“Nothing so entertaining,” he said. “We pass most of our time drinking and smoking. Oh, and gambling on billiards.”
“That must be fascinating,” Raesinia said, seizing on the opening. “Billiards always struck me as a game of skill. There must be a great deal of strategy to it.”
“I wouldn’t know,” the prince said. “I’m terrible at it. Really, I only play to please my friends.”
Raesinia sat back in her chair, leather creaking beneath her, and admitted defeat. A few more moments passed in silence while the prince chewed, and then the door at the far end of the hall opened, admitting a pair of servants carrying delicate iced sugar confections. Dessert. Which means this ordeal is almost over.
You’d think I was the one who’d badgered him to have dinner. Despite his ambivalence on their first encounter, Second Prince Matthew had been persistent, repeating his appeal for Raesinia to dine with him until she’d run out of excuses. She’d come into the meeting ready for anything—?treachery, underhanded offers, even an attempt at seduction. Instead, the prince had been morose and listless. So what’s the point? If there was a game being played here, it was a very subtle one.
The confections were as incredible as the rest of the food, literally melting on the tongue, sticky-?sweet. Raesinia wondered aloud where they got the ice, but the prince only shrugged. Can he really be such a dullard? Rumor could be deceiving, of course, but what she’d heard about the prince suggested a lively if somewhat irregular mind.
Finally, Matthew announced that he was tired, and Raesinia practically bolted from the chamber. Barely and Jo were waiting in the foyer, with a couple of Life Guards. All four soldiers stood as Raesinia came in.
“Back to my chambers, please.” She turned to the servant hovering behind her. “My thanks for a lovely evening.”
The man bowed, his expression a little pained. Raesinia swept out, bodyguards at her heels, into the Keep’s endless miles of gloomy corridor.
“Did they feed you?” Raesinia said.
Jo waggled her eyebrows, and Barely patted her stomach. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Damn well. Makes up for having to make small talk with the Life Guards all evening.”
“They can’t have been worse than the prince,” Raesinia said.
Jo made a sign, and Barely laughed. “I don’t know. How many different ways can you answer the question, ‘You’re girls, so you can’t really be soldiers, can you?’”
“Reminds me of Cesha Dzurk.” Raesinia rolled her eyes. She’d been around the pair from the Girls’ Own for so long that she sometimes forgot women in uniform were an unspeakable oddity in a place like Borel. “You know, if you ever get tired of explaining yourself, just tell me. You can go back to the Girls’ Own and Abby can send someone else to take a turn.”
“Thank you, Your Highness, but I’d only fret about you.” Barely laughed at something Jo signed to her. “Besides, the food here’s a lot better.”
Eric was waiting in her suite’s outer room, absorbed in his ever-?present notebook. He jumped to his feet when Raesinia entered, but she could tell by the set of his features—?not to mention the dark circles under his eyes—?that he didn’t have good news to share.
“All right,” she said, waving away the maid who scuttled up to offer her tea. “Let’s hear it. You visited them all?”
“All the members of the Honest Fellows who are currently in the Keep,” Eric said, looking down at his notebook. “Which is all of them except for Count Summerfeld, who is yachting for the next month, and Count Issenstrad, who is dead. Um.” He licked his finger nervously and flipped back a page. “I thought there was some confusion on that point, but I was assured by everyone I spoke to that the count remains a member in good standing of the Honest Fellows despite his... indisposition.”
“So what did the living ones tell you?”
“Mostly they told me to talk to Goodman. A few expressed sympathy but said they couldn’t act without him. The others didn’t seem very friendly to Vordan.” He sighed. “Apparently Master Goodman’s hold over the Honest Fellows is as complete as Duke Dorsay led us to believe.”
“And Goodman? Did you see him?”
“I did.” Eric flipped forward a page. “He... doesn’t seem to like me. As he put it, ‘Why should I bother talking to a clerk?’”
Raesinia gritted her teeth. Fredrick Goodman had some very definite ideas about who he should be meeting with. She was starting to wish she’d brought Count Strav, just so she’d have an elderly, bearded figurehead to make Goodman comfortable. He’d see Raesinia, but clearly he didn’t take her authority seriously, and he’d flatly refused to talk to Cora. Which, being fair, is a little more reasonable. I wouldn’t believe Cora was running the treasury of a major nation if I hadn’t put her there myself.
“Did he get over himself long enough to talk about our proposal?”
“He said it was ‘absolutely unacceptable.’” Eric traced a finger over his notebook. “He said that there was going to be no negotiation except on the basis of Vordan acknowledging the validity of prerevolution contracts, and terms could be worked out with the debt holders. Anything less would amount to ‘accepting outright theft.’”
“Balls of the Beast,” Raesinia swore, flopping into an armchair. She hadn’t really expected more, but she’d hoped Goodman would at least provide some avenues for negotiation. Cora had worked overtime coming up with a debt settlement she thought Vordan could afford—?and the Deputies-?General might approve—?which had revolved around treating the overall amount owed from before the revolution as a block but ignoring the terms of individual loans.
That was the version Raesinia could follow, anyway. She hadn’t been looking forward to a laborious back-?and-?forth between Cora and Goodman, but now she apparently wasn’t even going to get that.
“The Duke of Brookspring sent a message,” Eric said, after a moment’s silence. “He asked to see you when you have a free moment.”
“That’s something,” Raesinia said. “Maybe he has good news.”
*
Duke Dorsay did not, in fact, have good news.
His quarters looked much like hers, gloomy and elegant, with nothing of his personality in them. He only lived at the Keep in times of crisis, he explained.
“Until this business came up, I hadn’t left Brookspring in years,” he said. “It’s on the western coast, across the mountains. You must come visit someday. In spring, preferably. We get snowed in through the winter, but spring is beautiful. It’s only a small manor, but it hums along neatly.”
“Honestly, I feel like we might as well go there now,” Raesinia said. “We’d make just as much progress.”