She dismissed her maid and passed through the door to her inner salon alone.
She knew before she put her hand on the door that connected their rooms. The door was not thick, but neither were the sounds he made quiet. She knew. And yet she strode to the door and put her hand on the knob. Not with any intention of turning it. But, perhaps, to make it real.
The duchess felt suddenly cold, chilled to the bone. She grabbed a throw rug from the end of her bed, wrapped it around herself. Then she took one of the light, gilded chairs and placed it, silently and carefully, next to the door and listened to the sounds of her husband and his young lover. She listened until they were finished. She considered asking someone, a footman, when the secretary had arrived that day, how long he had been with the duke. It was a silly notion, immediately dismissed. They had been together for many hours, of course. Almost certainly as many hours as she had been away from the house.
Soon enough the pair began to talk. She recognized the tone in her husband’s voice, the velvet warmth of a man well sated, exhausted, and content.
“God, what’s the hour, Rafe?”
“Just past midnight. Why, should I leave?”
“Never. I order you to stay with me for the next century, at least.”
A young laugh, a momentary shuffle of sheets and limbs and sloppy kisses. “Won’t you tire of me, my lord?”
“I’m more likely to tire of air than I am to tire of you. Look at that, will you?”
“I can hardly take my eyes off it, Will.”
“You make me feel twenty years younger. But I must sleep. I have that blasted Council meeting tomorrow. Something to do with those chocolate traders that Diane has interested herself in. She says the vote will be central to improving our financial situation.”
“Ah, that,” said the boy, in the tone of one who has already had an earful. “Don’t you find it . . . odd that the duchess has interested herself to such a degree in trade? I hadn’t thought that a pastime of your set, in general.”
“Diane has always been unusual. Forward-thinking.”
“But your properties? Surely better to manage those than dabble in obscure trade agreements.”
William sighed. “Diane says that in these changing times, it pays to diversify our interests.”
“But, Will, how does that make any sense at all? I remember seeing a property of yours; we passed through with my father when we were going to Kingsport. Highcombe, I believe it was called. One of the jewels of Tremontaine. And my own father said that it was a pity you nobles didn’t take more to renting out your properties, because a man with money would pay a good deal to live in such impressive and agreeable surroundings.”
A pause. Diane’s grip on the edge of her chair tightened another fraction.
“You speak wisely, love. I grew up in Highcombe, and the idea of another man living there even for a few years is difficult for me. But we might easily come out of our current difficulties, as far as I understand them, with the rent it generates. I’m afraid, though, that Diane—”
“Hell’s bells, Will, if you tell me what Diane says one more time I will stop your mouth with my—”
“Sweet one, I might die of ecstasy if you do that, and no matter what you say, I must survive until this meeting tomorrow.”
The boy laughed. “Just as well. Even my stamina has limits. But I still think you should ask your Diane about Highcombe.” He laughed again. “Watch my own father put in a bid! Well, he might have if not for the cost of my sister’s dowry and trousseau.”
Diane released her grip on the edge of her chair with deliberate effort. Her fingers ached like an old woman’s. Like someone who had been holding too much, for too long. She had a sensation of weightlessness, the vertigo of an accustomed weight slipping away. It was the duke, it was her William, so famously content in his marriage. So content at such great effort. Could he fail her now? For this presumptuous new lover who so blithely encouraged him to pursue a trail he must not follow? The duke’s initial interest in bringing Rafe to Highcombe had been easily deflected. But William could not be allowed to even guess the real reason for her reluctance to visit—let alone to rent. The real reason was breathtaking enough that even she attempted not to think of it directly for very long.
Quite simply, she had mortgaged Highcombe.
And if she could not push through these tax breaks for the Balams, she would not be able to maintain her payments on the loans she had taken to invest in the unmitigated disaster of the Everfair. And if she could not pay her loans, her collateral would be seized. Her collateral, the jewel of the Tremontaine country holdings and William’s childhood home: Highcombe and its lands. Their position in society would never recover from such a public shame. Nor would her standing with William. She stood to lose everything.
It was, quite possibly, the most terrifying sensation she had experienced in seventeen years.
She moved from the door, so that the lovers’ conversation quickly faded to murmurs and sighs. Many years ago, she had installed a panel in the wall beside her vanity, cleverly disguised by gilt moldings of holly sprays and a green man. It swung outward silently, revealing another, smaller device. This required three keys to open, turned in a specific order, a specific number of times. When this was done, Diane looked at the sparse contents. A modest leather purse, cracked with age and disuse. A small brooch of tarnished copper embossed with a trefoil and a healer’s staff, characteristic of certain Northern country hospitals. And a newer addition, carefully placed to the right of the others. She stared at this object for a long time, until the noises from the room behind her subsided into silence. She locked it all away again, satisfied.
William was aware of the importance of the meeting tomorrow. He wouldn’t fail her in that. And when they had navigated this turn in the river, she would find a way to cow that meddlesome secretary. She would find a way to make the Duke Tremontaine hers again, and to renew the fortunes of their house.
Kaab meandered through the crowd with her two mugs of beer, ostensibly making her way to Tess, but really watching for anyone who seemed unduly interested in the drama of Tess’s “lost” forgeries. She spotted a pair of boys who were eyeing her bag as if it contained two dozen sweet tamales, but Kaab doubted that they had the wherewithal for murder, thievery, and blackmail. Give them a few years, she thought in Tess’s wry, nasal accent, and laughed shortly.
As she stood there, sipping absently from both mugs and accepting condolences and congratulations and advice with a general air of befuddlement and woefully inadequate grammar, she caught something. A man, who had a moment before seemed as blandly normal as the rest of those in the outer ring surrounding Tess, froze. He adjusted his weight. He pushed back his sword. He transformed through this and a dozen other subtle rearrangements from a tourist wearing a sword he had no idea how to use to a swordsman or a spy, reassessing new information. Then he twitched again and the impression faded so quickly that someone else might have decided it had been her imagination. Kaab, however, had not been raised to waste either time or opportunity. She moved purposefully back to Tess, and when she had come close enough she tripped slightly and spilled some beer on her vest.
“God’s blood,” she swore, as Tess had instructed her.
“Hey, save me some, will you? Don’t leave it all on your shirt!” Tess was doing that thing again, where she didn’t shout but her voice could be heard across the square. Everyone laughed. Including her quarry. Kaab bumped into him lightly as she approached Tess. Tess’s gaze flicked to him and then back at Kaab, who nodded slightly.
They clinked their mugs and settled on the steps at the edge of the portico.
“Now?” Tess whispered.
“Now.”
It would have fooled most observers. Kaab would have to get Tess to teach her the trick when all of this was over. Tess reached down with her left hand, fished in her bag with her right, and when she came up, her left was clutching two slightly dirty sketches of a compass watch
hung on a heavy chain—almost a locket, but not quite.
A hard-eyed serving girl at the Maiden’s Fancy paused on her way with a fresh beer delivery and clucked her tongue so hard the sound bounced off the stone. “Don’t tell me you dropped them, Tess!”
“Well, what do you want me to tell you, Rosalie?” Tess blushed and stuffed them back into the bag at her feet. She gave the impression of haste while taking a full twenty seconds, just in case anyone interested had missed the papers’ miraculous reappearance.
“That someone called Tess the Hand ought not be such a butterfingers. How you ever spent so much as an evening serving beer at the Three Dogs is a wonder to me.”
Tess made a sour face. “Why do you think I found myself a trade that better suits my talents?”
Rosalie just laughed at that. “Lucky you!”
The man Kaab had noticed earlier didn’t reveal his interest in such an obvious way as before, but it was clear enough now that she knew what to look for. She reached for Tess’s mug, abandoned on the steps during the sleight of hand over the sketches, and leaned in to hand it to her.
“One last fight should be enough,” she murmured. “Watch him so that you can draw him later.”
“Got it.”
Vincent Applethorpe, her savior and her challenger, was sitting on the lip of the fountain, tossing and catching a brass minnow. He caught Kaab looking and nodded politely. The thrill of their hunt combined with the excitement of a challenge from one who might truly teach her something about this delicate dance of swordsmanship made her forget her exhaustion. Kaab was, at once, ready to fight again.
“Well then,” she said. She started to stand, but Tess stopped her with a hand on her arm. Kaab nearly jumped from her skin.
“Wait,” Tess said.
“What is it?”
“Applethorpe—do you trust him? I don’t want you to die for this, Kaab.”
“I won’t die! I’m Ixkaab—”
“Balam, first daughter of a first daughter, yes I heard that. But you’re still bleeding, for the Land’s sake!”
Kaab looked down at her shoulder, where one of her earlier opponents had scored first blood before she found the rules of challenge could include a simple yield. She felt surprised to see that Tess was right. The flow had mostly stopped. It wasn’t any great wound. But she was so touched by Tess’s concern that she didn’t say anything. She just brushed the flyaway hair that framed Tess’s sweaty forehead and smiled.
“I’ll be fine, my sunset maize flower. This man is honorable. You will see. But for now you must let me go.”
She did love it when Tess blushed. She didn’t love it so much when she lost that sparking connection of Tess’s hand on her bare arm. But she turned as though she did not mind at all. And by the time she had crossed the chalked line of the fighting ring, she mostly didn’t. Vincent awaited her, blades drawn, a cocky smile unsheathed.
“Fight as dirty as you want, Mistress Balam,” he said. “I’ll still best you.”
“Fight well,” Kaab said, “and it will be an honor to lose to you.”
They tapped their blades in the ritual salute.
And they began.
30 hours earlier
Kaab had never learned to sleep well in the cold, even covered by extra mantles and furs. Her nose began to feel like a foreign appendage, so much colder than the rest of her that she often woke unable to feel it. Whenever Traders from the great mountain lakes complained about the heat of her home, she would think in wonder that their noses must be made of jade.
So she was once again only drowsing in fits, and dreaming thin smears of images that dissipated instantly upon opening her eyes, when someone rapped softly upon her door.
“What is it?”
“Mistress Ixkaab,” said the voice of one of their Local servants. “A woman has come to see you. She refuses to leave. I thought to ask your aunt, but if you would like—”
Kaab leaped from her sleeping mat and rushed to open the door.
“Who is she?”
The gatekeeper gaped like a monkey to see Kaab clad only in the simple knee-length blouse that she used for sleeping.
“A City girl, Mistress Ixkaab.” He spoke to the floor rather than risking another look. “A Riverside girl, if I’m any judge of the accent. I would have turned that sort away immediately, but she said that she knew you, and that she had business of a . . . delicate kind with you.”
Kaab winced and wanted to laugh. Her reputation had so preceded her that this servant had violated protocol and approached her directly. Either he thought that Tess was her latest paramour or integral to some secret Balam business—and after all, either way, he would not be entirely wrong.
“You did well to come here first,” said Kaab. “I’ll get dressed.”
Her female cousins slept in the quarters to either side of her; they would surely hear every word she said if she held the conversation in here. She hurriedly tied on a skirt, fastened it with her shortest belt, and laced on her sandals as minimal protection against the persistent mud. Her hair she left down, like a young girl.
When she was ready, the servant led her down the stairs, through the garden and toward the west gate, the one most commonly used by servants. She felt grateful for this, because it was the farthest away from the family quarters and made it less likely that her aunt or uncle would wake and hear something suspicious.
Tess was waiting by the gate, with the Kinwiinik servant who shared night guard duty. She was clutching her cloak tightly around her, but she still shivered. She jerked when Kaab came into view and then wiped her eyes. Kaab wanted to run to her, but she knew she couldn’t in front of these servants, however discreet they might be. Instead Kaab walked up calmly and greeted the second gatekeeper in Kindaan. Then she pulled a handful of cacao beans from her pocket. They were of very high quality, no small bribe. She gave half to each of the men.
“I appreciate your service,” she said, “and your silence on this delicate matter.”
The Local eyed the beans as if she had handed him some chia seeds, but the Kinwiinik elbowed him hard in the side and they both bowed to her.
“Of course, Mistress Ixkaab,” said the Kinwiinik. “Perhaps you would like to converse with the lady in the gatehouse?”
The tiny observation room, a Local invention, was built into the top of the wall. It would not offer perfect seclusion, but it was fine for their purposes. She thanked the man sincerely and turned at last to Tess. The forger followed Kaab with a trust that was as heartbreaking as it was baffling, given how they had ended their last conversation.
“What happened?” Kaab asked, when they were finally alone in the tower. Tess sat in the chair facing the compound, while Kaab had the view of the darkened street, which framed Tess’s drawn face and red eyes.
“You keep saying that Ben was killed deliberately. For a reason.”
“I think it likely,” Kaab said. “Because of the kind of knife wound I saw that day.”
Tess nodded, too many times. She glanced up at Kaab, wiped her eyes again, and began to rock back and forth in the seat. Her hands, Kaab noticed, were stained a peculiar shade of cerulean blue. A shade she recognized, because it was the color the learned scribes of her people used to paint the night sky in their codices. Kaab wished she could touch those hands, kiss them. But she stayed where she was.
“They came back,” Tess said at last. “I was in this time. Napping. They didn’t go into the bedroom, far as I know. But when I woke up, someone had left me a package. On my desk. Even locked the fucking door behind them!”
Tess started to shake again. Kaab felt the hardness coming on her, the stillness of the sacred rock pools of her home, the steadiness of Xamanek, the north star. She had felt this a few times before, but never in conversation, never with another person. The stillness was too great for even surprise. She would stop whoever had killed Ben, and whoever was threatening Tess. She did not make a vow; she did not hone her determination with rage or
with fear. She simply knew, and in her knowledge she would be implacable.
“What was in the package, Tess?”
Tess jerked at the change in Kaab’s voice. She peered at her for a long moment. But whatever she saw there, or heard, seemed to give her confidence. Tess reached beneath her shawl and pulled out a simple bundle wrapped in brown paper and twine. From this she removed two objects. The first, a red-and-green-striped jacket, familiar, and well worn. The second was a drawing, in a fair hand, of Tess herself at her desk. The details were telling: Tess in her nightgown, her hair disheveled, one knee brought up beneath her as she worked. Whoever drew this had done it from life and had been watching her without her knowledge for some time. On a sudden suspicion, Kaab lifted the jacket again. She turned it over.
The bloodstain blended somewhat with the red stripes, but it was unmistakable. As was the hole where the dagger had gone in.
“This was Ben’s,” Kaab said.
“He loved the ugly thing. But it wasn’t on his body. And it wasn’t with his clothes when I sorted them after. We figured someone had stolen it.”
“Someone had.”
Tess laughed, high and disbelieving. But she sounded steadier. She reached out and gripped Kaab’s hand. “They went through his things, that first time. They just threw around my drawers and bodices, but they were careful with his things. They cut the linings of his vests. Like they thought he might have hidden something there. Something small, like one of my drawings.”
“And you know what they were looking for.”
“I don’t . . . I might.” Her wide mouth was a grim, pale line. “Right before he died, Ben showed me a locket. He said his father had given it to him and it would make him rich. He had me draw it for him, and then he went off, and the next time I saw him he was dead. I didn’t think about it like that. What kind of a locket would get a man killed? But maybe this one could, what do I know?”
Tremontaine Season 1 Saga Omnibus Page 22
