Yeardnott Estate was by no means the most palatial, nor expensive, nor even tasteful of Ruvenal Park's mansions; respectable opinion held that those honours belonged by and large to Colliford Walk, its near neighbour. Many others surpassed it in some or all of these respects. For all its comparative modesty though, it stood out by virtue of its unique position. It was perched like a fluffed yellow duckling on a small island between split branches of the south-flowing Catgang River, surrounded by serene gardens and trimmed with a screen of willow trees. Access to the island other than by boat (which was strictly forbidden, her Ladyship nursing a lifelong antipathy towards water craft after the tragic drowning death of her twin sister in childhood) was limited to Soldock's Bridge. This marvel, designed in the previous century by the Royal Architect himself, spanned the eastern branch of the river, an elegant arch of tall timber pylons and interwoven chain cables that seemed to resemble a hunched hunting spider frozen in the act of striking. During the day teams of intrepid workers had installed a network of ropes crossing back and forth between the spars that jutted from either side, and overhead suspended a collection of brass lanterns with tinted glass panes. Now that evening was beginning to fall, these sparkled with a rainbow of different hues that was reflected by the rippling stream at either side, created an incandescent entry corridor.
\As the social doyens of Fellport approached, invariably by coach or covered buggy (the weather being all too predictably dreary), they were met with more marvels. A series of polished brass cages, each with an installation of more lanterns, lined the blue gravel path that led from the bridge to the manor. Within each cage, expertly highlighted by the lanterns, there rested some exotic tropical beast, from a crested, long-plumed and incessantly vocal bird, to a great golden butterfly with green-speckled wings that flapped with gentle tranquility, to a small bearded monkey that bounced about with amusing energy and nibbled away at slices of fruit. Lady Yeardnott, concerned that her attraction might congest the flow of traffic, had thoughtfully provided a cadre of footmen to escort the more intrigued guests; each was armed with a large parasol and a handful of brief, amusing, safely non-educational facts about the resident of each cage.
Having negotiated the entrance, her Ladyships' guests were met by her impressive waiter Sheltingdon, a now-elderly man whose imposing figure might under other circumstances of birth have suited him to a life of timber felling or cargo loading. Though expertly schooled in the names, faces and lineage of all Fellport's established persons of note, he nevertheless scrutinised each proffered invitation with microscopic attention, before announcing in a deep baritone that it was his pleasure to introduce Captain and Lady Such and Such.
Here Lady Yeardnott herself would take over, intercepting each guest as their coats and hats were whisked out of sight. She was a small woman, birdlike in her movements, with a pinched nose that itself resembled a beak. She also had a habit of twittering nervously in conversations, especially those that had strayed into controversial or difficult territory, clucking lightly with tongue and teeth to ward the exchange back onto acceptable subjects. “Oh my, Sir Deaghron - tich tich – I don't suppose there is anything of consequence to be known – tich – about Cenautic trade policies, is there? Tich! Although they do make that tea that I find so soothing, don't they? Now what was it called?” and so on. For those few for whom conversation above the level of utter triviality was a preference, she was a maddening dampener to be escaped in the most expedient fashion possible. Fortunately, as the evening's hostess, she could not possibly allow any group to monopolise her attention, for which all concerned were greatly relieved.
***
Bey tried to avoid wrinkling his nose in discomfort as Sheltingdon examined their invitations. This was nothing more than the first hurdle of the evening, yet he already felt like he'd run a mile.
Clerrance had punctually collected him from the Cardinal, to the evident delight of his staff who had gathered on the other side of the frosted glass windows, presumably hoping to catch a glimpse of his date. If so, they were to be disappointed, though from the 'Nutmeg' emblem and purple and tan livery dressing the fully-enclosed carriage, the driver and two footmen and team of four chestnut mares alike, there was no doubting its occupant's identity. She had not emerged, instead throwing open the carriage door and beckoning him with a scarlet-gloved hand inside. Bey had climbed aboard, ignoring with pointed irritation the impertinent outburst from within the saloon. Ever since it had become known that he was attending the ball, he had a constant source of great merriment to them.
In the spirit of the occasion, which by mutual agreement they had summarised as 'notorious', Clerrance wore a gown of clinging red silk, ribbed with tight cords of gold and chocolate. The neckline and back both plunged far deeper than was probably respectable, and the hem showed more ankle than not. She topped it with a glorious hat reminiscent of a brigantine under full sail and a shawl of dark feathers. Bey admired the whole effect in stoic silence for as long as he could manage it before his lungs gave way again. Despite almost thirty hours of straight sleep, he felt little better.
“Still sick? Poor thing. Try this,” she had said, waving a small flask of something deeply pungent at him; he could smell it even through his impervious stores of mucus. “Dab a spot under each nostril and another inside each cheek.”
He had obeyed. Almost immediately his sinuses had blocked off completely and he could no longer breath at all. He was suddenly overcome with a powerful, primal panic, clawing for the window latch to get his head out into the night air, but at once she was upon him, one hand forcing his arm down at the shoulder and the opposite knee pressing into his chest. Pinned, he gasped and tried to pry her off, his eyes bulging in helpless horror, but either she was stronger than he expected or he was weaker than he remembered. Bey cast about in hopeless search of some weapon to stop this maniac woman from killing him as some internal clock counted down his last seconds.
“Really, Sir Beyda, you're a grown man,” she purred, the sadistic wretch. “Have you forgotten how to breathe?”
He glared with wild eyes, incredulous at her perverse dispassion, mentally composing curses to fling at her with his dying gasp, before it occurred to him that in fact the clenching sensation in his nose and throat had already vanished. He drew in a deep clear breath and exhaled in muddled relief.
She allowed him a few minutes of stunned silence in which to recover. “Remarkable,” he allowed when he judged his irrational terror to have completely subsided. “Your own concoction?”
“It's a traditional Keerish medicine called salopha. Not well known in this part of the world. I had a terrible time finding an apothecary even capable of its preparation.” She slid into the seat next to him, moving her hand from his shoulder to the back of his head and drawing him towards her. She examined him in minute detail. “Satisfactory,” she pronounced, “though we will have to do something about that rouge. It's running quite disgustingly. How do you feel?” There seemed to be something more than polite enquiry in the question.
“Like I've come up from underwater,” said Bey, marveling at how much better he felt. “I can see better in the dark – I can see you clearly now; before you were just an extremely beautiful blur. It doesn't hurt when I blink any more. I can breathe without coughing. I can hear outside the carriage. One of your horses needs a new shoe, I can hear it!”
Clerrance said, “I will have Ferman attend to it presently, but dear Bey, we were discussing your condition. Tell me, how is it that you of all people could become addicted to yellowpetal powder?”
She might as well have asked him what the sun tasted like. “To what powder? I thought you called this sal-something.”
“Salopha, Bey. It is an oil extracted from the roots of a particular flowering shrub and it is not used to treat colds. It's a restorative that purges toxins from the lungs, the windpipe and the sinuses. It is particularly effective at restoring the sensibilities after indulging in recreational quantities of yellowpetal. Are you a sexual deviant?”
“Am I a - what!? What are you talking about? Really, Cheva, I appreciate the miracle cure but that's the most improper -”
She cut him short in mid-bluster with a dismissive shrug. “Among the decadent classes of my people yellowpetal is used to reduce the inhibitions. It's considered adventurous to indulge in 'petals, preferably in the company of artists or other free thinkers, people with imaginations, you understand. Some such sessions can be quite creatively... inspired. If you are such an adventurer, it would at least explain why you would use 'petals.”
Bey thought suddenly of the twins, Nella and Jessa, and wondered whether perhaps he had not participated in the greatest sensations that life to offer after all. The thought that there might be realms of experience beyond their limits made him shudder. “I've never heard of the stuff. How can you say that I'm addicted to it?”
Her eyes were full of diamond-sharp suspicion, her voice hard at the edges. “Your symptoms are unmistakably indicative of an advanced condition. You must have been on it for weeks now.” His dumbfounded expression did not waver. “You might recall that I made an... unusual suggestion at our last meeting? I wanted to confirm my suspicion. Your immediate reaction, though you tried admirably to cover it up, you dear man, was not one of disgust and outrage, was it? I saw that you were trying to form a mental picture of just what it was that I was suggesting. Perhaps it is just as well for me that in your condition your wits had quite deteriorated, otherwise you might have taken me up on my offer then and there.”
For all that he was thinking clearly again, this was a lot to take in, but it was quite evident to Bey that an apology of some sort must be in order. “Mistress Clerrance, if I gave the slightest hint of impropriety I-”
“Oh hush, you weren't capable of thinking with your brain, I knew it at once. I wish I could have brought this to you sooner but as I said it took all day to have it made. Besides, I think you'll find it quite difficult to make a proposal so lewd that I would find it improper.” She sprang with a cheerful twirl of her skirts off his seat and returned to her own, fixing him with an inquisitive stare. “Now, assuming for the moment the truth of your assertion that you are not a hopeless petal fiend by choice, the question is: who gave you such a deadly poison and why?”
“I don't – er, poison?”
“Oh yes, acute yellowpetal addiction usually ends fatally, not to mention sordidly. Another few days at the rate you were going and I've not a doubt in the world you'd have been found stone dead somewhere.”
***
“Do you know where you are?”
In the darkness, in air cloyed with ripe odours, surrounded by the thunder of cascading water, her prisoner had uttered a terrified whimper in response. He struggled against the improvised bonds, slipping with the effort on tunnel floors slick with mossy excrement. His head twitched this way and that, the tail of his blindfold wagging as he tried to make sense of the confusion of echoes near and distant. He rose, staggered two steps and slipped again, the eroded brickwork imprinting a fresh red contusion on his cheek.
It had taken some effort to drag Fowart into the city sewer tunnels unseen. For an old city, there were comparatively few entrances, most of them well sealed. In her first days of exploration of Fellport, Lynnis had investigated their use as a means of traveling about the city, but they had proved maddeningly disorganised and unnavigable. Still, she had established a couple of bolt holes in case of emergencies, storing food and water supplies as well as a few other essentials. It was to one of these hidden strongholds that she had bundled the happily underweight head waiter.
“You're underground. Perhaps a mile, perhaps more. Nothing can see in darkness such as this. These tunnels are a maze. Without my help you will never find your way back to the surface. No one will hear your cries for help. You could stagger around for days, drinking foetid water and eating human waste. But sooner or later you would contract some foul disease or fall down a shaft in your blindness and drown or starve, broken and alone.”
Most of this was not strictly true; while underground, they were no more than a storey at most beneath street level, and a shaft to the surface a few dozen paces upstream provided a glimmer of vision to eyes adjusted to the conditions. It was even possible that a hearty scream might be audible above, although whether such a cry would be answered with assistance was very much a subject for skepticism. And while she didn't rate Fowart's survival skills so highly, she privately allowed that even he might escape to safety if left unsupervised. That would not happen until he broke, however.
“Do you understand that if you don't tell me what I want to know, I will leave you to your fate and you will certainly die, be it in an hour or a week?”
She was taking a gamble on Fowart, trusting that she had not underestimated his reserves of valour. She had disguised her voice, affecting a convincing male impersonation, but there was a chance that he might perceive the deception if his panic subsided for a moment. From there it would probably be a short deductive leap for him to arrive at the identity of his captor, and she had gone to some trouble not to have to kill him.
Writhing on the floor of the tunnel, Fowart cringed. He coughed, spitting something repulsive and gibbering in fright. “What do you want?” he wailed volubly, biting his own lips in mindless fear. “Please, I promise I'll tell you anything!”
He was as good as his word. Within minutes she had her theory of Gardenio's complicity confirmed and a tearful confession to the pilfering extracted for good measure. Warning him that if the same was not repeated to Beyda Chur within the day he would sorely regret it, she had set him on his knees, recovered her stockings from around his wrists and ordered him to count to one hundred before removing the blindfold. As she made her getaway, it occurred to her that the stuffy, precise Fowart might actually obey the order.
***
“We don't have a lot of time,” observed Chroke Ilchard, hovering in the doorway and looking either way down the adjacent hallway. He mimed an elaborate listening gesture, cupping hands behind ears and waggling his eyebrows up and down. It seemed an unnecessary warning. It was doubtful that anyone could have heard their conversation over the noisy couplings intruding from both adjacent rooms. “I might've been followed,” he explained in a stage whisper. “They could be listening.”
“Will you stop being such a turnip? Come and sit down.” Sellton counted Ilchard as one of his more dependable disciples, but one significant character flaw was a surfeit of imagination. The man was prey to some damned odd ideas, and once they took hold they didn't let go willingly. Presumably that was just one of the reasons that he'd chosen this musty, roach-infested brothel as their meeting place. It wasn't a place either of them would ever expect to be found. “I need to know what's going on.”
“That's what I'm trying to tell you, Boss,” insisted Ilchard. “This Meldaran guy, he's really organised. He's got his whole operation divided into these small crews, and most o' the time nobody knows what anyone else is doing. And some of the time, he gives us a job to spy on one o' the other crews and make sure they don't turn blue, yeah?” Ilchard grinned. “I guess you and him think alike maybe?”
“Yeah, we're notorious criminal masterminds, all right.” Sellton conceded that Meldaran's style of command seemed to be effective. He'd have to remember to experiment with internal espionage himself. “So where's the rest of this crew they've got you with?”
“They're downstairs in the tavern. I told them I wanted to hose a dolly before-.” Ilchard trailed off, ravaging his fingernails with uneven, inattentive teeth.
Sellton didn't miss the sudden loss of nerve. “Something's happening tonight?”
“Meldaran's going to make his move tonight, Boss.”
“On Trigosi?” So soon?
“No, Boss, see, that's the thing. He's put it around that he's gunning for Trigosi, yeah? Like he wants to get back at him for insulting him or something? But that's not it at all.” The incredulity in Ilchard's voice appeared from nowhere, as if he suddenly couldn't believe what he was about to say. “He's going for the whole town.”
“He – what?”
“Boss, this guy, he just doesn't know when he's bitten off too much. He just keeps taking bites and he keeps chewing. He's trying for the whole town. Starting tonight. Some swank party in Ruvenal.”
“He's going to hold up a nob ball with an army of street gangsters? Who is this guy?”
Ilchard grinned. “It's mad, isn't it so? You should see him when he talks about it. He carries on like a Saint, puffing himself up and strutting about like a minstrel, telling all these stories about the peasant uprisings in his country. About how the simple folk armed themselves with their pitchforks and their harvest sickles and overthrew their evil queen and if they could do it, why can't we and so on. He's got them all convinced, Sellton.”
Sellton scoffed “You should broaden your horizons, Ilch. Do a bit of reading once in a while. Corphena's one of the most viciously suppressed societies in living history. Queen Paracastra's secret police kills anyone that so much as holds up a woodaxe, let alone revolts. She's been overthrown like I've been knighted.” He offered a look of sympathy. “You've been fooled, my son. Which is more than I'll say against myself. You're all fixed to turn me over, aren't you?”
Ilchard screwed his face up in preparation for a denial, but then he seemed to think better of it and just shrugged. “Like a pig on a spit, as you say. Hate to break my word of oath, but I couldn't say no to terms like those. When did you figure the setup?”
“Meldaran's the showman. You should ask him for some acting tips.”
Ilchard put two fingers in his mouth and blew a shrieking whistle. Sellton whipped a knife from his sleeve and pushed it towards Ilchard, who avoided it by dropping back against the door frame. He dropped to the floor, curling one leg under and kicking Sellton's knee with the other. He stumbled aside, giving Ilchard a chance to regain his feet and draw a knife himself.
“Let me make it quick, Sellton. I'd do that for you.” He danced forward with a succession of crossing slashes, experimenting with the range between them. “Favour to an old friend.”
“Maybe you're the Saint, huh?”
Sellton circled away, moving the table between them. The backs of his legs brushed against the low wooden cot. Ilchard grinned and dropped both hands to the edge of the table, hoping to push it forward into his midriff and knock him off balance. Sellton leaped, his feet popping back onto the bed as the rest of him fell forward. He landed heavily on the table with his knife arm outstretched. The thick blade caught Ilchard's exposed fingers and hacked two of them off at the base. Both knives flew away, clattering into dark corners.
Ilchard started to curse, scrabbling to staunch the fizzing spurts from his mangled hand. “Fuck! Ah, fuck!” Sellton grabbed him by collar and wrist and twisted him away from the table. He worked one foot in front on Ilchard's ankles, using momentum and leverage to sweep him to his knees. The two of them collided against the outer wall, Ilchard sandwiched by Sellton's full weight.
“Wait! Wait! We can make a deal!” Ilchard tried to twist out of his grip with urgent fear, but Sellton's grip was sure. “We can both get out of here!” They could both hear the footsteps on the stairs, seconds away.
Sellton glanced over his prisoner's shoulder at the shuttered window. “Ilch, I wish I had the time to find out how much you got to whore yourself to the Corphy,” he muttered, applying disabling pressure and tearing the muscles in Ilchard's shoulder. “But you're right about one thing. We're both leaving. On your feet!”
He dragged him up and back, keeping Ilchard's weight uneven to prevent his feet from finding purchase. With a rocking action he drove the two of them at the window, releasing his charge at the last second. Ilchard crashed through the wooden shutters like a caber and disappeared out of the framed wreckage without a word. There was a damp sound three storeys later.
Sellton missed it as he clambered into the window. From this slippery vantage point, the stable of the tavern next door, fifteen feet lower and probably six across, looked like it had not been tiled since the last century. It might well not hold his weight. On the other hand, it was a surer prospect that the three men coming through the door with swords in their hands.
He leaped.
***
Jedlow was coming to understand some of the less well-advertised aspects of policing.
The first and least surprising was that as an officer of the Ducal Guard, a lot of people automatically disliked him. The second and most obvious was that, bedecked in a uniform carefully designed to convey a sense of authority and respectability, those sorts of people could see him coming and make their confrontational or evasive preparations accordingly.
One such appeared to be the right noble Udo, Lord Protector of Herronvale, Verkoldt and Stathis-Nott.
Now it was true that Jedlow had not strictly obeyed the laws of protocol by which he understood that people of Herronvale's station ascribed to. He had failed, for instance, to send his card ahead to announce his arrival (for two very good reasons; one, that he was completely unfamiliar with the weighty volumes of intricate regulations defining polite society; for the other, it would completely have undermined his intention to surprise his Lordship). Upon his arrival, he compounded his grievous breach of etiquette by neglecting to wait with patience and humility while his Lordship's butler established whether he cared to be disturbed; rather with dogged determination he followed the annoyed butler through the hall of the Chattering Casket to the well-appointed wing reserved for the sole use of Herronvale himself.
He had found his Lordship in a mildly compromising position, half dressed in silk pantaloons as an agglomeration of tailors encircled him, measuring and fussing and taking special care not to stick pins anywhere that the short-fused noble might take offense. Under the circumstances, his Lordship's reaction, “Who in the red-eared fuck do you thing you are?!” might have been understandable.
Jedlow didn't extend the benefit of the doubt for long, though. He had duly explained his presence to the dumbfounded, livid Herronvale, enquiring as to the nature of his dealings with one Casimir Meldaran, who was wanted for questioning etcetera. He had put the question with unerring politeness, not to mention without stammering or looking scared even once, but had been told in disappointingly common terms that he could shove his questions up his arse. Herronvale had intimated that his immediate priorities involved preparations for a certain social event and that he had no time for these (unspecified) slurs on his character. The interview had ended a moment later, with Jedlow seeing himself out before a bouncer could be summoned to rearrange his vertebrae again.
On the surface it hadn't gone that well.
But that had brought about Jedlow's third insight into the nature of the Sentry. Being Mr Lonely, he reasoned, was largely a state of mind rather than a state of dress, and that most of the obstacles thrown up by his profession's numerous detractors could be removed with the simple expedient of taking off the hat, coat and boots. And a fourth, this one inferred from his observations of Ductio more than reasoned as such, that a copper could pretty much do what he pleased in the service of the Duke and could reasonably expect to get away with it. He had a feeling that last one might not be a universal law, but Herronvale's lack of cooperation had put him in a dispensatory mood.
By the time he returned from securing his civilian identity, Sir Udo Herronvale had departed for his evening's appointment. Jedlow was unconcerned. It was, he reasoned, unlikely that in the intervening period he would have reconsidered his obfuscatory tactic of blustering rage. In other words, Jedlow would have to help himself to any evidence that happened to be lying around. So he found an unguarded window, slipped the latch with his knife and broke into the Chattering Casket.
There had to be something to find here.
***
She found him drinking alone, as expected; as step by step his moods had grown more turbid, so had his few friends found more amiable companionship, leaving Gardenio to stew in his own inexpressible resentment. This time he had claimed as his own the small butchery between the kitchens and the animal pens, a stone chamber stained and stinking with the terrified passing of generations of table-bound beasts. Even if others did not now find his presence noisome in the extreme, he could still not have found a much less appealing place to get well and truly arsed. Gardenio, eschewing those he would soon to bring to ruin, could not have cared any less. His purpose was complete unconsciousness; conversation could only have delayed him in his mission.
Lynnis had meant to assassinate him without comment. She knew of others in her order who often succumbed to the temptation to taunt their victim with empty promises of freedom, or torment them with a parting message from the instigator of their demise. She never felt the urge. Her philosophy contended: if death is to come, let it be sudden and unannounced. She afforded her own victims the same courtesy wherever possible, privately appealing to the fates that ruled her superstitious peasant upbringing that when her own time came, she would be done for in like form. Another darker, more fundamental superstition told her that she would not be so lucky.
As though to emphasize her helplessness in the face of destiny, a damaged latch on the butchery door requiring violent fidgeting to release, announcing her to the not-yet-stupefied Gardenio. He grunted with a sudden swell of malevolence by way of pronouncing his intention to do ill to this trespasser. He kicked his feet off the scarred and bloodied block, disrupting one of the two candles providing his only light; it pitched wick-first onto the gravel floor and snuffed itself. Gardenio looked up into two eye sockets cast into bruise-black shadow by the sole surviving candle.
“You.” Though the word was slurred thick, the easy movement of his hand onto the protruding haft of an axe wedged in the block told her that the drink had spread to his reactions. He levered it free with a downward action, springing forward from his stool simultaneously to place the heavy wooden block between them.
Lynnis knew of this place, though she had never found a reason to inspect it before. The room was decorated with sparse functionality, she saw as she stepped forward, swinging the heavy oak door closed behind her. A door opposite opened on a short cobbled lane way secreted between two of the Cardinal's three wings, which led in turn to both the stables and two small animal pens. Three chains were hooked to the walls, each terminating in a steel neck halter. A fireplace was evidently situated beside the door for the disposal of unwanted offal and bones, judging by the wide-mouthed scoop, broom and steel rake arranged above a stack of cordwood and kindling. This was the most convenient place to keep the kitchen's heavy grinding wheel, it seemed, for there was one to her left. A shelf along the wall to her right contained large copper bowls, an assortment of scrubbing brushes and a collection of long curved knives and a fat-bladed bone saw. Gardenio had moved to keep himself between her and the arsenal.
“You're here to kill me?” He sounded offended. She felt a certain unwitting sympathy; here was a man whose only certainty, in a world that hummed and scratched and weighed him down with confusion and manipulation and oppression, was that he was at least better placed than some. The world would always be tilted away from Gardenio's like. There would always be others nobler or richer or smarter or – for that matter – better chefs, but he could rely on being able to castigate a subordinate or thrash an apprentice or beat a woman. That knowledge was his sour, selfish anchor, his mark, his rung on the ladder of life. Her presence now must seem like the rung had been slicked with goose fat; it outraged his sense of propriety.
“I'm here to kill you,” she replied simply. His eyes widened, with surprise at first, then opening further still with livid exception. He was outraged. His world, in which such offenses could not be, was coming apart. And she felt an odd sense of empathy – almost of apology – that this simple, ugly, mean man would never understand the forces that shaped events, that made the world turn, that brought a creature like her here, now, with no other purpose than to destroy him. Though little more than a malicious, truculent, small-minded bully with a persecution complex and an alcohol addiction, she thought that even someone who hated the world this much deserved to leave it with a little dignity.
He waggled the axe at eye level, pointing it like an accusatory finger. “I knew there was something about you,” he said, reaching with his free hand towards the tools on the shelf. She watched with cool detachment, her own knife held in a flat slashing grip at throat height. No sense in provoking him into a false move while they were too far apart to take advantage of a mistake; she disdained knife throwing on the grounds that it was a chancy prospect, especially in confined quarters such as these, and its only certain outcome was that the attackers was now disarmed. She could afford to wait, even if he made use of the lull to better equip himself.
Gardenio snatched a boning knife from the shelf with a manic grimace of triumph, as though he'd already struck her down. “Meldaran told me about you. He knows you have secrets.”
Lynnis permitted herself a look of shock almost as an automatic reaction: enemy makes a bluff, let them see you're rattled, let them think the advantage is theirs, let them compound their mistake from that point on. But in truth Lynnis was almost as startled as she seemed. What did Casimir know? What did he even suspect? And what would he have found it to his advantage to tell this blunt-instrument pawn he was using to repay Beyda Chur's inconvenient fortunes?
That was the trouble with Cas. He could only ever be relied upon to surprise you.
Gardenio edged forward, a weapon held in each slightly unsteady hand. She circled left, matching his slow advance, the central block always bisecting the line between them. He barked “You're mine! He promised you to me. As a reward.” His face was contorted with an exaggerated leer, as though he knew now that he could not hope to frighten her but had no alternate means of intimidation.
Lynnis kept her words slow and even. “If you know anything about me, then you know I was never his to offer. Much less yours to take.” As she stepped towards the fireplace, she considered collecting the heavy rake used to break cooked bones into powder, as a tool with better reach.
Gardenio said, “You'd not have had a choice!” At the last word he darted around and towards her a step. Then at once he changed his weight and dashed in the opposite direction, drawing the axe up over his head in an arc and swinging it down and across in a deep slash.
He had sold the feint too early and Lynnis was already drifting away from the path of the axe. For the briefest of moments she planned to intercept the swing with a blocking forearm or a slashing blade across the tendons, before she saw his intentions. The axe was heavy, unwieldy and unfamiliar; he'd already decided he could sacrifice it on this exploratory venture. Sure enough, as it swept past the point where she'd stood and continued on its downward journey, he abruptly let it go and switched the knife into his leading hand. The axe crunched into the gravel and bounced off, coming to rest against the fireplace grate.
Lynnis fell back against the wall, a feint of her own, and Gardenio was taken in for a half-step before the alarms sounded. He pulled out of his stabbing last and steadied himself against the block, pushing himself away from her.
Just what she'd intended. With her free hand she unhooked one of the animal restraints and gathered it into a jumbled loop. She was contemplating the confidence in his unlikely assertion. Things were suddenly beginning to make more sense. “You'd have seduced me with your earthy Murb charms, I've no doubt? He must have told you I like my men with bellies as fat as their moustaches.”
“Bitch!” he growled. “I'd have filled you so full of 'petals you'd have begged for my shaft 'til your insides split open!”
Charming. She was rapidly revising her earlier sympathies. “I'm flattered. But if Casimir let you think you could have me or anything else, he tricked you, Gardenio. As far as he's concerned, I'm his, and he's not one to share.”
Yellowpetals. That explained Beyda Chur's increasingly erratic judgment, not to mention his deteriorating health. She'd seen it used any number of ways in Corphena during the early years of her training; she should have recognised the symptoms, but its use was all but unknown in Murburan, and it simply hadn't occurred to her. Some spy! And while she was into self-recrimination, how had Casimir managed to get his hands on some. Had she been so preoccupied with making sure that the tools of her own covert occupation were secure from his scrutiny that she'd simply overlooked his own smuggling efforts? And if he had been able to keep this from her, what might he have learned that he simply never let on?
He shook his head with disdain. “You're the least bit of what I've been promised, you doxy. I'm to be well rewarded in his Lordship's service. Of course, I would've done it all for nothing, but he needn't know, don't you think?”
Gardenio started to dance forward again, probing ahead with quick, meaningful jabs of the knife. Lynnis backed away by a half-measure, letting him get close enough once or twice to have to turn his blade away with her own knife. She waited patiently for him to break his own rhythm.
“Oh, I know, Gardenio, I know. You're a bitter little man with a fat chip of spite on his shoulder. You hate me like you hate every woman who ever turned you down or turned away rather than meet your eye. You hate every laugh that was ever had at your expense and every other laugh you've ever heard besides. You hate people who are happy and you hate people who are content. You hate the Cardinals because they love each other and you took Nana away from them because you know they all love her. I bet she never slept with you, did she? She would have slept with the Lephali Emperor himself but she took one look into your heart and saw no good there. She shunned you for it, did she not? Maybe she even showed pity. You must have hated that all the worse. Well I see your heart just as clearly as she did, Gardenio, and there's nothing there but tar and ash and a chewed-up, helpless, rotten little core with nothing left to keep it in the world.”
He came at her. He stopped dancing, dug in his heels and charged. She turned the blade away again, this time leaving her own driven through his arm at the elbow. As he screamed and rushed past, she wrapped the chain around his throat twice and yanked it hard, throwing him to the uneven gravel floor. She fell atop him, working his free arm through the metal hoop of the harness and twisting it away to hold it immobile. The injured arm she assessed as unusable and ignored it. She tightened the chain, letting him get a taste of strangulation for a half-minute. When she let him breath again, the chain remained taut to keep him from moving his head.
Then she said “I'm going to make it all go away, Gardenio. All the fear, all the hate.” He whimpered. It might have been a note of resignation, even relief, but she would not let herself believe it. “But first you're going to tell me who Casimir is working with. Who's 'his Lordship'? Tell me that one thing, and then you can die.”
***
“Sir Beyda Chur of Deremar and Mistress Cheva Clerrance,” announced Sheltingdon with stentorian importance as he took a symbolic step back to permit them access to the main ballroom. His voice recruited support from the acoustics and insinuated itself upon every conversation in every corner. Bey felt rather than heard the hum of the room's conversation cease all at once. For a startled second, he fantasised that even the string sextet in the gallery had stopped playing and now stared agape at the intruders. Did they permit imagine that Clerrance's crimson apparel had been soaked in the blood of children?
Then with a moment to collect himself, he realised that only a few glances had sidled their way and one or two sentences suspended but briefly; the effect had been an imaginary one. His nerves may have been free of artificial stimulants, but the natural ones were like a circulatory river of fear, compensating with admirable resolve.
Clerrance brought him to his senses with a firm hand squeeze. “Shall we begin, or do you wish to be thought a statue?” Without waiting for his answer, she steered him into the throng, where Lady Yeardnott lurked in wait for each guest's arrival.
The ballroom was probably modest by local standards, though Bey's guess was founded on a very flimsy bed of experience. It spanned no more than forty paces in either direction, though its height was more impressive, with two tiers of balconies overlooking it. These were accessed by means of either a spiral stair immediately to his left as he entered, or a much broader stair describing a lazy arc from the wall opposite around to the right. This curled protectively about a raised stage at the far end of the room, the stairway terminating before it overran the apron and the space directly beneath enclosed to form a rudimentary wing. A regiment of servants were arranging a dazzling banquet buffet according to some arcane rules of etiquette, presided over by a centrally-positioned and surprisingly frank sculpture of one or another of the better-endowed Saints. A variety of chandeliers, some adorned with collections of lanterns, others merely decorative, were suspended overhead in an X pattern, their sooty illuminatory efforts enhanced by a broad encircling cornice made of beaten metal polished to a highly reflective surface. This gave an effect suggestive of light frozen in the moment of bouncing off choppy water. He assumed that was the intention, though depending on one's progression towards inebriation, he could see it inspiring genuine seasickness as well.
Bey and Clerrance having arrived with unseemly tardiness due to the latter's drug intervention, the cream of Fellport's better persons had already well and truly gathered into their designated cliques. Bey scanned the room for familiar faces, depending mainly on those Cardinal patrons with whom he had struck some form of rapport. Clerrance was no doubt doing the same, though her better-established customer base might not be so willing to acknowledge themselves as such to the peerage.
Bey spotted some promising prospects, but before he could catch their eye, there was the inevitable to contend with.
“Oh Sir Beyda Chur, you have come after all – tich tich – and in such surprising and of course delightful company.” Lady Yeardnott seemed to drift away from her conversation with a very relieved-looking countess like a hunting bird angling itself across a breeze. She swooped in and perched before the couple, cutting off all hope of escape. “Mistress Clerrance, how good of you, how very brave of you to come. You favour us all, I am very sure.”
Clerrance seized the initiative before her Ladyship's welcoming compliments could stray into unwelcoming territory. “Lady Yeardnott, your arrangements are the equal of the great courts of Keer. Beshemloa herself would look upon them with admiration, if not envy.” She made every effort to sound sincere, more to warm up for the evening's more challenging confrontations than to avoid giving offense to her Ladyship, who for her part just beamed with uncomprehending gratitude.
“Indeed,” Bey joined in, “I may say without reservation that it is the finest I have ever attended, Lady Yeardnott.”
Lady Yearnott chirped with innocent self-importance, “It is the premier event of the season – tich tich – such a great responsibility to see things off on the right note – tich tich – but of course you are teasing me too mercilessly, Sir Beyda, for this is your first Fellport ball, is it not so? So different I am sure from your outings in the provinces, yes? And a world away from the – tich – ah, exotic affairs where you are from, Mistress Clerrance – tich – I am quite sure about that?”
Clerrance smiled to show she had completely missed the faint hint of disdain. “Oh please call me Cheva, my Lady. I assure you everyone does. As for my homeland, the tastes run to occasions that cannot begin to approach the opulence of your setting -” At this accolade Lady Yeardnott gave a helpless titter of modest denials - “though perhaps they are sometimes a little more risque, if you know what I mean.”
Lady Yeardnott's scandalised expression fought a losing battle to conceal her secret delight. It was clear she could scarcely wait to rush off and report this snippet of foreign debasedness to a her closest confidantes i.e. everybody.
But at that precise moment, the sextet, who had up until now contented themselves with a succession of competent if uninspired Murb cultural standards, diverted down unfamiliar roads with the opening bars of “Never Surrender the Green”. The Cenautic military shanty was closely associated with the volamo, a widely-known if not particularly popular dance.
Clerrance sniffed in surprise, “Oh. Or perhaps I underestimated you?” Bey caught the implication that the song - which he knew well enough from his time in that land and to which, thanks to Nella and Jessa's tutelage, he was even qualified to dance – was in boorish poor taste, but Lady Yeardnott looked excited and pleased.
“Oh – tich – is it time already? I have tarried! Shella, Kerim, if you please” She turned away from them, signaling various strategically placed cohorts, who escorted each other to a clearing at the centre of the ballroom and began a rigid, courtly version of the usually torrid volamo.
Bey leaned in close to Clerrance to avoid being overheard. “What do you suppose this signifies?”
She considered for a moment. “It appears that Lady Yeardnott is making an attempt at controversy, albeit a clumsy one. These spring balls are tediously similar, you see, year in and year out, and in time it becomes impossible to make a lasting impression on the few whose opinions matter. Lady Yeardnott is resorting to extreme measures.”
Bey said stiffly, “You say that, Cheva, as if I have never attended a ball in my life.”
She raised a hand and nodded for him to take it. “Did I imply a falsehood, Sir Beyda? It must be my regrettable accent. Come, we can discuss my lingual techniques on the floor. I feel inclined to support her Ladyship's bid for notoriety.”