Sword Catcher (Sword Catcher, #1)

Antonetta looked through her eyelashes at Conor. She was shivering, Kel realized. Her silk-and-chiffon dress would be little protection against the night’s chill.

“Nonsense,” said Falconet. “Montfaucon accepts promissory notes, don’t you, Lupin?”

Charlon had risen to his feet and was thoughtfully observing the spread of food. “I’ve an idea,” he said just as Conor leaped up from the divan. He slid his brocaded jacket off his shoulders and offered it to Antonetta.

The Antonetta of old would have scorned the idea that she was bothered by cold, but this Antonetta took the jacket with a brilliant smile and shrugged it over her shoulders. Conor went to join Charlon at the tower’s edge, as did Montfaucon and Falconet. Charlon was bellowing with laughter over something.

Kel, feeling as uneasy as if an ant had crawled into his collar and was scrabbling about, decided no one would notice if he did not join in. He was not known as much for games of chance anyway, while Conor and the others would bet on anything at all—which bird would alight first on a tree branch, or whether it would rain tomorrow.

He was in no mood for it. He turned and walked a distance away, until he was standing at the edge of the western parapet. From here, he could see the sunset. It was a glorious one, red and gold like the flag of Castellane unfurling across the sky. Below, lamps were being lit in the city, bringing the pattern of the streets to life with a soft glow. Kel could see the hollow ring of the Sault, the spire of the Windtower in Fleshmarket Square, and the dark dots of moored ships, rising and falling atop the hammered-gold sea.

In the back of his mind, the Ragpicker King’s voice whispered, asking him about House Aurelian, about the Charter Families. Do you like them? Do you trust them?

“Kel?” It was Antonetta who had come up to him, surprisingly silently. Or perhaps he had simply not been paying attention. Not a good habit for a Sword Catcher.

He turned to look at her. It was odd, Kel thought, the way her mother both desperately wanted Antonetta to marry, yet insisted she dress as if she were still a little girl. Her dress had been designed for someone with a girlish figure, and the fullness of her breasts strained the citrine buttons at her neckline in a way they were not designed to be strained.

“You’re not interested in joining the game?” she asked. The light of the sunset glimmered off the metallic threads in Conor’s jacket. “Although I cannot blame you. They are betting on who can throw a meat pie farthest off the tower.”

“Perhaps you had the notion our amusements had become more sophisticated?” Kel asked. “After all, it has been nearly a decade since you graced us with your presence here at the Mitat.”

“Eight years.” Antonetta looked down at the city below. The sunset’s bloody glow tinted the edges of her pale hair.

“Why now?” Kel said. He wondered if anyone else had asked her. “Did Charlon ask you to come?”

“Well, he thinks it was his idea. That’s what matters.”

There was a shout. Kel glanced over to see that Charlon was making a triumphant gesture, presumably after hurling a pie. Falconet was drinking from a bottle of scarlet rabarbaro, a liquor derived from Shenzan rhubarb. Kel thought it tasted like medicine. Conor stood a little distance away, watching his friends with an unreadable expression.

“I was worried about Conor,” said Antonetta. “After last night.”

Kel leaned against the stone parapet. “You ought to forget that. He was drunk, that’s all.”

Now Antonetta glanced up at him. “I heard he might be getting married. Perhaps he’s sad at the idea of having to marry one of those foreign Princesses.”

So that’s what this is about. Kel felt an unreasonable frustration go through him. He told himself it was because she seemed to know Conor so little, despite whatever she felt for him. Conor was angry sometimes—furious, frustrated, jealous, operatically disappointed—but not sad. Sad did not seem to describe anything he’d ever felt.

“I don’t think so,” Kel said. “He does not want to get married, and I doubt House Aurelian can force him.”

“Because he’s a Prince?” Antonetta said. “You’d be surprised. We can all be made to do things. It simply requires finding the right way to push.”

Kel was about to ask her what she meant when Charlon called out to her. She leaped down from the low wall without a second glance, crossing the roof to where Falconet was holding out a pie. She took it, smiling that false smile that made Kel think of the painted masks worn every year on Solstice Day.

He remembered all too clearly when he and Antonetta had still been the sort of friends who climbed trees and chased imaginary dragons together. When he was fifteen, he had given her a ring—not a real ring, but grass he had fashioned into a loop—and asked her to be his bandit queen. He had been surprised how hard she had blushed, and later Conor had teased him. “Charlon will be furious,” Conor had said. “He’s been looking at her differently himself—but you’re the one she’s always liked.”

Kel had stayed awake that night, thinking of Antonetta. If she’d liked the ring. If she looked at him any differently than she did at Conor, at Joss. He determined to study her the next time he saw her. Perhaps he could read her thoughts; she had never taken enormous trouble to hide whatever she was feeling.

It never happened. It was not Antonetta he saw next, but her mother. She had rarely taken much note of Kel before, but after a Court dinner, Lady Alleyne had taken him aside and told him in no uncertain terms to stay away from her daughter. She knew they were young, but this was how trouble started, with boys getting ideas above themselves. He might be a minor noble of Marakand, but he had no land or wealth or significant name, and Antonetta was destined for much greater things.

Kel had never felt so humiliated. He told himself that it was not Kel, himself, who had been humiliated, but Kel Anjuman, the part he played. He told himself Antonetta would be furious at her mother’s interference. Instead Antonetta had vanished from their group, disappearing into House Alleyne for months, like a prisoner vanishing into the Trick.

Kel never spoke to Conor of what Lady Alleyne had said to him, and Joss, Charlon, and Conor seemed to feel Antonetta’s disappearance was only to be expected. Girls, they seemed to feel, went off and did mysterious things in order to become women, who were fascinating, strange entities.

He heard Antonetta giggle, and then she was gliding back across the tower. The sun had almost entirely set, and the stars were not yet out. She was mostly a shadow as she approached him. He was surprised she had come back, but equally determined not to show it. “I don’t have,” he said, “anything else to tell you about Conor.”

“What about you?” She tilted her head to the side. “Marriage, proposals. That sort of thing. You—”

Marriage is impossible for me. It will always be impossible. He said stiffly, “House Aurelian has given much to me. I wish to repay that debt before I think about marriage.”