“I’m sure he will,” Diane said. And when he finally let Tolliver go, there would be a comfortable pension to be paid out. . . . The duchess sighed inwardly. “When does Master Fenton begin?”
“Tomorrow,” the duke answered brightly. “I’ll ask him to share Tolliver’s office for now, but I think we might be able to have the annex off the library—you know, the room I was thinking of using as my study—I could modify it to suit Rafe.”
Diane took another sip of her wine. The anticipatory tone in her husband’s voice set her nerves on edge. “Do you intend for Master Fenton to live in the house, my dear? Would you like me to have the servants prepare a room for him in the attic?”
The duke’s face flushed slightly. “Oh, I don’t want to trouble you.”
She noted her husband’s equivocacy, but chose to not press him for now. “If I may ask, what is Master Fenton’s background? His course of study?”
“He’s a brilliant scholar,” the duke enthused. “He shares my interest in natural philosophy, and you know how much I enjoy my University work. Are you worried about his qualifications, my dear?”
She smiled prettily. “Oh, no, I’m sure you know better than I do whether he is qualified.”
The duke returned the smile warmly. “I can assure you, he will be perfect for the job. He comes from a well-placed trading family. I’m not sure what sort of goods they specialize in, but I know how careful you are with household expenses. Perhaps Rafe can help you with that, too.”
The very idea incensed the duchess. As if she would allow a stranger to have any knowledge of the Tremontaine finances, even if the knowledge related only to the price of turnips. “I wouldn’t wish to burden him with details, my dear. But I appreciate knowing that he will be at my disposal if necessary.”
The duke looked a bit nonplussed. “Of course, my love. Any secretary of mine is at your service as well.”
She smiled at her husband again. Her cheeks hurt from it.
The footmen entered the dining room with the main course of roast pheasant and root vegetables in a cream sauce. Once the duchess had been served, she picked up her knife and fork and sliced evenly through the meat. It was beautifully seasoned, but she had little appetite. The fact that her husband was lying to her about this Rafe Fenton made her wonder if he would lie to her about other things as well. This was something she would not allow. It showed a lack of respect for her and all the work she had done—and was still doing—to maintain Tremontaine.
“How was your day, my dear?” the duke said, cutting into the silence. “Any news?”
“Great news!” she said with false brightness, to see if she could make him laugh, or even look at her as if she were really there. “I’ve accepted Lady Halliday’s invitation to her garden party next week.” She made a moue. “And I’m afraid you, too, are expected to attend, as the gentlemen will be there as well.”
“I’ll tell Rafe to make a note of it,” the duke said, ignoring her completely.
He seemed quite hungry, polishing off his pheasant within minutes. The footman was waiting with more, and as her husband cut into his second portion, Diane forced herself to continue eating her own. The fury that had swelled inside her during supper seemed to coalesce in a hot lump lodged in her throat. The cream sauce was one of Cook’s finest, but it was all Diane could do to swallow it.
“Rafe is on the verge of quite a revolutionary discovery,” the duke said enthusiastically. “All he needs is a bit of time and space to finish his research. He lives over by the University in a positively ramshackle set of rooms that are surely horrible for intellectual cogitation. I was thinking . . . Highcombe is empty for the summer, is it not?”
Diane nearly dropped her knife and fork in shock. “Highcombe, my dear? Whatever made you think of that place? It hasn’t been opened up in years.”
“I spent time there when I was a boy; I remember early spring being especially glorious. I’m sure it would only take a week or two to make it habitable again,” the duke said. “Of course, I know you’re much too busy to leave town this season, but I could take Rafe with me out to the country, enjoy some fishing, maybe, and some riding, while he finishes his research. When he returns he can sit his exams, gain his degree, and then he can join my staff with the status of a full University doctor. Quite a coup for Tremontaine! Yes, yes, have Tolliver send a man out to Highcombe straightaway.”
“My dear, I wish you would wait a bit on that,” Diane said, ignoring the clammy chill that had risen on her skin. “I—I think there’s been some trouble with—with mice at Highcombe. I know there was something wrong there, because, remember? We were speaking of letting it out this year. And they told me there was something— Of course, if you want it, it’s yours, but let me send someone to take a look at it first, shall I?”
“If you insist, my love. In fact, I could go out and look myself!”
“No, no, you have the Council meeting to worry about. Let me handle the estates,” Diane assured him, investing her voice with all the warmth she could muster—which, at the moment, was very little. No one must go to Highcombe, not until the estate was safely out of danger from the loan. Especially not William; she needed him here.
Diane continued to slice her pheasant into tinier and tinier bites, as it would not do for anyone to notice her lack of appetite. “My dear William,” she said steadily, “tell me a bit more about these scholarly interests that Rafe Fenton has. I’m curious to know how they dovetail with your own.”
The duke beamed at her and began to speak.
Tess Hocking’s studio was warmly lit by a large oil lamp that shed a gentle, steady light over the rectangular sheet of paper that Kaab had given her. Tess leaned closer to the paper, studying the red and black signs and numbers, and reached out to touch the material. “This is not the kind of paper I normally see,” she said.
“It is called huun,” Kaab explained. “I have an extra piece for you to use.” She unrolled another sheet of huun from the case she had secreted in the inner pocket of her cloak.
Tess took the sheet and said, “You want me to transcribe this . . . incorrectly?”
“Yes. Substitute this symbol for this one.” Kaab turned the printed sheet of huun over and picked up one of Tess’s ink pens to write out the substitutions.
“Hmm. Normally, when I’m hired, my clients want me to be accurate, not make mistakes.” Tess gave Kaab a frankly curious glance. “Why? Are you really a chocolate merchant?”
The light turned Tess’s skin rosy, and Kaab wanted to reach out and caress the soft curve of her cheek. “Yes, I am. My family, the Balam, were the first chocolate Traders ever to come to the City. But this is an unusual situation. Are you able to do it?”
Tess cocked her head to one side, her lips pursing.
Such kissable lips, Kaab thought, and almost leaned forward.
“It’ll cost extra,” Tess said, and smiled at her.
Kaab laughed. “Of course it will. How much extra?”
“You’ll have to bring me some of that chocolate—the drink of the gods, you said?”
Kaab took one step closer and extended a hand to Tess. This was how the Locals struck deals, wasn’t it? “The drink of the gods is yours,” she said.
Tess took Kaab’s proffered hand, and Kaab held it for a moment. The sturdy fingers were calloused and ink-stained with many colors: the mark of her profession. Tess flushed, her pale skin showing the rush of blood like a fire across her cheeks.
“Give me a week or two,” Tess said, “and your mistake-riddled sheet of huun will be ready.”
“I will.” Kaab didn’t want to leave, but she had to return home to the Balam compound; her aunt and uncle were surely wondering where she was. Tess picked up a small lamp to light Kaab’s way down the stairs to the street, but before Kaab descended she turned back to Tess. “I should tell you about something I discovered today,” Kaab said.
Tess’s eyebrows drew together. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
/>
“Before I went inside the Three Dogs, I looked at Ben’s body outside.”
Tess went stiff as a board. “What?”
“I’m sorry. He was murdered.”
“How do you know that?” she demanded.
“He was killed in a way that showed it was deliberate.”
Tess looked frightened. “How could you tell?”
“I’ve seen these things before.”
Tess’s gaze narrowed on her. “Where? Who are you, really?”
Kaab hesitated. She was attracted to Tess, that was true, but speaking to a beautiful girl of murder—with her protector lying cold and stiff nearby, no less—was certainly not the best way to seduce her. Finally Kaab said, “I’m no one to you, I know that, but I hope to be a friend.”
Tess shook her head. “Why? You don’t know me or Ben.”
“If Ben was murdered, you might not be safe,” Kaab said. “He could have been killed for protecting you. You do dangerous work.”
“I told you before, I have a fortnight. No one in Riverside will harm me while I’m in mourning.”
“What will you do when the fortnight is over?” Tess just shook her head. “And outside Riverside?” Kaab pressed her. “Across the Bridge? There is a whole great city out there right now, where even your mourning won’t protect you.”
Tess looked at her thoughtfully. “You really are worried, aren’t you? You’re a different one, Kaab. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you.”
The way the lamplight turned Tess’s skin into shades of strawberries and cream was simply irresistible. Kaab knew that she was about to ignore her father’s instructions to stay out of trouble.
“I will find out why Ben was killed,” Kaab said. Before Tess could do more than draw a single, startled breath, Kaab went to her and kissed her on the cheek: a brief, fleeting brush of her lips across Tess’s heated skin. Kaab promised, “I will find out for you.”
Episode Five:
The Dagger and
the Sword
Alaya Dawn Johnson
The young foreigner had been fighting all challengers for the last two hours. She wasn’t large for a woman, and yet gave the impression of height. Her hair, perhaps, which had begun in two thick braids wrapped curiously around her head and had long since transformed into two unraveling streamers that whipped about her face as she turned and tumbled and struck. She fought with rapier and dagger, handling the smaller blade with notably more assurance than the longer weapon. As a swordswoman, her skills stumbled on the bad side of mediocre—except at certain moments, when she would move like a snake in the water; then her challenger might find himself on the striking end of her dagger and be forced to concede the fight. The gathered crowd jeered the losers then. But they were fickle friends: They jeered the young woman plenty too.
Two hours into the spectacle, the press in the Old Market prevented all but the most determined drunkards from entering the Maiden’s Fancy. So in this unseasonal dog-heat of early spring, the serving girls waded through the crowd with professional elbows to take orders in the square. Even to the jaded denizens of Riverside, training ground of the greatest swordsmen of the City, the sight of a foreign woman in tight-fitting men’s clothes issuing challenges by the trash-filled mermaid fountain in the Old Market was a more than sufficient spectacle.
The foreign woman had long since kicked her fine leather boots to the edge of the space, a traditional Riverside challenge spot marked by a rough ring of broken and gapped cobbles.
A pair of hungry boys had eyed those fine-tooled shoes with professional avarice before a redheaded woman, gorgeous and plump, grabbed them herself and scowled at the boys. They shrugged and melted back into the crowd, eyes sharp for a hint of treasure. Just because Riversiders were poor didn’t mean they had nothing to steal.
The redhead, now awkwardly clutching her friend’s boots in addition to an overstuffed leather bag, seemed oddly distracted. After all, the fighting was being done in her name: Tess the Hand as they called her, the best forger in Riverside, both skilled and affordable. Her protector had been the pretty swordsman Ben, who hadn’t looked so pretty when the clam women downriver, picking barefoot through the mud for the clams exposed at morning’s low tide, discovered his body among their harvest. Two weeks ago that was, and Tess the Hand was on the market for a new protector with a strong arm who wouldn’t expect sexual favors in exchange for the service.
A young man, soberly dressed in black and doeskin brown, whose measured stride still implied a swagger, edged through the crowd in a slow spiral. He had been among the first to pause and watch when the foreign woman issued her challenge.
“I go against any who dares cross blades with me,” she had called with a calm pride that lanced through the normal bustle of market day like a sword’s thrust. “And I will choose the next protector of Tess the Hand from among those who best me.” She spoke well, the foreign woman, like someone who had studied the language but was still accustoming herself to its shape on her tongue.
The young man had lived in Riverside for a time and made himself a reputation among those who cared about the sword. He was tall and lithe, brunet and not quite handsome, except for his eyes—green and gold and framed by curling pale lashes—which could have been his vanity, were he a man who cared less about the sword.
His name was Vincent Applethorpe, and watching the sweaty young woman fight so badly and so well in her unusually bare feet, he began to wonder if he had, at last, fallen in love.
Her latest opponent was one of the many swordsmen who frequented the Maiden’s Fancy: Alaric, a short, heavyset Northerner capable of surprising bursts of speed. He was not clever, nor an artist, but he was vicious and not above foul play, provided he could get away with it. He was also fresh and well rested. He was dewy with the first ten minutes’ exertion, but only because he was playing to the crowd, toying with his opponent. The foreigner seemed to know this. She kept her eyes on his sword. (His face! Vincent had wanted to shout more than once since the match had begun. Watch his eyes; they’ll tell you what his hands will do!) She dodged Alaric’s blows or blocked them as best she could. She seemed too tired to attack. Or perhaps she was waiting for a certain kind of opening, something that favored those enviably fluid foreign moves.
Alaric feinted left and right, and when that didn’t so much as prompt her to move her blades, he aimed his next blow, without any fuss at all, at her exposed neck. The crowd had time for half a breath. The foreigner wouldn’t have had time even for that. She raised her dagger for the parry at the last moment. She fell to one knee with a force that jarred those who knew what that cost her and then rolled to one side. She spat a few words in a language that Vincent didn’t understand, though from their tone he gathered they were not polite.
The foreigner stumbled to her feet. “I concede!”
That should have been that, but she did not lower her weapon, which Vincent thought was only prudent, given that she had barely avoided a killing blow that Alaric had no business employing in a demonstration match.
Alaric laughed and advanced. “We go to first blood, remember?”
He gave the woman no time to reply. Each of his relentless blows could have killed her had they landed. The challenge had never been to blood—if it had, the woman would be bleeding in half a dozen places from the duels she had already found. Someone had to stop this fight.
Vincent pushed himself to the front of the crowd, near where the redheaded forger was standing.
“She conceded!” the redhead screamed, along with a number of supporters. But other, more bloodthirsty Riversiders seemed to appreciate the spectacle and sided with Alaric. This side shouted, “First blood!” as though this had ever been a fair fight.
“What’s that, girl?” Alaric said as he hammered the foreigner. “You talk like you have marbles in your mouth. Speak civilized!”
“I concede!” the foreigner shouted again. Alaric lunged, and she slid beneath his attack in a move so chancy
it struck Vincent as suicidal. She slashed his shoulder and danced back out again. Alaric’s blade whistled through the air where she had been and threw sparks on the cobbles.
It was relief, Vincent thought later—and the shrieks of the crowd—that distracted him from anticipating Alaric’s next move. No one would continue a duel when his opponent had yielded and then drawn blood in the same elegant breath.
No one but a certain Northern swordsman who would rather murder than let it be said he was bested by a woman.
The foreigner turned, exhausted but grinning. She saluted the blushing redhead, and Alaric swung his foot and kicked her in the back of her knees. The foreigner fell hard. Her rapier clattered on the stones. And Alaric moved in.
“Kaab!” the redhead screamed. “Help her, you gaping idiots!”
Vincent Applethorpe stepped forward.
72 hours earlier
“But this isn’t right, Rafe,” said Micah, not for the first time that afternoon.
Rafe looked down despairingly at his mug of half-drunk chocolate, the syrupy concoction of over-skimmed milk and dark sugar that might have once touched a few shavings of cacao, but not very good cacao, and not for very long. The Inkpot had perhaps the worst chocolate in the City.
“You have mentioned that,” Rafe said, “a few times.” He looked again at the pages of navigational tables written in a neat but crabbed hand, the sum of Micah’s feverish work for the last two weeks. And, according to Micah, entirely wrong.
“Yes, four times, but I wasn’t sure if you had heard me.”
“I heard you.”
“Oh.” Micah looked nonplussed. The boy leaned forward and peered at Rafe, as though that could help him decipher the bland insouciance of Rafe’s tone. Rafe rested his head on his open right palm, like a sunflower too heavy for its stem, and tried to focus on the details of Micah’s latest discovery—if you could use a term so hopeful to describe the apparent failure of two whole weeks of work. Even using artificial numbers, Micah said, the tables came out wrong. There was some fundamental disconnect between the way that their people’s navigators had always calculated distances and the reality of sailing a ship across the gently curved surface of the earth.
Tremontaine Season 1 Saga Omnibus Page 19
