He stood, slowly. “The fuck is this?”
“My name is Ren,” she said, her throat tight. What have I done? “I was born in Lacewater and trained as one of Ondrakja’s Fingers. Never in my life have I been to Seteris. I am a con artist.”
“You’re…” His breath hissed through his teeth. Vargo wasn’t a stupid man, nor an unobservant one. She watched as he unraveled the knot. “You’re Lenskaya. And if you were a Finger, then Sedge…”
“Is my brother.” She tipped her wrist upward, showing the faint line of the scar.
She forced herself to hold still when he grabbed her hand and studied the scar like it would reveal another layer of secrets. Her fingers were soft after almost a year in gloves, his calluses rough against them.
He released her as though he’d picked up a dead fish. “How nice for you.” There was something ugly about the way he glared at her wrist, and something uglier still in his voice. “So we’re both liars and hypocrites. Are you a murderer, too?”
She’d taken her mask off. There was nothing to hide behind when that knife slid between her ribs. Leato.
The flinch shook her whole body, and Vargo’s expression transformed on the spot from anger to horror. “Fuck. Renata—Ren—I—”
He froze halfway through reaching out, like he didn’t know how to comfort instead of harm. Like he didn’t know if he could. For an instant she stared at his hand. Then Vargo started to withdraw—
She caught him, clutching his fingers in an awkward grip. It was the only thing she could think to do, because for once in her life, no words would come. She’d meant for the revelation to ease the tension between them, to prove that she did understand. Instead she’d hurt him—again—and he’d done the same.
But that hand spoke a different truth. The friendship she’d once believed in, even if they both kept doing their best to break it.
Vargo stood, hardly breathing, looking at their hands. It lasted long enough for Ren to start feeling embarrassed, and to search for something to say; then Vargo broke the silence. “I… need a drink.”
She let go, and he went to the sideboard. From its depths came a dusty, full-bottomed bottle of fortified wine. He filled one of the teacups, then held it out like a peace offering.
Fuck it. Ren knocked the contents back like the Lacewater rat she was.
Vargo refilled her cup, then took a swig directly from the bottle and clutched it to his chest as he sat. When he finally broke the silence, his voice was hoarse. “Let’s start again? I’m Vargo. Lower Bank knot boss, recently ennobled. And an ass who sometimes says things he regrets. You?”
She laughed unsteadily. “Ren. Arenza Lenskaya really is my name, but I use it now only when… well. You know. Also Renata Viraudax Traementatis, fake noblewoman, and the Black Rose. Though I planned that last one not.”
His smile was grudging, but real. “Not a fake noblewoman; I watched them add you to the register. Shit, that was an even bigger coup than I realized. Sit down. Stop making me look up at you. I died the other day and only woke up a few bells ago.”
Sitting felt like an excellent idea. Vargo took another swig, studying her. Abruptly, he said, “How old are you?”
She fought the urge to touch her bare face. “I’ll be twenty in Equilun.”
“Fuck me. I knew you were younger than me, but under that makeup, you’re still nipper-cheeked. I feel like an old man now.” He eyed the bottle as if trying to gauge whether it would be enough to get them through this conversation. “How the hell did you infiltrate the Traementis like that?”
“I was Letilia’s maid for five years. After Tess and I fled the Fingers.” No way in hell was she going to admit to Vargo that she was a knot-traitor who’d poisoned Ondrakja. Not right now, anyway. “Think you that I will answer all your questions, and ask none of my own? What is your interest in the Praeteri?”
His breath huffed out. “Destroying them, if I can.”
The fortified wine was hitting fast enough that her eyebrows rose. Vargo said, “I mean, I also want to know how they’re doing what they do. There’s a type of spirit called an eisar—”
“Yes, Tanaquis said.”
“Did she also tell you the Praeteri are using that shit all over Nadežra to bolster their own power?” He grimaced and drank again. “Probably not. She might be the only person in that cult who’s actually there to study the mysteries of numinatria. They’ve been doing it for years, though—I’d show you my notes, but the Rook burned ’em. The first time I was able to lay eyes on an active eisar numinat was during the Dreamweaver Riots. But the whole reason I became a cuff was so I could get an invite to the Praeteri and see how they make the damn things.”
Then he glanced around the plush comfort of his breakfast room and snorted. “Well. Part of the reason.”
Ren could hardly cast stones at anyone for wanting luxury. She sipped the wine: rich and dark, smelling of summer cherries, and nothing either of them could have afforded in the past. Vargo said, “My turn. Why the Black Rose? What was a con artist doing at the amphitheatre that night?”
“Initially? Being a prisoner. Mettore’s plan required using ash to poison someone conceived during the Great Dream. He had two: me and—”
Ren stopped, suddenly cold. That’s how Mettore knew. For ages she’d wondered how he could possibly have guessed—especially with Arkady. But Grey had said those who held medallions could tell when someone or something would be useful to their goals.
She took a gulp of her wine, washing down her fear. “The curse on Grey. You recognized it, and as more than just Praeteri work. You—” There was no good way to lie around it. As Vargo reached across to fill her cup again, she said, “I can hear your conversations with Alsius.”
The wine nearly splashed over her hand. Vargo cursed and stopped pouring, then belatedly dug out a wrinkled handkerchief and tossed it to her. While Ren blotted up the spill, he said, “How the fuck—”
“Veiled Waters. You had collapsed. I could see a thread connecting us. I—strengthened it. Somehow. And since then, if I am close enough, if I pay attention… I can hear.” She glanced around. “Except I cannot hear him now.”
“That’s because he’s still passed out. Shit! I told Alsius I heard a voice that night.” Vargo sank back on the couch, staring. “I’m going to lose my mind obsessing over every conversation we’ve had in your presence since then.”
Then, midway through another swallow, he coughed on the wine. “Is it only him you can hear, or—” His eyes narrowed as though he was thinking at her very hard.
“Only the two of you together.” Ren waited until he set the bottle down, then asked, “Is he really Ghiscolo’s brother?” When Vargo nodded, she said, “And he was killed by the same thing that almost got Grey.”
“Seems you’ve heard plenty.”
“But with Ghiscolo you still work.” Her speech was getting more Vraszenian the emptier that bottle became.
Vargo snorted. “Gotta get close enough to your enemy to slip the knife in. Sixteen years ago, he tried to murder Alsius with a death curse. Same one that was laid on Serrado. How did he stumble into it? That’s no simple thing to drop on just anyone. There’s a thousand easier ways to kill a person.”
Ren hesitated. It was the other side of the coin Grey had flipped to her: secrets she couldn’t share, because they weren’t her own.
Before Vargo’s expression could shutter the way it so often did, she spoke her thoughts. “I would tell you if I could. But that secret…”
“Isn’t yours. Got it. Out of idle curiosity, what lie were you planning to feed me if I asked before we started being all honest-like with each other?”
“That he was assisting me by investigating the Ordo Apis.”
Vargo traced a numinat into the dust on the side of his bottle, then wiped it away half-complete. “Alsius didn’t fare as well as Serrado. His spirit got trapped in the body of my pet spider, and we wound up connected.” He tapped his chest, where the numinatrian
brand lay hidden. “Once we realized there was no freeing him without killing us both, we started investigating who was behind the curse. The trail led to Diomen. Guebris, the old Acrenix head, had brought him to Nadežra, and was acting as his patron. Alsius thought Diomen was a charlatan, using trickery to control his father. Turns out his tricks are real. But we found out that while Diomen may have crafted the curse, the assassination wasn’t his idea.”
“Ghiscolo.”
Vargo nodded. “He started up the cult after he took over House Acrenix. So the plan’s been, learn their secrets, then once I’ve got those, kill Ghiscolo and Diomen. Then see about making this city less of a shithole.”
Assuming he could pull all of that off without being arrested and executed himself. But Ren knew better than to point that out, and Vargo went on in a deliberately lighter tone. “That’s tomorrow’s business, though. Today is for removing masks and washing off mud and whatever other metaphors you care to add to the pile.”
He topped up her cup, then clinked his bottle against it, hard enough to spill again. Ren looked for his handkerchief before giving up and licking the droplets away. Vargo watched for a moment like a man who hadn’t eaten his morning porridge, then grumbled, “I am not sober enough or drunk enough for this,” and took another swig.
She’d had enough of the wine to snicker at his comment. “The rest of my business can wait also. What say you to the idea of getting drunk and telling each other more things? I have of late been strangely honest, and it feels… good.” More than good. Like—
Like it was all right to be herself.
“I’ve got nowhere else to be. And no particular desire to get off this couch.” Kicking his slippered feet up onto the cushions, Vargo turned his sprawl into a shameless, full-blown lounge. “So. You were one of the famed Lacewater Fingers? Start there.”
Isla Čaprila, Eastbridge: Canilun 5
The message Tess received was brief, cryptic, and worrying.
Bring my makeup to Vargo’s.
Ren had left for Eastbridge at midmorning. Now it was well after noon, and she’d missed two appointments. What had gone wrong? Why did she need her makeup? If it was bruises that needed covering up—if that man had hurt her—
The heavy thump that came a moment after Tess knocked on the door put her heart in her mouth. But after it… was that a giggle?
Before she could fret more, the door swung wide to reveal a very drunk and disheveled Vargo, clinging to the frame. “Tess!” he exclaimed. “I hear you’re a wanted criminal in Ganllech!”
“Wha—” Tess stared past him to see Ren sitting on the floor of the hallway… without a spot of makeup on.
Her sister waved one hand loopily in Tess’s direction. “He knows everything. Long story. Come inside. Vargo believes not that I can put my face on while drunk; ’m gonna prove him wrong.”
Charterhouse, Dawngate: Canilun 6
Vargo woke the next morning wishing that the truth in wine didn’t come with predictable consequences. Yesterday he woke up feeling like death because he’d died. Today, he only wished he had.
::It’s your own fault for letting me sleep through important conversations,:: Alsius grumbled. After two days of his own dead sleep, he’d woken up chipper—until Vargo relayed the reason for his hungover state. ::A conversation I actually could have participated in!::
“Please, not so loud,” Vargo said, mixing up a concoction of pear juice, ginger, and willow bark that had never let him down. Perhaps he should send the recipe to Traementis Manor.
He could understand Alsius’s enthusiasm. For sixteen years the old man had precisely one person he could talk to; the prospect of being able to double the size of his social world made him giddy. And, true to form, Alsius was salivating to learn how it had been done, pronouncing Vargo’s secondhand and hungover explanation “quite insufficient.”
But the eagerness still rankled, for reasons Vargo preferred not to examine too closely.
He let the flood of questions go mostly unanswered while he bathed, shaved, and debated spending another day in his robe. He’d already let business slide for two days, though—three more than he could afford—so eventually he dressed. Then he sent a messenger boy to the Isarnah compound in Floodwatch, letting Varuni know he was feeling well enough to make himself into a target again, and would meet her at the Froghole headquarters.
::Could we make a brief detour to Traementis Manor before that? I should like to pay my respects to Renata personally.::
“Give the woman a chance to rest before giving her reason to regret having said anything.” It came out more sourly than Vargo intended. “We’ll see her soon enough, but business won’t wait.”
Just as Vargo was pulling on his gloves, however, a messenger in Charterhouse livery arrived with a summons he didn’t dare ignore.
Visiting the Charterhouse made Vargo want to take his hangover and crawl back into his deathbed. Bureaucracy that usually moved turtle slow had become mired to the point of stagnation. Vargo would have suspected Praeteri influence, except that it wasn’t like the usual push and pull of warring delta houses. Nobody could get anything through, not even with help from their friends in the cult.
The liveried messenger whisked Vargo past the morning crowd of petitioners and advocates clogging the main atrium. Past the doors of the Cinquerat’s public audience chamber and the archways leading to their offices, to upper-level halls that echoed with the somber hush of infrequent use.
::Maybe he’s leading us into an ambush.::
The way things have been going lately, don’t joke, Vargo thought as they passed through a set of polished doors of cherrywood and into a more intimate version of the audience chamber below. There was no spectator’s gallery, the Cinquerat thrones were understated rather than ostentatious, and instead of house benches for the nobility, comfortable chairs had been set up in rows.
They weren’t the first arrivals. Among the quietly chatting cuffs, Vargo spotted Faella Coscanum and her brother, Paumilla Cleoter and her heir and spare, Sibiliat and Fadrin Acrenix—Vargo quickly looked away before he caught their attention—and…
::Look, there she is! Renata! I mean, Alta Renata. Do forgive my manners. It’s just been so long since I’ve had a proper conversation—::
I talk to you every day, old man, Vargo grumbled, even as he felt his face warm. This was the sort of thing Ren had been privy to for months. He preferred to not think about what she might have overheard.
From the stiffening of her spine, she definitely heard Alsius shouting for her, but if she tried to reply, nothing came across. Peabody tickled Vargo’s neck as he crawled out of hiding and raised his colorful abdomen in an attempt to catch her attention.
::Why isn’t she saying anything?:: he asked mournfully.
I don’t think she can. Vargo ignored the welling of petty satisfaction that at least some things remained private. We can ask later. Right now, I’d like to know why everyone was summoned here.
::Representatives from all the noble houses? Someone must have invoked their right to a private tribunal.::
Dread settled over Vargo as his gaze swept the gathering again, searching for some hint of who might have done so, and why.
He wished he and Renata—Ren—had spent a little less time drinking the previous day, and a little more time planning. She hadn’t approached him here; were they going to keep up a facade of estrangement? It might be useful, if only because people would wonder at a reconciliation so soon after the events at the Traementis adoption ball.
It meant he had to fight to keep his gaze from drifting toward her, though. Even knowing the truth, he could barely make himself believe the woman talking to Parma was the Lacewater rat he’d met yesterday, much less the Vraszenian szorsa he’d hauled in for interrogation. Unlike him, she didn’t wear the marks of hardship openly; she’d had a mother for her early years, and then after that, Ondrakja had made sure to protect the asset of her “pretty face.”
Vargo’s s
kin crawled, remembering the loathing with which Ren had uttered that phrase. No wonder she preferred to be admired for her clever mind.
But the real marvel was in her bearing. She inhabited her role as naturally as breathing—as if she believed without question that she was every bit as good as those around her. As if it never crossed her mind that they might question it, either.
He was staring, despite meaning not to. Vargo nudged Alsius back under his collar before anyone could see him, then turned away and dropped heavily into the single chair set aside for his one-man house.
A few other nobles had trickled in; now two of the Destaelio daughters—the only two not currently traveling on their mother’s business—nodded to the doorman to close the doors behind them.
Once everyone was seated, Sostira Novrus stood up.
Vargo’s hands tightened on the arms of his chair. He still couldn’t look at her without thinking, I would do the job better. Not because he had any passion for Argentet’s duties; if someone offered him the Cinquerat seat of his choice, he would take Prasinet or Iridet or even Fulvet first. No, it was because he wouldn’t get caught up in petty feuds. He wouldn’t estrange the city’s Vraszenian residents for no better reason than prejudice and greed. If he had her power—
::Steady, my boy.::
Grateful for Alsius’s stabilizing presence, Vargo sat up as Sostira began to speak.
“I thank you all for attending this tribunal, and I won’t waste your time. Three nights ago, someone broke into the Novrus shipping office in Whitesail and destroyed a certain letter. My fellow Cinquerat members have already reviewed and accepted the testimonies of several witnesses as to the existence of this letter and the tampering with the cabinet where it was stored, and the ash around the incendiary numinat used to destroy it.”
Cibrial Destaelio and Scaperto Quientis looked distinctly pained at Sostira’s words, but none of the Cinquerat denied her claim. With a smug lift of her chin, Sostira continued, “The missing letter was from Eret Ebarius Viraudax, the father of Alta Renata Viraudax Traementatis.”
The Liar's Knot Page 45