Fortune's Fool (Eterean Empire Book 1)

by Angela Boord

  He sketches as he talks, making a big rectangle full of oval pools, bisected down the middle by the central aqueduct.

  “The steam room is over here. The pumps that bring the seawater up to fill its pools are housed here…and the channel that directs the hot water flows through this natural gap right here. Once you’re past it, there are only two more pools on your right before you reach the door to the kitchens. You’ll know you’re near because they perfume the water with sage. If we’re going to try to get out through the baths, there are three ways we could go—the kitchens, the front door, or the women’s side.” He lifts his eyes to look at me. “I suppose you might exit through either side. But Mikelo and I would stand out if we tried to leave through the women’s area.”

  I chew my lip and study the map. “You must spend a lot of time here,” I murmur.

  “I’ve had a few jobs,” he says.

  “Jobs?” I raise my eyebrow. “Really.”

  He catches my gaze briefly, then looks back down at the map. “Jasmine Pleasures is a little too high-end for my salary.”

  “Mmmm. Well. Your memory for places seems good. This is an excellent map.”

  He’s still leaning on the table with both hands, letting his gaze flick over it. “I suppose the ability to make maps doesn’t affect the quality of my life much.”

  “That’s a strange thing to say.”

  He straightens up, so I do too.

  His shoulders move in what might be a shrug or a stretch. “Perhaps I’ve developed a sense of irony since last you knew me.”

  “No. You’ve always had that. But it used to be less cynical than mine.”

  He smiles bleakly. “An innocent, was I?”

  It seems strange to think of it that way. But… “Perhaps we both were. In a way.”

  His brows pull down and he regards me oddly for a moment, as if my words have challenged his opinion of me. My fingers itch to touch him. The impulse leaves a dull hurt in its wake, almost as if I’ve lost another limb.

  We spend the rest of the night pillaging the whores’ closets.

  There are the expensive silk dresses, of course. The beribboned corsets and lacy chemises. The frilly white nightgowns. Wigs. But there are also, hanging tucked against the wall in their own section, a number of other outfits which some gentlemen prefer.

  An enormous red felt hat festooned with a peacock feather. A peasant’s guarnello. A Tiresian girl’s blouse and split skirt. Two entire suits of men’s clothing tailored to a woman, one a sober chocolate brown, the other carefully crafted of extravagant lavender silk.

  I can’t resist pulling it out and holding it up to see how it fits. Arsenault is leaning into the closet at the time, but he turns to eye me up and down, brows lifting slowly. Then the corner of his mouth pulls upward.

  “That would be quite a daring escape.”

  I sigh as if in disappointment and hang it back up. “Sadly, I think you’re right.”

  It’s hard to remember to be careful around him and all too easy to sink into old patterns. The strangeness of the situation is like a burning in my chest. I try to focus on thinking my way out of this bathhouse, but I’m constantly distracted by the small details of him at my side. The cuts and bruises on his knuckles as he carefully pushes a silk gown out of the way. The rise and fall of his chest as he stands and examines another. The sight of his fingers resting lightly on black lace stays, which he calmly sets aside.

  Every part of me aches. My muscles, my arm, my mind, my heart.

  I finally throw two dresses onto the bed beside Mikelo, who has fallen asleep or passed out, his hand still curled around the imya bottle.

  “Still can’t decide?” Arsenault says. He stretches out the skirt of a long pewter-gray gown and eyes it critically.

  “One’s for me,” I say. “And the other’s for Mikelo.” I pause and eye him. “But I don’t think that gown will do for you. Although it does bring out your eyes.”

  “I thought the plum silk would make me look a bit of a tart,” he shoots back, missing the reference completely or at least ignoring it. Either way it hurts. “I’m making an urqa. What are you going to do with Mikelo?”

  “Well…you might not be able to pull it off, Arsenault, but I believe Mikelo will make a credible scullery girl.”

  We both look down at him sprawled on the silk bedspread. He seems so very young, with those long, sooty black lashes closed against his cheek. Cassis had long lashes too.

  “You know, if you keep poking Geoffre, he’ll bite.”

  “I’m not doing it to poke Geoffre. But I do want to give myself a head start, and I don’t trust Geoffre to honor his promises. Do you?”

  Arsenault rubs the edge of his jaw, which has begun to darken with a shadow of black stubble. “Geoffre will send spies. But he won’t risk you killing Mikelo. At least not right off.”

  “Why not?”

  Arsenault shrugs and his gaze drops to the rumpled skirt in his hands. “He has a limited supply of heirs.”

  “He’s not too concerned with Devid and Cassis.”

  “He’s in marriage negotiations regarding Mikelo right now.”

  “Is it who he thinks he can get for Mikelo that makes the difference?”

  “Perhaps.” Arsenault draws his knife and begins to slice open the seams of the dress. I can tell by the way his mouth pulls down that I’ll get nothing more by pressing. Not now.

  “Still,” I say. “I think I’d like to put as much distance between us and Geoffre as possible.”

  “What do you think Mikelo is going to say to all this?”

  “He doesn’t trust his uncle either. He’ll do what he has to.”

  Arsenault’s knife rips through the silk again. “I suppose that’s all any of us are doing.”

  There doesn’t seem to be an answer to that. We both fall silent and turn to our work, pulling stitches, sewing, stitching, and hemming until the night is very far gone. Then, by unspoken agreement, we push our finished costumes to the side and find places where we can sleep, him sitting on the floor at the foot of Mikelo’s bed, one of his boot knives in his hand, and me facing him with my back against the door, his sword in my lap and the index finger of my left hand pushed lightly through the trigger of Jon’s gun.

  In the morning, Mikelo wakes with red-rimmed eyes, watery bowels, and a bad case of the shakes. He can’t spend more than a few minutes away from the chamber pot, and Arsenault makes him drink water. He throws up the shot I give him for health. By the time we get around to negotiating about the dress, serving girls are clattering about in the hallway outside with breakfast dishes.

  Mikelo doesn’t want to go along with my plan. Predictably.

  “It’s a ruse, Mikelo, not forever. They’re going to be looking for a Prinze guard and a young gavaro, and instead, we’ll leave through the women’s dining room underneath the bathhouse as two kitchen girls.”

  “And what about Andris?”

  Andris—Arsenault—shrugs. “The girls won’t think it strange if I say I’ve taken a Qalfan job. I know some Qalfans. The robes will make it easier later on.”

  I shoot him a sharp glance, remembering what Razi told me about men wearing Qalfan robes to hide. “Do you often take Qalfan jobs?”

  “No. But I’ve experience on the caravans and the girls know that.”

  “How do you remember—”

  “There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Jon helped me fill in the gaps.” He touches the gray silk folded over the back of a chair, seeming to concentrate on his thumb smoothing out a wrinkle. “At least for that part of my life.”

  I’ll wager he did, I think, but I bite my lip to stop the words coming out.

  “Why can’t I just robe as a Qalfan down in the baths?” Mikelo asks.

  “Because if I go out as a woman, we won’t be able to walk out the same door,” I say. “Unless you want me to pretend I’m your whore.”

  Mikelo looks at me in defiance. “Well, why not?”

  I lean ba
ck on the sideboard, crossing my arms and my ankles. “Are you paying me a compliment?”

  His face turns brick red. “No! I mean, I—”

  “The other girls will notice a new courtesan. They’d stop us in a heartbeat to find out who I was. And that would lead them to find out who you were.”

  “Couldn’t Andris just…bribe somebody to let us out? I mean, if the girls know him…”

  I stare at him, unable for a moment to accept that he has suggested what he’s just suggested. Maybe there’s more to Mikelo than I thought.

  Arsenault is leaning against the wall with his shoulder, his ankles crossed like mine in that easy gavaro stance. But his eyes, underlined by the violent purple bruise, do not look easy. He straightens up against the wall. “I’d rather not. If it’s all the same to you.”

  Who is this man?

  What happened to him in those years I was gone?

  “No,” I say. I try to keep my voice on a level, but I’m not sure how well I manage. “You’re going to put on a dress, because it’s just a piece of clothing.”

  “I don’t look anything like a girl.”

  I take his chin in my hand. “Well, you’ve got that pretty Prinze mouth. And those eyelashes and cheekbones.”

  Mikelo jerks away from me, glaring.

  “It’s just a piece of clothing,” I tell him again. “Some paint on your face. It doesn’t change who you are inside. It’s just a ruse you wear in order to stay alive.”

  “You’re trying to keep me alive now?”

  “Well. A long time ago, I promised a man I’d stay alive however I could. I’ve taken that promise seriously until now, and I don’t see any reason I should stop. If you’ll keep me alive, I’ll keep you alive.”

  Slowly, some of the suspicion seeps out of Mikelo’s eyes. “So, you’re not doing this just to torment me?”

  “No.”

  He looks down at his hands in his lap, then gives a short nod. “All right. I’ll do it. If it will get us out of this room.”

  Some of the tension inside me unwinds. A gun against a man’s head only works for so long. Eventually, he’ll dare you to use it, to see if you’re serious. If you aren’t, you’ll lose him, and if you are…you’ll lose him, too, but it will be worse.

  Arsenault’s shoulders relax their stiff line.

  “Keep close to me when we get to the baths,” I say. “Remember, I’m armed.”

  Mikelo nods in a defeated way, and Arsenault moves away from the wall to help me gather up our clothes.

  I chose a set of linen petticoats and an unremarkable brown skirt for myself, a loose, long-sleeved chemise, and a set of leather stays that lace in front. It won’t be quite like wearing armor, but the leather will give me more protection than a flimsy guarnello.

  Before we leave the room, I take off my shirt in the closet and unwind the binding that presses my breasts flat against my chest. I haven’t had it off in days, and my ribs were beginning to feel as if they’d been crushed. I allow myself one long, slow, deep breath and a stretch before I slide the chemise over my head and tuck its skirt into my trousers like a long blousy shirt. Then I pull on the stays and lace them up. With my tunic and my cloak on, I doubt anyone will notice my chest as we walk downstairs, but it will cut down on the amount of clothing I have to carry and dispose of.

  I can hear Arsenault talking to Mikelo through the closet door, which I left open just enough to shoot him if he tries to escape. I push it open and step out, fiddling with the blousing chemise. I’m not sure it’s going to look like a shirt.

  “You’ll talk to the bath attendant,” Arsenault is telling Mikelo. “I think Geoffre is probably trying to keep this situation hushed up…”

  His voice drifts off. I look up and he’s staring at me. Mikelo, who was frowning in concentration, glances up to see why Arsenault has stopped talking and stares at me too.

  I suddenly feel naked. I haven’t worn women’s clothing in five years.

  I put my fists on my hips. “You expected a demon?”

  Arsenault clears his throat and his fingers tighten on the veil he’s holding. His gaze lingers a little too long on my stays, long enough to bring up the heat in my skin, then flickers suddenly off to the side. “You still walk like a man,” he says roughly.

  I’m not sure I remember the way a woman is supposed to walk. In the space of a few moments, I’m going to have to unlearn everything I learned over the past five years. Perhaps what I told Mikelo is a lie. Maybe you don’t remain the same underneath the ruse. Maybe the ruse changes you until you become the thing you were only pretending to be.

  Take Arsenault, for instance. Lobardin was right; he was always a devil with a ruse, which never made any sense given how recognizable he was with that scar and that bright metallic shock of hair. But he never played a role that didn’t seem believable, and he never attempted too much disguise. Mostly, he let other people believe what they wanted to believe.

  His bruised gaze tracks over me again, like he can’t help it, and I pretend I don’t notice him do it.

  Does he remember me more now that he can see the shape of me, or is it just surprise?

  Mikelo says with some horror, “I’m not going to have to wear stays, am I?”

  Arsenault turns toward him and laughs, shakily. “Dear gods, I hope not. I don’t think we could lace them that tight.”

  I kneel down quickly in front of the jewelry safe so they won’t see me blush.

  “What are you doing?” Mikelo asks.

  “Cracking the lock.” I give it a twist and a squeeze with my right hand and it breaks. I open the door to reveal drawers full of jewelry, which I grab and shove into my pocket for later. There’s also a slim steel dagger folded up inside its hilt.

  “Oh, you dear girls, you’re all spies,” I whisper, and hunching over the safe, I ease the wooden busk out of my stays and slide the dagger down the slot between them instead.

  In another velvet-lined compartment lies a set of silver hatpins. When I first saw the hat, I knew there would have to be hatpins, and I can’t hide my grin. The hatpins are half the length of my forearm, and their sharp ends glitter in the dim light.

  I shake my hair out of its queue, then twist it up and push the hatpins into the knot to secure it. Now I feel better for being well armed.

  When I stand up, Arsenault is still watching me but like he’s trying not to.

  It’s been a long time since a man looked at me like that. Knowing I was a woman.

  A knock at the door makes us both jump.

  “Would the gentlemen like breakfast?” a young voice calls. I grab my swordbelt and tunic, then rise and join Arsenault in front of the door. He’s looking out the peephole.

  “A girl,” Arsenault says in a low voice. “With a tray of food. No one else in the hall that I can see.”

  Mikelo groans. “Food. No.” Then he takes a ragged breath. “But coffee…coffee might be welcome.”

  I struggle my tunic on over my head and begin buckling on my swordbelt. “Let her in,” I tell Arsenault.

  He swings the door open, but he keeps his body in front of it. Through the gaps, I catch a glimpse of a girl in a beige guarnello holding a tray heaped with pastries and buns. There’s enough food there to feed an army of gavaros, not just the three of us, and a steaming pot that smells comfortingly of coffee.

  “Hello, Andris,” she says as Arsenault steps aside to let her in. “The girls in the kitchens sent up your favorites. And for your companion, Cook made some of these Rojornicki buns special. I don’t know what they’re called.”

  Arsenault smiles down at her, but I’m watching his face and his eyes are troubled. “Hello, Clara,” he says. “Which are the Rojornicki buns?”

  I move up beside him to look at the tray. “Kefli,” I name them, pointing to the flaky crescents filled with almond paste and soft cheese that Markus and his wife ate every morning. Kefli rarely made it down to the barracks; we lived on buckwheat groats. My mouth begins to water, but t
here’s an off smell somewhere. I sniff, trying to place it, as the girl walks over to the sideboard with the tray.

  She’s a thin little thing with dull brown hair in two neat braids over her shoulders, and she has to lean backward to lift the tray up onto the sideboard. Arsenault grabs it from her and puts it down himself. The girl smiles at him anxiously, and he smiles back in a manner designed to put her at ease.

  “Would you like something, Clara?” he asks. “You ought to have a reward for carrying that all the way up here.”

  Her smile falters and she shakes her head firmly. “Oh, no, Andris, I couldn’t. The girls told me I mustn’t. Or—”

  “Or,” he repeats, in that dark way I heard often enough when he registered some injustice done to me. I let my gaze sweep over the girl, checking for bruises, but her skin seems clear. She lowers her eyes to the floor and begins backing out of the room.

  “We hope you enjoy your breakfast,” she says, not looking up until she steps through the doorway and out into the hall. Then she drops a quick curtsey and bolts away as quick as she can.

  Mikelo slides off the bed as Arsenault pushes the door shut. “Maybe my stomach will settle if I put something in it.”

  Cardamom buns. That’s what the girls sent up for Arsenault. Also stuffed with almond paste.

  I lean over the tray and take a big sniff.

  Lots of almonds on this tray, and there’s just a hint of bitterness beneath the sweet.

  Mikelo stands at my shoulder, not quite touching me. “Oh,” he says. “Raisin twists. My favorite.”

  There are no almonds in raisin twists.

  I look up to find Arsenault also leaning down. We lock glances.

  I jerk the tray off the sideboard with both hands and swing it around, heading for the window.

  “What are you doing?” Mikelo exclaims.