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The Face of Gold

Tricatium, the Pearls: Fellun 15

The precise elegance of a numinat reflected an orderly cosmos: one where each person and thing had their place, and the relationships between them could be measured to perfection.

Donaia Traementis knew all too well that order was often nothing more than a mask over chaos. The long scroll of the Traementis family register connected names with the lines of marriage, adoption, and descent… and far too many of those names were overlaid with the Ninat of death. For past generations it was only natural, but the truncated limbs of Donaia’s family tree gave mute testimony to the curse that had haunted House Traementis in recent years.

A curse now lifted, thanks to the name Tanaquis Fienola was inscribing into the register.

Three women stood around Tanaquis as she wrote: Donaia; her daughter, Giuna; and Renata Viraudax—soon to be Renata Viraudax Traementatis. Ordinarily a registry inscription would draw a crowd of observers and well-wishers to ring the participants. Instead, the Tricatium echoed around the small cluster that had gathered, all empty benches and soaring arches of polished oak that gleamed like satin and smelled of linseed oil.

Scaperto Quientis was there as Fulvet, the Cinquerat seat that oversaw civic matters like adoptions. Utrinzi Simendis, who held the religious Iridet seat, had emerged from his usual seclusion to oversee the inscription itself. A handful of trusted servants had come in the place of family members. And the friends of House Traementis, all two of them: Sibiliat Acrenix and Derossi Vargo.

Donaia’s house had done a fine job of alienating half of Nadežra, long before the curse began reaping them like grain.

A final sweep of Tanaquis’s compass inscribed the closing circle around the newest register entry. “It needs only your mark, Alta Renata. One moment—”

Renata rocked back on her heels to stop her forward momentum as Tanaquis stepped out of the silver circle embedded into the floor and set the closing arc in place. Like a sluice opening, the power of the Lumen coursed through the figure, the warm welcome of honey in tea.

“There.” Tanaquis dusted her hands, though for this numinat she’d used no chalk. “Now you may sign.”

Renata glanced at the register, then at Giuna and Donaia. Once, she had hesitated to accept Donaia’s offer of adoption. Once, Donaia had hesitated to offer. Now she nodded, and Renata stepped forward and signed the register with economical flourish.

And so she became family, as Leato had so earnestly wished.

Donaia hid her trembling hands under the apron of her surcoat, a tight ball of grief pressing into her stomach. Not even a month since her son had died, and so much had changed. Some of it for the better, yes… but all of it brittle and colorless now that her sweet boy’s light had returned to the Lumen.

He would want this to be a bright occasion, though—a rare moment of growth and celebration, a new dawn for their house. “Welcome to the family,” Donaia said to Renata as Tanaquis deactivated the circle and retrieved her quill. Giuna was already flinging herself at her new cousin with unseemly enthusiasm. Clasping her hands tight to keep from doing the same, Donaia asked, “About the rest… Are you certain?”

“It’s only until next fall, when Giuna comes of age,” Renata said over her new cousin’s shoulder. “I should be asking you and Giuna—are you sure I’m not treading on toes by doing this?”

“As far as I’m concerned, you’re welcome to remain heir,” Giuna said softly.

Before Donaia could think of a way to scold her without embarrassing Renata, Scaperto Quientis interrupted. “Ninat willing, this precaution won’t be necessary,” he said, setting a sheaf of pages down on the podium abandoned by Tanaquis. “I hope to cross wits and disagree on civic matters with you for many more years, Era Traementis.”

Donaia smoothed her skirts and joined him at the podium. By all rights she ought to resent Eret Quientis; his family had taken the Fulvet seat from hers when the Traementis fall began. But he never ground their faces in it—he’d even granted them their first new charter in years—and he’d worked with Renata to stop the riots during Veiled Waters the previous month.

She accepted the pen from him and smiled. “I’d rather work together, if you don’t mind.”

As she signed her name to the legal documents, Quientis said softly, “Once your heir is settled in… I know House Traementis sold its villa in the bay. Should you need a respite, you’re welcome to the use of ours.”

Her grief would haunt her no matter where she went, but Donaia had to admit it might help to leave Traementis Manor for a time. “Thank you,” she said, equally softly. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

Then she stepped away so Renata could sign as well, finishing the paperwork. Tanaquis stood nearby, tugging her gloves back on. “Congratulations,” she said to Donaia. “An auspicious day for such matters, and now that your curse is gone—”

“Not here,” Donaia hissed. Vargo and Sibiliat both were waiting at a distance, but not so far that a keen ear couldn’t catch whispers in the echoing Tricatium. Even the scratch of Renata’s pen nib seemed loud.

Tanaquis pretended to smooth the ever-straying wisps of her dark hair. “I only meant to say that Traementis’s fortunes should be on the rise. I’m happy for you.”

Donaia caught her hand—the glove ink stained, as always—and gave it a squeeze. “Thank you. You’ve been a true friend to our house.”

Better than some. Sibiliat was kind enough to Giuna, but even House Acrenix, legendary for their friendships and alliances across Nadežra, had been less than eager to help the Traementis during their decline. And Vargo…

The man slid up to them, smooth as a river eel and faintly resembling one with his scarred throat and his coat of river-green caprash wool. The gaudy spider pin on his lapel was no complement to the ensemble, but Donaia wasn’t going to be the one to tell him. When he spoke, the polished courtesy of his baritone voice held no trace of his Lower Bank origins. “My congratulations as well, Era Traementis. I can’t imagine how hard these weeks have been for you, but I hope you can take some comfort in Alta Renata. She is a treasure.”

“Thank you, Eret Vargo,” Donaia said, her diction almost as clipped as Renata’s. His presence rankled, a reminder that he was now her equal, in legal status, if in nothing else. No ennoblement would ever erase what he was.

A fact that didn’t seem to bother Renata. She joined them with a smile and a Seterin-style curtsy for Vargo, thanking him for attending. Vargo lifted her gloved hand from her shoulder and said, “I’m only sorry that you’ve refused all my attempts to arrange a celebration. Now I’ll have to devise some other ruse to lure you from your duties.”

“My duties?” The lingering touch of his hand brought color to Renata’s cheeks and snapping amusement to her eyes. “I believe you’re the one now in charge of a noble house—with no one to assist you.”

“But much less business to conduct than House Traementis. I think it comes out even.”

That, Donaia knew, was a bald-faced lie. Though it would be interesting to see how quickly the city’s nobility closed ranks against the upstart who had somehow wormed his way in among them.

His flirtatious manner worried her. Renata was still a stranger to Nadežra; she didn’t understand what kind of man Vargo was. She trusted him, and so far their partnership had been useful… but Donaia would have to ensure that relationship remained one of business only.

“I’m surprised you aren’t already neck-deep in applications from people wishing to be inscribed into your house register, Eret Vargo,” Donaia said. “I fear my desk might collapse under the weight of them. Though of course, Traementis can afford to be discerning.”

“Your house has always had that reputation,” Vargo said with a mocking bow. “And your first adoption has set quite a high bar.”

It was a skillful knife thrust, a subtle gibe at the old Traementis habit of insularity and a reminder that he’d seen the value of Renata before anyone else did, all neatly wrapped up in a single package. Donaia was glad when Scaperto approached and handed her the leather folder containing the formal adoption and heirship papers, held shut with a loop around the stacked triangles of the Fulvet seal.

Scaperto looked no more friendly to Vargo as he said, “This isn’t the time or place for it, but we need to speak soon about your plans for the river-numinat charter.”

“Of course,” Vargo said smoothly. “Is tomorrow too soon? I’m eager to get started while the weather is warm and the winds are fair.”

And the fox has gone a-courting. Donaia pressed her lips against the third line of the old delta farmer’s saying and took Renata’s arm to lead her out before Vargo could claim it.

He might have extended the first hand, but now she was Donaia’s to protect.

The Aerie, Duskgate, Old Island: Fellun 15

Grey Serrado strode up the wide steps of quartzite and granite that rose from Vigil Plaza to the Aerie. He was back in his blue-and-tan dress vigils, the double-lined steel hexagram of his rank once more pinned to his collar. It was almost like the upheavals of the last few months had never happened… if one didn’t look too closely.

That was Nadežra. Built on the shifting shoals of a river delta, the city lacked the feeling of permanence that grounded the inland cities of Vraszan. Like the dreams and the river it was named for, Nadežra changed while the mind was elsewhere.

But some places anchored the city, as surely as the Old Island stood against the river, splitting it into the East and West Channels. The amphitheatre built atop the Point; the Charterhouse, where Nadežra’s laws were made.

And the Aerie, where those laws were—occasionally, when it benefited the powerful—enforced.

The Aerie’s shadow fell over Vraszenians more often in threat than protection, but Grey had joined the Vigil hoping that something that couldn’t be broken from the outside might be shifted from the inside. The crisis during Veiled Waters had damaged that naive hope, but the changes since then had breathed new life into it.

He’d dressed that morning intending to witness Renata Viraudax’s inscription into House Traementis—an adoption he was still conflicted about, for reasons he couldn’t share with Donaia. But then a messenger arrived at his door, instructing him to report to the high commander’s office at sixth sun. Any other captain might wonder if such an invitation hinted at a promotion, especially after the service Grey had rendered in evacuating the Great Amphitheatre during Veiled Waters. But Grey knew there was no world in which a Vraszenian would be promoted past captain.

He smoothed down his waistcoat and entered the Aerie. His timing was flawless; the bells of the city rang out the noon hour as he presented himself to the lieutenant working the desk outside High Commander Dimiterro’s office. “Captain Grey Serrado, reporting as ordered.”

The old secretary was gone, swept away with the previous high commander. Grey recognized this one by sight but not name. The man nodded, without the barely veiled contempt many of the Vigil’s lieutenants directed at its only Vraszenian captain. “The high commander will be with you—”

The heavy door of the office swung open. “—now,” the lieutenant finished, without missing a beat.

“Serrado.” Commander Cercel gave Grey a once-over as though worried he might have worn his patrol slops to meet their superior. He must have passed muster, because all she said was “Come in.”

The first thing he noticed when he entered the high commander’s office was that the shelves full of bottles of alcohol were gone, as were the Ghusai carpet and the smell of old wine soaked into it from years of abuse. The second was that Dimiterro wasn’t alone. The man seated to one side of his desk wore not the uniform of a hawk, but the finely tailored silk coat of a nobleman, its glacial shade harmonizing elegantly with the darker blue of the Vigil hangings.

Grey snapped his heels together and bowed to his new high commander, then pivoted and bowed a second time. “Your Mercy.”

He eyed Eret Ghiscolo Acrenix warily, recalculating the possible purpose of this meeting. The man might be Liganti and a nobleman, but unlike his predecessor as Caerulet, he had no reputation for loathing Vraszenians. So what did he want with Grey?

Acrenix waved him to stand at rest. “Captain Serrado, welcome. As I understand it, we have you to thank for the salvation of the Great Amphitheatre.”

And the people who were in it. But Grey had long practice in keeping such thoughts behind his teeth.

“The lack of public commendation for your efforts is unfortunate, but unavoidable, I fear,” Acrenix said. To his credit, his regret seemed genuine. “The mood in the city is extremely delicate right now. The plan to destroy the amphitheatre and the wellspring may have started with Mettore Indestor, but there’s a great deal of negative sentiment against Vraszenians for their role in it, and in the riots. You deserve something, though. While I can’t take official action as Caerulet, I can send a reward to you from my private coffers. A bonus for hazardous duty.”

“I don’t need a reward for doing my job.” The reply was as automatic as it was brusque. Only when he noticed Cercel’s wince did Grey soften it with a nod and a soft “Your Mercy.”

“An admirable sentiment,” Acrenix said. “The Vigil could use more people like you. But a reward isn’t a bribe for doing your job; it’s a reminder to myself not to take such efforts for granted. So for my sake, if not your own.”

More people like Grey? That wasn’t merely a different tune from Mettore Indestor’s; it was being played on an entirely new instrument.

Cercel cleared her throat, and Grey realized his startlement had left them hanging in silence for too long. Nor had it given him any time to think of a way to refuse. Besides, the Masks knew he could use the money. Ancient callings might make for good stories, but they didn’t pay well.

Bowing again, Grey said, “Thank you, Your Mercy.”

“Don’t thank me too much,” Acrenix said dryly. “I’m afraid the true reward for competence is more work. You see, while Mettore Indestor may have manipulated the Stadnem Anduske into attempting to blow up the Great Amphitheatre… the fact remains that they did try, and they’re free to try again.”

These were dangerous shoals, given some of Grey’s recent activities. “Though they’ve left Nadežra, the ziemetse share Your Mercy’s concerns. Their envoy is making every effort to find the perpetrators.”

“And will this envoy turn those perpetrators over to us? Or will they face the justice of the clan elders, as Mettore Indestor did?” Dimiterro’s harsh tone said well enough what he thought of that.

Acrenix held up one hand. “Those were extraordinary circumstances, but we can’t deny the ziemetse’s decision to execute him was both earned… and useful.” His wry smile faded as he turned to Grey. “Convenient as it was, though, that sort of justice isn’t something we should allow to continue. Which is why I asked to speak with you. Your familiarity with the situation on the Lower Bank is particularly needed just now.”

Ah, there it was. The expectation that Grey would be their pet Vraszenian.

Aren’t you? His inner voice in that moment sounded very much like Koszar Andrejek, the leader—or former leader—of the Anduske. Andrejek, who could barely move after the beating he’d taken from his people when he gave the order to stop the amphitheatre attack.

Grey kept his tone neutral. “You want me to hunt down the leaders of the Stadnem Anduske.”

“This setback won’t stop them for long,” Acrenix said. “Easier to prevent them from doing something worse while they’re fractured and scattered.”

Fractured. Was it possible Acrenix knew that Andrejek no longer had control of his people? Even Grey had to admit the group posed a greater threat without Andrejek’s idealism to leaven them. People who would cut knot and beat their leader because he showed a minimum of sense wouldn’t confine themselves to printing broadsheets of dissident rhetoric.

Leaning forward to make sure he had Grey’s attention, Acrenix went on. “I’m not looking for scapegoats to string up in Suncross. It may satisfy a few people’s bloodlust to have someone to blame, but in the long run, it does nothing to root out the problem. The high commander suggested you could be trusted not to grab the first Vraszenian you hear cursing the Cinquerat over a cup of zrel.”

That suggestion had to have come from Cercel; Dimiterro was too new to know anything about Grey beyond his blood. And as much as Grey hated the idea of being treated like the Vigil’s pet Vraszenian, he was grateful to his commander for using him to protect the people who were just living their lives. Most of the Liganti and Nadežran officers wouldn’t care. He was surprised—and surprised to be gratified—that Acrenix seemed to.

But also puzzled. Because while Caerulet might hold the charter for the Vigil, that charter restricted how directly the seat could be involved in its running. Mettore had toyed with those restrictions like a game of dreamweaver’s nest. Was Ghiscolo no better?

“I’m assigned to Kingfisher,” Grey said. “The Anduske could be anywhere. As for additional assignments, I take my orders from my commanding officers.” He nodded at Cercel and Dimiterro in turn.

Cercel’s flat look said Grey would pay for that bit of obstinance later, but Dimiterro nodded as though that was the only proper response. “Well spoken.”

Acrenix said, “Indeed. But in this case, I’m afraid I’ve been unclear. I’ve granted a new charter for a special force, the Ordo Apis, to address the issue of insurgents within Nadežra. They won’t be limited to any particular district, and they’ll answer directly to me. I’d like you to join in a command position. Given your experience, I think you’d be well-suited to help with this mission.”

The implications chilled him. The Vigil was flawed, with a tendency toward inefficiency, corruption, and abuses of power, but there were checks against that: good people within the Vigil who cared about their mandate, and Fulvet’s judges to prevent people disappearing onto penal ships without due process.

Perhaps that was what Acrenix wanted in asking Grey to join—in a command position, even. Grey could be such a check.

Or you can be the mask they hide behind.

Much depended on Ghiscolo himself. Until recently, no member of House Acrenix had ever held a seat in the Cinquerat. His rise might have been a new shift in the hidden structure of Nadežra… or the culmination of something already there.

Regardless of the answer, the offer was impossible. Even if Grey trusted the intent of this charter, he couldn’t turn around and hunt the people he’d already helped hide. His conscience wouldn’t stand for it.

And he could never work directly for a nobleman. The mask Grey hid behind wouldn’t stand for it.

Grey bowed his head. “I’m honored by your trust, Your Mercy, and grateful for the opportunity. I’d like some time to think about it. I have other responsibilities—”

“You mean your vendetta against the Rook?” Glancing at Cercel, Acrenix impatiently tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Your commander assures me you haven’t made improper use of Vigil resources to pursue it.”

“That isn’t what I meant, no. Though I do want the man who murdered my brother to pay.” Let Ghiscolo think that the anger burning in Grey’s response was meant for the Rook.

Studying him with a gaze as intent as any hawk, Acrenix eventually nodded. “Understandable. I would want the same.” He stood, signaling an end to the unexpected meeting. “I hope you’ll still consider joining the Ordo Apis. Let your commander know your decision. I’ll be collecting a roster of candidates at the end of the week.”

With a nod to Dimiterro, he left. Grey trailed Cercel out of the office. She waited until they were alone in the hallway to say, “I suppose I’m not surprised, but I am glad you decided to stay on. Don’t tell the others, but you’re my best captain.”

After the tension of that meeting, Grey was relieved to see she knew him well enough to know he’d already made his decision. “I thought I was your biggest headache.”

She flicked his hexagram pin. “You really want to remind me of that right now, Serrado? We’re having a moment.”

“My mistake.”

His smile faded as Cercel walked away. Grey’s hooded friend had wondered for decades whether the Acrenix were touched by the corruption that threaded through Nadežra, but had never found any proof.

Grey wanted to believe in the possibility that they weren’t. That for the first time, he was serving under an honest power.

But he knew better than to trust it.

Isla Prišta, Westbridge: Fellun 15

Although Renata was prepared for the knock, it still made her tense.

She forced herself to wait, sitting quietly in her damaged parlour, while Tess answered the door. The patchwork light slipping between the boards Sedge had nailed across the broken windows fell on a room mostly stripped of its elegance: the looters had taken all the small valuables, everything easily carried, and even some things that weren’t. The couch Renata perched on was the only piece of furniture left in the room. Her erstwhile landlord had tracked down a few of the stolen items, but the shady markets of the Lower Bank were glutted from the riots two weeks ago. Even Derossi Vargo’s web couldn’t catch everything she’d lost—especially when three-quarters of the things she’d listed for him didn’t exist.

Tess curtsied in the doorway. “Alta Giuna is here to see you.”

“Thank you, Tess.” Renata rose and smoothed the front of her loose surcoat, as if it were the fine silk she’d been wearing for the adoption earlier that morning, instead of plain tabinet. Half the pretense of her con might have fallen into dust, but the other half had to keep standing.

Giuna had changed into her usual shapeless and dull clothes, fitting for the day’s work, and had her golden curls pinned up and covered with a cotton kerch. The nervous twisting of her fingers in her skirts and the press of her lips as she entered the parlour were new. They’d had little chance to speak in private after Giuna learned the truth of Renata’s finances, and no chance at all after Giuna had forgiven her.

Her gaze flitted around the ruined parlour, from the boarded windows to the bare mantel to the broken remains of glass Tess had swept into the corner. “I thought Westbridge was supposed to be safe,” she murmured. “Or did Indestor’s people do this when they abducted you?”

“The riots.” Renata allowed herself a bitter laugh. “They must have been terribly disappointed when they realized how little there was to take.”

“Oh.” After a silent moment of shifting foot to foot and looking anywhere but at Renata, Giuna lifted her chin and straightened her shoulders. “About that. I… here.” She held out a wrapped bundle of fabric.

Renata knew, even as she accepted the bundle, what Giuna had given her. The weight and shape were familiar, and brought an unexpected hitch to her breath.

But she had to unwrap it, even as she silently damned Giuna for catching her off guard. The fabric made a soft nest in her hand. Tucked into its heart was the blue glass bauble she’d bought for Giuna at the Autumn Gloria, five months and a lifetime ago.

“I thought, since you… lost… the one you bought for yourself, you might accept this one as…” Giuna’s babbling ended in a soft exhalation. “As an apology.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Renata said, cradling the glass sculpture in both hands. “That falls to me instead.” And to Sibiliat Acrenix, who hired someone to break into her townhouse while Renata lay unconscious in Traementis Manor, exposing the secret of her poverty.

“Then shall we strike palms and call it even? Otherwise, we’ll be arguing all day over who owes an apology to whom, and I don’t want you spending another night under this roof.” Giuna nodded at the boarded windows. “It’s not safe.”

No, it isn’t. But not for the reasons Giuna thought.

After they touched palms, Renata took her supposed cousin’s hand in her own. True cousin, now—at least as the Liganti count such things. Her voice dry with irony, she said, “Shall I give you the tour?”

Ren’s skin pricked as she took her new cousin into the service rooms, buried in a half cellar with only narrow windows near the ceiling for light. This was her true home, the place where she and Tess had launched this con. The one place in Nadežra where she could be herself: not Alta Renata Viraudax Traementatis, nor even Arenza Lenskaya, the Vraszenian pattern-reader who came closer to the truth of who she was, but Ren. A river rat born and raised in the Lacewater slums, trained in the arts of lying and thieving after her mother died.

But Giuna knew nothing of that. All she knew was that Renata had entered their lives hoping to live off the wealth of House Traementis.

Giuna wrapped her hands around her elbows, standing awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen. “You should have told us at the start. We would have done something to help. Well, perhaps not Mother; she still hates Letilia. But I would have. And… and Leato.”

Ren had been in this kitchen with him, in the shifting realm of Ažerais’s Dream. Just before she led him up to the Point—and to his death.

It was easier not to think about that, to do what needed to be done without dwelling on the why. But then she would catch sight of the ripples—Donaia’s hands trembling before she hid them in her surcoat, Giuna’s breath hitching before saying her brother’s name—and guilt dragged at her like a drowning tide.

If only she’d turned away when she encountered him in the nightmare. If only she hadn’t invited him to join her at the Charterhouse. If only she hadn’t returned to Nadežra in the first place. If, if, if…

Sensing the spiral of Ren’s thoughts as only a sister could, Tess snatched a well-scribbled sheet of paper off the kitchen table. “We should get to work,” she said briskly. “Master—I mean Eret Vargo’s agent will be here to take the keys at first earth, and we’ve a lot to do. Alta Giuna, you’re on candle duty. Make certain you spatter and scrape at least three layers. Alta Renata, you’re on floor scuffing and window smudging. I’ll start dusting.”

She passed Giuna three candles, each a different shade of pale beeswax. Renata was handed a bag of shoes—not just the fine ones she wore, but men’s boots and servants’ brogues, picked up cheaply from a secondhand vendor because they lacked mates. Tess said, “When Sedge gets here, he’ll help me shift the furniture and rugs. Any questions?”

Giuna’s startled look flickered between them. She’d witnessed the close relationship between mistress and maid, but this was the first time she’d seen Tess take charge. In fact, apart from using the correct title and name, Tess seemed to have forgotten herself, talking more to Ren than to Renata.

Ren hated doing it, especially in the kitchen that had been their refuge, but she had to step in before Tess slipped up more. She put a quelling note in her voice as she said, “Very well, Tess. Shall we, Giuna?”

Flushing at the reprimand, Tess lowered her eyes and bobbed a curtsy before trailing them back up to the main floor.

For the next hour, the house echoed with more sound than it had heard since the looters broke in. So far as Vargo knew, Renata had been using the entire house she rented from him. When she left, it needed to look like that was true—hence the dripped wax, the bootprints, the marks on the windows, and other small signs of use. She was strangely grateful for the riots, which gave her the perfect excuse for having so few possessions to carry out. Nobody had been paying attention when she moved in, but Alta Renata was well-known enough now that her few paltry crates would have seemed suspicious.

Giuna was helping her heave the mattress up to the bedroom when Sedge’s rough voice came from below.

“Perhaps we could let your footman take over?” Giuna asked, out of breath and blotting sweat from her brow with her sleeve. Her gaze snagged on her bare hand. “Oh, my gloves!” She darted across the entry hall and snatched them from a sideboard, yanking them on before she could be caught half-dressed—leaving Renata halfway up the stairs, clutching at the top of the mattress to keep it from sliding back down.

The weight lessened before her grip failed. “I got you, alta. Fine lady like you en’t supposed to do this sort of thing.”

With Giuna safely obscured by the mattress and Sedge, Ren was free to give him an ironic look. He’d said that kind of thing sometimes when they were Fingers together, children in Ondrakja’s gang, faking the manners of fancy cuffs. Now she was a fine lady—by law and by lie.

“With one hand, Master Sedge?” she asked, arching a brow at the wrist Ondrakja had snapped, bound with an imbued brace of Tess’s making. “I think this ‘fine lady’ is at least as useful as you are.”

He grimaced at her, and together they got the mattress up into the bedroom. Sounds from downstairs told Ren that Tess had Giuna busy for the moment, so she risked asking in a low voice, “Any luck with Vargo?”

“If by luck you mean he en’t put anyone on me yet, then I’m swimming in Quarat’s own blessings.” Sedge rested his corner of the mattress on the floor, rubbing the pale stripe around his wrist where his knot bracelet had been. The one cut after Sedge chose to protect Ren over his own boss. “Nobody will talk to me for fear it’ll get back to Vargo. Even if I somehow crawl back in, I’ll just be saddled with scut work. Only way I’m getting close enough to know Vargo’s business is if I save his Lig-spitted ass. Again.”

Ren was tempted to arrange a chance. The scabs and bruises from the beating the Fog Spiders had given Sedge were mostly healed by now, but she couldn’t look at their remnants without feeling cold anger. Vargo’s people had hurt her brother, and she wanted to hurt them back.

The best way she could do that, though, was by getting Sedge into a position where he could keep an eye on Vargo. And by smiling at the man as if she still trusted him, the way he’d lured her into doing before. Only then could she figure out his true game… and how to destroy it.

“I know that look.” Sedge lifted his end high enough to make her stumble. “That look gets me in trouble.”

“I’ve gotten you in enough trouble,” Ren murmured, heaving the mattress onto the frame. Not just with Vargo, but long before that.

Sedge’s light touch to the inside of her wrist stopped her from shoving the mattress into place. The skin there bore a faint scar: the mark of their kinship, sworn with blood in the Vraszenian way. Sedge had a scar to match, and so did Tess. His grip was loose, his tug gentle enough for her to resist if she wanted.

She let herself be folded in his arms, trusting that Tess would make enough noise to warn them if Giuna came up the stairs. “Got me out of just as much,” Sedge said, his voice even rougher than usual. “Weren’t you that got me severed and beat. That was my choice, and I already told you I’d choose it again. So stop dragging it around. Fine lady like you shouldn’t carry that weight—might sprain something.”

It made Ren laugh a little, as Sedge intended. A moment later Giuna did come up the stairs, and together they finished their work on the house, and Renata went off to Traementis Manor and a fine lady’s life.

Isla Traementis, the Pearls: Fellun 15

Donaia hadn’t given Renata the set of chambers normally allotted to the heir. Those had been Leato’s, and Renata would have refused them if Donaia had offered. Instead she was in a suite intended for an honored guest—back when the Traementis could afford guests.

Once she would have taken that as a calculated insult on Donaia’s part. But she understood: They were the nicest rooms Traementis Manor had to offer after the heir’s suite and Donaia’s own, the bedding and window dressings of silver and teal silk faille, the walls paneled in pale birch over numinata meant to keep the room temperate year-round. And she didn’t mind being on the guest side of the manor, away from Donaia and Giuna.

Her new quarters even had a bath. And not just a hip bath, but a tub big enough for her whole body, in a special tiled chamber off her bedroom. Never in her life had Ren been fully immersed in clean water. She found the sensation both luxurious and profoundly strange, as if she suddenly knew what it felt like to be a tea flower.

Tess chattered on about servant gossip as she mopped out the tub where Renata had first scrubbed down, Liganti style, before stepping into the soaking tub. The heated water was easing the dull ache in Ren’s lower back. She almost slopped some of it out of the tub when she realized she could finally afford something that had seemed wildly out of reach before: a contraceptive numinat, which would also suppress her monthly courses.

She swallowed that thought before it could come out of her mouth. Not just because she’d been about to speak in her Vraszenian accent, but because the servants would be shocked to learn that the supposedly wealthy Alta Renata didn’t already have a contraceptive charm pierced into her navel.

“—and Suilis says to him, ‘You should be a skiffer instead of a footman, as obsessed as you are with your pole.’ Fair robbed him of all his breath for bragging.”

Tess’s giggle faded into silence when Renata didn’t respond in kind. Setting mop and toweling aside, she sank onto the bathing stool in a puff of skirts. “You’re that quiet this evening. I thought you’d be happy. Or leastwise relieved it’s all over.”

“The riots and the troubles with Indestor? Yes, certainly.” She answered in her Seterin accent, and held Tess’s gaze when their eyes met. With one dripping hand she gestured toward the door. Servants came in and out of nobles’ chambers all the time. There was no reason one would be in her bedroom now, but the walls in this old manor were thin. She couldn’t take that risk—couldn’t relax into herself on the assumption that nobody would see or hear.

Part of what made Tess such a bad liar was that her skin was always striving to match her hair; every emotion flushed more red to her freckled cheeks. She covered them now, then her mouth, as though she could catch the words that had already gushed forth. She stumbled to her feet and into a quick servant’s bob. “Begging your pardon, alta. Here’s me going on and disrupting your quiet.”

Then she sat again and spoke in a barely audible voice. “What do you want to do? We can’t keep at this all the time. Even odds which of us will snap first.”

It wouldn’t be Ren. It couldn’t be Ren. She was legally a noblewoman now, and therefore couldn’t be tried for the crime of impersonating a noble… but that didn’t mean she couldn’t suffer other consequences if the truth came out. For at least the next five months, she was bound by numinatria and her word to be a Traementis. A role she’d have to play at all times, waking and sleeping.

Even with Tess.

That realization tangled her voice, so that her whisper came out in a dreadful mixture of accents, neither Seterin nor Vraszenian. “Tess… you wanted a dressmaker’s shop. You can have one now. There’s no need for you to be trapped here.”

The look Tess gave her was almost as fierce as one of her tongue-blistering curses. “Well, there’s me out five mills, for clearly you’re the one whose wits went a-begging. As though I’d leave you a fox among the hounds that you thought were chickens.” She grimaced at her tangled metaphor. “Besides, I’ll have more success if you lend out my services to a few people. Cuffs pay as much for exclusivity as they do for quality. I’m more worried about you.”

“I’ll be fine,” Ren said, now securely in Renata’s accent. If Tess could make the best of this, how could Ren be the one to complain?

Such confidence was harder to maintain after Tess bundled her out of the tub and left her to sleep. The bed was too soft, and too empty; for months she’d slept on a pallet in front of the kitchen fire, with her sister only a breath away. But now Tess was in the servants’ quarters, and Ren was alone—except for her nightmares.

Gammer Lindworm. Mettore Indestor. The horrifying days of her sleeplessness, when dream and waking life had twisted into one. The Night of Hells, her mother burning, the clan animals hunting her through the streets. Ash writhing through her blood and bone.

The zlyzen, tearing into Leato, over and over again.

Ren woke tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, but this time there was no Tess to brush the damp hair from her face and murmur something reassuring in sleepy, impenetrable Ganllechyn dialect. Clawing her way out of the covers, Ren curled into a huddle with her back against the headboard, knees up to protect her belly as though the zlyzen might reach out from nightmare to claw her in the waking world.

During the day, she could do her best to forget Leato’s death. But every night she relived it: the zlyzen’s hunger, his screams.

Her helplessness to save him.

“I’m trying,” she whispered to the darkness, scraping away tears. “I’m trying to help them.” It was the least she owed his family for abandoning him to save her own life.

A creak and groan came in response. The house settling, she told herself, but her gaze raked the shadows for any twisted, burnt-bone forms lurking there.

Lay a red thread around your bed. But Renata Viraudax Traementatis couldn’t indulge in Vraszenian superstition.

The suite of rooms had a balcony, overlooking a side garden. A neglected garden these days—no doubt Donaia would see to that eventually. For now, it suited Ren just fine; all she cared about was fresh air.

When she pulled the curtains aside to open the balcony doors, though, she froze.

A small corner of white projected between them. With careful fingers she pulled it through, unfolding it to find… a blank scrap of paper.

That seemed very improbable.

Rich cuffs lit their houses with numinatrian stones that didn’t risk burning the place down. But there was incense to sweeten the air, and a tiny numinat that set aflame whatever was placed inside it; Ren used that to light a stick of incense, then passed the paper over the fire until its hidden message manifested like a brown ghost.

R,

Thanks to “the boss of the biggest knot in the Shambles,” the Black Rose’s popularity has eclipsed even my own among Vraszenian audiences. The ziemetse wish to speak to her about matters I think would interest you.

Many titles have been attributed to me over the years, but I never expected to add “messenger boy” to the list. Perhaps you can find a different go-between to make arrangements. Arkady Bones seems resourceful and very enthusiastic.

Your servant,

R.

Ren slid down the wall with a breathless laugh. She hadn’t realized the fame of the “Black Rose” had spread so far. Or that the Rook would stoop to leaving a message wedged into her balcony doors—not after how they’d parted. Your servant, indeed.

The Black Rose had been an emergency measure, a disguise pulled from Ažerais’s Dream to get her past Grey Serrado at the amphitheatre. She hadn’t expected that guise to gain a name, much less notoriety.

She hadn’t expected the mask to remain in her hand when the leather petals of armor had faded.

It was tucked into the back of a top shelf in her wardrobe. Ren had to stand on a chair to retrieve it: a piece of rose-patterned lace, cut along the edges of petals and buds. She climbed down and let it slide through her fingers, hesitating.

Then she lifted it to her face.

Black material flowed over her body, just as it had before: silk and leather, layered like petals, gloves and boots and all. Not an illusion; it was solid and real. A gift from Ažerais—one she was apparently meant to keep.

To use.

“Fine,” Ren whispered in the darkness. “I guess we’re doing this.”