“Inventor wanted in connection to a noble’s assassination from this summer past! The man, called the Artificer, was known for his gearwork architecture and private school. A close cousin to the noble’s paramour, he was working on a secret contrivance that was meant to upset the balance of power in Normain. According to this paper’s sources…”
The lass shouted every other sentence, but she was quick enough about it and I’d naught else to do while waiting. The story was intriguing, but I’d a notion that this inventor had invented himself a new identity or been offed along with the noble. Any noble fool enough to have one man on the side was surely fool enough to have two, and loose lips besides. To say nothing of creating gearwork without Sin Eater oversight. I’d heard Normain didn’t require Ciris’s mark on gearwork, but I didn’t think her mages recognized borders either. This Artificer wasn’t going to be found. I glanced back at the girl and arched an eyebrow.
“You can read, girl?”
She paused, midsentence, glanced down at the water-streaked paper in her hands and back to me before answering. “Uh, no, signorina. I have the printer tell me the front-page story every morn and I memorize it.”
I shook my wet hair; I could already feel my braided strands beginning to crinkle. “Learning to read would be easier.”
“I—I don’t know what the symbols mean, signorina.”
“If you’re smart enough to remember all that—” I frowned. “You didn’t make that shit up, just now, about the Artificer, did you?”
She shook her head quickly.
“Good. If you had I’d have told you to go be a writer and I wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone.” I pointed at the paper. “Anyway, if you can memorize that, you can learn to read. Just need to get yourself a primer. That’s a book with pictures that help show you what the symbols—they’re called letters—mean.”
“Thanks, signorina, for the advice,” she said, her tone meant to be sincere, but to my ears I could hear the loud “fuck off” that she’d left unspoken.
My lips twitched in spite of the Eld-sized hole in my chest. “What’s your name, lass?”
“Quenta,” she said.
“Big name for a small girl.” In the Empire that was the name for the schooners that held one-fifth in storage what a galleon could.
“I’m not small!”
“There you go, shouting again.”
“I’m not small,” she repeated in a more normal tone. “I’m nearly as tall as you.”
“Aye, and I’m small,” I said dryly. “But size counts for little unless you’re dealing with fools and if you are—then why care what they think?” I shrugged in my sodden shirt. “You usually hang around this Quarto?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “Here and farther along toward the Tip, in the Painted Rock Quarto.”
“Ah.”
“Isn’t that where you grew up?” Sin asked.
“You know it is.”
“You ever get into the Tip itself?” I asked Quenta.
“I—I live there,” she said in a much quieter tone. “But I don’t sell papers there, t’a’int no one that can read in the Tip.”
“I’d have thought the nobles going whoring would,” I said.
“They, uh, have other things on their mind, signorina.”
“Fair enough.” I produced a coin, seemingly from the air, but she was too busy wiping her runny nose to notice, and let it flip across my fingers. “Point is this, Quenta: I’ve a need for a smart lass who can keep her eyes and ears open and her mouth shut. I’m looking for news of Servenza, the kind that won’t find its way to your pages. If you hear anything of interest, anything at all, you come to the Blossoms Quarto and ask for Sambuciña—what?” The girl had perked up.
“I’ve just never been to that Quarto before, signorina.”
“Uh-huh, well, it may smell like flowers, but remember all those motherfuckers shit just like you or I. And their shit smells like shit. Aye?”
She nodded.
“I’m interested in all manner of things, but you hear anything about the Gods or their mages, or talk of fighting amongst the gangs, and I’ll give you another coin.”
I tossed it to her and she snatched it out of the air fast enough that I half wondered if she wasn’t a pickpocket, too. Her eyes widened when she saw gold where she’d expected silver.
“If I don’t hear from you in a fortnight, I’ll send a lad named Govanti around to have a word … might be there’s other uses for your ears, if you ken. Another coin, same color as that one. Deal?”
“A whole lira?” She spat on her hand and held it out. “Deal.”
I laughed and Sin groaned, but I was already wet and dirty, so I spat on my hand and shook hers. A hansom cab came around the corner and I stuck an arm out into the downpour and waved until it slowed and pulled over. “Until next time, Quenta.”
* * *
I couldn’t stop thinking about Eld and magic as the cab carried me through the streets to our palazzo. The rain hadn’t slackened, rather the opposite, a precursor to one of the infamous winter storms blowing in from across the seas. It’d be pissing rain for the next couple of days at least.
I’d known how Eld felt about magic, but somehow I thought he’d feel differently if I was the one with magic, rather than some random mage. The sudden chasm between us had knocked me on my arse, last summer, and the Company had done everything it could to make sure I stayed there. Which led to my plan to restructure the sugar factories and force the Company to give me a true seat at the table. Preferably the Chair’s.
Only, that hadn’t happened. I’d woken up a week later in my bed, surrounded by physikers and an Eld who wouldn’t meet my eyes. That was when I realized I’d lost him. That was when the sharks, smelling blood, began to circle. Females ones, like Lucrezia. I wasn’t sure what she hoped he’d see in her, truly.
“She’s charming, pleasant, well-read—” Sin began.
“I wasn’t asking for a list.”
“Attractive.”
I growled.
“I’m just saying she’s got some qualities that, in my experience, men would find appealing.”
“Have you ever been inside a man’s head?” I asked him.
“Of course,” Sin said. “Though as a woman, because there’s a balance that’s better maintained with your kind by being opposites.”
“W-wait, you’re a woman?”
“I’m neither a man nor a woman,” he said. “I’m magic. I’m me. But your kind get tripped up by that sort of shit. Honestly, why gender matters at all is beyond—Anyway,” he said, sensing my mood, “typically we take on the characteristics of the opposite of our hosts.”
“Interesting,” I lied. “What were we talking about?”
“Lucrezia.”
“Ah, that bitch.”
None of the women eyeing Eld could do what we’d done. Gods, they’d have been dead on the gondola, let alone facing the Ghost Captain and his undead crews of Shambles. I remembered the stench of them, the hundreds that I dodged, fought, destroyed. That was my first time with Sin, and I was driven half-insane by my sudden power. Now we were a well-oiled machine. Together with Eld, we were a force to bring the Gods to their knees. Today, during the assassination attempt and again on the canal, we’d been unified, the way we’d been before.
“Relationships built on adrenaline and danger don’t seem inclined to health or longevity,” Sin noted.
Relationships. Eld and I could scarcely call what we’d become a relationship, but Sin was right, we’d had one today.
“That wasn’t what I meant,” Sin said.
“That’s perfect, Sin.” I need to find a way to bring more of that into our lives. Remind him what we’re capable of. And then he’ll have to see that we’re better together. “Thanks.”
“That’s not what I’m saying!”
“Hush,” I told him. I stepped out of the cab and tossed the driver a coin. Two lire in a few hours, but it was a small price for what I�
��d won: a way back.
7
As I walked through the wrought-iron gates between the head-high, white-plastered walls, the rain began to slacken and I bit back a curse. It would stop now. Many of the palazzos in the Blossoms Quarto had meandering paths leading to their entrances, meant to show off gardens and topiaries and the like. I wasn’t one for bullshit and our budget wasn’t either, so our pathway only had one bend in it and our garden—if you could call it that—was dominated by a few hedges. Wide marble steps led to the modest three-story building we’d bought after our first Kanados dividend payment. It was dwarfed by its neighbors, hulking behemoths five or six stories tall. I didn’t give a wrinkled fig. I liked our palazzo, with its marble pillars flecked with streaks of green that reminded me of summer and its recently painted plastered stucco that shone in the sun. In the grey of the storm it was diminished, true, but it was home.
“Home.”
A foreign word to me and one I’d only just begun to savor when Eld and I fell apart. Lightning flashed overhead and for a moment the palazzo shone in its light. I smiled as the door opened. Scratching absently at the scar on my wrist, I shrugged out of my jacket and handed it to Glori. I could dress and undress myself, but after our first fortnight in the palazzo, Eld had reminded me that there are some hills to die on and some to concede … and Glori had dug in for a final stand. The woman had come with the house so it shouldn’t have been any surprise that she knew when to hold the high ground. Even a demi-Goddess had to bend and with Glori, one bended or was bent. A season and a half later and I was used to her ministrations. Mostly.
Taking the still-wet garment, my head housekeeper made a sound in her throat, disapproval writ large across her plain, weathered features.
“That bad?” I asked her.
She held up my jacket so I could see the stains on it.
“Your jacket’s bled green all over your sleeves, signorina,” Glori said.
I almost told her at least the blood had bled itself out in the rain, but I didn’t think that would impress her. Glori’s black servant’s uniform was spotless, making her faded tan skin look almost white. She shook her long, thick-braided grey hair. “If you’d only wear dresses, as is proper for a lady of your station, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“No, it’d be worse,” I agreed. “The Doga likely would have died today, for one thing. And besides, all the ladies of my station are wearing jackets and trousers.”
“T’ain’t proper,” the old woman muttered under her breath, slipping a mint leaf into her mouth. I’d explained the wisdom of brushing her teeth instead of chewing a leaf that did wonders for her halitosis and nothing at all for the debris rotting her teeth, but she was stubborn as a donkey past its prime.
“Takes one to know one.”
“Shove it, Sin. I’m not stubborn, just set in my ways.” I felt him roll his eyes in my mind.
“No one proper ever made history, Glori,” I told her, marching past, suddenly shivering in my shirtsleeves.
“Those in the history books rarely died happy, either,” she said.
“You’re a seer, woman!”
“Signora Salina is in the drawing room, yon,” she called after me.
“Good, maybe she can make sense of the Chair,” I muttered beneath my breath.
I made for the drawing room, taking a quick detour through the door on my right, its edges hidden in the painted plaster, the cracks drawn over with thick ivy that climbed to the as-yet plain ceiling, poking my head into the rear of the library. A maid in livery matching Glori’s, and just as clean, compared two books before shelving the one with a green leather binding. She stepped back, mouthing the title slowly, before nodding with a faint smile of satisfaction.
“Marin!”
Marin squeaked and spun around, nearly dropping the other book. “You’re soaked through, Buc!”
“You’ve a fondness for the obvious, girl,” I told her. She blushed and I laughed. “What I really meant to say is you sound like your grandmother.”
“Now that is insulting,” she said, dark face stern before her cheeks dissolved in laughter.
Marin was my favorite chambermaid. Originally from the Tip, she’d been adopted by one of Glori’s daughters. When the fever had taken that daughter and her son-in-law, Glori had taken Marin in and treated her like her own. Marin reminded me of what I might have been, if I’d known Sister longer or met Eld sooner. I’d been teaching her to read, although our lessons had grown spotty of late, but she knew enough to maintain the books I ordered. The dark mahogany shelves, nearly as black as either of us, shone in the chandelier light, burnished by Marin’s cleaning. Over two-thirds were filled with books and I had enough in my bedroom to fill the rest, but I was trying—and mostly failing—to take my time in filling the house from floor to rafters with tomes.
“I thought you’d have been at the Board meeting, signorina,” she said, hefting the book in her arms.
“I was, but nothing’s so boring as the rich, unless it’s the old and rich.” Again she tried and failed to hide her laughter. “Is that Kolka’s The Mind Fears the Body?”
“It hasn’t arrived yet,” Marin said, shaking braids that fanned down to her waist. “Maestro Roulin says he should have it from Normain on the next ship.”
“Aye, I’ve heard that before,” I muttered. I had hopes for the tome. I’d read mention of Kolka in the afterword to Verner’s Disciple of the Body, one of the first books I’d read, number twenty-four, and the first on anatomy. If the transcriber was to be believed, Kolka laid bare the maladies of the mind the way Verner did with the body. “Well, I’ll leave you to it, Marin.”
“Signorina?”
“Aye?”
“Will we have another lesson soon?” She nodded toward the shelves. “I can read almost every title now, but I’m afraid to try to open them.”
“Books are knowledge and knowledge can be scary, Marin.” I flashed her a smile. “But books are also friends, the kind who hold you closer when you need it most. You’ve naught to fear from them and I’ll prove it to you. Soon,” I promised.
“What game are you playing at?” Sin asked when I slipped back out the secret door, heading for the drawing room.
“What do you mean?”
“Teaching a chambermaid to read is just going to illuminate the severe limitations of her position.”
“Better she live ignorant?”
“And happy,” he said.
“That’s the problem with you religious types—you’re all convinced education is pain when it’s the cure. After I throw off the yoke of the Gods, Marin will have the opportunity to improve her position if she wants to.”
“When you murder Ciris, you mean,” he said, disgust warring with disbelief.
“Think of it as me putting her back to whatever sleep she was in before she awoke three centuries ago. Only, this one she won’t be waking up from,” I added.
His silence was loud in my mind.
“You look like a twice-drowned cat,” Salina said, grinning. Back to finding me amusing, I saw, after the unpleasantness of the meeting. She was all right, when she wasn’t being an insufferable prig.
“And you look … remarkably dry,” I said. “How?”
“Magic,” Salina said, her eyes taking on the light they did whenever the mention of magic came up between us. Salina had seen us first after the Shattered Coast and while she didn’t know anything, she suspected much.
“Will Sirrah Eld be home shortly?” Glori called from the doorway. I saw Salina twitch slightly in surprise, though she hid it well, but I’d heard Glori’s swishing skirts following me into the drawing room. Glori firmly believed servants were not to be seen or heard unless their service was required. Glori also firmly believed she didn’t count amongst the help. Despite that, the woman was a ghost when she wanted to be. “You said there was some excitement with the Doga this morning?”
“He’s fine,” I told her. “With Joffers, catching rain.”
I rolled my eyes. “Since everyone’s telling me how fucking wet I am—and no one between my legs either”—Glori’s eyes popped and Salina’s laugh sounded scandalized—“I think I’ll pass and go find some dry clothes. Coming, ’Lina?”
“Not like that,” she muttered, and it was my turn to laugh.
Glori seemed to have lost her capacity for speech. I stepped around the older woman, motioning for Salina to follow, and made for my rooms on the second floor. My stomach rumbled and I regretted refusing the soup. Sin’s magic came at a cost and had me eating for three, and after fighting off would-be assassins—twice—I was going to be ravenous soon. Sometimes my tongue was too fast for my own good. Sin’s snort was loud between my ears as we climbed the winding stairs and passed through the doors into the main hallway and only then did I realize that my hands were clenched into fists. Eld. He and Joffers could take care of themselves, but they would have been overwhelmed by the lot that tried us earlier. It was unlikely they’d try again so soon, but everything about today had been unlikely. Then why’d he send me away?
“Off to visit one of those sharks. The female kind?” Sin asked.
“If I put an ice pick through my ears would it take you with it?”
“Perhaps, but you’d be lobotomized.”
“It might be worth it,” I told him; I felt his smile melt in my mind.
“What did the Chair want with you?” Salina asked as we walked.
“Oh, just to find out who is causing unrest across the rougher parts of Servenza,” I said, running a finger along the cream-colored wallpaper that Eld had picked out. Glori had helped ensure that it fitted our new station, so there was gilded filigree worked into it. “Reading between the lines, she wants me to feed her information that will give her a leg up on the Doga.”
“She wants you to ask around the Painted Rock Quarto?” She glanced at me. “Because you grew up there?”
“No, she wants me poking around the Tip because I grew up in the gutter and the rich imagine we all huddle in that Quarto when we aren’t waiting on them.”
The Justice in Revenge Page 5
