Chapter 11

CHAPTER

11

Luca’s boardinghouse was on the way back to Matti’s from the sea bath. The route took them along the edge of the harbour front, and the sun was heavy with promise where it fell between masts and buildings, so that Luca’s hair dried quickly and his skin had the lightest itch of clinging salt. It would be a hot day.

The streets were already alive with morning traffic: streams of people in and out of coffeehouses, some clutching leather folders if they were heading into those places most favoured for breakfast meetings. Shutters were being banged back from shopfronts, dust being rubbed from windows, signs and chairs and display tables being carried outside. Shopkeepers were the same everywhere; Luca could see the marks either chalked or engraved in the stone of the footpath, proclaiming where the space allocated to each shop began and ended, and he could see the glances exchanged as people edged their wares right up to the last breath of space in their domain.

Master Carriere had told Luca a story once about a famous duel that was fought by two masters, back in the previous century when hired swords were still a legal way of settling disputes in most city-states. The duel was famous for the brilliant sequence of forms that had finished it—the Galfi Feint, named for the victor—but the reason it had been fought in the first place was that the owner of a pottery shop, senior in his Guild, had spent a year in silent furious battle with an equally senior woodcarver who held the title of the adjacent shop. The subject of the dispute had been the slow encroachment of the potter’s space by a single leg of the woodcarver’s table.

It was a good story, the way Master Carriere told it, even if Luca did associate it with not being able to lift his arms above the shoulder and bruises on both of his knees from the merciless week it’d taken him to learn the Galfi Feint.

Matti’s face was composed, eyes bright and moving, taking things in. Not for the first time Luca wondered if Matti had been born with that resting expression—so blandly, pleasantly unreadable—or whether it was something he’d had to cultivate.

Neither of them had discussed this outright, the fact that Matti was walking Luca back to his boardinghouse. The fact that they were here, together, in public, and not skulking in courtyards or playing at housebreaking. Matti had simply fallen into step with Luca as they left the pool, and Luca hadn’t thought to find it odd until they were suddenly among people. Everything that they’d done together before now had been a secret of one kind or another. There was something unsettlingly blatant about this, walking as friends walked. A wary shock like new skin exposed to the light. Luca half expected to feel the drag of gazes following their progress. It felt remarkable . People should be remarking.

Sunlight hummed along Luca’s nerves and his mind was reliving the feel of Matti’s arms around him, Matti’s mouth on his: half pleasant reverie and half the equivalent of scratching away a scab to watch the blood well up.

“Matti!”

Matti pulled to a halt. Guilt flashed for only a moment on his face before he turned.

The young woman who had hailed them was leaning out of a doorway, her wavy black hair and full skirt both swinging with the abruptness of her motion. She said something over her shoulder, into the shop, then stepped down onto the footpath.

“Maya,” said Matti. “What are you doing here?”

Even without that confirmation, Luca would have picked Maya Jay as being a relation of Matti’s. She was a fraction taller than Luca, long-limbed in a way that only just stopped short of gangly, and her impeccably tailored shirt was tucked into a bright red skirt with gold trim. Her skin was darker than Matti’s, her face a longer oval, adorned with some of the same features. Luca wondered which of their parents had passed on that distracting, demanding mouth.

Maya’s mouth was lit with Matti’s rare smile, as though she had an endless supply of them in the bag slung over her shoulder and was happy to give them away for free. She bestowed one on Luca, along with a curious raise of her eyebrows, then looked back at her brother.

“I’m visiting Joyce Amberden. She knows Marko likes their cherries, so she put some aside for me. Are you going to introduce me to your friend, Matti?”

“Um,” said Matti, looking at Luca.

Luca, remembering how Matti had frozen up at the sound of the Vane townhouse’s door opening, decided that some kind of intervention was needed. He crafted a smile that was hopefully both winning and professional, fired it at Maya, and said, “I’m his best man.”

At exactly the same time, Matti said, “He’s the dancing master I’ve been seeing.”

“Well,” said Maya, after a moment. “This is interesting.”

Matti gave Luca a look through which naked betrayal and panic were clearly trying to escape.

“I’m sorry,” said Luca, “is your sister not going to be at your wedding?”

“I.” Matti’s mouth opened. Closed. “I didn’t think of that,” he said, sheepish enough that Luca burst out laughing.

“ Very interesting,” said Maya. She cast a pointed look at the cloth bag in Matti’s hand, which held his damp towel.

Luca was going to let Matti handle this. Matti’s family was clearly everything to him, and watching him interact with them was going to be illuminating. Luca felt like a critic at the theatre with a pen and paper poised, hungrily ready to take notes.

“Luca is my best man,” admitted Matti. “We’ve been swimming.”

“Ah!” said Maya. “The mysterious newcomer.”

“That’s me,” said Luca.

“Luca, my sister Maya.”

“My name is Luca Piere.” Luca extended his hand. It was the traditional framing for a business deal, and he was enjoying himself too much to drop the theatrics.

Interest glittered in Maya’s dark eyes. There was a pause a little too long for good manners before she extended her own hand. Her nails were painted yellow, with red tips. “My name is Mayanesh Jay.” As soon as she’d released Luca’s hand she turned back to Matti. “Your best man is giving you dancing lessons?”

“Sword lessons, actually,” said Matti. “It’s a long story.”

Maya smoothed her hands over her skirt and adjusted the lay of her perfectly symmetrical collar. “Have you two had breakfast?”

“I was just heading home,” said Matti. “I have to—”

“No,” cut in Luca. He tried another of his smiles on Maya. The strangeness of the morning had expanded and he felt an exhilarated, almost pugnacious urge to push at where this would take them. It was as though he and Matti had been existing in a glass bauble that had now been smashed, letting the world in. “We haven’t had breakfast.”

“Good,” Maya said. “I want to hear this long story. Erneska’s is nearby, and they make good raskils.”

“Lead on,” said Luca.

Maya disappeared back into the shop to bid farewell to her friend, and Matti grabbed Luca’s upper arm and tugged him close. A quick, interested thrill sped over Luca’s skin.

“Will you let me do this by myself?”

“No chance,” said Luca. “I want to talk to your sister, she seems like fun.”

“Luca—”

“What are you going to do, Matti?” Luca reached up and removed Matti’s hand from his arm. “Haul me up in front of a city magistrate? I had hoped we’d moved on from the mutual blackmail stage of our relationship.”

“No. I’m not going to do that. But if we’re telling Maya the story, I’m not leaving that part out.”

“Of course not.” Luca smiled. “I still can’t believe you forgot I’m going to meet your whole family eventually.”

“I was… distracted.” Matti’s gaze dropped clear as windows to Luca’s mouth.

Luca, leaning into the boundaries of what was fair and unfair, and reflecting that Matti had nobody to blame but himself—the man could have had at least two orgasms before breakfast, if he hadn’t been so stubborn—let his tongue flick over his lips.

“How much are you going to tell her?” he asked, waving his fingers to indicate the entire Corus Vane debacle.

“I think—”

“Shall we?” Maya emerged from the shop again with a small basket slung over one wrist, linked her arm through her brother’s, and set off. Luca walked close behind the Jays. The pair of them strode fast, with their long legs. More than that, they shared a kind of unthinking self-possession that bordered on arrogance as they dominated a fair portion of the busy footpath, collecting admiring or resentful gazes from the people who stepped aside.

As they were paused waiting for two carts to clear a road crossing, Maya turned and offered the small basket to Luca. “Cherry? They’re very good.”

Luca took one. “Thanks.”

“Matti?”

“Not for me,” said Matti.

Maya cast another glance over her shoulder at Luca that was probably meant to be as casual as her voice when she added, “I asked Joyce to send the order for the twins to the house. These were a gift.”

After a moment, Matti took a cherry. Luca bit into his own, rolling the sweet flesh of it around his mouth with more care than he’d ever taken over a bite of fruit before. Cherries were expensive, but not so expensive that Luca had ever thought twice about buying them. He tried to imagine denying himself something so commonplace, to the point where it would become a treat. He wanted to march back to the grocer and buy up their whole supply and shove it into Matti’s broad hands until they overflowed.

Erneska’s turned out to be a bakery close to Tolliver’s agency. Their tables were full; Maya bought three pastries and led the way to the closest park. She settled them on the grass in a precarious patch of tree shade that was going to sneak off over a pond if they stayed there too long, and handed out breakfast.

Luca had eaten raskils in Cienne, but had discovered since arriving in Glassport that nobody in the harbour city considered the cheese-and-herb pastries, in the shape of a curling snail shell, to be real raskils unless they were made locally. The one from Erneska’s was certainly the best example he’d ever tasted, with an audible buttery crunch to the browned edges and melting threads of cheese still so hot that Luca burned his tongue on the first bite. He set it down to cool.

“So, Mattinesh and Mayanesh,” he said. “What are the twins called?”

Maya wiped crumbs from her mouth and shot Matti a thoughtful look. “Marko and Merri,” she said. “Yes, both with the nesh attached.”

“It’s a naming convention of the mountain people outside Manisi,” Matti explained. “Where my mother’s mother was from. Mama kept it going when she married into Jay House.”

“And where are you from, Luca Piere?” asked Maya. That Jay smile really was disarming, and it didn’t help that Luca was already attuned to it. He wanted to smile back. He wanted her to like him, and it had happened very fast.

He swallowed down the urge to ask Matti’s sister if she’d ever considered a career in confidence trickery, and took another bite of his raskil. For a few seconds, mind lulled blank by the dappled sunlight and the warm food and the lingering smashed-bauble giddiness, he couldn’t remember if he’d lied about this to Matti. Or if he’d told Matti the truth. Or if it had even come up in conversation.

“Cienne,” he said, once he’d lost even the excuse of a full mouth.

“And what brought you here?”

“The usual,” said Matti. “Seeking his fortune. Seeking other people’s fortunes.”

Luca sighed. “Am I going to be given a chance to defend myself in this story?”

“No.” Matti licked grease from his finger, which was cheating.

Luca raised his hands in surrender, picked up his own raskil, and settled in to eat while Matti outlined events for Maya, everything from their first meeting in Audry’s drinking house. No mention was made of uneasy tensions around Matti having paid for Luca’s time—or just how close and excruciating that wardrobe had been—or of Matti’s tongue in Luca’s mouth, Matti’s fingertips bruisingly good on Luca’s spine, at the sea bath that very morning.

Everything else, Matti included. Luca managed to restrain himself to only the most important and entertaining of objections when Matti started telling part of it wrong, or when Matti prompted him for details regarding what he’d overheard between Corus and the Kesey House agent.

Maya sucked in her breath when Matti described exactly what they’d found in Vane’s document chest, but didn’t interrupt. She waited until Matti had stopped speaking.

“Corus,” she said then, like a stone dropped into a well.

“I know,” said Matti. They shared a look. “I’m going to start reversing what he’s done, at least the parts that I can manage quietly. The mordant will be an easy fix; I know you’ve been saying we should take that business to the chemists in Manisi.”

“Start by just threatening to do it,” said Maya. “You might worry the Haxbridge people enough that they undercut their own price.” She paused. “You… haven’t told Dad and Mama?”

“It was only yesterday. And… I’m afraid to.” Matti said it so quietly that it was almost lost in the noise of hooves and wheels from the closest street. “I can’t put that on them as well. It’s my job to keep things off their desks.”

Luca expected a protest from Maya, something along the lines of: They deserve to know. They need to know. Instead, she nodded.

“You want to tell them when you have a solution,” she said.

“There’s an easy solution,” Luca said. “ Fire the bastard. Drum him out of your House.”

Maya ignored that. “Is there any real proof to link Lysbette Martens to what Corus and the Keseys have been doing?”

“Apart from the fact that he was meeting someone at her Guildhall?” said Luca. “No. Not directly.” It annoyed him. It was a loose thread that he couldn’t help wanting to tug, though he didn’t know how it might be done, short of yet more snooping. And letting oneself in the front door of an empty, shabby house to which one had a key was quite a different matter to breaking into a Guildmaster’s dwelling.

Oh, yes. Luca was intimately familiar with that difference. His guts twisted with memory and the next bite of raskil had a sour foretaste.

“Leaving that aside, what about the letter about the fraudulent labelling?” asked Maya.

Matti nodded firmly. “Proof first. I should try to track down this Rob Rivers, and get more of the story out of him. See if he’ll swear to it in front of the Guild authorities. And then we can—”

“Or we could simply go and see the process for ourselves,” said Maya.

Luca felt off-balance. The Jay siblings had a rhythm to their conversation, a way of turning their bodies to each other, that made him feel achingly jealous in about three directions at once. Maya’s face was animated, her grin sparkling.

“And by we, ” she added, “I meant me and this con artist best man of yours, Matti.”

“Excuse me?” said Luca, at the same time as Matti’s “What?”

“Please.” Maya turned the sparkle on Luca. “Are you telling me you couldn’t talk your way into a little manual labour? I can give you the lightning course. A day on the carding floor should give us what we need.”

A niggling part of Luca was not sure about this, but it was immediately swamped by the part of him that didn’t know how to turn down a challenge. “I’m in,” he said promptly.

“But—” said Matti.

Luca raised his eyebrows at him. By the way Matti’s face changed and his gaze swung between Luca and Maya, Maya was doing the same thing.

“Are you sure?” Matti said.

“I know you can’t spare the time,” said Maya.

“And besides,” said Luca, “you’d open your mouth and sound like you’ve been giving polite orders your whole life, and it wouldn’t work at all.”

There was only the smallest twitch of Matti’s jaw to indicate that he was thinking about exactly the same polite orders that Luca was.

“All right,” Matti said.

“I’ve just thought of something.” Maya fluttered her fingers in Luca’s direction. “Does this mean you haven’t been going to dancing lessons?”

“Not even one,” said Matti. His grin flashed, sheepish, and Luca felt his own mouth mirror it.

“Huna’s lungs, Matti.” Maya threw a hand to the level of her head and flicked the fingers wide as though to banish water from them. “Your Half Moon Ball is only a few weeks away. You do remember that, don’t you? Mama and Dad think you’ve been spending all this time diligently learning to spin Sofia around the floor. What are you going to do? Prod her with a sword instead?”

Matti looked so comically struck, so totally betrayed by the fact that he had managed to overlook this one vital thing in his meticulously planned life, that Luca burst out laughing. He let the laughter tip him backwards into the grass, shading his eyes against the sun. A piece of tension that had been winding in resentful knots around his heart since Matti rejected him in the pool was finally easing.

Matti glared down at him. “That’s not helpful.”

“I’m imagining you doing your terrible version of the intermediate forms in the middle of a ballroom,” Luca said. “While your poor, neglected betrothed weeps in a corner.”

Maya’s laugher, high and rich, mingled with Luca’s.

“ Still not helpful.” Matti’s shoulders were stiff.

“I’ll help,” Maya said. “You won’t be as good as you should be, but I can teach you the basics. We’ll just pretend you’re a terrible dancer. Unteachable.”

A hint of humour appeared, finally, as Matti glanced at Luca.

Luca wasn’t going to disappoint him. “No pretending necessary. He’s a disaster,” Luca assured Maya. “You might want to find yourself a pair of those wooden shoes they used to wear in Harbeke.”

“A disaster? Matti?” Maya looked at her brother with effortless admiration. The sight of it stuck in Luca’s throat. “I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s true,” Matti said. “I’m awful.”

Maya scooped up some raskil crumbs and ate them. “Well. Let’s at least make sure you look like you’ve seen the steps before.”

“I have to get home.” Matti climbed to his feet, brushing crumbs from his trousers, and the other two did the same. “I’m already behind on work.”

“After dinner,” Maya said. “I’ll come up to your study. You can spare an hour, if it means not making a fool of yourself in front of all our friends and the luminaries of two Guilds.”

“No arguments.” Matti kissed his thumb and flicked her ear with it, which was probably the most adorable thing Luca had ever seen.

“I don’t get one of those?” he demanded.

“Family only,” said Matti. “Sorry.”

“Go away, Mattinesh,” said Luca. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

Matti’s gaze flicked between Luca and Maya, but he nodded and left.

“I should be going as well,” said Maya. “I’ve a friend in town from Otesca and I need to drag every detail of next season’s fashions out of her, so Matti can advise the dye buyers. We’ll be taking a coach tomorrow, by the way.”

“We— What?”

“The Kesey carding houses are mostly out of the city. I’ll send you a note.” She dug in her shoulder bag and came up with a handful of loose pencils and a notebook. “Where are you staying?”

Startled into truth before he could come up with an excuse to refuse it, Luca gave her the boardinghouse’s address. Maya wrote it down and walked away, sunlight finding the faintest hints of rich brown in the black hair that fell down her back.

“I remember this one,” Maya said. “ Tales from the Sun’s Fountain . Dad used to read it to us before bed.”

Matti rubbed his eyes, wondered belatedly if any of the ink smudges on that hand had been fresh enough to transfer to his face, and then decided he didn’t care. He was used to pushing through this feeling, but he was grateful for the excuse to lift his blurry gaze from the papers in front of him to the side of his study, where Maya was drawing a thoughtful finger across the spines of books. The shelf was an armspan wide and stretched from ceiling to floor. Maya’s profile was sharp with shadows in the golden light of the lamps.

“I haven’t read any of them for years,” Matti said, wistful. He’d never been a particularly keen reader, but there were remembered favourites from childhood— Sun’s Fountain among them—which he’d find running through his head sometimes, stories tangling themselves up with the columns of numbers and his dread of the next day’s stress.

There were vacant spaces in all the private rooms of the Jay house where items had vanished over the past five years, transmuted into money to bridge a necessary gap. The books had remained: not valuable enough to sell, and beautiful enough to feed the eyes when the tongue was missing cherries.

“If you’re wondering where a dozen of them have gone, there’s a pile next to my bed that I kick over about twice a week.” Maya came to the desk, glanced over the papers that Matti was working on, then got a hand beneath his elbow and encouraged him out of his chair. “You’ve yawned twice and told me just another minute three times. We’re going to get started before there’s a real danger of you falling asleep on your feet halfway through.”

“When did you learn how to do this?”

“Joyce and Verity love dancing, and they could never persuade their brothers to practice with them, so they used to show me what to do.”

Matti squeezed her hands and resigned himself to yet another session of physical ineptitude. “I’ll try not to tread on you too often,” he said. “Where do we start?”

Despite his fears, after nearly an hour of instruction, Maya pronounced him not bad at all.

“You’re picking it up quickly enough,” she said, once she’d coaxed him through a wissel-step and a catskill and the slower, more stately and romantic turns of a sehassa. They had no music to accompany them, but Maya beat time with her palm against her thigh or spoke the beats aloud as they moved.

Matti had surprised himself as well. Maya was a more patient teacher than Luca, and had a knack for adjusting her explanations as necessary. But Luca’s lessons had done something for Matti. He was used to being prodded into place or concentrating on a sequence of movements. He knew how to make his body do something over and over again, striving for the eventual rendition that would feel correct.

“I suppose Luca has been teaching me to dance,” he said dryly. “In a manner of speaking.”

Maya released his hands and pushed her hair back from her face. She’d tied it back but, as usual, wisps of it had escaped, and the situation hadn’t been helped by the number of times she’d spun beneath Matti’s arm.

“I never knew you were interested in learning to duel. You never mentioned it.”

“I just took the opportunity when it arose.”

“You created the opportunity by applying pressure at the right moment,” she said, approving. “Mama and Dad would be proud.”

“I didn’t know you liked to dance,” he offered in return.

“It’s not what I’d choose out of all the activities in the world,” she said lightly. “But it’s fun. And no matter how long you harp on about its many virtues, I’m not taking up swimming.”

Maya’s aversion to water had led their parents to call her kitten until the day of her naming, when she haughtily turned around and proclaimed that her proper name had been approved in front of Huna, now, and she’d be asking Huna’s revenge on anyone who insisted on using any silly animal nicknames. Even now she hated getting caught in the rain, and she declared her intention of cutting her hair short at least once a season—more, in summer— so it wouldn’t take so long to dry.

“What would you choose, then? Out of all the activities in the world.”

“Honestly?”

“Of course.”

“I wish we could keep horses. Obviously it’s impossible in the city. But when I was seven or so Mama took me visiting at the Coopers’ country house—where the ball’s going to be—and Daniela taught me to ride on Sofia’s pony, and I loved it. I kept nagging to be taken back.”

Matti tried to imagine his elegant urban sister on horseback, leaping hedges and galloping through muddy fields. It didn’t seem to fit. But then, nothing about the image of Matti with a sword in his hand really fit either.

“I wish I could have made that possible,” he said.

Maya’s gaze slid away. It bordered on awkward, and Maya was seldom awkward. Maya always knew what to say. Matti felt even worse for having somehow transferred his awkwardness to her by saying aloud the kind of thing that the two of them usually left unsaid.

“Don’t you dare dwell on it,” said Maya. “I have plenty of things. I like sketching, it’s not as though pencils cost much, and you know I love the work I do choosing our dyes and working with the designers on our weaves.”

“Yes,” said Matti, although he hadn’t known that. He’d never heard her apply the word love to anything about Jay House’s business before. He’d always known that Maya was ten times as artistic as he was, and it had been one of the many anxieties in Matti’s tangle, that she should have space to stretch her talents. He always made himself consider that when he was thinking of asking her to do a factory visit or answer letters from tailoring houses. It didn’t matter if Matti had no time for anything outside work. He had no artistic talents; nothing was going to waste.

Say what you would about Corus Vane, at least he’d managed to give his son that freedom.

“One day,” Matti promised Maya, “I’ll buy you a horse.”

“I’m a member of this House as well. One day I’ll buy myself three horses.” Her wide, familiar smile appeared as if from behind a cloud. “I suppose I’ll let you and Sofia buy the country house where I stable them, though.”

This reminder of his engagement landed on Matti with a small jolt, like someone flicking the crown of his head. The nearness of the Half Moon Ball really had snuck up on him. Sofia was in the house every other day, talking with Maya, their heads bowed over various things that Matti had never been asked to involve himself in. The last decision Matti had made was in regards to the cut of his wedding suit.

He wondered, suddenly, if his sister and his betrothed were creating the same kind of space from responsibility for him that he’d been trying to create for his siblings. If there were things that he should have been paying attention to, which they’d carefully handled without him, while he was—

While he was playing around with swords. While he was waist-deep in water and kissing his impossible best man.

Matti covered his guilt by taking a few steps to stand in front of his desk, where he lifted himself to sit on it.

“So, do you think I’ll manage not to disgrace myself?” He indicated their recent dancing lesson with a wave of his hand.

“We’ll do a few more sessions. And Sofia doesn’t know you’re meant to have been having these lessons. She’ll not hold it against you if you’re not perfect.”

“When I think about all the other children of rich Houses I could be marrying, I’m lucky. I’m glad that we’re getting to know each other,” Matti said, and realised it was true. “I would have been glad to have her as a friend years ago.”

“More friends are a good thing.” There was something in Maya’s tone that Matti couldn’t parse. “And you’ve managed to make one in Luca,” she added. “Do you think he dyes his hair that ridiculous shade?”

“I,” Matti said, and somehow found the taste of salt water in his mouth and his mind full of the image of Luca lifting himself out of the sea bath, rivulets of water running over the muscles of Luca’s upper back. Luca twisting around to sit on the rock, all freckles scattered across a milky chest and a line of the same dark copper running down from his navel. “I mean, no, I—”

“Huna wept, ” Maya breathed. Of course it was too much to hope that she’d missed his lapse in composure. “Matti, are you—are you and he—”

“No!” Matti was so very, very glad that he was able to deny that both forcefully and honestly. More or less. He’d not let it get that far. He’d pushed Luca away. “No, I’m not sleeping with my best man.”

“But you wouldn’t mind,” said Maya, analysing.

“I—no.” It came out like a deflation, through the sheer relief of being able to admit even that small amount. “He’s… attractive. But it doesn’t mean anything. I can cope with it.” Matti spoke more firmly. “And Sofia’s the person I’m going to marry.”

Maya started to speak, but a yawn took over her face and set one off in Matti as well. They looked at each other ruefully and Matti became aware of the sandy heaviness of his eyelids.

“I’d better get to bed,” he said. “Early morning.”

“Of course,” said Maya. “ Dancing lessons.”

Matti laughed. Despite his tiredness, he felt lighter. Sharing his accumulated secrets with Maya had been like an extra shoulder being inserted under a shared load.

“Yes,” he said. “Exactly.”