Death and the Merchant (River's End Book 1)

by C. H. Williams

  “We prove them wrong.”

  “And what do we do, when they tell you you’re on the losing side?”

  She met his gaze with ice-shard eyes. “We prove them wrong.”

  SAM

  “A picture says a thousand words? Then I can’t imagine the story one might stuff into an entire ball gown.”

  ~Sam Alderton

  “It just doesn’t pop.” Frowning atop the stool, the woman was swaying back and forth, watching the skirt dance in the tri-fold mirror at the center of Mulligan’s.

  Sam let himself fall back onto his heels from where he’d been trying to pin the pink satin hem amid her fussed and frequent movements, and glancing up, he gave a small sigh. “Des, hon, if it pops anymore, you’re liable to hurt someone.”

  “There’s a month,” she murmured, smoothing the skirts, preening. “You’ve got time.”

  “No, you’ve got time. I’m booked from now until February, love.”

  “Just…hmph. A bit of lace, maybe? At the hem?”

  “Desi…”

  “Please, Sam? You’re only introduced once, and everyone talked about your introduction for years,” she pouted, not taking her eyes off the mirror.

  Lips pursed, he pushed himself up, giving her a once over.

  He hadn’t been joking about the pop. He’d emblazoned the bodice himself, a brilliantly deep champagne diamond set right at the apex of the sweetheart neck, the rest cascading down to catch in the folds of her skirt. It’d been so heavy, the dress form had nearly toppled over—and he’d had to cinch it to poor Desi, which she’d taken in good spirits. Of course, she’d be dead on her feet by the end of the ball, touring the floor in that damnable thing. And now, the lace…

  Everyone talked about your introduction for years.

  She wasn’t wrong.

  But they hadn’t been talking about what he’d been wearing, that was for damn sure.

  When he’d stepped down that grand staircase at seventeen, he’d become the single most desirable bachelor across all nine districts, and next to Cele Carson’s introduction the next year, it had remained one of the most highly anticipated events of the decade.

  Clark Carson’s ward was available and looking.

  Sam had taken the first dance with Cele—a power play, the whispers said, to throw speculation about the favored suitors.

  The whispers weren’t wrong.

  The problem was, though, the more that he thought about it, it seemed like his favored suitor might be sitting miles away, curled up in a worn armchair, reading with his little sister.

  This had been after his first kiss, the one with the wrong boy that was actually the right boy.

  All the same, Sam danced with Edmund, the strapping young son of a Buyer’s Bay merchant and heir to a shipping empire that reached up and down the eastern coast. He danced with Vivien, the sweet daughter of the Commissioner from the Coastal Reach—not really his type, but Edmund, it turned out, wasn’t terribly light on his feet, and Sam really did love to dance, and Vivien was a goddess on the dance floor. He’d danced with countless others, too, all their faces and names blurring into one nondescript suitor with their arms around his waist.

  But it’d been Mattie that Sam had been eying.

  Matthew Fieldson would’ve been a good match, arguably the best match, and Sam’s turn about the floor with his sister hadn’t swayed the whispers from saying as much. A son of the Capital—and more than that, the son of the Capital’s commissioner himself—Matt was more than the bastard of a prostitute could’ve hoped. And they got on well, too, Mattie and Sam.

  He remembered thinking that maybe they could be happy together.

  It was Mattie’s fault, that Sam kissed the wrong boy. Mattie, and his gods-damned eyes, so dark and wide, his little oh of a mouth when he was trying not to act surprised, and Cele, she’d been after Mattie, too, but she still had a year, which meant everything was riding on Sam’s introduction.

  Mattie had walked up to him, as the evening had started to wane. Had asked for a turn around the floor, had held Sam close, his breath on Sam’s cheek as they whispered about the whisperers, and still, it’d been the echo of Teddy’s lips against his own that had consumed his thoughts.

  Teddy, the wrong boy who’d been the right one in the end.

  Mattie had led him to the garden, where the roses were just starting to bloom, and the pin-prick stars above them were glittering like candles.

  This was it.

  There’s a lot of speculation, Mattie mused, fingers trailing against Sam’s cheek in the moonlight, about your suitors. Word is, you’re not even going to leave your own introduction a bachelor.

  That depends, Sam had murmured, breathing in the bergamot of his city boy.

  On what, Mattie pressed.

  On you. And leaning in, he took his second kiss, from the right boy that was the wrong boy, in the end.

  Mattie, as it turned out, had always been Cele’s.

  Clark made sure of that.

  And Sam…he belonged to Clark.

  They didn’t remember Sam’s introduction as the night Aerdela’s most eligible bachelor met society.

  They remembered it as the night Clark’s ward left.

  Desi was right, in that they did talk about it for years.

  How he’d taken a small apartment off of Main, how he was working, with his hands, to actually earn a living, how he found a lover in a back-district farmhouse.

  How he’d lost every single person he’d believed to be his friend.

  Every person, that was, except two.

  Except Elsie and Teddy.

  Desi’s would be a different fate, though. She was sweet and bubbly and, gods, so smart—she’d find someone.

  And he’d be damned if he stood in the way of giving her the night she was dreaming of.

  “Fine,” he relented, a reluctant smile on his lips, dusting off his hands. “But this is the last thing, Des, I can’t fit in anymore, I’m already overbooked as it is. I can have it for you Tuesday—”

  “Actually, my dear, I’m afraid Tuesday’s a bit soon.” Mrs. Mulligan was sweeping across the show room floor, her crushed velvet wrap half-trailing absentmindedly behind her as she hustled towards the pair, looking rather grim.

  Oh, gods, she’s taken another commission—

  “Desdimona, sweet, be a good girl, and go get changed,” Mrs. Mulligan was fussing, helping her off the stool and shooing her towards the back hall. “Edith’s back there, she’ll help you out, there’s a pretty dove. Now off with you—you’ll get your lace, you never mind that,” she added, shaking her head. Then, heaving a sigh, she glanced back to Sam, voice soft. “It is a lovely gown, Mr. Alderton. You’ve…well, you’ve come a long way since you were stitching muslins in the back room, I’ll dare say.”

  “But,” he pushed warily.

  “But I’ve had a visit from your father.” Sucking her teeth, she drew her wrap back ‘round her shoulders, eyes darting about the room. “I think, sweet, we both knew it was a risk, bringing you on. And I didn’t mind, not with…well, not with gowns like that piling up,” she nodded, gesturing to the hall down which Desi had disappeared. “He’s fining me dry, though, Sam, and he’s even threatened to pull my license and lease if—if I don’t let you go.”

  His fingers found the cloth measuring tape hanging about his neck, fiddling with the ends, eyes skirting the shop.

  Let go.

  Words failed him.

  Let go.

  A nightmare.

  Panic was setting into his chest, deep, unmovable. This wasn’t happening, it wasn’t real—

  Let go.

  This was the price he paid, for her.

  For the letters, still tucked in the breast pocket of his brown suit, hanging neatly four blocks down in the cedar wardrobe.

  Let go.

  ELSIE

  “We dream of normalcy, but it isn’t real. We all simply do the best we can with what we’re given.”

  ~Sam A
lderton

  Lingering in the back of the drafty inkshop, Elsie’s eyes wandered the shelves—and Fletcher, intently focused on the contents therein, weighing pens in hand with chilling determination.

  Nearly a week, and she had come to dislike the facade.

  That was what he called it, waltzing around like some run-of-the-mill human, his round-eared lie. A facade.

  And the more she watched him drifting between worlds, faces, lives, the more she realized: he disliked it, too.

  It strained him. He adored this life, the inkshop-on-a-Tuesday sort of life, with sweetrolls and engagements and I-broke-the-nib-to-my-favorite-pen kind of worries. But it was taking its toll, guarding his words, his movements, the very magic that flared in his fingertips, a beating-heart reflex. And he’d been ready, she’d begun to realize, ready to endure that. A lifetime of exhaustion. Of being worn to a nub, of abandoning his people.

  Love was all kinds of misguided, sometimes. And she hated herself, for thinking it was sort of sweet.

  Love wasn’t supposed to make people hurt.

  “Any luck?” she prodded, turning over a stack of parchment in her hand. Bound in twine and butcher’s paper, a single sheet had remained atop the wrappings for identification. It was thick, with deep, angry, crevasses, the kind that ripped charcoal from pencils and drank up watercolor with greedy ambition.

  Fletcher’s only answer was a knitted brow, lips pursed as he ran his fingers along the carved wood. Then, with an exasperated sigh, he plunked it back down in the jar, looking irritated. “Wrong.”

  She glanced around—the inkshop was a closet of a store, and he’d spent the better part of an hour fiddling with the rows of pens that lined the shelves in their gleaming crystalline jars. Diving into the last row, he began again, scooping up a rather simple pen, stained a deep red, a brass band around the tip. A neat 2Ss,4c had been scrawled on a card before the cup, boasting the exorbitant asking price. “Two silver stacks,” she muttered, fingertips brushing the golden-tipped pens. “Absurd.”

  The remark earned her a glare from the shopkeep.

  In another life, she’d have slipped one up her sleeve to spite him.

  And in another life, she thought sardonically, it’d cost Sam more than a few stacks to bribe the mercenaries who’d have shaken her down, if she’d been stupid enough to get caught.

  She wasn’t stupid, though. Not usually.

  The first time had been the failure of a novice.

  It’d been a stale roll, with smoked ham and hard, yellow cheese slammed onto crusty bread. Pathetic street food, and not worth six coppers, but day in, day out, it lured her in. She’d been eleven and hungry and before that ten and hungry and nine and hungry and eight and hungry…

  Her reflexes had been dulled by winter, and she’d overestimated her stealth on a street devoid of chaos. She’d tried to run, of course, but the mercenary’s vice-grip around her arm had foiled any hope of escape, and there’d been tears stinging her eyes as she’d watched him kick the roll into the street, grinding the whitebread into the cobblestones with the heel of his boot.

  The debtor’s prison had been filthy, crowded, reeking of sweat and soil and the brackish water of the docks.

  Crammed against the bars, arms clenched about her stomach, she’d been dully imagining her fate. She’d work off the debt, no question—and with interest, no less. Maybe a few months a servant, if she was lucky. A few weeks in a pleasure house, if she wasn’t.

  Rats squealing, hands groping, women crying, and it was dark when she’d been yanked out of her corner by a bearded mercenary smelling of roast hazelnuts and money.

  But it hadn’t been a procurer waiting in the dingy office.

  It’d been Sam.

  She never asked how he found her there.

  She’d known Sam for less than a year.

  It’d been a singularly poignant sensation of relief, seeing him, and in that moment, she’d felt every bit the child she was. She forgot to be embarrassed, forgot to be quiet, forgot to hold herself with decorum, had, in truth, forgotten everything that didn’t really matter in the end.

  The mercenary had released her, and she’d run towards Sam. He’d caught her with a tight hug, smelling of sandalwood and cloves and the cigarettes he used to roll with idly elegant hands, had only murmured quiet comforts while she dried her silent tears on his waistcoat.

  She’d been supposed to meet him at the bookstore.

  After school, she walked to the bookstore, and they would read together, until the dark finally fell, and he’d walk with her to meet Teddy at the general store.

  That was how she’d met Sam.

  At the bookstore.

  A guard or someone had pressed a note into Sam’s hands, Receipt of Debtor, she remembered it saying, worth 20Gs, twenty gold stacks of twelve coins each.

  That number had branded her for the better part of the year.

  Two-hundred and forty gold pieces.

  A tangible badge of her worth, one she’d worn proudly, albeit secretly.

  Teddy had been beside himself, pacing up and down the general store counter, the sign boasting Closed but the lamps still lit all the same as he worried his cuticles to bleeding.

  I’m so sorry, Sam had pressed, voice remorseful, we stopped for a small bite, and I completely lost track of time.

  Not a lie. They had stopped for food. She still had half a bun from the bakery in her pocket to prove it. Tomorrow’s breakfast.

  No, no, you—you can’t just lose track of time! I thought something had happened! You weren’t at the bookstore, I—I trusted you with her, a-a-and you—

  His tears, though, she remembered better than the blur of words. Blue eyes brimming with panic, he’d held her tight, kissed her forehead, had, hands under her arms, boosted her up to sitting on the counter and looking her over, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

  He didn’t speak to Sam for two weeks after that. But that had been the last time Elsie could recall being really, truly, hungry.

  It was not, however, the last time she’d met his embrace in that office.

  She ran her fingers up and down the slender pen, sucking her teeth.

  Easy.

  Two silver stacks—tax to the Guild and Commissioner had to be, what, maybe half that? A few coppers to the poor soul who’d turned the damn thing, and the shopkeep would be sitting pretty in a rain of silvers. And what would he do, but thank the gods to be the shoe, not the bug.

  The sound of beetles crunching underfoot must be rather pleasant, from so far above.

  Elsie bit her lip, thinking.

  Does he know that Princess Pastry has sticky fingers?

  The pen clattered into the cup, her fingers moving to worry the locket instead.

  Debtor’s jail to gilded gifts.

  It was a long way to come for a bastard.

  They found the lodge in awkward silence, a fire dwindling in the hearth. Their half-eaten breakfast had been cleared from the coffee table, the rumbled bed freshly made, and even when the door had fallen shut behind them, Fletcher didn’t shift.

  He left the parcels from the inkshop on the messy writing desk in the corner, and still, he didn’t shift. He tugged his coat off. Ruffled his hair, looking around. Saw a stack of letters, bound in twine, waiting on the nightstand.

  And still, he remained uncomfortably human.

  “You’re not…are you going to stay like that?” she asked softly, hanging her coat on the hook by the door, watching him skim the letters left waiting. She’d borne witness to the courier who brought those letters, once, a few days ago, as she lay nestled into his bed, bathing in the late-morning light. It’d been just past eleven, she recalled, and a cadet, all in gray and belted with black, had appeared on the hearth rug, standing at attention as Fletcher sat up, pulling the blankets up a little closer.

  Sorry, sir, I—I didn’t—

  Fletcher had given Elsie a sidelong glance, apprehensive. And she’d grinned, pulling herself up to lean ag
ainst the headboard, sheets tucked tight around her. Any glimpse into his world was exhilarating, and the chance to meet another Drada…she wasn’t going to pass that up.

  It’s fine, Fletcher had sighed, giving her a reluctant smile before gesturing the cadet forward.

  Notice from the General, sir, he’s still furious you haven’t answered the censures—

  Censures, Elsie had cut in, frowning at Fletcher, as in, censures, plural?

  —and the situation on the western border is escalating, sir, the aide continued hesitantly, giving Elsie a scrutinizing look. Beg your pardon, Commander, but…permission to remark?

  What, Fletcher asked, raising an eyebrow.

  The cadet had paused. And then, the brightest smile Elsie had seen split across the boy’s face. It’s so lovely to meet you, my lady, he gushed. Fletcher—well, the Commander—he speaks of you often, and—well, it’s lovely, simply lovely, finally making your acquaintance.

  Leaving Fletcher with a stack of parchment and Elsie, flushed bright red, the cadet vanished a moment later.

  That’d been a lovely morning.

  Not having to pretend like things were normal.

  “Fletcher,” she echoed dully, and his head snapped up.

  “Sorry, yes, I will, but—Siddeus,” he stumbled.

  “Excuse me?”

  A few steps, and his arm was outstretched, passing her a letter full of scrawled script she couldn’t read. “One of my Captains. Mia Siddeus. She thinks she may have found a den, and it isn’t far from here.” He caught her gaze, a smile dancing on his lips. “El, we may have found our kobalde.”

  TEDDY

  “Ah, reality. Our fickle and ever-shifting friend.”

  ~Alva Praequintelya

  Bell clattering angrily, Sam was glaring as he slammed open the door. “That gods-damned piece of work had me fired!”

  Teddy stopped mid-way in reaching for the ledger beneath the counter, frozen in incredulity. “Wait, what?”