Do?a Salvara giggled despite herself, and the lines on her hostess’ lean face drew upward as she smiled. “Now, what did you want to ask me about, my dear?”
“Do?a Vorchenza,” Sofia began, then hesitated. “It is…it is commonly thought that you have some, ah, means to communicate with the…the duke’s secret constabulary.”
“The duke has a secret constabulary?” Do?a Vorchenza placed a hand against her breast in an expression of polite disbelief.
“The Midnighters, Do?a Vorchenza, the Midnighters, and their leader—”
“The duke’s Spider. Yes, yes. Forgive me, dear girl, I do know of what you speak. But this idea you have…‘Commonly thought,’ you say? Many things are commonly thought, but perhaps not commonly thought all the way through.”
“It is very curious,” said Sofia Salvara, “that when the do?as come to you with problems, on more than one occasion, their problems have…reached the ear of the Spider. Or seemed to, since the duke’s men became involved in assisting with those problems.”
“Oh, my dear Sofia. When gossip comes to me I pass it on in packets and parcels. I drop a word or two in the right ear, and the gossip acquires a life of its own. Sooner or later it must reach the notice of someone who will take action.”
“Do?a Vorchenza,” said Sofia, “I hope I can say without intending or giving offense that you are dissembling.”
“I hope I can say without disappointing you, dear girl, that you have a very slender basis for making that suggestion.”
“Do?a Vorchenza.” Sofia clutched at her edge of the table so hard that several of her finger joints popped. “Lorenzo and I are being robbed.”
“Robbed? Whatever do you mean?”
“And we have Midnighters involved. They’ve…made the most extraordinary claims, and made requests of us. But…Do?a Vorchenza, there must be some way to confirm that they are what they say they are.”
“You say Midnighters are robbing you?”
“No,” said Sofia, biting her upper lip. “No, it’s not the Midnighters themselves. They are…supposedly watching the situation and waiting for a chance to act. But something…something is just wrong. Or they are not telling us everything they perhaps should.”
“My dear Sofia,” said Do?a Vorchenza. “My poor troubled girl, you must tell me exactly what has happened, and leave out not one detail.”
“It is…difficult, Do?a Vorchenza. The situation is rather…embarrassing. And complicated.”
“We are all alone up here on my terrace, my dear. You have done all the hard work already, in coming over to see me. Now you must tell me everything. Then I’ll see to it that this particular bit of gossip speeds on its way to the right ear, I promise you.”
Sofia took another small sip of tea, cleared her throat, and hunched down in her seat to look Do?a Vorchenza directly in the eyes.
“Surely,” she began, “you’ve heard of Austershalin brandy, Do?a Vorchenza?”
“More than heard of, my dear. I may even have a few bottles hidden away in my wine cabinets.”
“And you know how it is made? The secrets surrounding it?”
“Oh, I believe I understand the essence of the Austershalin mystique. The fussy black-coated vintners of Emberlain are, shall we say, well served by the stories surrounding their wares.”
“Then you can understand, Do?a Vorchenza, how Lorenzo and I reacted as we did when the following opportunity supposedly fell into our laps by an act of the gods….”
2
THE CAGE containing Do?a Salvara creaked and rattled toward the ground, growing ever smaller and fading into the background gray of the courtyard. Do?a Vorchenza stood by the brass rails of the embarkation platform, staring into the night for many minutes, while her team of attendants pulled at the machinery of the capstan. Gilles wheeled the silver cart with the near-empty pot of tea and the half-eaten Amberglass cake past her, and she turned to him.
“No,” she said. “Send the cake up to the solarium. That’s where we’ll be.”
“Who, m’lady?”
“Reynart.” She was already striding back toward the door to her terrace-side apartments; her slippered feet made an echoing slap-slap-slap against the walkway. “Find Reynart. I don’t care what he’s doing. Find him and send him up to me, the moment you’ve seen to the cake.”
Inside the suite of apartments, through a locked door, up a curving stairway…Do?a Vorchenza cursed under her breath. Her knees, her feet, her ankles. “Damn venerability,” she muttered. “I piss on the gods for the gift of rheumatism.” Her breathing was ragged. She undid the buttons on the front of her fur-trimmed coat as she continued to mount the steps.
At the top—the very peak of the inner tower—there was a heavy oaken door reinforced with iron joints and bands. She pulled forth a key that hung around her right wrist on a silk cord. This she inserted into the silver lockbox above the crystal knob while carefully pressing a certain decorative brass plate in a wall sconce. A series of clicks echoed within the walls and the door fell open, inward.
Forgetting the brass plate would be a poor idea; she’d specified a rather excessive pull for the concealed crossbow trap, when she’d had it installed three decades earlier.
This was the solarium, then, another eight stories up from the level of the terrace. The room took up the full diameter of the tower at its apex, fifty feet from edge to edge. The floor was thickly carpeted. A long curving brass-railed gallery, with stairs at either end, spread across the northern half of the space. This gallery held a row of tall witchwood shelves divided into thousands upon thousands of cubbyholes and compartments. The transparent hemispherical ceiling dome revealed the low clouds like a bubbling lake of smoke. Do?a Vorchenza tapped alchemical globes to bring them to life as she mounted the stairs to her file gallery.
There she worked, engrossed, heedless of the passage of time as her narrow fingers flicked from compartment to compartment. She pulled out some piles of parchment and set them aside, half considered others and pushed them back in, muttering remembrances and conjecture under her breath. She snapped out of her fugue only when the solarium door clicked open once more.
The man who entered was tall and broad-shouldered; he had an angular Vadran face and ice-blond hair pulled back in a ribbon-bound tail. He wore a ribbed leather doublet over slashed black sleeves, with black breeches and tall black boots. The little silver pins at his collar gave him the rank of captain in the Nightglass Company; the blackjackets, the Duke’s Own. A rapier with straight quillons hung at his right hip.
“Stephen,” said Do?a Vorchenza without preamble, “have any of your boys or girls paid a recent visit to Don and Do?a Salvara, on the Isla Durona?”
“The Salvaras? No, certainly not, m’lady.”
“You’re sure? Absolutely sure?” Parchments in hand, eyebrows arched, she stalked down the steps, barely keeping her balance. “I need certain truth from you right now as badly as I ever have.”
“I know the Salvaras, m’lady. I met them both at last year’s Day of Changes feast; I rode up to the Sky Garden in the same cage with them.”
“And you haven’t sent any of the Midnighters to pay them a visit?”
“Twelve gods, no. Not one.”
“Then someone is abusing our good name, Stephen. And I think we may finally have the Thorn of Camorr.”
Reynart stared at her, then grinned. “You’re joking. You’re not? Pinch me, I must be dreaming. What’s the situation?”
“First things first; I know you think fastest when we nurse that damned sweet tooth of yours. Peek inside the dumbwaiter; I’m going to have a seat.”
“Oh my,” said Reynart, peering into the chain-hoist shaft that held the dumbwaiter. “It looks as though someone’s already made a merry work of this poor spice cake. I’ll put it out of its misery. There’s wine and glasses, too—looks like one of your sweet whites.”
“Gods bless Gilles; I’d forgotten to ask him for that, I was in such haste to get to my files. Be a dear dutiful subordinate and pour us a glass.”
“Dear dutiful subordinate, indeed. For the cake, I’d polish your slippers as well.”
“I’ll hold that promise in reserve for the next time you vex me, Stephen. Oh, fill the glass, I’m not thirteen years old. Now, take your seat and listen to this. If everything signifies, as I believe it shall, the bastard has just been delivered to us right in the middle of one of his schemes.”
“How so?”
“I’ll answer a question with a question, Stephen.” She took a deep draught of her white wine and settled back into her chair. “Tell me, how much do you know of the body of lore surrounding Austershalin brandy?”