The Fall of Ventaris (12 page)

She didn’t like the sound of that, but had little choice but to agree. It was clear she needed Jadis more than he needed her. “Until then, keeper.” She rose from her chair and moved towards the door, but before she could escape he stopped her with a question.

“You don’t often speak with keepers, do you my dear?” She turned back warily, wondering if this were another trick. She studied his face for a clue, but that chubby visage might as well have been made of stone.

“Not often,” she admitted, giving in. She didn’t see the sense of lying. “In fact, this is my first time, and I expect tomorrow night shall be my last.”

“Oh, not the last,” he said, his green eyes glittering in the lamplight. “No. I think not the last time at all.”

*
 
*
 
*

The
Bier
was crowded, which was fine by Duchess; the more potential witnesses the less likely anyone would start trouble. She was armed, true, but knifeplay in an alehouse would not win Rosamile’s ring from Julius. She bought a mug of ale and sipped it while she scanned the crowd: no ganymedes, lightboys or anyone else she knew, which was uncomfortable but not surprising. She wished Julius conducted his game somewhere like the
Merry Widow
, where if things went awry she could count on some help. But the
Bier
was not the
Widow
, nor would wishing make it so. Bucking up her courage, she made her way to the back room where the dice game was held.
 

Lysander had described Julius well enough, and it wasn’t long before Duchess spied him: a short, barrel-chested man, older than she, with a shock of thick black hair over a red face. He was standing near the dicing table, looking over the shoulder of a wiry, ferret-faced man who was running the game. At the moment there were six players, with another dozen or more content to watch the action while they pounded down tankards of ale and mead. She saw that luck was with the house, which was hardly surprising. A bit of
fruning
had revealed that the game Julius ran was more crooked than a crone’s back. Small wonder Antony had lost his ring. No matter what happened, she’d not be cozened into dicing for Roseamile’s treasure.

Taking a deep breath she wove her way carefully through the crowd until she reached Julius. She was certain he saw her approach — the only woman in a crowd of men — but he acted as if he were too absorbed in the game to notice. She waited patiently for him to acknowledge her, but when it became clear no such acknowledgment was coming, she said, “It seems that the gods favor you tonight.”

He feigned unconvincing surprise. “Well, well...it’s the high lady Duchess, come down from on high to mingle with the groundlings.” His surprise was false, but the disdain seemed all too real.

She floundered for a reply. “I come from the Shallows, same as you.”

He snorted and turned back to the game. “But unlike you,
I
don’t live on the Uncle’s penny.” She bit her lip. Hector had warned that her connection with the chief of the Red would bring trouble, and it seemed that trouble had finally arrived. At the time she’d dismissed his warnings as bitter jealousy. She should have taken him more seriously.

Recovering her poise, she said, “I see my reputation precedes me.”

“And extends between your ears.”

“Is that what you’re interested in, then?” she replied with light humor. “What’s between my ears?”

He gave her a cool glance. “I don’t think you have anything I’m interested in.”

Part of her longed to respond to his hostility in kind, but then she remembered the Uncle and his wily courtesy. “Don’t be so sure, Julius. Might we go off to have a quiet word?”

“We can have all the words you like, as long as we have them right here. Step behind the table so you’re not blocking those who actually came here to play.” As she complied, one of the dicers threw two moons, the lowest possible roll, and the entire table groaned. The dicer paled, and then flushed bright red as the dealer swept his coins away.

“The dice slipped from my hand!” he declared loudly. “Wasn’t no true roll!” Unfazed, the ferret-faced man kept sweeping up the house winnings. “This bastard greased the dice so they’d slip from my hand!” The dicer reached out to protect his coins, and without hesitation Julius made a signal to a beefy gentleman, with a blunt, expressionless face, standing nearby. He moved in and Duchess saw him do something quick and brutal, although she could not have said just what it was. The dicer, however, folded up like a letter, and the large man dragged him away from the table and out of the
Bier
. There was a round of laughter and some jostling as some of the patrons crowded towards the door for a better look.

She took a breath and tried to settle her nerves. Julius and his men were clearly no strangers to dealing violently with troublemakers. She’d have to make sure Julius didn’t think her one. “Coin is a hard enough thing for a man to lose,” she said, gesturing to the table as the game resumed. “But to have to part with something more sentimental...”

He wasn’t slow to take the hint. “So it’s about that oaf Antony, is it?” He shrugged unconcernedly, keeping one eye on the table and another on her. “Luck just wasn’t with him.”
 

She shrugged. “It just seems to me that you’d be better off with a few florin than with a ring engraved with a woman’s name. Unless, of course,” she winked, “you have a Rosamile of your own hidden away somewhere?”

Julius rounded on her, thick black brows contracted into a scowl. “Drop the pretense. You’re not half as clever as you think you are.” He turned back to the game, his face placid again. “That nonsense with Eusbius and his dagger’s already made its way round the hill and back. Maybe you’re content to sniff at the Uncle’s hindquarters,” he went on, as if commenting on the dicer’s technique, “but some of us remember their color. Some us know that the Red need to be reminded of their place.”

So Julius’ motivations were personal. Worse, he’d painted her the same shade as Antony. If she allowed him to run roughshod over her, within a day everyone along the Highway would hear of it. He’d make certain of that. Still, being seen as an ally of the Uncle
must
have its advantages. “You’re a bold man, to mention that name in public. Bad things have happened to those that have done less.” She let that sink in, then added more lightly, “But you spoke of colors. You and I are of the same hue, surely we can work out something about this ring?”

He scoffed. “I finally have Antony by the balls and you want me to just let go?”

“I wouldn’t expect you to part with the ring for free,” Duchess said, reining in her impatience. “You’re a man of business who works hard and I respect that. I do the same.” She spread her hands. “I can understand why you wouldn’t want to get too entangled with the Red, but what if I offered you the same ten florin that Antony did?”

Julius looked at her skeptically as the dice
clacked
across the table. “It was twenty, as I recall.
You’ve
twenty florin?” He exchanged a glance with the ferret-faced man, then regarded her for a long moment. He smiled and snapped his fingers in her face. “Sure, I’ll take your gold,” he replied lightly, as the dealer reached past Duchess to retrieve the dice. “Assuming you actually have it, that is.”

She smiled, reaching for her coin purse. “I knew we could come to an arrangement. That’s the way — ” She fell silent as her fingers grasped only empty air. “I just...” she stammered. She rooted through her other pockets, her heart sinking.
 

Julius smiled broadly. “Missing something? It’s a tough district, you know, and if a woman’s not careful...well, anything can happen, can’t it?” He clapped the dealer on the shoulder and she felt a cold stab of anger. The man had neatly lifted her purse, she realized belatedly. “Tell you what: you come back when you’ve found out what happened to your money and we’ll make as sweet a deal as you could want.” Then he made a frown. “But, wait...was that
Antony’s
money you lost? Goodness.
Bad things have happened to those who have done less
, haven’t they? I can’t guess what Antony will be like after losing both his ring
and
his gold.” He turned back to the game, dismissing her.

She glared at him, her mouth half-open to deliver a retort, but by then the beefy man had returned and was eyeing her ominously. She had seen what happened to the last person to defy Julius at his own game. Feeling angry and humiliated she stepped from behind the table, and Julius’ laughter saw her on her way out of the
Bier
. Only when she was back on the street did the fear finally settle in. The twenty florin she had accepted from Antony to retrieve the ring was gone, and she had no way of paying it back. Not even the gold she’d gotten from Hector was sufficient to cover it, and she’d have to bake enough bread for the entire imperial army to earn that amount.

The first time she’d seen Antony in her doorway, she thought she was a dead woman. If she did not find, earn or steal twenty florin — more than she’d ever had in her life — that bit of prescience might prove uncomfortably true.

Chapter Seven: A matter of faith

“About Jana,” Duchess prompted, from the stool she’d slid over next to the small, gray-haired woman. It was the third time she’d turned Ferroc back to the topic she suspected the older woman wanted to avoid. She’d thought to go to Ferroc the first thing that morning. Dealing with Jana’s problems was a welcome diversion from her own.

Ferroc and Nieces
was in the Shallows, but its proprietor did as much business as any seamstress in the city. Certainly her workroom seemed busy enough, filled with long tables at which girls and women from nine to ninety bent to their tasks under the light of lanterns hung from the ceiling. Duchess had always imagined such work to be drudgery, but the seamstresses in Ferroc’s shop chatted gaily as stitched and sewed. Although Ferroc herself did not join the talk she seemed unruffled by the constant conversation. Her own table stood upon a dais, facing the rest of the room, a perch from which she could oversee the activity without rising from her chair.

Ferroc shot Duchess a quick glance from brown eyes deep under a wrinkled brow. The woman was sixty if she was a day, but with blade or chalk or needle and thread her crabbed hands moved with a dexterity Duchess could only envy. “Jana,” Ferroc said, working on a seam, “is the only Domae with nerve enough to apply for guild membership, at least as far as I know.”
 

“But she didn’t understand the way things work in Rodaas, did she?”

“Mina, be more careful with that lace,” Ferroc said, barely looking at the girl in question. Her voice was just this side of a murmur, and yet the instant she spoke the others quieted to listen. Mina, red of cheek and hair, ducked her head in recognition, and then the talk resumed as if there had been no interruption. Ferroc shrugged and plunged her needle through the cloth. “I don’t understand why she’d need a license, anyway. She can do all the work she wants down in the Deeps. Nobody cares how those people get cloth.”

“There’s something special about
this
Domae,” Duchess said, unwilling to reveal more.

Duchess had reason to step carefully. Ferroc was not on the Grey herself, but Duchess had learned that the Grey had friends up and down the hill, people who did not wear the cloak but knew the Highway nonetheless. They used no marks but would accept them, and were willing to conduct commerce with the Highway when necessary. In return, they received assistance with their businesses or in legal or personal matters, assistance that made life in the imperial city safer and more comfortable. Duchess had long suspected that Noam was such a friend, which would certainly explain how his stall occupied such a prestigious place in the market square when wealthier and more prominent merchants had clamored for the spot. Ferroc was also a friend, which meant it was best to keep a prudent tongue around her.

Duchess steered the conversation back to her objective. “But I’m curious how someone gets into the guild. I guess it’s the guildmaster’s decision? Gloria...Tremaine, was it?”

Ferroc nodded. “Yes, but it’s not that simple. The guildmaster has sway, of course, but she must submit that decision to a vote of the members. The Magnificent Order of Tailors, Seamstresses, Weavers, Dyers and Haberdashers has its forms, you know.” She folded cloth, made a mark with the chalk, re-threaded her needle. Seeing that Duchess was still waiting, she sighed. “First, the petitioner must be recommended by a member in good standing, of journeyman status or higher. That’s where this Jana got caught. No one in her right mind would make such a recommendation.”

“But if someone
had
? What then?”

“Well, the petition would have been brought before the membership for a preliminary vote.”

Duchess frowned. “Preliminary to what?”

“The traditional three-day period of debate,” Ferroc replied, unperturbed. “During that time the members evaluate the applicant’s skills and experience, investigate her past for history of malfeasance or disgrace, and then make their feelings known, one way or the other.”

“The entire guild sits in a room and talks for three days?”

“By no means. Business continues as usual, with members coming and going, checking in at their shops, breaking for meals and rest. There are rarely more than, say, one-fifth of the members present at any moment.”

Duchess shook her head. “Then how can they debate anything?”

Ferroc chuckled, dry as paper. “They don’t, not really. The guildmaster’s assistants do the research and present their findings to whomever bothered to attend the meeting. Most of the three days is spent finding out which way you’re expected to vote.”

“
Expected
? By whom?” Duchess tried to make sense of this carefully orchestrated mummer’s show. “And wait...didn’t they already
have
a vote?”

Ferroc rolled her eyes. “The preliminary vote is nothing more than a chance for members to have their say before they do as the head of their faction tells them. Amy, that blue silk will never do with brown wool.” Ferroc never glanced up at the room, and yet she missed nothing. “Go back into the store room and get the green.”