“Good night, Cobal,” said Giddon. “Have you had a nice visit with Quona?”
“Always,” said Cobal, continuing past them toward the Cliff Farm.
“Why are those two so chummy?” asked Hava in a low voice.
“Poodles, supposedly,” said Giddon.
“What?”
“A kind of dog.”
“Right.”
As they stepped into Quona’s foyer, Quona, who was ascending the steps to the second floor, turned to greet them.
“Welcome home,” she said. “Was it a nice party?”
“Very,” said Giddon. “We just met the Estillan envoy on the path.”
“I invited him to dinner,” said Quona. “He loves my cats. I want to hear all about your party, but I’m so tired, I’m dropping. We’ll talk at breakfast.”
But when Quona joined them for breakfast the next morning, Saturday, she seemed to have forgotten her curiosity, along with her manners. Barely acknowledging them, she sat, then pulled a cat into her lap, which she didn’t usually do at meals. She began to eat with bleary distraction.
“Did you sleep well?” asked Giddon.
“Terribly, I’m afraid,” she admitted. “I’m going north again today, so please make yourselves comfortable. My staff will see that you’re well taken care of.”
Though Hava said nothing, Giddon could feel the change in her energy. Today they would get into that attic room.
* * *
—
Hava had memorized the schedules of Quona’s staff members, but still, she made Giddon stand lookout in the sitting room below while she worked in the attic with the lock picks.
“If anyone comes by, look noble and innocent, then have a loud coughing fit,” she said.
The only person who came by was that pale gray cat, who tugged at Giddon’s heart by jumping into his lap and cuddling against him in a way that reminded him of sitting with Bitterblue and Lovejoy in his big chair at home. She was soft and warm. “I still don’t know your name,” Giddon said.
Above him, Hava tapped on the floor—his ceiling—three times, which was his signal to come upstairs.
* * *
—
He found her standing triumphantly inside the small room.
“Good work,” he said.
Aside from a large desk and its chair, the room was empty, uncarpeted. The walls and floor were built of wood, finished but unadorned. It looked like a tiny, stark office. Hava was leaning over the desk under a single, high window.
“No foxes?” he said. “Or severed heads or sacks of money?”
“Just a desk with a million drawers,” said Hava, who was pulling on each drawer, peering inside. “Containing millions of papers.” When she got to a locked drawer, she pursed her lips in interest. “This would be a useful time to have Trina’s Grace,” she muttered.
“Except we don’t know what we’re looking for,” said Giddon. “Can you pick it?”
“The lock is very small,” she said, “but I guess I’ll have to try.”
It took her a long time, much longer than the door had done. While she worked delicately with her smallest lock picks, Giddon lit the lamp on the desk and began to look more closely at the papers in the drawers.
“Records of airship sales,” he reported. “Records of—” He paused, then raised a paper closer to the light. “Hava,” he said, “do you think it’s odd that Quona should have letters written to people who aren’t her?”
“Like who?” said Hava.
“Like Ada Balava,” he said. “Do you remember that name? She’s one of the importers who was cheating Bitterblue out of zilfium. In fact,” he said, skimming the page before him, “this seems to be a letter on that very topic.” He read aloud in Keepish. “‘You’ll find the queen to be selling her rock detritus at an advantageous price, to put it mildly. We suspect this price will last only as long as the queen’s ignorance, so we should buy now while we can.’ It’s from Ada Balava’s director of foreign operations.”
“Weaselbugger,” muttered Hava. Then there was a click and she made a satisfied noise. Sliding the drawer open, she began to rifle through it.
Suddenly, she cried out, “Giddon!”
“What?”
She was flipping through a small notebook. “Are these the scientific formulas for varane?”
“I’m not much of a scientist,” said Giddon, looking over her shoulder.
“‘Proprietary property of Minta Varana’!” Hava cried, speaking the words in Keepish. “‘Varane’! It says it right here! Oh,” she said, grabbing her own hair. “I’m so stupid. I should’ve guessed this. Look, the cover of this notebook has little dents in the edges!”
“Dents?” said Giddon in bewilderment.
“Tooth dents!” she said. “Her secret foxes steal this stuff for her!”
“Well, this is unexpected,” said a voice behind them. “Isn’t it, my darlings?”
* * *
—
In the doorway, Quona stood watching them with an aspect of absolute amazement.
She wore a long, white fur coat, cold radiated from her body, and blue foxes were perched all over her person. One balanced on her shoulder. Two peered curiously out of her hood. One watched Giddon and Hava from her pocket, and two more stood on the floor at her feet.
“Where’s the seventh?” said Hava, staring back at her coldly. An instant later, the seventh fox trotted into the room, shining golden eyes up at them.
“Aren’t you clever, Hava,” said Quona, sounding like she meant it.
“Why are you back?” demanded Hava.
“I changed my mind,” said Quona simply.
“Or you lied,” said Hava, “so you could catch us snooping.”
“Indeed,” said Quona, with a warmth to her voice that almost sounded like laughter, “I would never have known to try to catch you snooping. You’ve taken me entirely by surprise. How did you guess?”
“That you’re secretly bonded to seven foxes? That you’re the formula thief? We’re not stupid,” Hava shot back.
Giddon raised a hand. “I’m stupid, actually,” he said. “Hava figured it out.”
“You’ve had your foxes following us since day one,” said Hava. “Haven’t you? What else are you responsible for? How much do you know about our two drowned men?”
Quona was watching Hava now with a new expression, quiet and grave. “I’d like to sit down,” she said. “Will you come downstairs to talk about this?”
“I’d rather stay near this desk,” said Hava, crossing her arms. “This desk interests me.”
“Yes, all right,” said Quona, whose exhaustion was showing plainly in her face. Then one of the foxes at her feet began climbing directly up her coat, working its way to her empty pocket. Another followed, scrambling the distance to her available shoulder. When the last remaining fox made a move as if to climb, Quona said heavily, “That will have to be all, darlings,” and Giddon took pity. Pulling out the desk chair, he set it before her.
“Thank you,” she said, practically collapsing into the chair. The foxes on her shoulders almost toppled, but caught themselves, rebalancing. She took a breath or two, rubbing at her forehead, looking like a human fox-perch. “It’s hard to know where to start.”
“Why don’t you start by telling us why you stole formulas from your own sister?” said Hava.
“Yes,” said Quona. “All right. That’s fairly simple. There’s a Scholar in Parliament who recently decided to change sides on the zilfium vote and vote with the Industrialists to legalize zilfium use. I stole the varane formulas to bribe him back.”
“Bribe him back!” Hava repeated incredulously. “Is this the man we heard people fighting about at the Cavenda dinner party?”
“I’m not going to tell you everything,” said Quona, with
an interesting, tired resolve in her voice. “You already have the power to ruin me, but I want this deal to go through. The Scholar in question has a friend in Kamassar who will pay him a fortune for the varane formulas. In return, the Scholar will switch his vote back, vote against zilfium, and help to ensure that zilfium use does not begin to pollute Winterkeep. Simultaneously, Kamassar will develop workable airship technology, reducing their dependence on zilfium.”
“And that’s so important to you?” asked Hava. “You would break the law, steal from your own sister, even ruin your own family’s transportation monopoly, to ensure that zilfium remains illegal and Kamassar gets airships?”
“Yes,” said Quona, shooting the word out. “It’s so important to me.”
“Why?” demanded Hava.
“Because it’s our duty to care for the environment. We are bound by a promise to protect the earth and the sea. What happens if we don’t? And people know it,” she said wearily. “They know it matters, but they have other priorities. I nudge their priorities back into place.”
“By stealing,” said Hava.
“A big rule follower, are you?” said Quona sharply.
“What about all this other stuff?” said Hava, who seemed almost cheerful in the face of Quona’s antagonism. She nudged her head at the open drawers in the desk, at the papers Giddon had been going through. “Letters to Ada Balava, and who knows what else?”
“My foxes bring me many things,” said Quona. “They visit many homes, go through many desks, fireplaces, and garbage bins. I can’t be sure what they’ll bring back, but I keep everything in case it becomes useful later. In fact, that letter to Ada Balava might indeed be useful someday, to you. If you can demonstrate that the importers who cheated your queen out of her zilfium knew they were cheating her, you’ll win a lawsuit in the Keepish courts.”
“So, you did know about the importers,” said Hava.
“Of course I did,” said Quona. “Everyone in the Ledra elite knew about the importers. But I know more. I have more eyes than anyone else, and it’s good that I do, because there aren’t many people here who can be trusted to remember what matters.”
A moment of silence passed. This was a new, unsettled version of Quona Varana, and Giddon would decide what he thought about it later. For now, the things she was talking about were not, in fact, the things that mattered to him.
“In the course of reviewing the papers your foxes have brought to you,” he said, “have you ever stumbled upon anything that might explain why the Monsean envoy and a Monsean adviser to the queen were trapped in the cabin of their boat, then deliberately drowned?”
Quona turned dark eyes to him that were suddenly worried and serious. “I’m afraid that relates to my reasons for going north today,” she said.
“Seeing as you were gone about five minutes, you can’t have gotten very far north,” said Hava sarcastically.
“You’re right, I didn’t,” she said. “Almost immediately upon leaving, I saw the Cavenda airship, riding the winds north ahead of me. When Benni Cavenda flies north, he goes to his wife’s property in Torla’s Neck. That’s where I was trying to go too. But I can’t very well spy on Benni’s house from my airship if he’s there too, can I? So I shifted course, pretending to be en route somewhere else. As soon as he was out of my sight, I turned back home.”
“So you think Benni Cavenda’s house has something to do with our two drowned men?” said Giddon.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Quona, suddenly frustrated. “But I think Benni himself may have something to do with them, and some house somewhere has something to do with something.”
“How illuminating,” said Hava.
“The silbercows talk to me,” said Quona, ignoring Hava’s sarcasm. “They tell me stories that contain a certain amount of fantasy. But there are always parts that seem real. I can tell when they feel actual distress, for example, and sometimes they show me details I doubt they could know if the image weren’t true. When the silbercows show me things I suspect to be true, I can use my foxes to search for more evidence.
“Lately,” she said, “the silbercows have been showing me some sort of . . . thing that explodes. Some weapon someone is testing, or some terrible toy, some mistake, being thrown from an airship into the sea near a house on a cliff. Silbercows have come to me with burns, crying, not understanding their own injuries. You don’t look surprised, or even particularly moved,” she said, studying their faces.
“Silbercows have shown us the explosions too,” said Giddon.
“They talk to you?” she said, quietly. “They don’t talk to everyone, you know. Have they shown you the sunken boat?”
“Yes,” said Giddon. “With two people trapped inside. That’s what I was talking about: It’s the Seashell, the boat in which our comrades Mikka and Brek were murdered. That’s why we came to Winterkeep in the first place. Not because we’d seen that image,” he added when she looked surprised. “But because we’d started gathering hints that the drowning of our men wasn’t an accident.”
“I see,” said Quona. “Well, they’ve been showing me the explosions for a while, but the boat is a new image. I didn’t connect it to the boat that went down with your envoy, because I didn’t know that boat’s name. I’ve been focused on the explosions instead, trying to identify the house on the cliff. It’s why I keep flying north: I’ve been studying the coast to see if any of the houses look right.
“But then, the last time I talked to the silbercows, they suddenly seemed to have more information about the boat. They knew the names of your men, Mikka and Brek. They also seemed to know that those men had been murdered. I’m guessing now that they got that information from you?”
“Yes,” said Giddon grimly.
“Well,” said Quona. “Last night something sparked in my memory. A letter my foxes brought me from the Cavenda house here in Ledra a long time ago. It’s the reason I didn’t sleep; it’s the reason I tried to go north again today, to the Cavenda property in Torla’s Neck.”
“Well?” said Giddon. “What is it?”
“I suppose I should just show it to you,” said Quona.
She stood up quickly, not seeming to worry about the foxes on her person. Giddon had the impression that they were accustomed to shifting around, maintaining their balance on a moving planet. At the desk, she shuffled through some papers, finally pulling out a crumpled letter, which she passed to them both.
Hava read out loud, in Keepish.
“‘Note: Today, during my visit from the Estillan envoy Cobal, we were startled by a visit from the Monsean envoy Mikka, who is on a northern tour with a friend. The guards, knowing I was expecting a visitor but not knowing he was already with me, mistook Mikka for that visitor and brought him to the storehouse. They let him in at the back door. Cobal and I did not hear him enter. I believe Mikka overheard a great deal of our conversation before his presence became known to us. If you would kindly come north and honor us with a visit, I will furnish you with more details. Yours, LM.’”
Giddon’s nails were digging into his own palms. “Benni Cavenda had Mikka and Brek murdered.”
“Yes,” said Hava. “Because Benni and Cobal are planning something and Mikka found out. But what are they planning?”
“I don’t know,” said Quona. “I was up practically all night going through my papers, looking for clues. I sent my foxes out too, but they found nothing.”
“It was signed ‘LM.’ Who’s LM?” asked Giddon.
“No idea.”
“What were you going to do today once you got to the Cavenda property?”
Quona threw her hands in the air, rocking the foxes, whose eyes flashed as they clung to her. “Compare their house to the one the silbercows have shown me?” she said. “Hope to find some connection between the explosions and this letter? Find some clue of what Mikka learned? I don’t know. I�
�m not cut out for this kind of intrigue. Murder is far beyond what I ever expected when I decided to . . .” She flapped a hand again.
“Interfere?” said Hava helpfully.
“I only ever meant to interfere with Parliament,” she said. “With the zilfium vote in December.”
“It’s all right,” said Giddon. “Hava and I are cut out for this kind of thing, and we have two choices. Either we stay here and try to wring information out of Benni and Cobal, or we go north, sneak onto the Cavenda property, and figure out what’s going on.”
“You know I like the second option better,” said Hava. “It’s what my Grace is made for.”
“Yes,” said Giddon. “And we’ll be better able to wring whatever we need out of Benni and Cobal after we have a sense of what we’re dealing with. Quona, why on earth are you friends with Cobal?”
“I am not his friend,” said Quona.
“You invited him to dinner last night!”
“So that I could get him out of his house!” she said. “And send my foxes in to snoop! Why do you think I ever invite anyone anywhere? Unfortunately, my foxes found nothing useful, either at his house or the Cavendas’.”
“We need to go to Torla’s Neck,” said Giddon. “Quona, who else knows what you know?”
A peculiar, guilty expression crossed Quona’s face. “I can get you an airship as soon as tomorrow, which is Sunday,” she said. “And there is someone else who knows some of what I know. It’s someone who may be able to provide you with a discreet place to stay.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Lovisa spent all of Saturday remembering the tinny sound of the letter opener clattering against the attic window. The Queen of Monsea was alive. What should she do?
On Saturday night, she knocked on Mari’s door with purpose.
When he saw her, he grinned. “City?”
“No. I need a serious distraction,” she said.
“Okay,” he said, going with it. “Why?”
“I just do.”
“Oh, come on, Lovisa,” he said. “Something’s been going on for a while now. When are you going to tell me?”
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