The Duchess of the Shallows (14 page)

Minette only smiled. "Oh my," she purred. "Now there's an offer I can't turn down." Duchess took out
a handful of half-pennies, a few coppers and a sou from her pouch and placed them at her end of the table, and Minette, drawing from her winnings, followed suit. Duchess placed the tiles and the game began.

"I saw Noam this afternoon," said Minette, taking up her tiles from the pile with a red-gloved hand. She frowned at one, annoyed, but that of course could be a ploy. Minette was a master both at making and seeing through false expressions.

"He's well, I hope?" Duchess replied casually, taking up her own hand.

Minette raised an eyebrow as if surprised, which of course could mean anything. "Well enough. He asked after you." So Minette already knew that Duchess had left the baker's house.

Duchess laid tiles on her side of the table, face-down, and tossed two
half-pennies into the pot; Minette added her own. Duchess was a fair hand at tiles – Minette had made sure of that – but she rarely had the coin to play and so she'd often used stones instead of sou. Now that she had a pocket full of florin, supplemented by what she'd stolen the previous evening, they were both playing for coin, though at the moment she wasn't after money. Almost nothing that went on within the Shallows, or perhaps even the entire city, failed to come to her attention. Those who didn't owe Minette a favor feared her, and Duchess, who qualified on both counts, hoped to turn that to advantage.

"I told Noam you were well when last I'd seen you." Minette glanced over her tiles, her dark eyes looking searchingly into Duchess' own. "I trust that was the truth?"

"True enough," said Duchess. Minette hated carelessness, and had taught Duchess that careless words were more dangerous than knives. She laid out her first tiles and Minette did the same. "I'm staying with Lysander at the moment, but I don't really want to do that for too long." Minette handed her two more tiles, her white powdered face impassive. Duchess gestured for a third.

"Very wise. A woman should never depend overmuch on a man…even when that man is as sweet and lovely as Lysander.
So what will you do now?"

"As it happens, that's one of the reasons I'm here," she said, still looking at the
board. Duchess tried to seem earnest, but she felt as though Minette were looking directly into her skull and reading the thoughts there. "I was wondering if you knew of anyone who might be looking for a girl to work in their kitchens, or the like." She made herself meet Minette's gaze. "I'm a decent baker, and…well, I could stand at Beggar's Gate, but I thought you might know someone who needs help." She paused. "With parties. In Temple District."

If Minette knew more, she made no sign. "I suppose. Would you be looking for something soon?"

Duchess held her voice steady. "Very."

Minette nodded and played her next tiles, placing one sou on each. Duchess
covered a wince. The stakes had just gone up considerably. "You're doing very well," said Minette, without irony. Duchess glanced up at her, wary. "I've faced some truly bad tile players in my day, and I would not count you amongst them. Hector, for example, is an absolutely abysmal bluffer."

With Minette there was no such thing as a non sequitur; clearly she knew Duchess had been dealing with Hector. She felt threatened from all directions, so she chose the safest route and said nothing at all.

Minette nodded, pleased, and sipped at her wine. "He's rather sad, I think. The kind to strike out of simple jealousy or petty meanness." Before Duchess could respond, Minette went on, "Someone could manipulate that quite easily, you know. Turn him into a cat's-paw."

Duchess caught herself frowning; she was being led somewhere. What was Minette saying? That this whole thing with Eusbius wasn't Hector's idea? "Would that be so bad? To be a cat's-paw, I mean."

Minette clicked a tile into place. "It depends on the cat, my dear. Of course, Hector is not the sort of man to take his own risks, no matter what the grudge. He'd find a cat's-paw of his own."

"And on and on it goes," Duchess replied, laying two pennies on one of her own tiles. She thought on it, and placed another beside one of Minette's. Clearly, there was an even larger feline than Hector at work here.

"Well it always ends with someone," said Minette, smiling. The board was in her favor.

"And what happens to that someone? In Rodaas, someone eventually sets a dog on the cat. What becomes of the cat's-paw?" The answer to that question seemed suddenly very pertinent to Duchess' immediate future.

Minette took another sip of wine and thought a moment. "Have you ever heard the tale of how One-Penny Will got his name?" Everyone in Rodaas knew of the Shallows youth who eventually became one of the city's most notorious thieves; Will's exploits were the talk of many an ale house or wine cellar, and there seemed to be no end of tales. Duchess had heard many of those tales from her brother, but none involving Will's name. She shook her head, aware that this, too, was no mere non sequitur. Minette smiled and pushed back from the table, taking a break from the game. Minette enjoyed a good story, and Duchess wasn't about to pass up the chance to hear one. "There was a baron in Low District named Waverly, who was nearly as wealthy and influential as some of the highest aristocracy, but..."

"How long ago was this?" Duchess interrupted. Minette raised an eyebrow and said nothing for a long moment. Minette
hated
being interrupted, she remembered too late. "Well, I just meant," Duchess said, abashed. "No one has called that Low District for years."

"A noble of
Scholars
District, then." Duchess knew enough to keep quiet, and Minette went on. "Waverly's lineage was insufficiently old to permit him to move to Garden, so he resigned himself to indulging in a rather expensive habit to flaunt his power." She took another sip and smiled. "I'm sure some of the higher houses would say that's becoming something of an epidemic in Rodaas as of late." Duchess watched her warily, but Minette continued as if the comment had meant nothing. "Waverly began collecting birds of every size and breed. He bought birds from sellers of high birth and low, and when he had collected samples of all the local animals he paid foreigners to bring back birds they found on their travels. After a few years of this the aviary of House Waverly had become a local legend, containing birds of all sizes and colors." She turned her eyes toward some distant place, remembering. "Some of those birds hunted, others sang, and one or two even spoke. I don't need to tell you that Baron Waverly thrived on the attention and admiration brought by his collection, and deservedly so. It was a sight I won't soon forget."

"You saw the aviary?" Duchess asked, forgetting herself and interrupting again. "But you couldn't have been older than I am now. However did you get in?" Minette merely smiled, and Duchess knew she wasn't going to get an answer to that question. Or the rest of the story, if she didn't keep her mouth shut.

"His rise in status despite his low beginnings naturally brought enemies amongst the higher houses," said Minette, shifting closer to the table and running an eye over the board. "Namely one Lord Nevin, an old rival of Waverly's who'd done rather less well in business and in social circles." She placed a tile of her own and looked at Duchess levelly. "Your move."

In more ways than one, thought Duchess. "And so, Lord Nevin decided to do something about the Baron's collection?" This story was sounding more familiar by the moment. She wondered if the tale were even true, or just a cover for Minette to convey advice. Minette merely nodded and gestured at the tiles, so Duchess realized she'd get no more help from that quarter.

Duchess looked over the pieces before her, thinking six things at once. "But of course Nevin couldn't do anything directly," she ventured, fingering a tile. "That's not how the nobles work, is it? He'd embarrass himself and his House by admitting that Waverly's success had gotten to him." Duchess placed her tile at the center of the board, not bothering to place a coin. "He'd need a proxy. Someone to do his dirty work for him. Say, someone from the Grey?"

"Well done," said Minette, referring either to the tile or the insight, Duchess didn't know. Minette placed one of her own coins atop the tile. "They came out of the woodwork, so to speak, when Nevin snapped his fingers. So many, in fact, that he became suspicious. Whom to trust, amongst thieves?"

"How did Will get the job, then?"

"By living up to his name. Amongst the plans and the promises, the marks and the money that the others demanded, Will merely asked for a single penny."

"Why?" asked Duchess.

"Precisely Nevin's response," Minette replied. "The offer got his attention, but more importantly, it appealed to his notoriously penurious nature. Still, Nevin was not quite a fool. He investigated Will as best he could, tried to find some connection to Waverly, but came up with nothing. But what sealed the deal was Will's own excitement, as if he wished to see Waverly brought low more than Nevin himself. In the end, Nevin accepted the offer."

"And what did Will do?" Duchess leaned across the board.

"Most people aren't sure how Will penetrated the defenses of House Waverly," said Minette, all innocence. "He entered with nothing but a dagger, and left with nothing but the same. He took two bowls from the pile the birds were fed from, and filled one with the sap of one of the trees that the Baron had planted to house the pride of his collection. Into the other went the feathers he plucked from the head of every single bird, from the drab and lowliest to the magnificent and most exotic. By the time Will was done there wasn't a feathered head in that room." Minette took another sip of wine. "Two surprises awaited Baron Waverly when he entered the aviary the next morning. The first was a room full of caged, bald-headed birds. The second arrived a moment later. Will had always been clever with traps and rigging, you see, and he showed his cleverness that day. The bowl of sap Will had rigged above the door, triggered by the wire he'd set, doused the baron's own head, followed shortly by a swirl of feathers from the other bowl Will had positioned."

Duchess burst into delighted laughter, but Minette only smiled enigmatically and waited until she had finished. "That tale raced through the city like wildfire. Waverly had a thick head of lovely red hair, you see, so you can just imagine the mess. After much pulling, combing and cursing, in the end Waverly was forced to command his barber to shave his head entirely. It took a whole season for the nobles to tire of that story, and even longer for Waverly's hair to grow back, so Nevin got his wish." She swirled her wine, gazing thoughtfully into the cup. "Unfortunately, he
also
got a knife in the eye two weeks later as he returned home late from the theater."

Duchess gasped. The nobles often played dangerous games with one another, but it was unheard of for them to resort to out-and-out assassination; they were far too vulnerable to similar retaliation. A noble might order the death of a commoner, but another lord? "
That
must have caused trouble," she said, hoping to draw Minette out.

Minette humored her. "It did. But then all of this happened during the Color War, when things were of course already unsettled both up and down the hill. In the end, it was simply another pebble in the landslide."

Duchess thought of the War of the Quills and the chaos that arose amidst the rise of the tradesmen, of what her father had once said of Emperor Vassilus, and the price of speaking hard truths. "Great Mayu, but things in this city never change easily, do they?" She said it lightheartedly enough, but was disturbed to see Minette go completely still, as if she were suddenly made of fine porcelain.

"No," the woman said after a pause. "They don't." She gave Duchess a long look, and there was something so intense about that gaze that Duchess found herself quite unnerved. Then Minette relaxed and said, "But we were speaking of a knife."

Duchess, smiled nervously, relieved that the strange moment had passed. "And I was about to ask you what paw wielded it." she said. She already knew the name of the cat.

Minette shrugged, her face unreadable. "All that's known is that Will's reputation on the Grey was afterward much improved, and he certainly never turned up plus a knife and minus an eye. Why do you think that was?"

Duchess paused, considering. "I think," she said at last, "that Will wasn't important enough to make revenge worth it. Nobody would have cared if Will turned up dead, but everyone noticed when Nevin did." Minette smiled again and turned her attention back to the board. Was this a hint that, should Eusbius be angered, he might not go after the hand that stole the dagger but the head that directed it? Encouraged, Duchess added, "So although it can be dangerous to be a cat's-paw, sometimes it's safer than actually being the cat."

Minette made no reply, but the twinkle in her eye was all the answer Duchess needed. Flushed with victory, she watched as the older woman shuffled the remaining tiles and drew the next set. "Will was quite the tile player," Minette murmured, "and in life as in tiles, some pieces are so small they aren't worth the notice." Duchess said nothing and Minette went on, "Of course one might ask why one would bother with so small a piece in the first place." She sat back with her hands folded before her, her gloves a slash of red across the board.

Duchess was suddenly very aware of the mark in her pocket and she resisted the urge to touch it. Clearly, Minette knew what Hector wanted to her to do, but did she know about P as well? She searched Minette's face for an answer, but of course that powdered visage revealed nothing. No, she decided. Even Minette's knowledge had limits, and she was probably just probing for information, testing to see how much Duchess would reveal. Minette was more subtle than Hector, of course, but the game was the same. The question was, could Duchess win?

Duchess shuffled her tiles, looking for a way to lay them out. "I've been playing tiles with you as long as I could reach the board, but so far I win only through luck, not skill." She scanned the tiles, as if she were trying to better understand them, although she knew the real game was not on the board. "From what I can see, the secret to winning lies in how you play the pieces over time, rather than in just winning the pot." She glanced up. Minette was motionless, her dark eyes unblinking, hands still folded. "It's not the coin in the pot, but the bet on the tiles that matters. You can win the hand and the pot, but if you lose the pieces you've invested in…well, either way you walk away with a lighter purse."