The Liar's Knot

by M. A. Carrick

  “More wine?” Sibiliat appeared at Renata’s elbow. She hadn’t quite gone so far as to propose a drinking contest, but she seemed disappointed that Renata kept declining refills. “I’m sorry there’s no aža. Magistrate Rapprecco has been cracking down on the illicit trade.”

  “It’s too hot for alcohol,” Renata said, cooling herself with a fan that wafted citron with each pass. “How do you endure the heat?” She should get back under the canopy… except too many people lay in wait there.

  Sibiliat smirked. “If you think this is hot, wait until Lepilun.”

  She made even that sound competitive. Hoping to blunt it, Renata said, “Thank you for arranging this. I’ll admit, I wasn’t intending to have any kind of party—it seems too soon.” A year would have been too soon. They were all toasting her as the heir to House Traementis, but every time she heard that phrase, all she could see was Leato left behind at the bottom of the empty wellspring.

  Sibiliat leaned in and murmured, “Oh, it is. But you also have to keep up appearances, don’t you? House Traementis is recovering. People need to see that. If Donaia can’t do it, you must.”

  It sounded like genuine advice. And Sibiliat wasn’t wrong. Donaia was handling as much business as she could, but her mourning left her no will to face the social side of Nadežra’s politics. Whether this was Ren’s idea of a good time or not, she owed House Traementis her best effort.

  You used to dream of this. But every dream has both a Face and a Mask.

  The barge made its slow way upriver, past the Point, which split the Dežera, to where the heavily built-up islets began to give way to more open space, houses interspersed with vegetable gardens and goats. Up ahead lay the heavy stone bridge at Floodwatch. The party’s mood grew more raucous as they neared it; some of Renata’s suitors started taking dares, competing with each other to impress her.

  When the barge moored on the far side of the bridge so one of the servants could go buy fresh berries, those dares wound up sending Iascat Novrus over the rail to chisel off the river mussels encrusting the embankment. He’d shed his shirt to avoid ruining it, and by the time he slopped back on deck, his pale shoulders were already turning pink. Everyone retreated a step to avoid being splattered as he tossed a large, encrusted clump of mussels onto the deck. “Get to shucking,” Iascat said, examining the scrapes lining both of his hands. “There better be a pearl in one of those, or I’ll have injured myself for nothing. Fintenus, if I lose a hand to infection, I’m telling my aunt it’s your fault.”

  “What, you want us both to lose a hand?”

  For the first time that day, Ren felt a touch of real pleasure. She and Tess and Sedge used to duck Ondrakja’s eye every so often and make the walk up to Floodwatch for fresh mussels. Now she readily joined the others in claiming shells and whatever sharp implements could be found to pry them open. But her guests tossed theirs aside with disappointed mutters, meat and all, when each one proved to be empty.

  Her annoyance at their waste almost made her stab her thumb as she opened another shell. The bitten-off curse turned into a gasp as she saw the contents. “I found one!”

  She held up the pearl like a trophy in her filthy glove, stained with river water and grit. “That means good luck,” Parma told her, clapping.

  Benvanna’s voice rose above the congratulations and good-natured grousing. “So the Vraszenians say… but only if you eat the mussel you found the pearl in. Raw.”

  The congratulations turned to hoots and cheers, chanting for her to eat it. Benvanna was wrong about having to eat the mussel; the actual tradition said she was supposed to keep the shell in her purse, to attract more wealth. But Renata wouldn’t know that—and she would think eating a raw mussel was disgusting, especially above the cleansing numinat. Giuna was protesting, not that anyone paid her any heed.

  Benvanna gave her a sharp-edged smile and propped her chin atop her forefingers, tucking the rest of her fingers between her palms. “Come on, Renata. Eat up.”

  Renata almost dropped the pearl as she recognized the hand gesture. Benvanna was her sponsor for the second gate? Tanaquis had promised to pick someone who didn’t hate her.

  But it explained Benvanna’s presence today. And regardless of what they thought of each other, for Renata to continue her initiation into the Praeteri, she had to follow any order her sponsor gave. At least this one didn’t bother her nearly as much as Benvanna probably expected.

  She struck a pose, raising the mussel with a brave flourish—then slurped it right down. “Mmmm,” she said, dabbing her lips with exaggerated delicacy. “Not bad.”

  She grinned cheekily at Benvanna while the barge erupted in drunken cheers. The other woman gave her an unreadable smile in return. Satisfaction? Or annoyance that Renata hadn’t been more put off by the mussel?

  Renata didn’t get a chance to ask. As she palmed the mussel shell and tucked it into her pocket, a Galbiondi man whose name she didn’t remember said, “Hey—aren’t we near the Scurezza house? Little Giuna, didn’t you and Sibiliat find them? Let’s have the tale firsthand!”

  The laughter fell to dead silence. In that hush, Renata heard the strangled sound Giuna made. Her cousin wavered, hands rising to her mouth—then broke and fled.

  Sibiliat followed immediately. Renata didn’t. Instead she pinned the Galbiondi with a cold gaze. Then she went to the rail, stripped off one stained glove, and put her fingers to her mouth for a piercing whistle. The skiffers near the river stair began poling toward her, racing to see who could get there first.

  Renata pulled a decira out of her purse and pressed it into the Galbiondi’s palm. “For your passage home.”

  Then she went after Giuna.

  She found her cousin with Sibiliat at the stern. The musicians were taking a break; no one was nearby to hear. Sibiliat was stroking Giuna’s back, murmuring softly in her ear.

  Only when Renata saw her cousin did she realize what her knee-jerk response had been. Defend Giuna. The same way Ren had once defended a copper-headed Ganllechyn girl who’d just joined the Fingers.

  When it came to comforting, though, she was out of her depth. This had always been Tess’s strength, not Ren’s—but Tess wasn’t there. “I’m so sorry,” she said awkwardly. “I should have thought… We should have gone downriver instead.”

  “It’s all right,” Giuna whispered, though it clearly wasn’t. “Of course they’re talking about it. Everybody wants to know what happened.”

  Renata wondered what would eventually come of that. High Commander Dimiterro knew the truth, but since the culprit was already dead, Ghiscolo had seen no benefit in sharing what Giuna and Sibiliat had seen and heard. If the Upper Bank knew Quaniet Scurezza had killed her entire family because Coevis had applied to House Traementis, the gossip would be all about the return of the Traementis’s ill luck. It was a stigma they couldn’t afford.

  Renata glanced at the skiff now headed downriver, with the Galbiondi man aboard. “Do you want to go back to the manor? I’ll come with you. I’ve had enough of this heat.”

  That made Giuna straighten and wipe her cheeks. “No. No, we can’t show weakness like that. And I don’t want to ruin your special day.”

  The only thing special about the day was how much of a masquerade the whole thing was. But Giuna was right about maintaining the show. As Sibiliat had been earlier.

  Renata hugged her cousin. Then she drew in a deep breath and settled her mask back into place. If people expected the ruling star of the social scene, then she would give them that.

  Striding back toward the bow, she stripped off her other glove and flung the ruined fabric into the water. “More wine!” she commanded, and the party floated on.

  Whitesail, Upper Bank: Colbrilun 30

  In some ways Tanaquis lived the life Renata had pretended to in the Westbridge townhouse. She had no footman and kept only one maid, a taciturn woman named Zlatsa whose chief recommendation was that she took all of Tanaquis’s oddities in stride. There was no
cook; whether Tanaquis realized it or not, her food came from nearby stalls and ostrettas, when she remembered to request a hot meal at all. If rooms went days without being dusted—or even months—she didn’t mind, so long as her workshop remained clean. Many of the things others would rely on servants for were instead done with numinatria, or not done at all.

  Which was why Renata arrived for her meeting with Tess in tow and a hamper of food. Tess made quick work of dusting the relevant bits of the parlour, then laid out plates, glasses, wine, pastries, and Liganti-style sandwiches with cheese and ham. Much to Ren’s surprise, she’d found that she quite liked cheese, as long as it wasn’t the type that stank like it was rotting.

  “Thank you, Tess,” she said when that was done. “You may go. I’ll have Zlatsa bring the hamper back later.”

  It was both a relief and a wrench to send her away. Ren had seen almost nothing of Tess lately, except in the mornings when she woke—after far too little sleep, and that little bit disturbed by nightmares of zlyzen.

  The only upside was that Tess had more liberty to pursue her own work. She was in high demand as a dressmaker now. Soon Tess would have enough to reach her dream: a shop of her own. Then she could be free of the lies that bound Ren tight.

  None of which they had discussed. There wasn’t any opportunity… and it was a conversation Ren dreaded having.

  For now, Tess left with a curtsy and a worried pinch between her brows, and Renata settled in to wait for Tanaquis.

  But her plan to arrive early so that she and Tanaquis could discuss private matters ran aground on the rocks of Vargo’s punctuality and their hostess’s absentmindedness. “I’ll remind her you’re here. Again,” Zlatsa said with a long-suffering sigh after she led Vargo in.

  “Renata.” Vargo took both her hands in greeting before she could occupy them with tea. “Is that a bit of color in your cheeks? Summer suits you.”

  Summer plagued her. In addition to her usual imbued cosmetics, she had to invest in creams to shield her skin from the sun’s kiss. Renata tugged out of his grip on the pretext of covering her cheeks. “I’m afraid I spent more time out on the river than was wise.”

  “Your natal day, yes? I’m sorry to have missed it.” He followed her to the mismatched couch and chair—selected for comfort rather than style, Renata suspected. When she took the chair, hoping for some distance, he flipped back the crisp poplin skirts of his mulberry coat and settled on the footstool at her side. “Though I suppose I wouldn’t have been welcome among your guests.”

  Before Renata had to offer an insincere apology for leaving him out, Tanaquis wandered into the parlour, nose pressed close to a scroll. She seemed startled to find them there. “Is it noon already? Next time, don’t depend on my maid. Come up and announce yourselves. She’s always interrupting me, so I’ve learned to ignore her.” Tanaquis marked her place in the scroll with a clip and perched on the edge of a chair, studying the repast as though she’d never seen food. “Did she do this?”

  “No, I arranged it, as I imagine we’ll be working for quite some time.” Renata poured coffee for them all and took faint pleasure in seeing Vargo’s smile grow fixed as he took it. Apparently he liked coffee no better than she did.

  Tanaquis, by contrast, drank it black and with evident pleasure. “Did you serenade Carinci Acrenix at the Rotunda yet, Vargo?”

  “This morning,” he said. “If you have any other pointless orders for me, can you make them less inconvenient to my schedule?”

  She frowned at him. “But the inconvenience is the point. If it’s easy, then it misses the purpose. ‘Submission is the door to freedom.’”

  So Tanaquis was the one ordering Vargo around for the second gate of the Praeteri. Renata had assumed they were forbidden to talk about it, but Tanaquis turned to her and said, “Though it isn’t supposed to be too dreadful. Has Benvanna asked you to do anything that goes too far?”

  “Not at all.” Renata hesitated, weighing what she should say in front of Vargo. Likely he knew already; Sostira had hardly been subtle about showing her interest in Renata, and Benvanna couldn’t be subtle about her jealousy if she tried. “I’m merely surprised. You promised you wouldn’t choose an enemy.”

  “I didn’t.” Tanaquis paused in her dismantling of one of the sandwiches, apparently so she could eat each element separately. “I thought you were on good terms with House Novrus.”

  “That’s hardly the same thing.”

  Tanaquis nodded as if to say she understood, while her expression made it clear she never would—and didn’t care. “Well, I think you’ve both done enough to count as having passed the trial. I’ll talk to the Pontifex and arrange the second initiation. One more challenge after that, and you’ll be properly in.”

  “I was surprised to hear a Seterin voice at the first ceremony,” Renata said before Vargo could speak up. “Has the Pontifex been in Nadežra long?”

  Tanaquis’s reluctance to break the secrecy of the Praeteri apparently didn’t extend to discussing their leader. “Sixteen years or so. Would you consider that long?”

  “Compared to me, at least.” Renata forced herself to sip the coffee. “What brought him to Nadežra, of all places?”

  ::Money.::

  At the intrusion of the spirit’s voice, Renata spilled coffee into her saucer. While she mopped that up, Tanaquis said, “I believe it had to do with the law passed against mystery cults back in your homeland. Too many of them were being used as breeding grounds for political coups.”

  ::No one in Nadežra would dream of staging a coup.::

  That sardonic response was in Vargo’s mental voice, and got a chuckle from his spirit. But Vargo sounded only impatient when he said, “As interesting as the Pontifex’s history may be, could we get to the actual purpose of the meeting?”

  “Yes, certainly.” Tanaquis patted her pockets and glanced around before finally discovering her scroll under the table. “I’ve drawn up a few charts for you. Early Similun is much too soon, but there are other possibilities. If you’re expecting to make a cleansing numinat work on that scale simply by timing your efforts to the stars, though, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.”

  Vargo set down his coffee like a man determined to “forget” it was there and passed over a leatherbound folder much like the one he’d given to Renata so many months ago. “The details of my plans are with Fulvet’s office and the Traementis, but I made you a copy as well. In the absence of a skilled inscriptor willing to give their life to imbue the working…” He and Tanaquis exchanged ironic smiles. “The fragment I fished out of the river turned out to be layered, as I suspected. I don’t think it was a simple matter of passing the water through multiple numinata, each of a more reasonably achieved scale and sustainable level—but it supports my theory that an approach of that sort could work. Better than what we have now, anyway.”

  “Hmm. Inefficient, expensive,” Tanaquis muttered, tossing aside the pages until she got to the design sketches for the numinat. “Inelegant.”

  ::I beg your pardon?!:: the spirit squawked. ::I spent years devising this plan!::

  ::What happened to ‘Oh, I like that girl; excellent chalking’?::

  “It’s the only feasible route open to us,” Vargo said, as though there weren’t an incensed spider grumbling at him. “Or that’s my best prospect, anyway. Though after Veiled Waters, I’m wondering if there might be an alternative—given what I saw of the numinat in the Great Amphitheatre.”

  “You don’t propose to use the wellspring?” Renata was astonished that she could keep her voice steady.

  ::It’s an idea…::

  “No.” Vargo might have been answering both her and the spirit. “But it does prove that numinata can be powered by sources other than ordinary foci. Perhaps even by the Lumen itself—without the limitations imposed by foci.”

  Tanaquis lit up. “Yes! I’d previously discounted pattern as mere superstition, but Renata’s proven it can have actual metaphysical validity. Not
in the rational, predictable fashion of astrology, though. It’s more… intuitive, you might say. Or unreliable.”

  ::Now what’s inefficient and inelegant?::

  Renata tensed to keep from glaring at Vargo—or rather, at the rose-hued shadows of his collar, where she could just see the spider lurking. Tanaquis, oblivious, was still talking. “That doesn’t mean it isn’t possible to connect the two, though. There are sixty cards in a pattern deck, which divides neatly into ten groups of six, following the calendrical division of months and weeks in the year, leaving out the intercalary period. Renata, if you were to associate each card with one of the numina, how would you sort them?”

  “I wouldn’t,” she said, gathering her scattered attention. “They aren’t organized that way—and there used to be more than sixty, you know.”

  The speculation in Tanaquis’s eyes brightened. “There were? How many? Perhaps we don’t have to discount the five intercalary days after all.”

  I shouldn’t have said that. Improvising, Renata said, “I’ve been reading up on pattern—what little I can find that isn’t written in Vraszenian, at least.” She made a mental note to buy such books. Surely some had to exist. “One of them said there used to be seven more cards, one for each of the clans. They’ve fallen out of use, but still.”

  It dammed the flow of Tanaquis’s enthusiasm. “Seven. Drat.”

  Vargo drummed his fingers against his knee. “You mentioned this at Nightpeace. Using pattern to augment a focus, I believe?”

  In a minor miracle, Tanaquis hesitated and looked at Renata, rather than immediately spilling the whole tale of the curse. But Renata had already spilled that tale herself, back when she thought she could trust Vargo. She said, “The spiritual affliction I told you about, the one affecting House Traementis. Tanaquis was, thank the Lumen, able to lift it from us. And yes, she used cards in the numinat.”

  The discussion that followed was too abstruse for Renata to follow, but that was fine. It gave her the freedom to focus instead on Vargo, watching his reactions, listening to the brief comments his spirit interjected.