Oracle: The House War: Book Six (9 page)

Why? Why take this approach?

It had to be Jarven. It couldn’t be Lucille. Out loud he said, “What does Jarven want?”

“That’s the question,” Ludgar replied. He looked uneasy. “He’s all but retired. He hasn’t played politics with this heavy a hand since—” He shook his head. “If I’d had half an idea what you carried in your hands, I’d’ve told Ivarr to throw you out. I’ve half a mind to tell him to throw you out anyway.”

Jester rose, laughing. “I know when I’ve outstayed my welcome. But don’t waste the wine. I’m not carrying it back with me.”

“Any others you’re playing messenger boy for today?”

“Two,” Jester told him, as he headed to the door.

“I take it back. The wine’s not finished. Come back and tell me who they are.”

Jester was more than willing to comply. Ludgar’s reactions would give him useful information, and he felt he now needed that information.

 • • • 

The second merchant Jester was to visit that day was Ruby, also ATerafin. Rumor had it that she’d traveled the Southern caravan routes, trading silk, spices, and pearls for the gems in the two Terafin mines. If rumors were true, her days on the open road were well behind her; she left them for the younger and hungrier. She was not Lucille, but she hadn’t been poured into Verdian’s mold either; she occupied a terrain between the two.

She had a sense of humor, but there was enough anger and bitterness beneath her words that her company wasn’t generally considered enjoyable. She was therefore frequently without company, which didn’t improve her demeanor. Drinking did not noticeably improve it either, but it certainly sharpened her tongue; if Jester was willing to take the risk of drinking with Ludgar, he was not willing to do so with Ruby.

He didn’t dislike the older woman, but like most of the sensible world, didn’t enjoy her company. Ruby was in charge of a large portion of Terafin’s Southern trade routes. Popularity, however, had little to do with her position; she was tolerated—even appreciated, at a great enough distance—for her competence. She could stand toe-to-toe with Haerrad without blinking or stepping back.

Her routes had dwindled to a trickle during the war that had just concluded, and the roads, while in theory clear, had seen the usual rise in banditry that often followed war; this had diminished her theoretical importance to the economic vitality of the House. On the other hand, no one doubted her nadir would end.

Ludgar’s commercial ventures had been likewise constrained, but he had—in his own words—diversified, and there was no war with the northern province of Arrend. The winters in Arrend, however, were harsh and ships were only now venturing out of port.

“Be wary of Ruby,” Ludgar told Jester as he escorted him to the door. “She’s got a tongue like a razor, but it’s not the only thing about her that’s sharp. She’s survived things that most of my men wouldn’t.”

Jester was honestly surprised, and took no trouble to hide it. “Ruby ATerafin? Are we speaking of the same woman?”

“You can laugh, boy. You’re young. She’s one of the very few woman who can put a scare into Ivarr.”

Ivarr did not seem pleased by this observation, but he didn’t deny it, a fact Jester found significant.

“I’d pay real gold to get a glimpse of the letter your Finch has written to Ruby,” he added, with a half-smile.

“So would I,” Jester replied, half in earnest. “But she clearly meant the letters to be read by their recipients first, and it’s not worth my position to break those seals.” He strongly considered doing so anyway—or one better, failing to deliver the message at all. The visit with Ludgar had not gone to plan—and to be fair, he’d arrived entirely without one, as he did on most visits. Delivering the next two missives seem guaranteed to worsen the stand Finch appeared to be taking.

Jester generally affected boredom when presented with news about House Affairs. He listened with more interest to Carver’s gossip than he did to Finch’s or Teller’s, because Carver spoke about the men and women who actually kept the House running, and Jester had no complaints with those who had chosen a life of service.

The single exception to that was Ellerson. And there it was again: the old domicis’ name.

Jester generally lived without hope; hope led to disappointment and almost inevitably to despair. Neither were states Jester particularly enjoyed, and he avoided them by stamping them out at the root.

He’d done this one before. He’d sat, back to wall in the cramped, tiny apartment they’d once called home, listening for the floorboards in the hall beyond the den’s closed door. Listening for the familiar creak that belonged to one of the den who’d gone missing. He’d watched Arann practically disintegrate. He’d even watched Duster—Duster who treated Lefty with open contempt when she could be bothered to speak to him at all—tense, waiting in the same hope, and the same dread, as the rest of them.

She couldn’t acknowledge it, of course. Because she couldn’t, she’d snapped at the den when they spoke openly about Lefty or Fisher. She’d isolated herself as if isolation was her highest goal.

And she’d died.

She’d died for a group of people she kept at arm’s length. When he died, if he found her waiting at the bridge, Jester intended to ask her why. He closed his eyes and listened to the rumble of wheels as the carriage rolled across a different bridge. He did not want to be here, where fear of death—or loss—was predominant.

But he knew, now, that Ellerson was den. Because the emptiness and the absence of his oh-so-critical breathing was a shadow that he couldn’t quite escape.

Carver was alive, somewhere. Carver, like Ellerson, was Jay’s problem. But he knew Jay. If there was any way she could find Carver and bring him safely home, she would do it. She hadn’t said a word about Ellerson. She didn’t know what had happened to the old man.

She didn’t know yet what had happened to Carver.

Ruby seemed like a better topic for thought, and he tried, but he had little success until the carriage pulled up the drive to her manor. Ruby’s home was far grander than Ludgar’s, and it had actual grounds, the advantage of living in the hundred holdings, albeit the wealthier ones. The grounds were not of the same quality as Terafin’s, but Jester thought it was because their master didn’t really care about the grounds themselves, just the fact of them.

Jester, disembarking, cast a brief glance at the trees and the flower beds. He had learned, with time, to appreciate the difference in quality without in any way developing a desire to own such land himself. He understood that for Ruby, this existed as a visible symbol of her status within the House—and outside of it, as well. She didn’t have Ludgar’s size; she didn’t have the birth connections of Haerrad.

She didn’t need them. But she wasn’t fool enough to assume they were irrelevant.

Her servants were a cut above Ludgar’s; they did not fraternize with guests—or in this case, elevated messengers. Nor did Jester attempt to draw them out. He understood their role; they understood as much of his as they were willing to. They could—and probably had—serve in other manors of note.

Jester therefore told the man who answered the door that he had been sent by Finch ATerafin to deliver a message of some import to his master; the man immediately led Jester to a sitting room, bowed, and left.

This room was much like the parlor Ivarr disdained; it was heavily decorated with books, although some of them, to Jester’s eye, had been read. All but a handful were in Weston; the handful were written in Torra. No Old Weston, no other unintelligible languages, graced the spines of these volumes.

He withdrew the scroll case from his satchel and waited; he touched nothing, moved nothing, and went nowhere. Ruby’s sense of humor did not encompass acts of aggression—and snooping was an act of unpardonable aggression unless she happened to be the one doing it, in which case, it was just business and nothing personal.

Ruby never forgot a slight.

It was rumored that she never forgot a favor, either—but Jester had seen precious little evidence of that; people did not, in Ruby’s opinion, do favors for her. Any small gift—such as the purloined vintage Jester had offered to Ludgar—was treated as proof that you were sucking up to her. It was suspicious, not gracious.

Jester preferred to be above—or perhaps in this case, beneath—suspicion. He brought nothing but the message.

The message, however, drew Ruby ATerafin to the sitting room alarmingly quickly. She was not a woman who liked to be rushed by anyone who was not obviously superior to her in position; if The Terafin called her, she would of course jump through hoops.

Jester grimaced. The
previous
Terafin. Jay had locked horns with Ruby on one or two occasions during her tenure as a member of the House Council, and Ruby’s respect for The Terafin—she made clear—was for the title, not the person who, by luck, currently inhabited it.

She had certainly not lined up behind Jay’s banner when Jay had been in the South. She had, on the other hand, made offers of support to three of the four contenders. She wanted the Merchant Authority. She didn’t want it enough to personally attempt to depose Jarven.

No one wanted it that much. Jester considered this fact far more significant than Finch did.

“They’re all afraid of Lucille,” she’d told him, grinning.

“Do you even believe that?” he’d asked.

She laughed, and signed
truce
before they could start an argument in earnest.

Jester rose the moment Ruby had crossed the threshold. He didn’t bow; she was not, in theory, his superior, and she considered unnecessary gestures suspect. He did incline his head in the controlled nod that she offered first.

“You’ve a message for me?”

He handed her the scroll case.

“And she didn’t choose to send it through the usual channels.”

Demonstrably not. Jester kept the thought to himself.

“Did she send it through the Merchant Authority?”

“I’m not retained by the Merchant Authority,” he replied, keeping his voice both respectful and neutral. He chose to slouch slightly, diminishing the advantage of height; Ruby was surprisingly short, an impression lost pretty much the instant she opened her mouth.

“Do you know what she’s written?”

“I’m not retained by the Merchant Authority, and I’m not authorized to be part of its dealings. I have no idea what she wrote; I was asked to deliver the message today. You know as much as I do,” he added, when she failed to take the scroll from his extended hand. “But you have the opportunity to alleviate your curiosity in a manner that is forbidden me.”

She frowned.

“You can take it,” he continued, “and open it.”

He was honestly surprised at her reluctance; she’d appeared all but instantly, which implied a certain eagerness. Or fear. He almost pointed out that he was handling the case itself, without gloves or any other form of protection, and he had not incidentally dropped dead.

That level of sarcasm with Ruby could produce unfortunate results, but he found it difficult, as the minutes wore on, to hold it in. She finally took the case, handling it with enough care that she justified Jester’s silent sarcasm.

As this was exactly the type of social debacle he’d been burned by in his early introduction to patriciate society, he avoided it now. But he watched as she walked to a side table beneath the very generous windows. She set it down in the center of the bare, wooden surface. Jester frowned briefly. The table had escaped his notice; there was nothing about it to call it to his attention.

And that should have been clue enough. Ruby generally chose deliberate ostentation; if she chose to have something so sparse and plain in a room, it was meant to serve a different purpose.

The tabletop began to glow. Interesting.

“The scroll case is magical,” he told the Terafin merchant, his tone carefully neutral. “The message is meant to be both private and protected.”

She grimaced, still watching the table’s surface. After a pause of two silent minutes, she exhaled and lifted the case. Ruby was not generally considered paranoid; she was considered both canny and cautious, although she frequently chose to play a rougher game.

Clearly, she expected one now. From Finch.

His anger at Jarven grew edges; he saw the old man’s hand in the letter Finch had penned to Ludgar; he saw the old man’s shadow in Ruby’s reaction to a letter she had not yet read.

He retreated while Ruby, scroll case gripped so tightly it was a wonder it wasn’t crushed, magic notwithstanding, took a chair. She took, by habit, the finest chair in the room; not for Ruby the false modesty of hospitality. If you were on her turf, you acknowledged it, and you played by her rules.

Jester was ATerafin, but he labored under no illusions; his value to the House could not in any way compare to hers. Ruby did not labor under any illusions either; she didn’t care whether or not Jester was impressed. He was irrelevant.

The seal cracked cleanly and without visible magical acknowledgment; were it not for the contents—documents too large in dimension to suit unenchanted containers—the magic would go undetected. Jester glanced at the small, plain table.

“No,” Ruby said, as she unfurled the letter. “The table’s not new. It’s old. I acquired it when its previous owner felt it wise to leave the Empire with very little warning. He needed liquid cash. I underpaid,” she added, glaring over the top of a letter she had not apparently started to read. “The best bargains are the unexpected ones that come in the wake of someone else’s crises.”

Her steward appeared in the door, trailing two parlor maids in smart, stiff uniforms; they carried trays. If Ruby considered most hospitality a trial, her social graces were not so poor that she would take a light meal—for that’s what it was—without offering the same to a guest.

Given the extremely suspicious way she handled the scroll case, Jester wasn’t certain that he could trust the food. Apparently, neither was Ruby, given that one of the parlor maids appeared to test the food before she ate it. Jester made a mental note to ask Carver about servant rumors between the two houses and froze.