The Pyramid Waltz (36 page)

Greencloak lifted his sword far to the left, leaving an opening straight to his chest. Katya leaned away from his swing and then twisted her rapier, coming in under his arms. She stabbed him in the heart and then leapt past his falling body, bringing her sword up as she sought Mangy.

As she’d guessed, he’d been coming up behind her and had to spring out of the path of Greencloak’s falling body. He came on more cautiously. Katya kept her injured arm turned away and hoped this one wasn’t as big a swinger as the last. Mangy took one step forward before something as long as Katya’s arm crashed into his side. He staggered once and fell, grasping his ribs. Brutal’s spiked mace fell to the ground beside him.

Katya prodded the heavy mace with one foot. “You’re throwing this thing, now?”

As he dragged Eldest’s body into the road, Brutal shrugged. “You shouldn’t have this much activity with that shoulder.”

“You’re always so considerate, Brutal.” At her feet, Mangy coughed blood onto the pale gravel of the road.

“Punctured lung,” Brutal said.

“Fatal?”

“Eventually.” He bent and picked up his mace. “Go in peace, brother. Nothing is served by your suffering.”

Katya turned away as Brutal put Mangy out of his misery. She checked the pulses of Eldest and Greencloak. Both were dead. To be on the safe side, she also checked them for pyramids or insignia. Nothing. The crossbowman lived, but he was as empty of clues as the other two.

“Crowe’s not in the ditch,” Brutal said.

“Where could he have gotten to?” Katya froze as hoofbeats sounded down the road. “Brutal, quick!” They dove into the bushes.

Crowe rode down the road a moment later, the other two horses in tow.

“Glad to know you were covering us,” Katya said.

“You can handle a few ruffians. I looked for the man who ran away, but tracking has never been my specialty.”

“Leave him. Without the rest, he’s nothing. We’ve got a friend for you here.”

Crowe dismounted and knelt by the crossbowman. “Sleeping minds are harder to sort through.”

“I doubt you’ll find anything.”

With a shrug, he pressed a pyramid to the crossbowman’s forehead, and after a moment, he opened his eyes and stood. “As you thought. He had an elder brother who enticed him into thievery with romantic tales of a bandit’s life only to find that life full of starvation and fleas.”

“We don’t have time to take him in right now. Brutal, tie him to one of these trees, and we’ll collect him when we head back this way.”

After it was done, Katya rode on with a renewed sense of purpose. A problem she could put her sword to had lightened her mind. It made her think Starbride’s day would be less eventful. After all, it wouldn’t do for both of them to find trouble at the same time. It was a foolish, hopeful thought, but she had to cling to it.

They found one of their pyradistés in a small wooded glade, a gathering spot for those who sought enlightenment through Ellias and Elody, twins of love and beauty; in this case, the beauty of nature. Men and women sat cross-legged on cushions under silken canopies or strolled through the long grass or swam in the small creek that trickled by, all of them without a stitch of clothing.

From her hiding place among the bushes, Katya bit her hand to keep from laughing. “Which one is he?”

“I can’t tell. I think one of those?” Crowe pointed to two men talking under an elm tree. “Their hair is the right color, and they have the right build.”

“Nowhere to hide a pyramid,” Brutal said.

Katya pressed her lips together hard but couldn’t suppress a small snigger.

“Let’s away,” Crowe said, “before I qualify to be a dirty old man.”

They slipped away, and Katya let out a laugh once they’d ridden far enough down the road. “I can’t imagine our ruthless bearded man as a beauty-worshiping nudist.”

“It would be a good disguise,” Brutal said. “Or rather, it wouldn’t be any disguise at all.”

“Revealing nothing by revealing everything?”

Crowe shook his head. “I think we can count this one out. Our man is supposed to be smart. No one who sits near a patch of poison oak with his dangler out is that smart.”

That did it. Katya laughed until she felt weak. Brutal muttered, “Dangler,” once or twice. Each time, Katya doubled over in her saddle again.

When at last she wiped her eyes and paid attention to her surroundings, she saw that even Crowe had a bright smile on his face. “Yes, yes.” He waved their mirth back down. “One more to go.”

Their second quarry worked at the country estate of the dowager Duchess Julietta Van Umberholme. Katya played Lady Marchessa Gant, with the others as her servants. The dowager duchess seemed happy to receive her, the old lady not getting much company in the middle of nowhere. Katya didn’t tell her about the nudists who were frolicking practically on her doorstep. With the duchess’s poor eyesight, she wouldn’t even have been able to sneak a surreptitious peek.

Amidst talk of court, Katya casually mentioned that she had a cousin who was just admitted to the Pyradisté Academy. Duchess Julietta was only too happy to produce her resident pyradisté, a portly man, talented but lazy, who was content to live in the country, collect wages from the duchess for the minimal work she assigned him, and pursue his one true passion: fishing.

Katya’s spirits dampened as she and the others began the ride back to Marienne. If the bearded man wasn’t in the country, he might be in the city. Starbride could be headed toward him at that very moment. They picked up the pace and collected the crossbowman on their way.

Starbride had pictured alleyways and dens of ill repute. When Dawnmother had lent her a heavy cloak with a hood, it seemed perfect for skulking. She’d never skulked in her life, but she’d been looking forward to it with a palpable thrill. Her disappointment proved keen, then, when she began her journey through Farraday’s pristine streets mounted and with her hood down, doing her best to keep up the spirits of a moody young girl.

“It’s a nice day. Not too chilly.” She gave Maia what she hoped was a warm smile.

Maia mumbled and continued staring ahead or glancing at the buildings around them. Her forehead bore the same pinched expression she’d had from the start.

Starbride cursed the fact that she wasn’t with Pennynail. He’d left them to spy on their target houses, leaving the businesses to them.
He
was probably skulking to his heart’s content. “So, where are we going again?”

“I already told you.” She sighed, an over-exaggerated sound. “The King’s Street counting house, the largest chapterhouse of knowledge, and the Daishun trading company.”

Starbride gritted her teeth. She felt sorry for Maia’s reopened wounds about Roland’s death, but as Katya always said, they had a job to do. Dawnmother never let her sulk for long, but Maia had no bond servant. “Well.” She kicked her horse forward. “I won’t keep you, since you obviously have other things to do. If you’ll just give me directions…”

“What?”

“Directions. Since you’re eager to be off? I’m sure I can handle a little spying.”

“You can’t do this without me.”

“Why not? If I see the bearded man, I’ll return to the palace. Isn’t that the plan?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Then you have to be here why?”

Redness spread over Maia’s cheeks. “Look, I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you.”

“True.”

“Then you should listen to what I’m saying!”

“All right. What
are
you saying?”

“I’m…very good at my job!”

“We just crossed King’s Street. Didn’t you want to turn there?”

Maia started in her saddle. “You were distracting me!”

“You were distracting yourself.” Maia glared down at her pommel, her jaw tight. Starbride reached out to her shoulder. “Maia, I don’t want to make you feel worse, and I won’t claim to know what’s going on in your head, but we do have an assignment. And I do
not
want to mess it up. It’s my first, after all. You’re the veteran here. Please, say you’ll help me.”

Maia nodded. “I’m sorry I wasn’t paying attention.”

“It’s all right. Look, after this is over, why don’t we spend some time together? Apart from Katya and Dawnmother, I don’t have any real friends here, no one I can just talk to. Dawnmother can secure a bottle of wine.”

Maia smiled brighter than Starbride had seen for the entire trip. “I’d like that. I don’t have many friends, either. This job is…It’s a lot.”

“Then it’s settled. Let’s find our bearded man so we can have some fun.” As they turned up King’s Street, Starbride leaned close. “Who owns the houses Pennynail’s going to look at?”

“Chelius and Montenegro.”

“Lady Hilda!”

“The lady of cleavage herself.”

Starbride thought back to the disastrous dinner, the one that could have ended with her in some strange man’s bed. Spying on such a person’s household would be like getting her back, at least a little. She summed up the story for Maia’s benefit.

“Wow. Lucky you having Countess Nadia on your side. If Lady Hilda’s harboring the bearded man, her goose is cooked.”

“I’m guessing that means she’s done as a noble?”

“Definitely.”

“Strange. A cooked goose is usually a good thing.”

“Unless you’re the goose.”

“Ah, now I understand.” Horsestrong’s many sayings were metaphorical in nature, but they didn’t seem as hard to puzzle out as these Farradain idioms.

“Your story makes me want to check out the Montenegro house ourselves, but we’re almost to the counting house,” Maia said. “Now I hope the bearded man
is
at Lady Hilda’s. Then we could just get rid of her!”

Starbride chuckled, glad to have another ally. At the King’s Street counting house, Maia pretended to be a rich lady, new to Marienne, and traveling with her Allusian friend. Starbride hung back and pretended to look around the enormous, columned lobby, all marble and granite. She peeked into the barred hallways where the actual counting and storing of coin took place. Did Lady Hilda’s two hundred thousand gold crowns rest in there somewhere?

Maia pretended to be overly worried over security and what “Mumsy” would say if anything should happen to “poor Da’s” money.

The counting house attendant placated and reassured, but Maia wouldn’t be satisfied until she met this extraordinary pyradisté he kept talking about. The attendant happily produced him. Starbride watched from near a pillar, as deep in the shadows as she could get and breathed a sigh of relief when the, “highly trained, powerful pyradisté,” was a small, clean-shaven, weasel of a man with lank brown hair and a complexion so pale it was almost gray, definitely not the large strong man who’d attempted to pyramid her in the woods.

Maia assured them that she would bring the money in the next few days. As they left, Starbride put a hand to her chest. “I didn’t realize how my heart was pounding until now.”

“Getting a taste for this?”

“I’m going to have to get better at schooling myself. If that pyradisté had been our man, I think I’d have leapt from behind the pillar and shouted, ‘Aha!’”

“If you get too tense, pinch your leg. That’s what I do. After a bit, you’ll be so annoyed with the pinching you’ll forget about fear.”

Starbride tried it at the large library at the front of the knowledge chapterhouse. She needed pinching to keep her from the acres of books. Larger even than the palace library, the chapterhouse contained scrolls in display cases and rare volumes in bookshelves fronted with glass. Two grand staircases led up behind a large oval reception desk, and rooms lining the balcony above hinted at locked-away treasures.

“Like books, do you?” Maia said with a mischievous grin. “You’re drooling.”

“Where has this place been all my life?”

“Under lock and key. The brothers and sisters of Matter and Marla only let other knowledge monks and those with appointments study here. And they have back rooms that only the monks can enter. I’ve heard that you have to wear gloves just to touch the books.” She pulled on Starbride’s arm before they reached the desk. “Why don’t you play this one?”

“What do you mean?”

“Tell them you’ve a rare book you want to donate, and you want to make sure it’s kept safe. Say you want to see their security measures, and when they refuse, say you’ll need to at least meet the person who put those measures in place.”

“But…but if our man is here and he sees me…”

“From what I’ve heard, he knows what we all look like, Starbride. We took a chance in the counting house because I didn’t know how else to play it, but if you’d like, we’ll stand off to the side while they fetch their pyradisté. If he’s our man, we’ll run for it or try to hide.”

Starbride glanced around. There were quite a few places to duck out of the way. She nodded before her brain could argue. “Let’s do it.”

“Right.” Maia took her arm and walked to the reception desk. She stopped in front of a blue-robed clerk who glanced up as they approached.

“Can I help you?” He tapped a book on his desk as if reminding them he had other things to do.