“I believe Isabella beat me to the Tivik manuscripts last year. I’ll see if Hatter can be persuaded to identify her.”
“Go in your official capacity. Hatter may demur to protect client confidentiality, but not when it’s a matter of treason.” Leo’s face grew hard. He and Rocquespur were political and personal rivals, but Rocquespur’s meddling in Oakhaven’s foreign affairs went beyond beating each other out for prized art or jockeying for power within the government.
“I also traced the goods we’d been watching to one of Rocquespur’s warehouses on the river. Ostensibly, he’s renting it to Verney…”
“…who was mined from the same ore as Rocquespur and is doing his master’s bidding,” finished Leo. “Good, good. Follow up on that. That’ll teach Rocquespur to come to me in that smug way of his and tell me what an ill-advised scheme the mission to Blackstone was.” He fixed Rafe with an intense blue stare. “Things are not looking good for our government, Rafe. Rocquespur’s gathering a coalition, undermining the authority of the cabinet, inquiring into every move we make, badgering Roland to interfere.” Unspoken was the reason why they met in Leo’s home instead of at the Ministry offices. Rocquespur had spies everywhere.
“If Rocquespur’s smuggling goods to Blackstone and Isabella’s helping him do it, I will find out,” said Rafe. He fixed his gaze on Leo, trying to ignore the mental tug of the Renat Keys. It was almost as if they beckoned…
And his skin was warm where the Blackstone device lay in his pocket.
“Good man. I know I can count on you.” Leo sighed. “This whole thing has been an embarrassment from start to end. After submitting to humiliating restrictions, our men were rounded up by Blackstone on some flimsy pretext. Before we knew it, half of our embassy came out with confessions of petty pilfering and failure to show proper respect to the Father, just so they could come home!”
“Sir, about that man Pyotr in Blackstone. Is there any way Oakhaven could help him?”
Leo leaned back. “We’re not in any position to help anyone in Blackstone, Rafe.”
It was as Rafe had expected, but he had to try. “Pyotr risked much in giving me the information and letting me go free. If… if there’s any way we can get him out of there…”
“If it can be done without jeopardizing out interests, you’ll be the first to know.” Leo managed a weary smile.
“Then, if you’re done with me, sir?” Rafe’s feet ached and his head was still muzzy from whatever Isabella had done to him. His memories from the time he set foot in that abandoned mine to when he woke up to Oakhaven faces were confused and fuzzy—though considerably less than he’d led Leo and the rest to believe.
He still wasn’t ready to talk about the voices he’d heard, the images of Isabella dancing and shearing through darkness, and the flashbacks to his own past.
“Of course. You’ve done more than enough.” Leo gave a small shake of the head. “The rumor that Blackstone is collecting mage-era artifacts worries me. Selene help us if they develop a mage weapon! I’ve been at Roland for years to pursue the revival of mage technology. As King and Machinist, he’s in the best position to… but never mind.” He reached into a desk drawer and held out a folded piece of creamy linen paper. It was sealed with green wax stamped with a half-moon above the Oakhaven tree.
The seal of the Queen, from her own household. Rafe’s heart beat faster. “Thank you, Uncle!”
Leo sighed. His face was yellowed in the mage-light above his head, and he looked shrunken now that his ire had left him. “You know that I cannot approve of your association with the girl. Your father should have never brought her back to Grenfeld all those years ago, even if you were supposed to be at death’s door. He gave in to your mother’s pleadings, and no good came out of it.”
Rafe could not agree. “She’s my blood and my friend, sir.” He took the precious letter, Bryony’s deliverance. “I owe her this much.”
Real warmth crept over Leo’s face and into his eyes. “You are the kindest of us Grenfelds. I don’t know where you got it from—it’s certainly not from my brother, your grandfather. It’s good to have you back, Rafe.”
“Thank you, sir.” The heavy mask he’d worn throughout the dissection of his failure cracked a little. He found that he could even smile, though it was twisted with pain.
A sudden clamor from outside reached even through the heavy door of Leo’s study.
“What the…?” Leo’s chin jerked up, as the door burst open.
A slender woman swept in, trailing black scarves and pearl necklaces. “Leonius!” she said in a voice weighted with tragedy and unshed tears. “You have not answered my letters! When I look for you at parties, you are closeted with the other ministers! When I call at your office, you are too busy or out! I am his aunt, too. I demand to know what you’re doing to get Rafe back from those monsters in Goldmoon-that-was!”
“How do you expect me to get any work done with you demanding updates every two hours, Amanthea?” said Leo, acidly. “As for Rafe, well, he’s the last person we should’ve been worrying about. He got himself out.” He nodded at Rafe, who’d been brushed aside by the woman’s stormy entrance.
Amanthea spun, dark eyes wide under thin, arched brows.
“Hello, Aunt Amanthea.” Rafe grinned at his great-aunt.
“Oh my dear boy!” Amanthea wrapped her arms around him in a fierce embrace. Tears dripped down her cheeks. “I was sure that you’d been swallowed up by the horror of Goldmoon-that-was, that I would never see you again.” Her fine white skin was paler than normal. Remembered terrors shadowed her eyes.
“I’m safe now, Aunt.” Rafe pulled out his handkerchief and dabbed at her cheeks. She smiled at his clumsy solicitude through her tears. “It would take more than a few hundred Blackstone stazi and a dozen or two of the Secret Fist to keep me from missing a single dance with you tonight at the Brenwoods’ ball.”
“Flatterer.” Still smiling, Amanthea stood back and examined him. Her black-ribboned hat was askew. “You’re thin and worn. When did you last
sleep
?”
“On the train, all the way into Oakhaven this morning,” he assured her.
“It doesn’t look like it.” Amanthea pursed her lips and tsk-ed. Then she turned to Leo, who was shuffling papers impatiently. “How long have you known he was back? Did you even think to let the rest of his family know? You are not the only one to have a claim on him!”
“Oh, for Sel’s sake, Amanthea!” Leo looked aggrieved at his sister-in-law. “Rafe’s a grown man and a government agent. He had to be debriefed. You’d have gotten your mitts onto him soon enough.”
Amanthea did not look mollified. As she straightened her hat with gloved hands, her smoldering gaze lit upon the Renat Keys and sparked into fury.
Rafe’s heart sank. Amanthea hadn’t seen those for years and had never forgiven Leo for possessing them, even though one had come to the Grenfelds as dowry with Rafe’s Goldmoon grandmother.
“If Rafe’s a grown man,” said Amanthea, her words a challenge to battle, “then those should be his, like you’ve been saying for all these years. They were meant to go to my
sister’s
descendents.”
To Rafe’s relief, Leo held his exasperation in check. “Once I’m dead, Rafe will inherit them. Or are you afraid that I’m going to marry at my advanced age?”
“Besides, Aunt Amanthea,” broke in Rafe, hoping to diffuse the situation, “I don’t think my rented rooms are quite the right place for the Renat Keys.” Much more embarrassing than Leo and Amanthea’s ongoing feud over the Keys was the assumption that Rafe was salivating to inherit them.
Even though he’d had a hard time keeping his eyes off them today.
“We’ve had this discussion a hundred times, Amanthea. I am not going to give those Keys to you. I didn’t go to Goldmoon during the revolution and risk my life and cripple my legs just so that your feckless grandson could gamble them away—if your vapid mercantile husband hadn’t sold them in the first place.”
Amanthea flinched visibly, her cheeks flushing and paling in turn. Rafe put a hand on her shoulder, drawing close. He’d never heard that ugly tone from his uncle, brusque as he was, nor seen that pinched angry look about his nostrils. Leo’s hands clenched in the lap rug.
“Scavenger! That’s what you are,” spat Amanthea. “Full of greed and avarice!”
“If it weren’t for me, the Keys would’ve been destroyed, consigned to the Blackstone bonfires long ago. Thanks to me you can see them now.”
Amanthea’s shoulder was tense under Rafe’s hand. “Aunt, it is of no use upsetting yourself,” he murmured in her ear, but she didn’t heed him, trembling with years of coiled-up wrath. Rafe was afraid she would erupt and he’d have to take sides between two of his favorite relations. He cast about desperately for something to say that would soften those hard masks, banish the old rage and hurt in those two pairs of eyes. But words had deserted him. Heat swelled inside his skull, brightness splashed his vision. Oh no, not a fit, not
now
! Desperately, he tried to diffuse the buildup of the white light that heralded an attack of quartz-sickness. There were nothing but walls around him, but wait…
there
… a channel…
The Keys flashed light, all at once. The glass front of their case shattered. Splinters of pain shot up Rafe’s nerves.
Amanthea started. Leo jerked around, swinging his wheelchair into the glassfall.
“Go, go!” shouted Leo. “You are upsetting me and them. The Keys are joined to me now, don’t you see?” The Keys sprayed light and shadow spots all over the walls. The artifact in Rafe’s pocket stirred—
stop that!!
Nausea churned his stomach. He had to get out before the sickness built up in him again.
Rafe took Amanthea’s arm. “Come, Aunt, I’ll walk you home.” She looked about to argue, but stopped when she saw his face.
He looked back at Leo, but his uncle was at the display case, head bowed, the Keys winking like jewels in his lap. Leo spared not a glance for his relatives, and Amanthea firmly steered Rafe out of the room.
Once out on the streets of Oakhaven, Rafe’s head cleared and his stomach settled. Amanthea’s face was set, and the muscles of her arm still quivered with tension. To give her time to compose herself, Rafe looked around, reveling in being home. He drank in the sounds and sights, letting them cleanse him of the ugliness of the scene at his uncle’s.
It was just past Pollen and the broad promenades and walkways were brightly-lit with gas lamps. Groups of giggling debutantes and their chaperones rustled by in flocks, sturdy manservants carried litters, grinning pages did headstands and other cheeky tricks for the ladies, a fresh green scent rose from the crushed grasses underfoot. Rafe shortened his long stride to match Amanthea’s, something he didn’t have to do when he’d walked beside Isabella—
don’t think of her!
—and enjoyed the extravagance that would’ve so horrified Blackstone. Surely the girls’ dresses used far too much fabric, surely the ever-burning lamps were a scandalous waste of gas, surely no one needed laughter and frivolity and other ephemeral pleasures. But to Rafe, fresh from the numbing horrors of regimented Blackstone life and the unvarying bleakness of the Barrens, the scene was abundant and colorful.
They meandered into a small public park. Triangular flags of red and gold were strung between lamps, tinsel festooned ironwork benches, and water chuckled in small secretive fountains.
“I’m sorry you had to see that, Rafe.” Amanthea stopped and trailed a hand in one of the fountains. Their reflections wavered.
“I’m sorry, too, Aunt.” Rafe sought to find the words to explain away Leo’s bitterness, to apologize for his uncle, and gave up. “Uncle did not… act well.” Even that tiny admission seemed a betrayal of the man who’d guided him in a way his own father had not.
They stared into the fountain. Small ghostly forms darted about—pale fish with their insides traced in red on their translucent flesh. Water plants of pale green and yellow clung to the walls, small leaves hiding a sprinkling of dewy flowers. “Leo is right, of course, about my husband and grandson,” said Amanthea, sadly. “They’d have never treasured the Keys the way he does.”
Rafe agreed, but said nothing.
“You must wonder why I’m so stubborn about those Keys after all these years.” Amanthea spoke, in a low, tremulous voice. “Generations ago, Kayan Renat entrusted my family with the guardianship of his Keys. Over the centuries, we lost all but three. One was stolen, another sold by a debtor, a third simply went missing. When I was a child, my father kept them locked in their own room, a windowless room right next to his own bedchamber. He wore the key around his neck day and night. Once a month, my sister and brother and I were allowed to go in, to look, not touch.”
She shaded her eyes with a hand. There were tight lines of pain around her mouth. “I-I remember my father’s voice as he told of the Scorching and the Binding and the death of the kayan, and the tears glistening on his cheek. My Papa—crying!” Amanthea wiped her own eyes with the back of her hand.
Rafe stayed quiet, moved by this Amanthea he’d never seen before, by this recounting of a past that was not just gone, but that had been ripped, broken, trampled, spat and defecated on by scornful, screaming revolutionaries. Her ancestral home was a pile of blackened rubble. Her father—Rafe’s own great-grandfather—and her brother and most of her family had been felled by the axeman’s blade.
“I grow old and foolish, Rafe. Listen to me, prattling on about my childhood.” She smiled at him. Dark eyeliner smudged her lids, making her eyes appear bruised.
“Did he… did your father tell you about the Tors Lumena?” Rafe kept his tone casual, but pitched low.
Amanthea’s eyes widened, then her gaze darted to either side. No one paid them any attention, beyond an incurious glance. “Yes,” she whispered. “How did you know?”
“A man named Pyotr Furin told me that the Ferhani had been keepers of the Keys, and the Keys together revealed the location of the Tors Lumena. A Blackstone dissident found the Tower, Aunt. That’s the information the resistance wanted to sell us, but the man was captured before he passed on the secret.”
“I’ve told no one about the connection between the Keys and the Tower. Not Leo, nor my husband, anyone. Only a kayan can use the Keys to find the Tors Lumena. My family’s been waiting for one for generations.” Her fingers tightened around Rafe’s wrist.