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Blast it all. Moira had overdone it with the calming spells. This kind of magy was tricky, even at the best of times, even after years of practice. But she hadn’t missed the mark so badly in a long time. What was wrong with her? For a moment, she had thought Brother Hamon would kiss her, and that hadn’t been her intention at all. There was sometimes a fine line between interrogating a man and seducing him, especially from his point of view. But all she had wanted was for him to tell her where the Gramirens were and where the stolen collateral was being kept.
Or was that really all she’d wanted? If he’d really tried kissing her, would she have let him? She knew she shouldn’t have. But why not? She didn’t need to worry about her reputation. She’d given up on that when she ran away with Faustinus, all those years ago. And she didn’t need to worry what Faustinus might think. They were all but divorced, and they had never been the jealous type, either of them.
Now that she thought about it, she didn’t think she would have minded kissing Brother Hamon. He was rather good-looking, in a lanky, academic sort of way. Not devastatingly handsome, but she had faced enough devastation from handsomeness in the past two decades, and pleasant good looks would be quite enough. And it had been months since she’d had a real, passionate kiss. Let alone anything more than a kiss.
She remembered the last occasion quite clearly: the night she had told Faustinus, once and for all, that she really did want a divorce. He had agreed and then, rather typically, he had suggested they go upstairs and “celebrate.” So, they had done it one last time.
She thought the walk back to her house would clear her mind. She could think about the problem of the Gramirens and the stolen treasure. She could come up with a new way of weaseling the truth out of Brother Hamon. But instead she spent the entire walk imagining what it might be like to sleep with the Myrcian monk.
He’d be inexperienced, of course. Or would he? Earstien only knew what sort of depraved things he and the other monks might have gotten up to. And if he’d done those sorts of things with other young men, he could do them to her, too.
By the time she was halfway back to the house, she had decided that she would pour herself a glass of wine, stretch out on the long settee in the back parlor, and see if she couldn’t do something to relieve a little of this tension. This was something she tried not to do too often, not because she thought pleasuring herself was immoral, but because if she did it more than once or twice a month, she worried she was becoming pathetic.
Her solitary pleasure would have to wait, however. When she got home, she found Faustinus waiting for her in the garden. She couldn’t help wishing he was there for some quick, meaningless sex. But he was there for business.
“How are things going with our monastic friend?” he asked.
“I think I’m making progress,” she said.
“Oh?” He smiled. “How much progress?”
“Not that much,” she grumbled.
They sat on either end of the marble bench, and he leaned forward to pat her on the shoulder. “Poor girl. If it’s any consolation, I’m not having much luck, either.”
“No luck?” She almost asked if something had gone wrong between him and Gina, but she held her tongue.
“None, sadly. I’ve been looking around for someone who could manage a bank for us, and I haven’t found anyone yet.”
“So, you weren’t just joking about that?”
“Perhaps I was slightly flip when I first spoke the words, but then I realized it really could be the answer to all our problems.”
Moira needed a minute to let this all sink in, so she went into the house and fetched them each a glass of wine. That gave her enough time to get the idea straight enough in her head to discuss it seriously. “Surely there are plenty of people who know the business,” she said on her return, handing him a glass. “It seems one can’t throw a stone in Presidium without hitting somebody who works at a bank or has a big account with one.”
“Yes,” he said, “there are plenty of people who know the business.”
“What about Presley Kemp?”
“Oh, I absolutely intend to make use of his talents, but not as our managing director. He’s, well,....”
“Retired?”
“I was going to say, ‘too observant.’ No, for the director, I’m looking for someone special. Someone who is willing to help because...it’s his patriotic duty, or something like that. Someone who won’t simply regard this as a matter of profit and loss. Someone a bit more.... What’s the word?”
“Idealistic?” she suggested.
“Gullible,” he said. He finished his wine and levitated the glass gently over to the sideboard. “Look, I know you’ve already got a lot of work with our dear Brother Hamon, but if you or your girls happen to come across someone who could be our director, let me know.”
He left, and Moira had two more glasses of wine, but her amorous mood was entirely gone. Eventually she went up to her study and wrote out messages to all her Emissariae, explaining what Faustinus was looking for, and asking them to keep an eye out.
She would certainly never have suggested that Faustinus didn’t pull his own weight where the Prefecturate was concerned, but it often seemed as if she—and the Emissariae—ended up doing jobs that he could easily have done if he hadn’t been busy with other things, like dining with Senators and lining up votes for next year’s Proconsular appointments. And his powerful friends could find a dozen people qualified to run a bank at any of their dinner parties.
But then again, as he had said, he wanted more than someone who could start a bank. Faustinus wanted a man smart enough to run a bank successfully, but stupid enough not notice it being used as a front for spying and warmongering. And that would be almost impossible to find. She had a bad feeling this would end with the collapse of the new bank and the Prefecturate even further in debt than it already was.
In the afternoon, Lily stopped by and picked up the messages, and after an early supper, Moira had two more glasses of wine and went to bed long before she normally would have.
She had a dream that night in which she and Hamon were married, living in that very house. And in her dream, Faustinus and Gina came over for supper one night. Then Hamon disappeared, saying he had to go check on the stolen Gramiren treasure, but refusing to let anyone else go with him. And in his absence, Gina threw herself drunkenly on Moira, tearing at her clothes and thrusting into her with oiled fingers, while Faustinus sat across the room, watching and grinning.
When Moira woke up, she was sweaty and rather wetter than she had been in a long time, and she felt utterly disgusted with herself, even though she knew she had no control over what turned up in her dreams. She had never been attracted to girls in waking life, so she knew this was a passing fancy. But even so, she took a very cold bath before getting dressed and starting in on the day’s work.
She still had her hair drying in a towel when Lily arrived with the morning’s messages. “The usual updates, most of them,” said her vice-tribune. “But here’s something you don’t see every day.” She handed over a letter on excellent parchment, sealed with dark green wax.
Moira examined the seal and saw an owl on a mountain with five stars overhead. “Oh, balls,” she said. “It’s from Diernemynster.” And she already knew who had written it, because only one person up at the famous mountain retreat would be writing to her.
She tore open the seal, and sure enough, the letter came from Evika Videle. But it turned out that, in spite of the fact that Evika had used the Diernemynster seal, she was writing from Wealdan Castle. The girl was visiting the court of the new Sigor king.
“Oh, hold on,” Moira said to Lily. “This might be useful.”
According to Evika, rumors were beginning to leak out about the theft of the crown, sword, and book. No one but the king and his closest advisors knew the truth for certain, but many lesser courtiers had noticed that the famous treasures were not where they should have been. The official story was that the relics had been moved somewhere “for safekeeping,” but as weeks and months passed, people were beginning to wonder where they were.
“An ominous gloom” prevailed around the castle. “People are saying that the new king is unlucky,” she wrote, “or that maybe he’s not even the rightful king. Some people are pinning their hopes on a new marriage being discussed right now in Rawdon to distract from everything else.” But she ended by saying she didn’t know if all the marriages in the world could help the Sigors without the missing treasures.
That was bad news for the Sigors, and for Diernemynster, which unofficially backed the Sigor family. But it was very good news for anyone who might be able to get her hands on the stolen treasure. The Sigors would offer a reward to whoever returned it, no doubt. And the more desperate they got, the greater the reward. Moira wondered if the idea percolating in her mind might count as a little unkind to her old friends, but before she could second guess herself, she dashed off a quick note to Faustinus with a summary of what Evika had written. She handed it to Lily to go out with the other morning deliveries.
She did not, however, write a reply to Evika. “The girl surely can’t be expecting it,” Moira thought. “Not at this point.”
Feeling a bit revived, Moira headed back down to the Black Eagle Inn, where she had to wait no more than three quarters of an hour before Hamon made an appearance. He looked truly dreadful—unshaven and with his hair sticking up in the back. His eyes were red, with dark bags under them, as if he’d stayed up all night either crying or drinking. He didn’t smell like liquor, though.
“It’s you again,” he said in a low, flat voice as he settled into a chair next to her.
“Yes, it’s me,” she said, smiling and giving him a very tiny calming spell. “You look as if you could use a nap.”
He nodded slowly. “I probably could.” Then, abruptly, “Lady Moira, have you ever felt as if you’ve gotten yourself into something you wish you could get out of?”
No doubt he meant his mission to get a loan from the Procellus Bank. “I’ve often felt that way, actually,” she said, reaching over and giving his hand a sympathetic pat.
He pulled his hand away from her with a look of anguish, as if she’d touched him with red-hot steel. “I’m...I’m sorry. I’ve been up all night, and right around dawn, something occurred to me.”
“Oh, what’s that?” She was literally on the edge of her seat. The young monk seemed on the verge of some great crisis.
“It occurred to me that no one ever asked me if I wanted to be a monk. And it also occurred to me that the more time I spend outside the monastery, the less I ever want to go back. I liked it there, or I thought I did, but...I don’t want to live there anymore.” He kneaded his hands together. “Does that make me an awful person?”
Astonishing how a new day could make everything better. She’d messed up the spells yesterday, but even so, he was like potting clay under her fingers.
“No,” she said. “That makes you entirely normal.” She reached out again, very slowly, and took his hand. This time he didn’t pull away. “Look, I don’t tell people this very often, but as it happens, when I was...younger than I am now, I was involved in a kind of...monastic enterprise, as well.”
His eyebrows went up. “Really? Which order? Would I know your convent?”
“Um...probably not. It’s not important. In any case, I can tell you from personal experience that you can’t worry too much about their rules.” She squeezed his hand gently. “You have to ask yourself, Hamon, what it is that you really want.”