by Lish McBride
The butler waved him into a study but didn’t enter. Tevin almost asked him to wait. Downing wasn’t one for power plays, so this meeting would be short, and he would call the butler back to make sure Tevin left immediately.
“Don’t sit.” Avrel Downing, baron of a small but—unfortunately for him—rich barony in the south, stood up from his desk and glared at Tevin. Well, technically, Avrel thought he was glaring at Tomas. Swindlers never used their real names, and the DuMonts were meticulous with their craft.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Tevin’s smile was a sharp blade. It wasn’t sporting to kick a man when he was down, but Tevin harbored a dislike for parents who bullied their children. In many ways, Avrel doted on his daughter. She could have anything she wanted, except the one thing that mattered—control over her future.
Avrel sighed as he descended into his chair. The baron likely knew, at least intellectually, that he was angry, but the emotion would be muted while Tevin’s gift worked its magic . . . whether Tevin wanted it to or not. He missed a really good argument. Tevin’s gift had been bestowed when he was seven. He couldn’t charm his family—his parents had made sure that their children wouldn’t be able to turn their gifts on them—and every once in a while, he met someone who was immune, but not often. If the charm didn’t get them, his looks did.
“You’re a monster,” Avrel said, dropping his head in his hands.
“I know.” Tevin shifted his weight, his feet and calves aching from the lifts he’d shoved into his boots, despite the thick carpet he stood on. Everything in Avrel’s office, from his leather chair to the gilded spines of the books lining the shelves, said plainly that this home was full of wealth, comfort, and power. Tevin’s stomach was an empty ache, reminding him he hadn’t eaten since last night.
“You played her for a fool, an absolute fool.” Avrel’s face took on the appearance of a mournful dog.
Tevin kept his mouth shut, though he wondered what bothered Avrel most—the loss of face or his daughter’s heartache? It wasn’t his place to correct the baron. He was here to get paid. “We could always go through with the engagement—”
Avrel recoiled as if he’d been struck. “My daughter’s line is fairy-blessed on both sides.”
Whereas Tevin’s blood was common as dirt, not a noble speck of magic anywhere in his lineage. This is what they banked on, the parents’ aversion to sullying their own bloodlines. Diluting them. Tevin relied on them choosing that over a supposed love match. No one had picked their daughter’s wishes over bloodlines, not in the four years he’d been running this particular con for his parents.
Avrel didn’t disappoint. With a groan, he handed Tevin a leather pouch. Tevin opened it, counting the coin inside.
“I hope you’re proud of yourself, you miscreant.” His voice held no heat, though.
Tevin pocketed the leather purse. Miscreant was new. He rather liked the stately sound of it. “I am, thank you.”
Avrel stared mournfully through the window. “You can let yourself out.”
Tevin didn’t say anything as he slipped out the office door.
He ran smack-dab into Lydia, who was waiting in the hall. Her big blue eyes were wide, anxious. Tevin opened his coat and showed her the purse. Those big blues lit up, and she danced in place. She threw her arms around Tevin and kissed him on the cheek. He held her for a second before letting her go.
She handed him an embroidered handkerchief, the ends tied up in a small bundle. He didn’t count that one out, putting it directly into his pocket with the purse from her father. She gave his shoulders a final squeeze, a grin lighting up her whole face. Tevin shooed her off, sending her back up the stairs to her room. Wouldn’t do for her doting papa to come out and find them.
He made his way down the hall and into the kitchen. The cook, a rather fierce-looking woman with apple cheeks, waved a begrudging hand at the bun sitting on the table. “Jennings wanted you to have it.”
Tevin picked up the bun and took a bite. He didn’t have to feign enthusiasm. It was perfect—raisins and a hint of cinnamon and some sort of honey glaze. “You, madam, have a gift. This is perfection.”
The cook wiped her hands on her apron, a flush tinting her cheeks. “It’s merely a bun.”
He shook his head. “Not to me.” He lifted it. “This, madam, is art.”
She firmed her lips, her eyes getting distant. She held up a finger telling Tevin to wait as she strode briskly to the pantry. Tevin savored his bun, licking each drop of honey off his fingers, and waited to see what else the cook would offer.
* * *
• • •
Tevin managed to charm a carriage ride from Downing’s stable, making it to his parents’ home in short order. His cousin, the esteemed Valencia Tern, second in line to the barony of Tern, sprawled across his porch swing, her boots up on the edge of the railing. Well, technically it was Val’s porch swing. The DuMonts had taken up residence two years ago after a swindle had gone sideways and they’d needed fresh territory. The house was on the edge of the respectable part of Grenveil, and though the distance from the Downings’ was small, the two homes were worlds apart. The DuMonts were good at making money, but they were good at losing it, too. And spending it. At least his parents were.
“A ride and a gift basket?” Val asked, tipping her telescope hat back from her eyes, her country accent giving her a pleasant drawl. “I take it everything went well?” Val took after her mother, fresh faced and girl-next-door pretty, with short copper hair, tipped ears, freckles, and the most adorable button nose this side of the divide. She could also shoot the dots off a domino and didn’t like anyone calling her “adorable.”
Val opened the door for Tevin, and they went inside, taking off their boots and placing them by the door.
“They home?” Tevin mouthed, scooping up the gift basket.
Val shook her head. “Your mother isn’t back yet, and your father drug your sister off to a horse market. No idea where your brother got off to, and with him it’s always better not to ask.”
Tevin glanced around his house. The DuMont fortune fluctuated like the tides. One week they were eating seven-course meals off fine china. The next week they had to fire the cook and sell the china. More money always came, but the in-between times could be long and uncomfortable. Tevin could do without the creature comforts, but if things got too dire, his parents got desperate. And if they were desperate, they got hasty, taking riskier jobs that weren’t always well planned. Last time that happened, they’d barely made it out of town with the clothes on their backs.
Tevin was nineteen, and for the last year or so he’d often spent days, sometimes weeks, on a job and barely been home. He needed to work, to bring in money, but part of him always worried that he’d come back one day to find one of his parents in jail or his siblings thrown into a reckless con. If he was home, he could step in, take the risk himself. Make sure Kate and Amaury had some safety, some stability. But he couldn’t always be there, and one of these days, his siblings would fail to talk their parents into being sensible and he wouldn’t be there to step in. It was a fear that clawed at his guts whenever he thought about it, which was frequently.
Amaury was six months from his eighteenth birthday, but Kate had three more years at home. Three long years in their parents’ tender care, her fate tied to their whims. So Tevin looked around to see the state of things—did they still have the china? the silver? candlesticks? Small things that could be sold quickly would go first. The candlesticks were gone, and so was the dining room rug. It had been there last week when he’d checked in. Things were bad, then.
He peeked into a small room off the hall, relieved to see the ornate silver mirror hanging on the wall. He supposed it was too useful to part with easily. Mirrors were mage magic, not fairy, but his parents didn’t care where magic came from as long as it did what they wanted.
Godlings,
though powerful, were limited in their magic and could only gift and curse living things. Mages were the balance, humans born with a trace of magic that, after years of schooling, could work together to enchant objects. They couldn’t gift or curse, but they could invent. Some of the fairyborn didn’t trust magecraft, and so avoided things like enchanted mirrors, mage lights, and trains. Others embraced these new creations because they made life easier. His parents saw the advantages of both.
“Were they selling or buying at the horse market?” Tevin asked.
“Selling, I think,” Val said.
Tevin’s father, Brouchard, would have taken Kate to get the best deal possible. His baby sister had been fairy gifted with savvy. Even at fifteen she could negotiate the lifeboat from under a sea captain in the middle of an ocean.
Tevin felt a wave of relief that his parents were out, enabling him to talk freely. “At least we can’t lose the house.” A little over two years ago, after one particular job had gone disastrously wrong, Tevin’s family were forced to flee in the night and find new lodgings—no easy business with a family of five and no money. His father had remembered a rancher cousin in the sticks who’d managed to marry into a fairy line, and decided that now would be a good time to reacquaint themselves. It had been one of the best days of Tevin’s life. For the first time in ages, they had a steady home. The three-bedroom house was opulent enough to please Tevin’s parents—though he and Val had to bunk in the attic when they were here—and quaint enough that Val’s family was letting them live there rent-free as they recovered from the “troubles” that had plagued his family. Tevin tried to remember what web of lies they’d told, what misfortunes they’d spun from nothing, but couldn’t. Not that there hadn’t been misfortunes, but Val’s family wouldn’t give them much charity if they told the truth.
Val’s family mostly kept to their rural barony, which meant that before the DuMonts, this house often sat vacant. Val’s family, being the good, decent sort, didn’t seem to know what the DuMonts were capable of and had been happy to loan the house to them long term. They even encouraged Val to stay with them, thinking that the impeccable manners of their refined relatives might rub off on their daughter—an idea so wrongheaded that it made Tevin laugh every time he thought about it. On her end, Val had decided to keep anything she learned about Tevin’s family to herself. After all, she didn’t want to be called back out to the country. Not when the city offered proper mischief.
The neighborhood they were in was nothing like the Downings’, and they didn’t have live-in help—only a woman who came to clean in the mornings. It was a far cry from where Tevin had just been, but it was also much better than where they’d been living before. Definitely had fewer people with fire and pitchforks coming after them, which worked in their favor.
“Come see my bounty,” Tevin said, holding his basket aloft and making a side trip into the study. He handed Val his basket, smiling as it made her tip forward—it was heavier than it looked. After taking his percentage out of the big purse, he deposited it into the family safe. He put his cut into the knotted handkerchief and saved Val by taking back the basket before leading her upstairs. There he would separate his take into two places. He put a few coppers into the skinny lockbox hidden in the false bottom of his trunk.
“You know they have these things called banks,” Val said dryly as he locked the trunk.
“Banks establish a paper trail and make it difficult to grab your money in the middle of the night when trouble arises.” With the DuMonts, trouble always seemed to arise.
“Okay, but is that necessary?” she asked as she watched Tevin carefully move his nightstand so as not to leave scratches on the floor. Then he pried up the loose board, pulling up a leather purse.
“My parents search my room. They won’t believe that I’m not keeping anything for myself, so I have the decoy for them to find.” He put the rest of his cut into the dusty leather purse before stashing it back into the floor. The one thing he could always count on was his parents’ greed.
Val dug into the basket as Tevin settled in. “I still don’t understand why you have to give so much of what you make to your family.”
“If I’m turning a profit, I’m left alone, mostly. They’re left alone.” He didn’t have to specify who “they” were. Val would know he meant Amaury and Kate. Tevin didn’t keep things from Val if he could help it. He also didn’t admit that he liked the look of pride on his father’s face when he counted out the coins Tevin brought home. They weren’t good people, he knew that. But they were still his parents, and he wanted to hoard a few crumbs of their esteem. It was wrongheaded, but there it was.
He stripped off his vest and shirt, making his way to the pitcher and bowl of water on his dresser. “Besides, the last time I tried to keep a purse, it was . . . bad.”
“You can’t leave it at ‘bad.’ ”
“I was locked out of our rooms for three days. We lived in a rough area at the time, and it was January.” It had taken Tevin a full day to warm up when he’d been let back inside, and a week to get over the fever he’d developed as a result. He’d barely eaten, even with his gift. It was hard to charm food away from people who didn’t have any, and their neighbors had precious little. He’d had to be so careful that what he took wasn’t stealing food away from younger, weaker children. By the time his parents let him back in, he almost didn’t care. He would have snatched a morsel of bread out of the hands of a babe. “I was ten.”
Val shook her head. “Okay, but—”
“They said if I did it again, I would have to stay out longer, and take my siblings with me.” Tevin kept his voice matter-of-fact while he washed, enjoying the coolness of the water. The room he shared with Val was in the attic, and it was at least ten degrees hotter than the rest of the house on most days.
“If they locked you all out now, you’d probably have a party.” Val pointed at the basket. “If you can manage this by yourself, without even trying hard, then imagine all three of you together.”
Tevin grabbed a cloth to dry his face. “That was the threat they made when I was ten. I have no idea what they would do now.” And that was the problem. Florencia and Brouchard were adaptable and cunning, masters at understanding people’s weaknesses. Whatever punishment they chose would slip a dagger unerringly into the spot that would hurt their children most.
So Tevin worked hard, handing over most of his coin, saving what he didn’t. A cushion in case something came up, because something always did. A healer for Kate, food for the larder, the bill for the mage light. He could ignore the thinning soles of his boots and his father’s tailor bills, but he couldn’t ignore the important things, because his parents did.
Tevin dried his face. Val watched in interest as he did his transformation act. Lenses popped out, changing brown eyes to green. False lashes were removed—research had told him that Downing’s daughter liked thick-lashed, brown-eyed men with auburn hair. She’d liked them tall and lanky, a description that fit his younger brother, Amaury, better, but you didn’t send Amaury out to charm anyone. He generally had the opposite effect. Even though Tevin had already grown into a decent-sized man, he’d added lifts to his boots. Lydia also favored aristocratically thin gentlemen, but he hadn’t been able to change his musculature on such short notice, which was good, because Tevin was fair sick of dieting. It was too close to starving, and he’d had his fill of that.
Val shook her head. “It doesn’t matter how often I watch that, it’s still disturbing. How long will your hair stay auburn?”
“Another good wash should do it.” Tevin put on a clean plaid shirt, making quick work of the mother-of-pearl buttons. His hair was usually a golden brown that caught the light, or so one mark had told him. It also took dye well, which worked in their favor. “At least I can eat again.”
“You need to find an heiress who likes chubby, lazy men.”
“Chubby
doesn’t mean lazy.”
“I know,” Val said. “I didn’t mean it like that. But this last one had you dancing, horseback riding, and all kinds of social flittering. Wouldn’t it be nice to just sit and read a good book once in a while?”
Tevin laughed, rubbing a hand over his mouth. Val could always make him laugh. “That sounds like a lovely dream, cousin.”
Val peered into the wicker hamper. “Wow. There’s cheese, marmalade, a loaf of bread, roast quail.” She dug around inside the basket. “Fresh fruit, honey cakes.” Val whipped out a single red rose and bit it between her teeth, waggling her eyebrows. “The cook really liked you.”
Tevin grabbed a pillow, collapsing back onto his bed, his legs hanging off the side. “They all do.” He closed his eyes. “I hope tonight’s money holds them until Mother’s ship comes in.” It may have been two years since the last big disaster, but that didn’t mean they were safe. Last time, they’d been lucky Val’s family had taken them in. Next time, they might not be so lucky. To Tevin, Val had also been a gift. She had a habit of saying whatever honest thing popped into her head. For a boy raised on half-truths and fabrications, she was a beacon in rough seas. Plus, Val was fun.
Val set the basket aside. “I don’t know about you, but I reckon a game of cards and a pretty lady on my knee would feel right welcome.”
Tevin grunted. “Val, you always feel that way.”
“So?”
“I’m tired. Lots of social flittering, as you put it. And now some pigheaded fool is trying to get me to leave my comfortable bed.”
She poked him. “Let’s hit the kitchen, make a dent in this basket, and pour a pitcher of coffee down your gullet.”