Her whole den could have made a spacious home of the room that lay empty beyond the desk—and the desk itself might occupy three kitchens’ worth of space. But the wood here, gleaming as if it were a dark reflection of stone, was unmarked, unscored, utterly untouched.
She had never expected so much money could feel so . . . empty.
The warmth melted snow; she stood dripping in the glare, and tried not to feel self-conscious. A man appeared behind the desk. It was not so late that he looked tired or grouchy with lack of sleep—but given his expression, and the perfect drape of his stiff, pale clothing, she doubted that he ever slept. He nodded politely in her direction, and this, too, came as a little shock. But the clothing she wore spoke of affluence, not poverty; she was not out of place here. Or she didn’t look out of place.
Drawing her chin up, she walked slowly toward the man behind his fortress of a desk. “I’m here,” she said quietly, “to meet a friend.”
“Your name?”
Her name. She hesitated for a moment. “Amber,” she said at last. “Amber Hartold.”
He paused, and then opened a drawer to his right; he pulled out a long piece of paper, and studied it. It neither annoyed him nor amused him; his expression was like the stone she walked across. Since her parents had died, she had learned that being unnoticed was good; therefore it didn’t bother her much.
The wait did; she had never been patient. Even when awaiting punishment, the wait was a torment, the punishment almost a relief. She didn’t glance at Duster; she studied her boots instead.
“Yes,” he said at last, and this time he did look at her, and a brief expression, flickering by too quickly to be pinned down, touched his face. “You are expected.” He clapped his hands, and a man appeared from the other side of a small door she hadn’t noticed. His perfect clothing was almost exactly like that of the man behind the desk, but he was younger, and a bit less stern. He even smiled—when the older man’s back was turned.
“The Arboretum dining hall,” the older man said.
This stilled the smile. “But that’s—”
“Now. Ask no questions,” the older man added severely. “And do not trouble our guests.”
At least one of the guests didn’t like his tone, but Jewel was now, as Haval would say, in character. She pretended not to notice. And it was hard.
Rath had said the inn would be almost deserted.
He was right. And wrong. Inn was a poor word for a building this fine and grand; it could almost be a cathedral, with its high ceilings, its perfect floors, its visible stone and hanging tapestries; a cathedral, she thought bitterly, for the gods of money, whoever they were. Wealth was supposed to be hers, and this display of wealth should therefore be beneath her notice.
But it was almost impossible to just walk past unmoved; it was certainly impossible to move quickly in any case; her feet were now sore with their unfamiliar confinement, and the height of her heels made the back of her calves ache. It took effort not to wobble.
Duster caught her when she almost tripped; her grip was like steel, and Jewel was certain her fingers left bruises. She met Duster’s eyes, and saw that they glittered in the opulence of the light; glittered, and yet, were as dark as Jewel had ever seen them. There was, about her expression, something that made avarice seem chaste and tame, a hunger that made starvation seem paltry.
What did you expect to see? Fear?
No answer, there. Duster had never been a mirror.
And yet . . . she shook herself, smiled weakly, banished that smile, and continued to walk.
The air smelled oddly sweet and musty; incense was burning in the halls, fine, slender sticks that were dense and fragrant. Fires burned in hollows made for wood, and chimneys drew the smoke up, and up again; she was not cold in this place. And at this time of year, cold was always an issue.
Better cold, she realized, better hunger, than this.
She had come to kill a man.
No, some part of her said, Duster’s come to kill a man. It’s not murder. It’s execution.
But another part of her answered, bleakly, She would never have come this far without me. If she’s the knife, I’m the hand that’s holding it.
Then turn back. Turn back while you can; run. Give it up. What do you have to lose?
And behind her, steps soft and firm, walked a shadow, some vague accusation whose name was Duster.
But the next question, she had no answer for: Why are you afraid to lose her? And she asked it, because there was no way to still that voice.
Rath watched from the shadows; they were some part of him now, as was the Winter. He waited until Jewel and Duster, two incongruous steps behind, cleared the decorative guards at the grand front doors of the inn before he began to move. He felt uneasy, in the clean open light of the Winter moon. She was gone; he could not watch her or hear her.
He was an accomplished liar; he could not tell himself that he thought she’d be safe. He had made his plans, but plans seldom survived first contact with the enemy—and first contact would be hers in its entirety. Not for the first time, he wondered why he had agreed to this, and not for the first time, he accepted the answer: This was her test.
And had he tested Amarais? Younger and smarter than Rath, smaller and more steely, had he tested her? He had thought, in his youth, that she had failed them all, betrayed them all. Perhaps, he thought bitterly, she had tested Rath—and Rath had failed.
He was determined not to fail now.
He checked the one pouch he carried, leather thick and Winter-cold to his touch. At some cost, he had procured large quantities of a medicinal herb—the only one with a subtle flavor that would be easily masked by wine. He made his way to the servants entrance, and there, handed the guard on duty a small sum of money. It bought, for a few seconds, a very necessary blindness.
The Arboretum was the biggest shock. Jewel was vaguely aware of what the word meant—Rath was not a kind teacher, and certainly not a lenient one—but vague knowledge and reality were in no way the same. There was green here. It was the type of green that even the streets didn’t see during the height of Summer; the leaves seemed to glow with magelight, as if they absorbed it. And the leaves themselves were as wide in places as her thighs, as narrow in others as her smallest finger; they were long and short, emerald and magenta, and among them, nestled at times in the heart of those leaves, and at others, upon leaves that seemed to bear them like a crown, were flowers that were so brilliant her clothing’s expensive dyes seemed dull and flat by comparison.
This was life, she thought, and forgetting herself, bent to touch a leaf with a shaking hand, to stroke the thin membrane of red and violet. She could remember sensation clearly when other things escaped her: words to describe it, visual memories to fasten it. She could, if she wanted, think of bark, and know exactly what it felt like to bite it or suck on it, although she had no memory of ever doing so. And there was ivory bark here, thin trees with slender, rising branches, that almost invited her to make that memory. But she had enough dignity to pull back and rise.
Duster waited by her back in perfect, subservient silence. It was . . . unsettling. Jewel had never thought to miss her cutting words, her cruel curses—but she missed them now. There was nothing of Duster in the servant; the servant had become her. Then again, Duster had always said she was a damn good liar. Lying, to Jewel, was like a foreign language; she struggled with its consonants and the shape of its vowels.
And tonight, she had to sound like a native.
She was, of course, afraid, and she remembered clearly what Haval had said about fear. Coming here, in the cold that was so familiar it was almost like kin, it had been easy to believe that she could channel fear; in this bright room, this beautiful, impossible place, belief faltered.
But the boy who was leading her—and he was a boy, although older than she by a few years if she was any judge—now offered her a pained smile, a hesitant one. “Lady,” he said formally, “your host is wait
ing.” And in his tone she heard the words he wanted to say, and didn’t: that this host did not like to be kept waiting.
“Of course,” she said, in a pale, thin voice. “It’s—I’m sorry to keep you.” But hadn’t Rath said she would wait for him? He was early. Lord Waverly was early. Jewel was well aware of how their plan could go wrong—but all of the disasters she’d imagined, and she’d done little else, did not include this.
He shook his head. “In the Summer, hardly anyone notices the Arboretum. But in the Winter, it’s different. It’s almost like a harbor.”
“Do you come here often?”
“Me?” He laughed. Caught himself and folded laughter into awkward silence. “No. The Master Gardener would kill me if I so much as dribbled water across his precious flowers.”
She laughed, and her laughter sounded almost natural. “I can almost understand why,” she told him. “I’m not very good with plants.”
“He doesn’t call them plants. He has names for all of them,” the boy added.
“Flowers have names.”
“He calls that one Fossie.”
“Oh.”
“But if he saw you touch them, he couldn’t say a word. You were careful,” he added, “and you—appreciate them.”
“We don’t have flowers like this.”
“No, not unless you sleep in a flower bed.” He began to walk, and then slowed. Turned to look at Jewel. And to look away. It was painful and awkward, and she wanted to tell him, “It’s okay.” But her own words wouldn’t come, maybe because she just didn’t trust them to be the right words.
That was the problem with lying, she thought; you had to have the knack of using the right damn words at the right damn time. She had the knack of using the wrong words at the right time on a good day.
“If you—” he smiled, but it was the ghost of a smile—something that might once have known life, but now knew only cold and fear. “There are bells—” He stopped again. “Do you—have you met your host before?”
“He’s a business associate of my father’s,” she replied smoothly. “I haven’t met him yet, but I’m told I’ll like him.”
He said nothing at that. But the smile was gone, and he was pale and cold, like the Winter outside. Even the passing garden—and it still existed all around them—leeched color from his face.
“The dining room here is part of the Arboretum,” he said formally and stiffly. “The walls are made of special glass. Your host has—the Arboretum is his for the evening. There will be attendants to serve dinner,” he added, “but they will leave when the lord commands them.”
She nodded.
Nothing else to say, really.
Rath made his way to the spacious and—given his experience—the surprisingly clean kitchen. As it was Winter the staff numbered four; during the busy merchanting season, when the port was not occupied by empty ships, there were at least triple that number. He knew this because it was not the first time he had used this fine inn for business transactions. Admittedly, the tour of the kitchens that he had insisted on making had been entirely secondary to his goals, but the role he had taken for that particular job had required no less.
He glanced around the large room and frowned. There were two aproned cooks—a woman of Rath’s age, and a young man; the man who ruled the kitchen could be seen nearer the large stoves that occupied the far wall. But the man he had come to see, briefly, was nowhere in sight.
The woman, however, rose as Rath paused. She eyed him dubiously. But if she was brisk, she chose to be polite; it was, after all, a sparse season, and everyone needed to eat.
“Here,” she said. “You’ve taken a wrong turn. These are the kitchens, and they’re no place for guests.”
“My apologies,” he said. “I serve as a courier for Lands-don’s, and I was instructed to carry a small parcel for Marrett. His daughter’s been unwell,” he added.
She frowned. “Aye,” she said after a long pause. “She has, at that. But maybe whatever it is that made her unwell has also caught Marrett—he’s not come into work today.” She lowered her voice and added, “and the Cook’s fit to be tied; we’ve an important guest for the off-season.”
“I beg your pardon,” Rath said, running a hand through his hair. “But you said he hasn’t been in this evening? Perhaps I have the wrong shift.”
“Oh, no, you’ve got the right shift. But he’s not come in, and he’s sent no word.” She shook her head. “Maybe you should take that parcel you’re carrying off to his home; he might find it more useful there.”
Just like that, the world shifted. Rath was a practiced liar, a practiced con man. He nodded briskly to the woman and apologized, just as briskly, for the interruption, before retreating from the kitchen.
But if the Arboretum was a surprise, the man who waited, at a long, perfect table, was no less of a surprise. Jewel had, she realized, built an image of him in her mind, and that image and the man clashed horribly, the one shattering like the glass walls wouldn’t.
She had expected someone who looked like Rath’s friends—tall, forbidding, and very dangerous. She had expected someone handsome and cold, with dark hair, dark eyes, and an obvious penchant for cruelty. She hadn’t really thought of his age, of how old he must be, or how young—but this man could have been her father. Or someone’s father. He was not tall, at least he did not look tall, and he was not so lean and scarred as Rath’s almost unnamed friends. His hair was shot through with gray, and he had a beard that was almost unkempt. His hands were thick, like carpenter’s hands, although the rings were out of place, and many. She looked at him as if, by making this list, she would understand what she saw.
Understand, perhaps, the difference between what she saw and what she had expected to see. She had expected guards; Duster had been so certain there would be guards; there were none. But Haval had been certain as well—and that meant Haval could be wrong.
It should have comforted her: this stranger, this unexpected man, shorn of guards, no obvious cruelty in his expression.
Her Oma had always told her that life was a series of lessons, and most of them were harsh. It was a pride to the old woman to have survived so much hardship, and she was never so happy—in a grim sort of way, pipe cooling in the corner of her mouth—as when Jewel swallowed either fear or disappointment with a grim child’s acceptance. Not cowed, never that, but not broken.
She had cautioned Jewel to be suspicious of all things, especially appearances: the appearance of wealth, the appearance of poverty, the ways in which children would pretend to be crippled to swindle money out of the foolish. She cautioned Jewel not to be led astray—never to be led astray—by the whim of a foolish heart, a stupid kindness. But she also waited for the inevitable, because Jewel was her father’s child, and it did happen.
So you’ve learned something, she would say, and then slowly pad the bowl of her pipe. And you’re still alive. You’re not bleeding. Nothing’s broken. You’ve no scars and you’ve lost nothing important but stupidity. Not a kind woman, her Oma, never that.
Now, Jewel looked at this man, sitting casually in a chair at a table that was neither too long nor too intimidating. Certain, watching him, that he had children, and that he was even kind to them.
Had she been another person, she might have looked back at Duster, looked askance, demanded acknowledgment that this was the man who had so hurt her. But she was Jewel Markess, and before she could do any of those things, she understood what she was supposed to learn here.
She swallowed, and then offered the man a formal half-curtsy. “My father,” she said, in a quiet girl’s voice, “asked me to deliver this letter.” And she walked toward him, slowly, as if aware of his importance. His title.
She was. She hated it with a ferocity that did not banish fear, but deepened it. It was harsh and unexpected, and her hands were shaking as she extended them, Rath’s carefully sealed letter the bridge between them.
He nodded genially and took the letter wi
th care. But he didn’t open it immediately. Instead, he said, “How old are you, girl?”
“Fourteen,” she replied carefully. In the dress and the cloak, it might even be true, but it was a young fourteen.
He raised a brow, not believing her, and there was genuine amusement in the smile he offered. “Fourteen,” he said. “Almost an adult.”
She nodded hesitantly, stiffly, letting her fear inform her movements. Working with it, as Haval had taught her. When he returned her smile, he looked almost gentle.
Almost.
“Please,” he told her, lifting a hand, palm up, and gesturing around the table as if he owned it, “take a seat. It is cold outside, and you’ve traveled some distance; join me while I eat. Your father is waiting?”
“I am to call a carriage,” she replied, “when I’m ready to leave.” Lifting her chin, now, and striving to look the elevated age of fourteen.
This seemed to amuse him, and she remembered dimly that amusement was often one way of stemming rage, of averting danger. It had been so when she had been a child in her Oma’s home. But what amused this man?
She did not look at Duster when Duster came and retrieved, in perfect silence, her winter clothing; the fine cloak, the gloves, the scarf that Rath had taken pains to arrange so carefully.
“That will be all,” Lord Waverly told Duster, in a tone of voice that was both cool and dismissive. “Your mistress will call for you when she requires your service. Wait in the servants’ quarters until you are summoned.”
Jewel had not believed that Duster could come here and be unrecognized. Haval had promised her that she would pass unnoticed, and she had accepted his word as truth—but she hadn’t truly believed it until this moment. Duster was beneath the lord’s notice, here.
And Jewel was increasingly aware that she was not.
She didn’t want Duster to leave. But she nodded in silent agreement with the officious command. To do anything else might be to lose this unexpected miracle of anonymity. It might be the only miracle of a long evening.
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