The Lady Heiress (The Zero Enigma Book 8)

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  “Take a seat,” Gary said. “Tea? Coffee?”

  “Tea, please.” I sat on an armchair that had seen better days, pieces of stuffing spilling out of the cushions. “Milk, no sugar.”

  “Sugar?” Gary winked at me, then put on a faux aristocratic accent. “We don’t serve sugar here, My Lady. Our clientele considers it uncouth.”

  I giggled. “I’m sure I’ll survive,” I said. I’d never really liked drinking tea with sugar, even though it was fashionable to put so much sugar in one’s tea that it couldn’t really be called tea any longer. More like sugar with a little flavouring. “As long as it’s brewed by you.”

  Gary passed me the mug, then sat next to me. I felt ... I wasn’t sure how. I wanted to reach for him and kiss him, I wanted to wait for him to kiss me, I wanted ... I wanted to discuss why he’d invited me. He’d taken a risk, even though his master was miles away. It was lucky none of the Grande Dames knew I was here. Aunt Dorcas would have pitched a fit if she’d known I was travelling to Water Shallot alone. And then she’d have gleefully tattled to everyone she knew.

  Probably, I thought, sourly. I hadn’t seen anything of the elder woman for a while. I didn’t care what she was doing, as long as it didn’t come back to bite me. She’s not foolish enough to ruin me, is she?

  I sipped my tea, trying not to think about her and the others. It tasted good, although I wasn’t familiar with the blend. Ellington had told me we could cut our household budget in half by purchasing food and drink in Water Shallot, insisting that none of the party guests would realise what we’d done, but I hadn’t wanted to take the risk. Serving aristocrats plebeian food? They’d explode with rage.

  “I was studying the orb,” Gary said, suddenly. I was torn between gratitude that he’d gotten right to the point and regret that he hadn’t thought to kiss me. “It’s a fascinating piece of work. Whoever devised it was brilliant, truly brilliant. They could have made a fortune. I don’t understand why they didn’t take it mainstream.”

  Malachi probably blackmailed them into silence, I thought, morbidly. I didn’t think Malachi had invented the Device of Power himself. He simply didn’t have the mindset to invent anything. Or there’s something about it that can’t be easily duplicated.

  I stared into my tea. An Object of Power? It was possible, I supposed. There were so many legends about the Thousand Year Empire’s Objects of Power that it was hard to separate the truth from the lies. But ... if that was the case, where would Malachi have found it? I couldn’t see his family just letting it go, if it belonged to them. It was far more likely that it was a Device of Power.

  “The charms are very complex,” Gary added. “I think the memory is real.”

  “I know it’s real,” I said, more sharply than I meant. “I did it.”

  Gary didn’t take offense. “My point is that there’s just too much information wrapped up in the charms to allow for a fake, or a duplicate,” he said. “I think there’s no way to easily copy the memory.”

  “So there might be only one copy.” I gave him a sharp look. “Are you sure?”

  “No.” Gary shrugged. “But the orb’s impact comes from the sheer abundance of data woven into the memory. It isn’t a recording of what someone sees or hears, it’s everything. There’s a sense of inhabiting their body, as well as everything else. It’s compelling because it’s so complete. And I think that if you copy the copy, the memories would start to ... degrade. Glitch. It would simply start to lose the sheen. Sooner or later, they would stop being convincing.”

  “But too late for me,” I muttered. It was the first piece of hopeful news I’d had in a while. “Is there no way to fake the memories?”

  “I don’t think so,” Gary said. “Like I said, there’s just too much detail.”

  He leaned back into his chair. “I may be able to work out how the charms view and copy a memory, given time,” he said. “But they’re an order of magnitude more advanced than anything I’ve ever seen.”

  I let out a breath. “But there’s only one copy of each memory,” I said. “That’s useful to know.”

  Gary held up a warning hand. “There’s nothing to stop him from taking and recording the memory time and time again,” he said. “If I was in his place, that’s what I’d do.”

  “Yeah.” I shook my head. “But there have to be limits ... right?”

  “Perhaps,” Gary said. “I just don’t know.”

  I sagged, wishing he’d put his arm around me. Or something. I’d taken a risk in coming to the workshop and ... I shook my head, again. I had too many other problems to worry about what High Society thought. Perhaps leaving the city and running was the best of a set of bad options. I could take ship to Hangchow, travelling right around the globe. There were dozens of lurid accounts of visits to the mysterious empire on the other side of the world. I could go in person and see how many of them were actually true.

  “I do have one piece of good news, though,” Gary said. “I found his home.”

  “What?” I stared. Uncle Jalil’s quiet investigations hadn’t located Malachi’s home. I’d been starting to think he resided outside the city. “You found him?”

  “Yes.” Gary winked, again. “He lives in Water Shallot, surprisingly close to the docks.”

  My eyes narrowed. “And how did you find him?”

  Gary laughed. “I had to call in a few favours,” he said. “There were people I knew who’d had dealings with him, over the last few months. They were kind enough to locate him for me. I checked the records, once I had the address, and confirmed the entire block had been purchased by a blind trust. Whoever really owns it went to some trouble to ensure their names wouldn’t be on the title deeds.”

  I smiled at him. I knew where he was. And that meant ... I could get him.

  “Thank you.” I leaned forward and kissed him. “You’re wonderful.”

  Gary laughed and kissed me back. I felt a thrill as he pulled me closer, our lips touching time and time again. His hands stroked my back ... I wanted to relax into it, to let him go all the way. And yet, I couldn’t. I pulled away as his hand started to inch under my dress. It would have been a step too far.

  “Do you want to go there?” Gary stood, brushing down his shirt and trousers. His face looked flushed. “We can walk down and take a look at it.”

  I blinked, then nodded. “Let me use the washroom first,” I said. “Am I properly dressed?”

  “I’ll find you a cloak,” Gary said. He pointed me towards the washroom. “You might want to braid your hair too.”

  I hurried into the tiny room and inspected my face in the mirror. My lips were oddly puffy, too puffy. I muttered a charm to quell the swelling, feeling a pang of guilt for kissing him. It would be social death, if anyone found out ... I laughed, humourlessly. The Grande Dames would have problems deciding what they were going to ostracise me for, if they ever found out everything I’d done. There were just so many good reasons ... I put the thought out of my head as I braided my hair, feeling uncomfortably like I was pretending to be a child. Gary held out a drab grey cloak as I exited the washroom, looking away awkwardly as I pulled it over my dress. It was so drab, I had the feeling eyes would just slip over me as though I wasn’t there.

  “Ready?” Gary looked as if he were having second thoughts. “Shall we go?”

  “Yes,” I said. I’d survived boarding school. I could cope with Water Shallot. “Let’s go.”

  The streets felt ... cooler, somehow, as we hurried down the street and headed south. The gentrified parts of Water Shallot felt very much like South Shallot, with walls of shops, apartment blocks and everything else a city needed to function. The people on the streets looked poorer than their counterparts, but not that poor. And yet ... the further we headed into Water Shallot, the darker the streets became. I splashed though muddy puddles as we passed through alleyways and crossed bridges, the air steadily growing fouler.

  I looked around, silently grateful for the cloak. The buildings f
elt more and more oppressive, looming over us as if they were trying to trap me within their shadow. There were fewer people - almost all men - on the streets, their eyes following me as I walked. The shops looked tatty and old, a handful of ill-dressed women loitering on the corner ... I recoiled as I realised they were whores. What else could they be? I felt sick as one of the women beckoned to us. She seemed to belong to a whole other world.

  The stench - of rotten fish and hopelessness - seemed to grow stronger. I saw a man lying in an alleyway, a bottle clutched in one hand. A small boy ran past me, his hand brushing against my thigh. Gary snapped a hex at him, a spark of light the boy dodged with practiced ease before running into an alleyway and vanishing into the darkness. I recoiled, badly shaken. I’d never had anyone try to steal from me so blatantly. How could anyone live like this?

  They don’t have a choice, I thought. Kate and Gary and all the other commoners I’d met - even Marlene - hadn’t grown up in the southern side of town. What else are they going to do for a living?

  “We’ll be turning the corner in a moment,” Gary said, so quietly I could barely hear him. He was definitely having second thoughts. “Try not to look too interested in the house.”

  “I’ll try,” I muttered back. It wasn’t the first time I’d paid close attention to something without letting on. “Just keep your senses open.”

  I did my best to look impassive as we walked around the corner. The street might have been a nice place to live, once. There were the remains of a good neighbourhood around it. The block was solidly built, probably older than its owners. And yet, it was clear the area had fallen into darkness. The shops were boarded up, the apartments looked drab ... I shivered as I spotted a man escorting two teenage girls along the road. He looked armed and ready to fight. I wondered, morbidly, if he was their protector or their pimp. I’d heard the rumours about forbidden pleasures, things forbidden even to the aristocracy, but I’d never really believed them. I believed them now.

  Malachi’s house was surprisingly large. It looked, from the outside, to have been subdivided into smaller apartments a long time ago ... I remembered what I’d seen of the inside and nodded. Malachi - or his family - had bought up the entire block, then taken out the walls to turn it into a house. I wondered if they’d accidentally destroyed the supporting walls. It would be funny if the house collapsed, burying him beneath a pile of rubble ... I snorted as I allowed my senses to reach out and touch the wards. It wasn’t likely to happen. Probably. It was easy to imagine his family plotting his death, going the extra mile to make it look like a terrible accident.

  The wards were tough, surprisingly complex. They made the house stand out a mile ... I wondered, absently, just what the locals made of them. Malachi had protected himself from everything he could, up to and including remote scrying. They were an order of magnitude more complex than the spells I’d used at home, or school; I thought I knew how to crack them, but if I got it wrong I’d probably be killed on the spot. Malachi had never struck me as the kind of person to forgive and forget. He’d have every reason to kill me and turn my body to dust.

  My eyes wandered over the edge of the house and down the darkened alleyway. A trio of young men stood beside a large door, looking bored. They whistled at me, but didn’t move. Guards? Malachi was certainly wealthy enough to hire guards. He’d want to keep the local thieves out without revealing too much of his defences too, I was sure. I felt their eyes burning into my back as we kept moving, trying not to run. I hadn’t felt so unsafe since my first day at school, when I’d been told - in no uncertain terms - that I was no longer the little mistress of the house.

  “I’m sorry,” Gary muttered, as soon as we were clear of the street. He sounded embarrassed, as if the whole affair had been his fault. “That shouldn’t have happened.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I told him. I knew enough magic to defend myself, if push came to shove. The boys could hoot and holler, if they liked, but I’d give them the fright of their lives if they did anything worse. “Thank you for bringing me.”

  “Really?” Gary looked doubtful. “This is not my idea of a fun holiday destination.”

  I nodded as we walked past another alley. A large poster proclaimed the virtues of electing someone for guild leadership. It had been defaced so savagely I was surprised it hadn’t been replaced. Perhaps whoever had put it up had realised there was no point in putting up another one. It would just be defaced too. Another poster, a few metres on, was completely untouched. I frowned. It was an invitation to a socialist meeting, two days ago. I wondered, idly, how it had gone.

  Gary said nothing until we reached the workshop, then took the cloak. “That’s his home, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” I had no doubt of it. It was impossible to be sure ... I shook my head. I’d memorised the outer edge of the wards. I knew what they felt like now. It would be easy to confirm when he demanded I wait on him again. “It can’t be anything else.”

  I relaxed into his hug, just for a moment. “I’ll have to find a way to get inside,” I said. “He knows how to defend his house, worse luck.”

  “If you need help, just ask,” Gary said. He hugged me tightly, then gently kissed me. “Please.”

  I felt my eyes sting with tears. “Why? Why are you helping me?”

  Gary blushed. “Because I like you,” he said. “And because it’s the right thing to do.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I was not surprised, the following day, to receive instructions to meet at the same time and place as before. I dressed carefully, concealing a handful of weapons and surprises around my person before heading out. I had no idea if Malachi knew I’d visited Water Shallot - it was unlikely that any of the aristocratic girls he’d known had ever willingly crossed the bridges - but it was possible. His wards might have sensed me as a prior visitor and reported me to their master. And if he wanted to kill me ...

  The carriage rattled into view, the door banging open as it slowed to a halt. Malachi motioned me into the carriage, then sat back and said nothing as the vehicle rocked back into motion. I also said nothing, reaching out as gingerly as I could to feel the wards. He’d woven a lot of protections into his carriage, enough to save him from direct and indirect attack. I hoped it was a sign of cowardice, instead of cold-blooded prudence. A coward was easier to scare.

  I kept my face under tight control as the carriage’s wards brushed against the house’s wards. They felt familiar ... very familiar. Gary had taken me to the right house. I tried not to look cheerful as Malachi scrambled out of the carriage and strode off, forcing me to jump down and practically sprint after him. It was rude - a gentleman should always help a lady to the ground - but I was almost relieved. I didn’t want his hand touching me. I kept parsing out the wards as I followed him up the stairs, cursing silently as I realised the spells were all attuned to him. Malachi might or might not live alone - I knew he had at least one servant and I was fairly sure there were others - but he’d protected his house so thoroughly that he was the only person who could move within it safely. I glanced at the stained carpet and smiled. His servants couldn’t navigate the house without him.

  “Well,” Malachi said. He sat down, motioning for me to stand in front of the desk. “What did your friend have to say for herself?”

  “She said she’d try and find out what she could,” I said. “I don’t know how much she can find out.”

  Malachi gave me a sardonic look. “I meant your other friend. You did manage to chat to her, didn’t you?”

  Marlene, I thought. Someone had clearly noted we’d been spending time together ... probably one of the hired servants. They had less to lose. And there’s no way to track down the blabbermouth either.

  I pasted a smile on my face. “She just let everyone believe she was an aristocrat,” I said. I still couldn’t believe it. Not really. “It’s astonishing.”

  “Quite.” Malachi eyed me for a long moment. “And you haven’t tried to bend her to y
our will?”

  I winced, inwardly. I hoped he couldn’t see it. “No,” I said. “She’s got nothing to offer me.”

  “There’s always something,” Malachi pointed out. “She does have access to a Great House.”

  “She’s a servant ... the daughter of a pair of servants,” I said. “She doesn’t have that much access.”

  “There are ways.” Malachi smiled, coldly. “I’m sure she can find something for you, if you tighten the screws.”

  I felt sick. Marlene ... Marlene was no longer the figure of my nightmares, no longer the implacable and merciless enemy I had to destroy. She’d been a brat, as had I, but she wasn’t a monster. The real monster sat facing me, a benevolent smile on his ugly face. I didn’t want to twist the screws, I didn’t want to bend her to my will ... even if I did, I wasn’t sure she could give me anything. She might have lived in a Great House, but she wasn’t an aristocrat ... nor, really, a trusted servant. She was more of a favoured pet.