Episode Seven:
The Swan Ball

Joel Derfner

 

Diane, Duchess Tremontaine, shining in powder-blue silk, hears with satisfaction the graceful sound of her own laughter pealing through the ballroom like cool rain falling on crystal bells. If everything were falling to wrack and ruin around her, she would nonetheless laugh in just this particular, melodious way, simply to keep up appearances, but in this case she is expressing what she genuinely feels. For Karleigh is not here.

The Duke of Karleigh has not come to the ball!

So light is her heart that, if she were a different sort of woman, she would execute a twirl.

A very different sort of woman.

Lord Asper Lindley steps over to her, a splendid concoction of self-confidence and green brocade. He deposits his plate on the table beside a magnificent pile of bright silver spoons. The plate is heaped with the tiny curved necks and heads of pastry swans, which he proceeds to nibble one by one.

“Why, Asper, can it be that my little swan pastries have found favor with your discerning tastes?”

He gives her a lazy smile. There is pastry cream in the corner of his mouth. “Yes, Madam Duchess. But how could they not? One does so enjoy disjointing swans, even the flour and cream ones.”

“Then keep eating, please, as many as you like. I’m sure dear Nicholas is too busy these days with Council matters for the possible results of your pastry consumption to bother him.” There. An instant too long to return her smile. She has struck home. He will think twice next time he wishes to comment on her gown in the manner he did at Lady Galing’s party earlier in the season.

Over his shoulder, she sees the Dragon Chancellor attempting to keep the corners of his mouth from rising, and she floats over to him. “Gregory!” She has forgotten how very handsome he is, with his deep green eyes and the dun hair falling over his brow. “Why have you not asked to lead me in the dance yet this evening?”

“Because,” says Lord Davenant with a short bow, “I’m quite certain your beauty would cause me to stumble from inattention and tread on your foot, at which point I would have to hurl myself into the river in despair.”

She places a hand on his arm. “I dare say I would be so distracted by the perfection of your features I would fail to notice.” She is not entirely dissembling. Her hand is still on his arm.

This ball, upon which so very much depends, is proving a stunning success. Very little holds the nobility’s attention like the glittering of jewels in candlelight as the women on whose necks and wrists they hang spin in the dance, the strains of the violins wafting above the crowd, adorning the air with exquisite melody, the heat and crush of the City’s finest aristocracy drinking and eating and dancing and fanning and, above all else, whispering about one another. The smoke and mirrors with which she has given the proceedings the appearance of a luxury she cannot afford have aroused none of the comments she has feared they might inspire.

And the Duke of Karleigh, thank the good gods, is at home with a head cold.

Meanwhile, another much-desired guest is making his presence known. The head of the Balam Trading family has come after all, along with many of his colorful compatriots. She wasn’t at all sure he’d accept her invitation; it wasn’t as though any of these foreigners ever socialized on the Hill. But he has accepted both the invitation and the challenge, and seems to be enjoying both equally.

“Duchess,” says Master Ahchuleb Balam, arriving at her side and bowing with exactly the correct degree of deference, “may I congratulate you on a spectacular evening?”

“Why, sir, if the evening is indeed a spectacular one—an assertion whose merit I am of course in no position to evaluate—then it is due entirely to your presence and that of your people.” And to the absence of the Duke of Karleigh.

Diane glows with pleasure in the light of the flames flickering around them as they exchange increasingly intricate flatteries. Finally come the words she has been so desperate to hear from him: “The manner in which I have heard my Kinwiinik colleagues remark upon your hospitality suggests to me that, when I broach the matter to them again, I will find them eager to accept your proposal.”

Diane smiles. “I leave the matter, sir, entirely in your hands. A letter from you would be a delight no matter what news it bore.”

She does not mention the fact that moments earlier she heard Lord Galing say that, having met and been thoroughly charmed by the Kinwiinik here—so picturesque!—he’s beginning to suspect the chocolate import tariffs might be the slightest bit excessive; by the end of the evening she will have no trouble persuading him to lower them. She feels as if a great weight, a dark mass of onyx that has lain heavy upon her for months, were disintegrating into so much dandelion seed and scattering on a refreshing breeze. She has dealt with the terrible threat posed by her disgusting, chiseling visitor of three weeks earlier, the disaster of the Everfair is all but behind her, and for the first time in a very long while the ease of her breath is achieved without any effort whatsoever.

The duchess turns to take in the room, the swirling couples, the reflection of candlelight in faceted precious stones, the bright hiss of silk, the sweet scent of iced cakes, and her smile is ethereal. She has secured her position once more—and Tremontaine’s—and the road ahead will be strewn with violets and lilies.

Suddenly, as if from far away, she hears a low, faint rattling. She frowns. Such a noise has no place in a ballroom—but no, it is definitely there, and not only that but growing steadily louder. She flushes. “Are you quite sure you’re well?” says Davenant.

“The room is somewhat close, don’t you think?” she says, snapping open her fan. The rattling grows louder, and louder still, then resolves itself finally, inexplicably, into the sound of a carriage hurrying down a country road, closer, closer. She glances around, but she seems to be the only one in the room to hear it. It grows louder and louder, rumbling, advancing, thundering, until it crowds all other sound out of her ears. The room darkens, and in place of the supremely elegant gathering there are two girls, a maid and a mistress, riding in a traveling coach, giggling about the possibilities they believe the future holds, and then all of a sudden rearing horses, the shouts of men, the clash of swords, the scent of fear, rage, opportunity, and blood, blood, oh, blood, and she thinks she will faint, and she sinks toward the ground—

—and Diane, Duchess Tremontaine, wakes with a gasp, her heart wild to escape her breast, her mind whirling, spinning, clanging, and she sees after a moment’s disorientation that she is not in her ballroom after all, she is in her bedchamber, because the ball has yet to take place, the ball is tonight, and Karleigh, Karleigh will be there, and if he offends the Kinwiinik deeply enough that they refuse her proposal, then she will have rescued herself from the fire only to be cast into the sea.

 

And now, reader, let us take advantage of our position outside the tale, first to allow a span of hours to pass unremarked (unremarked by us, that is; to be sure, the men and women with whom we concern ourselves are about their business, bemoaning their woes, cherishing their secret hopes) and then, once we return, to flit rather than to linger, to glance rather than to gaze, to visit our heroes—for who among us is not the hero of his own story?—unseen and undetected as they ready themselves for the ball.

Here we see Ixkaab, first daughter of a first daughter of the Balam, a thousand and a thousand miles from her home, as with a thrill of transgression and pride she places in her ears the silver earplugs her uncle has lent her, of a quality and craftsmanship denied her on her native shores, where to appear in greater luxury than members of the royal house is punishable by exile. She adds golden bracelets studded with precious stones and a circlet of jade and pearl upon her brow, one such as might be donned for a solemn occasion by the daughter of the Batab, Ruler of the Territories, and finally knots a headdress of stiff cloth, modest in comparison with that of her aunt Ixsaabim but nonetheless resplendent with a shower of green quetzal feathers surrounded by the brilliant red of the macaw. She and the members of the household wear these adornments tonight to show the strength and power of their people, the honor of the Traders’ House of Balam of the Kinwiinik, but she herself finds an additional inner comfort in the pomp. She is terrified, as she has been for some time, that she will be discovered to have revealed the secret she has been told she must not give away, but this fear has just been overshadowed by an even greater one: They have had news this day of a disaster at home that could spell their doom and the doom of their entire people. Her aunt steps up behind her, and they regard each other in the glass, each thinking of danger and of Ixmoe, sister to one, mother to the other, who awaits them both, if their understanding of the cosmos is correct—and who is to say it is not?—in the houses beneath the earth.

Here we have Rafe Fenton, son of a different sort of trader, a City merchant’s reluctant heir, sorely vexed; we shall see the cause soon enough, but let it be enough for now to say that, of two things he desires with equally burning fervor, each seems to put the other out of his grasp, and vexed more sorely still because, at least at present, he is making what he feels is the coward’s choice. He too regards himself in the glass, splendid in claret velvet, and his face clouds like the sky before a storm that does not intend all it touches to survive. With an oath and a cry he tears open the soft doublet, slashed with black, and casts it to the floor along with the new stockings and the breeches; should you harbor any faith that the red silk ribbon for the hair flowing down his back is to be spared a similar fate, I advise you to gird yourself for disappointment. Now he attires himself, though he knows it will offend—or perhaps because he knows it will offend—in a manner much more befitting the man he wishes to be. The sight that confronts him when he turns back to the glass, though far less comely, pleases him far more.

Here is a girl named Micah, nervous about the evening ahead—as it happens, not nearly as nervous as she would be if she truly understood its character—rehearsing the words and phrases her friends have taught her to say should she be confronted with the need to speak. She is irked by the fit of the clothes she has consented to put on for the evening, more constricting than the scholar’s robe to which she has grown accustomed, but that is nothing compared with the madness to which she feels she is being driven by the mathematical mystery that evades her indefatigable efforts to solve it. In the meanwhile, she looks forward to the evening ahead as an opportunity to assuage the guilt she feels at having abandoned her family for so long by doing them, perhaps, a great service involving a humble vegetable.

Here are Tess, known to some as the Hand, and Vincent Applethorpe—we may speak of them together in Riverside rather than individually, as they are, while vital to their own tales, ancillary to ours. The one is attempting, without much success, to stave off a feeling of dread that has been growing in her since the death of her former protector, a fear that whatever malevolent force led him to his end has not yet abandoned its machinations in her life; I am sorry to inform you, reader, that events to come will prove that fear warranted. The other, who has arranged to attach himself to the large train of one of the brightly glittering families who will soon sweep up the Tremontaine House steps, buckles on a sword that he hopes will remain undrawn by the time he sees his bed. Whether that hope is to be met or dashed—well, you must permit the storyteller to retain a modicum of mystery; it is, weak though it be, the only power he has.

Here we see William Alexander Tielman, Duke Tremontaine, bedecked in a red deeper than the great ruby that shines among a circle of diamonds on his hand, feeling for the first time in years—and who, if the duke believes it to be the first time ever, could withhold forgiveness?—the thrill that renders men children in the face of love, if love indeed it be, that leaves them helpless and jolly even as all they have built threatens, whether they know it or not, to topple around them and leave them standing amid the wreckage of their lives.

And here, at last, we see, wide awake, Diane, Duchess Tremontaine, architect of the evening that is to come. Unlike her husband, she is all too aware of the destruction that looms over them, and perhaps by nightfall she will have come a great deal closer to averting it. There is another doom, however, far worse and more grim, that hangs over her head. She believes she has dispatched it, but she is mistaken, and whether she will escape it or be reduced to ashes in its conflagration is not at the moment within my ken.

These, then, are some of the men and women who may cross one another’s paths this night. Who is to say which of them will be hero to another, which villain, and which—

Ah, but the guests have begun to arrive.

In pairs they come, for the most part, over the course of an hour or two, borne in gilded carriages that bespeak opulence more than comfort, preceded down the dark cobblestone avenue by the clacking hooves of their high-necked horses, bay and chestnut and dapple gray. Some come alone and some in families, for such an opportunity to show marriageable girls to their advantage is not to be wasted. Some come beset by envy, others by spite; some come determined to find the furnishings ostentatious and the food inferior, some dreading the degree by which their own houses and entertainments will fail to shine as brightly as those that await them tonight. Some even come, curious as it is, to enjoy themselves for the evening.

But they all come.

For their hostess is an intriguing woman, a woman with a gift for mystery, and no one wants to wake up tomorrow morning to be informed by someone else what wonders the Duchess Tremontaine wrought at this year’s Swan Ball.

 

Rafe descended the imposing Tremontaine stairs, his black, wrinkled scholar’s robe brushing each dark step resentfully as he went, his face like doom.

The visiting Doctor Hugh McDonough was even now holding forth in the Great Lecture Hall on the properties of angles in irregular solids. Rafe’s friend Joshua was there, sitting under the high vaulted ceiling and the stained glass representations of the hunting of the royal stag in the windows, growing more enlightened by the sentence. Henry and Thaddeus too. And he, Rafe Fenton, so very noble in his aspirations, so pure in his love of scholarship, so single-minded in his impassioned pursuit of the truth, where was he?

He was going to a party.

He had no need to examine himself again in a glass to be aware of the sneering contempt on his own face. Well, he deserved that sneer. Only a short time since, he’d been a man ablaze with the fire of discovery, a man on the threshold of proving his most deeply held convictions about the cosmos. What was he now? A fribble, a mincing girl aflutter with her first love, or what she believed was love. And being ordered around by his lover’s wife, spending his time writing her party invitations. Invitations! When there was an unfinished book on his desk the pages of which would revolutionize natural science as nobody had done since Rastin! And instead he had reduced himself to this.

But he was hardly the only one to blame. Who did Will think he was, so casually to require Rafe to disregard the ambition toward which he had bent himself for years? Rafe was no tenant farmer, no jerking marionette to dance at the pleasure of his master, no—

And then, as he reached the bottom of the stairs, he saw Will walking through the entrance hall from the library to the ballroom, pale against the red velvet he wore and the richly wooded rooms through which he passed.

Rafe inhaled sharply, stopped short. Will turned, and at the sight of his face, Rafe felt the roiling inside him grow inexplicably more violent. He wanted to strike the man, he wanted to kiss him, to wrap him in his embrace, to tangle his fingers in his yellow hair, to caress every part of him not covered by clothing, to spit in his face.

Will’s deep blue eyes, bright when first he turned, clouded as they traveled from Rafe’s face to his body, taking in the rumpled, frayed University robe his secretary had chosen to wear to such a sparkling event. His voice was damask over steel. “Did the clothes I sent you not suit you?”

“No,” said Rafe, just as quiet but cold, as cold as the snows of Arkenvelt, “they did not. I found they were cut to fit your dog better than me.”

Will actually had the gall to look confused. “What?”

And in that moment, Rafe was pierced by the undeniable truth: his belief that the duke valued the same things as he did had been a gross error. Here was a dilettante, a coxcomb to whom fashion was so important he’d given Rafe clothing that matched exactly the color of his own jacket and the damned ruby on his finger. And his promise to urge the University Board of Governors to reconsider its vote on the matter of Masters’ examinations—no doubt worth less than the breath it had cost him to make. Rafe would never found his school, and it was Will’s fault.

Well, then. Will had snatched Rafe’s dream from him. Rafe would pay him back in kind.

“The reason I have allowed you to toy with me as if I were your plaything eludes me.” Should he leave the ball entirely, go to hear McDonough? His stomach twisted at the thought. No; better to make the duke suffer. “I have said I would attend this event as your secretary, and I am not a man to break my word. But rest assured, sir, that after this I will trouble your house no longer. You will not see me again.”

There.

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” said the duke. God, he was maddening! Why did he refuse to comprehend?

“William.” Diane’s voice as she approached was cool as chased silver. “Have our guests incurred your displeasure, that you neglect them so?”

Rafe looked up at the stream of aristocrats flowing by, each more foolish and plumped up than the last, all bedizened in useless frippery that mocked every principle he held dear. An elegant man under a mop of red hair gave him a languorous smile that implied volumes. Good. Lithe, the man was, of an age with Will, and handsome in emerald green slashed with silver. Rafe raised a careful eyebrow that implied volumes of its own.

“I’ll attend to our guests,” said Will, and there was a note of distance in his voice, “the very instant I understand why Rafe is wearing his scholar’s rags when perfectly suitable clothing was provided him.”

Diane’s eyes, veiled, gave away nothing.

“Don’t worry, Fenton,” she said, and even through his fury her voice sounded to him like a blade all the more dangerous for its beauty. She turned to Will. “Darling,” she said, “we ourselves can barely keep up with all the ridiculous rules by which we order our lives here on the Hill. You can hardly expect your secretary to understand them.” She smiled at Rafe, a generous smile, compassionate, and oh, how he hated her.

He schooled his expression to utter blankness. “Forgive me my intrusion, madam.” He turned and stalked toward the ballroom, Will’s pursuing footsteps echoing in his ear.

The redhead would be more interesting company tonight.

 

Diane permitted herself, as her husband went off, a very small smile; after all, neither he nor his snake of a lover could see it.

“Duchess!”

The smile vanished as if it had never been. Karleigh had arrived.

She turned to the door and swept toward him and his wife in a thoroughly convincing transport of joy. “Frederick! Helena!” She took their hands, Helena’s white as milk and Karleigh’s whiter, and her voice was the softest thick wool on a cold day. “Thank the good gods you’ve come! I can’t tell you how utterly dreary the evening has been without you!”

“Who’s been blathering such nonsense?” said the duke. “Any man who could describe an evening spent at Tremontaine House as dreary ought to be apprehended at once and packed off to the madhouse. Now: Tell us what the Swan is to be this year.”

“I would,” said the duchess, “but I’ve quite forgotten myself.” The duke harrumphed.

“Diane, you are stunning.” Helena adjusted the lace at her pink taffeta sleeves. “With anyone else I would apologize for such a cliché, but in your presence I absolve myself, as you long ago rendered any other response impossible.”

“Pish,” said Diane. “Helena, it is you who put stunning to shame. Those exquisite puffs at the neckline, and that pearl! It is heaven.” She regarded the duke. “And you, Frederick. I’m shocked my way to you wasn’t blocked by a crowd of pretty young things vying for your favors. That doublet puts Helena and me both to shame.” It was a hideous object, white with black braiding at the shoulders and sleeves embroidered in a blue that reminded her of something out of the sickroom. It would have looked foolish on a man half Karleigh’s age—had he been old-fashioned enough as to wear it. What had Helena had been thinking, letting him out of the house in it?

“You see, Helena?” said Karleigh, his tone so gruff with victory it bordered on the uncivil. “I told you it flattered me.” Ah, so Helena had done her best. “Now, Diane, where do you think I got it?”

By the Seven Hells. He was going to make her guess. “Frederick, I’m hopeless at such games, so I believe I’ll avoid your trap altogether and simply insist that your wife tell me.”

“We’re quite proud of it,” said Helena quickly. “People think he must have had it from—”

“People think I must have had it from Wickers,” said Karleigh—really, he had always been a boor, but to interrupt one’s wife!—“when in fact I had it from the hand of a crone who traced her lineage all the way back to one of Queen Amelia’s ladies! The woman died shortly thereafter, childless, friendless, and alone, but what does that matter when she was able to do this before she went?” He stepped back and spread his arms wide to offer an unhappily full view of the garment.

“Her joy in having provided you with such perfection,” said Diane, unable to help herself, “was, I’m quite certain, more than comfort enough for her in her final hours.” Helena failed to keep from appearing wounded, but honestly, what could she expect?

Karleigh, appraising the crowd, gave a gasp that would have done him credit on the stage. “Good gods,” he said. “Is that Latimer? I shall have to spend the evening avoiding him.”

“He will be disconsolate,” said Diane. “What crime has he committed, so to fall from your favor?”

“He told me last week he couldn’t join me for a simple game of Constellations because he had to entertain some sort of foreign grandee from Erland—I don’t know, someplace ridiculous like that. How humiliating for him. I’d rather serve chocolate to a good, honest local charwoman any day than to the king of a nothing country with no blood. He may wear linen and lace, but I guarantee you, go back far enough in Latimer’s line and you’ll find a haberdasher.”

Diane harbored no doubt in her breast whatsoever that Karleigh would keel over in a fit of apoplexy before he served chocolate to a charwoman, but on the subject of foreigners and their failings the duke was not to be gainsaid. She glanced around. The Kinwiinik had yet to arrive. She was safe for now, at least. “What punishment,” she said, “could be worse than to be cast out of your good graces? Now, both of you, come with me. If you stray from my side at any point during the evening, I vow I shall take to my bed at once and perish before sunrise.” And, pulling gaily at the ducal pair, she wafted into the ballroom.

 

Micah froze.

A lot of people, Rafe had said.

She had assumed that meant twelve, or even twenty!

But here were—her eyes darted around, taking in twenty, forty, eighty, until the crowd of people became uncountable, too many, too many people.

And the noise. Voices buzzing, humming, chattering, music bellowing, heels hitting the floor over and over, all of it combining to create a roaring onslaught that filled the room and seemed to pierce her eardrums, just as the whirling, the candles reflected in reflections of reflections, the gowns of pink giving way to lavender to blue to pale yellow to pink again assaulted her eyes, and she couldn’t move.

She had come here planning something—what was it?—something to help her aunt and uncle, something to do with turnips—

There was a door, a small door, nearby—if she could just move—yes, yes, and her feet were taking her toward it as fast as she could go, and she was in another room, and thank the gods, it was small, much smaller, but everything was still people and noise, noise and people, but there, there was a window with a blue curtain, yes, she ducked behind it and finally, yes, it was dark and, if not quiet, at least quieter, and she began rocking back and forth and grabbed the thick edge of the curtain as she rocked and rubbed it between her fingers, the softness of the heavy velvet sweet against her skin, and as she huddled here, nothing was moving, and she could begin to breathe again.

 

The imposing entry hall of the house of Diane, Duchess Tremontaine, thought Kaab as she stepped through the front door, was a grand thing indeed.

Its black-and-white-checkerboard marble floor had been laid, its sweeping staircase erected, its high walls painted and gilded with one purpose: to intimidate. Kaab suspected that for any number of the other guests it performed its office admirably, but she was from the great coastal city of Binkiinha, whose chief temple alone could contain multiples of this curiously designed hall.

When she entered the ballroom itself, however, her breath was, if not taken away, then—suspended for a moment. Innumerable mirrors glittered on every wall behind innumerable candles, still greater hosts of candles flickered next to the food, reflected in the endless heaps of magnificent silver on the tables scattered around the perimeter of the room, dark green ivy swept the walls and windows in such profusion that the house seemed to be transforming before her eyes into a living garden, men in servants’ livery wove, unobtrusive, through the crowd, bearing shining trays of cakes in the shape of swans, or stood self-effacingly beside large mounds of pastries, and nobles everywhere wound paths around one another, talking, laughing, flirting, fanning, dancing heat into the air.

The Kinwiinik, however, presented no mean spectacle themselves. In their deep jewel-colored Local doublets, jackets, and gowns, they blazed against the pastel silks and brocades and lace of the Xanamwiinik aristocracy. The Kinwiinik were dripping with gold and flashes of jade, sporting feathers the like of which this city had never seen: iridescent quetzal, bright green cotinga tail feathers, the neck feathers of the yellow guacamaya, sweeping, graceful, at once fierce and gentle, besting the Xanamwiinik at their own displays.

As Aunt Saabim and Uncle Chuleb approached the duchess to greet their hostess, Kaab caught sight of Vincent Applethorpe in the crowd, his sword hanging at his side, intent on his quarry. She breathed a small sigh of relief. She was so unsettled by the news from home, she didn’t trust herself to bend sufficient attention to finding the man who threatened the woman she—well, the woman she cared for.

The letter had arrived late in the morning, as Kaab had been—ugh—playing with some cousin’s baby, and Auntie Saabim and Uncle Chuleb had been bickering, the thick smells of maize boiling with lime and sweet atole wafting from the kitchen, telling them that the afternoon meal was almost upon them.

“No, my morning star,” sighed Saabim in the tone of voice that meant I am willing to be patient with you, but if you persist in your obstinacy, that state of affairs is going to change very soon. “I am quite sure I wish to go to the ball.” She knelt on a reed mat, attending to the large packet of dispatches brought by the ship that had arrived from home the previous day. “I am pregnant, not stricken with the wasting disease.”

“It would be far better to behave as if you were stricken with the wasting disease,” said her young husband, his lips tight. “What if something happens there to hurt the baby? What if your headdress is not protection enough for your head-spirit from the night air?” He made a warding sign to the bright jade statue of Chaacmul in the niche altar on the south wall, offerings of fragrant cacao beans and fruit at its feet.

“Your uncle,” said Saabim to Kaab, as if air occupied the space where Chuleb stood, “knows much more about bearing a child than I do.” Kaab covered her mouth to avoid snickering. Saabim put a hand on her swollen belly to adjust her wide belt, embroidered with leaping jaguars, and opened another letter from the packet.

“Understandable, of course. I can hardly be considered an expert; I’ve only borne a few of them. Before his time, of course.”

“Uncle is jealous,” ventured Kaab, and Chuleb gave her a dire glower, his cheeks dark in the late-morning sun. “He’s worried some ant-egg-skinned lord will catch your eye and spirit you away.”

Saabim stood up suddenly. “Ekchuah guide us!” Horror was rigid in her face.

“What is it?” Chuleb was at her side in an instant. But Saabim simply continued to pore over the long, folded sheet of fig-tree paper she held in her steady hands. Kaab felt as she always did when Ahkin’s priestess revealed what she had read of the family’s fortunes in the book of days. Her head felt light and her liver heavy, and she couldn’t quite breathe.

Finally, Saabim dropped the letter on the floor. The blood-red and charcoal-black glyphs on the page seemed to darken the room.

“Awful news from home,” Saabim said, her dark eyes grim.

Kaab’s aunt was as prone to understatement as an eagle to flight; if even she was calling the news awful, then it must be truly unspeakable.

“The Batab, Ruler of the Territories, is besotted with his latest wife, a daughter of the Cocom family.” Chuleb’s brow lifted. “A third daughter, at that.” A derisive puff of air escaped Kaab’s nose. “They have taken advantage of his infatuation to petition him to cancel our monopoly on this continent and open the trade routes to them.”

Kaab’s eyes met Chuleb’s, and each saw fear. “Why not tell us that the Locals have discovered how to read the mysteries of the Four Hundred Siblings and are preparing to sail to our homeland while you’re at it?” Chuleb kept his voice steady. “I could hardly think of anything worse.” Kaab’s stomach clenched as if it were full of hot pitch. So far her aunt and uncle knew nothing of her slip with Rafe and Micah, who were now terribly interested in discovering precisely that information. She must make sure it stayed that way.

“Then your imagination fails you,” said Saabim, “for that is nothing compared to the rest. It seems that a Kinwiinik woman living in Tultenco became involved with a Tullan noble.” Would she glance in Kaab’s direction? No; her aunt spared her that embarrassment at least. “There was a dispute, and she killed him.”

No one spoke. The slap of tortilla dough on the griddle and the low murmur of servants’ chatter sounded from the kitchen, as if this changed nothing.

“The Tullan,” Saabim finally continued, “executed her immediately, of course. They sent a delegation to Binkiinha to demand reparations. As soon as they arrived, the delegation began talking war.”

Calamity.

A canceled monopoly would topple the Balam family from its prominence among the Traders of Binkiinha; a war with the Tullan Empire might see the Kinwiinik all enslaved or food for the crows before it was over, or led to the sacrificial altar. Of course the gods must be fed with the precious water that flowed through human veins, but no one in the civilized world seemed to believe them quite as undernourished as the Tullan.

“Now may Ekchuah guide us,” said Kaab softly. But there was only so much assistance the god who moved in the deep could render his children.

Kaab could do nothing about the situation at home from the great Tremontaine ballroom, however, where Uncle Chuleb and Aunt Saabim (Kaab had known all along that there was no stopping her) were now leading the rest of the Kinwiinik company toward the Duchess Tremontaine—a figure of ivory resplendent in pale blue—to pay their respects.

All around, the fine nobles of the City stared at them. And then the whispers began, and the murmurs: shocked, amused, admiring, curious, impressed . . . There was no question but that the Kinwiinik Traders, in their gold and jade, their silver and pearls, their vivid feathered headdresses, had made a splendid debut entrance into the Duchess Tremontaine’s annual Swan Ball.

Having greeted the duchess, the elders of the family moved aside to allow Kaab to do the same. “Permit me to present,” said Chuleb, “my niece, Ixkaab, first daughter of the first daughter of the House of Balam.”

“It is a great pleasure to meet you, Duchess.” Kaab bowed with her hand on her heart, brown against the smooth yellow silk of her embarrassingly low-cut bodice. The duchess could not possibly recognize her; at their last meeting, Kaab had played the part of an unlettered servant, and people see, as her mother had often said, only what they expect to see.

But the sea-gray eyes in the face before her glittered. “And yet,” breathed the Duchess Tremontaine, “is it possible we may have met before? For surely I have seen your face, so striking, so bold. . . .”

Kaab swallowed. “I do not think so.” She must be very careful with this woman. “For I have not been very long in your stunning City.”

Diane sighed, a puff of regret tinged with self-incrimination. “I’m sure you’re right, then.” she said. “And the girl I’m thinking of had nothing of your bearing, your elegance.”

Kaab bowed her head. “You are too affectionate—no, excuse me, too kind.”

The duchess smiled. The effect was startling: the gray ice turned warm, like kind, sheltering shadows on a hot summer’s day. “I would like to be both. I wish to be a good, good friend to you and your people. And to know you better in particular, Mistress Balam, if I may.”

Kaab returned the smile, meeting charm with charm. In a graceful, confiding motion, Diane snapped open her fan, a confection of blue and gold. Kaab’s eyes flicked automatically to the lady’s slender ivory wrist.

And saw the locket.

The duchess was wearing the locket around her wrist, hanging from the worked gold chain of a bracelet.

The same locket Ben had brought back from his father’s deathbed, the same locket that Tess had copied so vividly on paper, an oval of gold ringed with diamonds, a jeweled swan resting, majestic, at the center.

Kaab and Tess had thought the locket gone forever, lying perhaps in the riverbed since the night poor Ben went uptown on the mysterious errand he had said would make his fortune.

Evidently, they had been wrong.

“I am inspired,” said Kaab carefully, “by the lovely . . . arm necklace? No—the bracelet! On your wrist.”

Was that a split second of alarm in the duchess’s eyes? “You like it?” she said coolly. “I assure you, it is nothing. A trinket. But,” she shrugged, “an old family heirloom. I wear it out of sentiment.” Just as at their last meeting: A nervous person always speaks too much. The duchess regained her footing. “Nothing, certainly, compared to the splendid jewels that adorn you and your family.”

So that was the game.

Kaab opened her mouth to make her next move—what it was she would not be able to say until it left her mouth; she was playing by instinct—but was forestalled.

Close by, there was a voice, pitched in a confiding murmur, but obliviously loud enough for those nearby to hear: “This is a new low. To see Tremontaine fawning over foreign tradesmen.” She jerked her head to the west to see a sneering older man in a white doublet looking at her askance. “Much less inviting them to a ball with the rest of us.”

Diane’s smile as she turned her head to look at him was beautiful. She nodded to the Kinwiinik. “Please do excuse me. I must attend to my other guests.”

“Of course,” said Kaab. This was exactly what she would have done in Diane’s place. Neutralize him before he offended the guests. A footman walking past with a tray of iced swan cakes obligingly cleared the path by stumbling—a thing Kaab had not expected to see in the home of the duchess—and when he recovered his balance, her hostess turned and glided off like a swan herself.

Kaab was beginning to like this woman.

 

Damn Karleigh. And damn Helena for being unable to restrain him. If Diane could have avoided inviting him at all, she would have done so, but such an open slight offered without provocation would have been deeply insulting and probably begun a series of hostilities for which she had at the moment neither the energy nor the patience. And so she had invited him and hoped for the best.

Fond hope. His attitude toward foreigners, a relic left over from a less enlightened age, was too strong a point of pride with him not to find expression. Only the girl had overheard Karleigh’s insult, though she was a sharp one; her performance two weeks earlier as a lowly servant had been masterly. Ahchuleb Balam’s attention had been elsewhere when Karleigh spoke, or at least seemed to be. But if Diane failed to contain the threat the duke presented, she might not be so lucky next time. And if the Kinwiinik refused the agreement she had proposed, then Highcombe would be lost, Tremontaine’s finances would never recover from the disaster of the Everfair, and—well, it did not bear consideration.

“Frederick! Helena!” she said, sweeping up to the pair. “I would be a poor hostess indeed, if I saw you bereft of punch and failed to rectify my error immediately!”

“Never mind that, Diane,” he said, stiff as ironwood. “What I can’t for the life of me determine is why you invited—”

“Duchess,” said Helena quickly, “you haven’t by any chance remembered Frederick’s weakness for iced cakes?”

She took Helena’s tiny hand in her own and applied the gentlest of pressure. Helena would interpret the gesture correctly as an expression of support and gratitude. This would be much easier with an ally. “How could you even think I would forget such a crucial detail? Both of you, please, come with me at once.”

It didn’t take her long to guide them to the room of tables groaning with food—a room empty of Kinwiinik, at least for the moment. “All is here for your delectation.” She made a grand sweep of her hand, indicating not just the cakes, the faint perfume of roses drifting from their icing, but also the filled pastry, the tender swan meat in citrus sauce—well, duck meat, but call it swan meat and who would be the wiser?—so much food even the assembled crowd would be hard-pressed to consume it all.

Out of the corner of her eye she spied—ah yes, a piece of luck indeed. “Sarah, I insist you come here at once and discuss with Karleigh the matter with which you were holding us all spellbound at last week’s dinner: your researches into the history of your family coat of arms and the questions raised by your discovery of the old escutcheon in the east wing of your home.”

There. That, she thought as the doleful Lady Perry approached them, would hold him for at least twenty minutes, and with Helena’s cooperation perhaps twice that. And then Diane would find something else to occupy his attention. Not only that, but Diane’s instincts about pastel at the beginning of the season had been unerring; in her light green gown Sarah Perry looked not just ill but actually like someone three days dead whom her family had unaccountably neglected to bury. Yet another triumph.

She turned and glided back into the ballroom, awhirl with dancing couples.

 

The clavier player looked at the violinist and rolled his eyes.

“I know what it is!” Andrew said quietly, as if seized with sudden inspiration, his hands moving over the delicate keys of the instrument in front of him. “He took up the viol only after a failed attempt at a career on the stage.” Jack turned a page. Andrew, for his part, played without a score. If he never heard the Boyce sarabande again after this season—a likelihood, the way people thought about music here on the Hill, fashionable one moment and worthy only of the trash heap the next—he’d be grateful; he certainly didn’t need to look at the sheet music to get the notes right.

Jack sniggered, his fingers moving deftly on the neck of the violin. “No, no! He’s actually gone deaf, but since he never learned another trade he’s just hoping nobody will notice.” Andrew hated playing with violinists who couldn’t talk as they fiddled. The music popular this season was less than inspired, to put it politely, and conversation allayed the tedium.

And there went the E in the third octave. “Damn this clavier. There’s another key stuck. How old is this thing, anyway?” He sighed and peered over at the violist. “He’s really a spy from Cham. He’s only been masquerading as a violist this whole time.” God, the harmonies in this piece were predictable. Here came the cadence again. Tonic, subdominant, dominant, tonic, as if Boyce were showing off something he’d invented. Ugh.

“Ah,” said Jack. “Modulation coming up in three measures.” His bow bobbed up and down in the air almost by itself. “Bet you my hat he flats the leading tone.”

“I wouldn’t take that bet in a million years. It’s too bad you’re not doubling him. You could just play louder and drown him out. Here it comes.” Andrew shut his eyes, cringed in anticipation, and winced when the modulation came. “Maybe he thinks we’re actually playing in C-sharp?”

“He couldn’t read the accidentals in C-sharp if his life depended on it.”

In fact, the musician about whom the two of them were speaking played his instrument no worse than either of the two of them played theirs, and occasionally better; Andrew was the most sought-after clavier player on the Hill not because he was the best, but because his shoulders filled his doublet so very effectively. But just three days ago Jack, released earlier than expected from a rehearsal because the soprano was too drunk for further work to do them any good, had opened the door to the small and dingy rooms he rented with the offending violist to find him in bed with Robert, their next-door neighbor. Even this breach might have been forgivable—the violist had been up until that moment, if not Jack’s sun, then perhaps his moon, or at the very least a not inconsequential star, and Jack was a reasonable man—but Robert, instead of being naked like a decent person as the violist took his pleasure, had been wearing Jack’s breeches. And as a result, Jack was now, as the saying went, pulling his plow unyoked. This gave Andrew, who had been disappointed in love, an opportunity for which he had been hoping for quite some time.

And Andrew was not a man to let an opportunity pass him by.

 

“This experimental science,” the redheaded noble was saying, “sounds fascinating.” He took Rafe’s hand and held it closer to the light reflected from the mirror towering on the wall behind them. “Why don’t you tell me about it while I gaze at your beautiful fingers?”

“Oh,” said Rafe lazily, “one man’s fascination is another man’s tedium.” Even he knew better than to engage in an actual description of his work in such a moment. “I do, however, offer you leave to make free of my fingers.”

Rafe knew this game like he knew his own body, had played it from a youngling, up until a few weeks ago. A breath of flattery, a honeyed sigh, a hollow endearment, and before long they would have found release with each other in an upstairs bedroom, or outside behind a hedge, or perhaps they would be in the redheaded nobleman’s own home, anywhere rather than scuttling around this insipid ball avoiding Will. The duke might have denied him his Master’s robe, but there was another art of which Rafe had already long been master, for which a robe was, in the end, but a hindrance.

And yet the single-minded focus with which he usually practiced that art eluded him, ruined by an unwonted sense of distraction. He started at the sound of a squeak from behind him. “Now, Horn,” a high-bred Hill voice drawled—gods, these mindless nobles!—“this fellow has a job to do. You wouldn’t want to deprive the other guests of the delicacies on his tray just for fifteen minutes of pleasure with him, now, would you?”

“Thank you, milord,” said the squeaker, presumably the servant whose peace was being troubled.

“Nonsense, Halliday,” said another mindless noble, this one elderly and irritated. “I’m far more interested in the delicacies he’s carrying on his backside.”

“Now you’re being silly. There is a more than acceptable Ruthven red in the salon. Come join me in a glass, and we can make a wager on what tonight’s Swan will be.”

“Hmph. As you wish.”

Could these ninnies hear themselves? Rafe longed to talk to Will, to huddle away in a corner with him and discuss solids or velocity or the orbits of the spheres. Something that mattered.

He shook his head. No need to think of Will. The languid redhead in front of him was the proper object of his attention.

“Rafe!” called a voice from his right, and he looked over to see Will coming toward him, brushing past a table draped in dark ivy. “Please, let’s talk this through.”

“Forgive me,” he said to the redhead, his voice strangling. “We will see each other very soon, I’m sure.” And with that he was away.

The redhead gave a smirking bow as Tremontaine came up to him. The duke looked at him for a moment without saying a word. “Damn him!” he muttered then, and continued after Rafe.

 

Micah had been breathing steadily for several minutes now. She thought she might be safe coming out from behind the curtain. Remember the artificial numbers if you start getting anxious, she thought. And remember what Tess said. She peeked out, saw no one looking, and stepped from behind the curtain to find herself before some kind of roasted bird and a big tower with thirty-four pastries on it. There were seventeen people in this room. Seventeen was a lot, but not more than she could handle, especially now that she had known to expect them. She took one of the pastries and bit into it. It was no tomato pie, but it wasn’t bad. A little bit of meat, some asparagus.

“Now, who might you be?” Whoops. Make that eighteen people. She turned around to see a pale woman behind her with dark hair and funny teeth. The woman kept talking but Micah felt another flutter of panic, so she began calculating. The fourth key of 1,024 is four. The seventh key of 343 is three. The eleventh key of . . .

By the time she was calm again, the woman was looking at her, not saying anything, starting to get the “I’m confused” expression, and Micah began feeling an intense pressure; the woman must have said something she expected a response to. Micah fought the urge to duck back behind the curtain. She could do this. “Fascinating,” she tried. “Why don’t you tell me more about that?” She held her breath. Tess had better have been right.

“Well,” said the woman, looking to either side and lowering her voice, “you didn’t hear it from me, but Lord Humphrey said . . .”

Micah’s eyes widened. Could this actually be working? This woman was doing just what Tess had said people would!

“Tell you what, sweetheart,” Kaab’s friend had said the previous day in Madeline’s shop when they had been there to get clothes. “Do me a favor and say this: ‘Fascinating. Why don’t you tell me more about that?’”

It seemed weird, but Tess knew a lot more about how people acted than Micah did. “Fascinating. Why don’t you tell me more about that?” Micah had repeated obediently.

“Good. Now say, ‘I’m really more interested in what you think.’”

“I’m really more interested in what you think.”

“There. Those are the only two things you’ll have to say all evening.”

Kaab, Vincent, and Madeline all laughed. Micah didn’t get the joke. “Huh?”

“It’s very simple,” said Madeline, reaching out and stroking her hair before she could shy away. To Micah’s surprise, it felt strangely soothing, almost like when Aunt Judith did it. “People love to talk about themselves. All you have to do is never stop inviting them to do it.”

This sounded interesting. “What do you mean?”

“It might not work at the University,” said Tess. “I’m sure they spend all their time talking about how many natural scientists can dance on a rutabaga’s ass or something. But the people at this party won’t be like that. So when you’re in conversation with anybody, if they stop talking and you’re not sure what to do, just say, ‘Fascinating. Why don’t you tell me more about that?’ And if at some point they ask you a question you don’t know how to answer, just say, ‘I’m really more interested in what you think.’ Those two sentences will get you through the entire evening.”

Micah was dubious. “Are you sure?”

“Sweetheart, they’ve gotten friends of mine through years of peddling their asses to men on the Hill who have no right to their thoughts about anything. It should last you for one party.”

But the words of the woman with the funny teeth in front of her brought her back to the ball. “. . . can’t wait to see what Tremontaine will do for the Swan?” Did the woman expect an answer?

All right. If it had worked once, she might as well try it again. “I’m really more interested in what you think,” said Micah, and the woman, amazingly, was off again. But just after she started talking, Micah saw somebody walk by the open door to the room with skin the same light-brown color as Kaab’s. He was dressed like everybody else, but his clothes were brighter and there were feathers on his head. Which meant he was probably Kinwiinik. Which meant . . .

“Well, milk a chicken and call her a cow!”

The woman with the funny teeth stopped in the middle of a sentence. “Pardon me?”

Micah opened her mouth to explain that Cousin Reuben said that all the time when he had ideas that he thought should have been obvious, though he didn’t have ideas very often, but then she realized that it would involve saying something other than the two sentences she knew she could get away with, and besides, every second she stood with this woman was a second farther away from the bliss and relief of enlightenment.

“Good-bye,” said Micah, not wanting to be impolite, and turned around and walked out of the room. Yes, there was danger everywhere. But now she was on a mission.

 

The “music” was driving Kaab mad.

She regarded the men sawing away with sticks at strings on wooden clubs they held under their chins, men blowing into flutes of metal, a man sitting at a huge wooden box moving his hands all over the front part of it. They looked bored.

Xamanek’s light! The ant-egg people’s insipid food was one thing, the swaddling clothes they wrapped themselves in and the shoes with which the women hobbled their feet another, but this clickety-clackety, tweedly-weedly noise was beyond belief. And just look at them all, standing around, talking, dancing, as if they didn’t notice, as if they even liked it! Amazingly, many of the Kinwiinik—even Chuleb and Saabim—were smiling and moving their heads slightly in time to the noise. She turned away and considered the mounds of silver on the table nearby. At least none of her people were dancing.

“Kaab!”

She turned to see Micah. “Ah, my small lordling,” she said. “How are you experiencing the ball?”

“Fine,” said Micah, and pointed. “I need to talk to him.”

Micah was pointing to Chuleb, in deep conversation with two Local men. Kaab’s brow wrinkled. “What is your need to speak with my uncle?”

“Navigation!” said Micah, and Kaab felt her heart clutch. “It’s still driving me crazy, and whenever I ask you about it, you always say you can’t help because it’s the Kinwiinik men who know about navigation. Well, he’s a Kinwiinik man, right? So I’m going to go explain what I’ve been trying to figure out and ask what I’m doing wrong, and he’ll tell me!”

Kaab’s veins throbbed. “I do not think that would be a good idea,” she said, very carefully. “He is a busy man, and he certainly would not—”

“Come with me!” said the girl, her eyes afire. “We can talk to him together! We’ll tell him the whole story, how you gave me the star charts and how it’s been so frustrating and then he’ll explain and it’ll all finally make sense!”

And Kaab would be disgraced, out of the service for good, destined to cook and clean in Uncle Chuleb’s house for the rest of her life. And help look after babies.

“No. You cannot.” Her tongue was wood in her mouth.

“Why not?”

“Micah, do not—”

Someone grabbed Kaab’s left arm and she whirled around. But this was not the place to assume a fighting stance. She relaxed her legs and removed her hand from the obsidian dagger at her belt.

“Your feathers are impressive.” The man who stood before her now was an ill-favored fellow despite his elegant costume: reedy, his leering face pocked, his voice nasal enough to make her eyeballs itch, his gray hair stringy. To Kaab’s horror, he reached up and touched the quetzal feathers on her headdress, and she jerked her head back. He was staring down her front the whole time, even as he made her one of the Locals’ little bows.

“I have the honor of introducing myself: Horace Lindley, Lord Horn, very much at your service.” She gritted her teeth. Micah had wandered off and was probably halfway to Chuleb by now, but Kaab didn’t dare offend one of the ant-egg lords.

“As I was saying—your costume! Such a delight. And that lovely necklace, especially the bit right there . . .” The man’s rude fingers reached now for the gold that hung on her breast, clearly interested in the one more than the other.

Before his hand could achieve its aim, she had her dagger out, pointed at the juncture of his breeches. “I counsel you,” she said coldly, “not to continue what you have begun.”

He raised an eyebrow and gave her a greasy smile. “Oh, you’re a feisty one, aren’t you? If you defend your titty’s virtue like a boy, let’s see how you fancy this instead . . .” To her amazement, even with her blade pointed right at his jewels, the mad old nobleman started reaching his other hand around for her backside.

What was she going to do? Stab him in the middle of the Tremontaine ballroom? Unwise. But if he actually touched her, she honestly wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep from harming him physically. So she took the only other option open to her.

Kaab turned and fled.

* * *

“There you are.” The redhead’s voice was silk. “I feared you’d been spirited away.”

“No,” said Rafe. “I find the continued interruptions of our acquaintance quite tedious, in fact, but there’s a certain person I greatly desire to avoid. I’m sure you understand that sort of thing.” The corners of his mouth turned up very slightly, and the redhead laughed.

“Many’s the man I’ve greatly desired to avoid at many a party,” he said. “I’m not in the least offended.” He spoke to a passing footman without releasing Rafe’s gaze. “Two cakes, from that tower of them over there.”

“Of course, my lord.”

They picked up the conversation where they had left off. And yet Rafe was mystified. The excitement he ordinarily felt in this situation—the skill, the subtlety of the game, the end a foregone conclusion, the only thing in question the path the two of them took to get there—felt muffled somehow. For the Land’s sake, it had only been a few weeks since the last time. He couldn’t be out of practice. He frowned.

“Oh,” said the redhead, “you are of a different opinion?”

What had the man been saying? No matter; the words themselves were irrelevant. “Let us say rather that I am still considering the question.” Rafe offered an indolent smile. “When it comes to the matter under discussion, that is. On other matters I am . . . quite firm.”

“I will keep that in mind, in case I find myself in a position later to make use of the information.” Why, why did this not feel the same?

“No, Halliday,” said a querulous voice off to Rafe’s left, “it was sewn by an old bat who traced her lineage back to one of Queen Amelia’s lady’s maids!” The voice, when Rafe glanced its way, proved to come from an old man in a doublet that should never have been imagined, much less cut and sewn. “And now Diane is forcing me to show it off to these foreign nobodies. As if I desired their approval. It’s insulting, I tell you.”

“I don’t know about that, Karleigh,” said the other noble, a young man of some gravity, tall, dark, perhaps not quite as vapid as the others in the room. “I find their presence intriguing. Yes, they’re foreign nobodies who probably do not belong at the Tremontaine ball. But the duchess has her little whimsies. And without the Traders we wouldn’t have chocolate.”

“Bah. They don’t even know how to drink it.” God, how could Will stand to have such people in his house? “My haberdasher’s supplier was at one of their parties. What kind of lout puts spices in chocolate?”

A twitching servant carrying a huge stack of empty glasses elbowed him in the ribs. “I’m terribly sorry, sir. Please forgive me.”

“Hardly. Do that again, you wretch, and it’ll mean your post.” A moment, as the unfortunate man scurried off. “Good god, Halliday, what is the world coming to if even Tremontaine can’t get good help?”

By the Seven Hells, this was gruesome. If only Will knew how Rafe felt, if only he truly understood!

If only pigs could fly.

“But I believe,” said the redhead, “that we were talking about your fingers.”

“Yes,” said Rafe, miserable. “Please continue.”

Alas for Rafe, he did.

 

Fortune, it seemed, was smiling upon Diane.

Between the two of them, she and Helena had managed to keep Karleigh distracted the entire evening. After tearing him away from Basil Halliday before he could work himself into a foam over the Traders, they had finally settled him into a game of Constellations with Humphrey Devize, the slowest talker on the Hill, and Richard Perry, the most voluble, so she could spend, if her luck held, the better part of an hour untroubled by worry on that score.

Which gave her room, finally, to deal with her husband.

It was one thing for William to make that tedious man his secretary, to invite him to the Swan Ball—and how predictably pretty little Rafe Fenton had played the spoiled child who wished to sit at the grown-ups’ table while refusing to follow the grown-ups’ rules!—but for William to follow his love around like a puppy desperate for tenderness while visibly ignoring her was . . . well, it would be foolish to say “unforgivable,” because Diane de Tremontaine had never forgiven anyone for anything in her life. Suffice it to say, however, that she kept very accurate score. And this was a serious loss.

As the Dragon Chancellor joined her near a window draped with so much ivy one could barely see out of it, she noticed William on the way toward her in that shocking red—naturally he had scorned to wear the pastel she’d advised—and settled in an instant upon an equal loss to inflict in return.

“Gregory!” she said. “Why have you not asked to lead me in the dance yet this evening?” Her voice faltered, very slightly, as she reached the end of the sentence. Something felt strange.

“Because,” said Davenant, and the strange feeling continued, “I’m quite certain your beauty would cause me to stumble from inattention and tread on your foot, at which point I would have to hurl myself into the river in despair.”

As William drew close enough for her to be within his field of vision, she stepped a hair closer to Davenant than propriety dictated and placed a hand on his arm. “I dare say,” she said clearly, keeping her eyes on her husband’s face as he approached, “I would be so distracted by the perfection of your features I would fail to notice.”

And William walked right past her.

His head did not turn a fraction.

Because, of course, he was following the noxious Rafe.

Rage blossomed in her. It was invisible to her guests, of course, who saw only the magnificent smile she bestowed on the Dragon Chancellor.

“Duchess,” said Master Ahchuleb Balam at her side, bowing, “may I congratulate you on a spectacular evening?”

There was that strange feeling again. Mixed with her fury, it was quite unsettling. “Why, sir, if the evening is indeed a spectacular one—an assertion whose merit I am of course in no position to evaluate—then it is due entirely to your presence and that of your people.” She felt as if she were saying words that had been chosen for her by someone else.

She felt light-headed, as if she were being supported by nothing more solid than the sound of the music. “The manner in which I have heard my Kinwiinik colleagues remark upon your hospitality,” he said, “suggests to me that, when I broach the matter to them again, I will find them eager to accept your proposal.”

“I leave the matter, sir,” she said, helpless, “entirely in your hands. A letter from you would be a delight no matter what news it bore.”

The foreigner’s brow furrowed. “You look,” he responded, “if you will forgive my saying such a thing, more than a little pale. May I bring you a cooling drink?”

“You are kind,” she said, fighting to stay steady, “but I assure you it is of no matter.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Karleigh coming out of the card salon, much too soon. So much for Devize and Perry. “If you will excuse me,” she said, and began to waft toward Karleigh, grateful to have something on which to focus her attention.

Grateful? To Karleigh?

Wonders, apparently, would never cease.

 

Sapperton was a nervous person by temperament, and the situation into which he had been thrust this evening had multiplied that nervousness tenfold.

He was an under-cook, after all, not a footman. He belonged in the kitchen.

“Just think of it!” his wife had said, a vexing touch of awe in her voice. “You’ll be able to see all the fancy things people are wearing, listen to the fancy things they talk about!”

Sapperton would have been happy not to know what anybody was wearing or what anybody talked about if it had meant he didn’t have to worry that he was going to cause some sort of disaster. Because if he did, Duchamp would have his head. And he was terrified of the steward, who had somehow managed to make “Sapperton” into a word that struck terror into his kidneys. The fit into which Duchamp had flown when the previous cook had sent up a cake with three tiers rather than four was a thing of legend; many of the kitchen staff claimed that the woman’s whimpering ghost still haunted the pantry, though Sapperton himself had never seen her. And so tonight he was going to do as he was bidden. “Every single other kitchen servant is playing above his usual role tonight,” the steward had said, “so I don’t see why I should issue you a special dispensation.” Then he had turned and started shouting at Daisy for telling him they’d run out of duck to mix with the goose in the swan pastry.

Sapperton had acquitted himself admirably, however, all evening—had stumbled once or twice, yes, but had dropped nothing, insulted no one, placed nothing on the wrong table.

Unfortunately, none of that was what he was worried about, or, rather, his worries about those things were all eclipsed by his worry about the task that lay before him now.

He was to carry in the Tremontaine Swan.

The Swan was the highlight of every year’s ball. In fact, said Duchamp, fully half the conversation of the evening was usually the guests’ speculation about what the duchess would bring out as the Swan this year.

One year it had been marzipan. One year spun sugar. One year chocolate. Last season, in a particular coup, it had been a giant swan sculpted out of ground swan’s liver, which everybody had said was delicious, though Sapperton had his doubts. Nevertheless, every year, apparently, when it was revealed at the height of the ball, the Swan was the cynosure of every eye in the room.

And tonight he was one of four lackeys carrying it in.

He stood before it along with the others: a great molded pudding made of red wine and blackberries. It rose to an astonishing four feet, adorned with brilliants, sheltering tiny cygnets made of sugar, with a bright necklace around its sinuous neck that ended in a ruby half the size of his fist.

The four of them gathered, one at each corner, and Alfred counted aloud. “Three, two, one, up!”

His heart in his throat, Sapperton lifted.

* * *

It is true, reader, that this year’s Swan Ball, as Diane had hoped, would be talked about for weeks afterward, if not longer. Alas for the duchess, however, the reason for this was not at all the one she had had in mind.

Our heroes—for who by now can say that any of our characters is not a hero?—began a strange convergence. Rafe, chased by the redhead and fleeing William, bound finally for the former’s bed, William pursuing Rafe and ignoring his wife, Micah pursuing Chuleb and ignoring Kaab, Kaab pursuing Micah and fleeing Lord Horn, old Lord Horn pursuing Kaab: They had all been moving through the crowd as quickly as they could, each intent on a goal. Andrew, the clavier player on the make, continued to play, and Sapperton and the other servants had just entered with the Swan.

And then Vincent Applethorpe—you do remember him, I’m certain: the swordsman friend of Tess the forger?—took a step forward. He had finally seen the man in search of whom he had come to the ball, a swordsman in the Tremontaine green and gold, lurking along the far wall. A man he had last seen in Riverside, without the livery, stealing the dummy sketch that Kaab and Tess had dropped in his path; a man he had then followed, at their bidding, to the gates of Tremontaine House.

So yes, Vincent Applethorpe took a step forward. And that step put him, as it happened, in Micah’s path, forcing her to turn her course. This gave the enterprising Kaab the opportunity, which she seized, to keep Micah from revealing to Chuleb what Kaab wished to remain hidden. She did this by putting her foot out six inches.

This caused a great many things to happen.

Micah very considerately tripped over Kaab’s foot and fell headlong into Rafe, who himself fell to the floor, his limbs entangled with those of the redheaded noble. Kaab’s pursuer, since she had stopped to trip Micah, ran headlong into her, with the result that she toppled over on top of Micah, Rafe, and the redhead. The obstacle created thereby was too much for both Lord Horn and for Duke William, both of whom collapsed on top of the others in a heap.

Matters might have ended there. But Kaab’s fine obsidian dagger, not firmly enough replaced in her belt after her encounter with the lecherous Lord Horn, had flown out as she fell and now sailed in a beautiful arc toward the musicians. Andrew’s eyes were not on his instrument, not on the dancers, but on Jack, and when his friend’s face filled with alarm, he had not the time to interpret it before the hilt of the weapon hit him on the back of the head, causing him to lose his balance and kick out so as to keep from falling down.

Unfortunately, his foot collided with the clavier, the legs of which the duchess had been told many times needed to be replaced. The instrument collapsed in a spectacular fashion, with a deafening crash of wood and discordant strings, causing the excitable Sapperton to emit a quiet shriek of terror and, more important for our purposes, to release his hold on the Swan, throwing the other men off-balance. Had the magnificent Swan even been capable of lifting its own fourth corner, it would have found doing so beneath its dignity, and so, unable to stay afloat on a sea of nothing, it fell, all red wine and blackberries, on top of Lord Karleigh and his white coat.

Well, it had begun the evening as white.

For a moment, complete silence reigned in the ballroom. And in that silence, Lord Karleigh growled a growl such as had never been heard before in Tremontaine House. The growl turned into a roar, and the roar finally clarified itself into speech.

“Well, Duchess,” he said, “this is what comes of polluting a ball by filling it with people without family or breeding.”

Lord Basil Halliday, paling next to him, seized his arm and alternated between patting it and smacking his shoulder in a vain attempt to quiet him. Karleigh brushed Halliday off and looked down at Ixkaab Balam. “I’d wager you don’t know your father’s name, girl. If you even know your mother’s.”

Kaab scrambled to her feet, her hand flying to where her dagger should have been; when it found nothing, she looked to her aunt for her cue. This time the silence lasted, it seemed, for an eternity. It was finally broken by Ixsaabim Balam, her voice ice.

“The girl you insult, sir, is Ixkaab Balam, first daughter of Ixmoe Balam, first daughter of Ixtopob Balam, first daughter of Ixchukwapl Balam, first daughter from a line of first daughters descended from queens who ruled empires more vast than your imagination can compass. You are fortunate indeed that I will not permit her to begrime herself by cutting the verminous tongue out of your mouth.” She turned to Diane. “I see my people and I are not welcome here. We will discommode you no longer.”

She called a word in her language, incomprehensible to most in the room. But the Kinwiinik all put down their glasses or plates, most of them gratefully, as they found the food unspeakably bland, and came to stand with Ixsaabim. Another word, and they all left as one.

Diane, Duchess Tremontaine, who had over the course of her life rescued herself from more dangers than one could easily count, who was mistress of herself in all circumstances, who knew what people wanted and what they feared as clearly as if it had been written on their brows, saw at once that there was one way, and one way only, out of the quandary in which she now found herself.

She fainted.

 

Ixsaabim, Kaab realized as she walked home next to her in the quiet, was smiling.

They had been grievously insulted in front of every person of rank in the City, and Saabim was happy.

“What,” she said, “can my wise aunt possibly have to be happy about?”

“Little bee, if you have to ask that question, then perhaps you don’t belong in the service after all.” Kaab was glad it was too dark for Saabim to see her blush. “I am happy for two reasons. First, the duchess has been mortified in front of us at her own party. The embarrassment of one’s opponent is an extraordinarily useful tool.”

“Yes,” she said. “And second?”

“I am also happy because I now know what business she is about.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She is, as you yourself have pointed out, a very dangerous woman, with a subtle mind. She could have been up to anything in proposing the partnership she brought to us, and you can be sure that she does not give a cacao bean in a hurricane for the Kinwiinik in any way other than our ability to further her own aims. Before tonight, I had no idea what those aims were.”

“And now you do?”

“Come, little bee. You are more observant than this. There were signs of it all over that ball. Tell me, why were all the candles either in front of mirrors or next to silver?”

“So that . . .” Her mother, Kaab thought, ashamed, had raised her better! And then she had it and smiled in the dark. “So that the reflected light would hide the fact that there were not more of them.”

A pause. “Yes.” Saabim’s voice was pleased. “And why was there so much needless silver on the tables?”

Now that she understood, it was easy. “To make us believe the house is drowning in silver, when in fact every piece she owned was on display.”

“And the pastries?”

She thought a moment. “A great deal of pastry combined with a great many vegetables and very little meat.”

“And the fowl in that hideous orange sauce?”

“Similarly: gallons of sauce hiding meat of dubious origins.”

“The ivy filling the room?”

“Plants are very inexpensive when one has country estates.”

“And the arrangements of those silly little cakes?”

“Towering shelved structures, empty on the inside, to create the illusion that there were four times as many as there were.”

“And why were the servants so awkward?”

Kaab had to think a moment. Oh, that was clever. “Because most of them were pressed into service from other duties. Otherwise there would have been too few for the crowd.”

“Yes. The duchess is desperately in need of funds. And so it becomes clear that her proposal is most likely an honest one: She sees us as a way of making money, and understands that she must offer us something in return. And we will accept her proposal, if she has the audacity to renew it.”

They walked in silence for a time.

“You are a good girl, Kaab. Ixmoe would be proud of you.”

Kaab had to work quite hard not to cry.

* * *

“That really was a masterful faint, earlier this evening,” said the Dragon Chancellor, running a hand along her delicate jawline.

“I was quite pleased with it,” answered the Duchess Tremontaine. “I perfected it long ago, and was beginning to think I would never need it.” She twirled an idle finger in his hair and left it there. They were in Davenant’s bedchamber, naked, beneath a silk-and-feather counterpane. Desperate at the ruination of her plans for the chocolate empire, she had decided to make the first move, by granting him a favor he had long desired and she had until now denied him and, in fact, every man who had similarly importuned her. It was not guaranteed to pay off. But timidity had never availed her anything. She was unsure how she felt about what she had just done for the first time.

For a while, they exchanged pleasantries of the sort traditionally spoken after the congress in which they had been engaged.

And then, when she had worked her way around to it, she said: “I find myself at an utter loss as to an appropriate response when next I see the Duke of Karleigh.”

“I imagine that for some time it will be quite difficult for you to see him at all, even if he is standing in front of you.”

She sighed. Careful, now. “I suppose so. But what would give me the greatest satisfaction is unlikely to remedy the insult to the Kinwiinik. Who knows what the rules of honor in their world demand in the face of such an insult? You saw the way they all wheeled and left the ball together, like a flock of—of starlings.” A silence she could not read. “I am invited for chocolate at the always delightful Lady Perry’s next week.”

“My sympathies.”

“Mmmm.” She licked the tip of his ear. “Indeed. Fortunately, she keeps an excellent grade of the stuff. But should they take it into their heads to interfere with our supply of chocolate—well, it gives me horrors.”

“Ah.”

“I imagine that a suitable gesture could be made. An indication that Karleigh’s boorishness is unacceptable to the rest of us.”

“Such as?”

“There must be . . . a tax of some kind on the importers of chocolate, no?”

“Yes,” he said. “A particularly high one, for which we have to thank our fathers, who were leery of allowing in anything the Land itself does not produce.”

“Or perhaps they wanted to ensure that such a stimulating treat remained out of reach of all but themselves.”

The Dragon Chancellor chuckled. “In which case, it was a dismal failure.”

“Just so.” Diane edged herself up on one elbow, letting her curls fall across his mouth. “So why not reduce it, as a token of goodwill?”

“An interesting idea.” He was silent for a while. “But ultimately unworkable.” He tickled her nose with the end of her own hair. “I fear there is, alas, nothing to be done about that.” If he had been a more observant man, he would have noticed her slight stiffening and then, after a pause, the fraction of an inch she moved away from him.

“Oh?” Nor was he well enough acquainted with her to know how dangerous this tone of voice was.

“It has to do with infernal Council politics. Ask William to explain it, if he manages to remember he’s on the Council in the first place.” Diane gave a small laugh. “Your beauty empties my head; I am unable to think clearly enough to do it myself.” She smiled at him, as if to show that she appreciated the compliment. “Besides, there are so many things we can discuss that are so much more pleasant.”

“You’re right, of course. For instance: Did you see Lord Perry and young Sophronia Latimer tonight? All those longing glances. Sarah looked as if she’d bitten into a lemon.”

“Yes,” he said solemnly, “but Sarah always looks as if she’s bitten into a lemon.” The conversation continued in this vein, light and friendly. She would find another way to achieve her aim. She always did.

And in the meantime, on the tally she kept always in mind, she added a black mark by Davenant’s name.

 

The Duchess Tremontaine and the Dragon Chancellor, however, do not draw our tale to its close; there is one more scene to play, reader, in another location, before you and I retire for the night. Would that our heroes were fortunate enough to be able to do the same!

But they, alas, must continue their stories until they reach the end, whether for good or ill not even I have been given to know.

 

His breath is hot against Rafe’s neck, his whimpers satisfying a hunger Rafe has forgotten he had. This has been their desire all evening, this the goal to which the path has taken such a very long time to tread, pale skin against paler, calf against thigh, teeth on earlobe, fingers on chest, moaning, as the one fills the other and is filled in turn, the sweet pain of a hand pulling long hair in ecstasy, Hells, he’s missed this, and why on earth has Rafe spent so much time so angry when the force to quench the fire of his need has stood before him all night, and Rafe quickens, greedy, faster and faster still, and then freezes, a small sound barely escaping his mouth, the agony of his release prompting the other to join him, and when the fog of desire has dissipated, Rafe turns to behold his companion, a thumb tracing the outline of his face.

“Was that worth the trouble you took this evening?” he asks with a smile, his voice low.

“I’m not quite sure,” says Will. “Let’s try again, and then I’ll know for certain.”