• • •
Ludgar’s single nod to his seafaring past was the attendant who answered the door. He was not, precisely, a domicis; nor was he by any stretch of imagination a patrician steward. He was first mate to Ludgar’s captain, a scarred, windburned man who was missing a tooth. He kept his mouth shut for the most part, and the tooth wasn’t prominent, but it was obvious to Jester. As obvious was the fact that he was not comfortable in the clothing these duties on the Isle demanded; nor was his Weston as smooth and polished as Jester’s had become.
Jester liked the man better for it. Servants were never addressed directly; Jester offered a casual nod and his most winning smile. “Ivarr.”
The man grinned back, relaxing. In repose he looked infinitely more dangerous; he slid out of the confining element of patriciate servant, which suited him poorly. What was left was a man more comfortable with daggers on a heaving deck than cutlery at a dining table.
“Jester. It’s been a while since you’ve been sent to fetch and carry.”
“Not nearly long enough,” Jester replied.
“You’re here for himself?”
“I am. And as recompense for my service as messenger boy, I’ve taken the liberty of procuring one of The Terafin’s finer vintages.” He withdrew a bottle from the folds of his cloak and showed it to Ivarr; he didn’t, however, hand it off.
Ivarr whistled. “Taken the liberty, have you?”
“Aye.”
“They’ll notice that one’s gone missing, mark my words.”
Jester shrugged. “It’s early enough in the morning I thought I’d give Ludgar incentive to get out of bed. He was out late last night.”
Ivarr frowned. “I don’t know where you heard that, but you need a better grade of informant.”
“I heard it from Scoville.”
“Aye, well. Himself was invited to attend Patris Winhaven.”
“So was I. His wine cellar’s good, and he usually invites men and women of note, but the man is a pompous windbag.”
Ivarr laughed. “That’s kinder than what Ludgar says.”
“I’m a smaller, weaker man,” Jester replied, with the same easy grin, “and I have more need to watch my words—at least the words that will travel back to Winhaven.”
“I’ll tell himself you’re here. Head on into the far room.”
“The parlor.”
“That’s the one. I’ll be by with glasses.”
“Bring three.”
Ivarr’s frown could have soured milk. “I’m not invited to drink when the guests are of import.”
“I’m an errand boy, as you’ve said, and I’ve no intention of letting Ludgar polish this off on his own. I suppose you could bring just one glass on the off chance Ludgar insists on patrician formality.”
• • •
Ludgar arrived in the sitting room within the half hour. In that time, Jester conversed with Ivarr and glanced at the shelving upon which very prettily bound books sat. He very much doubted Ludgar had read them, but noted by their titles that many were of recent vintage. The furniture itself had seen a notable upgrade since Jester had last paid a visit; the glasses that Ludgar procured were likewise new.
None of this was suspicious in and of itself, but Haval’s bland words had done their work; Jester was alert. Alert, however, meant Jester became far less formal; he chose to shed the subtleties that Ellerson had done his best to instill. The desire to please, to appeal, was at its strongest when danger was present; Jester worked with it, rather than against it. He eased himself into a chair, adopting a seated posture that Ivarr wouldn’t notice and Ellerson would have disliked in the extreme.
“Jester,” Ludgar said, as he entered the room. He cast a glance at Ivarr; Ivarr shrugged. Ludgar was at home in this house, and Ivarr did not consider Jester to be a threat.
Neither, if it came to that, did Ludgar, who not only took a seat, but dragged it across the carpet to bring it closer to both his visitor and his visitor’s theoretically fine vintage.
Jester chuckled. “I’m aware I’m not the star of this show,” he said, handing the bottle to Ludgar for the merchant’s inspection.
Ludgar did not whistle, as Ivarr had. His eyes rounded slightly, and then narrowed far more noticeably. He set the bottle down on the table between them as if it were now the stakes for which a hand of cards might be played.
Which is why Ludgar was captain to Ivarr’s first mate. He did not, on the other hand, demand that Ivarr retreat into invisibility. Jester noted that Ivarr didn’t pull up a chair. He was watching both Ludgar and Jester as if he was trying to figure out the game now being played.
“I’ve been informed that you’ve been sent with a message?”
“I have.” Jester shifted in his chair and removed the scroll case Finch used in moderately important correspondence. It was sealed; the seal had not been broken. Long years of practice had made clear just how tricky breaching such a seal was if one wanted to read a private message without either sender or receiver being aware of the intrusion.
It was not, however, impossible.
Ludgar’s frown was a natural part of his face. “You don’t know the contents of this message.”
“It wasn’t verbal, no. In general, Finch doesn’t trust me with important verbal messages. She feels I get too distracted.”
Ludgar lifted a brow in the direction of the unopened bottle. “Not without cause.”
Jester offered an unrepentant smile. “I’ve never said she’s a fool.”
“She sent the wine?”
“Let’s just say it came with her message.”
Ludgar did smile, then. “The steward of the cellar’s going to be blue in the face at the loss.”
“It wasn’t doing anyone any good in the cellars,” Jester pointed out. “And The Terafin has never developed an aficionado’s sense of wine.”
“Meaning you think she won’t care, is that it? She will, boy, when she sees the value this bottle has in her steward’s books.”
“I, however, have had the good sense to develop an appreciation for the finer things. May I?”
Ludgar grinned. “With my permission, yes.”
“You’ve learned grace and the manners of a gentleman,” Jester replied. He reached for the bottle and fished a corkscrew, with a suitable lack of elegance, out of a pocket. He did not appear to be watching Ludgar with any concern; he was.
Ludgar rolled the tube in his hands, inspected the seal with unflattering suspicion—of Jester, of course—and finally conceded to open the damn thing. Jester hadn’t lied; he had no idea what the message itself contained. He could, with a lot of work, tamper with such cases, but it wasn’t guaranteed to work smoothly. He’d considered doing it anyway, and just delivering the message in a more traditional envelope; Ludgar was unlikely to know.
He almost wished he’d taken that risk.
• • •
The scroll was compact; the message was not. Jester grimaced. He had his den leader’s natural distrust of magic, and the case itself was clearly one of the expensive cases obtained from the Order of Knowledge. These cases were constructed in some nefarious way; they could hold a message of any size. The parchment was not confined to the case’s shape. Why Finch had one—or possibly three, as all of the messages were in similarly sized and sealed cases—Jester didn’t know. In general, he didn’t interfere in the external business of members of the den.
He was not feeling highly charitable toward Haval as Ludgar began to read. Ivarr was studying his master’s face with the same concern and the same suspicion that Jester himself felt, but Ivarr was not a man who had learned the finer art of hiding such suspicions. Ivarr, like Ludgar, depended on the fear—or, the kinder word, caution—engendered by his physical presence.
Jester was not, and had never been, large. That had been Arann’s j
ob. He’d never been dangerous; that had been Duster’s, a role she’d owned in its entirety until her early death. That death had taught them all something, both about danger and the strange effects that loyalty—unexpected, unpredictable loyalty—could have.
He had never intended to have Duster’s death. He did not intend to face it now. He poured three glasses, rising to offer one to Ivarr. Ivarr blinked and accepted the glass with a grimace; it was stemmed crystal, which was not Ivarr’s ideal drinking cup.
Jester set a glass down to Ludgar’s right; Ludgar reached for it without comment. Without, in Jester’s opinion, any real thought, either. He was absorbed by whatever it was Finch had written, his eyes bright, narrow, and clear.
Jester felt conflicting things as his eyes grazed Ludgar’s expression. Finch was seldom noticed, and when she was, she was treated as a slight or insignificant presence. He understood why, and understood that in part Finch chose how she was seen. So did Jester, but he couldn’t choose invisibility; the red-orange shock of his hair had always denied him that. Yes, he could dye it; Rath had made that clear.
And he had, on a few occasions. But his hair and the pale skin that came with it were the two characteristics that people remembered. They implied personality. He had lived up to the expectations people brought to the hair.
Finch had lived down to the expectations with which she was generally regarded. But the Finch that those expectations presented couldn’t write a letter to a man like Ludgar that commanded the whole of his undivided attention.
And Finch had clearly written just that letter. He felt something he might once have identified as pride, but with it, a darker thing: fear. If he had had any doubts about Haval’s bald assertion, they crumbled. Someone had tried to assassinate Finch—and it was not, as Jester had hoped, the act of a fool. It was not, as the attack on Teller had been, meant as a warning to Jay.
It was Finch. He knew it with as much certainty as he knew anything. He drank as he watched; if Ludgar was a mean drunk, Jester was not. Jester could drink bards under the table, and had on one or two occasions; it was a costly endeavor.
Somewhere between sober and mean, however, was garrulous. Jester did not make the mistake of assuming that drink made Ludgar stupid; it didn’t, more’s the pity. But it sharpened his perceptions in a particular way. His instincts had been honed on ship decks and unruly streets; they had been refined with care. It was the care that he lost by slow degree. He knew who he could threaten or bully, and knew who to avoid. He recognized the fawning and the sycophantic for exactly what it was, but also knew the men—and women—who did not play the game.
Jester did not play the game. What Ludgar had, he didn’t want. He wasn’t interested in either fear or acclaim, and if he took center stage—and he did from time to time—he surrendered it with an easy, careless grace. If he chose to express either anger or contempt, he did it with humor, the way the bards did, and with a certain resignation, all of which implied he cared little.
Ludgar cared a great deal, but considered Jester well quit of the games men who jostled for power played. He drank, rereading the letter, with particular attention paid to the final page. When he was done, he handed it to Ivarr.
“Were you aware that your little mouse has assumed position in the Merchant Authority?” He paused and took a much slower sip of the wine that was dwindling in his very fine glass.
“She’s had a position in the Merchant Authority for well over a decade,” Jester replied.
“Not the position she now occupies,” was the acid reply. “Ivarr, give me that.”
Reading was not one of Ivarr’s more notable abilities. It was not one of Jester’s, either, but Ellerson’s earliest harangues had guaranteed competence in at least Weston. Jester had picked up other languages as they seemed useful—and to be fair, they had not seemed useful until he had encountered the bards.
Ivarr frowned but complied. Ludgar then made show of reading the document again—or perhaps it wasn’t show. “What does this mean to you?” He demanded, handing the papers to Jester.
Jester immediately lifted both hands. “Honestly, Ludgar, it looks too much like work.” He didn’t need to read the documents to see what so annoyed Ludgar; the final signature was Finch’s, but the seal beside it was Jarven’s. There was no second signature to indicate that Finch served in the capacity of secretary—a position that was very like babysitter, in Jester’s opinion, if the baby in question were a lying, patrician bastard.
“Is this, or is this not, Finch ATerafin’s signature?” The papers shook with each syllable Ludgar spit out. Jester carefully refilled his glass.
“It is, as you well know, although Jarven is perfectly capable of forgery.”
This gave Ludgar brief pause. In the merchant’s opinion, Jarven was capable of far worse than forgery. It was an opinion that aligned fairly well with Jester’s own, not that he shared it often; it annoyed Finch. She never disagreed with a word Jester said; she merely questioned his need to say it.
Since he was relatively certain Jarven took no small amount of pride in his notoriety, he felt this unreasonable, but he lived with Finch, not Jarven. Haval had implied that one of the three people to whom Finch had sent these messages had a hand in the assassination attempt. While each of the three might consider Finch an impediment to their future plans of power within House Terafin—and the Merchant Authority in particular—none of the three would benefit directly from her death. Or rather, none would benefit in the obvious, legal ways.
“I would’ve bet every coin I had that the girl’s a mouse. She’s caught between Lucille and Jarven. She hasn’t had time—or reason—to develop a backbone; gods know she hasn’t developed any character.” Ludgar spit. “I should have paid more attention.”
“You’ve not been negligent,” Jester pointed out helpfully.
“Aye, I’ve sent her the odd trinket or bauble—but any idiot could see she’s the way to Lucille’s heart.”
“I’ve not heard it said Lucille has one.”
“You’ve not been listening, then. She understands debt if you’re lucky enough to do her a favor, and there is no greater favor than watching out for her lame duck.” He shook his head. “Women understand women. I should’ve paid heed to Verdian.”
Jester whistled.
“Aye, and there’s a woman.”
Jester didn’t disagree, but he found Verdian brittle and humorless. Then again, that could be said for most of the patrician women who sought to rule in the Empire, including the former Terafin. Lucille was a bright spot in an otherwise perfect and ultimately lifeless landscape. Jester treated her with deference and respect, but in Lucille’s case, that involved high amounts of what she called cheek. She was not particularly shy about correcting misbehavior either.
“Verdian told you to be careful of Finch?” he asked, affecting confusion to perfection.
“She told me,” Ludgar said, “that Finch has Jarven wrapped around her finger.”
Jester choked on what he was drinking, which was a criminal waste of an expensive vintage—and quite possibly a shirt. “Jarven ATerafin?”
Ludgar laughed. It was a sour laugh. “The same.”
“Has Verdian ever met Jarven?”
“Many, many times, I assure you. And before you laugh again, this,” he said, jabbing the air with Finch’s written pages, “makes fools of the both of us.”
Jester sighed and lowered a hand. “Because I respect you, I’m willing to look at missives from the Merchant Authority. I wouldn’t do this for just anyone.”
Ivarr snorted as Ludgar handed Jester the letter.
Jester read it. He read it quickly, with an air of mild boredom. “Does this make any sense to you?” he asked, on page two.
“Yes.” Ludgar’s glass was almost empty. Jester considered refilling it, but decided against; Ludgar was on the edge. “If you’re referring t
o the eastern shipping treaty, it’s not official; Jarven’s been working on it for months behind his closed doors.”
“Finch is taking control of those negotiations.”
“Aye, I’d noticed.”
Jester’s brows rose. He could have controlled his expression, but it suited the moment and he let it go. He’d discovered over the past decade that the best lies were those that only barely strayed from the truth. Lies were a game; they required planning, forethought, and an unerring ability to keep score, to remember which hand he’d showed to which player.
As he was lazy, he seldom bothered.
Ludgar lied frequently, but not with any finesse, and he did so for one of two reasons. The first, and in Jester’s opinion the least defensible, involved his sense of his own import; he had an ego that needed to be massaged from time to time. He exaggerated his successes and belittled his failures.
Fair enough; it was the reason most people lied, in the end. They wanted to appear to be something they weren’t.
The second, however, was also common. He was a man whose focus was always on the pinnacle, and he had no qualms about pushing you off the mountain if you happened to be a step or two ahead of him. For that reason, he was wary of those who were too close to his back. A smart man trusted nothing that fell out of Ludgar’s mouth, especially not his promises.
But a smart man trusted nothing that fell out of anyone’s. In Jester’s opinion, given Ludgar’s particular views, he was fairly certain that the Terafin merchant was not in any way responsible for the attempt on Finch’s life. Finch was a mouse. He might step on her, but she would never be his primary target.
Not until and unless someone made it very worth his while.
Finch, he thought, as he finished the letter. What in the hells are you doing? There was no way to pass this off as the result of awkwardness or nervousness. She made it clear—politely, to be sure—that as of the moment of receipt of this missive, she was in charge of almost three-quarters of the shipping operations that Ludgar oversaw. She invited him to visit her office in the Merchant Authority in five days, but would of course understand if the date, given short notice, was not convenient.
Oracle: The House War: Book Six Page 7
