Arm Of Galemar (Book 2) (49 page)

“I am not asking he assist you.  I am only asking he
accompany you.  He has legitimate interests which coincide with our own.”

“Our own?  Our reputation is on the line!  What has he
to do with that?”

Vashti frowned.  “Our reputation is imperiled, yes. 
Helping those wronged by the thorn amidst our flowers will go a long distance
toward recovery.  Being
seen
to do so will help minimize the initial
damage before rumor grows upon itself.”

A look passed between the two.  Full understand of the
meanings it contained eluded Marik.  Obviously this was a continuing issue
outside his involvement.

Without a word, though with a stormy countenance,
Ilona whirled and stalked back the way she had come.  Vashti addressed him. 
“If you will wait a short while, Ilona will escort you to Daniel’s dwelling.”

“Uh…”

A quirky smile reshaped the madam’s sensuous lips. 
“Have no worries concerning her.  She has been in a foul mood all morning.  The
cityguard left not half a mark before you arrived, questioning us regarding the
woman assassin.  I am afraid Ilona has had little rest since returning last
night.”

“Her and me both.  Did you tell the cityguard about
this Daniel?”

“No.  The reputation of the Standing Spell is strong. 
Revealing our clients’ secrets would mean the end of that.”

“Then why tell me?”

“Ilona was already on her way to Daniel’s when she
stopped to speak with you.  As I said, this matter brings shame on our house. 
Ilona wanted answers, and meant to get them.”

Marik thought he read the deeper meaning this time in
both her words and her expression.  Might his very presence as a witness stop
Ilona from crossing some line with the noble?  A line Vashti wished to remain
inviolate?  “Well, thank you for letting me tag along.  And she’s probably
right.  I might not get inside on my own.”  He stepped to the doorway and
peered down the hall in hopes of seeing her.

Vashti still wore that peculiar smile.  “Well then, I
must go see Rosa.  She has a matter she needs to discuss with me.  Ilona will
be along shortly, I imagine.”

The madam left him to see Rosa in the reception area. 
Probably to talk about me
.  Ilona reappeared in short order.

She had donned a type of cloak Marik had only seen a
few times before.  It looked like an overlarge circle with a hole in the center
for the wearer’s head.  Wasn’t that called a…serape?  Why did she choose to
retrieve it when she had already been on her way out the door minutes ago
without it?  While the possibility of rain still lingered, it could easily be
hot enough she would regret wearing it.  Besides, the baggy garment also
covered most of her figure, he noticed with disappointment.

Only an unladylike grunt graced him before she walked
down the hall, never once checking to ensure he followed.  In the reception
area, Vashti nodded at them, the queer grin reemerging as she noticed Ilona’s
serape.

Outside, she headed deeper into the Inner Circle.  He
followed close on her heels.

Despite her harsh words, he could not tell if she was
angry at him personally, or if the entire situation had fouled her temper.  He
hoped the latter would prove true, and so spent the journey to Lord Daniel’s
residence working on a smooth statement that might lighten her spirits.  Marik
abandoned most of the possibilities since half of them centered on her hair,
the sight of which he was unable to tear his eyes from for long.

The wavy mass had been worked into lengths composed of
twenty or thirty strands each.  Or perhaps it naturally grew that way. 
Hundreds of these thick lengths streamed across her shoulders and down her
upper back.  In the light breeze, every step she took caused them to tumble
around each other.  Always in constant motion, her hair never knotted together
in a fisherman’s nightmare, as he would have expected.

Truly a fascinating spectacle.  Too bad it lent itself
to no opening lines for a conversation that would not make him sound a greater
fool than she already considered him.  The only other topics he could think of
that might breach the wall of her irritability were ones unlikely to endear him
to her.  Any questions about her relationship to the Standing Spell would
undoubtedly be interpreted as an attempt to discover how he might purchase her
services.  Given her statements from before, he could already guess how she
would react to another perceived implication that he saw her as a courtesan.

Which she seemed clearly not to be.  None of this made
any sense.

She halted in front of a large house little different
from the Sestion abode.  Additional space lay between the outer fence and the
house, and there were trees beyond a few decorative shaders.  Trees enough that
Marik thought the sky must be a rare sight to any residents who spent all their
time in the mansion.

No servant manned the gate.  Marik reached for the
gate handle when Ilona turned on him.  “Do me a favor, and keep your mouth shut
while we’re inside.”

He tried to renew the anger that earlier allowed him
to stand against her, except she met him eye-to-eye.  Her eyes were more than
glassy orbs like everyone else’s.  They were perfect globes.  Peering into
them, he could almost feel the back curves, could sense the distance between
iris and the interior space.  And the irises alone!  Space enough to be lost
forever in, though quite unlike the transparent void of the sky above.  The
very essence of brown, where everything existed solely to be dark brown and
perfection was dark brown and all manner of things were dark brown.  No other
color in the universe held meaning.  Never before had he experienced endless
infinity…as he saw in Ilona’s gaze.

Those eyes narrowed.  “Did you hear me?  I’ve come on
business and I
will not
have you tarnishing the reputation mother has
worked so hard for because you want to act smarter than you are!”

Annoyance stirred, but not enough to pull the anger to
the fore.  “I only want to ask about the assassin.  Not ruin your social
standings.”

“Then keep quite.  You can stand there looking tough
or important if that suits you.  Men never handle delicate situations right
anyway, so don’t interfere.”

He started to ask what she meant by that when she
walked through the gate, leaving him behind before he could form the right
words.  Marik followed her in with a sigh.  A forgotten voice had once told him
that a man never stood a chance against a woman who’d made up her mind, especially
if it was a decision to gallop a horse over a cliff.  The advice felt old, so
perhaps his father had said that.  Whoever it might have been, he agreed. 
While he watched Ilona crash the heavy knockers loudly against the doors as
though she would much rather chew through them, he questioned why he’d ever
started assuming men were the ones in charge of the world.

*        *        *        *        *

In the end, the interview was a waste of time for all
they received from it.  Daniel Dennilor, an earl at King Raymond’s court for
his entire life, fast approached his end.  Wispy gray strands were plastered to
his head, as though he had accidentally walked through a spider’s web.  His
deteriorated hearing forced them, or rather Ilona, to speak loudly, so people
passing on the street probably heard her.  Twice the old man’s mind wandered
from the present.  She needed to reiterate substantial portions of what had
been said until he remembered what they spoke of.

As for his involvement with the female assassin, they
got nearly nothing.  She was the daughter of an old lady friend of his who
needed to escape from a terrible fate or…perhaps it was
that
fate…or no,
maybe it was
this..
.

If nothing else, Marik did learn about Ilona.  To say
that she was angry about an assassin working her way into their employ, using
them as cover to advance her own schemes, would understate Ilona’s wrath.  It
encouraged Marik to know her ire, or at least its majority, was rooted
elsewhere than in him.

Back on the street, the festering boil of her foul
mood seemed to have been lanced.  Which was not to say she warmed to him. 
“That’s that.”  She adjusted the serape which had tightened around her neck. 
“Sorry you didn’t learn anything.”

Her tone held no sympathy in the least, and Marik
realized she meant to leave him standing there.  “What about this friend of the
earl’s?”  He could think of nothing else that might delay her departure.  “If
the assassin is her daughter, then she would know about her.”

Ilona burned him with scorn.  “Use your head!  If she
was the mother, she wouldn’t be likely to tell us anything, would she?  But
it’s obvious she’s not.  The whole story is a load of horse feathers put
together to trick Daniel into asking us to hire her!”

“But she was the earl’s friend,” Marik continued
stubbornly.  “She must know the details.”

“So you want to fly off and question her, then? 
Fine.  Exactly where will you find her?”

“Oh, uh…”

“And what is her name?  Tell me that because I must
have nodded off if he mentioned it.”

Daniel had not, and she was just being spiteful. 
“There must be options to try!  And don’t tell me you’re satisfied with this! 
You
haven’t found proof your mother wasn’t involved with the attack!”

“Don’t be a bigger idiot than you are.  Proof is one
thing I’ll never find.  I only wanted the explanation behind this so we know
where we stand.  I have what I want, and so I’ll be on my way.”

She started walking.  Desperate, Marik jogged to draw
abreast of her, catching a fresh glare for his trouble.  “But what about your
reputation?  I mean, your mother’s reputation?  Won’t your business decline if
people think you make contracts with your men?  I mean
put
contracts on
your
clients
!”  He had started thinking about her and it tripped up his
mouth.

“Our regular clients know us better than that.  When
the cityguard hangs the bitch from the city walls, everyone else will too.”

Marik frantically cast his mental nets for a new
argument.  If he kept from talking about her or himself personally, his mind
could stay in control of his words.  “What about the cityguard?  They were
already at the b…uh, at the Standing Spell earlier today, weren’t they?  I bet
they don’t turn their backs on your doors anytime soon.”

That irritated Ilona.  “What the cityguard does is
none of my concern.  They can’t disrupt our business much by sitting across the
street and glaring at the door!”

He thought he saw an opening, so he quickly leapt at
it.  “But you can bet they won’t!  They’ll probably storm through the place
every other day looking for assassins targeting aristocrats, or searching the
place for dangerous magical artifacts!”

She faced him sharply, stopping in the street. 
Hah! 
That one got her attention!
  “And what exactly is that supposed to mean? 
Dangerous magical artifacts?”

Bloody shit!  Now I completely stepped in it!
  He played it coolly.  “Hadn’t you heard about that?”

“About what?” she demanded through clenched teeth,
watching him avidly as a bird of prey.

His spine became a grape shriveling in the sun under
her stare.  “She had a magic assassin’s charm she meant to use on Hilliard.  To
kill him.  As I understand it, those things are supposed to be closely
regulated under the king’s law.”

“How do you know about that?”

“Well…”

“The guards never asked us about it this morning.” 
Ilona noticed him shift his weight uncomfortably.  “Come to think of it, how
did you know your lord was in danger last night?  You were so intent on
undressing me in your mind that I thought a Devil had possessed you when you
suddenly shouted.”

“I wasn’t…I wasn’t
undressing
you!”  Marik felt
his face flaming fiercely for what must be the ninth or tenth time in the last
day.

Ilona stamped one foot and poked his chest with a
slender finger hard as iron.  “Don’t dodge the question!  Tell me how you knew
about it!”

Bravo, Marik!  You always find a way to make a bad
situation worse.  Here goes any chance you might have had.  Now she
will
hate you, and for good reason! 
“Well,
I…sort of…felt it.”

“Felt what?”  She refused to allow him a graceful
escape.

“Felt…when she used the magic.”

She studied him strangely.  Cautiously.  He could feel
the repulsion building inside her.  “Felt the magic,” she repeated.  “Meaning
you’re a magician?”

“No.  A mage.  But not by choice!”

Ilona pointed at the sword.  “Then why are you
carrying that?  Hoping to fool people?”

“No!  I’m a swordsman!”

Her lip curled slightly.  “How much sense does that
make?  Either you’re a mage or blade swinger.  Can’t you do anything with your
magic?”

“Not…really.”  Why was she looking at him that way? 
It differed from the way she had disdained him before, though it was still
clearly scorn.