought out of my head as my friends returned, one by one. Malachi might suspect something, if he had people watching the hall ... I told myself it was unlikely. Besides, he’d told me to turn the screws on Ayesha and Marlene himself. I could justify Kate and Gary visiting, if he asked. Penny was the joker in the deck. If she was spotted ... would the observer even recognise her? I scowled as I realised Malachi could view the spotter’s memories. He’d certainly recognise his own daughter.

  Unless he hasn’t seen her for years too, I thought. I’d been a scrawny brat when I’d been sent to Grayling’s. I’d grown into a young adult by the time I’d returned. It was hard to believe my childhood portraits were of me. What sort of father was he?

  “We’re ready,” Gary said, as we assembled in the hall. “Are you?”

  “I think so,” I said. My imagination helpfully provided a list of everything that could go horribly wrong. “She should be here at any moment.”

  The wards hummed a warning. I tensed as I walked to the door, the others slipping into the shadows to wait. I remembered lurking in ambush, back at school, and silently damned my former self for not ..
. for not being older. In hindsight ... I told myself not to be silly. I hadn’t had the advantage of hindsight when I’d been a child. I opened the door, just in time to see a carriage rattle up the drive. It was fancy, but clearly rented. There was no family crest within view.

  I clasped my hands behind my back as the vehicle rattled to a halt. The driver - he wore bland livery - clambered off the seat, dropped to the ground and opened the door. A young blonde girl, her hair in braids, stepped out of the cab. My blood ran cold as I met her blue eyes. They were hard and cold, her face set in a sour expression that had practically been carved from ice. She was prettier than her father - it would have been hard to be uglier - but there was something of him in her stance. I silently forgave Marlene everything as Penny walked up the steps. She held herself like a queen visiting a hovel.