The Liar's Knot

by M. A. Carrick

  Right up until the day she tried to murder Sedge, and Ren poisoned her for it.

  Vargo wasn’t Ondrakja. And Sedge had never been good at playing people, neither. He could toss the ball to Ren, though, and see what she did with it. Leaning in close, Sedge said in his most menacing voice, “You heard the man. But if you talk, you can save yourself some pain.”

  Ren stayed silent, her eyes telling him to do it. Was she fucking kidding? Even if he would, there was nowhere he could hit her. People—Vargo—would ask questions if Alta Renata turned up with a bruised face. But if Sedge hurt her where it wouldn’t show, Ren might hate him almost as much as he’d hate himself. Because Ondrakja had always protected Ren’s pretty face.

  Do it. Get in with Vargo. Don’t give up the con. He could almost hear her thoughts beating against him.

  Sorry, Ren. En’t gonna happen.

  “Fuck this.” Turning his back on Ren, Sedge planted a hand on Vargo’s desk, displaying the fading stripe on his wrist where a charm used to be. “I en’t one of your fists no more. Got cut out, din’t I? And even then, I weren’t the sort to work someone over on a suspicion. You show me proof she did you up, I’ll plant a whole garden of purple roses under her skin. Until then, play your games on someone else. And leave her alone.”

  He expected cold rage. Masks knew he’d seen that often enough from Vargo, when somebody sauced off at him. Instead—incredibly—Vargo smiled.

  “Good to know you haven’t changed, Sedge,” he said. Lurets looked confused; Nikory looked relieved. Only Varuni’s expression remained stone. But then, reading her was like trying to decipher Enthaxn.

  Sedge was slow, but he wasn’t a snail. “This en’t some loyalty test?” But what else could it be? And if it was, how the fuck had he passed by refusing?

  Vargo said, “Of course it is. A man who’s determined to worm his way back into my organization would do anything I said, just to ingratiate himself—and to prove his innocence.”

  “You thought it was me,” Sedge breathed. “You thought I sold you out.”

  “Your bout of stomach illness was very convenient.”

  It hadn’t been convenient at all. Sedge had to go rooting through trash heaps to find some mussels that had gone off, and then there had been all the puking that followed. But he couldn’t risk Idusza recognizing him as the bullyboy she’d slugged the day she met Arenza—or Varuni paying him a visit and deciding he was malingering.

  He sagged, only his braced hand keeping him from sinking to the floor. “You asshole.”

  “Mm.” Vargo’s attention moved back to Ren. “Though that still leaves her under suspicion. No personal enmity, szorsa; you understand that I have to tie off every thread here. And you haven’t exactly been helpful.”

  “Because you ask the wrong questions,” she said, sounding not at all offended. “What would I gain from betraying the Anduske, or you? Seem I an ally of the hawks?”

  “You visit the house of one often enough.”

  “A Vraszenian hawk. And while to the Anduske I may not be sworn, they are my friends. No, Ča Vargo, I betrayed them not. You have a patterner before you—why not ask pattern for answers?”

  “Will the answer come in the form of another dropped card?” Nikory asked curtly. He had faith in patterners, and no respect for frauds. Especially when he thought they were trying to play his boss.

  But Vargo merely raised a brow, intrigued. “Even a dropped card can provide information.”

  Ren knew better than to subject Vargo to an elaborate show. She merely took out her deck and gave it three quick shuffles, then cut and drew a single card. Whereupon her brow knitted in what looked like honest confusion. “Seven as One,” she said, turning it so everyone else could see. “The card of institutions. An enemy of yours in the Cinquerat?”

  “Cinquerat’s five people,” Lurets said.

  She gave him an exasperated look. “The names are not literal.”

  “You can learn to be a szorsa later,” Vargo told Lurets, scowling at him for the interruption before turning back to Ren. “I want to know more about this enemy of mine. How did he know about the meeting?”

  He. Not she or they. So Vargo already had a suspicion of who was behind the ambush.

  Ren was still frowning at the card. “You have more than one enemy, I think, in more than one place. Of your troubles with the Stretsko, many people know—and they are an institution, as much as the Cinquerat. But no, this came not from them. Perhaps…”

  She trailed off in a way Sedge recognized. He wasn’t surprised when Vargo said, “Give us a minute.”

  Sedge didn’t want to leave Ren alone with Vargo, no more than Varuni or Nikory did. It was a reverse race to see who could dawdle slowest out of the room, until Vargo’s glare prodded them along.

  After several silent moments of everyone staring at the closed door, Varuni said, “Never should have cut you out.”

  “Huh?” Sedge wanted to shush her, even though Vargo’s office door had been scribed with numinata to prevent eavesdropping for exactly this reason. But then Varuni’s words caught up to him. His hand went to his bare wrist. “Thought you was madder at me than anyone.”

  Varuni made a noise in the back of her throat, something between a growl and a purr. “I was. But I also know what it’s like trying to guard that asshole’s back.”

  “It was politics,” Nikory said, as much to Sedge as to her. “A bodyguard don’t come back with a few scratches when the boss is filleted like a trout. Had to feed the fists some blood before they started asking why Sedge was still allowed to be walking.” He redirected his gaze to Sedge. “But you din’t deserve that. And you’ve been good despite it. I told Vargo you en’t leaky, tied or not.”

  Sedge blinked hard. It had hurt bad when Nikory cut him out—worse than he’d admitted even to his sisters, though he was sure they’d guessed. Nikory trusting him enough to speak for him when there weren’t any oaths between them was the balm he hadn’t known he needed.

  “Thanks.” Sedge turned his head away and coughed to remove the thickness from his throat, and then they all waited some more until the door opened and Vargo gestured Ren out—with way more courtesy than he’d shown at the start.

  Courtesy enough that she offered him a respectful touch to her brow. “One card alone says little. A full pattern says more. But for that… I would humbly accept your offering to Ir Entrelke Nedje.”

  “Just make certain I know where to send it, so I don’t have to disturb you on your way home again.” It was as good a promise as Vargo ever gave that he wouldn’t send fists next time to pluck her off the street.

  The veneer of warmth vanished a moment later. “Nikory, Varuni, back in here. Sedge, see her wherever she wants to go.” He started to turn back to his office, then paused and glanced over his shoulder. “We’ll talk again. Don’t worry—next time it won’t be a test.”

  The Shambles, Lower Bank: Lepilun 27

  After they left Vargo’s place, Ren and Sedge kept silent except for a few muttered cues. They both knew it was even odds whether Vargo had sent someone to follow them and see where “Arenza” lived; if so, she had to give him an answer. They walked to a seedy lodging house in the Shambles; then she bid Sedge goodbye, went inside, and bribed the landlady to say she lived there if anyone came asking. Then it was out the back door, to the stinking canal behind the house.

  Where she found Sedge waiting on a walkway so narrow his shoulders almost pushed him off. “Nobody saw me go round,” he promised. “And I en’t letting you walk the whole way home alone.”

  “I thought to take a skiff.”

  “That en’t what I meant, and you know it.” He scrubbed at his scalp. “’Sides, nobody’s poling across the Dežera today. Skiffers went on strike.”

  She ground the heels of her hands into her eye sockets as if that could press away the headache. This is what Scaperto was afraid of. A magistrate had sentenced a skiffer to death for dumping a passenger in the river when he refus
ed to pay the fare. A slumming noble, it turned out. The punishment was egregious, and Fulvet had commuted it, but the skiffers had been whipped into a fury. It could have been Branek’s work—most of the skiffers were Stretsko—but she suspected it was just more of Nadežra’s tensions boiling to the surface.

  By water or walking, getting home posed other problems. She didn’t dare go back to where she’d stashed Renata’s clothing and makeup, not right now, and maybe not ever. Not if Vargo had people watching the Serrado house. But she could hardly walk into Traementis Manor looking like Arenza.

  Well, if she had to walk across the whole city, it would be dark by the time she arrived. That would make sneaking in easier.

  Her attention refocused on Sedge, and the jittery tension that hadn’t left his shoulders. Her memory echoed back Vargo’s smooth, menacing voice. Work her over, Sedge. I know you know how.

  There was no room on the walkway for a hug. Ren nudged Sedge off it into the slightly less cramped alley between buildings. Once they were on less precarious ground, his arms landed heavy around her. Sedge’s voice scraped raw as he said, “What did Vargo say to you, in private? You’re sure you’re safe from him?”

  She blew out a long breath. “I told him that I think it’s someone in his own organization. Not you; someone else.”

  “That’s it? He din’t go after you?”

  They’d been alone—the perfect chance for Vargo to intimidate or threaten her. But he’d just nodded thoughtfully, and his spider had agreed that they needed to take a closer look at their own security.

  “He was never going to hurt me,” she said. “When he told you to do it—”

  She knew what she’d heard, and yet it still baffled her. Pulling back from the hug, she said, “That spirit of his was outraged at the order he gave you. And then Vargo said not to worry—that he’d stop you before you could follow through.”

  “But you—I thought you were telling me to do it.”

  Ren rubbed at her eyes again. “I read him wrong. I thought the test was to see if you would obey. Not if you would defy him.” She offered Sedge a half smile. “Turns out you know your own boss better than I do.”

  A familiar hardness came into his jaw, and he turned as if to make sure nobody was spying on their alley. “Vargo en’t my boss. Nikory said I was cut on account of politics, but…” With his back to her, maybe he thought Ren wouldn’t see the sheen of a tear, or the surreptitious hand that came up to knuckle it away.

  She might be a knot-traitor twice over, but Sedge wasn’t. Ren touched his shoulder gently. “I’m sorry. I…”

  She’d been thinking of Sedge’s snapped bond as a connection she could use. Not as a broken, jagged thing that would cut him every time he touched it.

  “You don’t have to spy on them for me,” she said. “I should not have asked you to.”

  He gave a one-shouldered shrug—the shoulder he wrapped now in one of Tess’s imbued braces, because he’d dislocated it so often defending his knot-mates. Sedge would do anything for people he claimed as his. Even to the point of hurting himself. “Who says I’m doing it for you? I weren’t ever tied to Vargo, but leastways I can look out for Nikory and the others by keeping an eye on him.”

  Ren bit down on the regret that surged inside. She missed that kind of loyalty. Not that she didn’t have the loyalty of family, from Sedge and from Tess—however poorly she’d been repaying it lately—but a knot was a different thing. There had been good times in the Fingers, however badly that had ended. She missed having friends who would have her back.

  She hadn’t told either of them about the knot offer from the Anduske, and now wasn’t the time. Ren was grateful when Sedge turned back and said, “So what now?”

  “Now,” Ren said, “I get back to the Pearls before Donaia deploys the full complement of the Aerie to find me. And I figure out some way to grab the clothes I left stashed in Kingfisher before Renata Viraudax’s latest surcoat turns up in a Coster’s Walk stall. As for Vargo…” She sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll leave Vargo to you,” Sedge said, the old grin returning as he bumped hips with her. “You leave the dress to me.”

  Isla Traementis, the Pearls: Lepilun 27

  True to his word, Sedge stuck with her all the way through the strangled traffic on the Sunset Bridge, past the skiffers in their boats chanting protests from the river; through the crowds of the Old Island, with the Vigil keeping wary watch; even across the Sunrise Bridge, as choked with people as its western cousin. It was full dark by the time they reached Eastbridge, and they only parted company when Ren pointed out that a Lower Bank fist and a Vraszenian szorsa walking the streets at this hour were just asking a hawk to arrest them for vagrancy. “I’ll go the rest of the way by rooftops,” she said.

  He snorted. “Yeah, that’s a lot safer. Naw, I know you’ll be fine—go. I’ll see you later.”

  Ren would have liked to keep his company, and not only because she’d seen Sedge even less often than Tess lately. Having him there would have meant not being left alone with her thoughts.

  I don’t understand Vargo. Every time she thought she had the man’s measure, he did something that didn’t fit. For someone in Ren’s position, whose safety depended on being able to read those around her and anticipate how they would act, that was terrifying.

  But she couldn’t solve that riddle tonight. Right now, her priority was getting back into Traementis Manor. She would have to sneak in her own window, redo her face and clothing, then climb out again and return through the front door. And hope that in the meantime she came up with some sufficiently plausible story for where she’d been, and why she was wearing a different dress.

  When she got to the manor, though, there was a shadow on her balcony.

  Ren froze, wondering if she’d interrupted the Rook in the middle of delivering a message. But he sat on the balustrade, and she heard a soft murmur as he… talked to someone?

  “Ah, no—ow. Is that any way to treat someone who’s trying to help you? Sheathe your daggers, alča. You need to make a good impression.”

  Several contradictory possibilities warred in her mind, most of them absurd. None were likely to be answered from the ground, so she climbed the tree to her balcony.

  He heard her coming and acknowledged her with a distracted nod. “Here’s the lady herself.” He seemed more interested in his coat than Ren’s arrival. “I’ve been waiting a while. Do you ever sleep?”

  “Do you?” She slipped over the railing, perching on the balustrade cornerwise to him. Was something moving in the Rook’s coat?

  His laugh was rueful. “Not today. I was dealing with unexpected intruders.” He lifted the edge of his coat. Clinging halfway up the lining, so dark it almost became invisible, was a small fuzzball. It rolled its head back, looking at Ren from an impossible upside-down angle, and its eyes flashed like moonstones when the light caught them. A high, squeaking mew revealed a pink tongue and white, pinprick teeth.

  Apparently one of the absurd possibilities was right. Alča was Vraszenian for “kitten.”

  The Rook said, “The Anduske found her in their safe house today. Unfortunately, cats make Ljunan sneeze.” He tried to free the kitten, but for every claw he unfixed, two more snagged on his coat. “Fine altas keep cats, don’t they? Or perhaps your kitchen could use a good mouser. Though she seems to prefer climbing to stalking… Could you—a little help, please?”

  It shouldn’t have taken four dexterous hands to detach a kitten from a coat, but cats had never shown much concern for logic. Once extracted, the kitten displayed no interest in being cradled and petted, but instead began exploring Ren.

  Given what Ren needed to say, she was grateful for the distraction. “I had no chance to tell you—not with Dockwall being such an urgent matter—but I’ve learned more of the Praeteri.”

  He listened in grim silence as she told him about the hidden temple and the numinat Diomen had put her in. When she was done, he said, “You’re sur
e it was your emotions it affected? Not a physical reaction? Numinata can affect the body in ways that make it feel like it’s your thoughts that are the cause.”

  “Tanaquis confirmed it. She sees it as normal enough, but…” Ren sighed, using one hand to make sure the kitten’s explorations didn’t take her off the balcony. “To Tanaquis, all parts of the cosmos are normal. They divide only into ‘known’ and ‘not yet known.’”

  The Rook made a thoughtful sound as the kitten began scaling the mountain of his shoulder. “The incidents I found among Vargo’s notes sound a lot like the effects of what you just described. Praeteri numinatria at work.”

  “He’s new to their ranks,” Ren said, then chewed on her lower lip, thinking. “But he knew of them, and I think all along his goal has been to join them. They have no one below gentry in their ranks.”

  Whatever the Rook might have said in response was forestalled by the kitten, who had discovered the fascinating world of his hood. Ren couldn’t suppress a snicker as the tiny head disappeared into its shadowy depths; then, when he gently eased her out—with a stifled noise that suggested her whiskers had found his ear—she took an interest in the loose fall of the fabric itself.

  He didn’t seem inclined to ask for Ren’s help this time, but after significant effort to pull the kitten free without dislodging the hood, the Rook sighed. “Two centuries of mystery, about to be undone by the cleverness of cats. Would you?” He tipped his head to Ren in invitation.

  A spark of curiosity flared to life within her. All it would take was one poorly calibrated attempt to pull the cat free… and he’d never speak to her again. Ren looked at the kitten, looked at the hood, and made a face. “I will regret teaching her this trick.”

  Then she leaned forward and dangled her braid at prime pouncing distance.

  Moonstone eyes went wide, and the skinny tail lashed. The kitten missed her leap, but wound up in Ren’s lap. A stuttering purr started up, louder than she was large, as she rolled onto her back and began attacking the braid with all five pointy ends.