Greystar

by C. L. Polk

  He stared at me. “You’ve had rather too much of that vintage, I fear.”

  “Raymond. Listen carefully now; this is important.” I leaned a little closer, as if I were about to tell him a secret. “I withdrew all my stock in Blake Properties yesterday.”

  All the blood drained from his face. I gave him a moment to remember how much stock my father had purchased after he and I became engaged. After that, I let him have another, to remember that I sat on the board in my father’s stead.

  And then at last, I spoke. “I arrived too late to contact the transfer agent at the Royal Aeland Exchange, but my agent is taking them in when it opens on Firstday.”

  He licked his lips. Swallowed. “Grace. You can’t.”

  “Can’t I? The certificates are mine. I decide if they’re worth keeping—or not.” I let my focus slide from him to survey all the people watching us, too far away to hear. Richard Poole grinned at me and raised his glass in tribute.

  Raymond Blake had forgotten one vital, universal thing: Everyone loves watching the powerful tumble from grace. Even the elite can’t resist the drama of justice done—or revenge fulfilled.

  Waxed paper cards fluttered in my imagination, spinning in the air as they fell. “I welcome your suggestions, as ever, but ultimately I must guide the direction of government soberly, prudently, and wisely. I make the decisions. Do you understand me?”

  Hate shone on his face. He nodded, one tight jerk of his chin.

  I returned his nod, a single serene dip. “I’ll speak to my agent in the morning.”

  He unclamped his lips and twisted his mouth into a smiling grimace. “Enjoy it while you can, Dame Grace.”

  A server passed with a tray full of honeyed glauce, and I snagged a glass, presenting it to my enemy. “Here. You look like you could use a drink.”

  I didn’t gloat when I walked away. It wouldn’t do to appear graceless. But I felt seven feet tall as I moved from one vantage point to the next, scanning the crowd for the column of crimson I had half convinced myself I would see.

  A young man in formal black and white stood in the entry to the ballroom. He was late, handing over his invitation, and raising his— No. I caught the sight of red-painted lips, a shining cap of bottle-black hair curved around full cheekbones, and stared.

  Avia Jessup had arrived in full white tie, nipped and fitted to her figure, just like Dorian Salter in Edge of Night, Falling. She was a sensation. She was breathtaking. I set down my glass and crossed the room, helpless to do anything but get closer.

  She bent over my hand, the light warmth of her breath kissing over the skin.

  “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  Everyone was staring, but none of that mattered. “I’m sorry we’re not dancing.”

  She winked and led the way as heads turned.

  We took a place on the floor during the introduction that gave dancers time to arrive or leave. Avia rested her hand at my waist as if she led in dancing all the time. She could have danced like this a hundred times; often enough that her heart didn’t pound in her chest at how she dared to stand with a woman and guide her through the weaving, complicated steps and turns of a promenade for two.

  Flautists in the musicians’ loft stood up and led the first tempo change, and Avia took so light a step, her fingers resting easy on my waist, guiding me with trust and the sparkle in her eyes. We were on air. The music pulled us, and we hadn’t gone a quarter of the way around the floor before she spun me out, rising on her toes as I reeled back into her hold.

  “You are very good,” she said.

  I was? “You’re doing everything.”

  “You’re letting me.”

  We changed to the circling step when we passed by the throne, whirling in a pattern that would trip me if I thought about what I was doing. I landed the fourth turn and we paused, catching the music’s change to a slower tempo.

  Her hair flared as we spun, falling back into place as we traveled, the locks curving lovingly around her cheeks as the music swelled. She held me in her hands, with her eyes—I looked at nothing that wasn’t her, caught in her shining smile.

  I should be making conversation, light and easy talk that had deserted me while I was busy being enchanted. I reached for a comment. “You look incredible. Like you came from the cinema.”

  She smiled, and murmured, so low I had to see her lips to be sure I heard her correctly: “I borrowed this suit. It was Nick Elliot’s.”

  I kept my step even through the shock. “Was he your friend?”

  “I’m glad you didn’t pretend ignorance at his death.” The flutes sang a melody everyone knew well enough to hum, and we danced on, never missing a step. “I regret that I didn’t understand him, at the end. I wish I had known then what I know now.”

  Solace! All our meetings collided in my memory. All the questions she’d asked, all the research she’d dangled in front of me—she had been following in Nick’s footsteps, tracing the path that had led to his murder. She wasn’t searching for a connection between the events of Frostmonth 1; she already had them.

  She spoke into my silence. “I hoped that you were different. That you were innocent. I was a fool to imagine that you weren’t shaped from the same mold as your father.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Really.” She sent me whirling in an open turn and caught me in the smooth, assured hold of an experienced lead. “I know what you made the witches do to make aether.”

  “Nick’s manuscript,” I said. “You have it.”

  The smile never left her face; her gaze never strayed from mine. “Nick figured it out. And he was going to publish it.”

  All those questions she had asked had been for a purpose. She wanted me to admit what had been done. She had wanted my cooperation, had hoped for it, but what she wanted was impossible. “Avia. You can’t. Please, if you let this out—”

  “I don’t think you may tell me what I can and cannot do, my lady.” She never missed a step. She never let me stumble. “How long have you known what they did in those asylums?”

  “Since the day the lights went out.”

  “Why are they out?” she asked. “I want to hear you say it.”

  “Because I—” I caught the sentence and held it through an unwinding spin, tethered only by her gentle grip on my hand. I described an arc with my free hand, winding myself back into her hold. “We destroyed it. Me, Miles, and Tristan. Then the Amaranthines came and saved Miles’s life.”

  That surprised her enough to break her smiling mask. “You broke it, not the Amaranthines? Why?”

  “You know what it was,” I whispered. “How could we have allowed it to exist? What would you have done?”

  She kept silent. Thinking? She had to understand. She must! “I swear, Avia. I didn’t know. And when I did, I couldn’t allow it to exist. I couldn’t.”

  The corners of her mouth pinned back, her face tight as she wrestled with my decision. “But you’re trying to hide it ever happened. The witches aren’t free. The dead walk among us. Your effort to deceive ends tomorrow, when the afternoon edition comes out.”

  The music sped to the final, breathless tempo. Avia twirled us through the circling step, coming to a halt on the final chord and bowing to me with one hand on her heart. Then she raised her head, high color in her cheeks.

  “Thank you for the dance, Chancellor.”

  She led me to the edge of the parquet, then left me standing alone.

  * * *

  Avia had taken me off the dance floor with every courtesy, but I felt as if she had slapped my face and stalked off. I’d been a fool to think I could keep the truth from her. Yesterday I had been troubled, but still worthy. Now I was left trembling and alone in a crowd. I couldn’t stand here much longer. Someone would speak to me of trivialities, or ask me to dance, and then I would have to smile and chat and no, no, I couldn’t possibly.

  I left the ballroom by the balcony doors, moving down the concrete stairs to the glasshouse, whic
h glowed softly in the moonlight. The unlocked door slid aside at my touch, the casters grinding in the shocking, bone-deep cold to exhale warm air that smelled of rich earth, thriving greenery, and clean running water. I slid the door closed and let the damp warmth seep into me, so different from the stuffy, body-smelling heat of the ballroom.

  From far away, the orchestra sounded another introduction to a dance. I picked out the steps along the winding path, caressing the large, waxy leaves of plants that had sailed across the Ayers Ocean to rest in this tiny patch of unreal summer shielded from Aeland’s snow and frost.

  Alone and away from curious stares. I could bite my lip, and did, focusing on the warm dull pain it gave freely. I could bow my head and wrap my arms around my middle. I could shake and tremble, sick at Avia’s parting words. It would all come out tomorrow afternoon. Aeland would march toward the end as its citizens rose up in just fury, throwing over the order that had brought the Amaranthines who watched and waited to see what we did next, how we proved ourselves worthy of their mercy.

  Would the Amaranthines have mercy for blood in the streets? Would they have mercy for the mob, that creature of violent mind and devastating purpose? I doubted they would. And then the merciless storms following the end of the Hundred Families would destroy whoever was left standing. If Avia revealed the truth, Aeland wouldn’t survive the year.

  I couldn’t allow Avia to print that story. But how could I dissuade her? She had come clad in the suit of her dead comrade, her dear friend. Avia knew what Nick had been murdered for knowing. She could bring the whole card-tower down with the flick of a touch, and she was angry enough with me to do it. I imagined her vowing retribution as she knotted her white silk tie and promised her reflection that justice would come to Kingston.

  And it should. It should. All the secrets she uncovered, the ones I tried so desperately to keep—they protected the people responsible from suffering any consequences. Oh, the First Ring was in prison, but that was to save Constantina’s neck. Father might go to the hangman, but he would die for a tenth of the things he had done to Aeland.

  The calculating, selfish part of my mind fixed itself on the First Ring. They were already locked up. Most of them were of my father’s generation. Many of them were complicit. They could take the blame—they deserved the blame. If Avia named them, that might deflect anger away from those of us who worked to keep the storms at bay.

  I had to find a way to convince her to follow my strategy, to be careful, and gentle, and guide the people through this devastating knowledge. I could bring her out here to this bit of summer, and—

  “You’re in the way.”

  I startled, bounced out of my thoughts. Aldis emerged from the shadowed canopy of banana trees, striding into the slice of moonlight where I had stopped.

  I straightened my posture, bringing up my chin just a shade too high to be deferential. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t know I wasn’t alone.”

  Moonlight and shadow revealed his sneer. “I was alone until you came.”

  Oh, this ungracious, hostile man. “I apologize for the intrusion. If you will excuse me, I will go and seek solitude elsewhere.”

  He interrupted my retreat with his snide voice. “Is this what you imagine Laneer to be?” he asked. “Green plants and running streams, and nothing worthy of respect?”

  “No,” I said. “Port Walan was a vibrant, cosmopolitan city that had welcomed trade and the exchange of friendship, until the Magal overthrew the rightful ruler and closed off decades of trade with us.”

  He scoffed. “Is that the story they told? That a despot possessed the throne, and so you had to save Laneer from her?”

  “Do you deny a coup took place?”

  “I deny that it was a reasonable excuse to slaughter millions in your quest to strip everything of value you could find, down to consuming the souls of a country to fuel pretty lights.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I do too. The war was wrong. There’s something we agree on.”

  Aldis cocked his head. “This is where you tell me that you were innocent.”

  “I was ignorant,” I said. “That’s not quite the same. But you know what I did when I learned the truth.”

  “I know that you haven’t said a word in defense of the political prisoners languishing in your Tower of Sighs.”

  “Laneeri tortured my brother.” My knuckles ached with the tension of my fists. “They kidnapped him. They kept him in the worst prison camp they had, and whatever they did, it was so unspeakable that he still hasn’t told me what happened. And you want me to unlock those cells and serve his enemies tea?”

  “You forgot the apology.”

  “I will never apologize to the people who came here to destroy innocents.” I cut my hand across the air to swipe the proposition away. “I am sorry for the people who actually had to fight each other for the sake of greed, and power, and dominion. They didn’t deserve what happened. To them, I am sorry. Now if you will excuse me—”

  “I will not.” Aldis towered over me, tall and red-faced. “You have taken an important diplomat from Kingsgrave Prison. What have you done with her?”

  Blast it all to pieces! I couldn’t answer him. We had given no word of Sevitii’s death, made no announcement, and now their champion among the Amaranthines was asking me a perfectly valid question. “I do not have to tell you anything about our dealings with the Laneeri.”

  “They are diplomats.”

  “They are criminals.” I wanted to twist the knobs of time and take that last word back, but I leaned into Aldis’s space and made a dart of my finger, jabbing it in the air between us. “The details of prisoner interviews are none of your business.”

  Aldis caught my wrist, squeezing all the tiny, mobile bones against each other. “The welfare of the Laneeri is my business because I say it is. I won’t ask you again. What has become of Sevitii an Vaavut?”

  Aldis’s eyes were dark and sharp. He stood so tall, taller even than Tristan, and he was luminous, unearthly. My tongue slid back to shape the answer, to tell him what he wanted, anything he wanted, more. Aldis looked into me and knew the truth. I saw the truth in his eyes.

  His eyes, too large to be human. His face, unearthly and delicate and utterly fascinating. He wound the spell around me, and a small part of me screamed in protest.

  I caught the hem of his enchantment and ripped the web into shreds, shaking now.

  “Let me go.”

  My whole body went hot. I burned, and my hair stood on end as that heat rushed through me, rising to the sky to erupt in jagged forks of blue-white light.

  Aldis flinched and let go as a deafening crack split the air, thunder roaring. I backed away, my eyes shut against his bewitchment.

  “Never touch me again.” I raised my hand, fuzzy with the reverse-magnet feeling of lightning about to strike. “Never.”

  Voices cut through the haze. The grinding squeak of the glasshouse door sliding open made me drop the power and turn around. Prince Severin rushed to me, his hands on my gloved arms their own shock. “Are you all right?”

  I stepped out of his grip, smiling. “Thank you. I’m just unsettled. I should probably go inside and see how Miles is—”

  I smiled at the curious faces, the quizzical looks, and the frowns of those who knew the lightning for what it was. But the Crown Prince caught up to me, his palm warm on the plane of my back, just between the shoulder blades.

  “I was looking for you anyway. Forget all this. Come and have a dance.”

  He meant to be my shield against the others. He would hide me in plain sight, protected by his presence. The onlookers would have to adjust their assumptions by taking my friendship with the future King of Aeland into account.

  It was a clever move. I let him lead me to the parquet, settling my hold—one hand on his shoulder, the other laid on his palm—and had nothing to do but to look into his starry dark eyes and mirror his pleased smile until the violins swelled and our feet trod the m
easure.

  Three minutes of refuge. Severin stood with me in hold, and we waited for the opening theme to end.

  “I had guards search the Laneeri cells earlier this afternoon,” Severin said through his glad expression. “They found a trove of star bangles in the cell of their head priest, Niikanis an Vaavut. One was missing. I think we’ve found our murderer.”

  FOURTEEN

  An Attempt at Strategy

  I groped for something to say, something that wasn’t incredulous or frustrated, but the music began at that moment. Prince Severin’s movements became a dance. The braid on his shoulder scratched on my fingertips, the serge beneath it woven from the hand-combed undercoat of northern long-hair goats. I heard the orders of my dancing master—spine straight but not stiff. Shoulders down. Let the neck be free, the head balanced upon it, and glide.

  A kettledrum boomed twice. Drums and brass chased winds and strings as we danced across the measures, his steps pursuing, mine retreating. He smiled at me, the lines by his eyes deepening with his pleasure. “It’s good news, is it not?”

  He’d put himself into the investigation the way Clarence Hawkes’s character had in Ten before Midnight. Hawkes assisted the glamorous Phryne Davis’s character—the sleuth who wasn’t convinced that Darlene Charlesworth, cast as the lovely woman accused of murdering her grandmother to speed her inheritance, was guilty. He’d been there every step of the way, misleading them until the final realization. Was Miles right?

  “Grace?”

  “My apologies.” My cheeks flared with heat. I shrugged and smiled at my absentmindedness. “The gears started turning. I was thinking about possibilities for motive.”

  “You never stop working,” Severin said. “You’re absolutely tireless. Have you any working theories?”

  “Nothing but a basket of questions,” I said. Why had he done it? “I wonder at motive, but I was wasting my time speculating. Is the prisoner in isolation?”

  “Yes. He has no contact with his delegation.”

  At least he’d done that correctly. “That’s perfect. Miles and I will interview him in the morning.”