House of Sand and Secrets (10 page)

I’m seventeen now. A lady of my own House. Married. I carry all of Pelim’s heavy history on my back. It’s time to forget the childish wants of my past and focus on what I can do for my House. I have so much for which I must atone. And if that means cultivating Carien’s friendship, then surely that is no great hardship. “I see. What did you bring me here for then? To listen to the mutterings of crakes?” A childhood forced to learn Pelimburg’s histories in verse has rather turned me against poetry, I’m afraid.

Carien sets down her tea, clasps her fingers together and leans closer to me, conspiratorial. Dark brown curls have escaped their glittering hair pins and they cast winding shadows along her cream throat. “I want your bat.”

The Splinterfist head was right about House Eline’s involvement. I draw back from her, my upper lip twisting in a snarl of disgust.

“He’d make a beautiful subject,” she continues. “All that contrast.” Her fingers uncurl to dance patterns in the air.

I freeze, trying to understand what she has just said. I had visions of her peeling the skin from Jannik with a silver knife, and now it seems she wants nothing more than to pin an image of him up alongside her kitty-girls and serving Hobs. She wants to capture him in her savage colours. The sweat turning cold on my back leaves me feeling clammy and ill, and perhaps I have misunderstood everything. My thoughts crystallize. “Wait, you want to paint him?”

“Do you think he’d agree to sit?”

I’m about to tell her she’d do better to ask him herself, when I remember who I am supposed to be, and what has been said between us. The way she shivered when she talked of touching the vampires. Her interest in Jannik still disturbs me.
Never trust them, Felicita.
“I could tell him to do it, if I wished.”

“Ah,” says Carien, and she draws back with a viperous ease. “And what would make you wish such a thing?”

We are back to playing games. There are vampires dead on the rubbish heaps. We are not tea girls or artists or poets. We are House pieces on the game board. “I seek an audience – a business meeting – with your husband.”

“And in exchange you’ll bring me your bat?”

I shrug. “I’ll give you the opportunity to discuss the matter with him.”

Carien covers her scowl by taking another sip of her tea. “I thought you would make him agree to sit for me. Is it really so much to ask for the damn thing to sit still for a few hours?”

“He has better uses than as a model. I need him in the Pelimburg offices. If he feels he hasn’t the time to waste … .”

“Your glorified bookkeeper,” she says. “I don’t see how he’s any more important to you than one of the serving Hobs.”

“And indeed, he isn’t, but he is still mine.” I stand and take out my purse, scattering brass on the wood.

“You’re leaving,” she says flatly. She thinks she has me trapped here, coach-less.

“I am.” That wildness, that Dash-like thing that draws me to her, I must never forget that it is also dangerous. I have no desire to be caught again in the webs of someone else’s schemes.

She thinks I am a fool she can cow by taking away my security? I’m not some little girl lost who can’t so much as hire a public carriage. I walk out into the narrow alleyway. It’s dark now, an afternoon thunderstorm is gathering and the air is electric.

Somehow, I doubt I’ll hear from Carien again. And her interest in Jannik that so unnerved me – it was merely her desire for some new toy to occupy her time, a thing to paint and put on show. That’s all.

* * *

The next morning
before breakfast I gather my sketchpad and inks, and make my way down to the gardens. Our odd meeting has inspired me to go back to my botanicals. Master Bermond, our head gardener, sees my approach, and has one of his staff bring my folding stool from the shed. He takes it from the boy with a flourish worthy of any gentleman, and waits for me with gruff indulgence.

“And which poor vegetable takes your fancy today?” He is not a man prone to smiles, but his good humour skates just under his voice. He finds my desire to paint and catalogue all the plants in the gardens a source of endless amusement.

I smile at him. “The purple bush – the one that’s just come into flower?” I point at the rambling shrub with the small compound leaves. Tiny butterfly-like flowers of a deep lilac are blooming between the bright green foliage. I see it everywhere around MallenIve, throwing vast sprays of flowers over the walls, or growing wild in the parks. It is not a plant familiar to me from Pelimburg.

“Sleepseed,” says Master Bermond. “Sometimes called pass-us-by.”

“And why is that?” I settle down on my stool, set my small easel out and prepare my inks.
“The Hobs say it wards off lightning.”

“Useful.” I draw a clean black line. With the first mark now made, my task is set. I concentrate on the bush, on the placement and size of the leaves, on the intricacies and individualities of the plant. “In a city like MallenIve, at least.” The summers here are punctuated with regular storms, brief and ferocious. Many of the houses have tall rods to charm the lightning away from their roofs. “If unlikely”

Master Bermond warms to his talk. At first, when I came out into the gardens to begin my new botanical, he found me an insufferable irritation, but soon discovered that I wanted to hear all he could tell me about the various plants. In our way, we have become friends, united in our desire for knowledge. Or rather; my desire for it, and his desire to share it.

I keep note of all he tells me and leave room next to my picture for his words. Later, I will go to the kitchens and ask Mrs. Palmer and her bevy of girls for the women’s knowledge, which is always different from men’s. Sometimes surprisingly so. Like Master Bermond was when I first had the temerity to enter their domain, the kitchen staff were wary and close-lipped. Now they share their secrets, and reward me for my interest with a mother’s wry amusement. As if I were a curious child, Mrs. Palmer hands me cups of strong tea and buttered griddle cakes topped with fig jam while I listen to the kitchen’s wisdom. Even the head housekeeper Mrs. Winterborn – a woman with a narrow, stern face who manages to frighten even me – sometimes peers in to add her own thoughts.

The sleepseed takes shape beneath my brush and a quiet calm envelops me. Master Bermond has told me all he knows and left me to paint. Even this early in the day the air is drowsy and fat with the drone of locusts and grasshoppers. The smell of mown grass and fresh-dug compost is faintly dusted with the scent of sage. There is no reek of plague; perhaps the fires are finally out.

The sun falls warm on my cheek despite my wide-brimmed hat, and the now-familiar bird song dances through the gardens. When I first arrived here it was the sound of the birds that made me realize how far I was from home. They didn’t sound right. Nothing made me more homesick than waking to their strange songs.

Here now in this summer garden, with only my brush and inks and the hovering bees for company, I am the closest to content I can allow myself. I will not think of Carien and the way she reminds me of something wild trapped in a small cage. Or of how pathetically eager I am to see in her someone like myself and to hope we could grow some friendship between us. To be the one who frees her, earns her gratitude, and perhaps her love. I shake my head. It seems I am eager to be a champion so people will love me. Am I really so lonely?

Or perhaps this is the way I think to salve all my guilt.

“My lady?”

I look over my shoulder to Riona standing nervously behind me. She walks with a curious cat-like stealth as if she is scared to disturb anyone around her. She’s one of the few Hobs who came to us already able to read, and lately she’s been helping me give tutelage to those servants who want lessons. I like her. When she does speak, her humour is dry and pointed as a stick.

“Riona.” I stand, shaking out my skirts. “What is it?”

“A messenger came,” she says. “From House Eline.”

“And?” My palms are moist as I pack away my inks and brushes.

Riona takes my easel without being asked, careful not to mar the painting. “They left an invitation,” she says. “I thought you’d want to know straight away.”

“Indeed,” I say. “Indeed.” But instead of eagerness, a dull panic throbs in my chest. Something ill is going to come of this connection I am forging with House Eline.

* * *

I turn the
little cream card over in my fingers, trying to think of some response to give. The messenger who left it is long gone, and still I have thought of nothing. The invitation is from Eline Garret; he would like to meet me. Here is my chance to make deals, to carve a foothold into MallenIve. And if there are secrets to be uncovered, how better to dig them out than by wearing the mask of friendship?

My brother would approve. I’ve become exactly the kind of society bitch the Houses love to breed.

Whatever my motives might be, Carien kept her word, so I suppose I’ll have to keep mine. I can imagine Jannik’s face when I put the idea to him that one of the House ladies wants to paint his portrait.

A glass bell rings for breakfast, breaking my contemplation, and I drop the card back onto the silver letter tray. I’ll deal with it once I’ve eaten. It’s too much for me to face on an empty stomach.

Jannik isn’t in the breakfast room when I enter. A servant pours tea, another brings in toast and preserves and salted herring. The smells of egg and mushrooms and tomato make the room feel oily. It’s not like Jannik to be absent. Normally he arrives before me and is already halfway through the Courant by the time I start eating.

I sit alone at the table, my heart tight. He’s not coming, and I make myself chew on toast and tomato. The texture of the egg turns my stomach, and I push it to one side with the rest of my uneaten food.

The Courant lies rolled neatly at Jannik’s place. Today’s paper is slim, uninteresting, and I flick through the goods trading section with dull interest. The silk crops are looking good. House Mata predicts bad flooding with the next summer rains, and the Casabi will break her embankments. Here’s a review of a new opera, a new play, a new gallery opening. An announcement of some House spawn, an engagement between two minor Houses. The dull minutiae of a dull city.

I care about none of this. My fingers still when I reach the final page, and my breath comes a little faster. On the back page there is a brief article – little more than a few lines. A vampire. Another one dead. The corpse was old, too rotted to identify.

Three dead now. Three of which we know. All in a matter of days.

Heart thrumming, I roll the paper tightly, and toss it back at Jannik’s place. He must be in the house somewhere.

The glass doors are cold against my palm as I push my way out of the clammy breakfast room. The fire was stoked too high, the reek of food too heavy. My stomach roils and churns, and as I leave, I find myself trying to gasp down the clean air as if it will somehow purify me.

Jannik’s side of the house is uncharted territory. When we came here we divided the apartments between us, marking out communal ground and private wings. Opening the door to his part of the house feels like trespassing even though the property is in my name.

He’s changed the décor. The silver and deep blues of my House colours are nowhere in evidence. Even though all the curtains are drawn, this side of the house feels lighter than mine. The drapes are pale, almost gossamer, and the old floorboards have been bleached. Something about the coldness, the lightness of it, reminds me of his mother’s home in Pelimburg. The white rooms have a certain stripped efficiency.

I find him in a study, reading, curled into an armchair that looks like it came from his old rooms, worn and shaped to him. One fist is knuckled against his temple, and his hair falls over his eyes. He is intensely engrossed in the slim blue volume. A cup of tea sits at his elbow.

“What happened to all the furniture?” I ask.

He starts at my voice and turns in his chair. “Never thought you’d come here.” A faint frown touches his forehead, and the third eyelids are half-drawn across his eyes.

“The furniture. It’s heirloom.”

“And safely stored away,” he says. “It made me feel like I didn’t belong here.” He turns back to his book, and raises his cup to blow across the tea. “To what do I owe the honour?”

“They found another body.”

Jannik sniffs, as if the tea tastes bad and sets the cup down on an occasional table. “I know.” He snaps the book closed with one hand.

“Don’t you care?”

“Of course I do – but what do you want us to do about it? You have a list of names, names that prove nothing. Are we supposed to go to the sharif now and demand that they arrest four Houses on nothing more than a slip of paper that some whore gave you?” His anger is tamped down but I can hear it just under the surface of his voice. It ripples the magic in the room and I rub my thumb across my opposite wrist to try still the itch.

We watch each other.

“I saw your invitation. Are you going to go?” he says, after seconds that feel like hours.

“Go – oh, to House Eline.” I look down at the full skirt of my dress. “I suppose. He wants to meet me at their offices.”

“Hmm. And this is all just about House Pelim business?”

I swallow. “Of course it is. You told me the deaths were none of my concern.”

“Since when have you ever listened to me?” The words are harsh, but the tone is defeated. “Not really much that you can dig up in his offices. If House Eline are buying and murdering vampires then I doubt they’re going to be doing it in full view of the staff.”

“No.” This third death must have goaded him. He knows he can do nothing in this city. I’m his only tool. And Harun, perhaps, if he ever agrees. I look up to catch Jannik frowning, his gaze focused on nothing. “But perhaps he will let something slip.”

“Well then, off you trot,” he says, “If nothing else, maybe this will be your catapult back into society.”

My stomach aches, he may as well have kicked me. But I am well-trained, and I keep my face as implacable as ever. “Don’t be a bastard about this, Jannik. I care about what’s happening with these vampires–”