The Unwilling

by KELLY BRAFFET

  As she passed the last of the galleries, someone fell into step next to her. It was the courtier from the Wilmerian dinner. Not dressed as grandly as he had been that night, maybe, but his boots still shone and his aquamarine coat had been perfectly brushed. He wore less kohl around his eyes, and hadn’t combed his hair quite as high, but he still wore the pea-sized diamonds in his ears. And his smell was the same. Lavender and something else, something sweet and cloying.

  He bowed his head slightly without breaking pace. “Lady Judah.”

  “Leave me alone.” She could be rude if she wanted. The Seneschal would approve of anything that drove him away.

  “We met the other night, do you remember? That unfortunate incident with the Wilmerian.” His features assembled themselves into a reasonable facsimile of sorrow. “One must be careful around guildfolk. The old ones are calculating and craven, and the young ones—well, they leave the world very young, some of them. No real life experience to speak of.”

  She didn’t answer. He bowed again. “Firo of Cerrington, lady. Most pleased to meet you again under more genial circumstances.”

  “I’m not feeling genial,” she said, “and I’m not a lady.”

  He raised his eyebrows, a sleek, practiced gesture. “Perhaps not. But Judah the Foundling makes it sound rather as if you’re here to do magic tricks, doesn’t it?”

  “I might be. You never know.”

  “Stories they tell to scare staff children,” he said dismissively. “Nobody of any caliber credits such talk. Believe me, if magic were real, every courtier in the House would be studying sorcery. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you on the Promenade before.”

  “I try to avoid it.”

  “Not unwise.” She was walking quickly, to convey that she wasn’t interested in a chat, but his long legs easily kept stride with her. “People talk about it as if it’s a loop, but it’s more of an—oh, an intricately beaded necklace, I suppose. Brilliantly designed. Lots of secret nooks one can duck into if one has the need. But of course secrecy works both ways; when you can’t be seen, you also can’t see. You never know who might be listening.” She felt his hand touch her elbow, gently steering her toward a shadowed lane that ran long and straight beneath an arbor bristling with ancient wisteria. “Now, this walk, as you can see, has no such nooks: the House on one side, the reflecting pool on the other, with the arbor providing concealment from all directions. It’s just as it appears to be. Straight and direct.”

  If the Seneschal hadn’t just told her she was forbidden to talk to courtiers, she would have shaken him off. As it was, she let herself be guided. She was headed in that direction, anyway. “No surprise it’s empty, then,” she said.

  “They call it the Discreet Walk. Although I’m afraid there’s nothing discreet about being seen entering it with someone else.”

  “As you’ve just been.”

  “And you,” he said.

  The path below the arbor was cold and overgrown with moss. Even now, bare as they were, the gnarled ropes of wisteria formed a decent cover, but Judah could see that in the summer the leaves would make an almost solid wall. The blossoms’ perfume would be strong and the air would vibrate with the buzzing of bees and wasps. Someone walking under the arbor then would not be seen, or smelled, or—if they were careful—heard. She was impressed.

  “May I, too, be straight and direct?” the courtier said.

  “I doubt it.” She liked moss, she decided.

  “Don’t be so negative.” Firo sounded amused. “Think of us courtiers as traders from across the Barriers. We may speak a different language among ourselves, but that doesn’t mean we can’t speak yours, too.”

  Discreet the walk might be, but it was also short. The exit glared with white winter sun, barely fifty feet away. If Judah’s mental map was accurate—and it was—this walk would spit them out not far from the walled-in east garden, which was out of fashion. He wouldn’t follow her there, and on its far side were the kennels and stables. “So speak,” she said.

  “You need a friend,” he said. “I’d like to submit myself for the position.”

  That surprised her so much that she stopped and stared at him. “You want to be my friend?”

  “I do.” The violent colors of his clothes were muted in the dappled shadows under the arbor.

  “Why?”

  “In my language, I would say that I treasure your unique perspective, that I am entranced by your rapier wit.” His eyes flickered upward. “The stormy scarlet radiance of your hair, perhaps.”

  “Storms aren’t radiant.” She felt her cheeks burn nonetheless.

  His kohled eyes crinkled. “Yes, well. I’ve realized recently that most of the compliments in my arsenal are sun-based. Comes from living in a country where everyone has golden hair, I suppose. You pose some interesting poetic challenges.” Whatever those challenges were, he brushed them away with one well-manicured hand. “Anyway, mere convention. The words wouldn’t matter. If you’d been raised in the court you’d already know the meaning behind them.”

  “Which would be?”

  “You have power.”

  She laughed. “You’ve taken too many drops from your vial. Your brain is addled.”

  “This is why you need a friend,” he said. “You’re one of the most powerful people in the House, and you don’t even realize it.”

  “I am the least powerful person in the House. I’m nobody. I barely even have a name.” She began walking again.

  He matched her pace. “You have unlimited access to the future Lord and Lady of the City. You have their ears, their friendship and their trust. You’re unconstrained by any obligations of your own; you have no family to advocate for, no agenda to promote, no lands to protect. Also, you probably don’t know this, but the cityfolk love you, to an absurd degree.”

  “They do not.” Judah’s teeth were clenched together but her stomach suddenly felt odd.

  “Oh, but they do. Why do you think they work so hard to make all the staff scared of you? Because out in the city, toymakers sew sweet little blood-haired dollies for children to play with, and then those children come inside. And they are young and puny and weak, but there are so very many of them, the dirty little things, and you...you’re a folk hero, to them. The nameless nobody foundling who gets to live among the highborn. Why, a word from you, and who knows what would happen?”

  “You’re lying,” Judah said, not bothering to disguise her scorn. “The Seneschal would never allow dolls that look like me.”

  “To the contrary. The Seneschal encourages it, outside. Raising you with his heirs is the one moderately positive story anyone can tell about Lord Elban.”

  As he spoke, one of his eyebrows bent, his head tilted, and his mouth pursed: each gesture so subtle it was barely noticeable, and yet they all worked together to add a layer of nuance to everything he said. She was beginning to see what he meant about speaking another language, but she couldn’t imagine how hard your brain would have to work to wring all the hidden meaning from every word and gesture. Even this tiny dose of it made her feel nervous about what she might be missing. She didn’t like it. “Are there really seditionists in Highfall, then?” she said, deliberately blunt.

  “Leading an empire is difficult,” Firo said. “You can’t please everyone. Suffice to say that at the moment, every courtier in the House is particularly alert for—opportunities, shall we say. The firmest of rocks on which to step.”

  “And I’m a firm rock?” She was bad at courtcraft, but she was excellent at derision, and she packed as much of it as possible into the words.

  Firo didn’t appear to notice. “Lord Gavin certainly thinks so, which makes you useful. Also, I suspect you’re bored, which makes you vulnerable.”

  “What makes you think I’m bored?”

  “If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be spending quite so many
of your afternoons shoveling filth in the stables.”

  Involuntarily, Judah froze. Another one of those complex expressions rippled over his face: part pity, part amusement. It made Judah feel tiny. “Nothing escapes notice here,” he said. “You seem to think that because you choose not to notice the courtiers, they’ll choose not to notice you. Or maybe you think their notice is limited to snickering at your clothes and hair? I assure you, it’s not. Don’t think there’s a single courtier inside the Wall that hasn’t thoroughly considered your position, and how it may be leveraged to support theirs. And not everyone will approach you as forthrightly as I do. We speak beautifully, when we want to, and we dress beautifully as a matter of course. But inside the silk and perfume, we’re venomous.”

  “That’s hardly news,” Judah said, but privately, she was discomfited. She knew the kind of gamesmanship the courtiers engaged in, but Firo was right: she’d never considered that she might be considered a playing piece. She’d assumed that nobody had noticed her trips to the stables because she assumed nobody noticed her. “I suppose you’re about to tell me there’s nobody I can trust but you.”

  Firo shook his head. “Oh, no. I don’t think I flatter myself if I say that generally, I’m one of the nastier specimens you’ll find. But I find myself in an interesting position at the moment.”

  “Which is?”

  “Lovely Cerrington suddenly finds itself poor.” He waved a hand. On one of his fingers he wore a garnet ring, and in the shade the stone appeared almost black. “It’s mostly agricultural, you know. There are fields, and the farmers grow things in them. We’re particularly famous for our flowers. Beautiful, but useless. Our real value, for the last two decades or so, has been strategic.”

  “Flowers are strategic?”

  “We’ve had problematic neighbors. One in particular that I’m sure you’ve heard of—no? Not up on the latest news from the provinces? Well, Cerrington borders Tevala, and for the last two decades, Tevala has been under the control of a man named Pimm. Have you met him?”

  Judah shook her head.

  “Would you like to? I’m afraid you won’t find him much of a conversationalist. His head is on a spike in the kitchen yard. Third from left, I believe.”

  There were always heads on the spikes in the kitchen yard. “Elban does love a good beheading.”

  “And if you need any further indication of your power, my dear,” Firo said with a lift of his plucked eyebrows, “consider that the words that just left your lips would leave my own lips, along with the head they’re attached to, right next door to Pimm of Tevala. Who was an idiot, by the way. If you’re going to attempt a coup, don’t mumble about it for twenty years beforehand.” He shook his head. “Anyway, Cerrington has historically been a very willing partner in Elban’s efforts to keep Pimm under control. Now Pimm—and his sons, and his grandsons—are all dead, and Tevala is in the hands of his step-nephew-by-marriage-in-law or some such, whose name I can’t remember but who’s more than happy to stamp out dissent at home in exchange for a pretty room in the House and the pretty adventures that come with it. None of this is of any importance to anybody but me, of course—but it’s very important to me. Suddenly, my beloved Cerrington has no purpose. Fields and fields of flowers, but no reason to exist.”

  “I don’t see how I fit into this,” Judah said.

  “I don’t, either. Not yet, anyway. But it’s in my family’s best interest to make Cerrington useful again, and if we can’t make it useful, we need to make it liked. You see, I’m speaking very bluntly to you. If you were a courtier, you’d already know all of this, and the moment you saw me approaching you’d remember all the favors you owe me and all the favors I owe you and all the favors we owe each other’s friends, as well as any particularly nasty gossip you might have in your pocket about any of the above. But you’d also think, Oh-ho, Cerrington is on a downswing, perhaps I can leverage away a few of those favors I owe him, or Perhaps he might be amenable to that scheme I was thinking about last week that nobody else is desperate enough to touch. But you’re not a courtier, so I have to do all the work myself. In the meantime, just know that I’m here among the spiders, keeping track of the webs. Should any of those webs come uncomfortably close to you, I can give you warning. Better yet, I can give you advice.”

  There was no urgency in his voice. There was hardly any emotion at all. Judah, on the other hand, found her head swimming. He was right: Gavin would become Lord of the City and Eleanor its Lady, and all the courtiers they’d spent their lives dodging and ignoring and feeling contempt for would suddenly become inescapable, even necessary. Which was bad enough, but to know that the courtiers watched from the wings, scuttling back and forth on their impractically-heeled shoes—that they were not just scorning her clothes and hair but waiting for an opportunity—

  “You need me,” Firo said. “You’re not the only one with Lord Gavin’s ear, you know. He has a particular friend among the courtiers. He’s had several, of course; he’s his father’s son, after all, and although tradition may keep Elban from remarrying, the royal scepter hardly goes unpolished. Although I will say, his favorites always seem to lose their taste for court life. Inevitably, they move to the provinces as soon as his interest wanes.” Then, offhandedly, “Lord Gavin’s favorites haven’t shown any particular preference for the provinces. But he’s young yet. Give him time.”

  She didn’t know what Firo meant, but she didn’t like it. “What Gavin does with his time is nobody’s business but his. He’s not Lord of the City yet.”

  “But he will be. So, in fact, what he does with his time and who he does it with is of great interest to—oh, pretty much everybody. But we were speaking of Lady Amie. She’s a Porterfield; an old city family, although their money comes from the provinces. Mining, mostly. Metalfiber, iron ore, that kind of thing.”

  “So what?”

  “So, she’s clever, and not overwhelmed with scruples. And she’d be exceedingly difficult to drive off to the provinces.” They had come to the end of the Discreet Walk. Firo stopped, looking back the way they’d come. Judah followed his gaze and saw two figures at the other end: women, judging by their skirts. One wore pink, the other violet. They were fluffy and unreal and she couldn’t see their faces.

  She thought of the Seneschal—Here, in this matter, you will obey—and found her stomach churning. “Gavin is in no danger from you, or any of your kind.”

  “Not danger, no. Not explicitly.”

  “I shouldn’t be here,” Judah said. More to herself than Firo.

  Those eyebrows lifted in mocking curiosity. “Is that what you said to that common low-ranking Wilmerian guildsman after you agreed to go out into the corridor with him?”

  Her anxiety became exasperation. “I did not—”

  “It hardly matters. What matters is perception and opportunity.” He raised a finger. “This is exactly the kind of valuable guidance I’ll provide for you. Think of the rumors, Judah. Always think of the rumors.” He bowed his head again and turned away: back toward the Promenade and the two fluffy shapes still silhouetted there, waiting and watching.

  She had to pass the kennels to reach the stables. The hounds were as unlike the floppy, friendly kitchen dogs as Judah was unlike the courtiers. Not even Darid liked them, and he could love the meanest stallion or the moodiest mare. When she came near, the animals hurled themselves against the wooden kennel fence. She had never seen an entire hound, just glimpses through the slats: a mad eye here, a slavering tongue there. And all the while, the furious barking. She wanted to grab the slats and bark back. She wanted to bite and claw with frustration. Firo had spoken of the House as a web and it felt like one, sticky and confining. She couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there. She couldn’t brush it away.

  Later that night, lolling in front of the fire with his head in Elly’s lap, Gavin asked what had made her so angry earlier in the day. “Nothing worth
talking about,” Judah said, sure that one of them would catch the odd note in her voice—but Gavin was playing with Elly’s braid. She was slapping his hand away. Theron lifted his head from his notebook; gave her a long look, then dropped it again. Judah let it go.

  Chapter Three

  On Nate Clare’s second night in Highfall, the fog rolling up from the Brake was a half step away from being as wet as the river itself, and not much cleaner. It clung to the brim of Nate’s hat, wormed its way inside his coat, stuck his shirt to his skin and collected on the lenses of his spectacles. More than once he nearly tripped over a beggar or a child or a begging child huddled for paltry shelter in the lee of a building. Elban’s House Magus lived in Porterfield, one of the city’s richest neighborhoods; beggars weren’t allowed there. Nate didn’t know about children.

  Limley Square wasn’t the grandest or biggest square in Porterfield, but it was still nicer than anything Nate had seen while staying across the city in Brakeside. The cruel blue spires of the guildhalls and manors stabbed at the sky here just as they did elsewhere in the city, but there was grass here, there were trees and trim iron fences and flower beds in front of the houses. Which were mostly freestanding—unlike in Brakeside, where people built on every square foot, squeezing shanties and half-shanties into the narrowest of closes and then squeezing entire families into them. Multiple families, even. The wagons he’d grown up in hadn’t been much bigger, but they’d used the space better, and they’d never been parked in the grimmest part of Highfall, where the fog and stench of the Brake were thick enough to cut.

  And over everything, the implacable Wall loomed like the end of the world. Here in Limley Square the sidewalks were paved in the same white stone that formed the Wall, so the featureless expanse felt more like an architectural feature and less like a prison. Seeing it made Nate’s breath catch so he didn’t look.