Henrik nodded. “All right, what about them?”
“You all leave them on the table while you’re eating. They should be neatly folded in your lap until you get up.”
“All right.” He obeyed, picking up his napkin and setting it over his knees attentively. Everyone else shadowed him, doing the same. “What else?”
“The bread. You tear it, you don’t cut it with your knife.”
“Well, that doesn’t make any sense,” Murrow muttered beside me, but he shut his mouth when Henrik glared at him.
“And your elbows shouldn’t touch the table,” I continued, giving a fleeting glance to Ezra, who had his set on either side of his plate, as usual. When he didn’t move, Henrik jerked his chin, ordering him to obey. He gave an irritated sigh before he sat back in his chair.
“You all eat too fast and take bites that are too big. And you shouldn’t leave the plate completely empty or the host will think you left the table hungry.”
Henrik listened intently, and I could see him thinking. Going over the plan in his mind. But there was far more work to be done with this lot than dinner manners if they were going to be accepted into the society of the guilds. It was in everything they did. Everything they said.
We continued on like that throughout the meal and Sylvie watched from the hall, snickering into the corner of her apron. Her cheeks were rosy, watching like a clucking hen as I corrected them. Much to my surprise, I didn’t get a single argument. Even Anthelia played along, helping Tru when he struggled to hold his knife in the correct hand.
After dinner, the soft haze of mullein smoke from my uncles’ pipes drifted through the air, casting everything in a dreamlike glow. I was beginning to see the beauty in the house. Beneath its uneven papered walls and creaky floorboards, there was a history. Legends and myths. In the daylight, it was cold and dark, but at night, the home of the Roths came alive with warmth and candlelight, softening its jagged edges.
The ping of dice on the long counter in the kitchen ricocheted up the hall, followed by the collective roar of my uncles and cousins. When I came to stand in the doorway, they were gathered around the large rectangular butcher block that had been cleared for the game.
The counter along the wall was set with trays of little gooseberry jam cakes and small loaves of cardamom bread. In Nimsmire, they were considered to be rustic treats, never favored over the custard-filled pastries and gold-dusted chocolates that filled the extravagant shop windows. But here, they were treasures.
It was the dice that made me feel more at home. Three Widows was a favorite of my great-aunt and everyone in the Merchant’s District of Nimsmire. They’d gather in parlors and galleries of grand homes with bottles of cava and wine and play late into the night. That was the fine line edged between people like the Roths and the guild. Gambling was a guilty pleasure among the highbrow society, a kind of open secret. They all played, winning and losing coin, but only within the walls of private homes. Such things weren’t for the daylight.
Noel picked up the three dice and cupped his hands, giving Anthelia a wink. She stood in front of the huge iron stove and when she smiled, she immediately looked years younger. Her face came alive. Noel threw the dice, letting them hit the wall before they scattered onto the counter. There was a holding of breath before shouting erupted again and Noel groaned, taking one of the cakes from the platter to soothe the sting.
I didn’t know why the Roths never ate dessert at the table like any other normal family, but I supposed that was just it—they weren’t normal. Whenever I’d attended family dinner, they’d retreated to the kitchen the way families in Nimsmire would have retreated to the salon.
Henrik stood leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, listening patiently as Tru recounted a story to him. From this angle, I couldn’t see the bruise that marked his cheek, and I was glad. He looked like any other boy, with bright, wide eyes, his hands moving in the air as he described something that had happened down on the docks.
Henrik saw me watching from the doorway and scooted over to make a space for me against the wall. I took a cake from the tray and wedged myself between them. When Tru laughed, so did Henrik, and it was strange to see my uncle that way. Ezra and Murrow had thought it better to strike Tru across the face rather than send him to Henrik, but my uncle was a different person in that kitchen. As if the moment dinner ended, everyone finally exhaled.
Casimir had Jameson in his arms, talking over his mop of dark, unruly hair to Murrow until he became too fidgety to hold. He let him slide down to the floor and when his little hands reached up to the counter’s edge for one of the cakes, Sylvie swatted him away gently.
Henrik watched from the corner of his eye until her back was turned, and he plucked one up from the tray, discreetly handing it to Jameson. The little boy’s mouth opened into a perfect O and Henrik nudged him through the door, into the hallway. I found myself smiling as another round of clamor rang into the air and Murrow picked up the dice, shouting.
There was a rhythm to this family. A heartbeat. From the outside looking in, they were beastly. Monstrous, even. But I was beginning to see beneath their glittering scales.
“You ready for tomorrow?” Henrik said, turning so one shoulder was set against the wall beside me.
“Yes,” I answered, almost instantly. I wasn’t sure how true it was, but I didn’t want to think too much about it.
Henrik gave me an approving smile. “Eden was that way.” His voice drifted. “Always fearless.”
I watched him carefully. It was the first time I’d heard him speak about my mother. The sound of her name on his lips made me feel a bit unsteady. “I’m not fearless,” I said.
Henrik’s empty gaze went past me, to the dark hallway, and he gave no indication that he’d heard me. He seemed lost in thought. Or memories.
My parents had died not long after my grandfather, and Henrik had been the architect of the job they’d been on. Maybe that was why he didn’t like talking about her.
I drew in a breath before I gathered up the courage to ask. “I saw the tea house in the Merchant’s District when I went to see the couturier.”
Henrik blinked several times before his eyes refocused on me. “Oh?” He suddenly looked a little uncomfortable and I was afraid it had been a mistake to mention it.
“How long has it been boarded up like that?”
His hands slid into his pockets, going a little stiff. “For years.”
I understood now why Tru said Henrik didn’t like talking about Eden. His whole manner changed, transforming him back into the man with bloodied knuckles I’d met the first day I arrived.
“Why didn’t you ever open it?” I asked, more softly.
Henrik frowned. “The tea house was Eden’s scheme. When the time came for her to have a stake of her own, I helped her purchase it. I thought it was a silly idea, but I gave it to her as a wedding gift and then she and Tomlin used their own coin to set it up.”
“Why a tea house? Was it a front for something else?”
Henrik shook his head. “No, just a tea house. She wanted the family to venture into more respectable work. So did Sariah.”
I watched his eyes, trying to see what danced in the light there. It pained him to talk about her. I could see that. Perhaps that’s what all this was about—legitimizing the family with a merchant’s ring. Maybe Henrik was fulfilling Eden’s wishes, in a way.
“Didn’t make much sense to open it once she was gone,” he said.
“Why didn’t you sell it?”
The air around him shifted and I held my breath. The problem with Henrik was that I didn’t know where the edges of his moods were. There was a sharp melting point between his fury and his good nature.
“I was just thinking,” I took a chance in saying it, “that it was a good idea. A tea house is the perfect way to endear the Roths to the guilds.”
He puffed on the pipe in his hand, letting the smoke ripple from his lips.
&n
bsp; “I would wager there isn’t a merchant in Bastian who doesn’t take meetings at a tea house. If you want the merchant’s ring, it’s a good place to start.”
“That’s what you think, is it?”
“I do.”
“Sounds to me like you’re making a pitch for your own stake.”
“Why not? Everyone else in the family has one.”
That made Henrik pause. “Everyone else has earned one,” he corrected.
The implication was that I hadn’t proven myself yet, and he wasn’t wrong. But if I could pull off this dinner and get Simon to offer his patronage, that would all change.
He turned back to the kitchen before I could answer, making it clear the conversation was over. But I could still see the thoughts illuminated behind his eyes. Getting the merchant’s ring would give him everything he wanted. But if he was going to join the guild, he had to stop thinking like a criminal, gathering gossip in rye-soaked taverns, doing dirty deals, and stealing information from merchants’ ledgers. At the very least he had to be better at hiding it.
“Are we really ready for tomorrow?” he asked, changing the subject.
I nodded. “We’re ready.”
He took the last puff on his pipe, staring into the ash-filled chamber as it blew out of his nostrils. Henrik would have to change if he wanted the family to change and I wasn’t sure yet how to help him see that. But there was a pattern to Henrik like there was to any other man. I just had to be patient enough to dissect it.
“All right,” Sylvie crooned, setting down the last tray. It was a tower of flaky, half-moon fruit pies with a golden crust. As soon as they hit the counter, Henrik joined the others, picking up the dice and shaking them in his fist.
The family swarmed around the butcher block like moths to a flame and Casimir poured another round of rye. The sound of their voices faded as I slipped out into the dark hallway, following the narrow passage to the workshop. I knocked three times and after a few moments, it opened.
Ezra stood inside, glancing over my head as if he had expected someone else to be standing there. “What is it?”
I reached into the pocket of my skirts, pulling out two hairpins. I held them up between us in answer and as soon as his eyes landed on them, he let the door swing open. He turned on his heel and I stepped inside, pushing the door closed behind me until the lock fell into place.
Ezra returned to his forge, going back to the anvil and picking up the mallet on the table. He was working on what looked like a cuffed bracelet, with delicate, intricate patterns hammered along its edge.
Down the hall, the shouting rang out. It sounded like Henrik was winning. “Don’t you play?” I asked, coming around the table opposite of him where the locked chest was waiting. I’d been practicing every chance I got, spending late nights and early mornings in the workshop.
Ezra’s eyes went to the closed door. “No.”
“I saw the dice on your dressing table,” I jibed, trying to thaw the ice between us. Whether I agreed with his treatment of Tru or not, I understood now that it wasn’t barbarity that had made him do it. But Ezra was still keeping me at arm’s length.
“I’ve lost enough with the toss of the dice,” he said, more quietly.
The way he said it got beneath my skin. It wasn’t a passing comment or a joke about coin. There was heaviness in the words. A truth.
I tilted my head. “You could have told me.”
“What?”
“Why you hit Tru,” I said. “You let me think you’d hurt him to be cruel.”
His hand found the tiny pick in the pocket of his apron and he sat back down onto the stool. “What does it matter? I still hit him.”
“It matters,” I said, louder than I’d meant to.
Ezra stared at me, filling the space between us with a howling silence. He always seemed to be shifting between truth and lie. I didn’t know which side of him was the real one.
“What did you mean when you said you weren’t supposed to be at Arthur’s?”
Ezra drew in a deep breath and his shirt pulled over his chest beneath the apron. The sound was like the brush of the waves against a ship. “If things had gotten out of hand, I would have stepped in.”
I wanted to tell him that things did get out of hand. That I had the mark on my face to prove it. But I reminded myself that he lived in a world with a very different idea of what out of hand meant.
“What did you mean when you said you weren’t supposed to be there?” I asked again, more quietly.
It took him a moment to decide if he would answer. “Henrik wanted to push Arthur out of the running for Simon’s patronage, so he sent you there knowing what would happen. He wasn’t happy that I followed you, but luckily his plan worked. Simon got wind of it and…”
“Murrow,” I whispered. That’s why he went to the tavern. To tell the story.
A tight feeling pulled at the center of my chest and my fingers curled into a fist on the table. Murrow had been in on it, too. They all were. By the next morning, Simon had heard, and the invitation came.
I kept my eyes on the flames in the forge. I’d figured out what Henrik was up to, but Murrow playing along hurt. He was the one person in the house I’d thought was in my corner.
“If I had interfered, we’d probably be in a worse situation.”
We. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. The family? Him and Henrik? Him and me?
He waited for me to say something, but I didn’t. What was there to say? It was both infuriating and completely unsurprising. And there was absolutely nothing I could do about any of it.
Eventually the tapping started and I was grateful for the noise. The sound of Ezra’s work was a constant resonance in the house, and it had become comforting. Now, it was the quiet that put my teeth on edge.
I got to work, bending the first pin the way he’d taught me. We didn’t speak as I picked the lock over and over, resetting it each time it clicked open. I had the muscle memory now, but Simon’s lock would be a little different. According to Ezra, they all were.
“Try it with your eyes closed,” Ezra said.
I hadn’t realized he’d stopped tapping. He stood on the other side of his table, leaning into it with both hands as he watched me.
When I hesitated, he lifted his chin toward the chest. “Try it.”
I looked at the pins in my hands, turning them in the light as I went through it in my mind once more. My eyes closed and I felt for the lock before me, my brow wrinkling as I worked. This time, they didn’t release easily, and my hands fumbled for the right angle until I pulled them out and tried again, relying on only the feeling of the pins to guide me. It took longer and I had to go through the steps more slowly, but when the latch released, my eyes popped open.
I looked up at Ezra and he gave me a subtle nod, the slightest smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. There was a faint, delicate crack in the cold, hard exterior of the silversmith. And I was becoming more and more curious what lay beneath it.
A wide grin broke on my lips. That was all the approval I’d get from him, I thought.
He unclamped the piece of silver he was working and rotated it before the tapping resumed in a steady, calming rhythm. I started again, and as the night drew on, the rising moon filled the workshop with a pale blue light and the sound of dice in the kitchen faded.
The door to Henrik’s study opened and closed and I sat up straighter, starting on the lock again. There’d been a different look in Henrik’s eyes at dinner that night, an air of respect that hadn’t been there before. He was a man who counted on no one. But in this, he was counting on me.
FIFTEEN
Even I had to admit, the gown was perfect.
I stood in front of the long, framed mirror in my room, running my hands over the chiffon. The skirts swayed from my hips, where the waist was cinched up into a fitted silver bodice that bled into long, sheer sleeves. I buttoned the last of the closures at the back of my neck. The chiffon was embroidere
d with glittering thread that depicted drifting leaves. It was a gown that looked fit for a ball with sea nymphs. The couturier had done his best work and now I had to do mine.
The image I saw in the mirror was like looking back in time, to Nimsmire. I was exactly what Sariah had raised me to be. A finely dressed doll ready to play a role for my uncle. But the image was missing the brightly painted walls of Sariah’s home. The polished wood furniture and the colorful rugs that covered the floor. The room that enveloped me was dark and shadowed and the candlelight played on my face until I was almost unrecognizable.
The girl in the mirror tonight wasn’t me, I reminded myself. She was a character in an elaborate stage play that had been going on for my entire life. Tonight, I was Bryn, the refinement of the Roths incarnate.
Beneath the shimmering gown, I was brimming with a dark excitement. There was a part of me that liked the idea of stepping into my mother’s shoes. I’d never fit among the gilded shelf of pretty things in Nimsmire. I was a rose with one too many thorns. But here, I had a place. And the more time I spent with the Roths, the more hopeful I was that I could truly belong.
I clasped my shoes before putting up my hair, and then I carefully pulled down a few strands around my face. I didn’t look like my mother in the portrait downstairs. I didn’t have her curves, but the dress gave shape to where I had none. The color against my skin was like frost, and the raw-cut edges of the chiffon fluttered against my collarbones, where three freckles were placed in a jagged constellation. I looked more like the woman I’d seen in Fig Alley. The one who’d appeared and disappeared like a specter. That woman was the kind of customer who would have made my mother’s tea house an elegant, prestigious haunt among the guild. And if I played my cards right at Simon’s, that was exactly what I planned to tell Henrik to sway him.
I draped my heavy, black velvet cloak over my arm and went downstairs. The doors to the study were open and the fire was blazing, as usual. But the man sitting behind the desk was new.
Henrik bent low over his ledger in his fine blue dinner jacket, scribbling with the quill.
The Last Legacy Page 10