The Liar's Knot

by M. A. Carrick

  Could the Rook be hiding within the Vigil itself?

  The pattern she’d laid for Serrado hadn’t turned up any hint of it. Only that hideous future line, something poisoning his fate. But maybe the forces that protected the Rook’s identity had blocked her reading. Meanwhile, the Rook had been pursuing Kolya Serrado’s killer for the last year, while Kolya’s brother supposedly hunted him.

  It was a tenuous thread at best. Besides, she’d been wrong before about who was under that hood. She didn’t want the humiliation of being wrong again.

  He still hadn’t spoken. Ren was loath to break the silence—but there was more she hadn’t said. “Acrenix is only half of it, though. Maybe less than half.”

  The Rook pivoted like a man facing a new opponent. Ren said, “Vargo has some kind of spirit bound to him.”

  “I assume you don’t know this because he told you?” Before she could answer, he muttered, “Though I should know better. People tend to tell you things.”

  She bit down on the urge to say, So tell me who you are. “They’re connected, mind to mind. I think the spirit is contained in that spider of his, Master Peabody.” She gazed down at the empty floor, where Vargo had stood. “I’ve been trying to find out what it could be. Some kind of ghost? It talks like a person—like a Nadežran, in fact, and one familiar with numinatria. Vargo called him Alsius.”

  “I should have crushed that thing when I had the chance,” the Rook said in disgust. At her raised brow, he added, “The spider was at the house when I visited. It was watching me the entire time. How is it you can hear them?”

  “When we fought here… I saw connections between people. A strong one between Vargo and this spirit, and another between me and Vargo. I…”

  She trailed off, trying to think how to describe what she’d done. “I strengthened it,” she said at last. “To get him to finish erasing the numinat. But I think that’s why I can hear them now.”

  “And Vargo doesn’t know?”

  “If he did, I doubt I would be talking to you now.”

  Hipping up onto the balustrade, the Rook propped a boot on the wall and looked out at the amphitheatre. She saw more than heard his sigh, in the movement of his shoulders. “So Vargo has a spirit that can keep watch for him but can’t stop intruders. And he hasn’t bothered to improve the protections at his house, which says there’s nothing there that needs it.”

  He sounded like he was thinking out loud. Ren stayed silent, waiting to see what he would let slip. “Would be nice if I could drop that bodyguard of his in a dark hole for a few bells,” the Rook said, rubbing absently at his calf, as though remembering Varuni’s chain whip. “Vargo strikes me as the sort to think there’s no safer place in the world than his own pocket.”

  Ren had once been a very skilled pickpocket—but she might as well go ahead and cut off her own hand now, rather than try that on Vargo. “If you could catch him alone… that would be useful?”

  Even in good light, she could never see more than the edge of a smile within the Rook’s hood. With the moons silhouetted behind him, she couldn’t even see that much. But she read a hint of amusement in the tilt of his head. “The Black Rose has a plan?”

  “Not the Black Rose,” Ren said, the idea taking shape in her mind. “Alta Renata.”

  Isla Traementis, the Pearls: Similun 34

  The Rook had patience. Those who wore the hood had worked toward eradicating Kaius Rex’s corrupting influence from Nadežra for two hundred years. And yet as he crouched above an open window at Traementis Manor, listening to the nobles inside discussing inanities over hand after hand of cards, it felt like an interminable wait.

  But his patience paid off. Alta Renata’s crisp Seterin voice asked her cousin to go down to the kitchens for spiced chocolate. Her instructions were very precise, and the lilt in her request implied Giuna could—in fact, should—take her time. The half-suppressed giggle in the reply promised Renata would have all the time she might want alone with Eret Vargo.

  The door clicked shut. The Rook slipped down, one booted toe nudging the window open wider so he could balance on the sill. A gauzy curtain softened the interior of the upstairs salon where the card game had been set up, until the silvered tip of the Rook’s rapier lifted it aside. Vargo’s back was to the window, and Renata…

  Renata looked like she was enjoying something immensely, and the Rook suspected it wasn’t Vargo’s company. He crept into the room, silent as the slide of the curtain over his shoulder.

  “Not that your new cousin isn’t charming company,” Vargo said as he shuffled the cards. “But I’d hoped we might have at least some time alone.”

  The Rook lived for invitations like that. His blade whispered along Vargo’s ear. “Too bad you won’t get any,” the Rook whispered into the other.

  Vargo went utterly still. The sword’s edge rested just a breath away from his throat; any sudden movement on his part would add a scar to match the one on the other side. Across from him, Renata sat frozen, back pressed hard against her chair, looking for all the world like a noblewoman caught off guard by a vigilante who hated her kind.

  A flash of color scuttled to the other side of Vargo’s collar. Scooping it up, the Rook flung it out the window and into the night. Vargo jerked as though he’d been struck, and the Rook said, “I don’t like spiders.”

  “We’re not much fond of birds,” Vargo managed, with the ghost of his usual sardonic edge.

  The man’s sword cane was leaning against the arm of his chair; that followed the spider out the window. Then the Rook circled around, blade at the ready, until he had both Vargo and Renata within reach of a lunge.

  His gaze flicked down to her gloves, set aside so she might more easily handle the cards. “I seem to have a knack for catching the alta when she’s undone.”

  “It takes more than a scrap of fabric to undo me,” she said coolly.

  He couldn’t resist saying, “That sounds like a challenge. What would it take to fluster you?”

  One fine eyebrow arched. She must pencil them thicker when she was Arenza; he would look, the next time they met in that guise. In a cool voice, she said, “I thought the Rook specialized in flustering nobles. Surely you don’t need my instruction.”

  “Less a challenge, then… and more an invitation to experiment?”

  “Should I give you two a moment?” Vargo drawled.

  So much for pleasant distractions. “Not necessary,” the Rook said, his voice hardening. “It’s you I came for. You ran off before we could finish our conversation.”

  Vargo smirked. “I thought it was a dance.”

  The Rook’s cold, eternal anger at the nobility flared up with the heat of Grey’s hatred for his brother’s killer. “It’s neither,” he spat. “And it isn’t a game. You have something. I’ve come to take it from you.”

  “This ‘something’… Is it what you were searching for when you broke into my house?” Vargo leaned back in his chair, balancing it on the rear legs. “Or is it something more ephemeral, like my life?”

  Neither Grey nor the Rook was stupid enough to believe that throwing away the cane had left Vargo unarmed. But a man with a knife was at a serious disadvantage against one with a sword. It would be easy: a single lunge, and Kolya would be avenged.

  Or would he? Vargo had survived some appalling wounds at the amphitheatre—survived, and recovered with unnatural speed.

  Either way, the desire to kill was Grey’s, not the Rook’s. This is what the medallions do, he thought. House Taspernum, House Adrexa, House Contorio… all destroyed, because someone else craved their power.

  That wasn’t Grey’s reason. But still: He’d sworn not to cross that line. “If I were here to kill you, you’d be dead. Stand up.”

  Jaw clenched, Vargo stood and endured the rough pat-down the Rook gave him. Two knives and a sap went onto the table, scattering the abandoned cards, while Renata sat watching in tense silence.

  Then, sword re-sheathed, the Rook started a
second, more thorough pat-down. Arms, legs, front, back; his gloves ghosted over every part of Vargo in search of the one piece that might unlock the whole puzzle. Assuming it was on Vargo. Assuming that was the reason for his sudden rise to power. The Rook lingered over the small lump at Vargo’s navel until the man winced and muttered, “If you want a contraceptive numinat, you can get them at the Sebatium.”

  The Rook shoved him away. Frustrated. Disgusted. But not ready to give up.

  “Strip.”

  “What now?”

  A muffled sound came from Renata, too. The Rook couldn’t spare attention for her. “You’re a clever man. I assume you’re good at hiding things. And having gone to all the trouble of tracking you here, I’m not going to quit before I’m sure.”

  When Vargo didn’t move or respond, the Rook’s hand crept toward the hilt of his blade.

  “What are you going to do—cut my clothes off of me?” Vargo’s voice was careless, but his body was tense.

  Steel whispered a hand’s breadth free in reply.

  “Fine,” Vargo growled. “Put that back. I like this coat; I won’t have you making ribbons of it.”

  The coat was pomegranate dark, swirls burned into the velvet, and too closely tailored for him to easily remove it himself. The Rook was tempted to slash it off just to destroy something precious to Vargo. Instead, he nodded at Renata. “Help him.” She edged past, as if wary of the Rook, to pull the coat from Vargo’s shoulders, then retreated with the fabric draped over one arm.

  With insolent slowness, Vargo untied his cravat, held it up, and dropped it like a flag of surrender. Next came the buttons at his wrists and neck, then his waistcoat. A tease, but not a sexual one. Vargo’s kohl-shadowed glare promised vicious retribution.

  His resentment was a mere spark compared to the bonfire that drove the Rook. “I’m growing impatient,” he snapped.

  Vargo’s smile was sharp as the Rook’s blade. “I’m worth the wait.”

  And then the door opened. The Rook had one frozen instant of seeing the mixed alarm and annoyance on Renata’s face before he heard a high-pitched shriek.

  Giuna Traementis. Leato’s little sister, whose departure from the room had been his cue to enter—and who, by Renata’s expression, should not have returned anywhere near this fast. Behind her, red-faced and reaching as though she’d tried to stop her, was Renata’s maid, Tess.

  Djek! For an instant he was Grey Serrado, broken from his focus on his goal.

  Then calculation took over again. “Be silent. Shut the door.” Her scream would bring the household, but the Rook still had a few moments to see this through. Vargo would bleed if cut from his clothes, but it wouldn’t kill him. The Rook turned, some half-formed jest on his tongue about having an audience, but…

  Giuna, white-faced and trembling like a bird as she pressed close under Renata’s protective arm. Giuna, whom he’d held just so after he brought her the news of Leato’s death.

  Alta Giuna. She was a noble. He didn’t have time to coddle her tender sensibilities.

  But neither did Grey have the stomach for frightening her. He backed toward the window, less graceful than he might have been as his conscience struggled against the purpose to which he’d pledged himself. He might be letting his best chance slip through his fingers—

  —or there might be nothing there to find.

  “It seems luck is with the house tonight,” he said to Vargo. The curtain fluttered down from its rings when he yanked it aside with too much force. “We’ll meet again, Eret Vargo.”

  “When we do, perhaps I’ll force you to remove something, Master Rook.”

  Better men than you have failed.

  Shouts were building inside the house. He was out of time. Cursing his ill fortune, the Rook swung up a trellis to the rooftop and escaped.

  8

  The Mask of Ravens

  Floodwatch, Upper Bank: Lepilun 6

  Somehow the Floodwatch Bridge had seemed less imposing to Renata when it was looming over her barge than when she stood atop it, waiting for Sibiliat Acrenix.

  The Dežera’s flood had long since subsided, leaving the water a very long way down. Its channel ran deeper here than around the Old Island, where its waters divided in half; in hindsight, she was glad Sibiliat’s pettiness had made the woman suggest this spot. People had broken their legs jumping or falling from the Sunrise and Sunset Bridges, because the water was too shallow to slow them much before they hit the mud below. At high tide, this should be safe enough.

  She’d gone to Tanaquis for swimming tips in preparation for her third Praeteri trial, the two of them splashing in the shoulder-deep canal behind the house in Whitesail. Only now was it clear to Renata just how different this situation was. How unprepared she was.

  “News! News!” A scrawny boy with a stack of broadsheets tucked under one arm waved a copy in the air. “Scurezza killers found! Buy a copy, learn all about it!”

  Found? Quaniet killed her family; Giuna’s account had made that clear. Chill with foreboding, Renata fished out a centira and took one of his broadsheets.

  A moment later she crumpled the cheap paper in her fist, grinding her teeth to hold back a Vraszenian curse.

  A sedan chair stopped at the eastern end of the bridge, amid the agricultural bustle of the nearby bean market. The bearers weren’t ordinary hirelings; they wore swords at their hips and House Acrenix’s emblem of a snake twisted into a double loop. They stood at attention as Sibiliat disembarked, brushed her surcoat clean of imaginary dust, and set out toward the center of the bridge.

  Renata shouldn’t care, but—“What’s the meaning of this?” she demanded of Sibiliat, brandishing the ruined broadsheet. “Blaming the cook? And saying the Anduske put him up to it?”

  Sibiliat didn’t even have the grace to look surprised. “It’s astonishing how fast word spreads,” she mused. Delicately pinching the edges of the paper to avoid staining her gloves with the ink, she spread it enough to let her peer at the text. “Yes, this has the right of it.”

  “It’s a lie,” Renata snapped.

  “The right story,” Sibiliat clarified, letting the river wind take the paper. “One that everyone will believe—after all, the Anduske were ready to commit murder at the amphitheatre. And Father already has the Ordo Apis hunting them for their other crimes; what’s one more?”

  Ren’s anger was like one of the Vigil’s attack dogs, fighting the chain that held it back. One more crime was another reason for common Nadežrans to fear Vraszenians, another reason to consider them all cold-blooded criminals. Branek and his ilk might deserve to hang for some of the things they’d done… but they hadn’t done this thing, and they weren’t the only ones who would bear the consequences of that accusation.

  Some hint of fury must have leaked through despite her best efforts, because Sibiliat aborted her move to lay a hand on Renata’s shoulder. “Honestly, you should be thanking me. Father and I did this for you—for the Traementis. People were beginning to talk about the lack of answers. With a clear target to blame, no one will think to lay Quaniet’s actions at the feet of your house. You don’t want them saying all the Scurezza died because Coevis thought about leaving them, do you?”

  Ren almost slapped her. On another day, under other circumstances, she might have had better self-control. But she’d been standing here for two bells, waiting to jump off a Mask-damned bridge, and there was a tiny part of her that admired the economic elegance of the lie.

  In that moment, she hated herself more than she hated Sibiliat.

  The other woman sighed. “Well, it’s done, and I don’t care if you’re grateful or not. This isn’t what we’re here for, is it? You’d best get to it.”

  “Fine,” Ren snapped—and without letting herself think twice, she climbed the rail and leapt.

  She’d worn trousers instead of an underdress, and she’d meant to bundle the front and back skirts of her surcoat around her waist before she jumped, but in her haste, she’d forgotte
n. The linen flew up and blinded her, so the impact of the water came as a shock. And then the river was closing over her head, and she was sinking.

  Ren flailed, the wet fabric of her surcoat tangling everywhere like weeds. Her jaw ached as she clamped down on the urge to scream. This was fucking stupidity—no Mask-damned cult was worth this! She was going to drown for Sibiliat’s petty cruelty, for cuffs and their idiotic rituals—she was going to leave Tess and Sedge alone—

  Panic clawed at her throat, choking the air from her lungs. Her whole body jerked with the urge to drag in a breath. Not yet. Light above her glowed like Ažerais’s wellspring, calling her to safety. All she had to do was reach it.

  But she wasn’t only in the river. And if the wellspring was the light above, it was also the darkness below, dragging her down into the nightmare that had overtaken everyone on the Night of Hells. She was drowning in that dream again, trapped in a canal, nothing to cling to, nobody to help pull her out.

  Ren fought to keep her eyes open, to keep her focus on the light. The water swirled with shadows like the liquid movement of the zlyzen. They waited for her down here, in the river; they waited everywhere her fears lurked. In the water. In the Depths. In Ondrakja’s malice, the tightrope walk of her masquerade, the fire that had burned her childhood to ash.

  In her dreams. Haunting her night after night. She thrashed, struggling to escape the river like she struggled every night to escape those nightmares.

  Her head broke the surface. Like a bladder filled with air, she’d floated through no skill of her own. And there was the skiff she’d paid for, almost close enough to hit her; the skiffer reached down and hauled her out of the water, and Ren lay in a trembling puddle in the bottom of the boat, not even able to lift herself to a seat.

  Fuck Sibiliat, and fuck all cuffs. Fuck Tanaquis for bringing her into the Praeteri.

  And while she was at it, fuck herself for ever having agreed to this nonsense.

  Isla Traementis, the Pearls: Lepilun 6