Fog Season

by Patrice Sarath

  “It was a sad business, that. The disappearance of Guild Liaison Trune and the merchant Barabias Parr, the fraud against the Mederos home business. A real mystery.”

  “It’s properly called a House, not a home business,” Yvienne said. He acknowledged the correction with a little nod and a smile. He had a distracting smile. She told herself to concentrate. “And our House was restored six months ago, the fraud revealed and the charges reversed. So we don’t need your help, thanks.”

  “There’s still the matter of the missing Magistrate and the missing merchant. Some might think that House Mederos would want revenge for his role in the downfall of your family’s home… House… business.”

  “Goodness,” she said again. “Of what are you accusing my family, Mister Fresnel?”

  “Accusing? Are you feeling guilty, Miss Mederos?”

  “I’m sorry,” Yvienne said, letting her voice reveal her temper. “Tell me again why you are here? Because, to recap – the fraud was revealed, the perpetrators punished, my family’s reputation restored, and what you call a mystery was solved six months ago. You may now go, sir.”

  He sat still for a moment longer, regarding her with a quiet, piercing expression. He had dark brown eyes, a bit of shadow around his jaw, and a plain, angular face. He was entirely an unprepossessing sort of man, except for the impression of strength in his shoulders, and his battered hands. Had he been a prizefighter? she wondered, though he didn’t have the broken nose or misshapen ears that classified that profession. No, he was not a brawler, and he was far more dangerous for all that.

  She flushed, aware that he had been taking her measure as intently as she had taken his. Fresnel stood, taking his time. He nodded at his card on the edge of her desk.

  “Keep it. I’m staying at the Bailet Hotel, on the Esplanade, if you want to tell me anything. I am sure we’ll be speaking again, Miss Mederos.”

  He closed the door behind himself, and Yvienne was left alone in the office. With the imminent danger gone, she allowed herself to take a deep, shuddering breath.

  Don’t react. He’s still watching.

  She took the card again, as if curious, then stuck it in the small box on the desk where all the other cards were kept. She would take it home later. Still performing, she drew the contract to her, picked up her pencil, and began to jot meaninglessly on it. All the while her mind was racing as fast as her heart.

  Calm, she ordered herself. Stay calm. The Guild doesn’t know anything. As far as the Guild wanted anyone to think, the Great Fraud that embarrassed its senior executives was foisted upon them by the Guild Magistrate Trune – a loose cannon, and now a fugitive from justice. Ditto Barabias Parr; she had never liked the man, but she had no doubt that he had thrown his lot in with Trune. This was probably just a grandstanding measure, nothing more.

  Foolish of them, she thought, her heart slowing. The Harriers had a fearsome reputation of always getting their man. If they weren’t careful, they’d be hoist with their own petard.

  Chapter Three

  If you can’t identify the mark at the table, you’re the mark.

  Tesara was reminded of the adage as she fanned her cards and looked over her hand at Lieutenant Anais, an encouraging half-smile tilting her eyes. He hesitated and swore, throwing down his cards on the green baize-covered table. “That tears it. My luck has been abominable tonight, and no mistake.” He sat back in his chair, and tried to re-light his cheroot with a damp match, swearing when it didn’t catch.

  Tesara reached across the table, took one of Colonel Talios’s matches from the silver case at his elbow, struck it, and held the flame out to the lieutenant. He gave her a startled look, but leaned forward, and puffed.

  “It is too bad, sir,” she said, shaking out the match and pulling her winnings toward her. “I thought you had that last hand. But you know what they say,” she added. “No luck for the wicked.”

  The crowd at Fayres, a melange of officers, actors, heiresses, and dock lovelies, laughed, and the lieutenant scowled. Fayres wasn’t the most exclusive casino on Port Saint Frey, but it had a devoted following because it was well-run and kept its customers’ secrets. What happened in Fayres stayed in Fayres, even when wayward merchant daughters won a month’s housekeeping money in one night.

  And that reminded her of a second adage, by one Alinesse Mederos – If you cannot be an asset, you must not yet be a liability. Tesara was not Vivi. She had no head for business, no desire to run a great House and increase its wealth and holdings.

  But she could fleece a cad of a lieutenant at cards, and do it with pleasure.

  The lieutenant switched tactics. “Perhaps you could transfer some of that luck to me, Miss Mederos?” he said, and he kissed his thin lips suggestively.

  The crowd ooohed, while Tesara hid her revulsion behind a smile. “Oh, and ruin a perfectly lovely friendship, Lieutenant Anais? I believe in a more spiritual connection over that of the flesh.”

  “And I believe five minutes in the garden with me will disabuse you of that quaint notion,” he retorted, his hostility ill-concealed.

  “Here now,” Colonel Talios said, with an uneasy chuckle, as if remembering that he had once been interested in marrying Tesara and should still feel protective. The lieutenant ignored him. He flushed, and rose with an oath, pushing his chair back so hard it fell over. He stood up, and loomed.

  Tesara felt the spark rise in her fingertips, and she concentrated on sorting her chips. When she had control over her dangerous emotions, she looked up at the lieutenant. She said nothing, merely gave him a level stare. He reached over and yanked her to her feet, chips flying all around them, his hand so hard around her wrist it would leave a mark the next day.

  “Come with me, girl,” he said, his voice slurred and guttural.

  Everything happened at once. The drunken revelers were shocked and owl-eyed, blinking foolishly at the sudden turn toward violence. Two burly gentlemen, house peacekeepers, shoved their way through the crowd toward them. Bracing herself, Tesara gathered the electricity in her fingertips and pushed it out at the lieutenant. There was a fizz and a crack, the air smelled like a thunderstorm, and the lieutenant was suddenly sprawled on his behind, his mouth and eyes wide with shock and pain.

  A woman screamed. Tesara put her hands to her mouth, feigning surprise. A new feeling of nausea came over her and lingered, then faded.

  “Poor fellow,” she said for the crowd’s benefit. “He can’t hold his drink.”

  “Here now, Ani!” said another reveler, his red officer’s coat half-unbuttoned. He reeled but he managed to get his hands under Anais’s shoulders, lifting the drunken man to his feet. “Behave, man. We won’t get asked back. No, no, it’s all right. I’ve got him,” he said to the burly fellows. “Just a bit to the winds, but harmless, you know?”

  The guards folded their arms across their massive chests, and didn’t look convinced. The two officers stumbled away under their steely gaze. Tesara sat back down, maintaining her composure, and went back to gathering her chips.

  “I can’t abide a man who can’t hold his liquor or his temper,” she confided to the overdressed woman at her side. “So bad-mannered, don’t you think?”

  The woman gave her a sidelong look. “You’re a cocky one, ain’t you?” She tossed back her drink. “Table’s too hot for me, Baby. Let’s dice.”

  Baby, a dissipated young man half her age, with a dirty cravat and an overabundance of opinions, hastened to help her to her feet. He cast a glare at Tesara’s chips.

  “It’s not fair, you know,” he said in his reedy voice. “You know it’s not fair to win so much. It is not a complaint. It is a fact.”

  She kept from rolling her eyes. Fair had nothing to do with it. Don’t play if you can’t lose. She wasn’t cheating. She was just counting cards, and if they couldn’t do it, that was their problem. And now the table was breaking up, leaving only Tesara, Colonel Talios, and the dealer, a silent and suprem
ely competent man employed by Mrs Fayres. The crowd parted and Mrs Fayres came forward, laying a possessive hand on the colonel’s broad shoulder. He reached up and patted it, but he gave Tesara an abashed look.

  Oh, for goodness’ sake, she thought. It had never been a real engagement.

  “Miss Tesara,” said Mrs Fayres in her melodious voice. “Are you ready to cash out?”

  No more gambling for you tonight, was the message. Tesara stood.

  “Thank you, Mrs Fayres. That would be lovely.”

  At a nod from Mrs Fayres, the dealer began totting up her chips, and with a quick tally wrote down her winnings on a tiny sheet of paper from the pad in his vest. He presented it to her with a flourish. Tesara ran through the numbers. Less the house’s take, she cleared one thousand guilders. She tried not to smile with satisfaction. And Mama says I have no head for business.

  “This looks satisfactory,” she said. She initialed the receipt. “Mrs Fayres, may I buy you – and the colonel, of course – a drink?”

  “Quite nice, quite nice!” the colonel boomed. Mrs Fayres smiled, but in a way that suggested that Tesara was being a precocious child.

  “Thank you, Miss Tesara,” Mrs Fayres said. “We’ll place your winnings in the safe, and if you like, tomorrow we can deposit your money directly in your bank account. You do have an account, of course?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Tesara said. She knew she could trust Mrs Fayres, the woman’s louche reputation notwithstanding. Mrs Fayres was correct. An account had been opened for her when she was born, and she had been supposed to tithe ten percent of her allowance into it. That was a joke – what with Uncle Samwell winning all of her sweets money, her own profligate nature, and the reversal of the fortunes of House Mederos for six years, there was likely nothing in the account with her name on it other than cobwebs. So it was with relief that Tesara handed over the receipt.

  Mrs Fayres stripped off a few engraved banknotes from the dealer’s bank and handed them to Tesara. “Pin money,” she said, as if she merely gave Tesara her allowance as a young, silly, merchant’s girl. It stiffened her back even as she had to acknowledge there was some truth to it.

  Tesara stood at the bar, flanked by Mrs Fayres and the colonel. Mrs Fayres signaled the bartender, and he brought them all drinks. Tesara leaned against the long mahogany rail and sipped her sparkling wine with punch. She looked around at the place. The gambling house was as elegant as a house of disrepute could be. That was Mrs Fayres’s management, and Tesara could not deny that the woman had a head for business. The gambling tables were well-run, the liquor was top shelf, and the prices at the bar were high enough that drunkenness was discouraged, though it did not entirely keep the lieutenant and his ilk from becoming completely disordered. Mrs Fayres employed well-trained croupiers and concierges, and the burly gentlemen at the door and who walked the gambling floor were inevitably polite, even as they took a gentleman – or a lady – by the elbow and ejected them from the premises.

  The parquet floor was inlaid with an elegant design of stained wood. There was plenty of light over each table, the red-and-black wheel, and the dicing table, and the house was humming. A haze of cigar and cheroot smoke hung mid-level in the air, the only drawback, she thought. She hated the way it stung her eyes and made her hair reek, and her gown always needed a thorough airing the day after. She and Mirandine used to complain, after a night at a fashionable salon, about the gentlemen’s cigars, and how hard it was to get the stink out.

  She missed Jone and Mirandine fiercely. Three disreputable comrades, and even though she knew they were playing at banditry, life had sparkled back then. It had been a brief, remarkable summer. Now Jone was gone for a sailor, and Mirandine – she hadn’t heard from Mirandine in months.

  If Mirandine had been there when the lieutenant grabbed her wrist, she would have stood up for Tesara and she wouldn’t have had to use her powers. Tesara rubbed at her bruised wrist.

  What time is it? she thought. There were no clocks, and she suspected that was deliberate on Mrs Fayres’s part. One lost track of time, and one stayed – and stayed – until the money was all gone. Or, in her case, she was thrown out. Politely thrown out, yes, but thrown out nonetheless.

  One of the burly gentlemen came up to Mrs Fayres and whispered.

  “Thank you, Vere,” Mrs Fayres said. She set down her small crystal glass of topaz liqueur. “I’ve taken the liberty of ordering a cab for you, Miss Tesara. At your leisure, of course – you are welcome to stay.”

  At the way the colonel gave his mistress a startled glance, Tesara recognized a polite fiction when she heard one. She smiled and set down her drink, gathering up her netted purse.

  “That is most kind, Mrs Fayres. Thank you so much for an enjoyable evening.”

  “Darling love,” Mrs Fayres said to the colonel, “would you be so good as to tell our friends that I will join them shortly?” She waved a hand at a far table. Tesara recognized Bunny and Firth.

  “Of course, my goddess,” the colonel said, capturing and kissing her fingertips. Tesara tried hard to keep from bursting into laughter. Had her parents ever been so soppy?

  Mrs Fayres escorted her to the front door. A maid handed Tesara her silk shawl, and a manservant opened the door for them. The cold wet air of Port Saint Frey smacked her in the face, a welcome coldness after the close, smoky air of the casino. At the foot of the townhouse stairs, a fairly well-kept hack waited.

  “Tha–” Tesara said again, when Mrs Fayres interrupted her. The tall woman never expressed anger, but by her face and her tone, Tesara could tell she brooked no discussion.

  “Miss Tesara. I don’t know what you did or how you did it, and I’m not saying the lieutenant didn’t deserve everything you gave him. But I can’t have talk about my business. It would be best if you don’t return for a decent interval.”

  Tesara’s lips parted but she couldn’t speak. Mrs Fayres kept her steady gaze on her.

  “I didn’t do anything,” she managed, but it came out as high-pitched and childish.

  “Don’t try that on me, Miss Tesara,” Mrs Fayres said, and the woman’s smooth facade slipped. She leaned closer to her, her voice a steel whisper. “You are a spoiled girl who is playing with fire, and I will not let your heedlessness ruin my livelihood. Is that clear?”

  Tesara managed to nod. Mrs Fayres stepped back.

  “You can expect the guilders in your account tomorrow,” she said and turned back to the house before Tesara could say a word in protest. Flushing, she turned and walked down the stairs. The cabbie jumped down from the driver’s seat and opened the door for her, helping her in. Tesara sank back against the uncomfortable upholstery, and the hack lurched off, to bump and sway over Port Saint Frey streets, from the bohemian part of town to the fashionable Crescent.

  Well, that was a kick in the teeth to a blind man, as Uncle Samwell would say. That stupid lieutenant, she thought, bitterly. If she couldn’t play among the real gamesters with their larger stakes, and if the first families of Port Saint Frey would no longer let her play at their fine salons, how could she make money?

  She was back to being the family liability.

  Six months ago, she had been welcome among the Port Saint Frey merchant families. To be sure, it was as a novelty, a subject of gossip, and mockery, but she had been a fixture of the gaming tables and won the ladies’ pin money. Then the Great Fraud was revealed, and too many merchant families had been embarrassed by their complicity or, at the least, their determination to look the other way. On the surface House Mederos had regained its status as one of the first trade families of the city, but in reality a tinge of the disreputable still hung over the family. They had very little business coming in, as their old contacts and business partners always found a reason that it wasn’t the right time to invest in a Mederos venture.

  Tesara ran a fingertip along the window frame of the cab, watching a tiny trail of sea fire curl into being and then fade away. S
o she had powers. It did little good, if she couldn’t use them. Yes, she could do more, but it was too dangerous.

  You didn’t sink the fleet.

  Sometimes that consoled her. At other times, when she was tired and despairing as she was that morning, riding home in a dirty cab that reeked of spirits, tobacco, and the stink of vomit, she didn’t believe that was true. She remembered what she had done that fateful night, and she remembered the vision she had of the ships breaking apart in a violent storm. She could not dare to hope that the Main Chance had been found, and was safe at harbor three thousand miles to the east.

  The hack arrived at the bottom of the Crescent. Tesara rapped on the ceiling to signal the cabbie to stop. No need to bring attention to her early morning arrival by having a hack drive right up to the house. She could let herself in through the side door. The rickety carriage jerked to a halt and tilted sideways as the cabbie climbed down. He opened the door and rolled out the step. From long experience Tesara knew his outstretched hand had nothing to do with helping her out of the cab and everything to do with her fare. She picked up her purse and her wrap and stepped down, holding the door frame. Safely on the ground she doled out the fare and a tip. Without a word the dour man made the money disappear, and climbed back up onto the driver’s seat. He slapped the reins and turned his rig, soon swallowed up in the fog.

  She waited a moment, weary. Then she gathered her strength and her skirts and marched up the steep cobblestoned street, wincing at the cold and wet that seeped through the soles of her thin evening slippers. It would be good to get out of her wet, smoky frock and wrap, and into a cozy robe, towel her hair by a fire in her room, and sleep in all morning. Yawning, Tesara made her way home, more by feel and memory, than by any attentiveness to her surroundings.