StarCrossed

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  I was awake late that night, my bruises throbbing and my mind bumping uselessly against the mystery of Bal Marse’s magical stains. I’d ask Durrel if he knew what it meant, but I’d hoped to collect some useful information for him before I went back to the Keep. Maybe I could learn more from someone else who was intimate with the inside of Talth Ceid’s home. Rat had told me the Ceid were untouchable — but he’d also said I might convince Durrel’s stepdaughter to speak to me. Besides, I was more than a little curious about this infamous woman who’d gotten Durrel Decath in so much trouble.

  The next morning, Grea called to me as I sneaked through the bakery kitchens. It was late; I’d slept through the breakfast rush, and she was tidying up. “Don’t hie away so fast,” she said. “You’ve had another letter.”

  I turned back. “Anonymous?”

  She looked affronted at the suggestion that she would read my mail, but she shook her head. “Not this one.” I felt a flash of hope; maybe Meri had figured out a way to get another message through from the front. But Grea tugged a square of folded green parchment from her apron.

  “Ah,” I said. I plucked the note from her hands and dropped it, unopened, into one of the great bakery ovens as I went past, not even staying to watch it curl satisfactorily into cinders.

  “Lass! Don’t you want to know what it says, then?”

  I halted at the common room door. “I know what it says,” I said. “The same thing as all the others.” Letters — four of them now — from Werne. My estranged brother, depending on the day you asked him, and the Goddess’s ordained High Inquisitor. I still didn’t know how he’d found me; I’d moved three times since coming back to the city, and that was tracking that could put me to shame. But as long as he limited his contact to mawkish letters begging me to return to the bosom of Mother Church, I could handle it.

  Although I hoped not to be questioned too closely as to the precise definition of “handling it.”

  Grea clucked disapprovingly as the letter went up in flames. I couldn’t blame her; five months wasn’t a terribly long time to get used to the idea of ignoring a letter from the Inquisitor, particularly when His Grace’s men were burning your neighbors out of their homes. “You don’t need my kind of trouble here,” I said. “I should move on.”

  Grea leaned low on her elbows. “Now where would we be if everyone in this city moved house whenever the Bloodletter said ‘boo’? Nay, I knew who you were when you took the room, and besides, you’re the only tenant I’ve had who can put up with that nephew of mine. You stay put.”

  I nodded gratefully and left her to her flour-strewn work boards. Outside, I headed uptown toward the Third Circle, a more respectable neighborhood than mine. The hired boats gathered here were nicer, their boatmen less inclined to nick your purse when your back was turned. I wasn’t exactly sure where I wanted to go, but I wagered one of these sailors could steer me in the right direction. I waved down a vessel.

  “Take me to see Koya Ceid,” I said in my best imperious lady-in-waiting voice. I almost looked the part today, in the nicer of my dresses, a gold brooch pinned to the bodice. I’d found it a couple months back, working the Spiral, and just hadn’t gotten around to selling it yet.

  The boatman looked confused. “Mistress Koyuz, you mean?”

  Did I? I realized I didn’t know anything about this Koya, except the scant rumors Rat had shared.

  “Not too many ask for her by name,” the boatman went on. “Most people just name the house over in Nob Circle.”

  That sounded promising, so I nodded and paid my fare. As the boat skimmed across the city, a buzz of mosquitoes in the humid air, I thought over what I knew of the Ceid. The family hailed from Tratua, their Gerse branch just an outflung arm, but they’d been fixtures in the city almost since its founding. Gerse was too much the royal capital for merchant-class families to seize control of the city government the way they had in Tratua and Yeris Volbann, but wealthy gentry like the Ceid had made inroads in shipping, trade, and banking, amassing local fortunes, allies, and power along the way. It was hard to imagine Durrel tied up with a family like that, but I reminded myself that he was a nob, every bit as used to wielding power as any clan of rich gentry.

  I’d heard that in Tratua, the Ceid had so many guards and retainers that they amounted to a standing army, and though they weren’t quite so powerful in Gerse, they were still people you didn’t cross if you could help it. More than one rival — business, political, or personal — had disappeared over the years. And the Ceid made sure the world knew who was responsible, so no one would mistake the disappearances for the work of the Inquisition.

  It occurred to me that perhaps I ought to have thought this errand through a little further.

  We pulled up before a modest riverside teriza, all pink marble and cultivated topiary, white banners flying from the pillars and balconies. Belatedly I recalled that this would be a house in mourning; Koya had lost her mother only a fortnight or so ago. Would she even be receiving callers yet? Before I could give the bellpull a tug to find out, the terrace doors flew open, and three huge sighthounds burst through, followed by a tall young woman in blue velvet, cut low about her neck and shoulders.

  “Pol! Fana! Kusht! Do not go near that water —” She saw me and broke off yelling. “I don’t know you,” she said, leaning forward to take me in. “Do I?”

  “No,” I said hastily, as the dogs snuffled hungrily around me. I pulled my arms in tight to my body. “I —” Pox. I hadn’t even come up with a cover. “I’m Celyn Contrare. I’ve come to — pay my condolences.”

  “Oh.” She looked oddly disappointed, but snapped her fingers, and the dogs fell back. “I suppose you can come inside.” She turned in a swirl of blue train and cascading golden hair, and led me into a room with high ceilings and spindly, gilded furniture. “I’m Koya, and my brother Barris is skulking about here somewhere. Did you know my mother well?”

  So this was the notorious Koya, for whom Durrel might have killed his wife. It now seemed altogether believable; there was something striking about her, the warm flush of her cheeks, the fair hair, the dogs — she looked like a statue of Zet, goddess of the hunt, come to life. She was watching me expectantly.

  “No,” I said without thinking, then added, “I’m a friend of her husband.” Who might have killed her, and whose name was surely not welcome in this house these days. Brilliant.

  “Lord Durrel? How marvelous!” Koya said, and I blinked at her. “Come in, come in. Such tales we hear these days. Apparently he’s quite despicable. Oh, do I shock you?” She gave a gay laugh. “I shock everyone.”

  “Yes, she delights in it,” said a dull voice. I turned my head to see a gentleman a few years older than Koya descend a curved staircase. “Have you forgotten that this is a house of mourning?”

  “With you haunting about like a figure from a funeral masque? Hardly. Celyn Contrare, my brother Barris Ceid.” He strode into the room to greet me. I saw that his neat, dark beard was just starting to fill in, and he wore white armbands on his pale gray doublet — the very picture of respectable mourning.

  “You’re acquainted with our stepfather?” His voice was cool, restrained.

  “I — yes.”

  “And yet you felt it appropriate to come to this house. Why?”

  I was spared the need to answer when Koya guessed it, somehow. “Oh! I remember who you are,” she said. “Celyn! Of course. Lord Durrel spoke of you many times. Are you looking into my stepfather’s case, then? Can you find out who did it?” There was a sudden urgency to her melodic voice. Who was this person? But her question was interesting: My stepfather’s case. Not my mother’s death.

  “Koya, don’t be an idiot. We know who did it. This ridiculous farce can only satisfy your own curiosity and boredom.”

  “Shut up, Barris.” The musical voice lost almost nothing of its tenor. “Durrel didn’t kill Mother. You only wish he had.”

  My eyes swung from sister to brother. There was t
ension here, but without more information, I couldn’t be certain of its source. Or its significance.

  “Do let’s sit and discuss this like civilized people.” Koya led me to a delicate, carved bench and settled beside me, but Barris lingered at the fringes of the room, like a suspicious dog that didn’t want to let me out of view. “Can I offer you some refreshment? Vrena, precious, bring us some wine,” she called to an out-of-sight servant.

  “No — really, I’m fine.” I hadn’t forgotten that one member of this family had already been felled by poison, and the suspects were still at large.

  Koya looked at me oddly for a moment. “I’m sure you have questions. And we have nothing to hide,” she added pointedly, looking at her brother.

  I glanced from sibling to sibling, realizing just how out of my depth I was. I had no experience investigating crimes; committing them, yes, but never reconstructing them, piece by piece, backward in time. The thing I really wanted to ask was who had had me arrested, but I kept that tidbit close. It might be more telling to see what they did if I didn’t mention it. Instead I seized on the first thing I thought of. “I thought there were four children.”

  “The twins live with the family in Tratua,” Koya said. “Leys and Reton. They’re thirteen, and Mother felt it time to expand their horizons.”

  “She wanted them out of the way of her and her new plaything, you mean.” Barris had moved from glowering to pacing, and he practically pounced on Vrena and the wine when they appeared.

  “You didn’t approve of the match with Lord Durrel?” I said.

  “As if Mother ever courted anyone’s approval. Here —” He gestured for me to follow, and, curious, I stood and trailed after him out of the room, Koya and the dogs behind us. Barris led us to an open breezeway, where a massive portrait of a woman and her young son stared out onto the water.

  “It’s a Fioretta,” Koya said at the same moment Barris said, “Does that look like a woman who cared what other people thought?”

  I studied the woman in the portrait, a thick, proud figure in a stiff clay-colored gown, with blond hair drawn severely back, and startling pale eyes glaring out from the canvas. The boy — Barris, probably — looked just as defiant. Koya had much of her mother’s stature, and the unnerving direct gaze, but she was more delicately built.

  “Why did she marry Lord Durrel?” I couldn’t imagine what that clay woman could have seen in a boy her children’s age.

  “To be Lady Decath, of course,” Koya said. “A noble title, not to mention a noble heir, was the one thing Mother didn’t have.”

  Since we were being so candid, I forged ahead with my next indelicate question. “And where were you both when she died?”

  “I was dining with my grandfather,” Koya said promptly. “It’s exactly an hour’s sail between Grandfather’s house and Bal Marse, and I assure you at least a dozen witnesses can place me there all evening.”

  I knew a thing or two about alibis. The more precise and elaborate one was, the less likely it was to be true. “At two o’clock in the morning?”

  Barris frowned. “What?” His voice was gruff.

  “Your mother was killed in the middle of the night. Her maid saw someone leaving her rooms at that hour.”

  “The dinner ran late,” Koya said simply. “We had . . . family matters to discuss.”

  “What about the curfew?”

  She gave a broad smile. “We’re Ceid. The curfew doesn’t apply to us.”

  Of course it didn’t. “And you, Master Ceid?”

  Barris set down his glass. “Unlike my sister, I don’t find your questions entertaining, and I have no intention of continuing this conversation.”

  Koya sighed daintily. “Unfortunately,” she said, “despite his efforts to suggest otherwise, my brother is entirely innocent. He was at home in Tratua when Mother died.”

  “Wait. You don’t live in Gerse? Do you keep a house in the city?” The Ceid owned properties from the Seventh Circle to Nob Circle. Maybe edgy Barris’s quarters would be worth checking out.

  Barris gave me a chilling look. “I did,” he said. “The Decath own it now.”

  I realized he meant Bal Marse. “Lord Durrel got your family home in the marriage settlement? Why?” What reason would a family as cozy and rich as Durrel’s have to lust after an ugly, hulking lump of stone like Bal Marse?

  “My mother’s house,” he said. “She owned it outright. And you would have to ask the Decath, since she’s no longer able to explain it.”

  “And you’re convinced that Dur — Lord Durrel is guilty?”

  “Well, who else? It was common knowledge Decath was only after her money. He was the last person seen with her before she died, and they’d been arguing.”

  Koya turned to me. “Anyone could see my mother and Durrel were a dismal match. Oh, the theory was sound, but once they were actually pinned together in the same house, well . . . it doesn’t always work out like the strategists plan.”

  “Do you mean to parade all this family’s shames before a stranger?” Barris said savagely. “Very well then, let’s talk about your own failed marriage.”

  “Hardly failed,” Koya said brightly. “Celyn, my husband is Stantin Koyuz. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.”

  Oh. That was an interesting development, and I should have known it. Wealthy merchant Stantin Koyuz, who had to be decades Koya’s senior, was infamous for breaking the hearts of younger sons of noble families. But marriage was mandated by Celys’s law, and it was difficult for a man to advance in Gersin society without a wife — at least in name. Looking up, I saw Koya regarding me, the same placid smile still on her face. I suddenly had the very uncomfortable feeling that she knew every thought inside my head. I didn’t like it. I dropped my gaze.

  “I can assure you, Celyn, that my marriage has nothing whatsoever to do with what happened to my mother.”

  “Of course,” I mumbled, changing the subject. “Who do you think is responsible for your mother’s death?”

  “My mother,” she said simply.

  “Then you think it was suicide?”

  Barris barked out a laugh, absolutely mirthless.

  “Certainly not,” Koya said smoothly. “I only meant, it must have been something she was involved in. My mother was a very skilled woman. And one thing she did particularly well was make people unhappy. Now, I wouldn’t call them enemies, exactly —”

  “Enemies?” That was a strange choice of words.

  “I’ll make a list.” Koya fluttered off to fetch paper and quill. She returned and spread the paper across her lap, writing with a swift, swooping hand. “This first name is my grandfather, Mother’s father. He was opposed to the marriage —”

  “Because he thought Decath was too young,” Barris broke in. “Koya, what are you doing?”

  “He was opposed to the marriage,” Koya continued as if her brother hadn’t spoken. “But I doubt he’d kill anybody. Although . . .” She paused thoughtfully, then wrote another name. “You should look into her business associates. Durrel was always trying to become involved in Mother’s interests somehow, but I’m afraid he didn’t really understand how things work in this family. Now, she was intimate with the Corsour family, although Emmis Corsour was no match for Mother, and she’d been seeing rather a lot of an Alech Karst recently —”

  “Koya, enough!” Barris crossed the room in long, determined strides and whipped the paper from her hands. Ink splattered her hands and gown, but she just regarded him with the same patient, composed expression. “My sister is a bored, unhappy girl, just looking for some amusement,” he said to me. And with that, he tore Koya’s list into pieces, which he dropped, one by one, into the pooling candle flame.

  “Why, brother, whatever’s the matter with you?”

  “I believe this meeting is over. Mistress Contrare,” he added with icy politeness, “please allow us to offer our personal barge to return you to your . . . home.”

  I hadn’t managed to ask what they kn
ew about the magic I had seen at Bal Marse, but it no longer seemed like such a simple question, and my ability to detect it was hardly the sort of thing I went about boasting of to total strangers. And certainly not to these two, who were about as strange as they come. Not even waiting for me, Barris stalked toward the open doors to the terrace landing. I lingered only long enough to see Koya watching him, a tiny furrow between her brows. She rose eventually, barely brushing down her skirts before leaning in to kiss me on the cheek.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said quietly. “Please don’t think too much of him. He’s highly strung. Like Mother was.” She studied my face for a moment, her wide, blue eyes dark and probing. “You’ll help Durrel,” she said, and there was a note of pleading insistence in her voice.

  “I’m trying.”

  “I’m scared for him, Celyn. I don’t believe he truly understands what a force this family is. Mother was but one of us. I don’t know how long they’ll be willing to wait for justice.”

  I was taken aback that her concern should be for Durrel, when it was her own mother who’d been killed, but I nodded. Finally she led me toward the terrace, pausing in the doorway.

  “There was nothing between us,” she said abruptly, her skirts whispering to a stop around her feet. “Except a foolish girl’s infatuation with an attractive man she couldn’t have, and the harmless warmth of a gentleman too kind to give her the boot in the face she deserved.” Koya gave me one last smile, this one tinged, I thought, with sadness, before turning back to the house and disappearing in a sweep of silk.

  Down at the landing, Barris paced the deck, where an elegantly painted skiff waited, clear blue water lapping its glossy sides. One of the sighthounds had followed him, and stood panting nervously in the humid air, its sides quivering.

  “I’m sorry for that scene,” Barris said. “Koya can be . . . difficult, and I’m afraid she’s always known just the right places to rub me raw.” He paused a moment, looking me over. “You are thinking something, and I would know what that was before I send you off.”