“So that was the famous Marguerite,” said Wren, as she and Shane descended the stairs to the courtyard.
“So it seems.” Insomuch as Shane had ever thought of the woman who had saved all seven of the Saint of Steel’s paladins a few years earlier, he had pictured someone rather like the Bishop, a tall, spare, civil-servant type. He had been very wrong.
Well, no surprise there, is it?
This time, though, it was a pleasant surprise. Marguerite had tawny skin and dark, blue-black hair, and to say that she had curves was an understatement that bordered on a venial sin. Her breasts were nearly the size of his head. Individually. He wondered if she frequently found herself having to repeat things to men two or three times, or if people often walked into walls and doorframes when she was around.
The less-pleasant surprise had been how nervous she was. Perhaps it had been Shane’s imagination, but when the door had opened, her eyes had shot to it like a woman expecting armed warriors to pour through. Which, in fairness, we did, but she knew that we were coming.
It was odd. The legend of Marguerite, who had locked horns with the Bishop and gotten away with it, did not quite mesh with his first impression.
Though my impression is more likely to be wrong than not, Dreaming God knows.
“Wonder why we’re trying to track down this artificer,” mused Wren.
“I imagine we’ll be told the reason in private. Or as much of the reason as the Bishop thinks we need to know.”
“Probably.” Wren rubbed the back of her neck. “I can’t believe I’m going to have to wear a dress again.”
“I can’t believe I’m going to have to shave.”
Wren grinned. “It’s been so long since I saw you without that starving badger attached to your face that I may not recognize you.”
Shane sighed deeply. “Why does no one like my beard?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?”
“…no.”
Wren hooked her arm through his. “Between my skirts and your bare face, we’ll take the court by storm. You’ll see.”
Shane knew that neither he or Wren was the sort to take a court by storm—unless charging in with blades flashing counted—but thinking back to Marguerite and the lazy gleam of assurance in her eyes, he suspected that there might be one brewing nonetheless.
And I am no longer the man to hold back the storm. Possibly I never was. Perhaps I should go to Beartongue and ask her to assign someone else. Someone who is not so unreliable.
He doubted that she’d let him get out of it, but fear of failure churned in his gut. He had not yet failed the White Rat, as he had failed two gods before Him, but perhaps it was only a matter of time.
I can ask. And when she tells me no, I will respect her judgment.
It is bound to be superior to my own.
Marguerite bit her lip. She was, for the first time that day, nervous.
If the audience with Beartongue had gone badly, she would have been annoyed, frustrated, and facing a great deal of extra work. If the Bishop had been in the pay of the Red Sail, she would have been downright terrified. But neither one of those things would have hurt.
If this meeting went badly, though…
It’s been three years. And you didn’t come to her trial, even though you tried to make it right.
She’d had to leave. It wasn’t safe. The memory of what had happened to her patron had been too fresh. She’d made herself too obvious, and if she didn’t cut and run, it was only a matter of time until someone realized who she really was. At the time, she hadn’t known that the Red Sail was behind the attack on her patron, and the world had been full of faceless enemies. Then it had turned out that having a face to put on the enemy didn’t help. I had to go. There was too much danger to Grace if I stayed.
Guilt stabbed at her. She bowed her head.
This is what comes of caring too much for people who aren’t in the game. Either they become targets or you cut them off because you know what happens to targets. Her patron had taught her that lesson and its corollary: that you must care for your own operatives and use them ruthlessly nonetheless. She had broken the first rule three years ago, and it haunted her still.
The door to the room opened, and Grace stepped through, her head turned to speak to someone over her shoulder. “Fine, I’m going, but this better be important. I was in the middle of a distillation and…”
“Well,” said Marguerite, “if you’re in the middle of distillation, I can always come back later.”
Grace’s head snapped around so fast that Marguerite heard vertebrae crackle. “Marguerite?!”
Grace charged into the room. Marguerite braced herself, not sure if she’d earned a warm embrace or a punch in the jaw but willing to accept either.
Grace’s arms went around her and the knot in Marguerite’s chest loosened. She hadn’t broken things past mending. She’d left before Grace became a target, and Grace had forgiven her. She took a deep breath, smelling the scent that her perfumer friend was wearing, something tantalizingly familiar that she couldn’t quite put a name on.
“What on earth is that perfume?”
Grace’s laughing sob, or sobbing laugh—Marguerite doubted that she knew herself—broke against her shoulder. “It’s supposed to be petrichor.”
“Isn’t that a level of hell?”
“No, silly.” Grace stepped back, wiping at her eyes. “It’s the smell right before a rainstorm. You know it.”
“Oh.” Marguerite leaned in and sniffed. “That’s it. How on earth did you make a scent like that?”
Grace shook her head. “Never mind any of that. You’re here! You’re back! Are you staying? I’ve moved into the upstairs, but there’s still a bed in my old room.”
“No, no. I’m only here for a day or two. Until the Bishop has her people ready to ride.”
“Will you stay with us until then?”
Marguerite winced internally at the hope on Grace’s face. She hated to say no, but the thought of that small, narrow room, with only one door, and no way to escape if someone came through… “I’m sorry. I’d love to, but I have to be here for all the last-minute arrangements, not sending runners halfway across the city.” She grasped Grace’s hands more tightly. “But tell me everything that’s happened with you!”
“Me? I haven’t done anything special. I work, I make perfumes, some of them sell, some of them flop. I have a deal with a minstrel who attends all the fancy parties and takes orders, but he’s not half the agent you were. Tab is the same as ever. He gets into Stephen’s yarn and rolls around and makes a horrible mess, and Stephen sighs and extracts him again.”
“And are you still happy with your paladin, dear heart?”
“Yes,” said Grace. “Gloriously, foolishly happy.” She smiled down at her friend. “I go about my work and I sell perfume and everything is normal and then he turns up and I think my god, I love you so damn much. And it’s just…easy. I know that everyone says that love is hard work, but when I compare it to what life used to be like…” She shook her head.
Marguerite knew that Grace had been in a particularly dreadful marriage with a particularly dreadful man named Phillip some years earlier. She had also arranged for the information of Phillip’s death to be brought to her friend last year. (She hadn’t arranged for the death itself, although she’d certainly considered it.)
“I was grateful for your letter,” Grace said, as if reading her mind. “Not just to know about Phillip, but to know that you were still alive. We worry about you, you know.”
Marguerite waved her hands. “I’m fine. Always am.”
“Yes, but I don’t know that!”
“I’d rather not bring anything down on your head,” said Marguerite. “You know what kind of business I’m in. The fact that I lived here for so long is trouble enough. It had to look like a clean break. I’m sorry.”
Grace sighed. “I know,” she said. “Or rather I don’t know, but I know you’re doing what you think is best. And you would know. So, what do you need?”
“Some samples. They don’t have to be anything you actually want to sell. It’s just my cover story. I’m peddling perfumes to the nobility again, and fell in with a noblewoman who needed an escort to the Court of Smoke. That’s Wren.”
“Oh, that’ll be delightful,” said Grace, laughing. “You’ll like her. I like her, anyway.”
“Right. And I’m taking another one along as a bodyguard. Tall fellow, regrettable beard.”
“Shane.” Grace nodded. “I can’t say if you’ll like him. He’s…very paladinly.”
“What, clanky and judgmental?”
“Oh no, not at all. More like apologetic furniture. He doesn’t talk and when he does, it’s usually to apologize for interrupting.”
Marguerite groaned. “Joy. Still, what I want is an obvious bodyguard for the court, and apparently he’s good at that.”
“Yes, very. The Bishop takes him everywhere. And I hear that he’s the one most likely to overrule the Bishop on matters of her own safety.”
“Not that apologetic, then?”
Grace grinned at her. “Eh, I’ve seen you charm customers who were ready to burn the building down. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble getting him to warm up.”
Marguerite accepted this statement as her due. “I’ll see what I can do.” She hooked her arm through Grace’s. “Now tell me more about how Tab is doing. I haven’t seen my best civette boy in far too long…”
Shane climbed the steps to Beartongue’s offices. The outer rooms full of clerks and civil servants, all working with great intensity, still seemed familiar and foreign all at once.
In the Temple of the Dreaming God, there were also scribes and clerks, many engaged in the work of writing and copying, reading reports on demonic activity, and dispatching paladins and priests to deal with it. His father had been one such clerk, and one of Shane’s earliest memories was of rooms of pale stone, the scratch of quills and the murmur of voices, and in the far distance, the sound of the litany being chanted.
But there the similarity ended. There were twice as many clerks here, many of them sharing desks, and three more rooms just like this one, plus a cadre of lawyers and organizers with quarters in the White Rat’s temple compound. The Rat had bigger problems than the occasional demonic possession. The Dreaming God’s people carried themselves with an air of solemn purpose, whereas the Rat’s always seemed to be cheerfully bailing the tide.
He waited outside the Bishop’s chamber, listening to the familiar sounds of reports being issued and reviewed.
“…says we need another healer assigned south of…”
“…ten gold will fix the problem…”
“…haven’t got enough. I can send an apprentice with her on rounds…”
“…lawyers don’t grow on trees, you know. Not even around here…”
After about five minutes, the door opened and two servants of the Rat came out, holding thick folios in front of them. He slipped in behind them. “May I request a moment of your time, Your Holiness?” It occurred to him belatedly that he should probably have asked for an appointment.
“Not if you’re going to ‘Your Holiness’ at me,” said Beartongue. She gestured to a seat, then leaned back in her chair, sharpening a quill with a pen-knife. “Is there a problem?”
“Ah…not exactly a problem, but…” He sat, wondering how to phrase the question.
Her eyes moved over him and she sighed. “You’re wondering why I’m sending you off with Marguerite and not someone else?”
Shane ducked his head ruefully. “Am I that predictable?”
“Desperately so. It’s part of the reason I’m sending you. I predict, in fact, that you will do brilliantly, succeed in circumstances that will likely prove far more muddled than anyone hopes, and bring yourself and Wren back in two pieces.” She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Second-guessing yourself all the way, of course.”
“Ouch. Would you like to stab me in the heart as well?”
Beartongue grinned. “Am I wrong?”
Obviously not, or I wouldn’t be here. It was simply a little embarrassing to be so transparent. Shane muttered something into his beard. After a moment he asked, “Do you trust her? Marguerite?”
“Trust,” mused Beartongue. “A complicated notion, isn’t it? I trust her to be acting in her own best interests. I trust that she is a very intelligent woman. And she and I both know that she proceeds with the understanding that, should her actions reflect badly on the Rat, I will claim to have been grievously misled.”
“Istvhan always says that trust is faith plus predictability,” said Shane. He missed his brother-in-arms a great deal, and more so lately. Istvhan could always make everyone laugh. The day we are dependent on my sense of humor to carry us through is the day that we will all be in a great deal of trouble.
It wasn’t that he didn’t have a sense of humor. He did. It was just that he kept it to himself rather than inflict it on other people.
Beartongue’s face softened slightly at the mention of Istvhan. “He’s not wrong. Let us say that I have a good deal of faith in Marguerite’s goodwill, but very little in my ability to predict her. Which is why you are perfect for the job, as you are, as we have established, very predictable.”
“Istvhan would be better at this than I am.”
“I wish he were here,” she admitted. “I know that you are not comfortable in this role. But he is happy in the north, traveling with his lady friend, and any word I send will take weeks to reach him.”
“What about Marcus?”
“There is a chance that he would be recognized. And since he has chosen to let his family believe he is dead—well, I do not agree with his decision, but I respect his wishes.”
Shane sighed. “Stephen, perhaps?”
“Working with Galen and Piper to track down more information about the death of the Saint.”
He bowed his head. Galen’s husband, Piper, was a lich-doctor, possessor of a rare wild talent. If he touched a dead body, he could relive their last moments. A few months earlier, he had laid hands upon the altar cleared from the rubble of the burnt temple of the Saint of Steel, and to the shock of everyone, he had felt the god’s death from the inside. Since no one knew how or why the Saint had died, they were trying to unravel as much as they could from that flash of insight. “I suppose there is no information to be gleaned about that at the Court of Smoke?”
“If you mean, are nobles likely to be casually discussing dead gods in the corridors? I shouldn’t think so. Then again, stranger things have happened. Keep your ears open, but don’t blame yourself if you don’t hear anything relevant.” Beartongue’s gaze lingered on him sympathetically. The only remaining paladin, the one that they had not mentioned, was Judith, and she had simply left after the revelation of the god’s death. Looking for something, perhaps. Running away from something. No one knew for certain.
He grunted.
“To that end,” Beartongue said, ignoring the grunt, “I have a message for you to deliver. Lady Silver dwells at the Court of Smoke for most of the year. She is favorably inclined to the Rat, and I have reason to believe that a message to her might not go amiss.” She slid a fresh sheet of foolscap in front of her and wrote quickly. Her hand was neat and clean, a testament to early training as a scribe, and Shane looked away so as not to risk reading the words.
“Deliver this to Lady Silver,” said Beartongue, sprinkling sand on the letters to dry them, then sealing it with wax. “Whether or not you tell Marguerite of this, I leave to your discretion.”
My discretion? I’m a berserker. I hit things with swords until they fall down. That is not discreet.
His alarm must have shown, because she smiled. “If you truly don’t know, then it rarely hurts not to tell everything you know.”
Shane groaned. “And then I will—”
“Feel guilty?”
His sense of humor was well-buried, but not completely dead. He gave her a wry look. “I was going to say, ‘worry that I am withholding vital information.’”
“Well, it’s always a concern.” She leaned over the desk and patted his hand. “You are the only possible choice,” said Beartongue. “And you are far more competent than you believe yourself to be.”
Shane squared his shoulders. “I pray that I may not fail you, Your Grace.”
“You won’t,” she said. “In that, I have faith.”