chapter VIII

T HE HOUSEHOLD WAS SO TOPSY-TURVY, THERE WAS a chance no one would notice if we lay on the rug all day. But it was a chance we were not quite willing to take. And so we hunted down all our clothes and put them back on. There would be other mornings, when the duke did not rise early to torture prisoners. He never noticed anything in the morning.

Marcus went out to investigate, while I put my hair back into some kind of order. “He’s gone out,” he said when he came back. “And we’re still not allowed to.” He’d brought apple tart; we sat on the window seat feeding it to each other.

We wished we could be sure that what had happened to Lucius Perry had nothing to do with us, but we had to consider the possibility that it did. Maybe we’d led those bullies right to him. Maybe they’d been after us to begin with. One of them had recognized me—though, as Marcus pointed out, I was getting to be pretty well known. But why were we locked in the house now, if not for our own protection? If we hadn’t followed Lucius Perry, maybe he never would have been attacked. Unless what happened to Perry had just scared the duke into worrying about us.

Then there was the question of those Tremontaine guards. They had been remarkably on the spot, coming to the rescue like that. Possibly the duke had set them to keep a protective eye on Lucius, or on Glinley’s, which was part his, after all. He did have people watching all over Riverside…but maybe—horrible thought!—they’d been there to keep an eye on us. Maybe they’d been following us all along. In which case, the duke knew perfectly well where we’d been. When he got back from wherever he was, there would be ructions.

To take our minds off it, and because the last thing we wanted was for him to return and find us naked on the rug, we went to check on Perry’s progress.

For reasons no one could entirely remember, Lucius Perry’s nurse was named Gobber Slighcarp, or if they knew, they wouldn’t tell us—I mean about his name. Gobber was a very competent nurse. It was perfectly reasonable for him to take care of Perry. He used to surgeon hurt swordsmen, having been thrown out of the College of Physic for unmentionable crimes that no one remembered either.

To make up for what had happened, we tried to make ourselves useful to Gobber Slighcarp. Marcus fetched things from the kitchens. I gave Betty money to go out and buy flowers and scented candles, which are nice when you’re ill.

We weren’t really eager to see Perry himself. But Gobber came out of the sickroom to say the nobleman wanted to speak to me, and before I could think of an excuse, I was by the hurt man’s bedside.

After what I’d observed through the peephole at Glinley’s, I couldn’t imagine having a conversation with Lord Lucius. But that fled my mind as soon as I saw him now. He didn’t look like the same man at all. His face was purple and green. One eye was swollen shut, and his nose was crooked and large and bandaged. And his mouth, his sensual, elegant mouth—

I said, “Oh! I’m so sorry—”

“Not to,” Lucius Perry rasped. “You saved me.”

“It’s better than it looks,” Gobber explained to both of us. “It won’t heal pretty, but it’ll heal all right. Ribs, too—I’ve seen worse. And if we’re careful with that leg, it won’t stiffen up too much.”

“Come,” said Lucius, gesturing with a scraped-up hand. I realized he couldn’t see me unless I was near his good eye. “Cousin Artemi’a friend. You know. Mus’ marry her.”

“Why?”

“Family.”

“The family want you to marry Artemisia?” This was awful. He was all wrong for her. And what about Teresa Grey? “But—does she want to? Have you asked her?”

“Ready now,” he sighed. “Safe. All m’fault, w’happened. You write her. Ask her to. I’ll sign.”

Gobber looked at me and shrugged. He had no idea what this was about. But I did. And I wasn’t having it.

“I’ll write her,” I said, and went to find Marcus. He didn’t argue, much. And he liked showing how well he could sneak out of the Riverside house without being caught.

Once he left, I went and wrote a letter to Artemisia telling her she was on no account to agree to marriage with Lucius, whatever her family said. I didn’t tell her that he was riddled with vice, or that he already loved someone else; I just reminded her that where there was no love there could be no lasting joy. I added that my heart was with her, and I hoped she’d find someone really nice to marry, but if she didn’t, she should not marry at all.

Then I did what I should have done ages ago: I went to the duke’s chief personal secretary, Arthur Ghent, and explained that Artemisia’s family didn’t want me writing to her, and might even be reading her letters, so could he please see to it that she got this one safely? Arthur smiled just short of a grin, and said he’d see to it.

Then, in utter penance, and to keep myself distracted, I went and offered to read aloud to Lucius Perry. He let me choose, and I was well into The King’s Hunt when Marcus returned with the woman from the Hill, the one Lucius Perry truly loved.

She didn’t handle it well. Marcus swore to me he really had told her just how bad Perry looked, and that he would get better, but it didn’t seem to matter. When Teresa Grey saw Lucius Perry, she made an unhappy sound and clutched at the wall, and Gobber had to make her sit and put her head down. “Oh, no,” she moaned; “oh, no….”

I ran and got lavender water to chafe her wrists with. She had very strong and flexible hands; she could have learned to hold a sword if she’d wanted. “It’s all my fault,” she said. “Oh, what shall we do? What shall we do? Oh, Lucius…”

I held her hands tightly, and got her to look into my eyes. “It wasn’t you,” I told her. “Truly, it wasn’t. I don’t know if you know, but Lord Lucius has been working for Tremontaine.”

“I know, all right, you curious child,” she said to me, which at least was better than moaning.

“Well, then. It was all because of that. He has a lot of enemies, the duke.”

“Does he?” she said in that annoying way adults have of humoring children who are telling them things they already know.

“Yes, well, if you know that already, you’ll know this has nothing to do with you. It was someone trying to get at our house.”

Teresa Grey stood up. Even with her hair all wild and her dress disordered, she managed to look astonishingly beautiful. “Where is the duke?” she said. “Let him see me, and tell me so himself.”

Marcus said, “He doesn’t know about you yet. We’re the only ones who do.”

She looked closely at him. “Is that so? And what do you know about me, pray?”

I said, “You are Lucius Perry’s one true love. The rest mean nothing to him—especially not the duke. You are a painter, and a writer, and—well, a Lady of Quality.”

She stared at me as though I’d lost my mind. “Oh, this is too much!” she cried. “You! You’re a girl! Are you some kind of actress, some protégé of his? Am I supposed to be writing a vehicle for you, is that what this is about? Because I’ll tell you right now, I’m not doing a thing for him or for anyone until I find out who’s responsible for this. Right now, I—I wouldn’t piss on the duke if he were on fire.”

“Watch it,” Marcus said with surprising heat. “Katie’s a lady.”

She swirled back to Marcus, and then to me, and back to him again. “You. You were the one who delivered those pigments.”

He ducked his head.

“Marcus, you rat!” I said. “You did that without me!”

“Were you in on it, too?” she demanded.

There was a strangled noise from the bed. We all jumped and turned to attend to the hurt man. But there was no need. Lucius Perry was laughing.

“Go away,” Teresa told us all, even Gobber Slighcarp.

We went. We left them alone together, and it did not even occur to us to try and look in through the keyhole until much later. They were both asleep, his head on her soft breast, and The King’s Hunt lying open on the floor beside them.

T HE DUKE TREMONTAINE WAITED IN A YELLOW-AND-BLACK drawing room that was the height of fashion and reminded him of stinging wasps. He was prepared, he told Lord Ferris’s man, to wait until tomorrow, if necessary, as long as they would bring him a pillow for the night. He ate only nuts from his pocket, and drank only water, but he opened the book Ferris had sent him and after a few pages took out a pencil nub and started scribbling comments in the margins.

The day was well advanced when Lord Ferris admitted the duke to his study.

He did not bother with preliminaries. “You come unarmed?”

“You know I can’t fight.”

“That, my lord duke, is becoming increasingly obvious. All the same, if you will empty your pockets, please?”

“You’re joking.”

“I am not joking. We are alone in this room. Let me see what you carry.”

Tremontaine glared at him. “Do you want me to trade my marbles for your string collection and broken top?”

“Do you want me to have you searched? Please don’t be offended—or rather, be as offended as you like. We both know you’re not going anywhere.”

The Duke Tremontaine put three nuts, two handkerchiefs, a penknife and his pencil stub on the table. He fished a little deeper and disgorged a button, two calling cards and half of the Knave of Cups with some calculations scribbled on it.

Ferris looked at them impassively. “And where is my contract?”

“Your what?”

“My marriage contract with your niece.”

“She’s just a girl,” Tremontaine said bluntly. “What possible use can you have for her now? She’s much too young.”

“Early marriages are a tradition in your family,” said Lord Ferris. “She’s sixteen now—See? I cared enough to check—older, in fact, than your mother was when you were born, like her mother before her. But you don’t respect your own traditions, do you? Your family’s, or anyone else’s. Do you think the Perrys will be pleased to know you’ve been employing their son as a Riverside whore? Or the Fitz-Levis, for that matter, who are even now trying to foist him on their not impenetrable daughter? Fussy people, the F-L’s.”

“You give me too much credit,” the duke said. “I didn’t find him his trade, I found him already at it.”

“They might not believe that.”

“They can ask him themselves. I’ve got him in my house—what’s left of him.”

Ferris laughed aloud. “If they ask him, he’ll blame you, if he’s got any sense.”

“And say he does? What difference will it make? The Mad Duke debauches another beautiful nobleman—again. All yawn. The question is what they’ll say when they learn what you’ve done to spoil his beauty.”

“I?” Lord Ferris cocked his head. “What did I do?”

“Oh, come, my lord.” The duke gave a pretty good imitation of the older man. “Hired bravos aren’t that hard to bully information out of.”

“Or to bribe. Of course you’d pay some Riverside tough to say I hired him. You’ve got plenty of money, we all know that.” The duke glared at him. “Face it. You may have friends, I’m not saying you don’t—all sorts of eccentric people adore you. But you’ve got no allies. No one who counts.”

Lord Ferris picked up a paper-knife, a long silver tool ornamented with a lascivious nymph. He rubbed his thumb along her while he talked. “You’ve brought this on yourself, you know. What do you think I’ve been doing for the past ten years? Building alliances, creating systems that will hold me. Yes, it’s cost me, but I can get more funds, one way or another. People respect me—and they fear me—and well they should, as you now know. Do they fear you…Alec? I don’t think so. They used to, back in your murderous Riverside days. But you’ve let that particular power go. You’ve gotten squeamish. Here I am, the elected leader of the land’s most powerful governing council. And you are…what, now? An entertainment. A curiosity.” He held the nymph up. “For your grandmother’s sake, I did try to warn you. Now you’re on your own.”

“Ferris,” said Alec Campion in a curious growl. “You are making me angry.”

“Try to control it,” Lord Ferris said agreeably, “or you’ll never get anywhere in life.”

“Very angry,” the duke repeated in the same half-musical tone. “It makes me wonder what it would be like to take the battle you’ve begun to its next logical step. To hire people to attack your people on the streets on no provocation but that they support you. You’d retaliate in kind, of course. I’d need to arm my friends, or have them guarded well. But there are plenty of swords out there, looking for work.”

Ferris turned his whole head like a bird, to look straight at the duke with his one good eye. “You would, too, wouldn’t you? You’d plunge this city back a hundred years and more, to when liveried houses were fighting each other on the streets, when houses were fortresses, and nobles hired swords to keep from cutting each other down. You’d do all that, rather than capitulate or work out a reasoned, reasonable compromise. You would.” Without warning, Ferris slammed his hand against his desk. “What was the woman thinking? Making something like you her heir! I admired her, I even loved her for a while, but in the end, she must have been mad.”

“They say it runs in the family,” the duke said doucely.

“I am hoping that isn’t the case.”

“Still planning on breeding my niece?”

“We’ll merely skip a generation—write you off as a bad egg and then move on. The girl has neither your grandmother’s looks nor her charm. Maybe she has brains, though. I trained with the duchess; she passed on to me what she knew of statecraft and the human heart—and believe me, she knew a lot. I’ve even forgiven her for throwing me over for Michael Godwin; I see now she chose well, he’s a capable man.” Lord Ferris’s nostrils were white, distended. He was breathing rapidly through them. He had lost his temper, but didn’t realize it yet. “Or maybe…” he went on cruelly, “maybe you had to sleep with her to get the benefits. I did wonder about you for a while, but now I’m quite sure you never did, or you wouldn’t be such a fool.”

“I’m crushed.”

Eventually, people the duke disliked did lose their temper around him. It was a peculiar talent that he had, and he usually enjoyed it. He waited, now, to see what Ferris would say. The Crescent was working himself up to something unforgivable. The duke wondered what it would be.

“Did she think you’d change, I wonder? Or did she merely think St Vier would keep you in line?”

“We didn’t discuss it. Her face was all frozen.”

“She thought you’d keep him, though, I’ll be bound. I would have bet on it myself. He seemed unreasonably attached to you. What on earth did you do to lose him?”

“How do you know he isn’t dead?”

“I know,” Ferris said. The ruby at the duke’s throat jumped wildly against the lace it was pinned to. “Did he, too, come to find you unbearable? What would it take to drive him from your side? Not hissing, like your whore of an actress, or mockery, like your fat friend. St Vier was a reasonable man, and gifted. Not a man to be bought, as I found to my own sorrow. Perhaps, when his love soured on you, you trusted to all that nice money you have to keep him by you, only to find it wasn’t enough. Really, you’d do better to give your niece to me, before she, too, finds you unbear—”

There was a bronze figurine in the duke’s hand, and he swung it at Ferris’s head—from the side with the eyepatch, of course. Ferris groaned, and went down.

It was a small statue of a god leaning on a pedestal. The pedestal had sharp edges; the back of Ferris’s head was bleeding heavily. His eyes were closed, but his hands were moving.

The Duke Tremontaine considered the statue. It had little bits of skin and hair on it. Now that he’d relieved his feelings with one blow, he didn’t really fancy bashing Ferris’s skull in with it.

Nor did he like the idea of what Ferris would do if he survived now. His eye fell on the nymph, fallen from Ferris’s hand. The long knife wasn’t silver after all, just a strong alloy plated in silver. He could tell from the weight. He stuffed his neck stock into Ferris’s mouth, to discourage breathing as well as noise.

“Listen, if you can hear me,” said Alec Campion. “You were right about one thing. The duchess never named me her heir. She believed she was immune to death. Certainly she was very resistant; when it felled her, she stayed breathing for quite some time. They asked her whom she’d chosen, but by then she couldn’t answer. They went through a list of names. Maybe yours was even on it; I don’t know. But when they got to mine, she made a sign with her hand, and they took it for assent.”

Lord Ferris groaned. The duke pulled open the man’s jacket; no need to make this any harder than it had to be. Third and fourth ribs, right in between…He closed his eyes, pictured an anatomy text. Richard always made it look so easy. One blow, straight to the heart—if he liked you.

How many men had Alec driven onto St Vier’s sword? His turn, now. Loser of knives, lover of steel…It took more force than he was master of. Ferris grunted and thrashed. I’m going to look like an idiot, he thought, if I don’t do this right. He took a deep breath, and then struck home.

The duke did not ring for a servant, simply walked out the door, left the house and started walking back to Riverside. He washed his hands at a public fountain, and if a very tall man in very disheveled, very expensive clothing walking the length of the city was hard to miss, he was, if you knew the proclivities of the nobility, easy to ignore. And there had always been something about Alec Campion at his worst, some air of dangerous negligence, that made even the toughest element give him a wide berth.