Fray

by Rowenna Miller

  I hesitated, but Penny didn’t. “You look well,” she said. “We read about you in the Galatine gossip pages of the magazines,” she added with a laugh.

  I couldn’t help but smile in return. “I can’t be so well-known as all that,” I said.

  “Well, they don’t always use your name,” Penny replied with an impish grin.

  And then Kristos strode into the courtyard and I found myself short of breath.

  He had grown a beard, common enough in Serafe if terribly gauche in Galitha, and his hair was longer, clubbed in a queue. Instead of the Galatine workman’s clothing I was used to, he wore loose Serafan trousers and no waistcoat under his linen coat. He hardly looked like Kristos at all, older and foreign. It made it easier, somehow. He had left his old life behind, the life we shared in a drafty row house, and had made himself into a new person, a new actor in a new life.

  “Sophie.” He didn’t move toward me, or I toward him. “I’m sorry this is how we had to meet.”

  “How long have you known I was here?” I asked. Pragmatism felt easier than addressing everything unsaid between us.

  “Since before you arrived.”

  Penny cracked a smile. “Like I said, gossip pages.”

  “Please,” Kristos said, as though remembering himself, “sit.” He gestured toward a quartet of chairs huddled around a fat ottoman. I obliged.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked. “The beard is new.”

  His smile was thin. “Not so new—I started growing it as soon as I left Galitha City. Turns out I’m terrible at shaving on shipboard. I only stayed in Fen long enough to save up some money, working for a small foundry. Then I came here. I’ve been studying at the university under a professor of politics and ethics for four months now.”

  “Where are your novice robes?” I joked. He flicked his hand toward a rumpled pile in the corner—pale gray robes. “Fair enough. Your professor knows who you are?”

  “Not quite,” he admitted. “But he knows I was involved in the revolt and doesn’t care.” He tilted his head, considering his words. “Or at least doesn’t allow it to interfere with his sponsorship. The revolt wasn’t exactly popular in Serafe.”

  “So I gather.” I watched a beetle with jade-green wings traverse the tufted ottoman, falling into the divots and struggling to right itself. “Why didn’t you reach out to me?”

  “When I arrived here?” He shot me one of his smiles, the rakish, uneven grin I recognized, even half-hidden by his beard. “I was given fair warning by your intended not to give the Galatine authorities any hints on my whereabouts. Extradition from Serafe is a real thing, you know.”

  “I meant when I arrived.”

  “It seemed more prudent to wait.” Kristos sighed. “In case you hadn’t noticed, your delegation is as full of rats as the wharfs on the far side of Galitha City.”

  “I hadn’t, in fact, until quite recently,” I replied. “How do you know more than I do about all of this? And how—” I stopped myself from finishing. How do you know at all? How can I trust you?

  “That’s where I enter this conversation,” Alba replied.

  “You’re not really a nun, are you?” I said. “You’re some—some kind of Kvys spy.”

  To my surprise, Alba laughed riotously, and even Kristos joined with a badly concealed chuckle. “I really am a sister of the order,” she said, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye, “and no one has ever suggested that I was anything but a meddlesome one, at that. But yes, I have been, shall we say, placing myself at the summit to be of service for you when the time came.”

  “But why?” I asked, growing a bit exasperated. Fighting back the resurgence of loss and pain over my brother had left me with little patience.

  “The Kvys are sympathetic to the aims of reform in Galitha. Unlike our friends in Serafe. The reasons for this are, as I’m sure you’ve discovered already, complicated and include plenty of practical economic concerns and machinations for beneficial alliances. And as for me, I am an egalitarian, personally. Motivated by a fool’s dream, perhaps.” I assessed her as she spoke; she sounded like she was telling the truth, but a truth almost too neatly packaged. “I have been in contact with Kristos since I first read his work, last autumn.”

  Kristos nodded. “And I’ve built a small network here. Including some contacts within the diplomatic compound. I’ve kept an eye on you.”

  “Well, that isn’t disturbing at all,” I shot back, resorting to the kind of jokes I was used to lobbing at my brother.

  Kristos shrugged. “What can I say? At least I’m not using my reach and influence to become a first-rate Peeping Tom.”

  Alba shook her head at both of us. “Our… shall we call it monitoring? It is not nearly as disturbing as the fact that your own countrymen have attempted to dispatch you.”

  I eyed them both warily. I had underestimated Kristos before, but was I to believe that a Kvys nun and an expat scholar were more capable of protecting me than the security in the diplomatic compound? Yet, here I was, a near victim of poisoning and stalked through the city by the thin shadow of a promised assassin.

  I threw my hands in the air. “This is absurd! All of it. I’m a common seamstress. Why do away with me?”

  “It’s a very widely held belief that Prince Theodor’s insistence on reform is at your behest,” Kristos said. “I know reading isn’t your favorite pastime, but you’ve at least seen the cartoons?”

  “The Witch Consort? The Rebellious Curse Caster? The Prince’s Commoner Whore? Doxy of the Pellian Cabal?” Kristos received my best icy stare. “Yes, I’m aware of what’s said about me. Theodor would have pushed for reform without me, too.”

  “If you say so.” Kristos shrugged, unimpressed. “But something doesn’t have to be true for it to gain traction and push people to act. A little destabilization—and knocking off the so-called witch holding the prince’s puppet strings will thoroughly destabilize things, along with the obstruction in Galitha—and the nobles get their way.”

  “And Serafe will support them,” Alba added.

  I slouched into my cushion as much as my stays would allow. The Serafans had their reasons to dispatch me, too, but merely knowing about Serafan music-based casting could be a death sentence. I wasn’t sure who, or when, or how much to tell. “And now what?”

  “Now it isn’t safe for you to go back to the diplomatic compound,” Kristos said. “We’ve a fair network of folks here in the university quarter who are happy to put you up. For now. You know one already—Corvin.”

  “How?”

  “I confess he may have been planted,” Kristos said with a grin. “He’s one of my good friends here. When I heard you were arranging a tour of the archives, I guessed what you might be after, and I made sure he stayed within earshot.”

  “And how did you hear I was arranging a tour?”

  “Dira Mbtai-Joro.” Alba smiled. “She and I are acquaintances of a sort—I brought her into our fold. Mutual distrust of Serafan maneuvering, you see.”

  “Dira!” I suppressed a shocked laugh. “Dira hated me.”

  “Ah, dear, no. Dira is cold, I’ll grant you, but the Allied States are keen to see the old guard of Galatine nobles shaken up a bit.” I recalled what Theodor had said about the Open Seas Arrangement, and that all of these nations had their own complicated plans in which I was only a footnote.

  “I have the most helpful friends.” Kristos grinned.

  “You are a devious snake, Kristos Balstrade.”

  “Good thing I’m on your side, isn’t it?”

  “Well, snake? What next? And what about Theodor—does he know where I am?”

  “I’ll make sure he gets a message.” His voice was gentle; in fact, he was quieter, more staid than how I remembered him. There were worry lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there before the revolt, and he seemed less poised to speak or act and more inclined to contemplation.

  “We were leaving as soon as we could,” I said. “Retur
ning to Galitha.”

  Penny hovered just beyond our earshot, waiting for us to finish. “I was thinking—Kristos, your sister is probably hungry. Maybe Mairti has something? One of her hand plates?”

  Kristos nodded. “And bring wine,” he said with half a grin.

  40

  THE WINESHOP OWNER, MAIRTI, SERVED US SEVERAL LARGE platters of what she called hand plates—though the phrase was far prettier in Serafan than translated. They were what we called appetizers in Galitha, what finer houses served guests before they were seated for dinner. Kristos explained that it was the fashion in the student district to make a meal of them, ordering plates and sharing them, passing them hand to hand. “Hence the name,” he said.

  “You speak enough Serafan to get by?” I asked, only half-surprised. He was always quick with languages.

  “His Serafan is awful,” Mairti said, handing me a weighty plate of thick pottery. “Those are—what is it in Galatine?”

  “Tomatoes,” Kristos supplied. “Mairti’s Galatine vocabulary is nonexistent,” he added.

  “That’s hardly true! When do I have to say tomatoes in Galatine?” She plucked one of the thumb-size orange tomatoes, their hollowed stem ends studded with herbs and what I guessed was some kind of cheese. “Don’t let him have any,” she teased me.

  Penny sat between me and Kristos, uncharacteristically quiet, but she kept glancing at me and then back to Kristos. She grappled, I was sure, with the same thorny barrier between us I did. Even Mairti’s cheerful interruptions didn’t loosen the tightly wound tension that pushed us apart by reminding us how we had once been drawn together. What could we say to one another that didn’t dredge up all of the ugliness of our all-too-recent past? In the wake of the failed revolt, could we all believe that we had ever really known one another to begin with? I worked with Penny every day, but she had surprised me, choosing supporting the revolt over her livelihood. I was taken aback again to find her here, in a foreign country, following the uncertainty that was Kristos. She was braver than I was, in many ways, I conceded.

  “Do you like red wine or white, Lady Sophie?” Mairti asked, the deep emerald wrap in her hair bringing out her startling green eyes.

  “I’m not a lady,” I corrected her.

  “They haven’t given you a title of some kind?” Penny asked. “I figured they’d add some string of impressive words to your name.”

  “No, I’m still just plain old Sophie.” I stopped, remembering snide whispers at parties. “They’re trying to kill me, remember?”

  A shy smile broke through Penny’s somber face. “Right.”

  “What have you been doing here in Isildi? I mean, to keep busy?” I asked.

  “Keep busy? I’m up to my chin in work,” Penny said. “I’m sewing.”

  “She’s one of the most in-demand seamstresses in the university district,” Kristos said with pride I had once wished he’d bestow on my work. “She hung out her shingle when she arrived that she sews ‘in the Galatine style’ and hasn’t had a break since. Keeps the roof over our heads.”

  “And pays for wine and your expensive book habit,” Penny replied. That, at least, sounded familiar—Kristos chasing world-shattering knowledge while someone else paid the rent.

  “It’s not that impressive,” Penny said, turning to me. “The Galatine thing—Galitha is kind of seen as the height of fashionable clothes, so being Galatine, well, I could turn out rags and they’d still buy them.”

  “Most of the delegates’ wives are wearing Serafan clothing,” I said. “Who’s buying Galatine styles?”

  “Plenty of women. I modify them, for the heat,” Penny explained. “Lots of cotton, looser sleeves sometimes. But the higher-ranking scholars and the students with money like the tailored jackets and gowns. Some merchants’ wives and shop owners are coming to me now, too.”

  “For official events, everyone wears Serafan styles,” Kristos added. “But if you visited those delegates’ wives at a ladies’ luncheon, half of them would be showing off Galatine jackets.”

  “I’d rather not,” I replied. “I’ve had enough of social events with delegates’ wives, thank you.”

  “I thought you liked that kind of thing,” Kristos said. “All that time spent with the Lady Viola—wasn’t just for measurements, was it?” There was an old edge to his voice, familiar disapproval that surfaced and chided even though it didn’t matter any longer.

  “I liked Lady Viola, and her friends.” I recalled Pauline’s quick questions, Annette’s kindness, Nia’s intense curiosity, Marguerite’s artistic talent. “You probably would have, too.”

  The snort and eye roll, so much like the ones that had responded to requests to clean our kitchen many times, should have angered me, but I felt a comfortable rapport returning. “These women at the summit? Most of them are a gaggle of—”

  “Say no more,” Alba interjected, holding up her hand. “There is a saying in Kvyset—words fly like birds and peck only the speaker’s eyes.”

  “That’s pleasant,” Kristos said with a laugh. “You don’t tell the truth in Kvyset if it isn’t nice?”

  Alba shrugged. “We find other ways to say what we mean. But most of the time, it needn’t be said. Everyone already knows. To state the obvious, and the obvious being unflattering, is seen as mean-spirited. And so reflects on the speaker.”

  “The upshot is that Alba agrees and wants to say something mean but her Kvys nun vows won’t let her,” Kristos said to me.

  “My vows say nothing about—that was a joke, wasn’t it?” Alba said. She shook her head and poured herself another glass of wine.

  “I’d love to see you work,” I said to Penny, pulling the conversation away from Kvys social custom and back to my brother’s life in Isildi.

  “Normally I would suggest that posing as Penny’s assistant would be a fine cover for a Galatine woman in Isildi. But given that it’s well-known you’re a seamstress, maybe stay away from needle and thread for a while.”

  I was about to retort that, without needle and thread, there wasn’t much I was qualified to do when the curtain blew aside as though propelled by strong winds. Not winds, but Corvin entered, his gray robes dusty at the hem and rumpled.

  “Please tell me you aren’t drunk,” he said to Kristos in greeting.

  “Not yet, just enjoying this delightful company.”

  “Don’t enjoy it too much,” Corvin said. “Mairti tells me they threatened her with assassins.”

  “Only if I misbehave,” I joked weakly. I fished out the letter from Merhaven, still stashed in my pocket, and handed it to him.

  “We should probably start to figure out when we will get you back to Galitha—what’s wrong?” Kristos’s tone changed instantly as he read Corvin’s face.

  “You could have mentioned we’re dealing with the a’Mavha.”

  “The what?” I had set my wineglass down as soon as Corvin arrived, but my fingers hadn’t left its blown-glass bowl. I slowly uncurled them, sensing danger in the word even though I had never heard it.

  “They aren’t even real. Supposedly,” Mairti said.

  “They’re real,” Corvin replied. “Just ignored by the Serafan authorities because they find them useful too often.” He turned to me. “Assassins. Professionals, for hire, highest bidder sort of thing. All underground.”

  “We already knew that Merhaven had a contract.” I tested the new term, a’Mavha, not stopping to be surprised that I was suddenly living a life where knowing the Serafan word for assassin might be useful. “The a’maftha? It means assassin?”

  “Your pronunciation is close,” Corvin said, as though tutoring a student. “It’s a’Mavha. The soft v in Serafan is difficult. And it’s not assassin; it’s the name of their operation. Technically the word means salamander.”

  “Salamander?” I tried not to laugh. “This deadly assassin guild is named after a cute little lizard?”

  “They’re not lizards; they’re amphibians,” Corvin said, unable to resi
st an explanation. “And the river salamanders of West Serafe can grow up to twelve feet long. They linger in the deepest parts of the riverbed, barely moving, until their prey comes close enough, then they strike like lightning. The a’Mavha are not dissimilar in their tactics.”

  “They sound absolutely disgusting,” Penny said, recoiling.

  “Which one?” I asked. “The river salamanders or the assassins?”

  “Both,” she said. “Ugh, I want to go back to Galitha. We don’t have giant river lizards.”

  “Amphibians. Your mountains have silver-crested eagles that can take a man’s head off, though,” Corvin said. “I have nightmares about those.”

  “Not important right now,” Kristos snapped. “The a’Mavha have a contract on my sister.”

  “Which we already knew,” I protested again.

  “We didn’t know it was the a’Mavha,” Kristos hissed. “You didn’t think that was worth sharing?” he demanded, turning to Alba.

  “Forgive me, but the letter—” She gestured to me, with an open hand, asking for the paper. I plucked it from Corvin and handed it to her. “The letter mentions the ports, assassins, waiting to get word from Merhaven—oh, yes, it does say a’Mavha.” She set it down. “What? I didn’t know what that meant. Forgive a single misstep in a complicated dance of delivering your sister alive.”

  “As long as they don’t believe I’m attempting to return to Galitha, they aren’t supposed to do anything.”

  Everyone’s expressions convinced me quickly that I had underestimated the threat. “The a’Mavha will track you,” Corvin said. “Ordinary hired thugs would just wait in the harbor for you to try to leave, but the a’Mavha are not ordinary hired thugs. They won’t wait for you to try to leave before finding you, and once they find you…” He shook his head.