The Liar's Knot

by M. A. Carrick

  More people like Grey? That wasn’t merely a different tune from Mettore Indestor’s; it was being played on an entirely new instrument.

  Cercel cleared her throat, and Grey realized his startlement had left them hanging in silence for too long. Nor had it given him any time to think of a way to refuse. Besides, the Masks knew he could use the money. Ancient callings might make for good stories, but they didn’t pay well.

  Bowing again, Grey said, “Thank you, Your Mercy.”

  “Don’t thank me too much,” Acrenix said dryly. “I’m afraid the true reward for competence is more work. You see, while Mettore Indestor may have manipulated the Stadnem Anduske into attempting to blow up the Great Amphitheatre… the fact remains that they did try, and they’re free to try again.”

  These were dangerous shoals, given some of Grey’s recent activities. “Though they’ve left Nadežra, the ziemetse share Your Mercy’s concerns. Their envoy is making every effort to find the perpetrators.”

  “And will this envoy turn those perpetrators over to us? Or will they face the justice of the clan elders, as Mettore Indestor did?” Dimiterro’s harsh tone said well enough what he thought of that.

  Acrenix held up one hand. “Those were extraordinary circumstances, but we can’t deny the ziemetse’s decision to execute him was both earned… and useful.” His wry smile faded as he turned to Grey. “Convenient as it was, though, that sort of justice isn’t something we should allow to continue. Which is why I asked to speak with you. Your familiarity with the situation on the Lower Bank is particularly needed just now.”

  Ah, there it was. The expectation that Grey would be their pet Vraszenian.

  Aren’t you? His inner voice in that moment sounded very much like Koszar Andrejek, the leader—or former leader—of the Anduske. Andrejek, who could barely move after the beating he’d taken from his people when he gave the order to stop the amphitheatre attack.

  Grey kept his tone neutral. “You want me to hunt down the leaders of the Stadnem Anduske.”

  “This setback won’t stop them for long,” Acrenix said. “Easier to prevent them from doing something worse while they’re fractured and scattered.”

  Fractured. Was it possible Acrenix knew that Andrejek no longer had control of his people? Even Grey had to admit the group posed a greater threat without Andrejek’s idealism to leaven them. People who would cut knot and beat their leader because he showed a minimum of sense wouldn’t confine themselves to printing broadsheets of dissident rhetoric.

  Leaning forward to make sure he had Grey’s attention, Acrenix went on. “I’m not looking for scapegoats to string up in Suncross. It may satisfy a few people’s bloodlust to have someone to blame, but in the long run, it does nothing to root out the problem. The high commander suggested you could be trusted not to grab the first Vraszenian you hear cursing the Cinquerat over a cup of zrel.”

  That suggestion had to have come from Cercel; Dimiterro was too new to know anything about Grey beyond his blood. And as much as Grey hated the idea of being treated like the Vigil’s pet Vraszenian, he was grateful to his commander for using him to protect the people who were just living their lives. Most of the Liganti and Nadežran officers wouldn’t care. He was surprised—and surprised to be gratified—that Acrenix seemed to.

  But also puzzled. Because while Caerulet might hold the charter for the Vigil, that charter restricted how directly the seat could be involved in its running. Mettore had toyed with those restrictions like a game of dreamweaver’s nest. Was Ghiscolo no better?

  “I’m assigned to Kingfisher,” Grey said. “The Anduske could be anywhere. As for additional assignments, I take my orders from my commanding officers.” He nodded at Cercel and Dimiterro in turn.

  Cercel’s flat look said Grey would pay for that bit of obstinance later, but Dimiterro nodded as though that was the only proper response. “Well spoken.”

  Acrenix said, “Indeed. But in this case, I’m afraid I’ve been unclear. I’ve granted a new charter for a special force, the Ordo Apis, to address the issue of insurgents within Nadežra. They won’t be limited to any particular district, and they’ll answer directly to me. I’d like you to join in a command position. Given your experience, I think you’d be well-suited to help with this mission.”

  The implications chilled him. The Vigil was flawed, with a tendency toward inefficiency, corruption, and abuses of power, but there were checks against that: good people within the Vigil who cared about their mandate, and Fulvet’s judges to prevent people disappearing onto penal ships without due process.

  Perhaps that was what Acrenix wanted in asking Grey to join—in a command position, even. Grey could be such a check.

  Or you can be the mask they hide behind.

  Much depended on Ghiscolo himself. Until recently, no member of House Acrenix had ever held a seat in the Cinquerat. His rise might have been a new shift in the hidden structure of Nadežra… or the culmination of something already there.

  Regardless of the answer, the offer was impossible. Even if Grey trusted the intent of this charter, he couldn’t turn around and hunt the people he’d already helped hide. His conscience wouldn’t stand for it.

  And he could never work directly for a nobleman. The mask Grey hid behind wouldn’t stand for it.

  Grey bowed his head. “I’m honored by your trust, Your Mercy, and grateful for the opportunity. I’d like some time to think about it. I have other responsibilities—”

  “You mean your vendetta against the Rook?” Glancing at Cercel, Acrenix impatiently tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Your commander assures me you haven’t made improper use of Vigil resources to pursue it.”

  “That isn’t what I meant, no. Though I do want the man who murdered my brother to pay.” Let Ghiscolo think that the anger burning in Grey’s response was meant for the Rook.

  Studying him with a gaze as intent as any hawk, Acrenix eventually nodded. “Understandable. I would want the same.” He stood, signaling an end to the unexpected meeting. “I hope you’ll still consider joining the Ordo Apis. Let your commander know your decision. I’ll be collecting a roster of candidates at the end of the week.”

  With a nod to Dimiterro, he left. Grey trailed Cercel out of the office. She waited until they were alone in the hallway to say, “I suppose I’m not surprised, but I am glad you decided to stay on. Don’t tell the others, but you’re my best captain.”

  After the tension of that meeting, Grey was relieved to see she knew him well enough to know he’d already made his decision. “I thought I was your biggest headache.”

  She flicked his hexagram pin. “You really want to remind me of that right now, Serrado? We’re having a moment.”

  “My mistake.”

  His smile faded as Cercel walked away. Grey’s hooded friend had wondered for decades whether the Acrenix were touched by the corruption that threaded through Nadežra, but had never found any proof.

  Grey wanted to believe in the possibility that they weren’t. That for the first time, he was serving under an honest power.

  But he knew better than to trust it.

  Isla Prišta, Westbridge: Fellun 15

  Although Renata was prepared for the knock, it still made her tense.

  She forced herself to wait, sitting quietly in her damaged parlour, while Tess answered the door. The patchwork light slipping between the boards Sedge had nailed across the broken windows fell on a room mostly stripped of its elegance: the looters had taken all the small valuables, everything easily carried, and even some things that weren’t. The couch Renata perched on was the only piece of furniture left in the room. Her erstwhile landlord had tracked down a few of the stolen items, but the shady markets of the Lower Bank were glutted from the riots two weeks ago. Even Derossi Vargo’s web couldn’t catch everything she’d lost—especially when three-quarters of the things she’d listed for him didn’t exist.

  Tess curtsied in the doorway. “Alta Giuna is here to see you.�
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  “Thank you, Tess.” Renata rose and smoothed the front of her loose surcoat, as if it were the fine silk she’d been wearing for the adoption earlier that morning, instead of plain tabinet. Half the pretense of her con might have fallen into dust, but the other half had to keep standing.

  Giuna had changed into her usual shapeless and dull clothes, fitting for the day’s work, and had her golden curls pinned up and covered with a cotton kerch. The nervous twisting of her fingers in her skirts and the press of her lips as she entered the parlour were new. They’d had little chance to speak in private after Giuna learned the truth of Renata’s finances, and no chance at all after Giuna had forgiven her.

  Her gaze flitted around the ruined parlour, from the boarded windows to the bare mantel to the broken remains of glass Tess had swept into the corner. “I thought Westbridge was supposed to be safe,” she murmured. “Or did Indestor’s people do this when they abducted you?”

  “The riots.” Renata allowed herself a bitter laugh. “They must have been terribly disappointed when they realized how little there was to take.”

  “Oh.” After a silent moment of shifting foot to foot and looking anywhere but at Renata, Giuna lifted her chin and straightened her shoulders. “About that. I… here.” She held out a wrapped bundle of fabric.

  Renata knew, even as she accepted the bundle, what Giuna had given her. The weight and shape were familiar, and brought an unexpected hitch to her breath.

  But she had to unwrap it, even as she silently damned Giuna for catching her off guard. The fabric made a soft nest in her hand. Tucked into its heart was the blue glass bauble she’d bought for Giuna at the Autumn Gloria, five months and a lifetime ago.

  “I thought, since you… lost… the one you bought for yourself, you might accept this one as…” Giuna’s babbling ended in a soft exhalation. “As an apology.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” Renata said, cradling the glass sculpture in both hands. “That falls to me instead.” And to Sibiliat Acrenix, who hired someone to break into her townhouse while Renata lay unconscious in Traementis Manor, exposing the secret of her poverty.

  “Then shall we strike palms and call it even? Otherwise, we’ll be arguing all day over who owes an apology to whom, and I don’t want you spending another night under this roof.” Giuna nodded at the boarded windows. “It’s not safe.”

  No, it isn’t. But not for the reasons Giuna thought.

  After they touched palms, Renata took her supposed cousin’s hand in her own. True cousin, now—at least as the Liganti count such things. Her voice dry with irony, she said, “Shall I give you the tour?”

  Ren’s skin pricked as she took her new cousin into the service rooms, buried in a half cellar with only narrow windows near the ceiling for light. This was her true home, the place where she and Tess had launched this con. The one place in Nadežra where she could be herself: not Alta Renata Viraudax Traementatis, nor even Arenza Lenskaya, the Vraszenian pattern-reader who came closer to the truth of who she was, but Ren. A river rat born and raised in the Lacewater slums, trained in the arts of lying and thieving after her mother died.

  But Giuna knew nothing of that. All she knew was that Renata had entered their lives hoping to live off the wealth of House Traementis.

  Giuna wrapped her hands around her elbows, standing awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen. “You should have told us at the start. We would have done something to help. Well, perhaps not Mother; she still hates Letilia. But I would have. And… and Leato.”

  Ren had been in this kitchen with him, in the shifting realm of Ažerais’s Dream. Just before she led him up to the Point—and to his death.

  It was easier not to think about that, to do what needed to be done without dwelling on the why. But then she would catch sight of the ripples—Donaia’s hands trembling before she hid them in her surcoat, Giuna’s breath hitching before saying her brother’s name—and guilt dragged at her like a drowning tide.

  If only she’d turned away when she encountered him in the nightmare. If only she hadn’t invited him to join her at the Charterhouse. If only she hadn’t returned to Nadežra in the first place. If, if, if…

  Sensing the spiral of Ren’s thoughts as only a sister could, Tess snatched a well-scribbled sheet of paper off the kitchen table. “We should get to work,” she said briskly. “Master—I mean Eret Vargo’s agent will be here to take the keys at first earth, and we’ve a lot to do. Alta Giuna, you’re on candle duty. Make certain you spatter and scrape at least three layers. Alta Renata, you’re on floor scuffing and window smudging. I’ll start dusting.”

  She passed Giuna three candles, each a different shade of pale beeswax. Renata was handed a bag of shoes—not just the fine ones she wore, but men’s boots and servants’ brogues, picked up cheaply from a secondhand vendor because they lacked mates. Tess said, “When Sedge gets here, he’ll help me shift the furniture and rugs. Any questions?”

  Giuna’s startled look flickered between them. She’d witnessed the close relationship between mistress and maid, but this was the first time she’d seen Tess take charge. In fact, apart from using the correct title and name, Tess seemed to have forgotten herself, talking more to Ren than to Renata.

  Ren hated doing it, especially in the kitchen that had been their refuge, but she had to step in before Tess slipped up more. She put a quelling note in her voice as she said, “Very well, Tess. Shall we, Giuna?”

  Flushing at the reprimand, Tess lowered her eyes and bobbed a curtsy before trailing them back up to the main floor.

  For the next hour, the house echoed with more sound than it had heard since the looters broke in. So far as Vargo knew, Renata had been using the entire house she rented from him. When she left, it needed to look like that was true—hence the dripped wax, the bootprints, the marks on the windows, and other small signs of use. She was strangely grateful for the riots, which gave her the perfect excuse for having so few possessions to carry out. Nobody had been paying attention when she moved in, but Alta Renata was well-known enough now that her few paltry crates would have seemed suspicious.

  Giuna was helping her heave the mattress up to the bedroom when Sedge’s rough voice came from below.

  “Perhaps we could let your footman take over?” Giuna asked, out of breath and blotting sweat from her brow with her sleeve. Her gaze snagged on her bare hand. “Oh, my gloves!” She darted across the entry hall and snatched them from a sideboard, yanking them on before she could be caught half-dressed—leaving Renata halfway up the stairs, clutching at the top of the mattress to keep it from sliding back down.

  The weight lessened before her grip failed. “I got you, alta. Fine lady like you en’t supposed to do this sort of thing.”

  With Giuna safely obscured by the mattress and Sedge, Ren was free to give him an ironic look. He’d said that kind of thing sometimes when they were Fingers together, children in Ondrakja’s gang, faking the manners of fancy cuffs. Now she was a fine lady—by law and by lie.

  “With one hand, Master Sedge?” she asked, arching a brow at the wrist Ondrakja had snapped, bound with an imbued brace of Tess’s making. “I think this ‘fine lady’ is at least as useful as you are.”

  He grimaced at her, and together they got the mattress up into the bedroom. Sounds from downstairs told Ren that Tess had Giuna busy for the moment, so she risked asking in a low voice, “Any luck with Vargo?”

  “If by luck you mean he en’t put anyone on me yet, then I’m swimming in Quarat’s own blessings.” Sedge rested his corner of the mattress on the floor, rubbing the pale stripe around his wrist where his knot bracelet had been. The one cut after Sedge chose to protect Ren over his own boss. “Nobody will talk to me for fear it’ll get back to Vargo. Even if I somehow crawl back in, I’ll just be saddled with scut work. Only way I’m getting close enough to know Vargo’s business is if I save his Lig-spitted ass. Again.”

  Ren was tempted to arrange a chance. The scabs and bruises from
the beating the Fog Spiders had given Sedge were mostly healed by now, but she couldn’t look at their remnants without feeling cold anger. Vargo’s people had hurt her brother, and she wanted to hurt them back.

  The best way she could do that, though, was by getting Sedge into a position where he could keep an eye on Vargo. And by smiling at the man as if she still trusted him, the way he’d lured her into doing before. Only then could she figure out his true game… and how to destroy it.

  “I know that look.” Sedge lifted his end high enough to make her stumble. “That look gets me in trouble.”

  “I’ve gotten you in enough trouble,” Ren murmured, heaving the mattress onto the frame. Not just with Vargo, but long before that.

  Sedge’s light touch to the inside of her wrist stopped her from shoving the mattress into place. The skin there bore a faint scar: the mark of their kinship, sworn with blood in the Vraszenian way. Sedge had a scar to match, and so did Tess. His grip was loose, his tug gentle enough for her to resist if she wanted.

  She let herself be folded in his arms, trusting that Tess would make enough noise to warn them if Giuna came up the stairs. “Got me out of just as much,” Sedge said, his voice even rougher than usual. “Weren’t you that got me severed and beat. That was my choice, and I already told you I’d choose it again. So stop dragging it around. Fine lady like you shouldn’t carry that weight—might sprain something.”

  It made Ren laugh a little, as Sedge intended. A moment later Giuna did come up the stairs, and together they finished their work on the house, and Renata went off to Traementis Manor and a fine lady’s life.

  Isla Traementis, the Pearls: Fellun 15

  Donaia hadn’t given Renata the set of chambers normally allotted to the heir. Those had been Leato’s, and Renata would have refused them if Donaia had offered. Instead she was in a suite intended for an honored guest—back when the Traementis could afford guests.