Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1) (21 page)

I’ll have to find a leatherworker.
She
patted at her near-empty coin pouch beneath the guild coat and frowned.

Next time I’m paid.

Tyrissa wouldn’t have thought twice about walking
the distance between the Alvedos’ rented house and Southwest’s guildhall, and
their carriage could have made the trip in a fraction of the time by taking the
side streets. But that wasn’t the point tonight and Alvedo had insisted that
they go through the Prime Circle. Tonight was all about maintaining appearances
and it seemed half the city was in on it. The night was warm enough and their
open topped carriage would be suitable for the entrance, though their exit
might be considerably cooler.

“A perfect night,” Alvedo purred, likely to
herself.

“Olivianna, you are looking lovely tonight,”
Jesca said.

Alvedo wore a pale orange dress, again in the
Felarin style of wider, ruffled skirts and lower necklines, accented with a
wide black sash around her waist. Jesca, as Joyce, was just as fine in yellow,
though her sleeves were unfashionably long and loose to hide her out of
character arms, scars, and knives.

“As are you, Joyce. And Jorensen,” Alvedo gave
her a slow look of amused contempt. “Well, I suppose two out of three isn’t too
bad.”

Ignore that. Words are all she has.

Alvedo proved herself to be buoyant as she was
caustic tonight. If anything, Alvedo’s little insults were the highlight of
their time together. Tyrissa saw them as tests, little failed attempts by her
client to provoke a response.

For her part, Tyrissa looked the best she could
manage. Caliss, the guild’s tailor, was in a seemingly permanent scramble for
supplying the Cadre’s uniforms, and had limited time to polish up Tyrissa’s
appearance among the dozens of other contracts for tonight’s dueling parties.

The Prime Circle was the heart of Khalanheim,
where the opulent headquarters of the five Prime trade companies ringed a
precisely manicured park filled with discrete meeting places and quiet
retreats. The streets at the center of Khalanheim (and, by extension, the
center of the world according to Khalan logic) were never empty, but tonight they
were thick with traffic, an endless flow of carriages directed by beleaguered
Central guardsmen in their tricolor coats. Their carriage entered on the west
point of the circle between Khalan Northwest and Southwest, both guild halls
lit up in all their glory. Northwest’s campus of pillar-fronted buildings glowed
from lights at the base of each pillar that painted the stonework in varied
autumnal colors. Their party was mostly outdoors under an expansive multi-peaked
pavilion. The wooded grounds of Khalan North shone just out of sight; Liran
would be there tonight.

Alvedo silently gazed at the polished splendor of
the Prime Halls as their carriage crawled its way into the traffic clogged
streets. The city still had that effect for her. It was one of the few things
Tyrissa would admit they had in common.

“Jesca, just how many people are attending this
ball?” Tyrissa asked.

Jesca didn’t respond. Tyrissa clenched her teeth
to stop the sigh and corrected herself. “Joyce.”

“Oh it’s an intimate gathering of a few hundred
friends, allies, and rivals. The autumn galas are as big and lavish as the
Prime guildhalls themselves. I believe there some sort of play in the latter
half of our party. That part has an extra layer of exclusivity. ”

“That’s right,” Alvedo said. “Nina was kind
enough to secure a table for us. And I wouldn’t worry Jorensen. You have every
appearance of having nothing to say, so you needn’t fear potential
conversation.”

Tyrissa looked out over the crowded streets once
more. Given they had time to kill and she didn’t want to leave Alvedo’s latest quip
unanswered, Tyrissa said, “Joyce. Your transformations from bodyguard to social
butterfly remind me of a story: Zeris of Rhonia. Would you like to hear it?”

“Certainly,” Jesca said.

“Can it be the short version?” Alvedo muttered.
Tyrissa pretended she didn’t hear her.

“There was once a Rhonian woman named Zeris, the
only child of her minor noble house from the Kasage province, a very precarious
position in the Empire’s society. As soon as she married, her family would be absorbed
by the house of whatever husband she decided to take and cease to exist. Zeris wouldn’t
stand for
that
. So, when the yearly Summer Court of the Empire was
called, she went as a totally different woman. Being of a small and remote
house, and the courts of the Rhonian Empire being as large as they are, no one
noticed that she came from somewhere that didn’t precisely exist. She had a
simple goal: earn an exception to the rules of marriage.”

Alvedo interrupted, “Her position was too weak.
It would take more than one Summer Court to get anything done.”

Tyrissa tried to hide how pleased she was to have
Alvedo’s attention and continued the story.

“That’s why it took ten, and each year she
introduced a new identity. She saw each persona as a mask, one that could be
placed on her face or switched out at will. Zeris was no simple country girl.
No, she was clever enough to play the deadly Rhonian political games as well as
the Empress herself. Her false personas were soundly created and well
researched. Each year she attended the Summer Court with a goal, and each year she
accomplished her goal through a disposable personality backed by her house’s
meager assets or various real promises that she managed to keep. With each
success, her goals grew in ambition. By the third year, she had assured the
continuation of her house by currying favor with the provincial governor, regardless
of whether she ever married. By the sixth year, two of the personas were
deflecting wedding proposals, another was invited to the Empress’s balls, and a
fourth was partner to a lucrative mining business. For one month of the year
she was a social shapeshifter, while the other eleven were spent at her beloved
home, a home that grew ever more secure with each passing year for herself and
her kin.”

Tyrissa let the story hang there, unfinished.

“Well,” Alvedo prompted right on cue. “What
happened to her?”

“It depends on the storyteller. In some cases,
Zeris has all her careful plots crash down around her in a bloodbath of
betrayal and she takes her own life. In others she finally accepts a marriage
proposal, from no less than an heir to the imperial throne. Sometimes she
simply stops going, puts away the masks and lives out her days in her secured
homeland. In every case, she earned the honored style: Zeris, Of Many Masks.”

“And what is my ending, Jorensen?” Jesca asked.

“Whichever mask you choose to make permanent.”
Tyrissa had found a couple different versions of the story on her most recent
visit to the university’s library. She wasn’t sure which ending she preferred.

Alvedo sighed and turned away to watch their
destination come into view while muttering something about ‘Moralizing nonsense’.

Khalan Southwest’s guildhall appeared to have
been built from a single, five story tall piece of river-smoothed stone. The
exterior walls that faced the Prime Circle were sculpted into a single sweeping
curve with subtle ripples and waves carved into the stonework. They passed
elaborate water gardens at the fore of the building as their carriage inched
its way along the curving entry roadway. A forest of fountains in countless styles
and sizes bubbled away in the gardens, their finer details now fading into a
dreamscape under the dying light of evening. Given the Guild’s dominance of the
waterways of the southwest Khalan state of Haarnen and deep ties to maritime Felarill,
they made no subtlety of their association with water.

Alvedo brought out a small note as they
approached the entrance. Her eyes scanned through the contents, nodding at each
point and wordlessly mouthing names. The cheat sheet disappeared with a
flourish into her left glove once their turn to disembark arrived. This was her
true debut, her big time entrance. Everything earlier this week had been mere
warm up and in that time Tyrissa had puzzled out just why Alvedo got under her
skin. The girl treated everything in a precise, calculated manner. Every word,
every smile, and every motion felt as if it were all part of an elaborate
script. Her social life was a merchant’s balance sheet. Tyrissa almost
wanted
something to go wrong tonight, just to see what a frazzled and unprepared
Olivianna Alvedo looked like.

But she had a role to play in that script all the
same. Tyrissa stepped down onto the thick marine blue carpet that spilled out
of the hall’s entrance and streamed right up to the paving stones of the road.
She lent Alvedo a hand to follow her down and received a gracious smile in
return. Her face had smoothed and brightened and showed no sign that any animosity
between them. It was show time.

As it was outside, the interior of Khalan
Southwest’s guildhall emphasized all things aquatic and maritime, be it the
paintings in the hallways or the color scheme of the walls and carpets. Within
the guildhall was a vast ballroom that contained Khalan Southwest’s
intimate
affair of hundreds of friends, enemies, and business partners. Along one wall
were a series of partially curtained alcoves with heavily cushioned seating where
a group could find some semblance of privacy. At the opposite corner of the
ballroom was a raised platform where a band played to a swarm of dancers below
them. There was no order to the night, no defined schedule. Some ate and others
danced, but most simply talked over food and drink that flowed endlessly out of
the kitchens. At the center of the ballroom a pair of men stood atop tables
with massive blocks of clear ice. With gloved hands that glowed with a ruddy
light, they massaged the ice columns into still unidentifiable shapes.

There were two dances at work, that of the
party-goers on the actual dance floor and that of the guests’ second pair of
eyes, their guards and attendants shuffling around the edges of the room. Security
was as excessive as the party it guarded. It appeared that many of the
attendees brought similar escorts as Alvedo, one or two guards, an extra layer
on top of the considerable number of guards wearing the colors of the host.
With the exception of a handful of drunken scuffles there were no issues and the
additional personal security was unnecessary. At best, the Cadre, the Talons,
and the host’s security provided isles of red and white, black and gold, and
marine blue that accented the riot of colors that shifted through the grand
ballroom and its adjacent halls.

Once again, the greatest danger was boredom, and
it was directed at her. The Cadre asked after her history in the city, tested
her skills in a fight, trained her to see unseen threats, but hadn’t yet gotten
around to teaching her the art of being invisible and passing the time while
others enjoyed themselves.

Tyrissa took a cue from the abundance of watery
decor and let the first phase of the evening flow by. Tyrissa followed her
client as a distant second shadow, the treading that line between in sight but
unseen the only thing to occupy her mind. Alvedo buzzed about the room, rarely
sitting still for a moment and going from one conversation to another with a
dedicated efficiency. She certainly favored members of the hosting guild,
shoring up her family’s standing in the eyes of the very people they may or may
not be trying to circumvent. Sometimes she mingled with ‘Joyce’ at her side,
sometimes alone when Jesca made a circuit of the other Cadre members, checking
in.

After an indeterminable amount of time, Tyrissa’s
heart jumped at a blast of white smoke on one side of the room. A member of the
wait staff wearing a white lacquered mask pushed up on top of his head fumbled
with a crate that had half spilled onto the floor. Its contents were glass
vials filled with a murky white substance. One vial belched out thin smoke as
it skittered below the attendees’ feet. Alarm quickly gave way to amusement, as
the fellow simultaneously apologized profusely to anyone listening and assured everyone
it was but a sample of the theatrics for the play scheduled for later in the
evening.

Not long after that Tyrissa heard a recognizable
drawl speak up to her left.

“Well now look at you! All gussied up in the red
and whites of a proper guild.”

Tyrissa cracked a broad smile as she turned to
Kexal.

“Kexal! I hardly recognize you without a few days
of dirt, stubble, and sweat.” Lacking a guild or uniform, the Jalarni was
dressed up in a formal black coat that looked awkward on him and clashed with
the sword at his hip.

“I like to think I clean up nice.” He joined her
against the wall, his eyes casting out over the milling dance floor. “How’s the
city treatin’ you?”

“Just fine. It could be better. I’d like fewer
dull jobs like this one.”

“Mmm, you’ll learn to appreciate the dull jobs.
Which one is yours?”

Tyrissa pointed across the room, where Olivianna
danced with her third scion of Khalan Southwest of the night, strategic choices
all. “The little Felarin girl in orange. Don’t let her appearance fool you,
she’s vicious. You?”

“Missus Guldres, the center of attention over
yonder,” Kexal motioned toward the line of curtained alcoves on the far side of
the room. Tyrissa could only assume he meant the rotund and radiantly dressed
woman that had no less than a dozen partygoers hanging on her every word. The
unspoken theme for dress this evening seemed to be subdued autumnal colors, and
yet Mrs. Guldres’s outfit went well past garish, like wearing the colors of a
sunset with all the brilliance and none the grace. A massive gem the color of
crystallized amber hung around her neck on a golden chain and sparkled in the
various lights. Tyrissa spied Garth nearby, the mute Rawlins brother similarly
dressed though looking bare without his elaborate crossbow.

“That’s quite a necklace your client is wearing,”
Tyrissa remarked.