Liar's Moon

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  “Cel-yn Con-tra-trar —” the partner read, with painstaking slowness. Raffin’s face betrayed the briefest flash of annoyance, and he plucked the documents from his partner’s hands.

  “Celyn Contrare,” he repeated, eyeing me superciliously over the edge of the papers. “It says here that you are a member of the household of one Eptin Cwalo, Merchant of the Spiral, Third Circle, Gerse. Is that true?” He looked surprised — what had he expected? No house affiliation at all? Maybe forged papers? Mine weren’t, but Cwalo would have vouched for me, all the same.

  I shrugged. “That’s what it says. They’re your licenses.”

  “Should we approach this Cwalo, check your story out?”

  “What do you want?” I snapped. On the street around us, people stopped briefly to stare, before ducking their heads and moving on.

  “We want what all good citizens of Llyvraneth want,” the other guard said, and his voice had gone silky and terrifying. “Peace and order in the streets. Obedience to the Goddess. A return to a state of blessed —”

  Raffin cut his partner off. “Suffice it to say, the Goddess cares for all her children.” There was a weird note in his voice, and I studied his face, trying to figure this out.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, peach, why don’t you let me explain it to you?” Raffin pocketed my papers, then handed his nightstick to his partner. “Watch this alley,” he said, pointing to a dark, twining opening between two squat storefronts. “I’m going to have a private word with the dutiful Mistress Contrare here.”

  And then, as I stood there, confused, Raffin unbuckled his belt and passed it to the other Greenman. I felt all the air just disappear from my lungs.

  “Need any support there, brother?” His partner was eyeing me with undisguised lust, and suddenly I wasn’t confused anymore.

  “Not this time. I’ll take care of this.” Raffin grabbed me by the arm and half threw me down the alley. I stumbled, cracked my knee on the cobbles, and scrambled to my feet, braced against a rough stone wall. He caught me and cornered me in a doorway, pressing his tall body over mine.

  “Stop!” I cried, and to my utter surprise, he eased back a little. The look on his face was fixed and intense — but it wasn’t violent. It wasn’t cruel. “What are you doing?” My voice was shaky. I was shaking.

  “I’m going to ask you the same question,” he said coldly. “Shouldn’t you be in gaol?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been to the Keep docks every morning this week, but Durrel’s pretty little spy is nowhere to be seen. What’s going on, Digger?” There was something nasty in the way he said my name.

  “Ask him,” I said, and my voice was surprisingly steady. “My interest in the matter waned.”

  Raffin pinched me suddenly, and I cried out. “Sorry,” he said under his breath. “Must keep up the pretense.”

  I glared at him, rubbing my sore arm. “Just ask me next time. I can scream as loud as you want. What do you want?”

  “I want to know where you’ve been. Why have you stopped investigating Durrel’s case?”

  “Because he did it, Raffin.” I sighed. “Or he helped his stepdaughter do it. He’s not what we thought.”

  “You can’t believe that.”

  “His own father believes it.” I recalled the odd note in Lord Ragn’s voice at the party, the clouded expression I now, belatedly, recognized as doubt.

  “Never. Decath would move the moons for Durrel.”

  I shook my head. “No, he told me. There was an incident — something in Tratua a couple of years ago?” I wasn’t aware that was a question until I heard the uncertainty in my voice.

  Raffin was nodding. “I remember. He didn’t do that either.” When I just stared at him, he fidgeted a bit and finally said, “You’ll have to ask Durrel.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  He shrugged. “All right. There was some girl in Tratua.”

  “What girl?”

  His eyes darted up the alley toward the street, and he lowered his voice. “Her name was Evalia Mondeci, or that’s what she called herself, anyway. She was a courtesan. Pretty, young. Too smart for her own good. Durrel fell hard.”

  I told myself I did not care what Raffin was telling me, but there I was, speaking anyway. “Were you there with him?”

  “He wrote me. Long, moony paeans about her crimson lips, her night-dark hair, her — well. The letters stopped a few weeks before he came home. The next thing I heard, she was found dead in an alley near his rooms. Strangled.”

  I could feel my face contract in a grimace. I tried to relax. This had nothing to do with me.

  “The way I heard it, Tratuan authorities were minutes away from arresting him, but Lord Decath paid a fair sum to keep his boy from the gallows.”

  I pulled away from him. “Thanks for the information.” I turned to leave.

  His long green arm blocked my path. “Well?”

  “Well, what? You realize that story makes him sound more guilty, don’t you?”

  “Don’t be an idiot. You know he wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

  “Tell that to Barris. I’m sure he’d find this all fascinating.”

  “Barris? The Ceid know about Evalia? Well, they’re obviously using that incident from Durrel’s past to frame him.”

  I shook my head, looking around at the cobbled alleyway, anywhere but Raffin’s too-intense gaze. “I’d like to believe that —”

  “Then believe it,” Raffin said, grabbing my arm again, but with urgency this time, not with malice. “Talk to him. Talk to Koya. Find out what really happened. Because you know as well as I do, Durrel Decath couldn’t hurt anyone.”

  “He lied to me,” I said. “You talk to Koya. Maybe she’ll explain how she and Durrel happened to buy the poison together. Temple Street. I talked to the potioner. You are more than welcome to continue this ‘investigation’ where I left off.” I twisted out of his grasp and straightened my rumpled dress. “Because I am heartily sick of the whole pack of you.”

  Raffin just looked baffled, wounded. “Look, I’m not saying he’s not an idiot,” he said. His voice sounded desperate. “But he’s not a murderer. You have to help him. He needs you.”

  “He needs me?” That drew a laugh. “All the world’s power and money and resources at your disposal, and a thief from the back streets of the Seventh Circle is the best you can come up with? You boys really are in trouble.” The low sun had shifted, leaving the alley in weary shadows. I was tired and just wanted to go home, and this stupid Greenman was in my way.

  Raffin leaned over me again, and his face had gone red. “Look,” he said, his voice harsh. “I told you, something else is going on here —”

  “I’ve heard that line before. I don’t care anymore.”

  “You would care, if you knew what was really happening.”

  “And if you have something to tell me, then tell me,” I said. “Enough of these games and —” I threw up my hands. “I’ve had enough, Raffin.”

  “Please,” he said. The word surprised me, but I wouldn’t look at him. I was afraid I’d see those sad hound eyes pleading with me. “Can’t you at least think about it?”

  “Oh, I’m sure I’ll think about it plenty. Let me go. I’m serious. Your partner will be wondering what’s taking you so long, and unless you really do mean to go through with this pretense, I’d appreciate it if you’d give me back my papers.”

  Raffin looked disappointed, but he pulled them from his green doublet. “I shouldn’t,” he said. “I ought to hang on to these, as a little incentive for you to help Durrel —”

  I snatched them back from him. “Help him yourself. You believe him,” I said. “Good day, Guardsman Taradyce.”

  I was tucking my papers back inside my bodice when I passed Raffin’s partner, still waiting in the neck of the alleyway. He gave me a leering grin as I stepped out of the shadows. I felt a shudder of disgust; Raffin’s ruse had worked in part because it was s
o common as to be almost beneath notice, but the Greenman apparently read it as something else — and he took the opportunity to slap me, hard, right on my backside. It took everything I had to grip my fingers together and not smack his hand so hard his grandchildren’s fingers would sting. I bit my tongue and forced a tight smile.

  “The Goddess’s blessings on you, Guardsman,” I said in a thin voice through my teeth, and edged out onto the street, where I could get away from the whole blasted lot of them.

  Nobs. Greenmen. Pox.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Despite Raffin’s loyalty, I still wasn’t convinced Durrel wasn’t involved — even a little bit, even perhaps unwittingly. I knew him well enough to guess what his attraction to Koya would have been; even if they were both telling the truth and it never went anywhere beyond sad, longing glances across the Bal Marse court, the fact was, Durrel just couldn’t resist a girl in need. And whatever this story about the courtesan in Tratua meant, well, it certainly didn’t help my impression of him. Even if I couldn’t bring myself to picture Durrel strangling a girl in cold blood, I knew blood didn’t always run chill when Marau was nearby. Mine had been boiling during that snowstorm in the mountains. Maybe I’d been wrong all along; maybe anyone could kill.

  That same evening, as I sat in the stifling top-floor heat of the bakery apartment, soaking wine labels in a mixture of onion skins and rusty water, Aunt Grea huffed her way up the stairs to tell me that “Some tart in a pleasure barge is calling for you.”

  Frowning, I peered out the window. Sure enough, a familiar boat was moored alongside the Bargewater Street landing, and I could just make out a hem of watery blue skirt over a leg propped casually on a cushioned seat, bejeweled chopine hanging half off a dainty, stockinged foot.

  Koya. Just what I needed. With a scowl, I followed Grea downstairs and stepped outside to see what the Ceid wanted now.

  “Celyn!” Koya waved lazily from the boat, her slim, graceful body draped like a shawl over the plush seats. The Koyuz boatman, in curious livery that looked green one way and violet another, sat silent and unruffled, his back to his mistress. “You’re not wearing that, are you?”

  I looked down at my linen kirtle, creased and rumpled from bending over the table, working on Rat’s Grisel labels. “What’s wrong with it?” Even as I said that, I knew it was somehow the wrong question.

  Koya just lifted one fair, arched eyebrow at me, and pointed back to the bakery. “Change,” she commanded. “That dress you had on at Hobin’s will be fine.”

  “What do you want?”

  She jerked upright. “Just to talk. Come with me.”

  “We can talk here.”

  That gay, careless laugh. “Oh, Celyn. Don’t be like that. It’s a beautiful night, the wine is cold, and I have something I want to show you.”

  I had no interest in following Koya’s whims, but it was hot in the bakery, and at least out on the water there was a semblance of a breeze. And wherever she was going, dressed like a courtesan, there were probably going to be other rich folk there — meaning jewelry and purses and (usually) good food. “Damn, damn, damn,” I muttered as I turned on my heel and went back to change my clothes.

  Back at the landing, Koya had shifted aside to make room for me, her silk skirts spread around her. She handed me a molded-paper mask on a long handle, glass beads cascading from its beribboned edges.

  “What is that for?” I asked.

  “Get in the boat, silly thing, and I’ll tell you.” She had a bottle of wine open beside her, and I thought the picture would be complete if only the boatman stripped off his doublet and shirt and fanned her with the vast confection of frosty white plumes and gilded ribs that lay in her lap. I lifted my skirts in nothing like a ladylike fashion, hopped down into the boat, and grabbed the bottle. I took a long swig before even noticing what it was — some ghastly sweet thing flavored of apples. Shuddering, I handed it back to her.

  Koya laughed. “It’s from Breijardarl,” she said. “Stantin imports it. Apparently it’s quite popular in Brionry, though I can’t imagine why. Oh, dear Celyn, tell me you didn’t have other plans on this gorgeous evening.” She leaned even farther back in her seat, dropping her head and exposing her thin, pale throat to the air. With a giggle, she straightened. “I am going to introduce you to the best Gerse’s nightlife has to offer.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “I knew you’d be skeptical. Onward, Henver — to Cartouche!” She announced that last to the boatman like a queen giving a royal order. He soundlessly steered us into open waters, and Koya trailed one hand over the side of the boat. “Barris said you’ve been to Mother’s warehouse,” she said. “Have you found any clues?”

  Had I discovered that she and Durrel had conspired to murder her mother, did she mean? The subject had lost its fascination for me, but I obliged her. “I talked to Geirt,” I said.

  Barely a flutter of those wispy eyelashes. “Gossipy little thing, but she did know how to dress Mother, which was a feat. What did she tell you?” She sounded eager, hungry — and not because she was desperate to know who killed her mother. More like she wanted to hear the latest scandal, and she didn’t even care how it might involve her or her family.

  “She insists she saw Durrel leaving your mother’s bedroom before the body was found.” I heard a dark note creeping into my voice.

  “Before the body was found?” Koya sat up in the seat, balancing the wine between her knees. “Didn’t anyone tell you who discovered her? It was Durrel.” There was the faintest tremor in her voice, and for a moment I almost saw a crack in her mask of frivolity. “Can you imagine how horrible that must have been for him? For him?”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, and I really didn’t care. “I know what happened in Tratua,” I said curtly, and something very much like anger flashed across Koya’s face.

  “This must be killing him, Celyn. How anyone could believe Durrel could murder someone —”

  “And I found the potioner’s shop.”

  Her mouth closed, lips pursed together briefly. “And?” she said, her voice a whisper.

  “I know you and Durrel bought the Tincture of the Moon.”

  For a moment there was surprise on her face, and she wasn’t quite quick enough to cover it. “Well, it wasn’t to kill anyone with,” she said. “I just —” She gave a wan smile, looking somewhere past me, out into the fading evening. “Don’t you ever just get tired, Celyn? Tired of the masks, of the acting? Of nothing being real? Don’t you sometimes think, ‘I could go to bed tonight, and if nobody wakes me up tomorrow, it won’t matter’?”

  “What are you saying? That Durrel bought you the poison so you could kill yourself?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, and her voice was short. “He would never have agreed to anything like that. I didn’t tell him what it was for, and that is the truth, Celyn. He just bought it because I told him I needed it. And I know you understand that.”

  Well, she was right on that account. Give Durrel a need to fill, and he would kill himself to fill it. But she still hadn’t told me why she’d bought the poison. “All right,” I said. “Maybe Durrel didn’t do it. Maybe you killed your mother on your own.”

  She didn’t react, just nodded thoughtfully. “But I was at my grandfather’s house. And what reason would I have?” She sounded as if this were a plausible theory she was hearing for the first time, and not an accusation of murder. “It wasn’t for the money; I didn’t inherit anything from Mother, and Stantin keeps me very well. And then what was my plan going to be? Take out Stantin also, but what a shame Durrel was arrested before I could manage it?”

  Well, said like that, it did sound a little far-fetched.

  “I don’t know how the poison ended up in my mother’s glass,” Koya continued. “But I can tell you it wasn’t Durrel Decath’s doing. Or mine,” she added, sounding strangely sad when she said it. “Do I wish Durrel and I had met three years ago, before either of us was married?
I won’t deny it. Did I conspire with him to kill my mother? Of course not.”

  She looked out over the water, silent for a long moment. Watching her, I thought she knew more than she was saying. “Maybe it had to do with her business, then?” I suggested, thinking of those falsified manifests we’d uncovered. “Was your mother involved in smuggling anything illicit?”

  “Goodness, I don’t know!” she said, her voice almost merry again. “You would have to ask Barris. I had exactly one role in this family — to marry well — and once I had done that, Mother hardly thought of me.”

  “Maybe that was your motive,” I said, but Koya only laughed.

  “Celyn, my dear, if you had met my mother, you would know that having her forget your existence could only be a good thing.” She reached for the wine again. “It’s good we have that unpleasantness out of the way,” she said brightly. “Because we’re here!”

  The boat had drawn to a stop near a square building, stuccoed pink, with a crowded courtyard outside. Bright banners emblazoned with images of Tiboran and Zet flew above the arched entrance, baldly proclaiming this a pleasure palace for the rich and noble. This must be the infamous Cartouche. People were even now milling about outside, looking alternately bored or curious, as servants in pink livery passed among them with bottles and trays of food.

  Koya was obviously well known here; the crowd swelled forward as overdressed young men jostled to be the ones to hand us out of the boat. “Don’t forget your mask,” she whispered to me, before disappearing into the press of bodies, her hand on the arm of a young man in a bead-encrusted doublet. Wait — she wasn’t going to leave me here? Shaking off the attentions of a slim gentleman who’d taken my arm, I pushed my way inside, through the tangle of limbs and fine fabrics and the hot smell of wine, smoke, and sweat, and the perfumes heavily applied to mask all of that, but Koya had been effectively swallowed up.