The chocolate. Her own personal blend. She’d done it on purpose.
Rafe rolled out of the way but stayed crouched on the floor, unable to go to Will, unwilling to run to the safety of the guards.
“That was what it was all about—the numbers, the stars, the caresses in the library, velvet and paper and ink—the way your hair curls so sweetly just there, the ways I can make you laugh, the way you cry out when I make you come—”
“Will, no—” Rafe held his hand up like a beseeching mendicant.
“She murders with the eyes of a crow, deep in the forest, but you—here in my own house, everything we had, everything I loved was only meant to kill me with happiness!”
A spear of ice went down Rafe’s back. The star he’d dreamed had said that too: Then you have killed him with happiness.
This was a nightmare. He stumbled to his feet. Will took a swing at him. Will was taller than he was, with a nobleman’s well-tuned body. But maybe he could hold him still, if he could just slip past the windmill of Will’s long arms to get near him—
Will grunted as a guard on either side took hold of his arms and wrestled him to a standstill. He strained against them as he shouted, “I am betrayed by everything I love! I am betrayed by everything I love! I am betrayed by everything I love!”
It didn’t stop, in volume, pain, or rage.
“I think, Master Fenton, that you had better leave.” It was the duchess’s clear, cold voice, very near him. “You see how you enrage him.”
Rafe staggered past her to the door, his ears ringing with accusations of betrayal.
“This is what it is like.” The duchess had come out to him. She, too, leaned against the wall, companionably, beside him. Her face looked ten years older. “I cannot calm him either.”
Betrayed by everything I love!
It was starting to sound like a song, just one line, repeated over and over.
“What are they doing to him?” Rafe asked her.
“Restraining him,” she said bleakly. “If he does not calm himself, they will bind him to the chair. Or to the bed.”
“I’d better go,” Rafe said.
“Wait.” The duchess put one hand on his sleeve and left it there. A fine-boned hand, tiny and perfect. Such a fragile hand, he could not move against it. And the one word: “wait.” Two little things that made him powerless. Rafe looked down as she raised her face to his. She was so close. She did not speak.
One bend of his head, and he would be kissing the Duchess Tremontaine. It was almost inevitable. And he would do it, just for the pleasure of remembering how far she had held herself above him, how she had mocked and flouted him— “Betrayed!” Will’s voice rang, muffled, through the door.
Rafe took a step back. It made no sense. He didn’t even want her.
“Please,” the duchess said. “If you would just grant me one more minute?”
“Betrayed!”
She shuddered. “Let us go down to the drawing room. This is too distressing.”
Mutely Rafe followed her. Had he imagined that moment? She was all dignity and business now, a formal but considerate hostess. Was she playing with him? Will had said that she was brilliant with people. But Rafe had never seen it. Was he seeing it now? Was he in over his head? Had the possible kiss been a possible test? What would she want Rafe to kiss her for? To prove he was a boor so she could throw him out? To try what had so seduced her Will? Or just to show that she could make him want her, after all that? Rafe grimaced. Maybe he had imagined it. But in his years of casual couplings, he prided himself on knowing what a come-on looked like. Maybe women were different. Maybe he was overwrought.
Back in the drawing room, the Duchess Tremontaine did not ask him to sit down. “I will not keep you long,” she said. “It’s just that—I need your help.”
“I do not seem to have been very much help so far, madam.”
She did not respond. “You were his secretary. As you say, you have not been formally dismissed.” She walked over to a small table, picked up a gilded paperweight, and put it down. “The duke’s affairs are in disorder. Tolliver is more confused than ever. If you could help me begin to go through the duke’s papers, see what has been answered and what still needs doing . . . It all falls to me, now, you see. Until he is better.”
“Do you think he will be?” Rafe asked—too quick, too eager. He was a fool where Will was concerned.
“I do not know,” she said gravely, looking straight at him. “His father was . . . eccentric.” She shrugged delicately. “Tremontaine does have a reputation. Even our daughter behaved oddly at times.”
Inherited madness. Rafe supposed that it was possible. Oh, Will! Rafe considered what she was asking. Far from sending him away, she was inviting him to return. He would see Will again, without hindrance. He would find a way to care for him, to heal him. He would not let them bind his Will with painful ropes or tie the knots too tightly.
“Yes,” he heard himself say. “I will come. I’d like to help.”
“Thank you.” She gave him a small and weary smile. “You will be paid, of course. And if you need a place to live—”
He couldn’t believe his luck. “I would like that,” he said evenly. “To be here.”
“Good.” She nodded. “I will have it seen to.” The duchess lifted a silver bell and rang it, and a footman appeared to show him out. “Please come in two days’ time,” she said. “It will take me that long to sort things out.”
That surprised him, but he wasn’t going to argue. Not now.
“Good,” Kaab said. They were drinking at the Inkpot: Rafe, Joshua, Thaddeus, Larry, Kaab, and a big redheaded woman Kaab had introduced as Tess, whom Micah had greeted warmly, so they could do no less.
Micah was playing cards nearby. His table included a mathematician who had publicly vowed to keep playing until he figured out Micah’s methods. He had, so far, been unsuccessful—and so the coins kept flowing over to Rafe. Funny kid! Micah always accounted for each minnow, knew precisely what had been spent on every single thing from bread to bathwater for the past three months, and would tell you if you let him—but he loved buying drinks for his friends.
He’s so adorable, Rafe thought in a haze of warmth. Rafe had apologized handsomely to Micah for being such an ass that morning, and Micah had told him that if he ever did it again, he’d sic Cousin Reuben on him, and Reuben had a mean left hook, and Rafe had solemnly promised that if he was ever even tempted, he would just recite his square roots tables, instead, which was much better than getting mad, and now they were friends again.
“No, really,” Kaab repeated. “It is good that you will be close to the duchess. We have a saying, with my people: Stay near your friends, but be even more near your— No.” She shook her head. “Most inelegant. Try this: Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”
Rafe repeated the phrase. It was a good one, and fit his circumstances neatly.
“I am sorry,” Kaab said, “that your duke is not better. But at least you will be near him. I’m telling you though, Rafe”—she leaned across the table and pointed a finger at him, jabbing the air in a very rude way that was probably a gesture of affection among her people or something—“do not trust this Tremontaine woman. Not for an instant. And come back and tell us whenever you can.”
“Tell you what?”
“Tell us what goes on there. We are all concerned.”
“Are you allowed visitors up on the Hill?” Thaddeus asked innocently. “I’d love a tour of Tremontaine House.”
Rafe grimaced. “I’ll ask the duchess to give you one.”
“This place is dull,” Tess said suddenly. Her face was a little flushed—of course, all of theirs were. “Is this all you students do? Just drink and play cards?”
“Pretty much,” Joshua drawled. “Why, what’s your idea of fun?”
“Music?” Tess pushed some of her abundant hair back from her face. “Dancing? If I wanted to sit around with a bunch of drunk
s and gamblers, I could’ve stayed in Riverside!”
There was a sudden silence, while everyone looked at her.
“You didn’t tell them,” Tess said.
Kaab lifted her head haughtily. “I saw no need.”
“Because any friend of yours would automatically be assured a welcome? Or because you honestly do not get what sort of a pit it is I live in, and how this city feels about us?” Tess stood up, rocking the table. “It doesn’t matter. I’m out of here.”
“Tess—wait!” Tess looked down at the foreign woman, all whipcord and braid. “I will come with you.”
Tess shrugged. But Kaab’s brown arm snaked around her, catching her as she turned. “No—” Kaab got that look in her eye. Rafe knew it well, and wondered what mischief she was planning. “No . . . you will come with me.”
“And to where?” Tess asked—but there was the edge of a smile in her voice.
“Why . . .” Kaab grinned. “To the sea!”
“The sea? Isn’t that kind of far?”
“Oh, yes. But it is so very dull here in this place.”
Tess shrugged, grinning, and Kaab settled her arm around her waist, and the women left the tavern laughing.
In the darkness, black water lapped against the stone of the quay. Something above them creaked, and Tess looked around nervously. Even the linkboy froze for a moment, his golden torch casting crazy shadows on the stone.
“Go on,” Kaab told him, and to Tess: “You live in Riverside, and you’re scared of the docks?”
“Docks are nasty,” Tess said. “No Riversider goes here. This is where the ones we don’t let in come. Or the ones we kick out.”
“Well, there’s no one here, Tess. No one who shouldn’t be. Not near Kinwiinik ships. We have guards for that.” Kaab lifted her hand to her mouth and blew a gurgling whistle: a long note, up and down, then three short sharp sounds like birds’ cries.
She was answered by an echoing sound, down the quay. Tess squinted and saw a lantern lifted in greeting. Promising, but still: “Great fun evenings out you take me on.”
“Heyyy-AH!”
Kaab ducked and spun suddenly, flinging a stone low to the ground. Tess screamed.
“Just a rat,” Kaab said peering into the darkness. “I nearly got him.”
This is what it’s gonna be like, Tess thought, as she tried to get her heart to stop slamming in her chest. Just a rat—she’s as bad as a street urchin! Tess wondered briefly what on earth she was doing out on the docks in the middle of the night with this madwoman and why she had thought this would be fun.
The man with the lantern called something in Kindaan, and Kaab shouted something back—probably “just a rat” in her language. When they came abreast of one another, their torch showed a Kinwiinik man dressed in their own garb, not even bothering to look like a City dweller. Tess tried not to stare and then gave up, as Kaab and he talked back and forth in their own tongue. Kaab gave him something from her pouch, and he laughed and nodded. Then he went off, and they waited a moment, until they heard a long whistle from down the pier.
Kaab nodded. “Let’s go.” The linkboy hesitated. “You too,” she said.
“I dunno . . .”
“You’ll be safer with me than going back through the docks by yourself. There are rats, you know.”
They made their way to a wooden pier. Against a starlit sky, Tess could make out the huge, dark shape of a ship bobbing on the water. A Kinwiinik ship. From all the way across the ocean. The torchlight picked out some of the brave paint on its side. A serpent’s open mouth and some kind of bird, long feathered, running endlessly before it.
Kaab mounted the gangplank and held out her hand. “My lady.”
Well, thought Tess, it’s now or never. And it was now.
The gangplank wobbled. It smelled of seawater and tar and fish and other things she couldn’t name. Step by step up the thing in the dark, the nervous torch behind them casting wild shadows on wood and water, while Kaab supported her arm and coaxed her along.
Tess heard music then. Coming from the ship. She followed the sound, and then she was standing on solid—deck, she supposed. She’d never been on a deck. It felt nice, after the gangplank, anyway. The whole ship bobbed gently, but she wouldn’t fall off.
“Welcome,” Kaab said softly, “to the great ship of the Balam, Tess.”
There, on the deck, they kissed—and when they separated, the music sounded free and clear: some kind of pipe, playing a slow air, with the sad kind of beauty that music can have. Tess saw a lone figure outlined against the starlit sky, atop the roof of a little house on the deck.
“The Kinwiinik sailors,” Kaab murmured, “must keep long watches, and so they play to keep themselves awake.” They were silent, listening. “Do you like it?”
“I do.” Tess drew in a deep breath. She was in another world now, Kaab’s world. She leaned against her lover. A shadowy man came up and offered them a bottle gourd and then withdrew. Kaab took it and drank, and offered it to her with: “Be careful. The first swallow burns.”
It did, oh how it did! But the second, and the third . . . Tess felt warm and light as air. She imagined herself on the ship, just the two of them, sailing out under the stars in the middle of the sea— “This thing won’t really take off, will it?” she asked suddenly.
“What?” Kaab laughed. “Oh, no; the tide’s all wrong. And the stars that will guide you and me home together are yet to be born, my maize flower. So let us dance under the ones that we have now.”
“Dance?”
Yes, the flute was getting faster, the music flowing like a river, and soon it was joined by a drum. And so they danced, just the two of them, on the great deck under the stars of that strange city.
At one point, Tess’s hair came unbound. Kaab nestled herself under it, her head between Tess’s breasts. The pipe was wild, and so they danced again and drank, and somehow there were fried tortillas, hot enough to burn your fingers, fragrant with cinnamon, and then there was a nest of blankets under the stars, and they sank down together in them.
“Sleep here,” Kaab murmured. “I have arranged everything. There will be chocolate in the morning, the finest, for you.”
“You really are a princess,” Tess said sleepily. “With a ship of your own, and servants . . . I didn’t realize.”
“No,” said Kaab, “you didn’t. And you’ll probably forget. But never mind. I keep my promises, you see, Red Tess.”
The duke awoke to a great flurry around him. He had been bundled into his clothes, and now they were trying to put a great fur robe on him, as well. The room was candlelit, but everyone else was already dressed.
“The medicine,” False Diane was saying, “Wickfield, every third day, now. No less than that, though, or he becomes agitated.”
A great bear, an old god of the woods, came toward the bed. It smelled of smoke and old fires. It opened its mouth, and “Hey there,” it said. “Hey there, lad.” It patted his arm with its great paw.
“I don’t know you!” Will struggled, but the bear held him fast, breathing in his face, growling: “What do you mean you don’t know me, young William? You’ve known me all your life.”
The bear had him by the head now, and water was falling from its eyes into his. “It’s me, Will! It’s Wickfield, your pal. Remember we used to catch trout together, at Highcombe?”
With the bear’s tears, Will saw an orchard in spring, apple blossoms, the nodding summer heads of barley lazy in the sun, and silver trout in the stream.
“I’ve come to take you home, lad.”
“Good,” he said, and lay back, comforted. “I would like that.”
Rafe couldn’t wait for the sun to rise. He dressed by candlelight in his dark linen suit, his clean white shirt. He didn’t shave or tie his neckcloth; he’d stop at a barber in the Middle City on the way to the Hill and let him do the honors. That would also take up time, so that he didn’t arrive too early at Tremontaine House.
Hi
s room looked bare; he’d packed up most of his things already, though he wasn’t bringing them with him today. Despite the duchess’s promise to have everything ready for him—by which he assumed she meant his permanent living quarters—he didn’t want to arrive with bags in hand.
Rafe stepped quietly into the outer room. Joshua was snoring on one pallet, Thad on the other, and Micah lay on his chaise, looking very young, younger even than he did when he was awake. Rafe paused and smiled fondly: the little card sharp! His innocence was part of what fooled the other players. He’d miss Micah, he realized, miss the way they had needed each other these last three months. It was good having someone to take care of and watch them learn things. But Rafe was taking care of Will, now—and he wasn’t leaving scholarship forever, just long enough to keep his enemy close and make things right. He didn’t know how long that would take, but he was determined; and then, when Will was better, whatever it took, they could go back to planning his school together—with a special room for Micah, to teach the rules of math.
“Rafe?” Micah’s eyes opened hazily, and he peered up at Rafe’s candle. “Rafe, are you going?”
Rafe nodded silently.
“So can I have your room now?”
He started to object, but then thought, What difference does one night make? “Sure, Micah. You can move in now.”
“Good.” To his surprise, Micah emerged from the covers fully clothed. “Then I’m going to walk with you partway.”
Micah’s motives were sometimes a mystery, but Rafe could read friendship when he saw it. And so they walked together through the silent, dew-damp, gray streets of University, Micah in his scholar’s robe, and Rafe feeling naked without his.
Micah prattled cheerfully, but in a muffled tone, in deference to the hour: “I’m really happy about your room, Rafe. I’m going to keep the door closed. It’s a good, thick door; you can hardly hear anything through it, because when you and your boyfriend were doing your business in there we only heard you when you were screaming really loudly, and that wasn’t for very long. I’m glad, because it scared me. But Joshua wouldn’t let me open the door, and now I’m glad, because it turned out you were perfectly fine. . . . So when I’ve got the door shut, I won’t be able to hear anyone on the other side, unless they’re screaming but Joshua says that’s once in a lifetime and will probably never happen to him—”
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