“I can always make an exception,” I said pointedly.
She dismissed my threat with a sniff. “I don’t suppose you have any idea who might want you dead—besides me after tonight, that is?”
“No.” I had already been considering the question myself. The number of people I had crossed recently was small; the number who could afford a Blade of Tamas’s ability, even smaller; and the number who were powerful, or desperate, enough to use magic made it, well . . . zero. Except someone
had
hired the Blade, given him a piece of glimmer, and sent him after me.
I slumped down farther in the chair. One of the bruises Tamas had given me found a hard edge somewhere and began protesting. I grimaced, then shifted slightly—no good.
“Drothe . . . ” said Christiana.
“Ana,” I said, “if you warn me about dirtying the upholstery one more time . . .”
“I don’t give a damn about the chair, Drothe.” There was iron in her tone. I stopped shifting around and looked up.
“How did the assassin know to wear my livery?” she said.
“Mine.
To get to
you
?”
I blinked at her implication. If they knew to put Tamas in her livery, they knew about our relationship and knew to send me a letter under her name.
I began mentally kicking myself. That I had missed this was bad enough; that Christiana had had to point it out was even worse. Now I’d never hear the end of it.
“Who knows about us, Drothe?”
“I . . . No one.” I shook my head, thinking. “The two of us, Degan, Josef. Maybe someone who remembers when we first got to Ildrecca, but I doubt it. It’s been too long—they would have acted on it before this.”
“So, whoever hired the assassin just got lucky and guessed I’m your sister? With no help from you?”
I sat up straighter, not liking what she was implying. “I don’t know,” I said. “You’re the ex-courtesan. You know more about people getting lucky than I do.”
It was a cheap shot and we both knew it. I deserved the kick she launched at my shin. That still didn’t mean I let her land it, though.
“You bastard!” she yelled. “You know I don’t talk about family. I was a
courtesan
, not a whore like you’re used to. I catered to my patrons’ minds as well as their bodies, and as hard as it might be for you to believe, talking about my brother the criminal was never a part of that. Do you honestly think I’d risk what I have here and at court just to talk about
you
?”
I was opening my mouth to make things worse when Josef cleared his throat.
“Ah, if I may . . . ” he said.
“Yes?” said Christiana as she and I continued to glare at each other.
“You’re both assuming whoever is behind this knows about your . . . relationship,” he said. He tapped the letter I had handed him earlier. “This doesn’t mention that at all. If anything, it reads more formally than most of the baroness’s correspondence with you, sir. More of a summons than a letter, if you will.”
“There’s a difference between the two when it comes to my sister?” I said.
Josef coughed discreetly.
“So they may not know anything about our blood,” said Christiana.
“Just our business,” I concluded.
“Which is bad enough for me, but still more manageable.”
“Oh, thank the Angels for that!” I said caustically as I got out of the chair and walked across the room. I rested a hand on the back of Josef’s chair and looked over his shoulder. Christiana glided over to his other side.
“What else can you tell me about that letter?” I said.
Josef had three pieces of paper before him on the desk: my letter and two other crisp, clean documents.
“I’m no expert, to be sure,” said Josef, pointing to the letter Tamas had delivered, “but it seems to me that someone went to a good deal of effort to produce this forgery.”
“So it
is
a forgery?” I said.
“Drothe!” said Christiana. “How many times do I have to tell you I didn’t write that letter?”
“You haven’t denied it until now,” I pointed out. “Besides, it’s easy enough to ambush a messenger, then alter the letter.” I stared down at the letter, then at the other two documents. The hand looked identical on each page.
“How can you tell?” I asked Josef.
“It’s small things,” he said. “Most of it is very well-done, but you can see errors in the characters for distinction and address. Here, in
iro
and
mneios
, and, let’s see . . . Oh, and there, in
phai
—far too light a hand. The style is close, but the calligraphy is from a different school than madam’s or my own.”
I looked where he indicated. I thought I saw a difference but couldn’t be sure. I nodded knowingly, nonetheless.
“What else?” I asked.
“Well, the chop is flawed; or rather, it’s not flawed.” Josef flipped my letter and one of the adjacent documents over. Each had a red blob of sealing wax impressed with a copy of Christiana’s baronial widow’s chop.
“The chop on your letter is false,” said Josef. “The baroness’s has a chip missing in the lower-right corner. There is no such flaw in the other seal.”
“A flaw in my sister’s seal?” I said, bending closer to see it. “I’m surprised you haven’t been flogged, Josef.”
“It was done on purpose,” said Christiana. “To prevent problems like this.”
I gave a slight bow of my head—leave it to Christiana to think of something like that.
“And then there’s the paper,” said Josef. “It’s, well, too fine.” He said it almost apologetically.
“Too fine?” said Christiana and I, almost in unison. Her voice was incredulous, while mine was full of amusement.
“For this type of missive,” said Josef quickly. “It’s too good for . . . That is to say, the paper is not what . . .”
Christiana’s eyes narrowed. “Ye-es?”
Josef took a deep breath and started over. “This isn’t the type of paper a person would use for simple correspondence. Its texture and weight are too good. This is the kind of paper used for fine volumes, or maybe imperial documents. It’s far too valuable to be, uh, well, wasted on a simple invitation.”
I reached down and felt one of the clean sheets of paper, then my own. It was hard to tell because of all the wear and tear, but the stuff of my letter did seem weightier. Christiana did the same, nodding her agreement with Josef’s conclusion.
I straightened up, taking my letter and refolding it. I put it back in my sleeve.
Christiana was studying me. “You know who did this?”
“No. But I know where to start.” Baldezar—damn that arrogant scribe, anyhow.
“I want them dead, Drothe. All of them.”
“Of course you do,” I said. Whoever was behind this knew about Christiana and me, at least on some level. Any threat to her reputation was a threat to her status, and I was one of the bigger threats her reputation faced. “But it’s not that easy.”
Christiana crossed her arms and arched an eyebrow at me. “Really? And why not?”
“Because whoever sent Tamas—the assassin—gave him glimmer. Magic. That means money and connections. That means they’re willing to risk the empire sniffing around if their man gets caught.” I shook my head. “Frankly, I’m not worth that kind of risk.”
“I could have told you that.”
“Notice I’m not arguing. But my point is, the person I have in mind doesn’t have the resources or clout to hire someone of Tamas’s caliber, let alone hand him a piece of glimmer.”
Christiana shrugged, her shoulders rising and falling in the curtain of her hair. “So just hold the forger’s feet in a. . . .” She stopped, and I could almost hear the pieces clicking together in her head. “It’s that
scribe
of yours, isn’t it? The one you’ve had doing the documents for me. Damn it, Drothe! I told you to find someone you could trust.”
I had to laugh at that. “You expected me to find a
trustworthy
forger? Ana, listen to yourself. I found someone who’s reliable and good at what he does; that’s as good as you’re going to get with a Jarkman. And because he’s reliable, he’s going to be hard to crack. He doesn’t give up his clients easily.”
“He didn’t seem to have a problem giving you up.”
I nodded. “I know, which is what is going to make this interesting.”
Chapter Eleven
T
he sun was tinting the east with purple and pink when Baldezar arrived at his shop. Some of his younger apprentices had been there for an hour already, grinding pigments, sorting papers, and gathering glair from the egg whites they had wrung through sponges the night before. I had waited across the street beneath a bookbinder’s eaves. I’d nearly nodded off twice, and had only managed to stay awake by chewing a handful of ahrami. Now, though, just the sight of the scribe was enough to quicken my heart.
I stepped across the street and slipped up behind Baldezar as he opened the door to his shop.
“Bene lightmans, Jarkman,” I said as I put a hand between his shoulders and shoved. He stumbled across the threshold and fell to his knees. I stepped in behind him and shut the door. Throughout the shop, the apprentices froze, their eyes wide.
Baldezar spun around on the floor. His face was already turning red, both from anger and embarrassment. His mouth was a dark scowl.
“How dare you!” he said as he began to gather his feet beneath him. “What do—”
I stepped forward and kicked out, catching him just inside the left shoulder with my foot. I held back on purpose, not wanting to break anything at this point. Right now, I was just setting the tone.
Baldezar went over backward. I heard his head strike the floor with a hollow
thunk
. He relaxed but didn’t go entirely limp. Dazed but not unconscious—good.
I reached behind me and locked the door to the street. “The shop is closed,” I said to the apprentices. “No one comes or goes until I’m finished. Is that clear?” They all nodded. I pointed to a corner. “Sit there. Don’t move.” They didn’t quite fall over themselves getting to the corner, but it was close.
I bent down and pulled Baldezar to his feet. “We need to have a talk,” I told him as he shook his head, trying to clear it. “Upstairs.”
Baldezar turned and walked unsteadily toward the steps. I followed behind, a hand on his back to steady him as much as to reinforce the threat.
He fumbled briefly with the latch before opening the door to his office. Baldezar settled in heavily behind his reading table, rubbing at the back of his head. I stood, hand on the back of the chair that faced him. One of the apprentices had opened the shutters earlier in preparation for their master’s arrival. The room was a strange mixture of gentle morning light and leftover shadows.
“This had better be good,” he said, managing to summon a sliver of his normally imperious tone.
“Yes,” I said, taking the forged letter out of my sleeve. I unfolded it and set it on the table in front of him. “It had better be.”
He stared down at it for a long moment. Finally, he picked up the paper, holding it gently between his thumbs and forefingers.
“I take it,” he said dourly, “you think I did this.”
“The thought had occurred, yes.”
“Then the thought would be wrong.”
I leaned on the chair. It creaked under my weight. “I’m not in the mood for hints and vagaries, Jarkman.”
Baldezar touched the back of his head gently. “I’d gathered as much.” He wet his lips, then set the letter back down. “Since I don’t know the context of this forgery, I can only guess it was used to get you somewhere for some reason. The text is clear on that much. But the reason you’re here is because whoever wrote the letter used the name, writing, and chop of a certain noblewoman with whom we both know you do business.”
“Which puts the person behind the letter into a very small circle of someones.”
Baldezar nodded. “Yes. And my having done work for both you and her in the past, and having access to her writing through you”—he shook his head—“a very neat line, I admit.”
“But?” I said.
“But I’m not stupid. That’s the key.” Baldezar eased gently back in his chair. “I’ve been forging documents for decades, Drothe. Bills of lading, imperial trade waivers, letters of passage, contracts, tax stamps, diplomatic negotiations . . . More documents than I can name, and most of them far more dangerous than a simple letter of summons. If I’ve been able to keep nobles, ambassadors, tax masters, and imperial ministers from tracing things back to me, do you really think I would make it this easy for you? Forgers die if they give people easy trails to follow.”
“Normally, yes,” I said. “Except when they expect the recipient of the forgery to end up dead.”
“Murder? Is
that
it?” Baldezar shook his head. “I’m surprised you settled for knocking me down. The more traditional response would have been to run me through, would it not?”