Stone of Inheritance

by Melissa McShane

  Stone of Inheritance

  Company of Strangers, Book 2

  Melissa McShane

  Copyright © 2019 by Melissa McShane

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Map by Oscar Paludi

  For Bryan,

  in thanks for the worship of Averran and delicious salmon

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Sienne’s Spellbook

  About the Author

  Sneak Peek: Mortal Rites (Company of Strangers, Book Three)

  1

  The cloudy gray light before the storm dulled the white marble façade of the Tombrino auction house to pearly dimness. Its many arches and gilded spires gave it the look of a temple of the avatar Gavant instead of a temple to worldly wealth. White statues topped the small round arches lining its roof, too far away for Sienne to make out details or identify who they were meant to be. She guessed long-ago rulers of Fioretti or representations of divine virtues, monitoring the activities of anyone who dared go within.

  A gust of freezing wind snatched her cloak from her hands where she gripped it closely around herself. She grabbed the cloak and wrapped it more tightly to her. Winter clung to the city despite having supposedly been evicted by first summer, and rain was imminent. Sienne was grateful they were far enough south that it wouldn’t be snow instead. Snow was pretty when you were indoors looking at how it covered the gardens and drinking spiced wine, but less pretty if you had to be out in it.

  “Was this always an auction house?” she asked Perrin, who strode along beside her. His long dark hair was windblown, and the tip of his nose was as red from the cold air as hers no doubt was.

  “It was the home of a minor noble, some hundred and seventy-five years ago,” Perrin said. “Someone who plotted against the queen of that era. His fortune and lands were confiscated, his family driven into exile, and his life forfeit. I am certain it was a far more tragic story at the time, but now it is simply a cautionary tale. The Fiorus family have ever been canny when it comes to protecting their rule.”

  “I don’t know. That still sounds sad, at least for the family. I suppose it was generous of the queen not to have them all executed.”

  Perrin took a drink from the flask at his hip. “Indeed. And daring, to leave alive any who might seek revenge for their father’s death.”

  Sienne eyed the flask, but said nothing. After nearly nine months of being Perrin’s companion on their scrapper team, she was used to his near-constant state of mild to moderate inebriation. The priests of the avatar Averran, whom Perrin worshipped, were expected to be a little drunk when performing their devotions, but Sienne couldn’t help feeling Perrin took it too far. She’d overheard enough of his side of the prayer conversations he had with his avatar to suspect Averran didn’t like it either. But any time she brought it up, even obliquely, Perrin sidestepped the issue with steely grace, and after four months she’d given up even the most subtle queries.

  The entrance to the auction house was an open arch with no door, through which men and women bundled up in cloaks against the cold scurried like so many drab gray or black beetles. Perrin and Sienne followed the trickle of people through a short hall where the wind blew briskly and into a larger antechamber with a domed roof. There was no indication as to what it had originally been meant for, but the fine frescos on the walls and the doors beneath them suggested some kind of reception chamber. Scuffs on the parquet floor, which had not been waxed in some time, told Sienne this was a place of serious business that didn’t have time for niceties like polished floors. Though the room was sheltered from the wind, it was still bitingly cold, and Sienne wished her magic for heating water applied to air as well. Though it was unlikely she could heat a volume of air this size.

  There were only about twenty or twenty-five people in the room, standing in knots of two or three, all of them huddled into their cloaks or coats as she was. Sienne surveyed the frescos. They depicted a series of familiar fairy tales featuring talking animals that walked on their hind legs and dressed like humans. It was subject matter she would have expected to see in a nursery rather than a noble’s reception chamber. Nobody else seemed to notice. “There’s not many here,” she said in a low voice. “That’s good, right?”

  “It’s not bad,” Perrin said. “Though we are counting on no one wanting the rather pedestrian lot we are here to bid on. But we should not discuss it in public. It may be a pedestrian lot, but we do not want to give any hint that it matters to us more than that.”

  Sienne nodded. Perrin was right; the knives they were here to bid on shouldn’t matter to anyone but themselves, but no sense giving the game away, and possibly encouraging someone to bid against them.

  It had been a long nine months leading to this point. At first, their newly acquired quest to free their companion Alaric’s people from the wizard who had them in thrall went nowhere. Perrin’s blessing enhancing Alaric’s memory of the wizard’s binding ritual had given them plenty of information, but none of it hinted at what their next step should be.

  Then, three months ago, Alaric had been successful in bribing someone to let him look at the confiscated possessions of Lord Liurdi, from whose property Alaric had originally taken one of the ritual pieces, a brass goblet. According to Perrin, the city treasury made good money off letting prospective bidders do this, so it wasn’t that spectacular an achievement, but it had been progress all the same.

  Alaric’s enhanced memory identified one of the knives in Liurdi’s trove as companion to the goblet. Warned in advance by Perrin, who refused to explain why he knew so much about city policies, Alaric didn’t try to buy the knife outright. Instead, he found out when Liurdi’s possessions would be auctioned off. And now Perrin and Sienne were going to bid on the knife. The lot of knives, actually; there had been five knives in the ancient trunk the team had found the key to. Sienne still felt annoyed that they hadn’t been allowed to keep the salvage, since they’d essentially found it, but Denys Renaldi, the guard lieutenant who’d arrested Lord Liurdi for kidnapping Sienne and a host of other crimes, had refused to break what was city custom, if not law. So bidding it would have to be.

  Perrin abruptly turned away from Sienne and swore under his breath. “What’s wrong?” Sienne asked.

  “There is someone here I would rather not encounter,” Perrin said. “Fortunately he is just as loath to meet me, but his companions might decide to force the issue. Better if they simply do not see me.”

  “Who—”

  “It is unimportant. Someone I knew once.
Someone who took exception to my conversion.” Perrin raised the flask again, stared at it, then put it away with a grimace. “I must keep my wits about me, however much I would prefer to lose myself in a gentle fog of brandy. Damn him.”

  Sienne knew little of Perrin’s past except that his family had cast him off when he converted from the worship of Gavant to that of Averran and, to make matters worse, became a priest of that avatar. She casually scanned the crowd, looking for anyone who might be paying close attention to them. Was it a relative? Another noble associated with the Delucco family?

  She met the gaze, briefly, of a short, slim man wearing an old-fashioned jerkin over a bell-sleeved white linen shirt and hose. He appeared to be scanning the crowd as she was, and she wondered what he was looking for. Sizing up the competition, perhaps? A nearby woman dressed in a long gown of heavy chartreuse brocade looked warmer than everyone else, and for a moment Sienne envied her the gown. Then she thought about how awkward gowns were, and the moment passed.

  A high-pitched bell rang out, a single tone that stilled the already quiet conversations. A woman dressed as Sienne was in fine linen shirt, close-fitting wool trousers, knee boots, and a form-fitting vest emerged from one of the side doors. “The auction will begin in five minutes,” she said in a clear, carrying voice. “Please follow me.”

  Perrin hung back, Sienne guessed to avoid whoever it was he didn’t want to meet. They went through the door nearly at the rear of the group, giving Sienne plenty of time to observe the others. Most of them were men wearing the colors of various Fiorettan guilds: carpenters, watchmakers, chandlers, and a few Sienne didn’t recognize. There was the woman in chartreuse, and the slim man in old-fashioned clothes. A group of two men and a woman, dressed more finely than the others, might be a rich merchant’s representatives or even those of a noble house. And finally, a young woman, probably in her late teens, clutched a purse to her side in both hands as if fearing thieves. Her thin nose was red-tipped as Perrin’s was from the cold, and she kept her gaze focused straight ahead on the backs of those in front of her. Sienne couldn’t help wondering what all these people were after, and whether any of them had, like Alaric, bribed their way to an early showing of the merchandise.

  They passed through the door, and Sienne had to control a gasp. The enormous room beyond had once been a ballroom, though one at least twice the size of the ballroom at her father’s ducal palace in Beneddo. More frescos, these of dancing nobles in the dress of two hundred years earlier, covered the walls and the high, arching ceiling where chandeliers still hung, dark and cobwebby. The light came not from the disused chandeliers, but from lanterns on poles scattered throughout the room. The smell of lamp oil was strong in the frigid air. This floor was also scuffed and scored with deep scratches where merchandise had no doubt been dragged over the years. It was almost criminal that they’d treated such a magnificent room so.

  But what had startled a gasp out of Sienne was not the beauty of the room. It was its contents. The ballroom was packed with furniture, tables and chairs and armoires and chests and all manner of household furnishings. Wooden crates with their lids removed lay here and there, some with packing straw sticking out of the top, others gleaming with unidentifiable contents. Sienne’s eye was drawn to a blocky, antique trunk atop which were piled furs, probably minks if Sienne had to guess. She and Perrin weren’t interested in the trunk, though it had come from the same ancient keep that had started their quest in motion, but Sienne was tempted to bid on it, for nostalgia’s sake.

  Men and women in the uniforms of the Fiorettan city guard stood at attention around the room, armed with the traditional sword and knife and looking willing to use them. Sienne didn’t need their deterrence to keep her distance from the wares.

  The auction house employee walked to a spot near where the goods were piled most heavily and said, “Bidding will proceed as follows. An item will be presented and an initial price declared. I will call for bids, and the highest bidder will be the purchaser. All items must be paid for at auction’s end. If the highest bidder lacks the cash to pay, the second highest bidder will be given the chance to purchase. Items not purchased at the end of the auction will remain the property of the city.” She waited as if expecting questions, then said, “The first lot is a dining table and sixteen chairs. Bidding will start at one hundred lari.”

  Sienne scanned the room again. This was going to be a very long day.

  She tried not to fidget as Lord Liurdi’s possessions were auctioned off. She hadn’t gone to the man’s execution—none of them had—and the last she’d seen of him had been when she testified to his kidnapping of her. When she’d first met him, he’d been vibrant and confident, if unattractive. At the trial, he’d looked as if all the life had been sucked out of him. Sienne felt no pity, because he’d murdered and schemed to get the key to open that trunk, but she did feel awkward, as if she’d seen him naked and not just beaten. She’d also felt angry that the Giordas, who’d been his accomplices in murder and theft, had been given prison sentences rather than death simply because they’d testified against him. Prison was awful, true, and it was possible they wouldn’t survive the term of their sentence, but it was just wrong.

  The bidding proceeded. It was boring, actually, with most items going for their first asking price and some items not bid on at all. Sienne couldn’t see a pattern to the order in which things were presented for auction. A sofa—a familiar sofa, she’d lain bound upon it while she listened to Liurdi and his friends plot her death!—was followed by a set of silverware, followed by porcelain bedroom utensils Sienne hoped someone had cleaned thoroughly. She let her mind drift, thinking about what Leofus might make for dinner. They were almost certainly going to miss the midday meal, the way things were going.

  Perrin put up a hand, startling her. Surely she hadn’t missed the knives being presented? But no, it was the pile of minks on the trunk he’d bid on. A few bids were exchanged, and Perrin was outbid. “Why did you do that?” she asked.

  “Camouflage,” Perrin said quietly. “And there are a few items we could use or resell at a profit.”

  “But what if we don’t have enough for the knives?”

  “This is not my first auction, Sienne. Have faith.”

  Sienne subsided. Perrin knew what he was doing. She was just there to keep him company and, she now realized, provide magical backup if necessary. If he bought an armoire like the one they were selling now, he’d only get it back to Master Tersus’s house if she cast fit on it.

  “Next lot,” the auctioneer said. “Five knives recovered from an ancient ruin, non-magical, but in excellent shape. We will start the bidding at twenty lari.”

  Perrin raised his hand. “Twenty lari, do I have twenty-five?” the auctioneer said. The young woman with the thin nose let go her purse long enough to raise her hand high in the air. “Twenty-five, I’m looking for thirty.” Perrin bid again. “Thirty. Thirty-five?” The young woman’s hand shot up again.

  Sienne examined her more closely. She was plainly dressed, but in clothes that screamed bespoke and a pair of boots Sienne recognized as coming from the bootmaker she and her companions patronized, a woman whose wares were as expensive as they were high-quality. Her hair, unusually light for a Fiorettan, hung loose to her waist in mouse-colored waves. Sienne’s hands closed into fists. There weren’t supposed to be any real challengers to their bid.

  The bidding continued to mount. Perrin looked as calm as if this weren’t crucial to their plans. Sienne didn’t know how much money Perrin had brought. Surely it would be enough. She resented the young woman and her stupid intrusion into their plans. They needed that knife, damn it!

  “That’s two hundred lari,” the auctioneer said as Perrin lowered his hand. She was trying to maintain her calm, but her wide eyes gave away her astonishment at the turn the bidding had taken. “Two hundred fifty?”

  One of the merchant’s representatives raised a hand, outbidding the girl. Sienne’s heart sank. The
unusual activity made it look like Perrin and the girl knew something about the knives’ value, and now others wanted in on it. She wanted to scream, snatch the knives, and make a run for it. She wouldn’t get far before the guards tackled her, but she was almost desperate enough to try.

  “Two hundred fifty,” the auctioneer said in a faint voice. “Three hundred?”

  “One thousand lari,” the girl said. Her voice was thin, but clear. The woman in the chartreuse gown gasped.

  “The bid is three hundred,” the auctioneer said. Her hand by her side was shaking.

  “I’m prepared to pay one thousand,” the girl said. “This just saves time.”

  The auctioneer considered her. She looked at the merchant’s representative and at Perrin. Perrin’s jaw was rigid. Sienne was sure they didn’t have a thousand lari. “One thousand lari,” the auctioneer said. “Do I have one thousand and fifty?”

  No one moved. The merchant’s representative shook his head. “One thousand, then,” the auctioneer said. The girl came forward to accept the numbered chit, then merged back into the crowd.

  Perrin stared at nothing. His hand came to rest on the hip flask, but didn’t take it. Sienne couldn’t think of anything to say. They’d lost, and to a girl who… what? Maybe she believed the knives had a value they didn’t. Or was she an unknown enemy who wanted them to suffer? She couldn’t possibly have known about their interest.

  Sienne stared at the girl, who was turning the numbered chit over in her hands like it was a precious jewel. Maybe they could reason with her. Maybe they could offer her money for just the one knife. No, that might sound like desperation, and make her inflate her price further.