She had not needed to deliver the first part of her speech to her backers in Wildern. They knew about the city’s status and its dynamics, its growing population and the establishment of libraries and schools and theaters. Some denied the shift of power from the lumber magnates toward the Benevolent Union, but most would admit the organization’s importance. None would deny the city’s hunger to prove its worth to the rest of the country.
She left out her research into Wildern’s history and its role in the civil war, and moved on to the niche that the gallery might fill in Wildern’s public life. The remains of the entrepreneurial class, those whose fortunes were not sapped by too much competition, owned artwork and needed to shore up their legacies in a time when their industry seemed to be overshadowed by new forces. The middle class, swelled by the influx of skilled medical and teaching personnel, would be hungry for cultural entertainment. The theaters and library had no shortage of backers, and talk of a history museum had flown around for years.
Agna took a deep breath, folded her hands in her lap, and went on. “Our top investor is almost certain to be Aines Shora, the lead administrator of the Benevolent Union base in Wildern, which he personally campaigned to establish five years ago. He is ambitious, charismatic, and is a collector of some note. He has outfitted the base with a skilled selection of pieces both commissioned and not, and while his personal collection is not open for viewing, several of my artist contacts have sold him pieces for it. I believe his primary goal is to raise Wildern’s profile nationally.” She suspected he had secondary, tertiary and quaternary goals beyond that, ambition stacked on ambition. But those factors were not relevant yet.
“I am confident that a full collection and public opening can be financed in three to five years, with much of the preparation time used to source historical relics. My plan is to soft-open with limited-scope exhibitions until the full collection is complete, in order to build capital and public interest. We can familiarize the public with the artists’ work and sell some pieces to finance the next stage.”
“And how long would this introductory exhibition take to launch?”
Agna met her father’s eyes. “With the art I plan to buy here and on my way through Kavera, within two months of my return.” She kept silent about the bound books now tucked among her luggage. Admitting that she had considered exhibiting her own work would only make it look that much more like a hobby project.
“I see.” He folded his arms. He hadn’t slapped her plan down yet. It was already more of a victory than she had expected. “You have addressed the where and the when.”
Who and why were the tricky parts. “No one else has gotten to it yet” was only circumstance. She had to make herself indispensable. If she were replaceable, the project could be delegated, and she would lose her excuse for staying out of the agency.
“I’ve been immersed in Kaveran culture for over two years. I’ve developed a network of Kaveran artists through correspondence. And I bring an extensive art background.” She tried not to lean on the words more than was necessary.
Her father stood to look out of the windows behind his desk. The velvet drapes framed a courtyard garden encircled by a tile-roofed walkway, where Agna and Lina had once played tag. “It might be a fine plan,” he said. Agna heard the might and the approaching caveats despite the leap of hope in her chest. “For a younger sibling, a distant cousin, a striver without a good background, trying to make a name for himself or herself.”
“But not for me.”
The slant of his head shifted, as though he looked at the ground where she had once run, at the marble tiles where moss was artfully allowed to grow in the cracks. “You are not any of those things. You have no need to make a name for yourself.”
Agna flexed her hands, stuffing down the urge to grab at his arm, to demand to be seen and heard. It would only undermine her argument to remind him that she was no longer the twelve-year-old who had left for the Academy. Instead, she kept quiet and waited for the rest of his statement.
“The Despana Agency has been in business for one hundred and seventy-four years. You’re aware of that.”
“Yes.” She left off any further editorializing.
“Have you kept informed on the situation here?”
Sensing fatigue in his voice, Agna sat up straighter. He might actually address the real situation, the complicated morass of politics and family and clients’ whims that mired the agency. He might meet her as an adult at last. “In the art world? Or politically?”
“One pushes the other,” her father said, resting his hands on the windowsill. “Our agency is still solvent, but the market has weakened as the Families spend their time and money fighting. Most new orders are for portraiture, and while that sector grows, the other commissions have slowed. Prices have dropped on existing works. The outcome of this power struggle will determine what happens from here.” As he spoke, Agna noticed that his hair was growing gray, threaded evenly through the black. “Mind you, our client base is diverse. We have had the time and the patience to make inroads into the Families and into the common collectors. We have avoided the fate of the agencies that rise or fall with the fortunes of one powerful patron. But whomever stands to win in this fight — and someone will, eventually — the ground will shift under us. We cannot afford to be complacent or unfocused.”
“…I see.” She felt her cheeks warming and felt grateful that he wasn’t looking her way. It squared with what Marco had said. Her father trusted her with at least this much of the truth.
“Despana and Nocta will have to strategize together. So far, there is enough demand in the market for both of us. But we are aware of the risks that may come.” He turned to watch her, and Agna studied the new lines around his eyes. He was barely over sixty, younger than Jaeti. He had decades to come, if he watched his health. She had to ignore the hole opening up in her middle. The Despana Agency had survived for a hundred and seventy years. Raniero Despana would see them close to two hundred. He’d hold his great-grandchildren someday, and would have sooner, if Esirel’s assignment weren’t so blasted long. Agna thought of a letter arriving from a stranger, filled with platitudes and manufactured sympathy, and squeezed tears back from her throat.
Her father waved toward the upstairs offices. “Nocta is in good hands. Naire and I have full confidence in Marco Pirci. We’d rather give her agency to blood, but he’s been as good as blood to her and to the agency, and he and Violetta will come around to marrying eventually. He’ll take our name and run the Nocta Agency as a Despana. However long they may take to settle down, his position in the family is secure. And we hope to leave the Despana Agency in equally capable hands.”
It had been his plan all along; she’d known that, when she’d written to her father to gather contacts in Murio. Papa and Aunt Naire had lined up Naire’s heir, and pushed him into position to be Agna’s colleague in business as well as her cousin by marriage. It was a neat plan, all right angles and buttressing, built to withstand the currents of politics. She would fit perfectly in the middle of it if she gave up everything she’d worked to achieve.
Agna reminded herself that his plan was built on his respect for her ability. If he truly thought nothing of her, he wouldn’t hand over the reins of the company he had worked all his life to maintain. His plans for her weren’t merely because of her bloodlines. He simply assumed that this was the only fitting use for her talents.
“I appreciate your faith in me,” she said at last. “I hope I can live up to it. But…” She looked at her empty hands in her lap. “I want to build my own foundation. I want to do something new. Not just repeat your life. It’s been a good life for you, and you’ve achieved so much. But it isn’t my life.” A thread of fear pulled her along before he could sigh or retort, before he could voice how disappointed he was in her. “This is important to me. And nothing is going to change that. What I’m willing to do is to find a compromise somewhere else. So that we both get what we need.” She rested
her hands, now going clammy, on the polished wooden arms of the chair. “In twenty, thirty years’ time, I might come back and take my place. It could happen. But I can’t promise it.”
Her father sighed. “What is it about that country? They warned us about this. About the romantic notions Academy children get. You’re all so young, and they fill you with conviction that you’re the Balance’s chosen champions. But we thought you’d…” He trailed off as if to avoid saying We thought you’d know better. “Letting you waste your talent would be a failure on our part.”
Agna’s spine stiffened, and she hated that her face glowed hot again. “You know what it is about ‘that country’? About the Academy? I can be me. Not an extension of you. If I fail, I fail. If I succeed, do you take the credit for that, too?”
“There’s no need to be belligerent. You’ll understand when you have children.”
Keifon had collected the baker’s assistant and half the hospital personnel in his wake without even trying. She remained invisible in his shadow, as she’d been invisible in Rone’s at the Academy. There was always someone prettier and better-dressed and more charming. Someone like Letta, like Nelle, like Giada from the hospital. Someone who knew what to say and didn’t knock the corners off everything they touched. She had always been passed over. “But I won’t have children,” she snapped. “You don’t see it because you see me as Raniero, Part Two.” To cover her shaking, she got up and paced on the thick carpet of his office. “It would make my life so much easier if I liked girls, but I just don’t. And I’m invisible to boys and always will be. Unless you have some obvious solution to that, too.”
His voice softened, which only amplified the tension in her throat. “If you’d like to be introduced, we have connections. Colleagues’ children. Our younger agents and artists.”
It was the closest thing to a confession that she was likely to get out of him. Agna could have punched her past self, letting herself enjoy Marco’s letters and the chance to reconnect with the life she could have led. It had all been a plot, since the beginning, and Marco was too smart not to know that. His enthusiasm through all of their correspondence had seemed sincere, but alongside their friendship, he’d let her sail toward this trap.
“No, thank you,” she made herself say calmly. “It’s a secondary concern. This is my legacy. My legacy, not yours. It’s the only one I’ll ever have. And if I let it die, I couldn’t live with myself.”
Raniero Despana looked out of the windows for a long time, as a breeze rustled the juniper trees. “We sent you to the Academy to learn history, economics, politics. To be an educated individual and to gain perspective on the world. We also raised you to think for yourself.” His smile as he turned was warm, but his eyes were tired. “I suppose we have ourselves to blame for this.”
She crossed her arms, shifting her weight to one hip. “Guess so. Should’ve made me dumb and compliant. ‘Cause those make such good leaders.”
Chuckling, he shook his head and opened a broad notebook on his desk. “Now, as for possible solutions…”
Agna’s head felt light as she sat in the upholstered chair and opened her satchel, but her chest also felt light. There were ways out of this predicament. None of them were perfect. So little in this world was.
She left her business plan in place and withdrew the half-coherent notes she’d made last night. The same thoughts, the same names, scattered across the pages, arranged and rearranged in incomplete patterns. “Do you think Naire-ceisi and Marco Pirci would meet with us about this?”
Her father inclined his head. “I would venture to say they’re expecting it, sooner or later.”
“All right.” She lay the notes on the edge of his desk, where her palms wouldn’t make the pages damp. “They’re likely to be involved in some capacity, no matter what we do. And their plans and ours have to work in harmony somehow.”
“Agreed.”
Perhaps she should get that word in writing, and have it illustrated with gold leaf like the rare treasure it was. “Not the best idea, but I would like to rule it out right away. I could sell my inheritance to a willing heir. Marco, or one of your agents. Someone who wants to take my place.” She glanced past her father’s sour expression. “The problem is that it wipes out our name from the agency, at least for now. And I understand Marco’s status is unsure, these days.”
“Correct.”
She’d hang that up next to agreed, an impossible diptych. “I can’t suppose you have another promising employee hiding somewhere?”
He shrugged. “Capable, certainly. Talented in their own ways. But none with the capacity for leadership that you and Marco Pirci have shown.”
Agna nodded and shuffled her pages. The answer failed to leap out at her. “Lina doesn’t want it. Can’t. We’ve spoken. And it will be at least twenty-five years before her children are old enough to take over, if any of them show an interest, which isn’t guaranteed.” Six more years until Esirel came home, another year to marry and bear a child by a donor — it would be eight years before their first child would even be born, and another twenty before he or she came to maturity. And that was if Esirel and Lina rushed into having children immediately. They’d talked about wanting to start a family, but they would want to settle into their new home first, for goodness’ sake. Her father would be over eighty by the time the next heir came of age, and nothing could be done for it.
Agna sighed. “We could pin our hopes on Esi and Lina’s kids and stall for a couple of decades. By then I could hand off my gallery to someone in Kavera, if you need to retire before they’re ready. I suppose that’s a good backup plan, in any case. But… I know you don’t want to risk it, and I understand.”
He spread his hands, granting her point. “I appreciate your understanding. Go on.”
This was a test, too. He was letting her talk to see what she’d come up with. “I am not against consulting in the agency,” she said. “I admit, Marco suggested this to me yesterday. It’s not fully my idea. But I want you to know that I would be honored to consult from Kavera.”
“I can accept that. But decisions must be made quickly, especially in times like these. The time it takes to send letters to and from Kavera may not be enough.”
“I thought that might be a problem.” The last plan hadn’t been committed to ink. It existed only in the bitter corners of her mind and in one conversation, slippery with river water and bright with scattered sunlight. Maybe he’d actually fall in love with you, her dearest friend had said, as they’d talked about a man whom neither of them had met. But that was not how the world worked. Marco loved Letta, as it should be.
She set her notes aside. “I want you to be honest with me. When I asked you to get me in touch with someone my age at the agency, to get to know my peers in Murio, you chose Marco Pirci.”
“Yes. He had just been elevated from apprentice in Naire’s agency, and we all saw his potential.”
“Did you know he was already seeing Letta at that point?”
His shrug balanced between dismissive and resigned. Young people, who can keep up? “We were not aware one way or the other.”
“We.”
“Your aunt and I. This is a matter that concerns both our houses.”
“I see. It does.” She swallowed, hoping her parents’ new cook’s exquisite breakfast would not fight to return. “I suspected you had other motives for that choice.”
“All choices are complicated, Agna. Do say what you mean.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. The headache had receded, but she could feel the dull hollowness of its absence, the space where the pain would have fit. “Did you intend to marry us off to one another? Marco seems to think you did. And—” Her father did not know Keifon, or his sense for schemes built upon names and bloodlines. She hated to take credit for his idea, but to bring him up would only confuse the issue. “Sometimes I wonder, too.” Before he could confirm or deny it, she blundered ahead. “Because that’s awfully disresp
ectful. This is not two hundred years ago. And we’re not nobles, making deals with our children’s lives.”
“It was only ever a possibility,” Raniero said calmly. “The situation may have played out in a number of ways.”
“Well, it didn’t play out that way.” She was invisible, as always. She would charm no one, even by letter. And Letta was a brighter star than she would ever be. “Besides, wouldn’t that effectively merge the branches? If—if two spouses owned each branch, their property would be common among them. You could run them separately, but what would be the point?”
“Perhaps. It would, as you say, simplify the process of merging, should we choose to do so.”
Agna tipped her head back, studying the molding along the edges of the ceiling. “Letta and I should switch places,” she muttered. “If I were Naire-ceisi’s kid and Letta were yours.” It was a little ironic, medically speaking. Everyone in the family knew that Raniero had been the sperm donor for Naire-ceisi’s wife, Letta’s birth mother. But descent through a donor wasn’t legally binding, and so Letta wouldn’t inherit Raniero’s property.
Agna’s father merely tapped his fingertips together. “How so?”
“It would make things easier! If Letta were your heir, and they stopped being stubborn and got married, Marco could get rid of his Pirci name. Then they couldn’t force him into backing them, or make him go into exile if his family ends up on the outs with whoever wins this stupid shoving match. If she inherited Despana and he inherited Nocta, as Naire-ceisi’s designated heir, then they could run both branches together or separately; it wouldn’t really matter. They could specialize, like our work in gallery collections and Nocta’s portrait business. But it wouldn’t be a big uproar to merge them, because they’d be spousal common property anyway. If Letta wanted to get involved, she could. She knows a lot about the business, after all. Or she could keep painting and let Marco and their agents run the business. But he’d be out of the nobles’ fight, both branches would have an heir, and…”
The Healers' Home Page 34