Trial of Intentions (26 page)

Lliothan glared back. “We are each of us in the Bourne,” the Bar'dyn said impassively. “We should not seek to leave unless we
all
go.”

“Does that include the men and women and children you make us tend in the camps?” He carefully meted out his ire—their old friendship would offer him only so much latitude.

“Inveterae tend the captives in the south because none of you would survive farther north or west.” Lliothan finished his drink, dropping the cup unceremoniously beside his feet.

Kett pushed gently. “What good are they to you? Especially the women and children. They can't fight. And they know little about the politics or armies south of the Pall.”

Lliothan gave Kett the most piteous look he seemed capable of. “These are things you don't want to know. Trust me. Soon enough, your eyes will be opened. Until then, let it alone.”

“Very well,” he said, nodding. “I will
trust
you.”

Lliothan's pity changed to a grimace Kett recognized as mild mirth. “And in trusting me, you'd have my trust in return. You are, indeed, a politician, Kett Valan. I'm surprised you didn't talk the flail right out of the Jinaal's hand.”

Kett then did something that in the presence of any other Bar'dyn would have meant instant death: He laughed. The sound of it fell coldly in the praefect's tent. And Kett realized with horror—in his friend's own grimacing smile—that Lliothan's teeth were slick with blood. In that moment, he also knew what the cuts on Taolen's arms were for.

When the mirth faded between them, Lliothan turned back into the lamplight. “What brings you to me in the dark? A request, no doubt.”

Kett had a moment to consider just how much to share. Lliothan's guardianship extended across several mountain ranges and broad valleys, and east to the Mourning Vale. He held considerable influence. Kett must guard what he told him.

“I came tonight—before I'm given to the Quiet—because I want to ask two favors. And I want your answers to me as your friend, not your commander.” He looked around the tent again, reassuring himself they were alone.

Lliothan said nothing, waiting.

“First, there may come a day when I ask you to help me—if only in looking another direction.” Kett lent as much gravity as he could to what he said next. “Should that day come … I ask for your devotion.”

Lliothan's expression didn't change. If anything, he seemed that much more indifferent. “What is your second favor?”

Kett looked down at the praefect's dropped mug. He hated having to ask this. But the path ahead had many turns. And in one possible future, he would need a friend inside the Quietgiven ranks.

He stepped even closer. So close, he caught the scent of carrion on Lliothan's breath. But he didn't step away. “The Jinaal killed Saleema so that I would know the price of betrayal. All I have left are Marckol and Neliera.…”

The praefect's eyes narrowed, as though he guessed what Kett would have of him.

He steeled himself to say it. “If they're seized, Lliothan, I want you to be their executioner. They've seen you; I've spoken of you; and they will be less afraid when death comes if it's by your hand. I ask you to make it quick and painless. And by the gods, take them in the flesh; don't allow the Jinaal to render their spirits.” Anger and sadness mixed in his words. “Will you swear it?”

The Bar'dyn's heavy features moved in a way he hadn't seen before. The thick, fibrous skin stretched over the great bones of Lliothan's face as he held Kett's questioning gaze.

The silent tent, reeking of blood and spent oil and cold earth, seemed to lock them together in a pact that chilled Kett's heart.

The praefect bent, bringing his massive face in line with Kett's. “Kett Valan, you live this side of the Veil, but you are not in the Bourne. Nor has the Bourne gotten inside you.”

Kett shook his head. “You're wrong. What I do … what I have done … We're not so different, you and I.”

The Bar'dyn's grimacing smile came again. “Tell me about this.”

“I won't have to. You'll see it for yourself. I intend to take you into my service after I'm given.”

The praefect picked up his mug, poured another cup of the viscous, copper-smelling fluid, and gave it to Kett to drink. “We are sworn.”

He drank of Taolen's blood, securing the help he might later need, and slid further into the taint he hoped to escape.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Chilled Milk

Information trumps all.

—Pulled from an informal survey conducted of street-sellers by the Chair of Commerce, Recityv, regarding the types of goods being sold by Merchant Houses

T
he Merchant District had a scent of its own, one Helaina had missed more than she realized. It was the musky smell of sheer fabric used for provocative garments; it was the papery aroma of books considered apocryphal but not scandalous; it was the alchemical smell of brass molded into survey instruments and given a polish that gleamed by lamplight.

She'd grown up on these streets, learning the difference between a pressed coin and metal plug, between alloys and single-metal currencies. Much of this she'd learned from her father, before she broke his heart.

But she let that memory alone for now, and reveled in the excitement of night commerce. It had a particular flavor distinct from the other classes of merchant activity. Lowest of these was the handstalls drawn up in makeshift fashion alongside the roads beyond the city wall. Those overland merchants often traded in “double goods”—meaning you were the second owner of something stolen. And if not stolen, then the items you were browsing were banned by law or crudely made, and able to be had for a few thin plugs.

Near cousin to the overland merchants were those inside the Recityv walls who set up handcarts in alley-fronts all across the city. Things they sold were a half step up from goods had on the road. That included the flesh trade. When a man or woman wanted practiced love, it could be bought. Some whores went it alone. Their services were cheap and fast and often had for a drink or drab of laudanum. The savvy ones, though, attached themselves to the Geneese family, who plied that particular trade with great aplomb.

And at the top of the commerce ladder: the Merchant District. Here, there were three levels of commerce. The night market, which buzzed all around her now. Then, in the day, a different set of merchants would line up in chalked stalls. These usually stocked discounted items cleared from the shelves of the merchant buildings. And highest in the pecking order were the merchant family warehouses. The district had as many as forty-seven families.

Helaina moved casually through the night market, feeling at home in a way she never quite did at Solath Mahnus. She loved the immediacy and urgency of chalked slate announcing goods and prices. It left the buyer with the sense that items written there might soon be gone, that prices weren't fixed.

Eager chatter filled the air. The sweet smell of honeyed barley-bread. The sharp tang of roasted sausages. More than a few musicians played on street corners—not carnival tunes, and not the airs of operettas. No, they played accompaniment to stroll and purchase by; they played songs like “Coins to Rub Together,” “Jubilee Is a Bargain Made,” and “Give It Here, It's Mine.” Gods, how she missed all this.

Before she knew it, and before she was ready, she stopped in the middle of the central merchant road and turned to face her family's warehouse. The bright, warm light of night commerce lit the granite facings, giving it a stout, lasting appearance.

In heavily serifed letters, chiseled into the stone above the high entryway, was a single word:
STORALAITH
.
Her family name. One of the most influential merchant houses in Recityv. One she'd have been asked to run if she'd remained in the business. One that believed she'd betrayed their interest in her very first year as regent.

Dear absent gods, I'm going in.

She was too old to be afraid of the ghosts of her youth. Besides, she'd been right to pass sanctions on trade.
And it was thirty years ago.
She didn't even bother to knock. Knocking would suggest that she didn't feel she was still permitted to enter the home of her family. She signaled to her Emerit guard, who would be close by and hidden, that she was going in alone. Then she opened the front lock with the key she still carried—a key fashioned by a Dimnian craftsman, nearly impossible to replicate.

The buzz of night commerce muted as she closed the door. Inside, a few oil lamps had their wicks turned down low. Her father preferred oil light to alchemical lamps. Flickering flames outlined furniture in the front sitting room. Closed doors to offices on the right. A lacquered banister ascending the stairs to the bedchambers above. And more light on her left—the kitchen, where the real business always took place.

Helaina put her key away and took a long breath, steadying herself. Then she went in. It wasn't a surprise to see her parents bent over glasses of chilled milk, scratching at numbers on a ledger, and conversing in hushed tones as they'd always done. They sat at a thick butcher-block-type table—sturdy enough for family meals and the occasional side of beef they portioned themselves. She missed that, too. In a family tradition, everyone wielded a knife of Alon'Itol steel and helped carve up the meat. Throwing slices of parted beef fat at one another had been good sport; laughter had kept them company during the task. Her father told all his old jokes about how if the family failed at its “business of knowledge” they could all become butchers.

As far as she could remember, this was the pose she'd last seen them in, too. If she squinted, it looked like they were bent in prayer, their words having a similar kind of reverence.

They didn't notice her right away, so she stood and watched for a while. She could count on one hand the number of times she'd seen them since she'd been made regent. And most of those had come before the trade sanctions she'd invoked. She'd run into her father twice since, and both times he'd skirted her and disappeared. Both times it had been when a vote had come up to revoke the sanctions, which had commonly become known as the “Knowledge Law.”

Before that memory returned in full, she heard her father clear his throat. Her eyes focused, and she found her parents staring at her. Without averting his eyes, her father picked up a meat tenderizer and pounded the table three times with it like a gavel. Loud cracks filled the kitchen. For a man nearly eighty years old, he was still strong in his arms. She'd thought he was simply being impudent, but shortly, a young man she scarcely recognized emerged through the kitchen's rear door.

“What's the matter, Da?” Then her brother Mendel looked up at her. Fifteen years her junior, he'd grown taller and thicker than their father.

Mendel's face rushed through an initial smile of pleasant surprise to a look of concern, and then—she thought—a hint of distaste.

“Helaina, dear, you're all crippled over with rheumatism,” her mother observed. “Are you drinking green tea? Try turmeric powder, dear.”

Helaina smiled. Her mother never stopped being a ma.

“Please show the regent her way out,” her father said.

“Gemen,” said her mother with mild reproof.

He cracked the meat tenderizer down once more for good measure. “Merta, don't cross me on this. Storalaith hangs by a thread because of that girl.” He jabbed a finger at her. “We're just this side of crooks, as they see it. Law always sniffing around. Conducting audits of our inventory. Threats all the while.” His own words seemed to drive his anger to new heights, and he slammed the tenderizer down again, this time on its flat side, producing more a crack than slam. “And that's on the commerce of
information,
dove. It's madness!”

She hadn't heard her father call her mother “dove” since she'd lived here.

Mendel put a hand on his father's shoulder to try and calm him. “Helaina, it's late. I assume you're here for personal reasons, and not as regent?” His tone turned up at the end, as in a question.

Helaina nodded. “A little of both, actually.”

“Can it wait 'til tomorrow?” Mendel suggested, looking down at his father and back up.

Her brother meant that Gemen Storalaith would be engaged in trade tomorrow. She'd do better talking to them if he wasn't here.

Not seeing the exchange, her father closed his ledger, took a long draught of his cold milk, and leveled his appraising eyes on her. “Then let's have it. Start with the regent bit; I'd like to know why you grace our warehouses so late on an official errand. You can't hardly tax us anymore than you already have. Or maybe we should just get to it and sign over our stock to you now.”

She waited while her father vented, giving her mother a patient look. “I need access to the family vault.”

Her father brayed out a caustic laugh. It sounded wet in his chest, like he had the blood cough, but he didn't fall into any spasms. “Unbelievable. Access to our vault. That's what you want? Is that an official request? Or is it my daughter needs money? Maybe to bribe a few votes to pass another trade law.”

“I could make it an official request,” she said coolly. “But I don't want to do that.”

“We might need you to, Helaina.” It was her mother, trying in her own way to smooth the divide between daughter and father.

“Why do you need to get in?” Mendel asked. He showed no suspicion, and it was a fair question, besides.

She stepped forward and placed her hands on the edge of the table, mostly for support—she'd been walking and standing a long time. “The day I was named regent, I came here, do you remember?”

Her parents both nodded.

“I had something with me. Something I placed in the Storalaith vault, because to me there's not a safer place I could have kept it, not even in the deeps of Solath Mahnus.”