Chapter Fourteen
Three Invitations
1
“OH, LUKAS!” DO?A Sofia’s smile lit up her face when she met him at the door to the Salvara manor. Yellow light spilled out past him into the night; it was just past the eleventh hour of the evening. Locke had hidden himself away for most of the day following the affair at Meraggio’s, and had dispatched a note by courier to let the don and the do?a know that Fehrwight would pay them a late visit. “It’s been days! We received Graumann’s note, but we were beginning to worry for our affairs—and for you, of course. Are you well?”
“My lady Salvara, it is a pleasure to see you once again. Yes, yes—I am very well, thank you for inquiring. I have met with some disreputable characters over the past week, but all will be for the best; one ship is secured, with cargo, and we may begin our voyage as early as next week in it. Another is very nearly in our grasp.”
“Well, don’t stand there like a courier on the stair; do come in. Conté! We would have refreshment. I know, fetch out some of my oranges, the new ones. We’ll be in the close chamber.”
“Of course, m’lady.” Conté stared at Locke with narrowed eyes and a grudging half-smile. “Master Fehrwight. I do hope the night finds you in good health.”
“Quite good, Conté.”
“How splendid. I shall return very shortly.”
Almost all Camorri manors had two sitting rooms near their entrance hall; one was referred to as the “duty chamber,” where meetings with strangers and other formal affairs would be held. It would be kept coldly, immaculately, and expensively furnished; even the carpets would be clean enough to eat off of. The “close chamber,” in contrast, was for intimate and trusted acquaintances and was traditionally furnished for sheer comfort, in a manner that reflected the personality of the lord and lady of the manor.
Do?a Sofia led him to the Salvaras’ close chamber, which held four deeply padded leather armchairs with tall backs like caricatures of thrones. Where most sitting rooms would have had little tables beside each chair, this one had four potted trees, each just slightly taller than the chair it stood beside. The trees smelled of cardamon, a scent that suffused the room.
Locke looked closely at the trees; they were not saplings, as he had first thought. They were miniatures, somehow. They had leaves barely larger than his thumbnail; their trunks were no thicker than a man’s forearms, and their branches narrowed to the width of fingers. Within the twisting confines of its branches, each tree supported a small wooden shelf and a hanging alchemical lantern. Sofia tapped these to bring them to life, filling the room with amber light and green-tinted shadows. The patterns cast by the leaves onto the walls were at once fantastical and relaxing. Locke ran a finger through the soft, thin leaves of the nearest tree.
“Your handiwork is incredible, Do?a Sofia,” he said. “Even for someone well acquainted with the work of our Planting Masters…We care mostly for function, for yields. You possess flair in abundance.”
“Thank you, Lukas. Do be seated. Alchemically reducing the frame of larger botanicals is an old art, but one I happen to particularly enjoy, as a sort of hobby. And, as you can see, these are functional pieces as well. But these are hardly the greatest wonders in the room—I see you’ve taken up our Camorri fashions!”
“This? Well, one of your clothiers seemed to believe he was taking pity on me; he offered such a bargain I could not in good conscience refuse. This is by far the longest I’ve ever been in Camorr; I decided I might as well attempt to blend in.”
“How splendid!”
“Yes, it is,” said Don Salvara, who strolled in fastening the buttons of his own coat cuffs. “Much better than your black Vadran prisoner’s outfits. Don’t get me wrong—they’re quite the thing for a northern clime, but down here they look like they’re trying to strangle the wearer. Now, Lukas, what’s the status of all the money we’ve been spending?”
“One galleon is definitely ours,” said Locke. “I have a crew and a suitable cargo; I’ll supervise the loading myself over the next few days. It will be ready to depart next week. And I have a promising lead on a second to accompany it, ready within the same time frame.”
“A promising lead,” said Do?a Sofia, “is not quite the same as ‘definitely ours,’ unless I am very much mistaken.”
“You are not, Do?a Sofia.” Locke sighed and attempted to look as though he were ashamed to bring up the issue once again. “There is some question…That is, the captain of the second vessel is being tempted by an offer to carry a special cargo to Balinel—a relatively long voyage but for a very decent price. He has, as yet, to commit to my offers.”
“And I suppose,” said Don Lorenzo as he took a seat beside his wife, “that a few thousand more crowns might need to be thrown at his feet to make him see reason?”
“I fear very much, my good Don Salvara, that shall be the case.”
“Hmmm. Well, we can speak of that in a moment. Here’s Conté; I should quite like to show off what my lady has newly accomplished.”
Conté carried three silver bowls on a brass platter; each bowl held half an orange, already sliced so the segments of flesh within the fruit could be drawn out with little two-pronged forks. Conté set a bowl, a fork, and a linen napkin down on the tree-shelf to Locke’s right. The Salvaras looked at him expectantly while their own orange halves were laid out.
Locke worked very hard to conceal any trepidation he might have felt; he took the bowl in one hand and fished out a wedge of orange flesh with the fork. When he set it on his tongue, he was surprised at the tingling warmth that spread throughout his mouth. The fruit was saturated with something alcoholic.
“Why, it’s been suffused with liquor,” he said, “something very pleasant. An orange brandy? A hint of lemon?”
“Not suffused, Lukas,” said Don Lorenzo with a boyish grin that had to be quite genuine. “These oranges have been served in their natural state. Sofia’s tree manufactures its own liquor and mingles it in the fruit.”
“Sacred Marrows,” said Locke. “What an intriguing hybrid! To the best of my knowledge, it has yet to be done with citrus….”
“I only arrived at the correct formulation a few months ago,” said Sofia, “and some of the early growths were quite unfit for the table. But this one seems to have gone over well. Another few generations of tests, and I shall be very confident of its marketability.”
“I’d like to call it the Sofia,” said Don Lorenzo. “The Sofia orange of Camorr—an alchemical wonder that will make the vintners of Tal Verrar cry for their mothers.”
“I, for my part, should like to call it something else,” said Sofia, playfully slapping her husband on his wrist.
“The Planting Masters,” said Locke, “will find you quite as wondrous as your oranges, my lady. It is as I said: perhaps there is more opportunity in our partnership than any of us have foreseen. The way you seem to make every green thing around you malleable…I daresay that the character of the House of bel Auster for the next century could be shaped more by your touch than by our old Emberlain traditions.”
“You flatter me, Master Fehrwight,” said the do?a. “But let us not count our ships before they’re in harbor.”
“Indeed,” said Don Lorenzo. “And on that note, I shall return us to business. Lukas, I fear I have unfortunate news for you. Unfortunate, and somewhat embarrassing. I have had…several setbacks in recent days. One of my upriver debtors has reneged on a large bill; several of my other projections have proven to be overly optimistic. We are, in short, not as fluid at the moment as any of us might hope. Our ability to throw a few thousand more crowns into our mutual project is very much in doubt.”
“Oh,” said Locke. “That is…that is, as you say, unfortunate.”
He slid another orange slice into his mouth and sucked at the sweet liquor, using it as an artificial stimulus to tilt the corners of his lips upward, quite against his natural inclination.