“Which means they need you to look after their longer-term interests by not giving unnecessary offence.” I ushered him down the stairs again.
Temar glanced at the steps to the cellars as we walked through the watch room. “Did Avila learn anything more from the thief?”
“She hasn’t had a chance to try. As soon as she came out of the library Lady Channis whisked her away for a full day’s engagements with Tor Arrial.” I tried to hide my relief; I still didn’t think I could stand and watch a man undergoing such assault. “Then they were going on to Tor Bezaemar, for tisanes with the Relict before coming back here to change for dinner.”
“Dirindal?” Temar’s eyes were icily intent.
“You sound like you smell rats in the granary,” I commented quietly.
“What do you know of Tor Bezaemar?” Temar demanded, drawing a little way into the gardens, beyond the curious ears in the gate arch. “Has that House any reason to bear a grudge against D’Olbriot?”
“You want Cas for this, not me.” I rubbed a hand round the back of my neck. “It’s no secret Tor Bezaemar took losing the Imperial throne hard, but that was nigh on a generation ago. Messire backed Tadriol the Prudent from the first, I remember that.” I thought back to my early days in D’Olbriot’s service. “There was some talk about Sarens Tor Bezaemar putting himself forward, but with so many Names following D’Olbriot’s lead it never came to anything.”
“Sarens was the Relict’s husband?”
“The Sieur as was,” I confirmed.
Temar scowled. “The reason Casuel was on hand to save the rope trickster was he had followed Firon Den Thasnet only to see him meet a man whom Gelaia tells me still answers to Dirindal, for all he has been pensioned off. Casuel was following this man who was talking to some of the other nobles come for the spectacle.”
“Anyone in particular?” I asked, my own hackles rising in response to Temar’s tension.
“Den Rannion’s third son, for one.” Temar spat.
“You didn’t arouse any suspicion?” I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth.
“Hardly,” said Temar scornfully. “I can ask all the stupid questions I want; everyone expects me to be ignorant of everything and everyone. But Saedrin be my witness, I swear this man is Dirindal’s ears and eyes.”
“And he was seen with Firon Den Thasnet?” Perhaps there was a larger pattern to fit Dalmit’s seemingly innocent news. “It could still be nothing, Temar. We’d best wait until we can get a full tale from Casuel. Where is he?”
“Velindre wanted him.” Temar dismissed the mage with a gesture. “What if Tor Bezaemar are part of this hostility? Gelaia was telling me the charming Relict can show a very different face if she is crossed, even vicious if it serves her turn.”
“How so?” I asked.
Temar shook his head. “It is another’s secret. I swore I would not tell.”
I opened my mouth and then shut it again. Trying to get Temar to break his word belittled us both. “Did you tell Esquire Camarl about this? Is there any way we can send word to warn Demoiselle Avila?”
“We can let her know to be on her guard as soon as she returns.” Temar looked through the postern at the long shadows and the splendid sunset beyond. “She cannot be much longer, she is due to dine with Den Castevin with me.”
“I wonder if she learned anything useful from Guinalle. You can tell me when I get back.” I was ready to go, Charoleia’s letter tucked in the breast of my jerkin, my sword waiting in the gatehouse.
“Avila can make my excuses to Den Castevin—” Temar began.
“Messire will have my hide—”
“Ryshad!” Stolley was beckoning by the postern, a figure beyond him indistinct against the darkening rose and gold of the sky.
I hurried over. “Yes?”
“Message for you.” Stolley moved aside to let the newcomer enter. It was Eadit, Charoleia’s Lescari-bred lad.
I picked up my sword from its peg inside the watch room door. “Outside.” We stepped out through the gate to lose ourselves in the shadows under the trees. Temar came too, but short of slamming the postern in his face I couldn’t think of a way to stop him.
“I thought I was to call on your mistress?” I queried Eadit.
“Some news came that changed her plans.” His eyes sparkled. “I’ll take you to her.”
“Is this something to do with the matter I raised with her this morning?” I wasn’t sure how much Charoleia was in the habit of confiding to this boy.
He grinned. “She’s run your quarry to ground for you and she’s watching the earth as we speak.”
“Then I most assuredly will come with you,” Temar insisted.
“No,” I told him, exasperated.
“I come with you or I follow you,” he told me bluntly. “Or will you tell Master Stolley to chain me alongside the thief? Nothing less will stop me!”
“It’d serve you right if I did,” I said grimly. But then I’d have to explain to Stoll where I was going and why Temar couldn’t come too. Then I’d have Stoll rousing half the barracks to back me. He wouldn’t miss a chance to succeed where Naer had failed and redeem himself in the Sieur’s eyes.
“We should go,” Eadit said, looking uncertainly between us.
And bringing half a Cohort down on her wouldn’t endear me to Charoleia either, not when she’d been so insistent on the need for discretion. Stoll would certainly want to know where I’d got my information, him and Messire.
“All right, you can come,” I told Temar. “Go and get a sword from Stolley. Look haughty enough so he won’t ask you why you want it. But you do exactly as I say, you hear? If that means hiding under a barrel until all the fighting stops, you do it, understand me?”
“Of course.” He was as eager as a child promised an evening at the puppet shows.
“The Sieur’ll wipe that smile off your face,” I warned him. “He’ll be furious when we own up to this.”
“We had best make sure we have something to show for it,” Temar replied. “Success can gild the most brazen act, after all.”
“I don’t know about that,” I muttered as I watched him go back to the gatehouse. As soon as he reappeared we followed Eadit down the road.
He paused by the conduit house. “Got your purse, chosen man?”
As I nodded, he flagged down a hireling gig and we all climbed in. “Where to?”
“The shrine to Drianon down this end of the Habbitrot,” Eadit told the driver.
“Is that not—”
Eadit shot Temar an angry look and I silenced him with a sharp nudge. We all sat mute and expectant as the gig took us to that uncomfortable quarter between the southern docks and the lowest of the springs. A great swathe of the city is given over to making cloth hereabouts, dyeing it, printing it, cutting and sewing. Over to the east, where the land begins to rise again, pattern drawers and silk ribbon weavers live in comfort and prosperity. Down in the hollow where damp leaches up from hidden streams, women go blind knitting coarse stockings by firelight while their men search the refuse of the rich, knifing each other over bones to sell for bookbinders’ glue or rag for the paper mills. The Habbitrot is the main road cutting through the squalor and I noted the Valiant Flag as we passed. Quite some distance past, Eadit turned to our driver. “Anywhere here, thanks.”
I paid the man off and we watched him whip his horse into a brisk trot to get them both back to safer streets unmolested.
“Down here.” Eadit led us down a rutted lane, the summer-parched earth beaten hard underfoot, which was one blessing. Identical row houses faced each other, doors and windows cramped together beneath an unbroken roof ridge, all built many generations since by landowners eager to cram as many households as possible on to the smallest piece of land.
The lad moved confidently, gaze flickering constantly from side to side, lingering on any shadow that might conceal an unexpected threat.