by Juliet Kemp
The atmosphere in their group changed again over the next few minutes, voices getting louder, eyes brighter, gestures more pronounced. Finally, Marcia managed to get someone to mention Daril’s name again.
“Oh, he’s just a nasty little shit,” she said loudly.
“That’s not what you thought back in the day, Marcia, is it now?” Nisha said, laughing.
“Oh-ho! Is that why you’re scared to speak to him now?” Aden said.
“Of course, you were off in Teren that summer, weren’t you, Aden?” Nisha said. “Marcia was besotted, darling, honestly.”
Marcia really didn’t want to let Nisha get started on that story. At least not in front of her. Her eyes flicked over to Jonas, and, thank the angel, he took the cue.
“Who?” he asked.
“Daril b’Leandra,” Aden replied. “He of the wide berths and dubious reputation. Our Marcia jumps away like a startled cat whenever he’s nearby.” He was teasing, mostly. Nisha’s tone had been… more pointed.
Marcia let her words slur slightly.
“Scared of him? Rubbish. I’m not scared of Daril b’Leandra. Just because everyone makes out he has this reputation he walks round like he’s all that? Scared, ha.” Her chin went up and she beckoned regally, drunkenly, to Jonas. “You’d like to meet him, you said earlier. Let’s.”
Jonas played the baffled outlander perfectly. “Eh, I don’t know the man. By all means, Marcia, if you say so.” He bowed slightly, radiating bemused amiability.
“Well then,” Marcia declared, as if something had been settled, and crooked her arm, inviting Jonas to walk with her. “Let us make introductions. I am sure b’Leandra will be delighted to meet you.”
“Marcia…” Aden called after her, sounding suddenly concerned, but they were already halfway across the floor and Marcia didn’t turn round.
“Finally,” she said, looking up at Jonas. “Took me long enough to find a moment.” And that wasn’t at all about her not wanting to do this at all, no. “Thank you for setting that up earlier.”
Jonas nodded slightly. “Do you need anything of me?” he asked.
There was something in his eyes that she couldn’t quite read.
“Pull me away if I pinch your arm,” Marcia said. “Otherwise feel free to keep up your whole foreigner-abroad thing.”
They were nearly at the other side of the room. Someone next to Daril leant over and said something to him, and he turned to look at them. Marcia’s breath hitched slightly.
“I don’t know how this is going to go,” she confessed – to Jonas? To herself? “I have no idea what I’m going to say.”
She wasn’t sixteen any more. She was an adult, and Fereno-Heir. She held onto that thought, and to Jonas’ reassuring arm, as they reached Daril’s table.
k k
Marcia felt herself sway slightly as they stopped, and told herself it backed up her claim of inebriation. She was glad of Jonas’ presence; and of the fact that he gave no indication of how hard she was gripping his arm.
Daril, slouched in his chair, looked up at them. His dark hair, drawn back from his face over the shaved sides of his head, emphasised his pointed features. The light was too dim for her to read anything in his dark eyes.
“Daril!” Marcia said, aiming for cheerfully inebriated, and with no idea how well she was doing.
“Marcia.” Daril’s small smile widening a little. “It’s been a long time.”
She couldn’t suppress the twitch in her shoulders. For a moment, looking at him, she was catapulted back to sixteen. The first time she’d met Daril had been at some summer drinks afternoon, given by one of Madeleine’s friends. Marcia had been dragged along as Heir-presumed. Cato had refused to join them. Daril had been in a similar position as her, Heir-presumed of Leandra at the time, before his falling-out with his father. They hadn’t quite been the only two under thirty there, but in retrospect it was inevitable they’d end up talking. Less inevitable that they had talked all afternoon, with no attention to spare for anyone else, to Madeleine’s slight disapproval.
Marcia had been besotted from the start. That was the summer Cato had discovered his magic, too. Marcia had been interested, of course she had, but her focus was all on Daril, that summer. Stupid.
“My friend here is a visitor from Salina, and was curious to meet you,” she said, pulling herself back to the present day. His eyes were the same. She couldn’t quite bring herself to meet them. “Your name came up in conversation.”
“For all the best reasons, I am sure,” Daril said, and Marcia gritted her teeth. She hated the idea that he would think she had been speaking of him.
“Jonas, this is Daril b’Leandra,” she said. “Daril, this is Jonas t’Riseri.”
A subtle insult; as a House member, Daril outranked a non-Marek visitor, and Jonas should have been introduced to him, not vice versa.
Daril’s smile didn’t flicker.
“Welcome to our city, t’Riseri.”
Jonas bowed neatly, in the Salinas style. “I am delighted to be here.”
“So, Marcia, what have you been doing, all these years?” Daril asked, his attention snapping back to Marcia.
The memory that surfaced now was of the last time she’d seen him. What his planning and persuasion had led them to. Reb saving them all from themselves on that bloody roof…
She couldn’t think about that now. She was here for Cato.
“Much of my time is spent with the Council,” she said. “Dull but necessary. Although I suppose you wouldn’t know.” She smiled, wide and false.
From what Nisha and Aden had been saying, he’d finally taken to criticising that situation. Would he repeat that to her?
“Indeed not,” Daril agreed. “The current situation has led to the ignoring of all talents and abilities possessed by those of us under forty or so. I am glad if this does not apply to you, but still – a shocking waste, would you not agree?”
For a moment, his gaze was direct and honest, and Marcia struggled with a wave of sympathetic understanding. It was absurd that Gavin had been manipulating – attempting to manipulate – Daril for over a decade. It was absurd that Nisha was Heir only in name. And you are Heir in truth? a self-mocking voice whispered at the back of her head. She shut down the image of Madeleine sweeping out of Council ahead of her, plans already made.
No. Whatever Daril was arguing, even if there was a kernel of truth in it, she was not on his side. But she couldn’t bring herself to disagree out loud, either.
She had hesitated too long. He looked away. “And thus, as you doubtless remember, my time is frittered away in diversions of various sorts, many of which it seems are disapproved of.” He sighed theatrically. “I am misunderstood, as ever; I seek only interest and pleasure, and who can criticise that?”
As you remember. She remembered his interest when she bragged about Cato’s new abilities. She remembered him telling her not to be silly, that blood magic was perfectly safe, it was only hidebound Marek that forbade it. But for her, he would try the Marek way. She remembered his fury when she introduced him to Cato and Cato told him to get lost. And the determination that replaced that fury.
He wore a sleeveless shirt tonight, but she couldn’t see, in this light, whether the scars were still there. She stopped her hand from straying to the thin white line on her own inner arm, and breathed out her anger, swallowing down the retorts that sprang to her lips.
“I am sure your diversions are entirely above criticism,” she said, praying that her voice would stay steady. “My brother – you remember my brother? His diversions, now, I frequently find myself criticising.”
“Your brother?” Daril said. “Dear me. I was under the impression that House Fereno had repudiated their social dropout altogether. Some time ago.”
Marcia’s chin went up. “House Fereno may have. I have not.”
“Indeed,” Daril said.
There was a long, excruciating, pause. Daril looked amused.
She wasn’t sure, no
w, what she’d been hoping for. Some reaction when she mentioned Cato? Had she really expected Daril to be that obvious? Her stomach felt tight, her anxiety rising. Try again. Try something more personal to them both. Something more specific.
“I suppose Cato’s sorts of diversions are unlikely to be of interest to you, any more.” She laid a very slight stress on the last two words, and this time she let her hand fall forwards, baring her inner arm, and let her thumb move to that scar.
Daril did react to that. His eyes had been wide and innocent, surrounded by a blue ring of face-paint that made the irises appear bluer and the whites whiter. Just for a moment, they narrowed, and his face tightened. She saw his throat jump. She was getting somewhere, she just needed to push him a little bit harder…
She let her voice go up a few notes in the high tones of someone wired on pejo, fighting nausea as she spoke.
“I mean, I know I could never think of magic again after that time…”
He twitched slightly – surprise? – then settled back in his chair with a slight smile. She’d gone too far. Too obvious. She dug her fingernails into her palm.
“Or of me either, as I recall,” he drawled, leaning backwards. “I’m still a little hurt that you never even left a message, Marcia. Is this an attempt at an apology, ten years on?”
She felt herself flush to the hairline and spoke almost at random, desperate suddenly to get away. “As I recall, I was bored. Of you. As indeed I find myself now. Jonas, I am afraid that, as you see, Daril is hardly as fascinating as the rumours might suggest.” She flicked her hand at Daril. “Good evening to you.”
It was abrupt, too abrupt, and she didn’t even know anything for sure about Cato. But she had to leave, now, before she screamed, before the memories came back even more strongly.
“Good evening,” Jonas nodded.
Gods, he’d barely spoken. Daril would surely know this was just about him and her. She leaned into Jonas again, hoping to suggest that he was her current fling.
“Good evening,” Daril said, a laugh lurking under the surface.
She clenched her teeth so hard her jaw hurt. They turned to leave; and he added, “I will convey your regards to your brother.”
She felt herself jerk, involuntarily; found herself halfway to turning round, to grabbing him by the throat and to hell with the politics of it all. It was only Jonas’ firm grip on her arm, his nails digging in painfully, that kept her moving, away from Daril.
She was not going to let anything happen to her brother. Whatever Daril b’Leandra might have planned. She was not.
SIX
The rain started just after Jonas turned away from House Fereno to walk back down Marekhill. They’d stayed for maybe half an hour after the conversation with Daril, before he’d claimed tiredness in the hope of getting Marcia out. She looked nearly as strung out as if she’d really taken those uppers. It was clear what her friends thought they were going off to do, the two of them, but Marcia had ignored the insinuations so he did likewise. Would he have been tempted, if she’d offered, he wondered? Likely not. She was pretty enough, no doubt about that, and they got on well, but he wouldn’t care to try more than that. And most certainly not tonight, when she was clearly in some emotional distress.
On the way home, he’d checked that Marcia really had heard what Daril said, and she’d point blank refused to talk about it until they met up with Reb the next day. Her voice had cracked as she said it, but she politely and persistently turned down his expressions of concern and offers of help, so in the end he walked her to the door of House Fereno and left. They barely knew each other, anyway; who was he to try to help her?
The streets were mostly empty now, though his Salinas tunic and trousers garnered a couple of curious glances from other party-goers presumably also wending their way home – or out somewhere else to extend the night a little. He snorted. Of course, it hadn’t so much as occurred to Marcia to wonder if he would be safe returning to the squats in this getup. Just as well he’d already thought about it himself.
He was a few streets down the Hill before the houses were close enough together that he was easily able to take to the roofs. He found a house with a solid-enough one-storey side extension, from the roof of which he could get up to the taller houses. Doing so without damaging his good clothes did make the task a little harder.
The rain meant the roof-tiles were slippery and the gutters half-full of water and damp leaves. It was still easier than being up a mast in a storm. And the rain was gentle, reassuring, pattering soft and almost warm on his face.
He found a convenient flattish ridge-top and made his way along it, gathering his impressions of the day as he went. He’d spent the afternoon, after leaving Cato’s, running as many messages as he could to make up for the morning already lost, given that he wouldn’t be able to do an evening shift. Though evenings were always erratic, to be fair. Housing in the squats might be free but nothing else was. And then Marcia just now had blithely assumed he’d be round at Reb’s tomorrow, missing yet more work. He rolled his eyes. Thoughtless rich. No wonder, with a society so divided, in so many ways. It still seemed strange to him. The Salinas sought always to bind people together, in different ways – blood-family, ship, trading fleet, chosen-family – rather than to separate.
He wiped a drip of rain off his nose. At least he wasn’t wearing Marek-formal face paint, to run in the wet. It had been odd, seeing a whole hall full of those painted masks. He knew the style already, but he’d never seen so many at once. Not that they disguised everything, there was that. Not as much as you might have thought, at first sight, once you got accustomed. Faces still moved the same way, body language didn’t change. You could still read people.
So, then. Reb’s, tomorrow. Would he, or not? He could just not go; could get on with his own affairs and leave them to it. No skin off his nose if Marek lacked a cityangel. But he’d had no chance yet to ask Beckett about his flickers. The cityangel – former cityangel – might have the answers that Reb apparently didn’t; the answers that would allow him to get rid of his wretched flickers and go back home. And if he let things go now, who knew where the cityangel might disappear to. It was possible, even, though Jonas rather begged leave to doubt it, that Beckett would achieve their aim of returning to their old position, and then Jonas would have no chance at all at getting any information from them.
He slowed as he came to the tall roof of one of the Guild buildings alongside the river’s south side. He’d stowed a bundle of street-clothes, wrapped in his ship oilskins, behind a chimney up here. He hadn’t fancied walking through the squats in full formal wear. Probably he would have been fine – the squats weren’t the hotbed of crime that some of the more excitable Marekhill folk seemed to think – but he stood out enough already as it was.
As he skimmed out of his formal wear and back into a loose shirt and Marek-style trousers, he looked out over the city. Torches shone their dots of light outside the big houses up on Marekhill; further down the hill the houses were dark, but the odd moving torch-flicker showed up well-off groups presumably on their way home. Down around the river and the market on the far side of the river, the only lights were outside the couple of pubs and inns that were still open at this hour; people walking managed in the dark.
Changed now, he wrapped his formal clothes carefully in the oilskin, and tied the package to his belt. Then he climbed up to the top of the roof, and sat on the ridge-pole of the Guild-house.
The rain pattered softly onto the tiles around him, and he pushed tendrils of wet hair back off his forehead.
Kia. He hadn’t really thought through the possibility that someone at the party would know him. His mother had told him, before he put ashore, that Kia was the current ambassador, and he’d nodded and ignored the information. He didn’t want to be Jonas t’Riseri, staying on Marekhill and being shown around. He wanted to be Jonas, making a living same as anyone else. He couldn’t see how he’d have any chance at getting the informa
tion he wanted otherwise; not that he’d exactly been making the most of his opportunities. He scowled into the darkness. And then, today, he just hadn’t thought about how Marcia’s Marekhill party might be the sort of thing that ambassadors attended. He certainly hadn’t realised what Marcia’s House position meant, in terms of her involvement in Marek politics.
So now Kia knew he was here, and he had a horrible suspicion that she would want to press her point a little harder. Would feel obliged to look out for a t’Riseri, or expect him to be available to support her politicking. And he didn’t want to be penned up in the embassy. He wanted to solve his little problem, without any interference from Kia, and get the hell out. But if he didn’t show up tomorrow, she’d be even more likely to interfere, to be on the lookout, now she knew he was here.
Of course, if he’d actually got on with solving his little problem a bit sooner, this wouldn’t be an issue.
Beckett might yet have an answer. And then there was this Cato, too. If Beckett didn’t know anything, maybe Cato would. If Jonas could find him. It sounded like he had knowledge that Reb didn’t, or at least didn’t want to. Maybe his flickers were more that sort of knowledge. Jonas shivered slightly. Though if Cato’s area of expertise was spirits, like Reb had been suggesting, maybe that would be bad news.
The thought took him back to that moment in Cato’s room where the thing in the air had been reaching towards Beckett, and he’d stepped in front of it. Jonas scowled down at his knees. Beckett had said, afterwards, that it was their doing, that it disappeared. But Jonas was nearly certain that the cityangel was lying. It had been him. It had gone when he moved. And what the hell did that mean? He couldn’t think of any explanation that felt remotely comfortable. Coincidence, perhaps. He would surely love to put it down to coincidence, but that would be fear talking, not truth.
He wanted to get rid of his flickers. He wanted to find out what the hell had happened there in that room. He wanted to have absolutely nothing more to do with any of this magical nonsense at all. And, quite clearly, those first two weren’t compatible with that last one.