But no—she couldn’t jump to conclusions. Rafe and Micah were acting oddly, but that in itself didn’t prove anything. Kaab needed more than mere suspicion. She needed proof. Because if Micah really had discovered the truth, and had shared that truth with Rafe, then Kaab would have to go to her aunt and uncle and confess everything.
The thought of it made her legs wobble. But there would be no other choice. And she didn’t want to think about what would happen after that. She had no illusions about her own fate. Her exile would be permanent, her duties restricted to helping in the kitchens and the nursery. For Rafe and Micah, things would be even worse, for her family would stop at nothing to keep the Kinwiinik Traders’ secret of navigation from these Xanamwiinik and preserve their own privileged seafaring and merchant position, which was precarious enough already.
Kaab could scarcely contain her anguish. What was wrong with her that she kept bringing disaster to everyone she loved? It took everything she had not to walk out of the Inkpot and keep on walking, right out of the City, disappearing into the wideness of the world, where her family would never find her. But even if that were possible, it would solve nothing. Her duty was clear. With a deep breath, she lifted the drinks that had been set before her and returned to the table.
“Here she comes,” Rafe whispered. “Remember, once we’re gone, go back to our rooms and wait for me to send word.”
Micah nodded mutely, eyes downcast. The poor kid looked miserable. Rafe felt sorry for him. And more than that: responsible.
It was plain that Kaab suspected the truth. Rafe had been a fool to invite her along to the Inkpot. He should have made some excuse, no matter how lame, to get away from her. Not that he thought he and Micah were in immediate danger from Kaab herself. But her family was another matter. The best course of action—or so he’d feverishly worked out while Kaab stood at the bar, pretending not to be spying on them in the mirror while he pretended not to be spying on her—was to muddy the waters. Right now, Kaab didn’t know how much Rafe knew, or who else might know. That meant the first order of business was to get Kaab away from Micah. Once he did so, Rafe was confident he could lose the Kinwiinik woman in the streets. Then it would be a matter of securing protection for them both.
As Kaab approached the table, she tripped—or gave a very good impression of doing so—and spilled the drinks she was carrying over Micah’s papers . . . and over Micah as well. “Oh, your calculations!” she cried. “They are ruined!”
Micah stood, brushing awkwardly at his clothes. “It’s all right. I remember everything. I can write it down again.”
Rafe, who had been caught off guard by this maneuver, saw his chance and took it. He rose to his feet, tossing the sack of turnips—and the papers he’d made sure Kaab had seen him add to it; papers snatched at random from the pile—over his shoulder. “Good idea. We’ll celebrate another time. Meanwhile, I’ve got something to do at home—that is, Fenton House.”
“Fenton House?” Kaab repeated. “I thought you did not get along with your father.”
“I don’t,” said Rafe. “But it’s never too late to patch things up. Especially with a nice gift.” He gave the sack an expressive shake.
“But those—” Micah began.
“Yes, yes,” Rafe said, cutting him off. “I haven’t forgotten what we talked about, and you haven’t either. I’ll see you both later.” And he slid away from the bench and began walking toward the door, forcing himself not to glance back over his shoulder.
“Wait!” came Kaab’s voice.
He stopped and turned, relief coursing through him.
“I will come with you,” she said. “I have business in that direction myself—family business.” She turned to Micah. “You should come too, Micah.”
“I have to go back to Rafe’s,” the boy said.
“We’ll catch up to you later,” said Rafe. “Come on, Kaab, if you’re coming.” And he turned again and made for the door. By the time he reached it, Kaab was at his side.
Their journey through the streets of the City, from the University to the Middle City, was one of the most unpleasant he had ever made.
“How’s Tess?” asked Rafe.
“Fine, fine,” said Kaab. “Are those turnips from Micah’s farm?”
“Yes, what of it?”
“I thought I could bring some to our cook,” Kaab said. “Introduce him to some of the better Local produce.”
“Very thoughtful of you.”
“Could you spare a few?”
“Sorry. These are all spoken for.”
“Not even one?” Kaab leaned sideways. “Here, let me choose it myself—you can make sure I leave the best!”
“Honestly, I wish I could, but I’m afraid my father would be cross with me if I didn’t bring him everything in this bag.”
For a moment, it seemed to Rafe that Kaab might actually try to wrest the sack away from him. Either that or draw the obsidian dagger she always wore at her side and plunge it into his. He had never been so grateful for a crowded street in his life. At last Kaab simply shrugged and said no more.
He’d hoped to shake her, but she stuck close, following him right up to the gates of Fenton House. “Perhaps you’d like to come in,” he offered politely.
“Another time,” she said. “I have pressing business of my own, as I mentioned.”
“A pity,” he said. “Thanks for the company, anyway. Don’t forget, you still owe me a drink.”
“That is the least I owe you,” she said.
Rafe felt her eyes upon him all the way up the walk and the stairs. He doubted a dagger would feel much more piercing. Indeed, a blade between the shoulders would be an anticlimax. He knocked; the door was opened by Loverage, an unflappable man who had served the Fentons for Rafe’s whole life.
“Master Rafe,” he said, raising one impeccably etched eyebrow. “We did not expect you.”
“To be honest,” said Rafe, slipping past him and into the coolness of the house with a feeling of immense relief, “neither did I. If anyone asks for me, tell them I’m with my father.”
“I’m afraid your father is not at home,” Loverage deadpanned.
“Good,” said Rafe. “Neither am I.”
He made straight for the kitchen and the door that opened into the alley behind the house. He feared and more than half expected to find Kaab waiting for him, but there was no one. Rafe drew a deep breath, hoisted the sack of turnips, and set off for the Hill and Tremontaine House, which, of course, had been his true destination all along.
Home, he’d said. Nor had he been lying. Wherever Will was, there was his home. He knew that now. In the moment when the enormity of Micah’s discovery had washed over him, he had not thought of the advantage this knowledge might win for his family’s business, but of Will, and of how Will would understand more than anyone in the world how best to use it for all people, not just the privileged few. Retracing his steps to the top of the Hill, Rafe felt, for the first time since he had agreed to Will’s terms, that there was nothing false in his position. He was going to Tremontaine House not as a secretary or even as a lover, but as Rafe Fenton, the man whose discovery would change everything.
Uncle Chuleb and Aunt Saabim were sitting side by side on mats and enjoying a late afternoon chocolate in the courtyard when Kaab burst in, out of breath, desperate to speak but dreading the necessity. Aunt Saabim took one look at her and dismissed the servants with a sharp clap of her hands. After that it was just the three of them in the cool, leafy courtyard, and the birds in the trees trilling their evening songs. Kaab wished she could listen to them forever. But she knew her duty.
“Well, what is it?” prompted Uncle Chuleb.
So she told him.
“They what?” he thundered.
Kaab swallowed dryly and glanced toward Aunt Saabim for reassurance—she did not find it in her aunt’s pinched expression where she sat beside her husband, hands folded over her rounded belly. There was nothing for it but to rep
eat the words she had composed and rehearsed under her breath as she ran home from Rafe’s precious Tremontaine House on the Hill.
“I have reason to believe the Xanamwiinik have learned the mysteries of the Four Hundred Siblings and deduced, or soon will deduce, the secret of crossing the North Sea.”
Uncle Chuleb sagged as if he’d been struck a blow.
“Oh, little bee,” said Aunt Saabim, “what have you done?”
Kaab bit her lip. She hated lying to them, but to tell the truth about that conversation with Rafe and Micah was just as impossible now as it had been all those weeks ago. “I’ve done nothing,” she said. “I swear it! I told you they were close to understanding. I warned you it might happen.”
“Tell us everything,” said Aunt Saabim.
Kaab did so, though her version of everything still left out quite a lot.
“So the Fenton boy knows,” said Uncle Chuleb heavily. “By now, his wretched father knows as well.”
“Not so,” said Kaab. “After he entered his family compound, I circled around to the back. Rafe had already tricked me once—I wasn’t going to let it happen again. Sure enough, he came out almost immediately. Believe me, Uncle, there was no time for him to speak to anyone of anything significant. Or to leave a note. He led me to that house as a ruse.”
Aunt Saabim smiled. “And you did not confront him. Well done, little bee. You are learning the virtues of restraint. We will make a good Trader of you yet.”
Her uncle grunted dubiously.
“I followed him to the Hill,” said Kaab. “To Tremontaine House.”
Another groan from her uncle. “Tremontaine House? That is a thousand times worse! Better you had slain him on the street than let him reach that viper’s nest!”
“In broad daylight? In front of a hundred witnesses? It would have been suicide, Uncle.”
“And would that not be an honorable death, Niece, if it protected our family?”
Kaab bowed her head. She had no answer to that.
Luckily, Aunt Saabim did. “It was clever of the Fenton boy to split them up like that. Even if she had killed him, the mathematician Micah was still at large.” She thought for a moment. “If Kaab had remained with Micah and taken care of her, would the situation have been improved?”
“No,” said Uncle Chuleb. “Either way, we are doomed. Once the news gets out, those upstart Cocoms will have all the leverage they need to convince His Majesty to revoke our Trading monopoly. We shall be lucky if we are left with our heads.”
This byplay gave Kaab time to gather her wits. “I think we are fortunate that Rafe went to Tremontaine House.”
“Explain,” said her uncle. “Because you and I must have a different understanding of the word ‘fortunate.’ Keep in mind that you are as close as you have ever been to ruin. Less than a breath away, Niece.”
Kaab looked him in the eye. “If Rafe had told his father, that would have been the end of it. Master Fenton is a greedy, grasping knave who cares about nothing beyond the swift gratification of his desires and the advertisement of his ego. But Tremontaine? The duchess is a more subtle creature.”
“A viper,” her uncle repeated.
“Even a viper does not strike blindly, without cause. But the Duchess Tremontaine is not a serpent but a spider. She spins her webs, planning for the future. She will not proclaim what she knows. She will hold it to her chest as tightly as we ourselves have done for all these many years. That is to our advantage. We know already that she is willing to bargain secretly with us. In this matter too, she will be approachable.”
“That is well reasoned, little bee.” Aunt Saabim turned to her husband. “You must admit that she has the right of it, dear.”
Uncle Chuleb gave a terse nod. “In our previous dealings with the duchess, we possessed a certain leverage. We had something she needed, and so she came to us. What is our leverage here? Enlighten me, Niece.”
“I don’t know,” said Kaab, then quickly added: “Yet. But there is something. That murdered man I told you about—Ben Hawke.”
“The one who was the protector of your Tess,” said Aunt Saabim.
Kaab nodded. “Remember I told you about the locket I saw the duchess wearing at the ball—the same locket that had been in Ben’s possession, and which I think may have been the cause of his death?”
Her aunt pursed her lips. “You think that may be our leverage?”
“I do,” said Kaab. “ I don’t exactly know how. But the duchess is hiding something. I’m sure of it.”
“You may be right,” said Uncle Chuleb. “Still, it is a slim thread to hang our hopes upon.”
“At present, there is no other,” said Aunt Saabim.
Her uncle grunted. “How do you mean to uncover this secret?”
“There is only one way,” said Kaab. “I will have to enter the spider’s web.”
Diane, Duchess Tremontaine, spread the silken folds of her dressing gown and settled softly on the cushioned window seat in the highest room of Tremontaine House, itself situated on the highest point of the Hill. From this privileged perch she gazed with satisfaction on what was, now more than ever, her city.
The sun in its lazy decline still painted the canted roofs of the big houses across the river and splashed the high, windowed facades of the old University buildings beyond them in profligate gold. The river, too, at the foot of the Hill—and thus, in a very real sense, laid at her feet—glittered as if covered with spilled coins, and the bridges joining the two halves of the City, old and new, past and future, shone like fanciful confections of glazed sugar in the waning afternoon light of a late spring day in which, or so it seemed to Diane, summer had announced itself for the first time.
She felt as sleek and contented as a well-fed cat in a sunbeam.
Her arrangement with the Kinwiinik Traders had gone through without a hitch, thanks to the efforts of Lord Davenant, the Dragon Chancellor of the Council of Lords, who lay sprawled across the daybed behind her, snoring lightly, his clothes in disarray after more recent efforts, equally successful, undertaken on her behalf. The tiresome difficulties that had preyed on her mind over the last months, since the loss of the Everfair, were as good as over. That dark cloud had lifted with the return of chocolate to the City, and soon, by the terms of the mutually beneficial understanding she had forged with the Traders, would follow the funds allowing her to redeem Highcombe and at last place the future of the Tremontaine family—her future—on unshakable financial ground.
In that regard, even as her gaze played appreciatively over the cityscape she knew so well but which had rarely appeared to her in a more attractive light than now, she was drafting a letter to Ahchuleb of the Balams in her mind, a letter she would write and dispatch to that shrewd foreigner once Lord Davenant—who was neither of those things, but had other virtues to recommend him—took his leave.
This was a note whose every word must find its target with the artful precision of a Riverside swordsman sparring with an opponent he one day might be called upon to dispatch in earnest.
A snort from behind her signaled her paramour’s return to consciousness. Smiling, Diane rose and turned to him. He remained as she had left him, shirt open, trousers likewise; there was an urgency and passion to their coupling that had been missing from her marriage of late, and which she enjoyed very much, in the manner of a brisk walk through gardens she had once loved to lounge in—though the Dragon Chancellor had the regrettable tendency, not unlike his namesake, of falling asleep over the body of the treasure he had pursued with such fevered zeal.
Davenant returned her smile, basking in her attention, confident in his effect on her. Her effect on him was already quite visible. “Come back to bed, Diane,” he growled.
“It is late, Gregory,” she replied, though in fact she was tempted to give in just this once. Instead, she walked to the small marble-topped table on which the paraphernalia of chocolate preparation awaited: the kettle, brazier, spouted chocolate pots, silver gra
ter, the set of porcelain cups hand-painted with red roses, and various spices, sugars, and creams. “We’ve time enough for chocolate, and then I’m afraid I must dress for dinner.”
He sat up and began to make himself presentable. He had learned not to argue. Still, a petulant note crept into his voice. “Our trysts always end with chocolate.”
“That is because you do not give them time to begin with chocolate, or indeed with any other refreshment,” she said as she bent to her task.
“Your kiss is all the refreshment I require,” he said gallantly.
She laughed. It was pleasant to banter with her lover in this mindless way, to let her hands go through the practiced motions of readying the chocolate, while beneath the surface, in the ceaselessly turning mills of her mind, she worked out what she should say to Ahchuleb Balam.
It was not that she doubted the man’s word. He was, after all, a merchant, and merchants, however exotic they might appear, conducted themselves within the pettifogging constraints of written agreements. What concerned her was what had not been explicitly rendered into words: the spirit rather than the letter of the thing. A bond now existed between their houses; their interests—political, economic, social—were linked in subtle ways that went beyond the terms of the present understanding. Ever so gently, without seeming to do so, she must impress upon him (and his wife, Ixsaabim, who she knew was the real power in the family) that despite all this, theirs was not a partnership of equals. This was her city, and if the Balams forgot that, there would be a price to pay. It was the kind of challenge Diane relished.
“I do enjoy watching you prepare the chocolate,” said Lord Davenant, adjusting the fall of his collar. “There is something so domestic about it. Do you prepare it for the duke as well?”
“Jealous?” she asked in turn as she poured hot water from the kettle into the chocolate pot.
“Should I be?”
“That is a strange question to ask one’s lover about her husband.”
“You are no happier in your marriage than I am in mine,” he answered. “If only we were free to—”
Tremontaine Season 1 Saga Omnibus Page 40
