Disreputable Allies (Fates of the Bound Book 1)

by Wren Weston

  Tristan’s hand shot out, gripped his arm, and held him in place. “We’re not done.”

  Simon tried to shake him off, but Tristan held firm. “You idiot child, we’re trying to help you. Senator Craft is dead. Your father can no longer help you get out of this mess. Do you really think your mother is going to save you? She tried to dump you in a mine where you would have come out with black lungs if you ever came out at all. She isn’t coming back for you, no matter how many messages you send. You’re not the only one she threw in the trash, you know. Not everyone was so lucky to end up in a rich man’s vineyard.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, he does,” Lila said. “Why does Alex need to see your mother?”

  Simon shrugged off Tristan. “I have to get back to work.”

  Lila barred his way. “Simon, I promise you that I will not tell my mother anything that you tell me this afternoon, but if you don’t tell me what I want to know, then this deal is off. I’ll make it my mission to find it out anyway. You know that I will.”

  Simon glanced back and forth between her face and the work crew, looking like a lost child who must chose a savior from the crowd. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Then trust me like Alex does.”

  He frowned and kicked at the grass, his eyes reddening. “I started interning as an assistant to Mr. Heatherstone last year. He brings in new software accounts between our family and the wealthier lowborn. I noticed my mother was acting weird during our meetings. It was just small things at first, like saying no to reasonable deals because the families weren’t the right sort of people. The deals wouldn’t have brought in all that much money, so I didn’t put much thought into it. But then, suddenly, she didn’t want us to take on any short-term accounts. It seems odd, doesn’t it? I mean, we needed more partnerships, and Mr. Heatherstone brought her several good deals, even one with the Park family. All she needed to do was sign, but she said no to all of them. She said they weren’t right for the family, that we had too many other projects going on.”

  “What other projects?” Lila asked.

  “That’s what I wanted to know, so I looked into it. We’re coding a few software applications. Each deal is worth several million credits, all long-term projects, but we’re losing more and more money every year. We have plenty of people to work. Why wouldn’t she want us doing anything?”

  Simon cracked his knuckles and sighed, his breath steady once more. “I broke into my mother’s files and started fishing around the financials. I’m not an idiot child. I know enough to understand when someone is liquidating assets. She’s putting her affairs in order, Lila. My grandmother died when she was my mom’s age. I got worried. I wanted to know that she was going to be okay, so I confronted her about it one night after dinner. She got angry that I had peeked where I shouldn’t have, said she couldn’t trust me anymore. She admitted that something was going on, though. It’s the fertility meds she’s been taking. I knew they were hurting her. You can’t take that many pills and still be okay. She said they’ve made her sick and that she just needs a bit of time to get things settled. She needed extra money for a doctor up north who might be able to help.”

  “Then you found yourself with a drug charge?”

  “Yes, less than two weeks later.”

  “Simon, your mother did this to you.”

  The boy stared at Lila, eyes wide. “She didn’t mean it. She’s just sick and confused and scared. That’s why she’s not responding to my messages. She’s trying to get treatment, so she can have an heir and save the family, but it’s killing her. If the press finds out that she’s confused or that she’s not well, then the stock price will go down even more. Maybe it’s already too late and that doctor up north couldn’t do anything. She’s just trying to protect the family. I spooked her. That’s why she won’t respond to my messages.” His words came faster and faster, all in a rush. “She just doesn’t want to risk anyone finding out before everything is settled. She can’t write back, don’t you see? She just needs me out of the way for a bit, but she’s going to come back for me when she’s ready. I’ve sent her lots of messages, and she’ll come.”

  “What proof do you have that she’s sick?” Lila asked.

  “She wouldn’t lie about it. She’s going to get me out of here when she’s ready. You’ll see. She’ll tell them it was all a mistake.” Simon’s cheeks sank slightly into his mouth, and his jaw clenched.

  He had been brave so far, but that bravery was about to fail.

  “I’ve sent her messages. She’ll come,” he insisted again, his voice cracking.

  “I’m sure you’re right, Simon. Your mother will come back for you.” Lila wrapped him in a hug.

  The boy clung to her, sniffling, the years vanishing at her touch.

  Lila rubbed his back and pretended not to notice. It was how Pax had come to her months before, after he had lost his best friend, after he had put away his brave face and let her squeeze away some of the shock. It was how he still came to her sometimes, eyes darting around her room, unsure how to start.

  She should have checked on Pax before she left the compound. He needed his sister.

  She should have brought Alex to visit Simon more often. He needed his sister, too.

  Lila offered Simon another silent squeeze, an apology to Pax, to Alex, to all of them, frustrated with herself for allowing her father’s case and Tristan’s conspiracies to take over her life so completely, frustrated that once again she had forgotten the little things.

  When the boy finally pulled away, his eyes were redder, rawer. “You won’t break our promise?”

  Lila shook her head.

  “Simon,” Tristan began, “those blackcoats who arrested you? Do you remember their names?”

  “Of course. Muller and Davies.” Simon spat out the words, all too eager to trade his sadness for rage. “Everybody hates them. They’re two of the biggest assholes that you’ll ever meet.”

  Chapter 11

  Lila dodged a picnic bench and a deep puddle near Tristan’s truck, stamping her feet to dislodge the mud and grass on her boots. “I’ll drive,” she said, holding up her hands to catch his keys.

  “Not a chance. It’s my ride.”

  “It’s not yours. Not really,” Lila shot back, climbing into the passenger’s seat. She crossed her arms over her chest as he hopped in beside her and slammed the door.

  “Well, it certainly isn’t yours.” Tristan thrust his key into the truck’s ignition. “When we get back to New Bristol, we’ll go to Rossi’s Pub. I want to know more about Muller and Davies.”

  Tristan started the engine and pulled out onto the road, tires spinning in the muck before catching the asphalt.

  “Well, I want many things, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to get them.” She couldn’t imagine Tristan visiting Rossi’s, a bar frequented by militia members throughout New Bristol. Not only could she not imagine it, she didn’t want to encourage such stupidity.

  “Of course, Chairwoman Randolph has everything she could ever want, yet she still wants more. It’s a shame you abdicated as prime. You certainly fit the profile of a whitecoat.”

  “What do you know of it?”

  “I saw enough with the Holguíns. More than enough.” Tristan’s jaw had set like Simon’s.

  Set and closed.

  Bluebonnets and cedar trees flashed by the windows as they pulled onto the interstate.

  “I’ll look into Muller and Davies,” Lila said. “Quietly.”

  “I hired you to help me, Lila, on behalf of every poor workborn in Saxony. I didn’t hire you to protect whatever highborn secrets crawled up your—”

  “I’m not protecting highborn secrets, you impulsive nitwit. I’m trying to protect yours. If you go anywhere near Rossi’s Pub, someone will spot the scar on your neck. They’ll do a DNA sti
ck faster than you can blink, and you’ll be off to the mines within the week. Is that what you want?”

  “I’ve been inside Rossi’s before.”

  “Well, it was a dumb move then, and it’s an even dumber move now. You don’t need to go. I’ll dig into Davies and Muller’s backgrounds, see what I can find, and contact you later.”

  “Fine,” he muttered.

  “You have a lead now, Tristan. A lead that came with zero risk to you and your people. You should be thanking me.”

  “Thanking you? For more scraps? The boy’s militia lead is a poor substitute for hard evidence, evidence that’s sitting in Liberté right now. I’m left wondering why we’re not hitting that bank. All I have is the word of a scared boy who’s too loyal to his mother to save himself from slavery.”

  “You really can’t understand it, can you? Can’t understand someone protecting their mother?”

  “What I can’t understand is that my two biggest leads are those dirty militiamen, and you don’t want me to go after them. Are you trying to save Bullstow’s reputation?”

  Lila turned in her seat. “After all our jobs together, you’d ask me that?”

  “I’m asking you that because of all our jobs together. So many secrets. It’s what I hate most about the highborn.”

  “Like you don’t have secrets of your own. Every day you hate something new about us. It must be so tiring.”

  Once again, Lila realized that she was fighting with the former slave. She rolled down her window and breathed in the fresh air. “What more do you want from me, Tristan? I’ve already promised to investigate them. I’m trying to keep you away from trouble. If I come up with anything, I’ll share. I promise.”

  “Thank you very much, chief. Can I do anything else for you, chief? Fluff your pillows, perhaps? Shine your boots?”

  Lila smacked the door of the truck and whipped her head around. “What is wrong with you today? You’re even worse than usual. I’m sorry I called you out on your bullshit back at the shop, but at the risk of sounding like a child, you started it. Just like you’re starting it now. If it’ll make the ride back smoother, then fine, I’ll go back to pretending that I don’t know who your parents are. Is that better?”

  “You can’t even apologize well. I guess they don’t teach the highborn that at Bokington. Why would they? It’s not something you’ll ever need.”

  “Why should I apologize? Because your panties are in a twist?”

  Tristan pressed down the accelerator, and the truck sped up. “That’s rich.”

  “Slow down and talk to me like a grown man. I don’t want to end up in a ditch.”

  “Yes, because you always talk to me like a grown woman,” he said, rubbing the edge of the steering wheel with his thumb. Hard.

  For a moment, Lila merely stared at him, not sure how things had spiraled into an argument yet again. Had she started it? Had he?

  Was it even a different argument, or was it the same one, a marathon of bruised feelings and frustrations?

  Lila couldn’t tell anymore.

  She wasn’t even sure that she cared.

  “I have my own spy network, you know,” he said, breaking into her thoughts. “Every single highborn family in New Bristol has at least one of my people sneaking information. The Massons, the Holguíns, the Weberlys, even the Randolphs. The highborn talk in front of the help all the time, forgetting that we’re there, but we’re always listening.”

  “That’s not a secret to the highborn. We use it all the time to our advantage, planting false—”

  “Did you know that Senator Dubois is planning a lavish party a few weeks before the season begins? I didn’t, not until I read the report this morning. He’s hoping that one of his kin will win the hand of a certain unnamed heir this season. Yammered on about it through an entire dinner with his mother on Sunday night. He wouldn’t tell her the identity of this eligible mystery woman, but it was obvious to anyone paying attention.”

  “Slow down,” Lila said again, eyeing the speedometer as it crept higher and higher. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

  It was a lie, of course. Senator Dubois, her sister’s favorite senator, loved playing matchmaker, especially between Lila and his cousins.

  She couldn’t blame Dubois for the interest. A match with a Randolph heir would make any senator’s career, regardless of whether or not Lila wore the whitecoat. She was a highborn, after all, and everyone knew the chairwoman considered her the prime, despite her interest in the militia rather than Wolf Tower.

  That was not the only thing that made Lila so valuable. She had no children. A senator always retained custody of an eldest son born to an heir. Turned over to the senator soon after birth, he’d grow up at Bullstow, raised by his father and educated in their schools and university until he was old enough to take a position in the compound. It was how future senators were bred as well as their clerks, their militia, their chefs, their professors, their medics, and their community liaisons and social workers. The men of Bullstow had once been the children of Bullstow, bawling and snotty and laughing, doted on and spoiled by a thousand fathers.

  A boy meant a child of one’s own and a child shared.

  The rewards were even higher with Lila, for Chairwoman Randolph had no granddaughter yet. Such a child would be necessary to secure the hierarchy of one of the richest and most powerful families in Saxony, otherwise Beatrice’s sisters might begin to step out of line. The man who could offer that security to the chairwoman would consummate his career between the sheets.

  It was really the only way. After their internships, senators began their political careers in the legislatures of the smaller cities scattered throughout Saxony. To advance to a larger, more prestigious city, a senator needed to prove himself behind the podium as well as bind himself to the highborn and elite lowborn in the region. He did that by making matches, or more specifically, by making babies. Seeding an heir for Lila, and by extension Chairwoman Randolph, would catapult most any senator directly to the New Bristol Senate, or elevate him to the Saxony Senate if he had other favorable ties in the region. A Saxon senator might even make it to Unity.

  That was why she hated going to events during the season, this endless press of men smiling at her, flirting with her, merely for the chance to become the father of her children.

  Children she explicitly did not want to have.

  If Dubois’s plan hadn’t worked for the last four years, it certainly wouldn’t work this year.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about. Last night you claimed it was my fault that we wouldn’t be working together any longer, but instead you’re quitting so that you can bed a rich, pompous senator and pop out a—”

  “Tristan, if you’d—”

  “When the poorer classes have children, they choose that moment to fight back, Lila, to make the world a better place for their kids. But the rich shrug off their ideals and hide behind the shelter of laws and society. You always said you had no intention of having children, but I suppose that was a lie. You’ve been beating me up for two years because you think I’m a liar, but—”

  “It wasn’t a lie. If you’d shut up for one—”

  “Fine. You changed your mind. It says a great deal about your character that you’d quit the work so easily. I thought you were—”

  “Quitting the work? I never worked for you, Tristan, and I don’t belong to you. It’s absolutely none of your business what I do or don’t do. I’m not going to apologize for not talking about my life choices with someone who has lied to me, someone who has stolen from me, someone I can’t trust, someone who has shown a complete disregard for my safety and welfare. Get over it.”

  “Disregard?” Tristan gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. “I didn’t disregard your safety last winter, you spoiled ass!”

  Lila jerked her hea
d away.

  Spoiled.

  Ass.

  Tristan words echoed in the quiet truck.

  She settled back into her seat, her fingers trailing out the window. Her hand caught the updrafts as they drove closer and closer toward the city. Tristan was right. He had saved her life, and he hadn’t needed to. The job was over when Lila had slipped off the downtown bridge and plunged into the waters below, knocking herself senseless when she struck the surface. She had panicked, not knowing which way was up or down, barely able to hold her breath, barely able to see the lights of the bridge through the murky water.

  Tristan had jumped in seconds later.

  Though she was too confused to find the surface, she’d seen Tristan. She cut through the water toward him, and he grabbed her waist immediately, pushing her toward the surface with all his strength. He kicked after her, madly mimicking her movements.

  It turned out that she hadn’t been that far from the surface after all. Her head had broken the surface a short time later.

  Tristan’s hadn’t.

  She had been about to dive back down after him when he appeared several meters away, clawing at the water, looking afraid, his mouth barely clearing the surface. “Relax, Tristan,” she’d shouted, too scared to get close to him until he calmed. “You’re safe. Stretch out like you’re sleeping on a bed, and you’ll float.”

  Tristan finally trusted her instructions and calmed. She’d circled him, grabbed him from behind, and started the long trip back to the shore, pulling him along.

  They had lain under the bridge for a long time after, panting and shivering. Tristan had dug his forehead into the grass and dirt, clutching at the white wildflowers. He’d reminded her of Pax and of Simon, struggling to get himself under control.

  It wasn’t until later that night, after they’d returned to the old hotel, after she was bundled in blankets before a heater, that Dixon had told her what she already knew.

  Tristan didn’t know how to swim, and he was terrified of the water.

  Spoiled.