“My goodness!” Diane exclaimed. “What a tangle. If you might permit me to make a suggestion?”
He clasped his hands together and leaned forward, giving her a rather pointed smile. “By all means, my lady,” he said.
There was something quite thrilling about him in this moment, Diane thought; he was all teeth. “My lord, I am no expert in these matters of trade, but I feel that I do know a bit about the Kinwiinik after they graced my home with their presence. I believe that your suspicion might be correct, but obviously you must not allow anyone else to know. Perhaps if you go to the Council and suggest, on your own, relaxing or eliminating the tariff? I know all of the lords hold you in high esteem and would likely follow your command.”
“If I give in to the Kinwiinik’s demands, that will set a dangerous precedent,” Davenant said, his face reddening. “The Council—along with the Dragon Chancellor—sets the tariff rates. I cannot cede to them, or the merchants will demand their own concessions.”
“If no one on the Council knows of the Kinwiinik’s request, no one will believe you’ve ceded to anyone. You will only be strengthening the relationship between the Kinwiinik and the City.”
“Their demand is extortion,” he snapped.
“My, my, such strong words. It would be so much simpler if you followed my advice, Gregory.” She said his name softly, and she saw him twitch as she said it. He was like a fish on a line. One more tug, and he would do as she wished.
He moved more swiftly than she had expected and was suddenly kneeling before her, his hands gripping hers. “Diane, please, can we set this matter aside? I only want to please you in one way, now.”
She pulled her hands away from him, but gently, and allowed her fingertips to caress his cheek. His eyes were not as blue as her husband’s, but they were filled with much more passion. She trailed a thumb over his trembling lips, but before he could do more than lean closer to her, she had escaped his grasp and gone to stand beside the mantel. He was startled—bewildered by her sudden movement—and still kneeling as if in prayer before the seat she had vacated.
“If you want to please me, then you will agree to do something about the tariffs on chocolate,” she said evenly. “Are you not the Dragon Chancellor? Is this not in your power? The entire Council trusts your decisions in these matters and will surely follow your lead. You need not share with anyone the course you followed to arrive at your decision. And the entire City will owe you their thanks for bringing an end to their chocolate deprivation—even if they don’t know precisely what the favorable winds were that caused the Kinwiinik fleet to reach our harbor with fresh shipments.” He rose to his feet, turning to face her. She couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed or angry at her—perhaps a little of both. She added, “They may not know, but I will. And I will thank you.”
He spread his hands. His face bore a strange combination of frustration and submission. “You leave me no choice.”
A flush of triumph filled the duchess, but she did not allow it to show. “You’ve always had a choice, Gregory. I’m so pleased that you have made the right one.”
He came across the room, eager for her, but she said, “First, send word to the Balams to indicate that you will consider their request. You can send word to the Council later, summoning them to an important voting session, when you return home.”
He halted and then smiled faintly. “Business before pleasure.”
“Pleasure after business,” she corrected him. “Now, come with me.”
Diane led him out of the room and opened the panel in the wall that revealed the steep, narrow staircase to her private sitting room. He followed her without question, and she removed paper and pen and ink from her desk. He sat where she told him to sit, and he wrote what she told him to write. He sealed the brief note with his signet ring, and then she handed it to the servant outside her door. It would be taken by messenger to the Balam compound immediately.
She locked the door behind her and turned to face Lord Davenant. He was still seated at her desk, watching her and waiting. She enjoyed the expression on his face immensely. She crossed the room, and he rose to his feet, but did not approach. He has learned, she observed. When she stood before him, she reached up with her small, delicate hands and began to untie the complicated knot of his cravat, the ruby ring on her right hand flashing bright as blood against the creamy linen and lace. She pulled the stock free, a long, narrow flag of surrender, and let it flutter to the floor. Beneath the taut skin of his throat, he swallowed. She slid her fingers up and over his neck, reaching up to cup the back of his head, drawing his face down to hers. He was a tall man, though not so tall as her husband.
The thought of William caused a sharp, sudden pain in her, as if someone had jabbed her with a needle. She banished the thought with a quick, vicious efficiency. She did not succumb to common jealousy, but she was no man’s fool, and she would not stand for William’s lies.
Lord Gregory Davenant did not lie to her. She could read him as easily as the novel she had left on her desk. He really was a charming man, she thought, and opened her mouth.
Evening has descended in soft rose light across the City, brushing the ancient gray towers of the University with the warmth of a maiden’s first blush. From inside his chocolate shop, Duncan Olivey watches the light change, feeling a weary sense of satisfaction over the day’s events. The petition has been delivered, and already his source has sent a response: The chocolate ships have been sighted. They are due to arrive any day now. I knew it, he thinks. He resolves to discard the remaining amandyne in his possession immediately.
Down the street from Olivey’s, a motley group stumbles out of the Inkpot, supporting one another with swaying shoulders, talking and laughing as the effects of the amandyne wear off in the wake of too much beer. Three of them follow more slowly: the young Rafe Fenton, now Master Fenton of Natural Science; the Duke Tremontaine, his hand on Rafe’s back; and Micah, who chatters excitedly about the problems she has noticed with a set of star charts she recently acquired.
Rafe feels the effects of the many beers he has drunk over the course of the afternoon, but the watered-down brew sold at the Inkpot is not strong enough to muffle the disquieting combination of triumph and panic that has overtaken him since completing his examination. Now he is a Master, a title he has yearned for all his life, and all he can think about is how impossibly frightening it is to be facing the next step in his dream. Now he must act—now he must start his school—and he does not have the faintest idea how he is going to do this.
The Duke Tremontaine takes Rafe’s hand and squeezes it, and says in his ear, “What is bothering you? Can I help?”
Up on the Hill at the duke’s home, his wife is walking in their gardens. She enjoys the drama of sunset over the river, and the evening breeze is a pleasant balm on her face. She has spent a diverting afternoon with Gregory, Lord Davenant, and she hasn’t felt so young in years. She leans over the marble balustrade and pulls a stem of pink roses toward her, inhaling their perfume as the petals caress her small, pert nose. In this flattering light, she is pretty as she was at sixteen, supple-skinned and sweet as a bride on her wedding night.
The long shadow of a man with a sword on the gravel path to her left jolts her out of her reverie, and her fingers close abruptly over the rose’s thorns. She hisses in pain and turns to face her swordsman. “Well? What did you discover?” she asks, forgoing any niceties. The blood wells up on her fingertip; the cut stings unpleasantly.
“My lady, I haven’t figured out yet how the merchants heard that gossip about the warehouses, but I found something that I am sure you would like to know.”
She raises her fingertip to her mouth and sucks at the tiny wound. “These theatrics don’t become you, Reynald. Tell me what you found.”
He accepts her rebuke silently. “My lady, the Kinwiinik Trader girl who was at your ball—the Balam girl—she has been trying to discover who killed Ben Hawke.”
The duchess sta
nds very still in the twilight. “Are you certain?”
“Yes, madam. She has been making inquiries about Ben at various houses on the Hill. I also followed her into Riverside and discovered that she is the lover of the woman Ben was protecting, Tess. She painted that illustration that Ben had when he came here. I believe that is why the Kinwiinik girl is seeking Ben’s killer. For the sake of Tess.”
The duchess licks a trace of blood from her lips. Her finger still smarts from the bite of the thorn. “She must not discover the identity of his killer,” the duchess says.
“No, my lady.”
The sun has disappeared over the horizon, and the sky is rapidly blackening, punctuated by countless glittering stars. Reynald is but a shadow among shadows. Tremontaine House looms above them both, its windows lighted like great golden eyes in the night. The duchess turns her back to Reynald and the house on the hill. Her heart races; her blood rushes; she hears a whistling in her ears that has nothing to do with the breeze on her face.
She says to her swordsman, “I trust you know what to do.”
Episode Nine:
Lies in our Stars
Paul Witcover
Micah glanced up in annoyance from the welter of her papers covering the wooden table as the door to the front room of Rafe’s lodgings swung open to admit a trio of laughing young men who immediately blundered into the table. Her inkpot would have spilled across her latest calculations had she not already lifted it clear, well used to such interruptions by now.
“Sorry, Micah.” It was Larry, the scholar who had invited her into the lecture on geometry all those weeks ago. She supposed that, in a way, she owed her presence here to that encounter, for without it she would never have met the man who, in turn, had led her to the Inkpot, and if she had not met that man, she would never have encountered Rafe. It was interesting to consider how far back one might trace a series of such events before reaching the initial cause from which all subsequent effects flowed. In isolation, each seemed random, pure chance, yet when looked at in a certain way, through the clarifying lens of mathematics, they were not random at all, but rather the outcome of probabilities amenable to calculation, at least theoretically. She wondered what it would take to compile a likelies table to cover all such eventualities. First it would be necessary to—
“’Scuse me!”
Micah groaned at the interruption. “Could you be quiet for a moment, please?”
“’Scuse me, but have you seen Rafe?”
“Micah, this is Nick,” said Larry, then nodded to his other companion. “And you remember Tim.”
She did, from numerous card games—the man had a genuine talent for losing, and, as Rafe said happily, never seemed to tire of exercising it.
“Rafe isn’t here,” she said impatiently, eager to get back to work. All morning she’d been experiencing the maddening sense of fizzy excitement that she’d come to associate with a fresh leap in her understanding of a subject. The last time she’d felt this way had been in the lecture hall, listening to Doctor Volney’s lesson on geometric solids; the discomfort had grown until, in a flash, she’d seen that he was wrong, and that knowledge had compelled her to challenge him. Volney hadn’t appreciated it, but Rafe and his friends had been impressed.
“What kind of numbers are those?” Tim was looking at her papers—the scribbled and crossed-out calculations, the Kinwiinik navigational star charts Kaab had loaned her, her corrected and re-corrected and re-re-corrected table of artificial numbers (which, maddeningly, was still not correct!)—with an expression she’d seen often enough on the faces of her family whenever they offered a minnow for her thoughts. One of the things Micah liked best about Rafe and his University friends was that most of them didn’t look baffled—or, worse, sorry to have asked—when she explained what she was thinking. Well, sooner or later they did, even Rafe. But it was still better than back on the farm, where everyone’s eyes glazed over long before she got to the good stuff. Even though she missed her family. And felt guilty about not helping out with the planting. Which reminded her that she owed her uncle another letter; she hadn’t written home for weeks now, since the Swan Ball. . . .
“Oh gods.” Tim glanced over at Larry. “Is this stuff I should know?”
Larry was looking a bit panicky himself. Nick had already made himself scarce, disappearing into Rafe’s room, where a seemingly endless chocolate-and-alcohol-fueled party had been going ever since the miraculous return of chocolate to the City had coincided with the equally if not more miraculous news that Rafe had passed his exams. And what, she wondered, would the likelies have been on that eventuality? Rafe himself had been a rare visitor during this time; his tasks at Tremontaine House were quite demanding, apparently, and his friends had taken advantage of his absence to put his vacant room to what they considered better use.
Micah did not agree. But despite these annoyances, she was gratified by this unexpected interest in her work. “Those are artificial numbers,” she said.
“Artificial?” squeaked Tim. “The real ones are bad enough!”
“Oh, all numbers are artificial, if you think about it! But at the same time, they’re the realest things of all,” she said, warming to the subject. “Even if they don’t exist in the same way as, say”—her eye went to one corner of the room, where a slumbering student whose name she couldn’t recall had made a pillow from the sack of turnips Rafe had purchased from her uncle before the ball, then forgotten to bring to Tremontaine House as he’d promised, even though she’d reminded him fourteen times so far—“turnips, for example—”
“Say, isn’t that Joshua?” Tim’s eyes had taken on a faraway look. “Talk to you later, Micah!” He lunged away from the table.
“And there’s Thaddeus!” said Larry.
Before she could say another word, he was gone, joining Thaddeus, who sat by the room’s one window, engaged in earnest conversation with an Alchemy student called Clarence. With a sigh, Micah set the inkpot back down on the table. Really, would it have even mattered if the ink had spilled? Her new calculations were coming out just as muddled as the previous ones, and the ones before that. What was she missing? She felt stupid and useless . . . yet there it was inside her, stronger than ever, that buoyant, fizzy feeling, as if an answer were rising up from her depths. . . .
The door swung open again, and once again she lifted the inkpot before the new arrivals could bump into her table . . . which of course they proceeded to do even though she called a timely warning. Everyone did. It was absurd to put the table here, so close to the door. But there was no other place for it; the apartment was already crowded. There were the chaise Micah sometimes used as a bed, pallets for residents both permanent and temporary stacked in a corner, a handful of chairs, overflowing bookshelves made of wooden crates, a smaller table likewise constructed, and assorted items scavenged from the streets by Rafe, Joshua, and Thaddeus for artistic or scientific projects that never quite commenced, the remains of meals too desiccated to be of interest even to rodents, and heaps of cast-off clothing that seemed to belong to no one, as if they’d sprung up overnight like toadstools in the manure piles on the farm. She’d never imagined being able to live with so much clutter. Was it any wonder her calculations kept coming out wrong? The Inkpot was scarcely better, but at least there she could enjoy a tomato pie while working.
Coming to a decision, Micah pushed away from the table and stood. She set the cover tightly onto the inkpot and stowed it in one pocket, then gathered up the papers from the desk willy-nilly; time enough to sort them properly once she was ensconced at her favorite table, a refreshing glass of cider in front of her.
She glanced around the room. Clarence, Larry, and Thaddeus were sharing a pipe whose noxious fumes provided further inducement to depart. The chaise was occupied by a pair of students who seemed to be wrestling in slow motion underneath a blanket. The student using the sack of turnips as a pillow had turned from his left side to his right.
Micah’s aunt an
d uncle had impressed upon her that it wasn’t polite to simply get up and leave a room where others were present, so she walked over to Thaddeus.
“Thaddeus, I’m going to the Inkpot.”
“Hmm? Oh, that’s nice, Micah,” he said, gazing at her with a look of vague disappointment, as if he’d been hoping to see something else entirely.
“If Rafe comes back, will you tell him? I don’t want him to worry.”
He nodded absently as the pipe came round again. The billow of greenish smoke that rose from the bowl pushed her into a coughing retreat. Meanwhile, four more students had entered the room. She wondered if there might not be some equation to predict the seemingly random movement of bodies within an enclosed space, some tipping point after which the flow of students into the interior room would reverse, without the students themselves being aware of why they felt an obscure compulsion to exit a space they had so recently been keen to enter. There was something deeply comforting in the notion that even human beings—that capricious order to which, by an accident of birth, she belonged, without ever quite belonging—were as subject to the laws of mathematics as any other bodies in motion.
Comforting in theory, anyway. But in practice anything but, because that was the very problem Rafe had given her to solve, and which eluded her at every turn. How could bodies in motion—in this case, ships—plot a true course across the curved surface of an ellipsoid—which turned out to be the true shape of the world, according to Kaab, who should know!—using Kinwiinik formulae that relied upon centuries of their people’s painstaking observation of the stars and planets?
Of course, the real question was why they couldn’t. Because theoretically they absolutely should be able to do just that. It was simple geometry. Well, maybe not simple, exactly, but simple enough for her.
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