Liar's Moon

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

“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.”

  “Only that you’re too old to be Talth’s son,” I said.

  He nodded evenly. “I’m her stepson. She married Grensl Ceid when I was but a child. She is the only mother I ever knew,” he added. “Such as she was.”

  I made a guess. “You’re responsible for her business affairs now.”

  “I am. Both here and in Tratua. Those I managed to keep from his lordship’s grasp. But that’s little change from how things had been these past two years, if you’re thinking I had some motive to murder my mother.”

  “Stepmother.”

  He ignored that, which said something. What, precisely, I wasn’t sure. He wasn’t easily rattled, though. That part was Ceid, through and through. I was beginning to get a sense of these people; if they were going to kill someone, they’d do it thoughtfully and stolidly. As he handed me into the boat, I asked one last question.

  “What position did your mother take in the war?”

  “The same position she always took. Whatever was best for Talth Ceid.” He looked out over the water briefly, then turned back to me. “We’re not a subtle family, Mistress Celyn. We make our enmity plain, and we welcome your investigation, since it can only confirm what we know. We are aware of his lordship’s history, and we know who murdered our mother. Reasonably soon, you will too. Good day.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I wasn’t at all sure what to make of the family Ceid, and mulled over the bizarre way they related to each other as the boatman steered me across the Oss. Quibbling brothers and sisters were entertaining and familiar enough, but I hadn’t learned much that was particularly useful, aside from Koya’s vague references to her mother’s enemies, and her own confession about her marriage and her relationship with Durrel. Her brother had called her bored and unhappy; unhappy enough to strike back at the powerful mother who’d yoked her to a wholly unsuitable husband? It would be more practical to kill the inconvenient husband and escape the marriage altogether. Even if Koya had wanted Durrel for herself, killing her mother didn’t seem to accomplish much.

  Unsettled after that meeting, I convinced the boatman to let me off in Nob Circle so I could walk the rest of the way home. Charicaux, the Decath family home, was nearby, and I had promised to try to see Durrel’s father. I found the house easily from Meri’s wistful description of the place last winter. It sat a few streets off the river, in the shadow of the Celystra’s green dome, a pretty, older building of white stucco and flower boxes in the windows. A tidy tile courtyard separated it neatly from the street, giving the family within the opportunity to prove how wealthy they were, by way of ornamental fences and cultivated fruit trees. True to the Decath’s neutral reputation, Charicaux flew no colored banners from its towers.

  But there was one small detail Meri had omitted from her description of her uncle’s home: the guards. I stopped behind a flower stall across the street to get a better look. Two men patrolled the front courtyard, heavily armed and making no effort to hide the fact. This was a curious development; these guys looked like ordinary street heavies, not the kind of neat, trained guards commonly employed by nob households.

  They also weren’t the kind of people likely to welcome a caller off the street, and when I crossed over and rapped on the gate, a heavyset guard with a pockmarked face and a clunky gait sent me away without ceremony. Assertions that I knew Lord Decath were met with sneers and a curt, “He ain’t in.” I gave the guard my best dazzling servant smile and promised to come back.

  I pondered this curious development as I made my way back across town. With the war edging closer, life in Gerse was getting more tense every day, and I supposed it was conceivable that a man who’d just lost a daughter-in-law to murder might be nervous of his — and his wife’s — safety. But I had visited one of the Decath properties before, Favom Court, a day’s sail outside the city, and I’d had complete freedom of movement while there. I didn’t remember any guards, or even so much as an armed retainer. Lord Ragn and Lady Amalle had opened their arms and their doors to me without a question. Yet here was their city house, fortified with armed muscle.

  Well, people changed, I supposed. And a change like that was different and interesting — certainly worth investigating further.

  I made a last stop on the way home, at a rag shop on Bonelicker Way, a tiny, cluttered storefront hidden between an unlicensed tobacconist and a cheap bawdy house. With no sign out front, and a tattered rug for a door, it was easy to miss, which was exactly how Grillig, its proprietor, liked things. I pushed aside the rug, wary of fleas, and stepped into the lamplit shop. Another customer was already inside, a hard-looking fellow with a pistol in his belt, leaning over the counter and studying something with great intent. It was technically illegal for the common citizens of Gerse to walk about the streets wearing firearms — but the residents of this neighborhood didn’t generally subscribe to what was technically legal.

  “We’re closed,” announced a raspy voice from behind the counter, and a squat man about my height waddled out of the back room.

  “Well met, Grillig,” I said, and the storekeeper gave me a frantic look and waved a stubby hand to silence me.

  “I said, we’re closed.” Grillig shrugged when I gave the other customer a pointed look. “We’re closed to nonpaying customers.”

  “I can pay,” I said, and came farther into the shop, sidestepping the fellow with the gun. The shop was cluttered with all manner of goods — books, knives, tapestries, clothing — all of it secondhand, and most of it stolen. Grillig was the best fence this side of the Oss, or at least the cheapest. I’d been a good customer here, welcome, once. I’d often come by with Tegen to sell our spoils, and one night he’d bade me pick out a treasure to buy from among Grillig’s shelves and cases. He’d meant a gem, maybe, or a blue silk petticoat like the night girls wore — something pretty and feminine. But I’d chosen a book, bound in red calfskin, full of drawings of fanciful beasts. He’d teased me for that, long after, but would lie in my arms, turning the gilded pages and tracing his slender fingers along the colored images, as I read the words aloud to him. I wondered where that book was now. Had it burned with the rest of Tegen’s belongings when he was arrested?

  The man with the gun lost interest in the item he was examining, and left the shop without a word. Grillig glared at me. “Never mind,” he said. “What do you want?”

  Information, was what I wanted to say — but asking for it outright would
spook him. So I poked through the heaps of rags and dishware until I unearthed something worth buying.

  “That’s three marks,” he said when I plopped the shirt on the counter, and “Three silver marks,” when I laid the copper coins beside it. It was an outrageous price, but it might be worth it, if he could tell me anything useful.

  “Fine.” I dug the coins from my bodice. “How’s business?”

  “As if you’d care,” he said sourly. “We don’t hear from you for months. You’re doing trade with that nip on Tower Street now, aren’t you? Gotten too fancy for us Seventh Circle folk.”

  “The Tower Street fence?” I said. “That stings. You know if I had business, I’d bring it to you.”

  His furtive eyes darted past me as he gathered up the coins. “I wish you wouldn’t,” he said. “We don’t need your trouble here. I’m running an honest business now, and —”

  I looked in the direction his previous customer had gone. “I see that,” I said.

  Grillig leaned toward me. “My son’s in the war.”

  “Not Orrin,” I said. “What — happened?” I’d been about to say, What side? But that was a stupid question. Nobody admitted to having sons fighting with Prince Wierolf.

  The shopkeeper made a face. “Conscripted. To pay my bond after I got arrested last spring, thanks to people like you mucking about where they’ve no call!”

  That did sting. It wasn’t like I’d personally, single-handedly started the war. “I’m sorry to hear it,” I said truthfully. Grillig was slippery, but nobody deserved to have his children sent to battle to pay for his sins.

  Grillig cast a hand in a dismissive gesture. “You didn’t come here to buy a shirt.”

  “No,” I said. “I was wondering what you’d heard about the murder of a nobleman’s wife recently.”

  “That Ceid thing? Bad business. You want to know about the poison.” That was the Grillig I remembered. “It didn’t come from around here,” he said. “There might be a handful of potioners in Gerse who deal in stuff like that. Freitag up in Sixth, or maybe Ver — nay, he’s gone to the gallows. Anyway, with the restrictions and the embargoes, nobody wants to take that kind of risk these days.”

  “So you wouldn’t happen to have any.”

  Grillig made the sign against Marau. “Like I said, we don’t need that kind of trouble. My son —”

  I nodded. Strange days, if the gods had figured out a way for a man like Grillig to go honest. “Thanks all the same,” I said. “If you hear anything about that poison . . . ?” I slid another silver mark into the pile of coins for the shirt. Grillig scowled, but swept them all into his broad hand, nodding. I gathered up the secondhand shirt and headed for the door.

  The next morning I surveyed myself before Rat’s mirror. In a blue linen kirtle and a lighter blue wool overgown with matching sleeves, my hair tucked up inside a linen cap that mostly shielded my cut cheek, I could do a fair turn as the servant of a decent family with an unfortunate member in the Keep. The only problem would be if one of the guards on duty recognized me from my first visit. Which seemed unlikely, dressed as a girl and with much less blood on my face this time. There was just one more thing I needed: a visitor’s pass. And I didn’t have time to wait for approval from the king.

  I crossed the city on foot, trotting up Bargewater Street toward the First Circle, the district mostly taken up by Hanivard Palace and the Celystra. The Keep stood just on the edge of First, where the Big Silver river circled the royal palace. When I got to the harborside landing, a few other people milled around, waiting to cross over to see their loved ones detained at His Majesty’s convenience. I studied my companions in the crowd, a handful of people dressed like servants, here for masters or family? A wildly overdressed young nob couple, the girl sobbing hysterically into her lad’s velvet shoulder. A fat gentleman dressed in the gray robes of a lawyer and doing a poor job balancing a document case, a mug of beer, and a meat pie. He’d have a pass for sure. I was just aiming myself for a carefully timed collision with the fellow so I could knock his papers from his hands, when I heard a cough from behind me.

  I turned slowly — and found myself a scarce inch from a Greenman.

  I lost all my breath. I couldn’t help it. He was facing away from me, but the grass-bright livery of his uniform loomed before me, tunic and hood and nightstick. And the gleaming golden tree, silhouetted against the full moon of Celys. I edged aside carefully, trying to look anonymous, invisible, nonexistent. I was nobody, just a servant in a crowd, waiting to visit somebody in the gaol.

  The Greenman turned and saw me. “Sweetling! Fancy meeting you here. Come to visit our boy?” Raffin Taradyce, Acolyte Guardsman, took two easy steps toward me, everyone else melting out of his way from habit, and lifted me bodily from the street.

  “Put me down, you oaf!” I struggled in his grip, then surveyed his uniform. “That suits you, I guess.” His fair coloring and easy height made him look like one of the Goddess’s own.

  “I think there’s an insult in there somewhere,” he said cheerfully.

  “Not at all,” I said. “I have nothing but respect for the Guard.” And Tiboran praised liars. “Drag any old ladies from their beds lately?”

  He gave a shrug and looked over my head. “It’s a living.”

  Raffin hadn’t answered my question, but every once in a while I knew when to leave well enough alone. “What about Durrel, then? What have you heard?”

  He looked grim. “Not much more than you, I’ll wager. He’s in a bad way, though. The Ceid don’t care he’s noble; they’ll shove this thing through the courts like a merchant’s son with a two-mark hus —” He caught my eye and gave a cough. “Right. And thanks to his father being so damned neutral, the Decath can’t rely on support from Court or Council. He’s on his own in there.” That was more or less what Durrel had told me. His family was famous for not taking sides during any political conflict. In peacetime, it made everyone their friends. But now?

  “Durrel said his father won’t see him, thinks he’s guilty.”

  That drew a pause. “You’d have to ask them about that. Did you meet the family?”

  It took me a moment to catch up. “You mean the Ceid? Just the two children, Barris and Koya.”

  “Entertaining, aren’t they?”

  “That’s one way of putting it.” I looked up at him, shielding my eyes with my hand. “What’s the story with Durrel and Koya?”

  A slow grin spread over his face. “Our boy caught himself a bodice full of trouble this time, I’ll tell you that.”

  “If there’s a point, you’d better get to it. They’re about to open the gates.” Across the landing, a bell was clanging, heralding the lowering of the drawbridge. And the lawyer was long gone now. I’d missed my best chance for nicking a pass. A pox on Greenmen.

  “Listen, peach, I’m going to be late for muster,” Raffin was saying. “Wouldn’t want them to take away my baton, now, would I?” He bent low, as if to kiss me on the cheek, and whispered, “We’re not to touch you, you know. Lord High’s orders.”

  “What?” I pulled back to stare at him. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. But word came down that you are not to be disturbed by the Acolyte Guard, at least until His Worship decides what he wants to do about you. Looks like you have a free pass in this city, greensleeves.”

  A hands-off order from the Lord High Inquisitor? What was my brother up to? “Not from everyone,” I said. “I was arrested the other night.”

  “Were you? And yet here you stand. Might as well enjoy it. You know how His Grace is, sun one day, shadow the next. But if anything changes, I’ll warn you.”

  I was suspicious. “Why? What do you want in return?”

  He edged a little closer than was comfortable. “Just take care of our boy. Something’s off about this whole affair. Do the job you’ve been engaged for.”

  “Wait — what? What do you know?” I asked, my voice cold. “Did you have anything to do with this, wit
h getting me pinched?”

  “My, my, such self-absorption!” he cried. “As it happens, I’ve been far too busy dragging old women from their beds.”

  “You’re hilarious.”

  “And you’re not listening.” Raffin pulled me closer, and his grip on my arm was exactly what I remembered of Greenmen. “Something is going on here, and Durrel is trapped in the middle of it. You are in a unique position among all his acquaintances to look into it.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You’re a Greenman; that has to be more useful than some petty street thief. Why don’t you look into it?”

  “I am trying,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically serious. “But I’m just two months on this job, and my father paid twenty thousand crowns for my commission. There is no way I can go poking around asking questions, particularly of other guards.”

  The pieces were starting to click together, with Raffin Taradyce holding the purse strings to this whole situation. “Whoever paid to have me arrested also put up my bond. Fifty marks.”

  That wolfish grin again. “Extraordinary! Be flattered, peach. I don’t normally shell out nearly that much money on a woman. You can pay me back later.” He finished the kiss he’d started and, still bent close to my cheek, whispered, “Help him. You know he’s innocent.”

  And he passed me something before he ducked away, whistling and swinging his nightstick, and clearing crowds as he went.

  It was a rolled-up parchment, thickly inked, with a royal seal stamped in its center, right above the words Admit the named bearer, CELYN CONTRARE, into the presence of His Majesty’s gaolers at Bryn Tsairn Prison. Good for three months from the date of issuance, and Signed by the Left Hand of His Exalted Majesty, Bardolph the Pious.

  A visitor’s pass. Made out to me. I glanced up to see Raffin across the landing, still watching me, a blot of green against the brown sunlit docks. He gave me a brisk salute before turning away into the morning.

  CHAPTER SIX