This isn’t helping.
She took a deep breath and tried to calm down. She felt weak, even a little dizzy. Her stomach ached. She looked at the duchess’s door and frowned. Maybe it was time to eat.
At first, Genny believed the poor quality and extremely small portions of food had been a tool to weaken her, make her more pliable and easier to control. She had since revised that theory. They’re doing it out of spite.
They had a noble duchess at their mercy, and they were torturing her for entertainment. They fed her gruel as humiliation. That was their plan, to beat her down, starve, degrade, and intimidate her. When she was desperate, perhaps they would give her dead rats and laugh, goading her to eat them. It was possible that the poor treatment was part of some clever plan, but Genny had come to believe that it was merely for sport. How grand it must be to embarrass her, what hoots, what laughs they must share. How wonderful to finally make one of them suffer.
Only I’m not one of them. Not really. She grimaced at the worn wooden bowl and remembered a similar one she had eaten from as a child. I’m not one of anything. The masses see me as privileged, and the nobles see me as the unwashed.
If Duchess Dederia, Duke Floret’s wife, had been abducted, she wouldn’t have survived the first hour. The moment they stuffed Dederia’s head into that smelly bag, she would have dropped dead.
They’re fortunate they got me instead. Lucky on the one hand, not so fortunate on the other.
Genny was done playing nice.
No one got anywhere by being timid. No one advanced through whispers. This was a lesson she’d learned early.
Genny had observed that successful men were bold and acted confident, even when they weren’t. They declared they were right, insisted it was so, and, amazingly, people who ought to know better, believed. Even if they were wrong half of the time, they were right the other half. After a while, the mistakes were forgotten, but the victories never were—the men made a point of reminding everyone of those. Genny had seen this, learned from it, and practiced what she had dubbed the Art of Bluster. She’d always had a big mouth, literally and metaphorically. And she was smarter than she looked, which at first was a hindrance, but later had become a weapon.
Peering out through one of the cracks in the door, Genny wanted to make certain there was an audience for the tirade she was about to unleash. Mercator was at the cook fire, dishing out her own meal. She poured the same dismal slop into an identical wooden bowl. Not a bit of fruit, nut, syrup, or berry was added. There was no meat, no bread, no cider or beer. Genny watched, baffled. She’d been certain her captives served themselves a different meal. Who would willingly eat such miserable food?
She stared as Mercator drained the last of the porridge into a bowl. That’s when Genny realized the most remarkable thing of all. After pouring out the remnants, Mercator had significantly less in her bowl than what Genny had been served.
Is this really what she lives on?
Mercator sat down on the floor, crossed her legs, and ate that half serving of porridge, lifting the bowl to her mouth and drinking it in like soup. Even at their poorest, the Winter family never ate this badly.
Genny knelt at the reach of her chain, staring out the gap in the door, studying her captor. Mercator was a miserable sight. She was thin and ragged, her skin dark—reddish brown like an acorn—except her arms, of course. She was small and more than lithe. Mercator looked like a deer in late winter. Stick-like legs, a long slender neck, high, hollow cheeks, and the infamous oblong ears that declared the woman’s elven heritage. Mercator was a mir, and all the mir Genny had ever seen were thin.
Are all mir in want of food?
Genny had already identified the need to empower the Calians and dwarves, but it turned out she had a blind spot—the mir. They were, as always, invisible. That was before Genny came to know one. Before she was forced to watch Mercator struggle to survive. Before she saw her eat the mouse’s share of the porridge. Before she saw a person where there wasn’t supposed to be one.
Mercator stopped eating. Her head bowed over the remains of her miserable meal, and with raised knees, she rocked in a regular rhythm. Try as she might to be quiet, Genny could still hear the sobs.
“What’s wrong?” the duchess asked.
After a gasp and sniffle, the mir lifted her head, brushed her hair back, and surprised Genny with an answer. “Your husband isn’t doing anything. He’s not trying to save you.”
“Leo? What do you mean?”
Mercator shook her damp hair. “When Villar grabbed you, he left our demands in the carriage—a simple set of instructions. Once they were followed, you’d be set free.” Her lower lip shook as her mouth pulled into a deep frown, the sort attempted in the hope of restraining emotion—an effort that never worked. “We didn’t even ask for much. Hardly anything at all. But rather than agree, or even make a counterproposal, he’s refused to bargain.”
“Demands?” Genny said mostly to herself. “You asked for money? A ransom? Is that what this is about?”
Mercator made a loud disgusted sound. “We aren’t thieves. We just want . . . a chance to live.” She sniffled again. “All we ask is to have the same opportunities as everyone else. For no known reason, Calians are denied the privilege to open their own shops. Dwarves are forbidden to engage in any trading, why is anyone’s guess. And my people, the mir, are banned from everything, labeled outlaws at birth. Our crime is existing.”
“Surely you exaggerate. You make and sell dyed cloth.”
“Illegally. And if I’m caught, or if those who risk doing business with me are apprehended, we both face mutilation or death depending on the whims of the city guard who discovers the offense. The punishments are capricious and subjective.” She shook her head and toggled a finger between them. “This right here, my talking to you, is against the law.”
“What do you mean?”
“A mir isn’t allowed to speak to a citizen of the city. Doing so will result in a beating. Technically, I can’t even look you in the eye. That, too, is forbidden, although rarely enforced. We can’t take water from wells or fountains, can’t fish or hunt for food. We can’t beg. Renting property is prohibited; so is sleeping on the streets or in alleys. We are banned from the bathhouses and denied the ability to clean ourselves in the river or bay. We mustn’t start fires to warm ourselves, have to speak in whispers so as to not disturb the better folk, and are forbidden to teach our children to read, write, or learn numbers.”
“How do you live?”
“That’s just it, we aren’t supposed to.”
“What did you ask of my husband? What did you demand.”
“We begged for the privilege to work, to buy and sell, and to rent land the same as anyone else. We asked to be made citizens of the city and be granted the same privileges, opportunities, and security granted to everyone else.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes. Your husband could fix everything with a signature, but when it comes to granting even basic dignity to the Pitifuls, even the life of his new wife isn’t enough to make him do what is right.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“Neither can I, but here we are.”
Mercator hated crying. Knowing the duchess was peering out, seeing her moment of weakness, made it worse. At this point, all she had was her dignity, and the duchess was stripping away even that.
“You know you’re being foolish,” the duchess said. “Kidnapping me was about as stupid a thing as a person could do.”
“So is calling me stupid if you ever want to eat again.”
“You don’t understand. I was trying to help you.”
“By calling me stupid?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Silly and stupid, I guess you really don’t like food, do you?” Mercator picked up a rag and wiped her face.
“You misunderstand. Let me explain. The night you abducted me, do you know what I was doing? Where I was coming from?”
“I heard you were on a shopping spree. Checking out a blue vest to give to your husband.”
“That was a momentary stop on my way back from a meeting with the Merchants’ Guild.”
“Merchants’ Guild?” Mercator stared at the closed door. She couldn’t see the duchess but guessed the woman was peering through the slats the way Mercator often did when trying to tell if the duchess was asleep. “What business does a duchess have with the guild? Are they not importing the fashions you desire?”
“I was trying to persuade them to grant membership to the Calians.”
Mercator let out an absurd laugh. “Why would you do that? Because you anticipated being kidnapped and thought it might be a good way to—”
“Because this city is a financial mess!” the duchess burst out with enough indignation to overpower the bells of Grom Galimus.
She sounded so sincere that Mercator forgot her sarcasm. She forgot her indifference as well, her shield against sympathy. Instead, she listened.
“An absolute disaster and I’m just the woman to fix it. I wasn’t always a duchess, you understand. Before coming here, I was a merchant. I helped run one of the most profitable businesses in the most successful mercantile city in the world. I may not know why the sun circles Elan, but I know how to make money. When you look like I do, it’s a necessity. Believe me when I say I love Leo, but the man knows nothing about finances. I asked to see his books and he showed me his library of poetry! Ha! Can you believe it? This city possesses tremendous untapped potential. Most people don’t see the downtrodden as valuable, but then they don’t think much of me, either, and I helped turn an illegal moonshine operation into a respected distillery. Other people’s ignorance is always a moneymaker, remember that.”
Mercator wasn’t certain she’d be capable of accurately remembering any of the duchess’s ramblings but didn’t doubt the truth of what she said.
“We are a port city with unique access to the exotic eastern trade routes, but we refuse to embrace our best resources. Instead, we force them to deal illegally, which not only denies the duchy tax on their profits, but it also lowers the income of legitimate businesses, depriving us of even more income.”
Genny’s blood was obviously up; Mercator could hear her walking back and forth in her little cell. “The situation is even more dire with the dwarves. Their neighborhood of Littleton should be a gold mine for this city. Raw goods arriving from Calis and Galeannon should be shaped into works of art by their hands. The results would be triple the profit when those finished goods are exported. With its wealth of natural talent and geographic position, Rochelle should be the crown jewel of the east, the powerhouse producer of Alburn. Instead, we flounder in debt.”
She paused, perhaps to catch her breath, then went on, “This is why I screamed at all those pasty-faced shopkeepers who were too locked in their traditions and too blinded by intolerance and idiocy to see that they would stand to double their profit as well. A rising sea lifts all boats. I demanded they grant acceptance to all Calians interested in doing business in our city, or I would triple their taxes—for the good of the people, you understand.”
“That’s why De Luda was with you.”
“Yes. While he didn’t agree with my ideas, he was obligated to make the introductions. Ironically, he was murdered by the very people who would have benefited from his continued assistance.”
Chapter Ten
Venlin Is Standing
Bishop Maurice Saldur of Medford stared in awe at the ceiling of the grand chapel inside Grom Galimus. The overhead fresco had been painted by famed imperial artist Elijah Handel. The beauty, the depth, the vividness of color displayed in the image of Novron receiving the Rhelacan from Maribor was the very definition of mastery. Several of the paintings on the walls of the cathedral were also created by Handel, who had been commissioned by Bishop Venlin in the years that directly followed the fall of Percepliquis. Venlin was famously quoted as saying, “Novron spared you from the destruction of the capital, Elijah, so you could decorate the new one.” What wasn’t painted was carved in marble. Three of the greatest sculptors of all time had worked on the cathedral: Burke Thatcher, who in his youth studied at the Art Academy of Percepliquis; his son Alrick Thatcher, who surpassed his father; and the greatest of all, Marley Layton, who was best known for creating the massive statue of Novron that graced the plaza outside.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Tynewell said. The bishop mirrored Saldur’s upward stare. “This is the closest thing we have to a piece of Novron’s empire.”
“It’s magnificent,” Saldur agreed.
“And this is my home,” he said with a self-satisfied smile, the sort a man displays after making a pig of himself at a feast.
This was a source of irritation to Saldur that he knew full well was pure jealousy, but he couldn’t help himself. Who could? Grom Galimus was easily the most sacred place in Elan. Why the patriarch and archbishop chose to dwell in that remote remnant of a castle built by that impious barbarian, Glenmorgan, who literally destroyed the last vestiges of the imperium, was beyond Saldur. Even so, the Crown Tower was a blessed relic compared with Mares Cathedral. Saldur was relegated to a cheap imitation of Grom Galimus built by childish thugs in the cultural desert otherwise known as Melengar. His church had been hastily erected with all the artistry of a blind cow with paint on her tail, and manifested all the sanctity of a whitewashed brothel. This, Saldur thought with a sigh while looking up at the marble and gold, is what religion is all about.
Catching Tynewell grinning at him, Saldur scowled and said, “Will we be dining here, or should we go out?”
“Rochelle does, indeed, boast numerous cafés and public houses that are a delight.” Tynewell was grinding it in now, twisting the dagger, relishing Saldur’s envious drool. “But I took the liberty of having meat and bread brought to my office. I felt that in private we could speak more candidly.”
Maurice Saldur had hoped for a meal at the pretty coffeehouse across the plaza that he’d passed on the way in. They didn’t have such places in Medford, not even in Colnora, but in Rochelle they were everywhere. While he preferred a good brandy to dark coffee, it wasn’t seemly for a bishop to linger in a local tavern. Coffee shops were a different matter. In the cultured east, they were seen as sites of intellectual discourse where a learned bishop was a welcome visitor. While Saldur didn’t savor the idea of chewing stringy meat across a battered desk in a cramped closet, he nevertheless resigned himself to accept his host’s decision. He followed as Tynewell led the way through an intricately carved mahogany door into the Bishop of Alburn’s private office.
The moment the door opened, Saldur was dumbfounded. This was just an office the same way Grom Galimus was just a church.
Tynewell led him into a series of rooms every bit as opulent as the cathedral proper. More frescoes, very likely created by Handel, adorned a ceiling never meant to be seen by the general public. They walked right by Tynewell’s meticulously polished desk and into a separate suite with plush furniture arranged in a semicircle before a massive marble hearth where a trio of giant logs burned brightly. One wall was a towering stained-glass window; the other another fresco, this one of Novron laughing, with a silver flagon in hand. He was seated in a chair speaking with an elderly man in suspiciously modern church robes. The background was a perfect extension of the room they were in. The illusion was amazing, and Saldur felt he could walk right through and into that other space.
“Venlin.” Tynewell pointed at the older figure in the painting. “He had Handel put Our Lord in his office and him in the picture. This is the most candid image of Novron you’ll find. It borders on the obscene, but no one ever sees it except the bishops. The story goes that Venlin ordered its commission to show Novron’s human side, and that here, in the sanctity of this behind-the-scenes refuge, we, too, can relax and be human.” The bishop sniffed contemptuously. “Personally, I think Venlin was an egotistical narcissist. I’m told that in his old
age he thought Novron actually spoke to him.” Tynewell stared at the painting that ran from floor to ceiling, making Venlin and Novron life-sized. “Can you imagine His Holiness, the self-proclaimed patriarch, sitting in this room and talking to himself while believing he was speaking to Novron? Astounding, don’t you think?” He gestured at the couch. “Please, have a seat.”
Only then did Saldur notice there was a banquet of venison and quail on the table before them.
“You live well,” Saldur said, sitting and digging in.
“Venlin lived well,” Tynewell corrected as he proceeded to close and lock the doors. “I benefit from his legacy.” The Bishop of Alburn took a seat across from Saldur, reclining back, crossing his legs, and throwing a long arm out over the cushions. “Did the patriarch send you?”
Saldur ripped the leg off a quail. “Yes, well, not directly, that is. I didn’t actually chat with the patriarch. I’ve never seen the man.” He gestured at the painting with the drumstick. “This is the closest I’ve come to meeting a patriarch of the church. I sometimes wonder if he exists. Maybe Nilnev died a decade ago and the archbishop hasn’t told anyone. Seems like something Galien would do, and who would be the wiser? But the archbishop did give me a message that he said came from Nilnev’s hand.” He pulled a sealed letter from a pocket of his robe and handed it to Tynewell.
The Bishop of Alburn broke the seal, read the note, and smiled.
“Do you mind?” Saldur asked, holding out his hand.
Tynewell shook his head and gave him the letter.
Saldur skimmed the contents quickly. “Well, this is quite an honor. The patriarch has left the selection of the new king up to you. Makes sense. You know your kingdom and can best judge the candidates.” Saldur swallowed an excellent mouthful of well-seasoned quail, then reached for the jug of what he hoped would contain wine. “May I?”
“Of course.”
Saldur filled a goblet with what sadly turned out to be mead. He wasn’t a fan. He raised a greasy finger. “Just remember to pick someone who will be willing to relinquish power when the day comes.”
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