The Liar's Knot

by M. A. Carrick

  Her head ached. Pressing cold fingers into her eyes, she said, “Tanaquis. You promised me this would help with finding the source of the curse—but so far, all it’s done is make things worse.”

  “I’m sorry.” Tanaquis’s hands tugged her own down, hot against the chill of Renata’s skin. She chafed them to bring some warmth. “I can only stretch the bindings I’m under so far. The Pontifex believes that if we give knowledge too freely, then initiates would feel they’ve gotten all they needed from the Praeteri. He doesn’t want to lose your involvement in our society. But what I wanted to tell you is that I believe the Traementis curse was driven by eisar.”

  The eisar. Emotional energies. Like anger? Diomen had told her to focus on that, on her desire for vengeance against those who had wronged the Traementis. But even so… “How could that be?”

  “How much do you know about how the various members of House Traementis died?” It seemed to be a rhetorical question, because Tanaquis kept talking. “Between you and me, quite a few of them brought about their own ends. Oh, not on purpose—they didn’t seek death—but take Donaia’s husband, Gianco. He ruined himself through his addiction to aža. With others it was carrying their greed too far, or unwise choice of lovers. All hells of their own making. That can’t be caused by everyday numinatria, nor through imbuing. I am very curious to know if it can be done with pattern. But eisar numinata can affect the mind, making people act in certain ways. Destructive ones, even.”

  Ren scraped through her memories, trying to think if anything in her past felt like the rage that had overtaken her the night before. There was nothing that strong or immediate—it would have been impossible to overlook that—but perhaps something that had been slower, more subtle?

  Diomen had spoken about the Gate of Desire; that must be one of the types of eisar. Hadn’t it been her own desires that carried her into this situation? The decision to infiltrate House Traementis, the risks she’d taken to make that happen. Had all of that been due to the eisar? Not creating the urge, just feeding the hunger already in her heart?

  But that still didn’t explain how she’d become cursed. Tanaquis had chalked it up to blood—but Ren didn’t have a blood connection to the family. No connection at all, until she was inscribed into their register.

  She couldn’t tell Tanaquis that part. “Assuming the curse was caused by eisar… does that mean one of the Praeteri cursed us?”

  Tanaquis’s brows rose, as if the possibility had never occurred to her. “We’re not the only people to practice this kind of thing; there are similar sects elsewhere, primarily in the north. But in Nadežra—yes, I suppose it’s logical for you to suspect them.” Curiosity flared bright in her gaze. “I’ve been trying to figure out where pattern fits into all of this, how it can be reconciled with the order of the cosmos. And how it manages to interact with eisar—as clearly it can, given that you detected the curse with your cards, and your cards helped with its removal.”

  Renata stifled a sigh. Tanaquis would never let go of her belief that someday she would find a way to slot pattern into her well-organized universe. “I don’t know. Pattern is a thing of intuition, revealing the connections between people—which is how I assume it worked to lift the curse—but there’s no emotion involved. It’s just… patterns.” She lifted her hands, unable to give words to something she just knew.

  Before Tanaquis could irritate her with another attempt to subsume pattern into the paradigm she knew, Renata added, “Regardless, I can’t try now. I don’t have a deck with me, nor the concentration to use one.” She needed to sleep—and needed to tell Donaia and Giuna that she’d fallen out with Vargo. What would that mean for their partnership on the river numinat? When it came to business obligations, the law didn’t care if they were on speaking terms or not.

  Tanaquis touched her wrist again. “I am sorry that things went poorly for you last night. I promise, I have no desire to see you hurt. And if you’d prefer not to take part in any more Praeteri rituals, that’s fine. You’ve gotten far enough for us to talk openly about this.”

  Renata laid her hand over Tanaquis’s. “I do appreciate that you’re trying to help. I—I need some time to think. We can talk more later.”

  The Shambles, Lower Bank: Lepilun 12

  The half-collapsed building where the Black Rose waited was empty apart from herself and Gulavka. Arkady was the one who’d found it for the Rose and held on to Gulavka while this handoff was arranged; her kids kept watch nearby. The sudden and out-of-tune melody of a skipping song, drifting through the cracked walls, alerted Ren that the Vraszenians were approaching.

  “You claim to be Ažerais’s servant, but you betray her and her city just like the ziemetse,” Gulavka muttered from where she knelt. “There is still time to do right by her. Let me go, and all the Faces will look kindly on you.”

  Ren ignored the bluster. She just waited, lounging in the room’s one chair, as Dalisva entered with a man at her heels.

  “Lady Rose,” Dalisva said, nodding in respect. “Once again, we thank you.”

  Gulavka spat on the floor. “This creature is a—”

  “Don’t make me regret not gagging you,” Ren said. “Bear in mind that your alternatives to this include Derossi Vargo and the Cinquerat. I’d say you’re getting off lightly.”

  “You fool yourself only if you think there is a difference. Betrayers, all of y—Urk!”

  Ren tied the gag’s knot tightly to prevent Gulavka from pushing it off with her tongue. It didn’t silence the noise, but at least it rendered her rhetoric incomprehensible.

  Dalisva looked saddened by the necessity. “Heed not her bile. Truly you do the work of Ažerais in bringing this one to us. The Stretsko are by family loyalty moved; without her connections, Branek will have a harder time convincing others to follow his lead.”

  At Dalisva’s nod, the man hefted Gulavka over his shoulder and carried her kicking from the tenement. Dalisva remained behind. “Would that you could bring us Branek himself,” she said, with more than a hint of suggestion behind the wish.

  Ren huffed out a laugh. “Not that I’ll admit it in public, but I have limits. The best hope for dealing with Branek is to back the man he deposed.” She held up one gloved hand before Dalisva could protest. “What you heard was false. Branek and his allies turned against Andrejek without cutting knot, then lied to everyone else to cover what they’d done.”

  Dalisva sliced her own hand through the air, as if cutting away a tangle. “Who betrayed whom is not my concern. From the start, the plan to destroy the amphitheatre was Andrejek’s.”

  “And who do you want in charge of the Anduske—the man who made the plan but abandoned it, or the one who tried to follow through?” Ren began to pace, hands locked behind her back. “I know your answer is ‘neither.’ But someone is going to lead the Anduske; they won’t vanish simply because you capture their leaders. If Branek falls to an outside force—even to me—that will only make him a martyr to his followers. Whereas if Andrejek exposes him for a traitor, not only he but his ideals will lose credibility.”

  “And how do you propose to bring this about?”

  Ren couldn’t hold back a sigh, remembering her own cards. The Face of Light, cautioning against hasty action. “It’s going to take time.”

  The low ceiling and mildewed walls dulled Dalisva’s bark of laughter. Then she touched her brow in apology. “Forgive me, Lady Rose. I know you will do all you can to slow Branek. But simply to slow him is not enough. We must stop the Anduske themselves, for the safety of all our people.”

  “All our people?” Ren’s nerves sharpened at the phrase. “Forgive me, Ča Korzetsu, but we both know that isn’t true.”

  The formal address brought Dalisva upright. “I only meant—”

  “You meant that you’ve gotten complacent. Maybe not you specifically, but the ziemetse, and the other cities of Vraszan. You’ve come to accept that Nadežra is controlled by the Liganti—you don’t like it, but it’s
been that way for two hundred years, so how could it be anything else? But there was a time when nobody had to pay to experience the Great Dream. When no outsider had the power to enact a scheme like Indestor’s, which almost destroyed our connection to Ažerais. And you conveniently forget that Cinquerat control isn’t something that happens once every seven years during the Great Dream, or just at the Ceremony of the Accords. The people here live with it every day.”

  Ren wanted to blame that flood of words on the rage numinat Diomen had placed her in, but they might have burst out anyway. Dalisva knew there was a human woman under the mask, one who hadn’t come to the city with the Vraszenian delegation last year. Ren didn’t have to pretend to be some mystical spirit. And she was tired of feeling like the only “true” Vraszenians were the ones who didn’t live in Nadežra—like the people here didn’t count, except as tokens to capture in a game of hexboard.

  But she wasn’t the only one with strong feelings. “Have the Anduske not caused worse harm, to less effect?” Dalisva’s fists were clenched, her face twisted with frustration. “The last great uprising was Elsivin the Red’s, and what profit came from that? Whole kretse wiped out, the Isarnah punished for their assistance. The only changes were for the worse. Fifty years have passed, but the sanctions remain.”

  She was right—and also wrong. With an effort, Ren lowered her voice. “It’s foolish to try the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different result. The Anduske fight, and they change nothing. The ziemetse refuse to fight, and they change nothing. What if everyone tried something new… like working together?”

  Dalisva’s frustration softened. Wistfully, she said, “Ah, if only the Ižranyi still lived. Is that not what everyone says? Without the clan of the dreamweaver, our fabric has pulled askew.” She rubbed her face wearily. “Perhaps you are right, Lady Rose. To have a dream is not enough, though, is it? The ziemetse will not reach out; the Anduske will not reach out. Each scorns the other for the blood or the mud on their hands.”

  It was the same obstinacy Ren had seen far too much of in the Charterhouse lately. Seeing it among Vraszenians made her feel tired. The Rook had spent two hundred years fighting an endless battle against the corruption of the nobility. Was she doomed to be the first in a long line of Black Roses, waging an equally hopeless war?

  Dalisva’s smile did nothing to wipe away that image. “Perhaps in truth this is why Ažerais chose you, Lady Rose. To bridge the river that has divided us so long. I will pray to An Mišennir that it is so.”

  Better bring a big offering. The Black Rose was just a mask to hide a half-Vraszenian face. Neither the Anduske nor the ziemetse had any reason to listen to someone like her.

  She abruptly wanted to be anywhere but there, looking at Dalisva’s hopeful expression. “I’ll let you know if I capture anyone else useful,” Ren said, and strode out of the building without saying farewell.

  Isla Stresla, Kingfisher: Lepilun 14

  When Grey heard Renata’s voice coming through the door of Ryvček’s practice room, he almost turned around and left.

  The problem wasn’t him being there; everyone knew Ryvček had trained him. But Renata Viraudax was a busy woman, and the Black Rose equally so—yet Arenza Lenskaya kept finding the time to visit his house, usually when he wasn’t there. Grey couldn’t tell how much of that was sympathy for Alinka, grieving and overworked, and how much was concern over the twisted fate she’d seen for him in her cards.

  He hadn’t expected her to react so strongly to that. He almost wished he could undo his trick, or take back the suggestion that she lay the cards for him at all. But she’d patterned the Rook. What if she’d patterned Grey, when he wasn’t around? Better to give her a false answer, making sure her gift didn’t winkle out the truth from the other side. So he’d suggested it, and then when he sent her gaze skittering away during that last shuffle, he’d slipped two cards from the bottom of the deck into a gap near the top.

  Every time he thought of that, he remembered her white-eyed fear, the harsh rasp of her breathing as she stared at something he couldn’t see. The rigid tension of her hands in his own. Who knew; maybe it would have been as bad even if he hadn’t interfered. Grey had known for a long time that his fate was a poisoned one. She might have had the same reaction, and uncovered that he was the Rook.

  But having gone to those lengths, he needed to make sure he didn’t undo their benefit. Which meant his best course was to be Captain Grey Serrado at her as firmly as possible. Dull, upstanding, and duty-bound, with no time for a life beyond the Aerie.

  “You come for practice?” Ryvček said when he entered. “Good. The Vigil are brawlers with swords; no finesse. You could use a polish. Or quit that nonsense and be a duelist. Skill you certainly have, and these past months—djek. More duels than even I can fight. Alta Renata, your people have become as prickly as wet cats.”

  In his peripheral vision, Grey saw Renata seizing a chance to catch her breath. Despite her sleeveless fencing coat, the hair plastered to her brow was dark with sweat. Still, her voice was as cool as always when she said, “I’d forgotten you two know each other.”

  “Since before he called himself Grey.” Ryvček grinned at the pained look Grey shot her. She and Donaia were the only ones left who remembered.

  “Oh?” Renata said. “I confess, I did think ‘Grey’ was an unusual name.”

  “He’s Kiraly. And not very creative.” Ryvček racked her practice blade and mopped her face with a cloth. A yell issued from upstairs. She looked at the ceiling with a glare that could burn through the boards. “If those two cease not their arguing—”

  Cutting off the common complaint, she winked at Grey. “The pains of living with cousins. I must deal with this. Serrado, why not put the alta through her paces? A student needs many partners to learn from.” And with that, she vanished from the room.

  Vengeance for all the times you almost stumbled on her secret, he thought—which didn’t put him in charity with her.

  “Is she that suggestive with everyone?” Renata asked as the door shut them in Ryvček’s trap.

  “Everyone she hasn’t known since they were children. Leato and I were safe. Mostly,” Grey grumbled, shucking his coat and tying his sleeves down with a pair of cords. He’d come intending to ask Ryvček a question, not to spar, but leaving now would only make Renata more curious. Taking up a practice sword, he gave it a few sweeps to get the feel of its balance. “What have you worked on so far?”

  He listened with half an ear as Renata named off drills. She was further along than he’d expect from a beginner, but that made sense; he knew from when he’d ambushed her in her kitchen that she had instinct and experience already. Just no formal training, and no familiarity with swords.

  So far as he knew, she still had Mezzan’s Vicadrius blade. She deserved its fine craftsmanship more than that kinless bastard ever had, and it would be a pleasure to help her learn to use it well.

  “Three moves,” Grey said when she was done. “I’ll call them, and you respond as fast as you can.”

  Like Vargo, her biggest flaw was her inability to judge measure. She was fine when attacking, lunging at Grey from a reasonable distance, but when it was her turn to defend, she retreated farther than necessary. “I know,” she said with a grimace when he pointed this out. “I’m working on it, but—”

  But her impulse was to get as far from danger as possible. At least when fencing, he thought. In social matters, she courted danger close enough to kiss.

  He reminded himself to be a boring hawk and focused on correcting her technique in as dry a manner as possible. When he finally gave her a respite, she said, “I never thanked you for your assistance during my episode of sleeplessness.”

  Assistance. If the Rook hadn’t sent her into a panic, forced her to confess her malady, then all but shoved her into seeking help, who knew how long she might have spent dying before she told someone other than Tess? But he hoped she wasn’t referring to that.


  Grey tugged his glove straight, as though her words didn’t trouble him. “Eret Vargo and Meda Fienola solved the problem. All I could do was share what hadn’t worked for the sleepless children.”

  The tightening of her lips at Vargo’s name was faint but visible. He’d heard rumors of a rift between them; was the strain of her masquerade starting to bleed through? Renata said, “But Tanaquis spoke very highly of your attempts—in particular, the herbal remedies. Might I ask who your herbalist is?” She hesitated, then confessed, “Donaia isn’t doing well. It isn’t that kind of sleeplessness, but… nightmares. And her appetite is poor. The Traementis physician is attending her, of course, but I wonder if different methods might not produce better results.”

  You know damned well who my herbalist is. “My sister,” he said, letting a little of his conflict drag his expression into a frown. Would Ren pretend to misunderstand his ambiguity, or would she slip and reveal that she knew Alinka was Grey’s sister by marriage? “She traveled the river growing up, and had the benefit of learning from a variety of village healers.”

  Renata’s expression grew stricken. “I’m sorry—I wasn’t aware you had a sister as well. She might not want to attend to Donaia, especially if dealing with a grieving woman would remind her of her brother’s death. Though…” Was that the hesitation of a real thought? Or an artfully staged pause? “It might help Donaia—might help them both—having the company of someone who understands.”

  “Alinka was Kolya—my brother’s—wife.” No need to fake the roughness of those words. If only he could loosen the hold of the grief that strangled him whenever he had to speak of it. “But are you looking for an herbalist for Donaia, or a companion? Alinka is good at the first, but you could easily find better. For companionship…”

  It was like fighting with two blades, maintaining the fiction that he didn’t know about Ren, about Arenza, about all the things the Rook knew, while trying to puzzle out the motives behind her words.