The Fall of Ventaris (29 page)

Jana’s distress brought Duchess back to the present. “We have still to unpack the teacups!” the weaver lamented, wringing her hands.
 

Lysander grinned. “No worries...ale’s better than tea after you just escaped the Brutes.” He seemed jovial enough, but Duchess could read his unease. It matched her own. As they settled down to eat, she ran over the evening’s events in her mind. The Brutes had merely been the glove for another hand, she was sure, and not Nell’s. No lightboy had the coin to pay for the services of Malleus and Kakios.
First to business
, they’d said, but whose? Smashing Jana’s looms would have set back Duchess’ fledgling business, but who would want to do that?

She briefly considered Jadis, but dismissed the thought almost instantly. The First Keeper had no reason to strike at Duchess, and every reason not to. The shared secret of Castor was enough to get them both hanged. If he wanted to seal her silence he would have sent the Brutes to kill her, not to destroy some looms. Hector was petty enough to try something like this, she supposed, but not bold enough to approach the Brutes to do so. She considered Baron Eusbius, who had used Malleus and Kakios in the past, but Eusbius had no way of knowing that Duchess was behind his humiliation, and she could not believe that Ahmed would want his own association with House Kell brought to the baron’s attention.
 

She came out of her reverie to find the others looking at her. Jana’s expression was wary, Castor’s serious, and Lysander’s knowing. “You’re wondering who sent the Brutes,” he said, swirling the ale in his cup.
 

“Among other things,” she replied, fiddling with a crust of bread. “I’m also thinking that I can’t let this pass.”

Lysander’s gaze sharpened. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” she said, feeling anger intertwined with fear, “that by this time tomorrow half the Shallows will have heard about tonight’s little adventure, and the rest will know soon after. They’ll all be talking about how Duchess almost took one in the teeth.”

“Almost,” Lysander pointed out. “They’ll also know how cleverly you avoided the Brutes.”

She rose to her feet and stalked to the window. “Maybe,” she mused, looking out into the Wharves. The street was empty except for two Ahé women who were passing, carrying a large, cloth-wrapped bundle between them. “Or maybe they’ll wonder when the next blow will fall.”

“Everyone in this city, up and down the hill, knows the meaning of that red hand,” Lysander said, gesturing to the door. “Malleus and Kakios are scary, sure, but not as scary as Uncle Cornelius.”
 

Duchess turned back to face him. “It’s not the Brutes I’m worried about, but the one who paid them.” She paced back and forth, like a restless cat. “Nell knows, but she won’t say, and I doubt the Brutes will be more cooperative.”

“Perhaps there is nothing to be done,” Jana suggested. “No one was hurt, and we are all safe here.”

“From the Brutes, perhaps, but if anyone gets the notion that I’ll take this lying down...” She clenched a fist. “I need to send a message. She was thinking of Tyford and his tale.

“What message?” Lysander asked, although he looked as if he knew.
 

“That no one, up or down the hill, Brute or blackarm or lightboy, fucks with me.”

PART TWO

FALL

“Your Imperial Majesty,” she intoned, in a voice stronger than Duchess would have expected. “It is a great honor for us to stand before you, on this day of all days. As Ventaris —
”

Tick.

The sound rang out loudly in the quiet chamber, the clack of wood on wood, and Green hesitated, looking confused. Then she composed herself. “As Ventaris begins —
”

Tick.

“ — His long twilight struggle against the darkness, we, His children wish nothing more than —
”

Tick, tick.

Now Green’s speech trailed off, and she turned to look at the cask, clearly the origin of that strange clacking noise. The others exchanged glances, the herald looked mortified, and even Violana blinked and leaned forward in her chair to see what was the matter. Two of the Whites on the dais stepped to her side, hands on sword-hilts, cat-like in readiness.

Tick, tick. Tick, tick tick.
 

Chapter Seventeen: Pacing the cage

A tiger ate her sleep.
 

Duchess had never seen such a creature, and knew of them only from a lushly illustrated manuscript that had belonged to her father. The document was in a language she did not recognize, but about the first letter was curled some great cat, striped in golds and reds and browns, all staring eyes and fangs and claws, drawn so vividly it seemed ready to leap and pounce and grab and tear. Many strange animals were depicted in that scroll, but the cat had preyed on her mind so long she’d finally gone to her father’s library to satisfy her curiosity.
 

She’d scoured the shelves and read of the creature’s habits and temper, its hunting practices and preferred prey. The tale she best remembered described the efforts of a previous Rodaasi emperor to capture a tiger for a menagerie he intended to build, written by the hunter who’d made the attempt. The cat had been captured without much difficulty, but when they’d caged it for the trip back to the empire, everything went wrong. The tiger paced unceasingly, hour after hour, day after day, neither eating nor sleeping. Several days into the journey bloody streaks appeared across the bottom of the cage, left by the tiger’s paws, which were worn and tattered by its constant movement. The great cat grew thinner and weaker, and yet still would not rest. It died before the end of the voyage, so that in the end, the emperor was presented not with the prize he had so coveted but merely its skin.

At the time Duchess had wondered what it might be like to be so trapped and frightened and angry. In the days and weeks since Jana’s move and the Brutes’ attack, she realized she knew. The tiger of her worry paced and fretted and growled and would not let her rest. She spent many a sleepless night at her window, waiting for the morning sun and the fog that came with it, bringing another day of worry and dread and anger.
 

She was hemmed in not by iron bars but ignorance. Ophion rented his men out to any and all buyers, so nearly anyone with gold and a grudge could have sent Malleus and Kakios to smash Jana’s looms and ruin her business. Yet her enemy possessed not only coin but cunning, aiming not to ruin Duchess physically but financially, in the Deeps, far from the protection of law. The worst thought was that the chosen weapon was no coincidence. Ophion had many men, and yet it had been Lysander’s tormentors who had found her.
 

She had
fruned
about desperately for an answer and come up empty. If any word had been whispered along the Highway, she had not heard it. Either she was not
fruning
well enough, or whoever was behind the attack was making sure no news came to her ears. Tyford had once told her that the low man on the Grey Highway was always the last to know, and she wondered if that person was now her.

In the month since Jana had taken up her new abode there had been no further trouble. Duchess had posted Castor at the shop as often as she could afford, and of course the mark of the Red was a powerful deterrent. So far no new threat had materialized. Jana wove, Castor watched, and Duchess worried. She kept at her training with Tyford, continued to spar with Castor in their Deeps cellar, but those activities were drained of pleasure. Her days belonged to numb exhaustion, and her nights to the tiger.

Which is why she registered only dull surprise when Julius walked into the Merry Widow where she was waiting for Lysander. She’d come in hopes that ale would still her thoughts for an evening, and was working on her first mug when he appeared. “If it isn’t her ladyship!” he cried, standing before her, hands on hips. The tavern was crowded but he managed to make himself heard. She hadn’t seen the man since the business with Rosamile’s ring, but if she thought that defeat might have cowed him, she could not have been more wrong.”The last I heard you were becoming a respectable woman of business.” He slid into the empty chair across from her, grinning widely. “The Uncle set you up with that, too?”

She swallowed her retort and tried to seem unruffled. Since she’d rooked him with his own loaded dice, Julius had taken to
fruning
his displeasure over her victory, accusing her of betraying her own color. Duchess had done nothing in return, hoping her silence was response enough. In the end, she determined that the consensus on the Highway was that Julius had gotten himself outsmarted and out-conned; his carping was merely advertising his humiliation. Still, the whole business was yet another worry she did not need, but she wasn’t certain how to end it.

“Whatever business I’m about is between my partner and me, Julius,” she said pointedly. Grey Julius might be, but that did not mean he could speak poorly about the chief of the Red with impunity. Besides, she had no desire to be linked with the Uncle any more than she already was. “
You
may wish to
frune
whatever you’re about across the city and back, but some of us understand the meaning of discretion.” She sipped from her mug, taking the opportunity to scan the tavern. No Lysander yet, gods be damned.

“All that discretion didn’t help you and the weaver, did it? I heard there was some trouble moving up from the Deeps?” He examined his nails, as if speaking off-handedly, but to her eye he seemed terribly eager, as if there was something he couldn’t wait to tell her. Jossalyn, her “sister” for those years at the bakery, had played the same game when she knew Duchess was in Noam’s bad books.

She rolled her eyes. “Let me guess...you were behind all that, right?” In truth, she’d half-considered that possibility, but had dismissed it for one simple reason. Julius was as vindictive a man as could be imagined, but if he’d tweaked her nose he’d want the world to know it, and yet a month after the attack he’d
fruned
nothing. “Spare me. You’ve been grumbling up and down the hill about that dice game, but nobody’s heard a peep from you about that business with Jana.” She flicked a hand. “I understand your pride is wounded, but even for you this is just...pathetic.”

“You think you know so much,” he mocked, “but some of us who’ve worn the cloak longer know that sometimes things aren’t what they seem.”

She snorted. “How insightful. Well, if it
was
you, the Brutes failed and you’ve wasted your coin, so unless you’re planning to sing for your ale, I’d suggest you move on.” She nodded towards the portly woman at the bar. “Shari doesn’t like beggars taking up her tables.”

He smirked and jingled his coin purse beneath the table. “Oh, I’ve plenty of coin, even after paying Malleus and Kakios,” he said in a low voice. “I profited from that little venture, I can tell you, even though I couldn’t care less about the Domae slut’s looms.” He laughed, clearly enjoying himself, and now she wondered. She still didn’t think that Julius had set the Brutes on her, but the fact that he knew they’d been after the looms was interesting. She certainly hadn’t
fruned
that about. She thought of Minette, who sometimes used silence to draw you into revealing more than you intended, or was good for you. In lieu of a reply, she lifted her mug and sipped, never taking her eyes from Julius.

Sure enough, he cracked first. “I wouldn’t waste a half-penny on the likes of you, but when the money comes from higher on the hill, who am I to say no?” He grinned, enjoying his moment, and she fought down the urge to slap the smugness off his ugly face. “You’ve made powerful enemies, one too many, I’d say, and now they’re coming for you.” Julius somehow managed to swagger without rising from his chair. He called for his own ale and sat back to watch her, arms folded across his barrel-chest. She considered. If Julius truly had sent Malleus and Kakios after her, it was curious that he would come to taunt her when they failed. Most would be too embarrassed, yet here was Julius in all his strutting glory. It was as if their loss didn’t touch him personally.
 

When his ale had arrived, Duchess smiled. “Yes, I’m sure that the empress herself slipped you the gold to hire the Brutes.” She made a yawn. “Julius, I like my lies clever, or at the very least entertaining. This one’s neither. I wonder if you’d have been this disappointing in bed.” She said this last in a voice that carried, and a pair of blacksmiths seated at the next table guffawed laughter. Julius looked darkly in their direction, but they were broad men and thick with muscle, and he said nothing. Timing her move carefully, Duchess got to her feet. “I can hear children’s tales on the street, thank you.”
 

As she made to leave his hand shot out to seize her wrist in a grip like iron, pulling her back to her chair. Her hip bumped the table, rocking the tankards and spilling ale onto the wood. “Let me tell you one more tale, then, about a Shallows bitch who got so above herself that even Ventaris himself took notice.” Her breath caught, and Julius took that as fear. He grinned smugly. “
That’s
got you, doesn’t it? You’re scared now, just as you should be. The gods are coming for you, and they’ll have no mercy.”

Realization dawned, and she didn’t bother trying to free herself from his grasp. “You
did
hire the Brutes, didn’t you?” she said, barely above a whisper. “What did Preceptor Amabilis say when you failed?”

That
wiped the smile from his face, and she felt a stab of triumph. “I...you don’t know he paid me!”

“I didn’t until just now, when you so helpfully confirmed it.” It’d been a wild guess, but now it all made sense. Whoever had sent Malleus and Kakios wasn’t bragging about it where the Grey could hear, but if Julius had arranged for the attack he’d have shouted that news from the rooftops. He was far too petty to bother with dark hints and obscure warnings. He retained his grip on her wrist and she used it to reel him in until they were nearly nose to nose, close enough to kiss. “Someone
did
use you to strike at me, someone who knew about our little quarrel over Antony’s ring, which was common knowledge on the Highway but I doubt was the talk of Temple.
Ventaris himself took notice
, eh? I know only one radiant who can
frune
.” She disentangled herself from his slackening grasp. “And so do you.”