Chapter Four
Tesara slipped in through the side gate, latching it behind her. The rusty iron groaned in the wet, foggy air. She scurried to the servants’ entrance. As expected, light spilled out of the kitchen into the dank hallway, a warm, cosy light from the whale oil lamps and the fire. Mrs Francini was hard at work. She could hear pots banging in the kitchen and masculine whistling coming from the butler’s pantry. Albero, the young butler, was up and about. She could hear the homely kitchen clock on the mantel chime six.
Drat. She had returned home later than she expected. She had no wish to face Mrs Francini’s or Albero’s disapproval.
Tesara held her breath and sidled down the narrow hall past the kitchen. The lovely smell of porridge, sausages, and coffee wafted through the house. Even though it was just the girls and Uncle Samwell now, Mrs Francini put on a full spread. Tesara’s stomach growled and she threw one more glance back at the kitchen – and ran smack into Noe, the new housemaid.
“Oh!” The maid, a thin nervous girl with stringy blonde hair and a small straight mouth, dropped her bundle of linens.
“Oh! Sorry!” Tesara whisper-shouted. “Let me help.”
“Oh, no, Miss Tesara, I can do it.”
“No, it was my fault, sorry.”
They both knelt to pick up the linens and bumped heads. Tesara saw stars.
“Miss Tesara!” Noe snapped. “Let me do it, miss. You’re a sight and you’re getting everything all filthy.”
Just like a rich merchant’s daughter, to make more work for me, was the not-so-implied undertone.
“All right!” Tesara said, guilty and annoyed. She got to her feet, but the damage was done.
“Miss Tesara, is that you?” Mrs Francini said, coming out of the kitchen. She took in Tesara’s bedraggled appearance, and her tight-lipped expression gave Tesara to understand that she was just – barely – holding her tongue on her opinion. Tesara was surprised at how low that made her feel, to have disappointed the kind cook. She had been so patient with Tesara when she had been impersonating a maid, and had forgiven her when it had all been found out. Had it been Alinesse, Tesara would surely have been impertinent with her. Instead, she said humbly, “I’m so sorry, Mrs Francini – and Noe – I didn’t want to make a fuss and bother you.”
Noe snorted and stomped off.
Mrs Francini sighed. “Change your clothes, Miss Tesara. Noe will see to your dress.”
Tesara was in her dressing gown toweling her hair, the silk gown given over to Noe’s capable hands and surly demeanor, when a quiet knock came at the door. Yvienne poked her head in.
“May I?”
Tesara nodded. Yvienne entered and sat down on the bed, leaning back against the headboard, hugging the pillow. In her dressing gown and with her loose braid, she looked shockingly young and far less severe than the face she usually presented to the world. When she spoke, though, she was her usual forthright self.
“How was your night?”
“One thousand guilders, clear,” Tesara said. She met Yvienne’s eyes in the mirror, and her sister was gratifyingly shocked. “Mrs Fayres is depositing it into my account tomorrow.”
“Good God,” Yvienne said, simply stunned.
“Unfortunately, there’s bad news. I’ve been banned.”
“What did you do?” Yvienne said.
“Vivi! I’m insulted.”
“Tes…”
“All right,” Tesara said with a sulk. She explained about the lieutenant. “He was abominable, Vivi. You would have approved.”
“I do approve, Tes, but if people start to talk…” Yvienne stopped.
They would put two and two together, and soon it would get about exactly what happened the night Trune disappeared, and all the other strange things that happened around the younger Mederos girl. They would even, potentially, tie her back to the missing fleet. Tesara began to work a comb through her hair, studying her reflection in the shadowy mirror. “It doesn’t matter,” she said lightly, refusing to meet her sister’s eyes. “I’ll just find a new game.”
“Is that wise?” Yvienne asked. “Mrs Fayres’s establishment is one thing; she’s a smart businesswoman. She knows what would happen to her if anything happened to you. But any of the other gambling dens or casinos – they’re barely a step up from the docks.”
Tesara rolled her eyes. “I’m not Uncle Samwell. I wouldn’t play on the docks. I’m just saying there are other establishments that are of a respectable level with Mrs Fayres’s.”
“And what if there’s another lieutenant and another ban, and another? Word will get out, Tes. Remember Trune.”
“Trune’s long gone,” Tesara pointed out.
“There will always be men like him, who seek to use your talents to their advantage.”
“If it’s all I have, shouldn’t I use it?” Tesara said. At Yvienne’s protest she lifted a hand. “I’m not like you, Vivi. I can do two things. I can make odd things happen, and I can gamble. I’d rather not do the first, and now I’m banned from the second. I’m not sure what else I can do.”
To her credit, Yvienne didn’t try to dissuade her. “You’re right,” she said at last. “I know. I just wish–”
The muffled sound of something dropping outside the door caught their attention. Tesara and Yvienne immediately silenced and looked at one another. Tesara gave a quizzical shrug at Yvienne’s questioning look. She tiptoed over to her door, then pulled it wide.
It was Noe, scrambling to pick up the same armful of linens that Tesara had knocked out of her arms before breakfast.
“Oh!” both girls said. Yvienne came up behind Tesara.
“I can help now. I’m all clean,” Tesara said, her voice bright.
“No!” Noe almost shouted it, and she gathered up the sheets in a careless wad. “Let me be to do my work, miss.”
She hurried off, trailing a bit of sheet and treading on it.
“What was that about?” Yvienne said, staring after the departing girl.
“I didn’t know there was that much laundry,” Tesara said. She gave a guilty thought to the dress she had so heedlessly added to Noe’s workload. “Maybe that’s why she doesn’t like me.”
“Interesting,” Yvienne said, lost in thought.
“What? Laundry?”
“Not that. And you’re imagining things. She barely talks to me. No, I meant about the linens. All the sheets were changed and aired last night, and the linen warmer is downstairs by the kitchen.”
That was true. “She had them this morning, too. I bumped right into her outside the dining room,” Tesara said.
“Someone carrying an armful of linens could reasonably be considered to have legitimate business, going from one place to another in a household,” Yvienne mused.
“So if she were found loitering outside a closed door, for instance, she was just walking past and could never be suspected of eavesdropping,” Tesara finished. “What do you think she’s plotting?”
“Whatever it is, she’s quite inept,” Yvienne said. “It rather makes me long for Mathilde. Now there was a conniving maid. We should keep an eye on her, nonetheless.”
“Agreed,” Tesara said. She stifled a yawn. The night’s excitement and the morning’s emotion caught up to her all of a sudden. “Sorry. Long night.”
Yvienne gave her a teasing smile. “It’s going to be a long day, too.”
“What! Why?” Then Tesara remembered. With a groan, she flung herself onto her bed. She had been so looking forward to a long, leisurely sleep, rising only for tea… “Elenor Charvantes’s luncheon.”
“Indeed.” Yvienne looked at the small watch pinned to her bodice. “By my calculation, you have time for a nap only.”
“Oh, Vivi, must I go? I’m so tired.” Tesara knew she sounded much like her twelve year-old self but she didn’t care. After last night, the last thing she wanted was to visit with merchant women and their daughters, all of whom would
be angling for gossip about the two Mederos sisters and their errant parents.
“Nonsense. This is Elenor’s first informal party as a married woman. Of course we’re going. Better get some sleep – I’ll wake you in time to dress.”
Chapter Five
A knock interrupted Abel Fresnel as he finished tying his tie at the round mirror over the cheap deal dresser. He picked up the small pearl-handled pistol on the battered dressing table and palmed it. It was a lady’s gun but no less dangerous for all that. He liked the way it felt in his hand.
He positioned himself behind the door, ready to slam it closed if he didn’t like what was on the other side.
“Who is it?”
“Front desk, Mr Fresnel. You have two letters, sir.”
Still cautious, Abel opened the door. The eager clerk waited with his post, his starched collar already wilting under the pomade applied to his hair. “And may I just say, sir, how honored we at the Bailet are–”
“Thanks,” Abel said, taking the letters and closing the door on the clerk, with just enough time to see the man’s expression turn from expectant to crestfallen. One of the occupational hazards of the Harrier profession was hero worship. The least the hotel could have done was put him up in a better room, if they expected to fawn over him, he thought. The space was small, cramped, and narrow. It was little more than a sailor’s rest, but at least Abel had the place to himself. He could put the washbasin outside the door when he finished, and a maid came by and emptied it. There was a water closet at the end of the hall. Best of all, Abel was able to jigger the lock to his room so that the master key wouldn’t be able to open it.
The first letter was an invitation to come to the Charvantes house for a meeting with the Merchants’ Guild to:
discuss the tenor and direction of the investigation into the criminal and civil activities of former Guild liaison P. Trune.
The other note was a letter from his mother, to idle eyes anyway. Abel ignored the florid, breathless feminine script littered with phrases about how she missed her darling son, her rheumatism, and gossip about the neighbors. He ran his fingers across the rough paper, picking up the tiny pricks and bumps of a carefully lettered code.
Contact in Port Saint Frey has identified the younger Mederos girl as an unnatural. Find her and bring her in alive. Exercise extreme caution. She is believed dangerous.
An unnatural. No wonder Doc had a special interest. The Harrier Agency was always looking for unnaturals – and if Doc couldn’t find them, he had ways to encourage the talents of his Harriers. Abel wondered if Doc had sent him to Port Saint Frey with this second job in mind or if it had come to his attention after Abel had been dispatched. The letter was undated and unfranked, meaning it hadn’t come by the mail coaches that trundled along the coast. While that passage was secure, the mail took ten days and multiple stages to carry letters between Great Lake and Port Saint Frey. Doc had sent this coded letter via the express riders who galloped their spry, lean ponies down through the Chahoki empire and across the Desert Sea. The fearless riders were able to shave the time to five days, but they were expensive, and many a letter pouch languished under the bones of a painted pony and its orphan rider, shot down by Chahoki horse soldiers wielding their fearsome repeating rifles. Doc was lucky though; his letters always got through.
This was the first instruction he had received since he had come to town two days ago. Three weeks previously a request for the services of the Harrier Detecting Agency came to Doc Farrissey’s offices in Great Lake. Doc had dispatched Abel alone, and he had made the journey via stagecoach westward through Chahoki territory and then down the coast through the Ravenne Protectorate. He had sent word to Guild headquarters that he had arrived and waited orders. This was the first time they deigned to reach out to him.
Abel had not been cooling his heels for the last two days. He was a Harrier, and a Harrier always got his man, and part of that success had to do with understanding the client as well as their target. He had the kind of unassuming demeanor that made people comfortable, and he listened – to the gossip, the constables, the gents o’ the night who would ramble on for the cost of a glass of whiskey or a pint of ale. He had gleaned a lot in the past two days, and all of it would be enormously useful in both of his jobs – the one for the Guild, and the one for Doc. Because while Doc might have thought the two were completely unrelated, Abel had discovered that the Guild, the Guildmaster, and now the unnatural younger Mederos girl, were all entirely intertwined. And after meeting the self-possessed elder sister, he was more certain than ever that whatever happened during the Great Fraud, the girls had something to do with it.
When Abel was eight years old, nearly twenty years before, his father indentured him to Doc Farrissey as an errand boy. A roof over his head and a trade and not too many beatings – it was the best he could hope for. He liked being told to run fast on his deliveries, and he liked threading through the crowds, his wiry little body ducking and dodging, taking all the short cuts at a sprint. He didn’t like the cursing and the beating, and he didn’t like the fact that he never had enough to eat, and he missed his mother. Once he took time out after delivering a message to one of Doc’s cronies to divert down a familiar alleyway to his old house. There he perched like a small gargoyle on top of a back wall and watched his mother hanging out clothes in the narrow strip of yard behind the house. He almost called out to her when his father saw him and gave a yell.
Abel had been so startled he fell off the wall, had the wind knocked out of him, and was caught by the old man. He got beaten twice – once by his father, who told him never to come back, that it was a breach of contract; and once by Doc.
When he was nine, he was summoned to Doc’s office. Doc was a big man, with a big stomach and a big black beard. To a kid, he was a giant. He handed Abel a thimbleful of liquid and told him to drink. For all Abel knew, it was strong spirits. He drank eagerly, thinking it was a sign that Doc would treat him like one of the big boys, and almost immediately his throat and stomach burned as if he had drunk lye. He couldn’t scream, just clawed and grasped at his throat, and when it was over and he was still alive, Doc knelt beside him and put Abel’s limp fingers around his wrist.
“What can you tell?”
“Everything,” Abel managed to whisper.
Doc chuckled. “I knew you had it in you, boy. Just needed to bring it out.”
By the time he was fifteen, he very nearly didn’t need to touch his target to know if they were hiding something. He could almost tell their very thoughts, but he usually didn’t need that much detail. Emotion, unease, small tics and changes in expression – all were as revealing as a confession.
Doc always said it took an unnatural to find an unnatural. This wasn’t the first time he had been tasked to bring in such a person of interest. Dangerous though she might be, the Mederos girl stood no chance against a Harrier.
Whistling, Abel sauntered down the stairs to breakfast in the hotel dining room.
Chapter Six
WHAT PRICE PEACE OF MIND?
It has been six months since the scourge of Port Saint Frey, the so-called Gentleman Bandit, last terrorized the city. The Chief Constable and the city constabulary have pointedly said little about the progress of their investigation into the identity of the scoundrel and the likelihood of his capture, but their silence speaks volumes.
What is known is this – the Gentleman Bandit’s career ended as abruptly as it began and it coincided with another disappearance, that of Guildmaster Trune, the mastermind and perpetrator of the Great Fraud. Rumor has it that the curious events at the address of One Hundred Fourteen High Crescent were enlivened by the presence of the bandit, and that his role was both pivotal and yet unexplained.
The city has a right to know. Who is this man? Why has he not yet been apprehended? If he has given up his life of crime, will he walk among us unmolested by justice, or has he fled the city to take up his career among other peaceful
people?
We demand that the Chief Constable tell us what he plans to do to capture the Gentleman Bandit and bring him to justice.
Editors, The Gazette
Georges Kerrill, Head of House Kerrill, smacked the paper and threw it down on the gleaming oak table in Jax Charvantes’s billiards room, where the board members of the Merchants’ Guild met in conference with Abel Fresnel. “I’m telling you, Fresnel, you need to do something about this,” he said in his bullying way. “The whole town is going to hell in a handbasket.” He puffed on his cigar, blowing out a rich, acrid cloud. A golden brandy in a crystal snifter rested by his elbow.
Abel sat back, feigning ease to cover his irritation. Kerrill was one of those men he disliked the most – he had no understanding of power, and therefore wielded it like a bull in a china shop, rather than with surgical precision. Face it, he told himself. You just don’t like being yelled at.
“First things first, Mr Kerrill,” he said, his accent smooth and sophisticated, meant to intimidate. There was no point in laying on the country bumpkin routine he had tried on Miss Mederos. That would have been lost on Kerrill. “I’ve been hired to find your Guildmaster. Other crimes will have to wait.”
“Don’t groat and guilder me,” Kerrill said. He settled back into his armchair with irritation, his striped waistcoat straining over his bulk. “We’re paying you Harriers enough.”
With no warning, his son Amos cursed a bad shot at the billiards table, and smacked the cue onto the mahogany edge. “You’ve a rotten bad table, Charvantes.”
Abel didn’t have to look at Jax Charvantes to feel his wince from across the room.
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