“Should we—” she began.
“Let us talk later,” Perrin said. “When there are fewer prying ears.”
Sienne nodded.
More lots came and went. Perrin half-heartedly bid on a kitchen table, and won. “Leofus has been complaining about the old table we use now,” Perrin said as he accepted the chit showing the lot number he’d purchased. “I thought this would be a nice gift for him.”
“He’ll be thrilled.” Sienne felt empty. Of course there was no point conserving their money now the knives were out of reach, but it was so pointless. She didn’t know how Perrin managed not to despair. Or maybe he was despairing, and concealed it well.
It was hours before the auction was over, and by the end Sienne’s feet hurt from standing so long, her stomach was empty, her bladder was full, and her hands were numb from cold. The announcement of the last lot energized her, until she remembered they still had to pay for the table. After what had happened, she resented the table for keeping them one moment longer than necessary, but she waited more or less patiently with Perrin to present their chit and hand over the money. “Will you arrange for delivery?” the man who took their money asked.
“My companion will handle the details,” Perrin said, walking over to the table. Sienne followed him, pulling out her spellbook and opening it to fit. She’d had the spell for six months and still wasn’t tired of using it. Slowly she read out the syllables of the transform, envisioning the size she wanted the table to become, and savored the honey-sweet taste that filled her mouth. As the last sound left her lips, the ten-foot-long table vanished, replaced by a doll-sized table no more than a foot long. There was never any transition between the two states; objects went from one size to another with no intervening stages. Sienne closed her spellbook, ignoring the stares and whispers of the onlookers. Perrin picked up the table. “Our thanks,” he said, and strode off toward the exit.
Sienne began to follow him, but a hand on her arm stopped her. It was the girl who’d outbid them. She held a bulky leather bag larger than Sienne’s spellbook in her other hand. “I have something you want,” she said in the same thin voice.
“How dare you taunt me!” Sienne said, jerking away.
The girl was unmoved by Sienne’s anger. She dipped into her belt pouch and brought out a rectangle of pasteboard. A calling card. Sienne had once had ones just like it. She extended it to Sienne, who took it without thinking. “Be at that address at nine a.m. tomorrow. All of you.” She tucked the leather bag under one arm and turned to go.
“Wait!” Sienne said. “Why—”
“Tomorrow,” the girl said, and kept walking.
Perrin hadn’t stopped walking, and now he returned to Sienne’s side. “Sienne,” he said, “why were you talking to her?”
Sienne looked at the card. It bore the name Odela Figlari and an address on the east side of Fioretti. “I think,” she said absently, “we’ve just been had.”
2
Perrin took the card and read its contents. “Figlari,” he said. “The name is unfamiliar.”
“She said ‘all of us,’” Sienne said. “Perrin, this was a set-up.”
“Agreed,” Perrin said. He tucked the card into his belt pouch. “Back to Master Tersus’s house, and we will discuss it.”
He turned away, then halted. Standing in front of him was the trio of finely-dressed merchant’s representatives, or minor nobles, or whatever they were. Perrin went very still. “Good afternoon,” he said, all emotion drained from his voice.
“You’re still in Fioretti,” the oldest of the trio said. He had silver hair swept back from his face, which was handsome despite the many lines wrinkling it. Sienne judged him to be in his early sixties, and very hale.
“And why should I not be? It is my home.” Perrin’s right hand closed into a loose fist, and Sienne hoped he wasn’t going to start a fight, surrounded by all these guards.
“You should have the decency to leave, and prevent encounters like this,” the man’s female companion said.
“I did not choose to speak to you,” Perrin said. “Please excuse us. My companion and I have business elsewhere.”
“Your ‘companion’?” the older man said. His lips compressed in a tight, pale line. “You betray Cressida—”
Perrin’s fist tightened. “My friend is a scrapper, as am I. And you are the one who annulled my vows, not I. By law, there is nothing to betray. But I am faithful as you were not.”
The man snarled and slapped Perrin. The sound rang out over the murmurs of conversation. Two guards looked in their direction.
Perrin didn’t retaliate. His hand was clenched so tightly it was almost white. “I think we have nothing left to say to one another,” he said. “Unless you would like to include those guards in our conversation.”
The man took a step backward. “Leave the city,” he said. “Spare your family the humiliation—”
“The humiliation is all in your eyes,” Perrin said. “Now get out of my way.” He walked forward, and Sienne held her breath, certain there would be a fight. But the man and his companions stepped aside, and Sienne hurried to catch up to Perrin, who was almost running.
They emerged from the auction house into darkness and a thin rain. Night had fallen while they were inside, and the cobbled streets were slick in a way that suggested it had been raining for several hours. Sienne trotted to keep up with Perrin, and finally gasped, “Slow down, please!”
Perrin came to a stop. Sienne got a look at his face and swallowed her next complaint. He shifted the table and swiped away the water slicking his cheeks. Sienne pretended to believe it was just the rain. “My apologies,” he said. “I would like to return to Master Tersus’s quickly, and get out of this incessant rain.”
“Me too, but my legs are shorter than yours.” Sienne walked beside him at a somewhat less brisk pace, and finally dared, “You knew that man?”
She regretted her words instantly. Of course he knew him. That was the stupidest thing she could have said. But Perrin, to her surprise, let out a short laugh. “You could say so,” he said. “That was Lysander Delucco. My father.”
Shocked, Sienne blurted out, “He expected you to leave Fioretti?”
“He did. Disinheriting me was insufficient balm to his soul, I fear. Nothing less than my complete disappearance would satisfy him. But I was never a satisfactory son, even when he still considered me that.”
“He thought you and I were a couple.”
“He has a low mind, for someone so… respectable.” Perrin’s voice was low and bitter, and Sienne stopped short of asking him who Cressida was. She didn’t need to ask; based on that conversation, Cressida was almost certainly Perrin’s wife. He had a wife? Or—was she not his wife anymore? Perrin had said Lysander had annulled his vows. In either case, Sienne could guess how painful it would be to Perrin to bring her up.
“I’m sorry,” she said instead. “That your father is an ass, I mean.”
Perrin shot her a surprised glance. Then he laughed, heartily this time as if she’d just told the funniest joke he’d ever heard. “My thanks,” he said when he wound down. “I was on the verge of feeling sorry for myself, but you have reminded me that not all my woes are of my own making.” They were trudging up the short hill to Master Tersus’s house, and Perrin once more wiped water off his face. “Let us hope they have waited dinner on us. I feel my stomach is trying to cave in on itself from hunger.”
Sienne went through the door into the welcome warmth of Master Tersus’s back hall. She hung her wet cloak on its accustomed peg and ran her fingers through her shoulder-length chestnut hair. Light, and the smells of roast beef, came from the kitchen doorway ahead, and she advanced into the room, for the moment not thinking about Perrin’s tragedy or their colossal failure. She called it Master Tersus’s house, like they all did, but in her heart, it was home.
Her other companions were seated at the scarred old table and looked up when she entered. Nearly empty plat
es lay in front of them, and Kalanath, red-haired and wiry, was the only one still eating. As usual, his staff stood propped against the wall behind him, next to the kitchen window. The young Omeiran had a healthy appetite for someone who never seemed to gain any weight.
Beside him, Dianthe had pushed her plate away with a few morsels of potato still clinging to it. Her dark blonde hair, braided in a crown around her head, was as untidy as it always was by this time of day. Long, agile fingers held her wine glass lightly, and she thrummed the fingers of her other hand against the table top. At the moment, she was laughing at something, the merry sound making Sienne wish she’d heard the joke.
And, seated at the head of the table as usual, Alaric leaned back with his hands behind his head in a pose that said he’d thoroughly enjoyed his meal. The giant Sassaven, with his white-blond hair and pale blue eyes, was tall even when he was sitting, his broad shoulders and well-muscled chest making him look even bigger than he was. He caught sight of Sienne in the doorway and smiled a welcome. She smiled back and hoped it didn’t look as foolish as she felt whenever she saw him.
“You’re back!” Dianthe exclaimed. “There’s food in the oven. Hurry, I want to see it—” Her cheerful smile wavered, then disappeared. “That’s a table. A doll’s table.”
“A gift for Leofus,” Perrin said. “But we failed to achieve our primary goal. I will not apologize, as it seems we were made the dupe of someone else’s plan.”
Alaric’s smile vanished. “Sit,” he said. “Tell us what happened.”
Sienne got herself a plate from the warming oven. The slices of roast beef were tender and pink, the roasted potatoes sprinkled with herbs and salt, but the smell didn’t tempt even her empty stomach. She sat next to Alaric and picked up knife and fork. “We were outbid. By someone who did it on purpose.”
“I do not see,” Kalanath said. “If you are outbid it must be on purpose, yes? Or do I misunderstand?”
“I mean,” Sienne said between bites, “she intended us not to have the knives.”
“She paid a thousand lari for them,” Perrin said.
Exclamations went up all around. “There’s no way we could have paid that much,” Alaric said.
“Indeed. But then she approached Sienne afterward, informing her that we are to meet this woman at a certain place tomorrow morning to discuss… what, Sienne?”
“I don’t know, exactly. She said she has something we want—well, obviously—and all of us were to come to discuss it.” Sienne took another bite. It tasted like ashes. One more thing to hate the woman for, for ruining her enjoyment of Leofus’s excellent meal. “I think she deliberately outbid us so she could exchange the knife—or maybe the knives; maybe she doesn’t know we only want the one—for something else she wants. Something we can give her.”
Alaric frowned. “Who is this woman?”
“Her card names one Odela Figlari, but that is no guarantee that is she, as she might have used anyone’s calling card,” Perrin said. “It is irrelevant. I know nothing of the Figlari family, do you?”
“Never heard of her,” Alaric said. Dianthe shook her head. “Damn. It would be nice to know what we’re walking into.”
“And how did she know what we wanted?” Dianthe said. “That’s disturbing.”
“She only had to know we were interested in Liurdi’s possessions,” Alaric said, “and then show up at the auction and see what we bid on. And if she’s got enough money to pay that much for the knives, she’s certainly got the resources to bribe someone to learn of our interest in the auction.”
“So she wants something of us,” Kalanath said, pushing his plate away. “If it is a job, why does she not ask to hire us?”
“Then it’s not a job,” Dianthe said. “Or, worse, it’s a job she knows we wouldn’t take without the right incentive.”
“I really don’t like this,” Sienne said. “She probably doesn’t know why we want the knife, but what if she does?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Alaric said. “It’s a private matter, but it’s not secret. We aren’t doing anything illegal in trying to discover this ritual. Even if she found out I’m Sassaven, what could she do with that?”
Sienne was sure Alaric wasn’t nearly so carefree as he sounded. The Sassaven were a magical race able to take the form of horses or, in Alaric’s case, an enormous unicorn, and Alaric had no desire for anyone to find this out. But she said, “I suppose that’s true.”
“Then we’ll just have to see what she wants,” Alaric said, standing and clearing his plate. “Why does Leofus want a miniature table?”
Sienne had nearly forgotten the one thing they’d gotten from the auction. “It’s just shrunk. Will you help me swap them out?”
“That sounds like a signal for the rest of us to clear out,” Dianthe said, taking her own plate to the sink and rinsing it. “I’ll be in the sitting room for a while, reading.”
“That is a good idea,” Kalanath said.
Perrin cleared his place, scraping what was left of his meal into the scraps bucket. It was more than a little, Sienne noticed. “I’m for an early bedtime, myself. I shall see you all upon the morrow.”
When the others had gone, Alaric sat next to Sienne as she finished eating. “Something else happened,” he said. “Don’t think I don’t know when Perrin intends to drink himself into a stupor.”
“We met his father.” Sienne summed up the interaction, adding, “I think Perrin drinks to forget his family. I mean, I guessed it before, but this is a strong confirmation.”
Alaric sighed. “I wish he’d find some less self-destructive way of coping. I’m certain it’s not what Averran expects of him.”
“Me too. But how can we tell him not to be upset at what his family did to him? Alaric, he had a wife. Maybe he had children. Can you imagine—” She broke off.
“Imagine what?”
“I was going to say, can you imagine leaving your whole family behind, but then I remembered who I was talking to. Sorry.”
Alaric smiled. “It’s not the same. Perrin was kicked out. I chose to leave to save myself. If my family could have come with me, they would have.”
“What family did you have? Don’t answer if it’s prying.”
“It’s not. Sassaven don’t have big families. There was my mother and father, my older brother Karlen, and my younger sister Genneva. Oh, and my father’s sister and her daughter. All of them were bound except Gen, and by now, she has been, too.”
His gaze grew distant. “She’s the one I think of when I remember what we’re trying to do. She’s smart, and funny and… kind of a brat, actually, willful and selfish, but not in a bad way. I know that doesn’t make sense. She was just so carefree, didn’t give a damn what anyone else thought. And that’s all gone now, with the binding. It makes me furious to think of all that being stripped away from her.”
His hand rested on the table near Sienne’s plate. If she put her hand on his, that would be all right, wouldn’t it? Companionable, even? Then he looked at her, and the moment passed. She made herself smile. “I hope we meet her someday.”
“So do I.” Alaric stood and took her plate. “Let’s move the chairs out of the way.”
They rearranged furniture in silence, shoving all the chairs to one side to make a big empty space around the battered old table. With Alaric behind her, Sienne read off fit twice, once to shrink the old table and again to enlarge the new one. Alaric picked up the old table, doll-sized now, and set it in the hallway. “I know I’ve seen you do it a hundred times, but I still half expect the things you shrink to spontaneously grow again.”
“I felt that way the first several times I saw it done,” Sienne said, picking up a chair to put it back at the new table. “Fit on people is so impermanent, it feels as though fit on objects should be the same. But I’m glad it’s not. I would hate to have to keep casting it on my boots, for one.”
“We’ll have to ask Master Tersus what he wants done with the old table. It can�
�t clutter up the hallway for long.”
“Something else to do tomorrow.” Sienne stepped back and regarded the new table. “It feels almost like a waste of our money, when we needed the knife so badly.”
“One thousand is too rich for our purse.”
They stood in silence for a few awkward moments, not touching, not looking at each other. Finally, Alaric said, “I think I’ll turn in.”
“Me, too.”
Another long, awkward pause filled the space between them. “Good night, then,” Alaric said, and left the kitchen. Sienne gave him a few seconds to get halfway up the stairs, then followed.
Safely in her room, she changed into her nightdress and put her clothes away, not bothering to turn on the lamp. Her room was chilly, and again she idly wished there were a spell to heat air. She climbed into bed, pulled the blankets to her chin, and cursed herself, thoroughly and in a whisper.
Her relationship with Alaric had started out badly, with him hating all wizards because of the one that had created and enslaved his people and her resenting him for being an arrogant ass. Then he’d started to bend, and she’d come to see his good side, and before she knew it, they were friends. And if she’d left it at friendship, everything would be fine. But he was strong, and clever, and had a funny smile, and now she had trouble looking him in the eye, for fear he could read her emotions there.
What made it worse was her increasing suspicion that he wasn’t indifferent to her. Those awkward silences when they were alone together, like just then in the kitchen, were awkward for both of them. He, too, never met her gaze if he could help it, and he was scrupulously careful not to touch her, even casually as he did the others. Whatever this feeling was, she was sure it wasn’t unrequited.
But they were companions, comrades in arms, and she didn’t know much about scrappers, but she was damn sure starting a romantic relationship with one of your companions was the kind of thing that could destroy a team. She didn’t want this team destroyed. They were family, or as near to as made no difference, and nothing was worth giving that up.
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