Authors: Sharon Shinn
Greggorio had stepped past her and laid both his hands on the door as if confused to find it shut. He looked awful, Corene thought—skin five shades paler than usual, eyes wide and haunted, mouth tensed with the effort of holding something back. Screams or sobs, maybe.
“I’m sorry,” Foley spoke up. “The door locked itself again when we shut it.”
Greggorio had obviously arrived at the same conclusion, because he had already lifted his hand to run it along the lintel above the door. He came up empty, of course, and Corene watched as he went through the same thought processes they had. He looked at the floor, he bent down to poke through the thick dust in the corners. When he straightened up, Corene thought he looked both puzzled and on the edge of frantic.
“Where’s the key?” he demanded.
Filomara issued an order over her shoulder. “Someone fetch Lorian.”
Foley answered Greggorio. “We couldn’t find it. Steff forced the lock.”
“We need the
key
,” Greggorio exclaimed. He began digging at the seam between the door and the frame with his bare fingernails. “We have to get to her.”
Corene could only stare at him—she had never seen the easygoing Greggorio so wild—but Filomara came close enough to put a hand on his shoulder. “We will get to her soon enough,” she said gruffly. “She has waited this long for us.”
He shook her off impatiently. “All this time,” he said, as if the words were gagging him. “We thought she was somewhere safe and happy, and
all this time
—all these ninedays—down in the dark with the echoes and the rats—”
Well, he’s certainly been to the bottom of the stairwell sometime,
Corene thought. And he certainly seemed half-mad at the idea that
Sarona had ended her life in such an infelicitous place. She didn’t believe he was clever enough to manufacture such distress, which made her think he couldn’t have been involved in her death. But maybe, this whole time, Greggorio had fooled them all.
“I am furious that she suffered, and in my home,” Filomara said, still speaking in a low, serious voice. “But she is not suffering now. Be calm. Lorian will bring the key.”
Greggorio deliberately turned away from her, from all of them. He continued running his hand over the door frame, checking the lintel again, unable to stop looking, searching, trying to find a way past this obdurate checkpoint and down to the dead girl below.
Filomara turned to Corene, her face harsh and set. “Thank you for watching the door until I arrived,” she said. “But these are Malinquese matters, and we will deal with them now.”
That
was unmistakeably a dismissal. Corene was only too ready to go. “Let me know if there’s something else I can do—or tell you—or help with,” she said, stammering a little.
“If something occurs to me, I will.”
Another exchange of nods, and Foley and Corene were slipping past the soldiers and back to the main corridors. “Do you have any idea how to get to our rooms?” Corene muttered. “I’m not sure I can find the way if Liramelli isn’t with us.”
“I couldn’t retrace our steps, but I think I can find the main hall on the lower level,” he said, a touch of amusement in his voice. “Surely even you could make your way back at that point.”
Indeed, they followed progressively wider and more welcoming hallways until they were suddenly in the grand foyer. It was bright with afternoon sun and bustling with servants and petitioners, and absolutely nothing in its calm, purposeful, well-ordered confines would make you suspect that somewhere on the premises a murderer might be lurking, hoping not to be discovered.
THIRTEEN
“I
didn’t think you would be here today,” Chandran said when Leah showed up at his booth in the morning.
“Neither did I. It turns out the princess would like to visit with me, and this is where she asked me to meet her.”
“I am always happy to entertain royalty,” he said. “And to have extra hands to do the work. We got a shipment from Dhonsho last night. You can unpack it while you wait.”
It sounded like a brusque order, but Leah recognized it as a gift. Dhonsho’s primary exports were bright fabrics dyed in luscious colors that reminded her of fruit—plum and lemon and mango and berry—and she loved them. She had been so enamored of a nubby cherry-red shawl that Chandran had actually commanded her to take it as part of her salary for the nineday. Here in mid-Quinnatorz, the mornings were almost cool enough that she could pretend she needed the shawl for warmth, at least before the sun rose too high. She had worn it every day.
The four crates that had arrived yesterday were filled with similar delights—more of that fine, loosely woven material in wide strips of fabric big enough to wrap twice around your body. This time the colors made Leah think of landscapes—grass green, river blue, sunset orange. Each
one was finished with a knotted fringe hung with beads that matched the dye. As she lifted the fabrics from the crate, shook out the wrinkles, and folded them back up, the beads of each shawl made small, cheerful clinking sounds.
She really wished she wouldn’t have to sell a single one. She would prefer to keep them all for herself.
Nonetheless, under Chandran’s watchful eyes, she dutifully put the Dhonsho items on display and made sure that any serious shopper who stopped by had a chance to look them over. By noon, half were gone.
“I don’t know how good you are at spying,” Chandran observed as they grabbed a quick bite to eat during a noontime lull, “but you have a gift for selling. You have a fine eye for merchandise and the rare ability to make your customers fall in love with whatever you love. You could open up your own booth here on Great Four and be rich within a quintile.”
She sipped at her keerza—which, she could hardly believe, she had actually begun to like—and thought that over. “If I became a merchant, I don’t think I’d stay in Malinqua,” she said. “I’d go back to Welce and open a place in the shop district of Chialto.”
His voice was mild but his eyes were keen. “I had formed the opinion you were not eager to return to Welce. Whether or not you had an occupation suitable to your talents.”
She shrugged slightly; he was right about that. “Well, one of the reasons I haven’t wanted to go back is I haven’t had any idea what I might do when I returned,” she said. “I certainly don’t want to go back to my old life.”
“Often one’s old life is not an option even if one wished it were.”
She poured herself another cup of keerza just so she could ask the question casually while her hands were occupied with something else. “How about you? Would you return to Cozique?”
“No.”
That was unvarnished enough that she couldn’t help sending him a quick, quizzical look. “Wouldn’t, or wouldn’t be allowed to?” she asked.
“Wouldn’t be allowed to.”
Now she straightened up, blowing on her hot drink, and making no more attempt to hide her curiosity. “A crime or a scandal?” she asked.
“Some people would call it a crime.”
“And would you take the same actions again if the same situation were to arise?” she asked.
“I would.”
She refused to ask another question; he would either tell her or he wouldn’t. So she just sipped from her cup and watched him. He returned her gaze for a moment before allowing a small smile to touch his lips and then looking away. “Perhaps it is the fact that I have operated outside the law that makes me appreciate its parameters so deeply,” he said.
“That’s funny,” she said. “Being judged by the inflexible standards of society is what has made me want to live outside it.”
“But then, we are different in so many ways,” he said. “If you could, you would go back and change your actions. I wouldn’t. I would change the situation that led me to act, but I don’t regret what I myself have done. You do.”
It was annoying how well he read her. During the past five years, Leah had grown fond of the idea that she was mysterious. She wondered if everyone else found her as transparent as Chandran did.
“For good or for ill, neither of us can revisit the past,” she said. She gulped the last of her keerza and set down the cup; she’d spotted a trio of wealthy-looking women headed straight for their booth. “And so here we are in Malinqua for the foreseeable future.”
“I am, perhaps,” Chandran said. “You’ll be back in Chialto within a quintile.”
She barely had time to give him a glance of surprise before the customers descended, and she was showing them music boxes and scarves and delicate trinkets. He was wrong, of course—if she ever returned to Welce, it would be when she was old and tired, empty of both sorrow and rage. But what spooked her was that Chandran had an eerie way of being right about things. Why would he think she was on the verge of going home?
The bright afternoon was so late that it had almost changed into its sober evening attire by the time a delegation from the palace arrived. Leah spotted Corene’s distinctive red hair the minute her group rounded the corner and began a slow promenade down the row of stalls. There were only a handful in the royal party this time—Corene, a diminutive Coziquela girl, the sturdy-looking boy who must be Filomara’s miraculous grandson, and the guard named Foley. With an airy wave of her
hand, Corene directed the other two to some wonder at a nearby booth, then she and Foley came directly to Chandran’s.
“We don’t have much time,” Corene said without preamble as soon as Leah stepped over to greet her. She spoke in Welchin and very quietly. “Melissande won’t be distracted for long.”
“What’s happened?”
Corene gave her a swift look. “I suppose you’ve heard the news from the palace.”
It was one of the things Leah liked about the princess; she wasn’t shocked or offended by the notion that people gossiped about royalty. She actually seemed to count on the idea that information would precede her.
“The body of a young lady was found in some underground passage. I heard about it right after I got your note.”
“I want to know what people are saying.”
“Some think she was killed by a royal lover—most likely Greggorio,” Leah answered. “Others think the empress did away with her because her nephew was too fond of the girl and Filomara wanted him to marry elsewhere. That theory isn’t as popular, though, because most people idolize Filomara.”
“What else?”
Leah glanced around, but the Coziquela girl was still out of hearing distance, trying on bracelets at another stall. “A jealous rival disposed of her to clear the field.”
Corene nodded. “So far, all of these are ideas that have crossed my mind as well—and, I have to think, Filomara’s. But none of them feels exactly right to me.”
“Other people are saying she probably killed herself,” Leah added.
Corene nodded again. “That’s what everyone at the palace is hoping happened. Filomara has called in some of her—her—biological experts, and they’re supposed to be studying the body, trying to figure out how she died. And if it wasn’t by suicide—”
“She was murdered,” Leah finished up. “And you’d better get out of Malinqua as fast as you can. The minute your father hears of this—”
“He’ll send the Welchin navy to bring me home,” Corene said. “I know.”
“If you’re ready to go, I can get you to a ship this afternoon,” Leah said. “You can walk out of the Great Market and straight to the harbor and sail out tonight.”
“I’m not so sure,” Corene answered. “A handful of the empress’s men accompanied us here and they’re waiting at the main entrance. I don’t think they’d let me sail off without a goodbye.”
“Then give me a day or two to plan, and we can outmaneuver them.”
Corene was silent a moment. “It might not be necessary,” she said. “If Sarona killed herself, it’s still really awful, but I’m not in danger.”
Leah scanned her face. “You don’t want to leave,” she said.
“I’m torn,” Corene said. “I realize that things have become very strange at the Malinquese court, which makes me think I should walk away right now. But I also have the feeling that I haven’t come to the end of the adventure yet, which makes me want to stay.” She laughed ruefully. “Or maybe I’m just not ready to go back to Welce.”
Leah could certainly understand
that
. “Well, just let me know. I’ll find a way to get you out of here—whether or not the empress wants you to leave.”
“That’s good to know,” Corene said.
There was no more time to talk, because Filomara’s grandson and the Coziquela girl had arrived at the booth, bickering in a friendly way. “This Steff, he has no taste at
all
,” the Coziquela princess complained to Corene. “If the situation ever arises in which he needs to purchase a gift for me, you must be on hand to advise him, or it will be utterly hideous.”
Steff was grinning. “I don’t know why you’d think I ever
would
need to buy you a present,” he said.
“Because women love gifts. It is so obvious it does not need to be stated.”
“They do,” Corene agreed. “Melissande, did you see these beautiful shawls? Do you think we should buy one for Liramelli? She was so sad.”
“These arrived just yesterday from Dhonsho,” Leah said, deftly unfolding a blue one and holding it up to Melissande’s face. “They’re exquisite. I own one myself and have thought about purchasing another one. Perhaps two or three.”
Melissande turned toward the little mirror on the counter and
admired the way the fabric perfectly matched the color of her eyes. “From Dhonsho? Then we must get one for Alette as well.”
“There’s a good idea. And one for each of us, too.”
“But of course.”
“That blue looks very good on you,” Leah said to Melissande. “These friends of yours—what would be their best colors?”
“Liramelli always wears black or white but she is so pale she could hardly choose worse shades,” Melissande said frankly. “This green, perhaps? I think she needs something vivid.”
Corene had wrapped a purple scarf around her head and was studying herself in the mirror. Leah wouldn’t have thought the color would suit her, but, in fact, it was stunning against her flaming hair. “Yes, and maybe that bright yellow for Alette? She’s from Dhonsho,” she explained to Leah. “Her skin is dark brown and she looks best in warm colors.”