“What about Ezra?” I tried not to let my voice take on an edge. I was learning that Henrik’s ear was tuned to my moods. He didn’t miss anything.
“He was convinced you wouldn’t be able to pull this off. He took one look at you the night you arrived and said you were a waste. That you were too soft for this work.” He shrugged. “He underestimated you.”
I cringed. The words stung more than I wanted them to.
“It’s nothing more than a little competition. I wouldn’t worry,” he said.
“I’m not competition.”
“Sure you are.” Henrik stood, going back to the mantel. I watched as he refilled his pipe with mullein and lit it. “He holds a powerful position in this family. It’s no surprise that he doesn’t want someone else coming in and taking what’s his. He didn’t want to cut you in. Told me I should send you back to Nimsmire. But he’ll come around.”
I swallowed hard, careful to not let a single emotion cross my face. I’d known that Ezra didn’t want me here. That he didn’t like the idea of me gaining any footing in the family business. But part of me had begun to think that had changed. I hadn’t thought he’d go behind my back and try to sway Henrik against me.
“Be careful, Bryn,” Henrik said, peering at me through the smoke. “Ezra is talented. And brilliant. Most importantly, he has no ambition. But there’s one thing that will always be true.” His gaze sharpened. “He’s not blood.”
“You don’t trust him,” I said, understanding.
“He’s hiding something.” Henrik leaned into the wall, thinking about it. “Could be a side job, a girl … wouldn’t be the first time. Or it could be something that matters. Time will tell.”
The coil of breath behind my ribs tightened, the seams of the gown making me sore. It hurt every time I drew air into my lungs.
“I just want you to be smart,” he said again, more gently. “You are taking your place in this family, and Ezra has tried to undermine that. But I need him if I’m going to get that merchant’s ring.”
I breathed out slowly. I wanted to ask what he meant, but I was already on the edge of revealing how much I cared. And the last thing I wanted was for Henrik to know what hurt me. “I understand.”
“Good.” He looked relieved. “Now, you have a lot of work to do, starting tomorrow. You’re going to be very busy. I’d like to hear your first report at family dinner.”
I nodded dutifully, rising from the chair with my heart in my throat. Henrik went to the desk as I opened the door, but I paused, staring into the dark hallway. I turned back to him.
“And Coen?”
Henrik glanced up. “What about him?”
I let my eyes meet his, careful with the words. “I don’t want to be matched.”
Henrik half laughed. “You don’t, do you?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll get the tea house up and running. I’ll fill the coffers with coin and carve out a place for the Roths in the Merchant’s District. But I don’t want to be matched.”
“Then show me,” he said, simply.
“Show you what?”
“Show me that you’re more valuable to me here than you are in Simon’s house,” he answered. “And then we’ll talk.”
I gritted my teeth, fury burning inside of me like the melted silver in the forge. My fingers dug into the soft leather of the coin purse.
“Although Ezra won’t be too happy about that,” he murmured to himself.
My eyes shot up. “What?”
Henrik rocked forward, standing from his chair with a grunt, as if his bones hurt. “It was his idea to match you with Coen.”
All of a sudden, the room spun around me, making me feel like there was a vicious wind. In my hair. Pouring down my throat. My head was light with it.
Ezra is the one he listens to.
That was what Murrow had said. Because Ezra was brilliant. He had a mind that knew how to bend and shape things, like his silver. In the last few days, I thought I’d found some kind of shelter in the silversmith. A hiding place. But he was making bets against me. He was using me like the rest of them.
“And Bryn?” Henrik looked up once more. A soft smile was on his lips. “You really did look beautiful tonight.”
I clenched my teeth so hard that my jaw ached and I closed the door with the heavy purse clutched to my chest. The blackness of the hallway hid me as I climbed the stairs, back to my room. This was all a fixed game to Henrik. The guild. The tea house. The match with Coen. Like a trio of dice flung from his hands. And everyone in this house was playing. Even Ezra.
I pushed into my room and shut the door, too loudly. I paced, pressing my cold hands to my hot face, and when I caught my reflection in the mirror, I stopped short, sucking in a breath.
There, in the gilded frame, was the image of everything I was supposed to be. Beautiful. Useful. Bendable to everyone’s will. The pale gold-and-silver gown had looked like the ethereal garments of a dream in the evening’s candlelight. It had done its job, making me the creature of a fairy tale. Now, I looked like a ghost.
I was tired of being looked at. Assessed. Measured and weighed.
I pulled the chair from the table beside the window and clumsily took the quill from the inkpot, not caring if it dripped on my skirts. I scribbled, my heart racing, hand frozen as I signed my name. My eyes went to the ouroboros that now inked my skin. It looked up at me, the shape of it distorting through my tears.
No one was going to give me a place in this family. I had to claim it.
I folded up the parchment and sealed it with wax, turning it over to address the letter to the couturier. There was one more garment he would make for me.
TWENTY
It felt like every eye in the Merchant’s District was on us.
Murrow and I walked down the center of the street, shoulder to shoulder in the morning light. He was more than a head taller than me, hiding me in his shadow, but our boots hit the cobblestones in tandem, like the beat of a drum.
I could feel it—the quickening in my blood. I was finished trying to prove myself to Henrik. To all of them. But I still had something to prove to myself.
I belonged here. I didn’t know if it was the tattoo on my arm or the secret about Holland I’d concealed from my uncle, but finally, I felt like one of the Roths.
Sharp gazes followed Murrow and me as we passed, more than one person averting their eyes when I returned their stares. I found that I liked the feeling of power it gave me. There was a delicate balance to be struck if we were going to find a place for ourselves in the guild—a fine line between influential and dangerous. We had to be both. The merchants of Bastian needed to fear us, and at the same time, want to be associated with us. And there was a chasm between where we stood and where we needed to get to if we were going to win the vote at the exhibition.
I’d spent my life pretending to be a soft thing with petals. A thing that grew in the sunlight. But I was beginning to wonder if I was a creature of darkness, like the faces that sat around my uncle’s table. If that warmth beneath my skin when I saw eyes drop from mine had been there all along.
Ezra pushed his way into my mind like he had over and over since I’d opened my eyes that morning. The straight line of his mouth. The hardness of his jaw. He’d been gone before dawn and his seat at the breakfast table had been empty. But what Henrik had said still cut deep.
I replayed the moment, my fingers threaded into Ezra’s, the brush of his breath over my skin as my mouth drifted toward his.
I’d wanted him to meet me halfway over that table and kiss me. To show me where he stood. But that was before Henrik offered me the tea house and before I knew that Ezra had been working against me.
I wasn’t a fool. Henrik’s claims could have been his attempt to keep me cradled in his palm. But something about it felt true. Since I’d arrived in Bastian, Ezra had made it clear he didn’t want me there. And even if I’d caught his eyes on me more and more in the last few days and the space between
us felt alive with hunger, I wasn’t sure that meant I could trust him.
What I did know was that my growing feelings for Ezra had let me blur the lines between what I’d come here to do and what everyone else had planned for me. Now, I was glad he hadn’t kissed me. I didn’t know if there would have been any coming back from that.
“Where was Ezra this morning?” I asked, keeping my eyes ahead as we walked.
“Probably running an errand for Henrik.” If Murrow had the same suspicions about Ezra that Henrik did, he didn’t show it.
I caught a glimpse of us in a shop window as we passed. Murrow was watching me, but I couldn’t help myself. “He disappears a lot.”
The slightest hitch in Murrow’s step revealed that he wasn’t buying my attempt at sounding indifferent. “What exactly happened at that dinner last night?”
“What do you mean?”
He looked more amused than concerned, and I took that as a good sign. “When I got back, Ezra was in the workshop. He seemed off. I thought maybe something didn’t go as planned. But Henrik didn’t say anything at breakfast.”
“Nothing happened.” I kept my tone light. Murrow had lost what little trust I’d had in him when I learned he was in on Henrik’s plot to send me to Arthur’s. I liked him, but he wasn’t on my side. None of them were. Now, he was mining me for information. The number of cards in my hand was growing by the minute and I liked that. I would need them all by the time I claimed my stake in the family.
We walked a few more steps before we reached the corner of Fig Alley and Murrow finally turned to face me. “Why are you so curious about him all of a sudden?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I just can’t figure him out.”
Murrow studied me with a trained eye. “We all have our secrets. I’d like to keep mine. I’m sure he’d like to keep his.” He said it with humor, but there was an undertow of seriousness. It was a warning.
Perhaps he knew it was a strand that would unravel when pulled. Murrow cared about Ezra. He was protective, even. But I didn’t doubt whose corner he’d be in if it came down to it. He would do exactly as he was told.
When we reached the tea house, the sun glinted off the seeded glass like a reflection on still water. The faded sign looked down at me and the scratched gold paint of my mother’s name almost seemed to glow.
Murrow pulled his hand from his pocket and a short gold chain hung from his fingertip. On its end was strung a long, slender key that looked as if it hadn’t seen the light of day in years. I watched it swing.
He extended his arm toward me, setting it into my hand with a mischievous grin. “Go ahead. It’s yours.”
The same smile pulled at my own lips as I fit it into the rusted lock. It creaked as I turned the key, but when I lifted the handle, it didn’t budge.
“Let me.” Murrow waited for me to step aside before he leaned into the jamb, jostling it on its hinges until the latch gave.
The bottom of the door scraped over the marble floor as I pushed it open. I held my breath as I stepped over the threshold, into the darkness of the tea house. It was cold but missing the damp air that hovered between the walls of the Roth house. A layer of dust covered every surface, softening the room, and I looked up to the ceiling. Gold chandeliers studded with quartz points hung over a long, carved wooden bar, backed with tall mirrors. Behind the glass, the silver was separating from the backing, and fine hand-painted teacups and teapots lined the shelves beyond the tables that covered the floor. It was as if the place had been frozen in time, untouched since the last time my mother stood between these walls.
I turned in a circle, a sense of awe consuming me.
“What do you think?” Murrow swept the dust from a nearby stool before he sat on it, crossing one ankle over the other as he watched me.
I grinned. “It’s perfect.”
And it was. I could see it—the candles lit and the steam pouring from the teapots. The colorful frocks and jackets and twinkle of crystal. The tea house was as beautiful as it was useful. There wasn’t a sliver of gossip that didn’t make its way through the doors of the tea houses in Nimsmire. If Henrik wanted to enter the society of the merchants, this was as good a door as any.
“I do remember Eden,” Murrow said, suddenly. His voice wasn’t humorous anymore. It matched the softness in his face. “I remember this place, too.”
I slid onto the stool beside him, leaning into the counter. “No one ever talks about her.”
“They don’t like to talk about what happened.”
“The uncles?”
He nodded. “Things changed when Eden died. Henrik, Noel, and my father changed, too. It’s haunted Henrik for years, and I think he hoped you would replace her somehow. Fix what he couldn’t.”
I watched him fidget with his watch chain. He was being more candid than I would have expected.
“You think he feels responsible.” I tried to get to the bottom of what he was saying.
“He is responsible. For all of us,” Murrow said. “That’s not a burden I would want to bear.”
It occurred to me that Murrow wasn’t just talking about Eden. In a way, he was defending Henrik. Trying to help me see why he did the things he did. Why Murrow followed his every command.
I had no doubt of Henrik’s love for the family, or his sense of duty to its business. If I had to guess, I’d say he’d cut off his own hands before he let anyone harm us. But that didn’t mean I wanted to be his puppet.
“What happened to the man who killed my parents?” I asked quietly. It was a question I had never asked, but I sensed that Murrow would give me the honest answer.
Murrow’s voice lowered. “My father, Noel, and Henrik left that night after we got the news about what happened.” He paused. “They didn’t return until almost dawn. My father’s shirt was soaked with blood. I didn’t see it until I left on the rounds that morning—the door.”
“The door?”
Murrow swallowed. “The door of the house. It was red.”
I shifted uncomfortably on the stool.
“They’d painted it. With that man’s blood.” He swallowed. “People told the story for years. Everywhere I went—the tavern, the docks, North End, the piers … everyone told that story.”
That sounded like the Roths I’d heard about. And it was probably the reason no one wanted to lay a hand on anyone with the tattoo. It was the family’s reputation that protected us, the same way people feared going against Simon.
“People think they’re heartless,” he said, “I’ve heard more than one person say that Henrik has no soul. But his heart is this family. All of us.”
“I guess that makes sense. He has no family of his own.”
Murrow shrugged. He was holding back now.
“What? He does have a family?”
He hesitated. “There are rumors. Who knows if any of them are true.”
But the look on his face told me that he didn’t think it was just gossip.
“What about your mother?” I asked. “What happened to her?”
“Figured out pretty quickly that she wasn’t cut out for this life.”
I frowned. “I’m sorry.”
“Can’t really blame her,” he said sincerely.
Murrow finally let go of his watch chain, crossing his arms over his chest as he drew in a tight breath. He looked over my head. “There’s still one problem, you know.”
I followed his gaze to the chandeliers. “What’s that?”
“Who’s going to take tea at a tea house run by the Roths?”
I’d had the same question spinning in my mind since I’d left Henrik’s study the night before. It would take time for people to warm up to the idea of Henrik in their ranks, but he wanted the tea house open before the exhibition. More than that, he wanted the voting guild members in these seats before then. This tea house was my way out of a match with Coen and I’d told him I could do it. But I wasn’t sure how.
My gaze skipped over the worn v
elvet backings of the chairs and the intricate mosaic floors until I caught my own eyes in the grand hanging mirrors. It didn’t matter how much he tried, Henrik was never going to be one of them. Not really. His shadowed past would follow him for the rest of his life. But maybe that was where the opportunity lay. In that fine line between influential and dangerous.
“Maybe…” I murmured, my thoughts coming together as I spoke. When I looked at Murrow, his head tilted to the side inquisitively. “Maybe it’s not just a tea house.”
TWENTY-ONE
“You want to what?” Casimir gaped at me.
The people filing into the merchant’s house stared at us, but behind him, Murrow stifled a laugh. He was enjoying this.
“Dice,” I repeated.
It was perfect. Three Widows was the guilty pleasure of nearly every one of my great-aunt’s high-society friends, and I’d watched from the darkened hallway many nights as her parlor filled with finely dressed merchants for a drunken night of throwing dice for coins and gems. It was the dirty little secret everyone knew about. And I was betting the highbrow merchants of Bastian were no different.
“It makes sense,” I continued, perfecting my pitch. I would need it to be rock solid by the time I went to Henrik. “The tea house will be proper enough to entice them but just scandalous enough to keep them coming back. It will be … unexpected.”
“How is that a good thing?” Casimir argued. “We need to give them what they know, Bryn. What they’re comfortable with.”
“If we do that, they won’t come. They’ll see it as lowlanders trying to put on airs. But if we act like Roths, they will be intrigued. They won’t be able to help themselves.” I laid it out again. “It’s a tea house. The finest of tea houses, with exotic brews and the hand-painted porcelain. But it’s also a dice house. Right in the middle of the Merchant’s District. No back rooms and secret games. It will be both. At the same time.”
The Last Legacy Page 14
