by Sam Sykes
“You are generous to invite them.”
“Gerowan would have wanted us to maintain cordiality to our guests.” Alarin sighed, his smile turning weary. “And cordiality we shall maintain, regardless of who…”
His voice drifted off, along with his eyes, as his gaze slithered toward me. And in his eyes, I caught a glimpse of something I had seen many times before.
Not to sound too licentious, but this was hardly the first time a man had made that kind of eyes at me. Soldiers, senators, savages and scholars alike; all sorts of men had given me that look. At that moment, they didn’t care about my name, my past, my motive. Their eyes were full of wonder and their heads were concocting a story as to how mysterious I might be.
Tricking a man isn’t much harder than telling him that he’s right.
So when I offered my hand, I did so with a soft smile and softer words in a thick Katapeshi accent.
“Lord Amalien,” I said. “It is my inestimable pleasure to be among those honored by you.”
His mouth fell open just a bit, hung there for half a moment, before he fumbled over his next words.
“Al. Alarin,” he blurted out. “Please, call me Alarin.”
Got him.
I contained my smile, even as he forced refined composure back onto his face. This sort of thing doesn’t always work—and when it doesn’t, it ends badly—but occasionally you meet a man like Alarin Amalien. A man who’s seen more gold than grass and finds a shrubbery more interesting, a man whose attention is short and imagination is dim. Show a man like that something he’s never seen before, and even a skinny Katapeshi girl in an ugly dress seems amazing to him.
“Alarin,” Dalaris said, gesturing to me, “may I introduce Madame…”
She paused.
For a moment, I swore she was going to mess this up by giving him my real name.
“Shadeaux,” she said. “Madame Shadeaux.”
Then again, maybe it would have been better if she had.
“Madame Shadeaux,” Alarin said, overemphasizing it with a terribly honest enthusiasm. He took my hand and gave it an equally excited kiss. “That’s foreign, yes? Osirian?”
Well, at least he didn’t say Qadiran.
“Katapeshi, my lord,” I replied. “But you have a good ear. I take it you are well traveled?”
“Gods, but I wish.” He made a long roll of his eyes. “I had aspirations to before father died. And before the unfortunate business with Gerowan, I was intending to leave much of this in his hands, leaving me free to see the wonders of the Inner Sea.”
I nodded politely, taking note of how he referred to the murder of his brother as merely “unfortunate.”
“Alas,” he said. “This will compel my presence in Yanmass and surroundings for the rest of my years, until my heir is of age.”
“If you ever get one,” Dalaris replied. “And a wife, before that.”
Alarin glanced toward me. “I have time.”
I giggled, as he would expect me to. I squeezed his hand, as he would expect me to. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, as Dalaris would expect me to.
“Come, Madame Shadeaux.” Alarin drew me closer. “You simply must accept me as your escort for this evening.”
“Oh!” Dalaris piped up. “But she—”
“Lady Sidara overwhelms me with her concern,” I interrupted, forcing an already forced accent a little thicker. I looked at her pointedly. “But I assume that a man as learned as Lord Amalien will be nothing but a gentleman.”
“She’s right to be concerned,” Alarin muttered, glancing around. “The fops here have been jumping at the mere whisper of the word ‘Qadiran’ for a generation now. A woman of such…”
Don’t say “exotic.”
“… beauty as yours,” Alarin said, “would likely blow their tiny gilded minds. You must grant me the honor of being there to see it.”
My eyebrows rose in genuine appreciation. So Alarin wasn’t all bad.
Dalaris tensed for a moment before glancing at me. “If it is her wish…”
“Oh, but it is,” I said. “If my gracious host desires to … how did you say? Make minds blown? I can hardly disoblige.” I smiled, took Alarin’s arm. “Shall we, dear?”
* * *
“Originally, our house was founded on a desire for knowledge.”
Alarin had his good points.
“It was my great-grandfather that had a desire to be a cartographer. He once set out from home with the desire to chart the entire world, to learn the language of every human he could.”
Handsome. Pleasant smile. Large hands, but he didn’t grab or pull or squeeze.
“Of course, he had scarcely gone two days out before he stumbled upon the richest vein of iron this nation had ever seen. And when he could be wealthy in knowledge or just plain wealthy…”
Well read, well versed, and curious, which are traits you scarcely see these days.
“He sold much of his ore to the Eighth Army of Exploration, and the emperor was all too happy to pay for the privilege to use it.”
He was rich, too, which isn’t always important, but never hurts.
“Our family migrated to Yanmass just two generations ago.”
All told, Alarin Amalien was the sort of man I thought I could like very pleasantly.
“And we’ve since risen to great effect.”
That is, you know, if he could ever shut his gods-damned face for a bit.
Not that I’d tell him that. I smiled gently, nodding along, speaking only to add a suitably mysterious quip that he probably thought sounded Katapeshi. I needed to keep him talking.
Not that there was any danger of that stopping. I could have stabbed him six times in the neck and he might have stopped to staunch the blood before going on about his family history.
Hell, he might not have even noticed the blade. He certainly didn’t notice my attention drifting.
“Wine, madame?”
Thank Norgorber someone did, though.
One of the servants, the dark-haired, hungry-looking man I had noticed before, came up to me with a tray brimming with goblets. I would have taken the whole damn thing, had it not been unladylike to do so. Instead, I settled myself with just one—the one that looked the fullest—and smiled my gratitude at him.
He merely stared at me for a moment before turning and departing.
Ordinarily, I’d call that rude.
But comparatively, he was downright polite.
I glanced around the hall, noting with displeasure the suspicious glares cast my way and the way painted lips mouthed the word “Qadiran.” Though any contempt they had for the race they imagined me was overshadowed by the respect—or the scraping simpering that passed for respect—for Alarin.
“Lord Amalien!” they called out. “Favor us with your company!”
“Lord Amalien! Have you given much thought to my proposal?”
“Lord Amalien! Raise a glass to your gracious host, you dogs!”
Alarin offered them nods, smiles, the occasional wave if he was indeed feeling gracious, but continued escorting me across the floor of his ballroom. I cast a glance at him from behind my fan.
“My lord is quite in demand at his party,” I observed. “Would it not be polite to stop and grace them with your presence?”
“As though these jackals would recognize ‘grace’ if they saw it.” The veneer of noble politeness slid from his face, leaving a contemptuous frown behind. “I know what each of them wants and I know how each of them wants to take it.”
“My lord?” I put the expected timidity into my voice.
“My brother isn’t even in the ground yet and already these swine would fit their fat asses in the spot he left behind.” His words boiled with such anger I half-expected him to spit on his own floor. “Each of them would seek to take his shares of the wealth and responsibility and call themselves generous for doing it.”
I observed him silently, hiding my scrutiny demurely behind my fan.
Contempt roiled across his features. His jaw clenched, his eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared. Odd that a man who should call the death of his brother merely “unfortunate” should react with such distaste to others acting boorishly about it.
Then again, his ire with them seemed keenest when he mentioned them clamoring after Gerowan’s shares of the family fortunes. There were few things greedy people resented more than other greedy people. It could easily be that he resented the very idea of sharing wealth that he had already killed for.
“But I forget myself.” Congeniality returned to him with a weary smile. “I forget that you’re not native to Yanmass, my dear. This must all appear frightfully barbaric to you, treating a funeral like a courtship.”
“We are no strangers to coin in Katapesh, my lord,” I said as he guided me past a few pillars, into the shadow beneath one of the overhanging galleries. “It is, after all, a nation of bazaars and caravans. Deals are made at any occasion: funerals, birthdays…”
“Weddings?”
He placed a hand gingerly upon my shoulder, eased me in front of him. I suddenly felt the cool of marble upon my back as I pressed up against a pillar.
Goodness, but he did move quick, didn’t he?
His smile remained gentle and easy, but his eyes were fixed on mine with a hunger deeper than any guest had shown their wine. I turned a smile away—exactly as he would expect me to—and looked at him shyly out of the corners of my eyes.
I had him now.
“Weddings are a place for such proposals,” I said, “though it might be considered quite … forward to do so.”
“You’ll forgive me for not knowing the custom.” His voice was a raspy purr. “Even here in more civil countries, I’m considered a bit forward.”
He raised his arm, leaned forward and pressed his hand on the pillar beside my head. He loomed over me, looking down upon me. I’d seen this before—powerful people like to show it by getting in your space, show you what big people they are and how small you are.
They rarely realize that the closer they get, the less time they have to react when you pull the knife, but I digress.
“You would fit right in in the desert.” I ran through the routine in my head—smile small, eyes direct, look interested and pretend this isn’t creepy. I reached out, wrapped a hand around his wrist as he leaned closer. “Brashness is valued in men … and women.”
“I should very much like to see it one day…” I felt his breath on my face as he leaned closer, smelled the wine on his lips.
“The desert?” I asked, letting my smile grow a little wider. “Or the brashness?”
“Yes.”
He leaned down toward my face. My fan was up—not too quickly, not too slowly.
“Pardon my tongue, my lord,” I said, “but were you not lamenting a lack of proper accord at your brother’s wake? I would hate to offend your custom.”
I held my breath and waited. Waited for him to snarl and curse his brother’s name, waited for him to chuckle and make a sly remark, waited for him to give me anything, any word, any gesture that would tell me he did it.
I waited a very long time.
And when he reacted, it wasn’t what I was looking for.
All the bravado leaked from his face as wine from a cask full of holes. The hunger left his eyes. What remained was something shallow and empty.
“Yes, I…” He turned away from me. “I suppose you’re right, madame. Forgive my impetuousness. Gerowan wouldn’t…”
Had he not turned away, he would have seen the puzzlement on my face.
I’ve known my share of murderers—exposed them, confronted them, shared wine with them. And I’ve known just as many faces that they wear. They moan, they sob, they weep. Sometimes they explode, they snarl, they threaten. They show any emotion they can think of, anything that they think would prove their innocence.
You rarely see them look quite so … empty.
That look, that drained, vacant stare, I had seen before, mind you. But on widows watching their husbands of twenty years being put in the ground, on eldest children who had to become parents for their siblings after their own died. Such a look appeared strange on Alarin.
“Lord Amalien.”
A voice, hard and sharp as a blade, cut through the air. Alarin instantly wiped the grief from his face and turned to the shadow that had suddenly appeared behind him.
She was a woman, though to look at her, she might as well have been a spear. Tall and thin, she was wrapped in a tightly laced black dress with red trim, covering every inch of skin but a face that was full of sharp angles. Her lips were pursed in a tight frown beneath a hawkish nose, an elegant bun of red hair streaked with gray crowning a pair of glowering blue eyes.
“Your absence is noted.” She spoke in soft, harsh words.
“Lady Stelvan.” Alarin regained his composure in the time it took him to force a smile back onto his face. “I had wondered when you might show up. Fashionably late?”
“I arrived precisely when I intended to. Any sooner would involve me in senseless small talk that I have neither time for nor interest in.” Her eyes drifted past his shoulder and all but skewered me to the pillar with her glower. “You are entertaining, I see.”
“Ah, of course.” Alarin glanced over his shoulder, took my hand and gingerly led me to his side. “May I introduce you, Madame Shadeaux, to Lady Vishera Stelvan, matriarch of one of Yanmass’s older families.”
“Older?” I asked.
“Very old,” the woman replied, acid dripping from her voice. “Old enough to recall the last war with Qadira with immense clarity.”
“Ah,” I replied. “Well, we are not without our issues with Qadira in Katapesh, either.”
Her glare intensified, as though she didn’t believe I wasn’t Qadiran or didn’t see enough of a distinction between a Qadiran and a Katapeshi. When she glanced away from me, I had to restrain my sigh of relief.
“Permit me to keep this mercifully short, Alarin,” she said. “I am here for the sole purpose of discussing the contract we left in the lurch three weeks ago.”
“Indeed.” Alarin’s sigh was deep. “I take it you’ve still got your heart set on inheriting his contracts.”
“I think with my brain, not my heart, Lord Amalien,” Vishera replied sharply. “I understand I am in the minority of Yanmass in doing so, but I did not acquire my status through acting on weak feelings. Your brother controlled considerable amounts of ore that I should like to see dedicated to noble purposes.”
“Purposes such as your weapons manufacturing,” Alarin said.
My eyebrow perked at that, though I was careful not to betray too much interest, lest Vishera speak less freely around me.
As it was, when she glared my way, I rolled my eyes and turned away, taking a heavy drink from my wine. Satisfied at this Katapeshi girl’s lack of interest in anything business, she turned back to Alarin.
“I have a legion of smiths and engineers waiting,” Vishera said. “They merely need the metal to begin their process. Thousands of lives in hundreds of townships could be saved with the weapons I can create.”
“As it happens, Lady Stelvan,” Alarin replied, “I concur with your noble end. Improving the lives of the good people of Taldor is an utmost priority for me.”
Vishera nodded stiffly.
“Which is why I’ve arranged a trade with Andoran. Gerowan’s ore will be traded for more than fifteen hundred bottles of their finest wine.”
“Wine?” Vishera hissed, her face twisting in anger.
“Wine. Exactly the kind that Madame Shadeaux is drinking.” Alarin turned a smile my way. “What do you think, madame? Will they fetch a fair price?”
“As fair as any lady of the court,” I replied, raising my glass to him. “My lord has exquisite taste.”
I didn’t lie about that, at least. It was damn fine wine.
“You’re a fool if you think wine is what you should be investing in, Alarin,”
Vishera growled. “When Taldor’s government collapses and we’re stuck between Qadira and Cheliax like a sow on a spit, drowning in rabble from Andoran and Galt, you’ll wish you had spent more on weapons.”
“Madame Stelvan, you know I never begrudge anyone speaking business at a party,” Alarin replied. “But I feel I should point out that it’s dreadfully crass to advertise your weapons trade so brazenly. Especially when we’ve not seen a Qadiran across the border in years.”
“Present company excluded.” The noblewoman aimed her words in my direction.
I smiled back. “I applaud my lady’s caution,” I said. “And gently chastise her attentiveness. I have pointed out that I’m from Katapesh.”
Vishera sneered at that, as though the thought of a difference between the two nations was simply laughable. I didn’t begrudge her that any more than I begrudged it to anyone else who thought all southerners looked alike.
By which I mean I made a mental note to spit in her wine when she wasn’t looking.
“I was taking the long view,” Stelvan said. “If you desire proof of the need of self-defense, look no further than our own borders. Or is the murder of your brother at the hands of centaur thugs simply beneath your notice, sir?”
I held my breath, watching Alarin intently. I waited for him to show me something—a tremor of rage across that pretty face, an errant flinch—anything that would betray the slightest hint of guilt.
That bastard might as well have been carved from porcelain for all his face changed. He didn’t so much as stop smiling.
“Your condolences are appreciated, dear lady,” he said. “But I insist that your relentless doomsaying is unfounded.”
“But it’s true!”
I glanced over, saw that our discussion had drawn the attention of a few other nobles. One of them—a skinny fellow in a coat too big and a wig too small—approached us.
“Taldor’s emperors been impotent since my grandfather’s time,” he said. “When the time comes, the grand prince will not look out for us, but for himself. And where will we be if we can’t defend ourselves?”
“Funny thing about weapons,” I interjected, though the glares cast my way suggested that this was highly unwanted, “once you’ve got them in hand, you start looking for a reason to use them.”
