“Do you still have the drawing you made?”
“I gave it to Ben. And there wasn’t anything on him when those clam women found him. Maybe they took it. But probably not.”
“I think,” Kaab said, taking the stillness inside her and making of it a weapon, “that you have the right of it. This locket is probably what lies behind these threats. They must want to find out if you know something.”
“I don’t know anything!”
“But you might have made extra drawings. You didn’t, right?”
Tess shook her head. “I didn’t. Ben didn’t give me time.”
“So my plan,” said Kaab, “is to make one. It is to make several. And it is to find you a new protector. I . . .” She swallowed. She could do this. “I apologize for my rudeness before, Tess. I’m only concerned for you. I hope that you’ll agree with me. You need a new protector now. It can’t wait.”
Tess embraced her. “I know. I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’m sorry I kicked you out. You are something, you know that? I don’t know what I would have done if I couldn’t have come here.”
Kaab held her for a very long time and tried, from within her stillness, not to think about what its unexpected presence meant.
Applethorpe knew how to fight. Kaab recognized some of his stances and moves as infinitely more refined relatives of the ones that she had learned on the ship. But he fought with a smoothness and a balance that she associated with the most highly trained warriors of the Kinwiinik or the Tullan: a dance of violence that worshiped the sacred water within each human, the only possible nourishment of the gods.
She was hopelessly outclassed from the first moment their blades touched. And she had never enjoyed a fight more in her life. When she was a child, the boys would play the ball game with her, and they would let her practice with sticks to mimic the moves of the dagger and the short ax. But by the time she was ten, the boys were firmly sequestered in their studies and she in hers. Even a woman dedicated to the service only needed to learn defensive fighting. She had trained diligently in the dagger, and on rare occasions she had revealed a temperament for it—a capacity for stillness, for the fine control of the passions of her head- and liver-spirits. What gave her so much trouble in her daily life was her greatest strength in a battle. But that night they embraced in the gatehouse, Tess had helped her find her stillness.
And she found it again, now, with the slash and parry, the feint and jab, every desperate block she made with muscles that pumped vinegar instead of blood. Every gasp from burning lungs that must be her last, if she weren’t saved by some fierce instinct that made her spin into his feint instead of stepping west into the blow. Even the tough soles of her bare feet—surely smeared by now with the omnipresent Local street filth—felt bruised and cut by so many hard landings on broken cobblestones. And Applethorpe fought with passion and grace and brutality and not even a hint of awareness of anything beyond of the range of his two blades, and hers.
Outside the circle, there was fear; there was confusion and doubt and hatred and jealousy and pain. Outside the circle was a cage stretching to infinity. Inside the circle, there were no straight lines. Everything curved, took a longer, unexpected path, discovered unexpected affinities. There was a greeting among her people: I am the other you. In this backwater across the North Sea, she had discovered a woman who held the key to her stillness. She had discovered a man whose skill with the blade would have made him a great warrior even in Binkiinha. She had discovered herself and her curved reflections.
She was about to lose, she realized. Her exhausted muscles were flagging, while Vincent was relentless. For all that the match was supposed to be in sport, these were real blades. He could kill her, as that other man nearly had. She waited for the fear, but the line curved to one side and turned into something else. Its opposite.
Kaab was not afraid to die here.
So she dropped her sword.
Even Vincent hesitated. For a fraction of a second, but it was enough. Kaab saw her opening and took it. The fluid moves that she’d had drilled into her from childhood came as though from the sky and not her own memory. She flowed forward and disarmed him of his dagger in a gesture that felt as natural as breathing but that she could not recall having used before. She bent away from his sword and went in again, so close to his neck she could see the vein throbbing—
And was stopped, with perfect poise, with his long blade on her own delicate vein.
“Yield,” he said. A bead of sweat rolled into his hairline.
“Be Tess’s protector,” Kaab said.
“King’s blood, girl, you’re mad!”
The depth of the stillness flowed away from her: She could hear the crowd again, feel the heat and how close she was to passing out. But just a little remained.
Kaab grinned. “You’ll do it then?”
Applethorpe sheathed his sword. He bent to retrieve his dagger.
Someone shouted, “Do it, Vince! You’re the best of the lot.”
“But be careful, Tessie doesn’t want you—she’s got a taste for the foreign spices, am I right?”
That last speaker groaned as someone splashed him with beer dregs. “Mind your manners, Pip! Or did you not just pass two hours winning bets on the back of this nice foreign lady?”
Vincent shook his head, but Kaab knew. “I have better places to go,” he said.
“But you want to, anyway.”
“Damned if I know why.”
“You want to teach me the sword. You want to know about my stillness, and how I fight with the dagger.”
“I—that was like nothing I’ve seen before.”
“So you’ll protect Tess.”
“I will. Long enough for you to learn what I can teach you.”
“And I you.”
Kaab held out her hand, in the custom of these people. The crowd quieted. Waiting.
The cheer that went up when Applethorpe walked over and shook her hand easily covered what Kaab wished to say to him in private. Vincent gave her a speculative glance and nodded.
5 hours earlier
Diane left the luncheon early, pleading a slight indisposition. It was a pretext she knew would be badly received by the hostess—the Dragon Chancellor’s wife was sensitive to any slight while her husband’s mistress quickened with his child—and yet it seemed, everything considered, the best of bad options.
The duchess’s swordsman had taken it upon himself to send her an urgent message, informing her that her husband had not yet left his chambers. It was true that she had indicated to Reynald that she would trust him with duties that did not generally fall under the purview of a house swordsman. Still, she wondered at his boldness.
The contents of the letter would not normally be cause for concern, let alone a message that encouraged her to excuse herself from polite company. But if William had not yet left his chambers, if he were still in the arms of that Fenton brat, then he could not possibly be in attendance at the meeting of the Council of Lords, taking place at this moment in the Old City. Even if he had left just after Reynald had sent the note. William had missed the reading of proposed amendments to the tax on foreign chocolate. He had missed the debate, whose points they had so painstakingly rehearsed. He had missed the vote (if Davenant had allowed it to take place at all, after such a gross breach of procedure). He had missed the entire affair, and he certainly would not be allowed to introduce further amendments for debate if he could not trouble himself to attend their discussion.
Everything that she had promised to the Balams. Her perfect plan to rescue Tremontaine—and Highcombe—from the disaster of the Everfair. The financial reprieve that would save her from the ultimate ignominy of letting bankers repossess an ancient family estate.
William had thrown it away for a tryst with a student. And Rafe Fenton was no brilliant star, no future scholar of renown. No, this Master Fenton was belligerent and ill-mannered, cunning and duplicitous. She even suspected he was using her own William to
buy his way through his examination!
So the duchess pleaded indisposition and consoled herself with the fact that she looked pale enough that the ladies present might even believe her.
Reynald caught up with her carriage not far from the Davenant townhouse.
“I regret to have brought you such distressing news, madam.”
“Since you decided to meddle, I wonder that you did not do so when it might have averted disaster.”
Reynald, whose demeanor toward her had shifted these last weeks to be at once more deferential and more familiar, seemed caught off guard. She supposed he had been expecting praise.
“I was away performing other duties in your service,” he said. “I sent that message as soon as I returned to the house.”
She imagined that he had wasted time contemplating every potential advantage of the action. But she did not see any benefit to saying so. Any earlier would have only given her an illusion of possibility. At least now she knew the scope of the disaster she must confront.
“And how have you fared with those other duties, Reynald?”
Her swordsman shrugged, which she could not recall any other servant having done in her presence in almost twenty years. Before that day, even Reynald never had. “Well as might be expected. I have watched his trull for over a week, madam. I don’t think she knows anything about that business. She might have drawn the picture that he gave you, but I think she did so in ignorance, and is no threat to us.”
She let the “us” go unchallenged. “Are you sure?”
He paused. “Not quite.”
“Then tell me when you are. One way or another.”
“Are you ordering me to kill her?”
Were she another woman, in another place, Diane might have slapped him. “I am asking for security, for which service I employ you. How you go about the business is your own concern. And Reynald, since you have so generously added messenger to your list of duties, please go ahead to Tremontaine House and tell his lordship’s manservant that Lord Davenant sends word from the Council Hall to enquire—to enquire anxiously after the duke’s health.”
Reynald bowed without so much as a quirked shoulder blade and hurried ahead. By the time she arrived, she had given their people sufficient time to relay the message to his lordship of Tremontaine. The duchess mounted the great stairs, while Lucinda vainly attempted to interest her in the difficult repairs of a gown, and Duchamp in some pressing issues regarding the dinner menu.
She paused before the door to his chambers. “Is my husband in?” she asked, as though the thought had only just occurred to her.
Duchamp and Lucinda and the three footmen behind them did not respond immediately.
Duchamp stepped forward. “I have heard he isn’t well, madam. The Dragon Chancellor enquired after his health.”
“What distressing news,” she said. “We must send for his physician. Is he in his bed?”
The door opened and Rafe stumbled through. Dressed, as far as it went, but his greasy black hair hung in tangled locks down his back, and his clothes were rumpled as if they’d last been laundered weeks before. William looked a little better, as though his man had dressed him, but only to run from a fire.
“Oh,” the duchess said. “They told me you weren’t well, William. The Dragon Chancellor asked after your health. Did you fall ill during the meeting?”
William blanched. “That . . . Dearest Diane. You must believe me, I had no idea—”
She watched him choke on his own excuses and wished her petty revenge tasted like anything other than ashes. “Why, Master Fenton,” she said mildly. “I am surprised to see you here. Did you forget something in my husband’s library?”
Rafe blushed a brilliant ruby, breathless with rage, but she merely smiled. He would say nothing to her if he wanted to see her husband again. And clearly they would sacrifice a great deal to be with one another.
“No? In that case, would you see him out, Tilson? And do be so good as to report to me when you return tomorrow, Fenton. I have employment for you, if the duke can spare you from your labors.”
How Rafe took this, she did not bother to learn. The footman Tilson was as good at his job as Reynald was at his.
“Diane,” William tried again, “I was asleep. Duchamp said he knocked but I didn’t hear—”
“We can discuss it over dinner, my dear.” She looked up at him sadly and then down at the floor. He reached for her, and she sidestepped his embrace. She had never done that before.
“Darling, I’ll make it up to you. I’ll take the carriage to Davenant’s house right now. I’ll explain everything. . . .”
He seemed to realize, then, how useless his explanations would sound to a man like the Dragon Chancellor.
“I’ll see you at dinner,” she repeated, and left him.
Later, alone in her chambers, she laid upon her desk a blank sheet of paper and a fresh quill. She would write to Lady Davenant, recently returned from her country estates at Rendellfield, and inquire after her health. Would she be sufficiently recovered from her journey to receive a caller two days hence?
What Diane would not write, but what she knew, was that in two days Lord Davenant, Dragon Chancellor of the Council of Lords, Master of the Exchequer, and a man who more than once had made it clear that he regretted the duchess’s inflexible fidelity to her husband, would also be at home. She had not made up her mind on how precisely to proceed, but the example of young Fenton had forcibly reminded her that there were many paths to influence. Perhaps the attentions of a powerful man who had admired her for so long were worth cultivating in a spirit more open to unprecedented possibilities.
It was a fairy tale, they said—a Riverside fairy tale. The fair maiden Tess needed a protector, and so the foreign princess had fought every pretender until she found the one Riverside swordsman who was honest and true. That last fight had been the best of the day, went the judgment of the crowd. The princess had lost honorably, and Vincent Applethorpe had made the Riversiders proud.
“And it’s a true Riverside fairy tale,” Two-Ply Max was saying for the third time to the crowd at the Maiden’s Fancy, “because I just won enough brass minnows off of these fools to buy me a barrel at the Three Dogs!”
Rosalie took his empty mug and handed him a fresh one. “How about paying your rent with it, you drunk!”
“Get off it, Rosalie! Where would you be without us drunks, a barmaid like you?”
“In my own tavern, collecting tips instead of pinches!”
Everyone laughed, especially the fair maiden and her foreign princess. The two were leaning against each other, drinking pints and telling stories. The forger’s bag was at her side again, but one dramatic gesture pushed it over, a little more toward the shadows. No one seemed to notice. But several people did.
“I’m off, then,” said Applethorpe, to the disappointment of his friends, old and new. He’d come to Riverside a fiery boy, full of steel and promise. When he had disappeared a few years ago, everyone assumed he had been killed. They were glad to see him turn up again, older, more sober—and with a fighting style that left the knowledgeable ones with questions.
“Where’ve you been training? You were good before, Vince, but that was . . .”
Vincent smiled and did not answer. “I have some business of my own to attend to, ladies, but I’ll be back in a few days.” He looked up and projected his voice. “And that means the rest of you louts had best leave these two be, because they are under my protection.”
The foreign lady objected to this. “Tess! She is under your protection.”
“Why can’t you be?” He seemed genuinely curious.
“Because I’m under my own protection.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “Just Tess, then.” He walked off without another word.
That man will steal something from Tess, she had said, as they shook hands. When he does, please follow him.
Sure enough, the man who Vincent had initially pegged as a
poor country neophyte, new in Riverside and with just enough knowledge of the sword to stick himself with it, stumbled near Tess’s bags as Vincent made his farewells. The boor picked himself up and apologized to everyone nearby. He seemed harmless, but Vincent had watched his hands. He had stolen the papers, just as Kaab said he would.
Kaab, who had watched this with great satisfaction, turned to Tess. She held the forger’s blue-stained hands.
“Will you give me a prize?” she asked. Kaab had learned some of these people’s stories during her lessons at home. She knew what the prince sometimes won from the maiden.
Tess was staring at her lips. “What prize, Kaab?”
Kaab tried to think of something clever to say, but all she found were love poems in languages that Tess couldn’t understand. So instead she bent forward and kissed her. And then she stopped thinking in any language at all.
The cheering and hollering and lip-smacking of a crowd rewarded by young love followed Vincent as he left the square in pursuit of the thief. His quarry moved quickly once out on the empty streets, heading over the Bridge and then up to the Hill. That didn’t surprise Vincent, since the thief was almost certainly a swordsman of some ability. And skilled swordsmen—reasonable ones, not fools lovesick for a pair of dark eyes and impossible dagger work—liked the living on the Hill.
But it shocked him when he realized that he was standing beside Tremontaine House. And that the thief had nodded to the guards and walked inside. He felt cold, like he was in the ring and a chance mistake had cost him everything.
Tess and Kaab had somehow made themselves a very powerful enemy. And they didn’t even know it.
Episode Six:
A Fair Hand
Patty Bryant and Racheline Maltese
There were certain things that happened every year, as regular as clockwork. In the springtime, farmers planted their crops, the University prepared for its exams, the City’s streets turned to mud, and—far more important than any of that, at least in the steward Duchamp’s mind—Tremontaine held its annual Swan Ball.
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