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Carolle peeled off her glowing costume, dropped it in front of the mirror, and fell into the only chair in their bedchamber. She propped her sore feet on her bed. Braith brought over a tray with heated oil and soap.
Lucille wrung out a steaming rag and laid it over the mouth of the ewer on the bath stand. “I’m only saying you should hear Gaines out.” Carolle’s glower didn’t deter her. “Don’t do something rash, like. I’m not being funny; that plat can do a proper lot of good. In your hands.”
“In my hands? You’re doing my head in, Luce. I couldn’t do what Rodinger can.” Carolle poured the olive oil over the pitch on her chest and began to rub it in. “Gaines and his father’ll use whatever I tell them against our own queen’s wishes—against the Bonded Nations. I’m sure of it.”
“The Bonded Nations?” Lucille asked, passing over the damp rag. “Who’s getting ahead of herself now? We’re talking about one noble and the Warring States. You can’t know what’ll occur—”
“I can! Because I won’t do it!” Carolle wiped the last of the olive oil from her chest and slung the rag to the tray. “I’m not my mam! I’m not a whore!”
Lucille’s cheeks went ruddy. “I was. The women who reared you were! You look down on them now, do you?”
“Course not, Luce bach.” Carolle sat forward. “I’m only saying Gaines is buying a part of me that’s not for sale, man. No coin should give me pause over that.”
Braith said to her fidgeting fingers, “Really makes you a mercenary more than a prostitute, doesn’t it?”
Carolle defied Lucille’s glare with her own and responded with an audible sigh through her nose.
Someone gently tapped twice at the door. It cracked open. “Braith, love?” Dafydd asked. Braith scurried to block his view.
Lucille draped her cloak over Carolle. They sat opposite each other with softened features. “There’ll be Gaines,” Lucille whispered.
“I never wanted to feel this way,” Carolle said. “The way that coin makes me feel.”
Lucille sulked and studied her hands in her lap.
“This is what’s best, Luce.”
Braith put her back to the door and offered a reassuring smile. “It’s not Gaines. Madame Davies wants a word, Carolle. I told Dafydd you’ll be there now in a minute.”
Dressed as herself, Carolle sought out Madame Davies in the suites upstairs and found her sitting at her vanity. A letter preoccupied her thoughts among the plentiful bouquets. “Madame Davies?”
“Never thought you the type, Carolle bach,” she said without looking up. “To marry into security.” Carolle took the note. Rodinger’s formal invitation to dinner.
Madame Davies waved away her words. “I’m not saying I disagree with your methods. I shouldn’t be surprised. You’ve always taken care of yourself more than the rest have done.”
“If that were true, I wouldn’t be in the troupe.” Carolle laid the note aside and stood behind her matron. She began removing hairpins from the older woman’s lavender-perfumed curls. “Lord Bernard is a friend, not a suitor.”
Madame Davies’s cackle dwindled into a chortle. “Oh, you should see your cheeks, good girl! Beet red! You can’t fool me. And before you go denying it again, recall I saw you spending your time with High Lord Bernard in the castle the night of the gala. The way he jumped to your defense, like.”
“I don’t remember that,” Carolle said into the mirror. “After all you’ve done for me, Madame Davies, and Queen Ada, I can’t imagine why I’d want to marry out of this life.”
“You do it for security, of course! Servants dipping and bowing, bringing you grapes and wine and feather pillows . . .” She snapped herself out of her daydream. “Got to be honest with you, Carolle Ysbryd, you could belong in that world. Your heart knows it. You didn’t want to be a dancer, either. But fate has served you well.”
“That’s different. I chose to be the Pixie of Bryn Mawr. I liked being a footpad. And I thought I’d be sent to the gallows if I didn’t agree.”
Madame Davies softened her expression. “That’s as may be, yet someone’s lit a fire inside you, girl. Can you honestly say you’d go back to that life if you left this one? No, you can’t. Sometimes fate puts you where you need to be. Gods know I didn’t plan on spending my middle years minding troublins day in, day out.”
Carolle’s embarrassment roasted. She set the last pin on the vanity. “I belong with you lot. I’m a hard worker. What work is there in being carted around to mingle with the like who can’t disagree without waving a fan?”
Madame Davies didn’t seem to hear her, contemplating behind her faint grimace. “Older than I would’ve expected, mind. But a high lord of the Tenth Ring has ways to compensate for that.”
“Please, Madame Davies. I remind him of his late daughter.” Carolle knelt next to her matron. “I want to stay with you and someday start my own troupe. Your life is far more appealing than peeled grapes.”
“Ha!” Madame Davies said to her reflection. “You hear this? She’s sending us to an early grave. Taking our lives for our livelihood.” She began scrubbing away at her makeup.
Carolle rose to meet her gaze in the mirror. “Never. I want to do what you do. Help those in need, in trouble.”
Madame Davies patted Carolle’s hand and shrugged. “We’ll see, won’t we?” She resumed her scrubbing. Carolle took up the invitation and departed the floral scents of the room.
Out in the hallway, Dafydd waited for her. “Braith sent me. There’s a Lord Gaines in the theatre to see you.” He followed her. “If I’m going to be running up and down by here delivering your messages, I may start expecting some coin—”
Her sharp look cut him off. He couldn’t have meant the plat. Braith wouldn’t have told him. “Sorry, Dafydd. I’m having a demanding evening, as you know.”
Traipsing the hall’s creaky floorboards with her, he said, “This Gaines feller looks like a right twat. You want me to go with you?”
“I’ll be fine, ta.” Then she reflected on what refusing a noble may bring. “But if I’m not back in a few, I wouldn’t mind if you checked in on me.”
He agreed with a furrowed brow. She didn’t have the time to explain.
Back in her quarters, Lucille and Braith grew silent when she entered. Lucille had Gaines’s purse in her hands. She held it out to Carolle. “One hundred and fifty little coins. All counted and ready to go.” Her grip wasn’t easily conquered.
Carolle said, “It is for the best, biwt. Wish me luck?”
Gazing longingly at the purse, Lucille gave a weak agreement. “Aye. Go on. You’ve already kept him waiting.”
“Good luck!” Braith shouted as Carolle thudded down the hallway with the hefty purse in her arms.
From backstage, Carolle spied into the theatre and saw no one. A crack brought her attention to the royal box. There Gaines sat, tossing nutshells on the floor.
Carolle doubled back and hesitated for a moment outside the royal crests on the curtains. She entered. Gaines rose and examined her woolen gown as she did the same for the bruise—or bruises—overtaking the left side of his face. When his eyes lit on the purse, he deflated back to his chair.
“What happened to you?” Carolle asked. “Is that why for you missed the gala?”
Side-eyeing the purse, Gaines said, “I live a charmed life. More charmed by the minute, it seems.” He jammed his hand into a sack of nuts in the chair next to him. A purse identical to the one Carolle carried lay on the chair as well.
She set her purse with its twin and sat in the next chair over. “Oh, don’t be embarrassed, man. Worse things have happened at sea. I hope he—or she—got theirs.”
Gaines exhaled loudly. “He. He always gets his and never accepts less than what he wants. Especially in rebuke.” Abruptly sitting forward, he scanned the theatre and listened for a moment. Relaxing, he popped a hazelnut in his mouth and gave it a meaningful chomp.
With the tip of his belt knife, he bored into the soft part of another shell and said, “I’ve been informed you learnt something interesting about Lord Bernard’s association with the Warring States.”
“What? By who?” Carolle asked. “The man in the gray mask?”
Gaines put his finger to his mouth to shush her. He leaned over the purses to whisper. “No! We don’t speak of them. If you ever see one, you run the other way.” She felt a bit dizzy from the fear in his voice, but nodded. He sat back and raised his eyebrows, prompting her to tell him what she had learned.
She gathered the wool of her skirt in her fists. “I don’t know how interesting it is to hear he’s cousins with a duke. Figured you’d already know that.”
He studied her reaction and pouted his disappointment. “There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”
“Well that’s as may be,” she said. “I can’t help you. If I’m honest, noble acts are more appealing than noble coin. I’m sorry. Here’s your purse. I kindly ask you to leave me be.” Carolle rose.
Gaines brushed the splintered hazelnut shells from his lap to clatter to the floor. “No, I don’t think so. I’m sorry too. I cannot let you go yet, Carolle Graean.”
Splinters of frost drove through Carolle’s chest upon hearing her name. Her mouth went dry. Crossing her arms to counter his apology, she said, “I wouldn’t have believed you to be the brave sort, Barimor Gaines. But here you are, alone, speaking things you shouldn’t be.”
That brought the haughtiness back to his tanned, yellow-and-purple-bruised face. “Brave enough to be alone with a penniless footpad? The bastard daughter of a brothel whore?” He stood as she tried on Queen Ameera’s steely expression. “Does the elegant Carolle Ysbryd not want to be reminded of her harlot mother? Good. I’d want to distance myself from the fate of joining those diseased harpies, too.” He kicked the chair holding the purses.
“What will it take to get rid of you?” Carolle asked.
His features apologized again, tempting her to darken his other eye. “Keep your word,” he said, stowing his knife. Gaines dug into his jerkin pocket for his snuff case and tapped a deposit onto the back of his hand. “Don’t desert me like some elf. Tell me what you know.” Carolle took a step up while he snorted the brown powder. “Don’t desert your Madame Davies, either. Rumors place thieves and prostitutes in your troupe—”
“What are you saying?”
Gaines twitched his nose and closed his case. “Queen Ada has a strange sense of humor, sending your kind across borders,” he said and returned the snuff to his pocket. “The problem your matron faces is that simply bringing a troupe of miscreants into Racine carries a precedent, one that puts you and your troupe in pillories and sends your ‘madame’ to the gallows. Did I hear correctly that Queen Ameera announced Racine’s entry into the Bonded Nations with the woman standing behind her?” He scrubbed a hand under his nose. “To illustrate my point, that murderer in your midst, Lord Dafydd Gallivan—”
“Shut up! You don’t know what you’re saying. Braith’s father abused her. Come after them, and I’ll lump you myself! Wretch!”
“Save him,” Gaines growled back. “You could save all of these dancers who are one misstep away from a brothel.” He came closer, letting the light reveal his busted lip. “Carolle?”
“You keep my name out of your mouth.” Her heated stare weighed him. He genuinely seemed to be struggling with his threats. “Who did that to you? Who’s making you do this?”
“Someone who can make us both disappear if I fail.”
Carolle’s frustration summoned tears she blinked back.
Gaines murmured, “We have no choice.”
“I understand that!” Carolle snapped. Her fingers rubbed the invitation in her hand. She fanned herself with it. Upon realizing what she was doing, she quit and groaned. How long has she been here for that to become a habit? Too long. Too long around cockin’ nobles. “In Popplewell’s warehouse, they’re building a ship. The Nymphony. Warding it with magic, like. It’s a gift for Lord Bernard’s cousin, the duke of Ghest in Critz.”
Understanding dawned in Gaines’s eyes. “Smart. Intimidate Crestwall into joining. Miltiad legally cannot refuse. The other Warring States won’t resist Crestwall, Miltiad, and Critz.”
Gaines passed her on the steps. “You’ve nearly earned your coin and your freedom, Lady Ysbryd.”
“Nearly?”
“One last task.” He faced her from the curtained entrance. “The final. You have my word. My request is this: accept Lord Bernard’s invitation.”
Carolle pinched the invitation tighter. “Why for?”
“To save him,” Gaines answered, “just like you’re saving your troupe. Do what you can—all that you can—and keep him in his High House tomorrow, far away from the docks. The death of a high lord is more attention than they’ll want, but they’ll achieve their goal no matter the price.”
Her stomach gurgled, promising illness. “Gaines, could we stand against them?”
A hopeful hesitation lingered, but he closed his eyes and shook his head. “Save your troupe, Lady Ysbryd, and keep Lord Bernard from interfering with the destruction of his ship.”
Her thoughts erupted. “They work day and night. Guarded. They’ll always be there. Then they’ll just build another—” Unless they couldn’t. “You won’t hurt Master Popplewell! Give me your word!”
“You think I have a say?” he growled. He stood there for a moment. “Console yourself with your new coin or imagine your troupe dancing in fetters. Lady’s choice. Either way, don’t waver now. You’re almost free.” He ripped the crested curtains down, wadded them into a ball, and threw them aside.
Carolle waited until Gaines was gone and bade Dafydd a good night at the entrance to the back of the house. Then she collected the purses and brought them to the costumery. Alone with her thoughts, Carolle circled until her mind fell silent and her core numb. Whatever Gaines intended for the Nymphony, steal the designs or burn it, she wouldn’t betray her troupe for a ship. Master Popplewell . . . they’d have to start anew, on a new ship. But Rodinger would be safe at home.
After combining the coins into one purse, Carolle hid it beneath a scenery cart. Her shaking hand penned the acceptance to Rodinger’s invitation. With that carried off, she returned to her dark quarters and sat on her bunk. Carolle leaned forward and opened the empty purse for Lucille and Braith. “Done,” she whispered. “We don’t bother with Gaines now.”
Lucille moped but got up to give Carolle a hug.
“This doesn’t change anything, Luce,” Braith said, lying on her side. “We can still carry on like before.”
“I know,” Lucille said weakly. “I do hope Chester has more sense than his friend do.”
Perhaps Chester was part of the “they” Gaines feared. That didn’t seem right. Chester had been subservient to Gaines when they’d met them.
“What?” Lucille asked.
Realizing she stared, Carolle answered, “Nothing. I’m just worried for you. You’ll have to deal with that lot while you’re being courted. Gods, for the rest of your life, if you marry the man.”
“Bite your tongue,” Braith whispered.
Lucille feigned offense. “You think I’d stick around when he’s no longer fun?” They giggled. “I’ll be right here with you. We can both be Madame Davies. I’m the talent and you’re the loud crone.”
Carolle elbowed Lucille off her bed and bade them a good night. Her mind worked the puzzle of Gaines’s scheme and what it would truly mean for her troupe if she declined. To calm her nerves, she wound and rewound the thin chain of the dragon’s ear through her fingers.
When Lucille’s snoring steadied, Carolle slid off her blankets, snatched up her boots, and made her way back to the purse hidden in the costumery. One thing she could see clearly, it wasn’t safe anywhere in the theatre. Gaines or his cohorts might report she had stolen it now that they knew of her past.
In need of concealment and agility, Carolle donned a pair of dark blue trousers and a matching tunic. She sneaked past Mage Serrano’s private room, where he and Madame Davies were celebrating with their second bottle of wine, judging by the murmured words and tender cooing. She pressed on to the alley.
In a wintry drizzle, the freedom of the night hit her as solidly as the wind up the bay. Clutching the purse to her side, she rounded Theatre Row to Port Way and stuck to the shadows as best she could, hiding behind crates, carts, and barrels whenever someone wandered by on her way to the Temple District. No one out at the peak of night could be up to good doings.
Carolle thanked the gods when she finally found the squat temple to Pencer, the pik god of the feasts. Around back, she tiptoed to the pair of short black doors, the Portals to Shadow. Humans believed the little people had added them as a false entrance, a memorial to Pencer’s slain twin sister, Panette, the goddess of shadows. But Carolle had relied on the truth of the Portals more than once. For if there was a race worth their word, it was the piks.
Certain she wasn’t seen, Carolle crouched inside. A tiny corridor sloped downhill to a small brazier and two pik guards. At the sight of a human, the guards peeled their pale eyes and seized the hilts of their daggers.
Time to see if Liliwen had spoken truthfully when she’d said the Patevian password would be accepted around the world. “A ddwg ŵy a ddwg fwy,” she said to the older guard. His hand lifted from his dagger to scratch his scalp through his leather cap.
“What?” the younger guard asked. Pointing the sprig of whiskers on his chin at Carolle, he drew his blades fully.
The older pik translated, “He who steals an egg will steal more.” He thwacked his companion on the back of his helmet. “She’s Patevian, Rumer. You need to study up, lad.” The older guard waved Carolle forward. “Segurdod yw clod y cledd.” A sword’s credit is its idleness.
“I’ll be needing your vault, gentlemen,” Carolle said.
Pursing his lips, Rumer shifted his weight forward to stand on the balls of his feet. “No sudden moves, human. The slowest of our kind is always quicker than the fastest of yours.”
“Not when it comes to wit,” said his partner. He put his fingers to the stone wall.
Rumer frowned over at him and palmed a stone himself. They pressed and rotated the stones in unison. A hidden door swung open behind Rumer, revealing a smaller opening than the cramped corridor in which Carolle hunched. Rumer led the way as Carolle crawled on all fours down the steep decline into the stale air. The door behind her resealed before the floor leveled out.
“How does a human know our secrets?” Rumer asked.
At the end of the tunnel, the ceiling allowed Carolle to stand again. She brushed the dust and grit from her hands and said, “A friend told me.”
The wheels in Rumer’s head spun. “Then they’re a tossin’ traitor! This isn’t a secret to share. Never with humans!”
“When I was twelve, I saved her daughter from drowning in the river, man. She didn’t have coin but wanted to repay me.” That cooled his steam a bit.
They walked past three tiers of pik-high openings on either side of the corridor. Ladders on rails offered access to those higher in the walls. Carolle sought one that didn’t have a small stone at the entrance, marking it as claimed.
Spotting a stone-free hole, Carolle rolled a ladder near. Again, she’d have to crawl. She threw the purse into the ancient vault first and awkwardly managed to shuffle inside from halfway up the ladder.
Rumer hoisted a lantern on a pole in order for her to see. Thankfully, the vault went only as deep as her height. After depositing the purse on one of the embedded shelves, she removed the dragon’s ear from around her neck and set the necklace on a shelf of its own.
Scooting back out on her backside, she dropped down to where Rumer was setting the lantern on its pedestal. He selected a stone from a pile beneath the light and offered her the tan river rock. “I was wrong. She was right to tell an ally to our people.”
The statement gave Carolle pause, conjuring thoughts of her betrayal of Master Popplewell. Setting the rock at the edge of the vault, Carolle said, “I didn’t save her son.” They didn’t speak again.
Along the bay, Carolle roamed in the mist. Carolle Graean or Carolle Ysbryd? Master Popplewell’s cheery face interrupted her thoughts. Poor dab. May the gods—the world—forgive her.
