Liar's Moon

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  “Not a temple,” I said, sweeping my arm toward the massive, round public house with a flourish. “The Temple. The House of Tiboran. They’re bound by sacred oath not to ask questions, and guards are forbidden from coming in here to look for anyone.” Unfortunately that protection didn’t extend to Ceid henchmen sniffing around, but I didn’t say that out loud.

  Inside, I waved down a woman at the bar, a dark-skinned beauty in a raven black wig that cascaded curls, winking with jewels, to her waist. She gave a dazzling smile behind her mask when she saw me, but her eyes narrowed briefly when she took in Durrel’s green uniform.

  “Now, Digger,” she said in her lilting voice, “you know we can’t have Greenmen coming in here. It upsets the Masked One.”

  “Oh, I’m not really —” Durrel began, lowering the green hood.

  The woman’s grin widened. “But he loves a man in disguise,” she said. “I am Eske, High Priestess of Tiboran. Be you welcome to this place, stranger.” The note of amusement in her voice said she knew exactly who this man in green was, and, in keeping with the long-honored tradition of the Lying God’s hospitality, found it highly diverting and didn’t plan to do a thing about it.

  “He needs a room,” I said over the din. A place to hide, I didn’t need to add.

  Eske took Durrel by the arm. “It is our duty and our honor to provide one,” she said, her rich voice warm and genuine. Like all high priestesses of Tiboran who had served at the Temple, she was named for the mythical original Eske who had held the role, back in the Nameless One’s day. Our present priestess was a tall woman whose beauty owed more to artifice than nature, and her ecclesiastical costume made her look even more striking, from the gown’s open neckline showing off her night-dark skin, to the vast mask that covered almost her entire face — tonight’s version made of feathers, the peacock plumes that were Tiboran’s favorite, but also sporting a few spiky violet shafts I didn’t recognize.

  Since this Eske had taken the mantle of high priestess, the followers of Tiboran had sported Sar’s colors more and more openly. Long-standing truce, and hefty bribes billed as taxes, kept the Inquisition from interfering with Temple business. Tiboran’s devotees controlled Llyvraneth’s wine and spirits trade, which even Celys’s people relied on for their rituals and their everyday lives. Vintners outside the city, not to mention coopers, glassblowers, and all the other people who made a portion of their living from Tiboran’s bounty, wouldn’t stand for interference in their trade either. The Celystra left the Temple and its denizens alone, for the most part. And so Temple folk could sometimes get away with things other people didn’t dare do, like show open defiance toward Bardolph and Werne.

  Eske led us up through the second-floor gallery where I’d watched Karst with Fei, to a curving corridor of guest rooms, her beaded skirts brushing the dark floorboards. Some of the doors had colorful silk masks hanging from the knobs. I saw Durrel give them a look, and then cast a questioning glance my way, but I pretended not to notice.

  The priestess stopped before a room at the back of the Temple. “It’s not quiet, but it’s private,” she said. “No one will disturb you here.” She produced a key out of thin air, a slim length of ornamental iron fashioned into the shape of a mask, and handed it to Durrel. A moment later the door swung open into a fair-sized room. “But understand, Tiboran’s sanctuary only applies inside our doors. We can’t protect you if you go outside.”

  “But —” Durrel objected.

  “He’s not going outside,” I said hastily. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  “I’ll leave you now,” Eske said, bowing to Durrel. “I’ll have my staff send up some food, and my dear boy, you’re going to need new clothes.”

  “Normal clothes,” I stressed. “Nothing — outlandish. He’s supposed to be in hiding.”

  Eske gave me a wink. “Digger, darling, nothing is going to make that boy look like anything other than the pretty nob he is. Even the Masked One has his limits.” In the candlelight, under the grime from the gaol, I thought I saw a flush of pink color Durrel’s face.

  Almost before we were inside the room, a procession of masked serving girls carried down the hall, linens and platters and clothes in their arms. One of them lit the lamps, casting the room in a merry glow. It was well-appointed but not lavish, with a feather bed and a couple of cross-frame chairs, a large window overlooking the river (with a wide sill below it, convenient for Tiboran’s servants to come and go as necessary), and a bottle of wine on the prayer stand. Durrel grinned at that.

  “There’s no hot water till tomorrow, milord,” one of the masked acolytes said apologetically. “But Her Grace has ordered you a bath come morning.”

  “Morning means almost noon,” I murmured to him.

  The acolyte continued. “There’s rosewater with mint in the washbasin, and fresh clothes for you. Would you like us to dispose of the uniform?”

  “Ah, no. I think the owner’s going to need this back,” Durrel said.

  “Very good, milord. We’ll just have it cleaned, then.” The girl stood back expectantly, but when Durrel made no move to strip in front of her, she nodded. “We’ll pick it up in the morning. Good night, milord.” And she and her fellows slipped out in one masked stream.

  Once they were gone, Durrel stood in the middle of the room, looking faintly lost. I sat on the bed. “A wash?” I suggested gently. His weeks in the Keep had him smelling like something that wouldn’t pass inspection at the Favom Court stables. Absently Durrel shrugged off the green tunic, and his shirt with it. A smudge of blue still showed up on his back, where someone must have kicked him. When he was arrested, probably. I looked away; men had a disturbing propensity to take their shirts off in my presence. Eske had been right about the noise; the sounds of tavern life down below us rattled through the floorboards, a merry clamor and din in the distance. I tried to ignore the sound of Durrel splashing in the background. Once cleanish, he put on an embroidered shirt the serving girls had left, with vaguely rude designs at the cuffs and collar, then sank down to the floor, his legs folded neatly under him. With a lavish sigh, he tipped his head back against the bed, eyes closed, and sat like that for a long moment, not speaking. I watched him, his throat tilted to the ceiling, the bronze of his beard glinting in the lamplight, until I was sure he’d fallen asleep.

  But a moment later he sat up, grinning, and lifted down one of the trays of food. “I think we should share a celebratory feast,” he said, uncorking a bottle of wine. He hooked two glasses from the tray, then pulled the clay cover from a dish. Inside was a steaming platter of stew, thick with meat and onion. Durrel looked like he could drown in the smell of it. He speared a chunk of meat with his knife and popped it into his mouth. “Oh, gods,” he said, sagging a little. When he recovered, he poured me a glass of wine, then toasted me with the bottle.

  “To Raffin Taradyce,” he said.

  “Raffin,” I echoed, lifting my goblet.

  “Is this Grisel? I thought it had been banned.”

  “That depends on what you mean by ‘Grisel,’ ” I said noncommittally as Durrel polished off his glass and poured another.

  “I think I like this god of yours.”

  I took the wine from him and refilled my own glass. “Most people do. Maybe you should have some food with that.”

  “You too. Eat. I feel like a glutton with you just watching me.”

  “I had a decent meal this week. I live at a bakery,” I reminded him. “It’s going to take more than that entire pot of stew to get you back to not looking like a half-starved hound.”

  “That bad?” He winced. “I guess it’s been a while since I’ve seen a mirror.” He set down the plate and rubbed at his chin.

  “Not so bad,” I said softly.

  He gave a choking laugh. “Try to say that with a little more enthusiasm! I know I’m not at my peak at the moment, but I’ll be back to racing form in no time, thanks to my favorite servant of Tiboran.”

  “Eske?”

>   “Not Eske,” he said, so solemnly that a moment later we were both grinning. We finished the meal and the wine, merrily managing to ignore the crisis that had drawn us here as the candles burned lower and the room felt warmer. Finally though, Durrel grew serious again. He set down his empty glass and stretched his lean body past me, reaching for the pile of Raffin’s clothes. He retrieved a roll of papers from them and spread the pages on the floor.

  “You saved the manifests?” I said. “Well done.”

  “I’ve been studying them. I wish we could have recovered more of Talth’s papers. The Ceid keep records of everything — docking fees, licensing, records of payments made or received. Whatever they were doing, they weren’t invisible. There’s proof somewhere.”

  I was thoughtful, looking at the documents, now covered in notes and scribbles. He’d made lists of the ships and their cargoes, their routes and arrivals and all the money that went with them. “You told me about Talth,” I said, “how she kept you out of her business. But you’re good at all this; it’s obvious you know what you’re doing. Why would she ignore an asset like that, right in her own house?”

  Durrel eased back, watching me curiously. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Months ago, she was eager to marry the heir to Decath, but after the wedding she shut you out of everything? I don’t think it’s because she thought you were ignorant or immature. She didn’t want you nosing about in her business. I think she was doing something she didn’t want you to see, and she knew you’d do exactly this. You’d figure it out.”

  Durrel’s face was impassive. Finally he sighed and shuffled the papers back into a neat stack. “I wish she would have trusted me,” he said. “Because whatever she was hiding, it got her killed.”

  “We’ll work it out,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “We just need to know how Karst fits into all of this.” There hadn’t been time yet to explain everything I’d learned from Fei, but I filled in the details now. Durrel seized on the idea.

  “We have to find him, then. If he’s involved — if he killed her —”

  “I don’t think it’s that simple,” I said. “It sounded like he might be connected to the Ceid somehow. Would they just take your word for it that he was guilty, instead of you?”

  He looked stubborn, and for the briefest moment I could tell what he was thinking. The word of a nobleman weighed against a street heavy and Ferryman? But he finally shook his head. “We’ll need evidence.” He glanced back through the documents. “Were you able to learn any more about the magic that you saw at Bal Marse?”

  “No,” I said, “and it’s even more confusing now. I haven’t seen him up close, but Karst doesn’t seem the magical type to me. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the traces I saw didn’t have anything to do with the murder.”

  Durrel just gave me a look at that. I suppressed a yawn, and the look grew concerned. “You need some rest,” he said. “You’ve been running around town all day.”

  “You too,” I said, dragging myself upright. “But you’re right. It’s a long walk back to the bakery.”

  “You’re not leaving?” Durrel stood and reached for me, his hand falling before making contact. “Don’t go.” I thought I heard a thread of something else beneath the lightness. “I’m going to need help fending off those servants of Tiboran in the morning.”

  “So you’ll want me here for backup, then?”

  His arm was on the door above my head now, and he was leaning over me, grinning slightly. “It couldn’t hurt,” he said, but that easy charm faltered just a little.

  “I can’t.” I sighed. “Grea and Rat will worry, and I still have to let the Greenmen know about Raffin. He can probably manage to get out of there on his own, but we shouldn’t risk it. I’ll be back in the morning.”

  “The morning?” he said, a little quirk to his lip.

  “The real morning,” I promised. My hand on the doorknob, I grew sober. “Listen, Eske was right. You can’t leave the Temple, and it’s probably a good idea if you don’t leave the room. At least for a while.”

  He nodded finally. “Good night, then,” he said.

  At the last minute, I almost didn’t leave him. The lamplight behind him flickered against his shoulder and sparked through his beard, and his gray eyes were in shadow as he watched me. But he was safe as he could be for the night, and he had a friend out there taking an awful risk for him. My job wasn’t finished yet tonight. As the door clicked shut, I caught a glimpse of Durrel sinking back to the floor among the remains of our feast, his empty glass in one hand.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  On my way home, I tipped off the Greenmen at Raffin’s station, using the anonymous speaking-box outside the wall, which was meant for citizens to accuse their neighbors of heresy without being identified. Although they’d been told one of their own was in the Keep, it might be a day or more before they actually believed it. Raffin would have to miss at least one shift before anyone would register his absence, and who knows how many more before they did anything about it.

  The next morning, I descended the bakery stairs feeling oddly unsettled. I had slept poorly, worried about Durrel. He’d traded one cell for another, and though we’d dodged the immediate threat from Karst for now, we still weren’t any closer to clearing his name. Downstairs, Rat was in the common room, making his way methodically through Grea’s leftovers. “Letter for you,” he said through a mouthful of bread. “It came by courier. You owe me two marks for the tip.”

  Now what? There was no seal and no signature; whoever had sent it wasn’t concerned about the message being intercepted. But I immediately recognized the small, neat hand as Cwalo’s, and his message was typically cryptic.

  Shipment of Talancan oranges arriving tonight. Come to the docks to inspect cargo.

  “You’re smiling,” Rat said. “Love letter?”

  “Better.” I memorized the address Cwalo had included, then handed the note back to Rat. “Burn that when you’re finished,” I said, breezing out the door.

  I heard Rat’s voice behind me. “Secret riverside rendezvous? Clearly I’ve underestimated you.”

  As I crossed the city, I grew almost cheerful. Last night’s rain had left the air light and fresh, and everything looked brighter. Durrel was free, Raffin would be fine, and now Cwalo had come through with a lead on those secret shipments he’d told me about. Maybe I’d be able to connect them with Talth’s burned records and the discrepancies in the Ceid manifests, and see what they had to do with the magical stains on the Bal Marse floor.

  This news buzzing in my thoughts, I hurried back to the Temple District. Was it my imagination, or were there more guards on the streets today? Up in Markettown, I saw red-sashed Day Watchmen mustered by a public fountain, distributing broadsides. I drew back into a shadowed alley and turned to take another route. It was a safe wager those papers had Durrel’s portrait on them. And possibly mine, as well. Pox. I took to the river paths, which were always crowded in the morning, and kept my head down as I hurried along the water.

  Upstairs at the Temple, Durrel swung open the door, half dressed in steel gray breeches and a blue jerkin that made him look like a yeoman farmer. Eske’s girls had chosen well; the clothes fit his smaller frame better than anything I’d seen him in yet. “Good morning,” he said cheerily. “Sunshine, new quarters, new clothes. I am a new man.”

  I looked up at him, and he was right. He did look like a new man. The light scattered across his damp hair and clean cheeks and — “Oh, you shaved,” I said.

  He gave a little frown. “You sound disappointed.”

  “Of course not.” That was ludicrous. Why should I care whether Durrel had a beard or not? “But it makes your cover a little trickier. You’re harder to recognize with a beard.”

  “Oh,” he said, fingering his chin. “I hadn’t thought of that. I just wanted it gone — it made my whole body feel grimy.”

  I came inside the room. He’d been busy sinc
e I’d left; in addition to the bath, the shave, and the new clothes, he’d apparently wheedled a box of tacks from Eske’s girls and pinned the shipping manifests all across one wall of the room. They’d sent up breakfast too, simple fare, a jug of mead and a loaf of hot, brown bread. The bread was untouched, but he’d started on the mead. I tore off a hunk of bread and helped myself.

  “I’m going to thank you again,” Durrel said, sitting beside me on the bed. “I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be a free man.”

  “You’re not a free man,” I reminded him. I strode to the window and pulled the shutter closed. “You’ve got to start thinking like a fugitive. Don’t let people see you, don’t call attention to yourself. You need to learn how to be invisible. Karst and the Ceid are still out there.”

  “Of course,” he said quietly, staring into the distance. “Anything else?”

  Pox. When I’d gotten here, Durrel had looked the best he’d seemed for weeks, and now I’d deflated him. “Ignore me,” I said. “I’m used to living like this. You’re not. I can’t expect you to master all the secrets to fugitive behavior overnight.”

  Durrel looked grave. “You live like this all the time? Don’t you ever feel safe?”

  I didn’t know how to say what I was thinking, but it came out anyway. “Not unsafe, exactly. Just cautious. Like a mouse.” My mouth had a little trouble with the last word. It was an old nickname, and those memories were painful ones.

  “That’s an awful way to go through every day.” He reached for my hand. I meant to pull it away, but it had its own ideas.

  “It’s not so bad,” I said, but my words sounded a little hollow. I couldn’t help looking at him, at the way he sat, holding my hand like it was fragile and precious, like the scars were beautiful. Eske was right. Even in the drab and well-worn workman’s clothes her servants had procured, there was still something unmistakably noble about Durrel. He made the title seem like it meant something.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” he said. I looked at him quizzically, so he added, “I didn’t mean to insult your virtue by asking you to stay.”