The Liar's Knot

by M. A. Carrick

  He had outlasted every person who wore the hood. He was born from determination in the face of despair. He was something like a spirit—but one created again and again by those who became him, who imbued the outward facade of the costume with the energy and conviction of their performance.

  It didn’t matter what it cost the man inside. The Rook would not die here tonight.

  Human weakness folded in on itself, hammered into the steel of that immortal drive. Hands tightening, arms flexing as if to bend iron bars, the Rook pulled at the constricting strands. Sparking energy in all directions, the net tore—then dissipated in a cloud of black smoke, as if it had never been.

  Its effect wasn’t gone. He could feel it in his flesh, slowed but still burrowing, still draining. His attackers didn’t know that, though, and they flinched back as he rose to his feet.

  “Don’t lay your wager before you see your cards,” the Rook said, retreating slowly through the threshold of a courtyard house and across the garden inside. It funneled his enemies into a clump, but that wasn’t why he chose this route. “You haven’t caught me yet. And I’ve got a net of my own.”

  Kicking the pole at his back, he flattened himself against the wall as the heavy canvas awning fell on the cluster. While they struggled underneath the weight, he dashed across the lumpy terrain, using their covered bodies as a stepping stone to launch himself back into the street.

  Not everyone had followed and been caught. The Rook’s sword flashed out, not sparing flesh and blood. One man screamed as his blade fell to the ground, the hilt still gripped in his severed hand. By the time the Rook broke through their line, the ones under the canvas were free, and they pounded after him as he slammed through the door of the perfumery.

  But they couldn’t see in the dark like he could, and they didn’t know where the hidden exit was. As they staggered to a halt inside the building, the Rook eased shut the panel in the side of the false cabinet and slipped like a ghost through the wig-maker’s shop, toward the door that let out onto an adjoining street.

  Free—for all the good it did him. His muscles twitched with warning shocks of greater agony to come. Whatever that net had done to him, it hadn’t stopped working; it had only been slowed. But he still had to make his rendezvous with Beldipassi, had to stop the next stage of the plan.

  Not like this. Not on my own.

  Grey fought his way up, out of the drowning shadows that had overtaken him. The Rook had gotten him out of the net, but he couldn’t afford to lose himself permanently to that power. I need help.

  Ryvček. But she lived in Kingfisher, clear across the river; under the best of circumstances it would have been difficult for him to get there and back in time. With pain ripping along his body like swarms of flame ants underneath his skin, burning away his strength, there was no chance.

  Without help, though, Beldipassi would fall to the trap that waited for him. And as for what he held…

  The hopelessness eating into his bones wasn’t just logic at work; it twined like a snake with the exhaustion and pain that drained his strength like someone had opened a vein.

  No. This couldn’t be the night it ended. Not when they were so close to the goal they’d pursued ever since the Rook became something more than a scrap of wool and a young woman’s grief-stricken anger.

  It wasn’t only the effect of the net that made him lurch into a wall as he began walking. The Rook didn’t just have a mandate; he had the ghostly traces of the men and women who’d bound themselves to that role. Those traces gave Grey strength… but they also fought him now, as he forced himself north.

  Toward Traementis Manor.

  15

  The Liar’s Knot

  Whitesail, Upper Bank: Canilun 3

  Gut still aching from Serrado’s sucker punch, Vargo led Varuni through the maze of warehouses and wharves that made up riverside Whitesail. He was wearing a coat bought off one of the sedan chair bearers; his own coat and Varuni’s chain whip were on their way back to his Eastbridge townhouse. Nothing to mark the two of them as Eret Vargo and his bodyguard.

  Although most of Vargo’s shipping ran out of Dockwall, he’d been a smuggler long enough to know his way around the port offices of Whitesail. A decira in the pocket of a night watcher bought word that the Stella Boreae was still at anchor in the bay awaiting port authorization… but a dinghy had come upriver and docked near the Novrus warehouse office.

  “Better if we had a few more people,” Varuni said as they surveyed the darkened building. Her hand brushed over the place her whip normally coiled.

  ::She’s right,:: Alsius said, his legs twitching against the back of Vargo’s neck. ::We should wait until—::

  “I’m done with waiting,” Vargo snapped. He’d sent a message along with his coat, but the time it would take to get to the Froghole den or his Dockwall warehouse was time for Iascat’s promised information to slip out of Vargo’s grasp.

  He and Varuni pressed themselves against a wall as footsteps approached. Not the irregular beat of people walking normally, but the heavy and rhythmic tread of chair bearers. Peering around the corner, Vargo saw a sedan chair approaching with two guards flanking it. Black cloth covered the crest on the side, but the red-lacquered panels were familiar enough on their own.

  The reason for the identifiable chair became obvious as soon as the bearers set it down. House Acrenix had people who understood subtlety and delicate operations… but Fadrin wasn’t one of them.

  Vargo’s lips shaped a curse. He didn’t know how Fadrin had learned about the message, but nothing else would have brought him to this part of Whitesail at this time of night. Seems like everybody wants leverage over Renata Viraudax.

  He edged back so Varuni could size up the situation for herself. “Doable?” he asked quietly.

  She wasn’t reckless like some of his fists, so invested in proving her toughness that she charged stupidly into situations that would overmatch her. She held still, massaging her knuckles, calculating odds.

  Then she nodded.

  “Let’s do it,” Vargo said. He was looking forward to finally throwing a punch tonight.

  Neckcloths served as makeshift masks, though they weren’t enough to provide total anonymity, especially with an Isarnah woman at his side. And Vargo couldn’t risk being identified. Ghiscolo Acrenix was the pot for every gamble he and Alsius had made since the night they met, and Fadrin was a card Vargo couldn’t afford to sacrifice.

  So while Varuni kicked over a crate to make a distraction in front, he slipped up behind Fadrin, taking extreme satisfaction in blinding him with a handful of mud slapped across his eyes. Four-on-two still wasn’t a fair fight, but with Fadrin swearing and scrubbing at the grit on his face, Vargo had less to be concerned about when one of the chair bearers hooked a finger under his mask and clawed it down from his nose. He unhooked it with a twist of the bearer’s arm, followed by an elbow to his throat. A drumbeat of meaty thuds and low grunts said Varuni was doing what she did best: taking care of the guards quietly and efficiently.

  With one chair bearer retching for breath, the other looked around, weighed his odds, and ran. Vargo might have gone after him, but Fadrin had regained his feet, if not his vision, and charged blindly. Vargo locked him close in a shoulder-to-shoulder hug and brought his fist up again and again, tenderizing Fadrin’s gut and bits farther south. When Vargo’s arm became the only thing keeping Fadrin up, he was about to switch to the ribs and the face—but Varuni pulled him off, and Alsius’s shouting finally pierced the need to break his knuckles on someone else’s bones.

  ::—that’s enough! I agreed to come here, but it wasn’t for this.::

  No. This wasn’t what Vargo had come for. But it was what he’d needed.

  Shaking the pain out of his bruised hands, he nodded his thanks to Varuni. She understood. Just like she’d understood enough to step aside and let Serrado deliver his hits.

  “What do we do with them?” Varuni asked, crafting makeshift bindings out o
f the neckcloths and the bunting from the Acrenix sedan chair.

  Vargo wasn’t sure how long it would take him to find the papers, and he didn’t want this lot having a chance to draw attention. He jerked his chin at a nearby dinghy, and Varuni hoisted one of the men over her shoulder.

  They’d loaded three and were going back for Fadrin when Vargo’s gaze fell on the sedan chair. It was lightweight. Well-made. And wooden.

  Keeping his voice rough and unrecognizable, he said, “I bet that thing would float.”

  They sent Fadrin off in style, floating downriver in his remarkably seaworthy sedan chair, with the dinghy following behind—leaving its paddles on the dock. Watching it go, Vargo said, “Remind me to give you a raise.”

  “You’re not the one who pays me,” Varuni reminded him. The twitch of her lips was as good as a laugh from anyone else. “We should move. Before we have to deal with whatever problems that noise brings.”

  Whitesail, Upper Bank: Canilun 3

  Ren knew what the gossips would say. Derossi Vargo had shown up at the Traementis adoption ball and been escorted out scarcely one bell later by Captain Serrado—the man whose brother he’d murdered. Shortly after that, Alta Renata had retired to her room, apparently fleeing what should have been a night of triumph.

  She didn’t care what explanations they invented for her absence. The worst would pale next to the truth, if it got out: that Renata Viraudax Traementatis had been a fiction from the start.

  Her mind had begun shuffling possibilities the moment Giuna told her what she’d overheard. By the time Ren changed into inconspicuous clothes and climbed down from her balcony, she knew exactly what the threads of her future looked like.

  Learning she wasn’t a Viraudax didn’t mean people would know she was half-Vraszenian. She could still pass herself off as Letilia’s daughter, even; that part didn’t require noble Seterin connections. There would be no legal difficulty, because what mattered under Nadežran law was who had signed the contracts, not what past that person claimed. Nor could she, as a registered noblewoman, be tried for the crime of having previously pretended to be one.

  But none of that would matter. This was what Sostira had threatened, and why the woman had been both vague and certain: She knew something damaging was on its way, but not what form that damage would take.

  And Sostira was right to be confident. The scandal of having adopted a liar like her would destroy House Traementis’s newfound credibility. And if Donaia threw Ren out—which was all too likely—a trial would become a very real danger.

  So that was the ill of her future. It was up to her, now, to ensure she saw the Face and not the Mask… by getting those papers before anyone else could.

  She arrived in Whitesail to find the competition for that prize was dismayingly fierce. Bad enough, though not unexpected, to see Fadrin Acrenix getting out of a sedan chair with several people at his side; Giuna had told her Sibiliat wanted the papers, and given the need for haste, it wasn’t surprising that she sent her cousin. But then two figures sprang from the shadows and went to work on the Acrenix crew—and even though they were masked, she’d spent enough time watching Vargo to recognize his movements.

  Djek. How had he found out about the papers?

  It didn’t matter. Vargo wouldn’t hesitate to use any leverage he had; she could no more let him get hold of them than anyone else. But he was unwittingly doing her the favor of taking care of Fadrin and the others, and while everybody else was distracted, she had the perfect chance to act.

  Ren knew which office to go for. Her lightstone was shielded like a thieves’ lantern, casting its illumination only where she wanted it. She swept it around the interior, noting desks, cubbyholes, cabinets, an incendiary numinat for disposing of waste paper. Once she found the packet from Seteris, one toss would preserve her secret.

  For now. A message sent once could be sent again. She’d hoped to forge a replacement letter once she saw the real one, but there was no time for that now. And if Sostira kept pressing—or anybody else, for that matter—then sooner or later the truth would come out. All Ren was doing was buying time.

  Better to have time, though, than to face that crisis tomorrow.

  She was swift in her search. The Novrus office wasn’t as well-organized as anything under Indestor control, but it wasn’t a shambles; it didn’t take long to find the cabinet where important packets were kept. Ren tore open the one on top, spilling papers onto the floor, and found a letter marked with the seal of House Viraudax in Seteris.

  Her triumph was short-lived. A board creaked in the hallway an instant before she heard Vargo’s mocking baritone. “Lady Rose. What possible interest could Ažerais have in the business of a Seterin alta?”

  He leaned against the doorway—blocking it—and in the shadows behind him, Varuni cracked her knuckles. Over his shoulder, Vargo said, “Make sure the Rook isn’t about to drop in on us. I can handle her.”

  His tone wasn’t exactly a threat. After all, hadn’t he and the Rose worked together before? But Vargo’s expression in the dim light was as unforgiving as she’d ever seen it, and he absently massaged one hand, the action of a man who’d been employing it as a weapon. There was no hint of the cuff about him now, in his clothes or his bearing. This was the crime lord who’d taken over the Lower Bank.

  One Poppy Weeps. He’d caused plenty of pain in the past, and that wasn’t behind him now.

  She tried for the Black Rose’s usual careless tone. “Thanks for taking care of the others. Whitesail’s oddly busy for this time of night.”

  “Sostira’s ship has more leaks than she realizes.” Edging into the room, he closed the door behind him. Not locked, but it was another barrier to slow her down if she fled.

  Ren couldn’t see the spider, but she heard his voice. ::Vargo, if she gets away with that letter—::

  ::She won’t.::

  ::Even if that means making her an enemy?::

  ::I already have plenty of those. What’s one more?::

  Ren’s pulse spiked. That bleak tone didn’t offer much hope for her getting out of here with the letter in hand, and she was too far from the incendiary numinat to throw it with any accuracy. Nor did she want to imagine what Vargo might do if she tried.

  But she’d talked her way out of worse situations. “I imagine we both have a use for the information in here. As I recall, I gave you Dmatsos Očelen back in Staveswater. You still owe me for that—so how about I take this, and we call it even?”

  The curt shake of his head didn’t pause for even a moment of consideration. Vargo, advancing, backed her into a corner between desk and cabinet. “I’m not here for deals or trades or favors. Whatever interest you have in Renata Viraudax, mine takes precedence. Hand it over. Now.”

  ::Before someone else shows up,:: the spider added.

  When she still hesitated, a knife flashed into Vargo’s hand. “After the way my life has gone lately, I’m done fucking around. You’ve been useful to work with, but if I have to, I will fight you for that letter.”

  And he would win. Ren had a knife, too, but she couldn’t have taken down Fadrin and the others the way he had. Even without Varuni to back him up, Vargo could beat her. Then she wouldn’t have the letter or any trust between him and the Black Rose.

  But if she gave it to him, that knife would be at Renata’s throat.

  Deal with that when it happens. It’s that, or lose right here and now.

  Good, rational thinking. None of which made it any easier for her to seal her fate by handing Vargo the letter.

  For the briefest instant Ren thought about rushing him while he was distracted, looking down at the envelope. But before she could, a casual flick of his wrist sent the letter flying—into the incendiary numinat.

  Fire surged abruptly, then died away.

  It was too sudden for her to do anything more than yelp. Or for her to read the complicated expression on Vargo’s face, before it sank back into shadow. “I don’t know why you want
leverage against Renata,” he said. “I’m guessing the Rook asked for it. But I’m warning you now: Leave her alone, or we will be enemies.”

  His words were a pattern she couldn’t read. “But—” All her eloquence had deserted her; she stared at the ashes drifting out of the numinat. “Why come all the way here, just to destroy it?”

  Vargo sheathed his knife, as though she wasn’t any sort of threat anymore. “Because I’m the only one I trusted not to fuck it up.”

  “You didn’t even read it.” Renata had torn into him with every vicious word she could find, unleashing all of her pent-up rage—at him, at Nadežra, at everything she’d suffered—and he’d just protected her. “You could have used—”

  “No. I really couldn’t have. I’ve made that mistake one time too many.” He ran a palm down his face as though trying to pull a mask over the bitter lines there. “Her secrets are her own.”

  A performance. He’s doing this for your sake, because he knows who you are.

  But even the most suspicious part of her, the part that saw the world as a constant dance of manipulation, didn’t believe it. Vargo had no idea who the Black Rose was. And he had no reason to think Renata would ever know what he’d done here. He was protecting her because—

  Because she hadn’t been wrong, when she believed that she mattered to him. That he cared what happened to her, and didn’t just see her as a tool.

  Yes, Vargo had used her. He’d sent her into the Charterhouse, knowing Mettore wanted her there, and he hadn’t told her either before or afterward. He kept things hidden from her.

  But he also regretted hurting her.

  Vargo’s gaze flicked up. “Go home. Or back to Ažerais’s Dream, or wherever it is you bed down.” His hand touched his stomach, and he winced. “Masks know that’s where I’m headed.”

  Then he turned and walked out. And Ren stood where she was, not breathing, until a shout outside reminded her she was somewhere she shouldn’t be, and she ran.