Chapter 13

CHAPTER

13

Beneath the mingled blaze of gaslight and fire that lit the crowded ballroom, Luca’s hair stood out like the gleam of gold thread in tapestry. It took Matti no more than a few glances over the room to pick him out. Luca was being interrogated by Merri and another small girl in an explosively lacy dress, and he looked both bemused and alarmed at the fact.

He looked incredible tonight. Matti’s breath had stopped at the first sight of him, in well-fitted dark trousers and a shirt of palest dimflower blue. He wore no waistcoat, but a structured jacket of charcoal grey and a sword belt of gleaming woven leather that Matti wanted to hook his fingers through.

Matti had worried that Luca would feel ill at ease at the Half Moon Ball, knowing nobody in the room except Matti and Maya, but he seemed to think nothing of plunging into a knot of people and immediately making himself at home by throwing smiles and stories in every direction. He’d participated in the ritual called Maha’s Tasting; his fingers had lingered on Matti’s when Matti passed him the cup. He’d made his formal bow to Matti’s parents and received the Half Moon gift given to each member of the wedding party. And then he’d flitted off to entertain some of Sofia’s friends, claiming that he’d rather be admired for the sword at his waist than run the risk of being stuck in yet another conversation about looms.

Matti could have told him that the Head of Duvay House was far more likely to talk one’s ear off about his precious dogs than about the silk industry, but Luca had already been halfway across the ballroom at that point, and Matti had weathered Rowain Duvay’s canine enthusiasm on his own.

The air was alight and busy, crowded with the smells of food and perfume and flowers and candle wax. Gas lamps blazed in brackets conspicuously newer than the stone of the walls, but candelabras and two wrought gold chandeliers cast their own complex shadows, crammed as they were with long sturdy candles.

The Cooper country house was much, much older than Cooper House as an institution. Sofia’s parents had bought the enormous building and its even more enormous grounds just after Sofia was born, and poured yet more money into rescuing it from a state of genteel disrepair. Tonight Matti had already overheard a certain amount of murmurs, most of them approving, in regards to the restoration job. This ballroom could have been primped and wallpapered into modernity; instead the dark grey stone had been washed and left bare, a striking contrast to the intricate wooden floor underfoot.

“Matti.”

Matti looked back at his cousin Roland, whose amused smile was a hint that perhaps he’d been trying to capture Matti’s attention for a while.

“Sorry,” said Matti. “What were you saying?”

“It doesn’t matter. And we shouldn’t be keeping you trapped here. This is your night, after all. There are probably ten other conversations you should be having.”

“No, not at all.” Matti widened his smile, trying not to feel too guilty. “I’m glad to see you two again. I feel like I’m just trotting you out for rituals.”

“We know you’re busy,” said Wynn, shrugging that off. “Roland here was just asking if you thought he would look like a pirate if he wrapped the nice green handkerchief you gave him around his head, or if it would just look like he was trying to hide his disaster of a haircut.”

Roland’s fair hair was cropped fashionably close. He made a noise of protest. “Don’t listen to this farmer, Matti.”

“We’re surrounded by some of the best wine in Thesper, Roland Jay. Make yourself useful and fetch the groom-to-be another drink.”

“I’ve barely started this one.” Matti lifted his glass.

“One of the Audelet girls is getting a card game going in another room while we wait for the dancing to start,” offered Roland.

“Excellent,” Wynn said. “I’m in. We’ll leave Matti to mingle. Don’t worry, Matti—we do like the gifts, even if the colour doesn’t suit us to perfection. We can’t all be your flame-headed best man.”

Thankfully Matti had remembered in time that Roland and Wynn had been present when Luca pulled his trick with the pocket watch. Tonight Luca had spun some earnest, convoluted story for them about doing errands for a family friend while he was settling in as a new duellist in town, and Matti had nodded along.

Luca’s green gift had been a scarf: summer-weight, not wool. When Matti had made the presentation, Luca had fingered the silk for a long moment and then given Matti a look like he was waiting for something. For an incoherent heartbeat Matti had wanted to take it back and tie it for Luca, let his hands linger on the column of Luca’s throat—wanted to kiss Luca in front of his family and everyone he knew. It was a thought as impossible as the rest of the things that Matti wanted.

“Come to think of it, Matti,” Wynn added over his shoulder as they walked off, “it’s a good thing the wedding party colours shook out the way they did. I don’t know if I would have been able to wear gold boots without being laughed off my own farms.”

Matti looked over at where Cecilia Cooper, the heir of Cooper House, was standing. Her boom of a laugh was easy to distinguish. Sofia’s Half Moon gift to her older sister had been a short fitted tunic embroidered with grapevines in golden thread. It suited Cecilia’s rangy figure, and her preference for trousers over skirts given her tendency to spend more time tromping the hillsides of the Cooper vineyards than in the city proper.

Even if Matti did have vague memories of Cecilia pushing him into a puddle as a small child, he preferred her to Tino, the middle Cooper sibling. Tino was the perfect marketing foil to Cecilia’s viticultural expertise and was unfailingly pleasant, but something about his never-dimming smile rubbed Matti the wrong way, as though Tino were always trying to close a sale even if engaged in nothing more than a conversation about the weather. Matti had been avoiding making eye contact all evening.

Matti threw back a good half of the wine in his hand. Mingle. Right.

He could see one of the senior agents from Harte House’s Glassport office nearby, accepting a full glass of sparkling wine from a companion, and she gave him an easy smile when their eyes met. Matti returned the smile, but he didn’t have the stomach tonight to make small talk with someone representing a soon-to-be competitor while both of them pretended it wasn’t about to happen. For the moment, Harte’s plans to break into the wool industry had been relegated to a less urgent position on Matti’s endless list of worries.

Instead he strode up to the nearest small knot of men, which obligingly cracked open to let him join the circle. Matti had just opened his mouth to deliver some polite thanks for their attendance when he realised that he was now standing directly opposite Adrean Vane, who was giving Matti a look that bordered on belligerent. Awareness of this awkward situation descended on the group like a mist. A few people inspected their drinks closely.

“Good evening,” Matti said.

There was a smattering of bows and nods. Adrean was the only one who said, “Good evening,” in return, and his tone matched his facial expression.

He doesn’t know what his father’s doing, Matti reminded himself, but all he could think of was Adrean’s sneering assessment of Matti’s personality, and Luca calling him a—

“Mr. Jay!” said Luca, elbowing his way into the circle at Matti’s side. “So sorry to intrude, sir, but your sister—the tiny one—was very anxious for me to remind you that you promised to dance the catskill with her, later. That’s all. Do continue your conversation.” He beamed around the circle. He was wearing the scarf in a careless knot around his neck. His gaze landed on Adrean, where it stayed.

A complicated series of things happened in Matti’s stomach. He wondered if it would be obvious if he trod on Luca’s foot.

“Luca Piere,” said Luca to the group at large. “At your service. Well, at the groom’s service, obviously.”

Many of the guests would have seen Luca’s formal bow as a member of the wedding party. Even if not, the green scarf at his throat and the sword at his waist loudly proclaimed his role. The awkward mist thickened into something more like fog. Gazes travelled between Luca and Adrean as though already following the blows of the inevitable duel.

Matti urgently reconsidered throwing himself on the mercy of the Harte agent.

Adrean’s gaze was on Luca’s weapon, and Luca made an exaggerated show of noticing this and patting the gleaming hilt.

“It’s a sword,” Luca said kindly. “I can see why you might not be familiar with it. I do understand that none of Mr. Jay’s friends are any good at duelling. After all, if you were, he’d hardly have needed to engage me, would he?”

Matti found a strangled laugh in his throat and managed to hide it in a gulp of wine. One of the other young men in the circle, whom Matti recognised vaguely as someone from one of the larger brewery Houses, was not so restrained. The person next to him patted him pointedly on the back as he worked to turn the laugh into a coughing fit.

Adrean flushed and threw his shoulders back. He gave Luca a look of intense dislike down his long nose as he visibly struggled with the desire to explain just how expert a swordsman he was, without having to publicly admit that he was no friend of Matti’s.

“It doesn’t seem like it’ll be the most interesting job, this wedding.” Terrifyingly, Luca was still talking. “Apparently there might be a token display of mediocrity by some tiresome fellow, now what was his—”

“Excuse us, please,” Matti managed, and dragged Luca away to the nearest corner with a hard grip on his arm. They collected a few curious stares as they went.

“Yes, that’s it.” Luca sagged dramatically against the wall. His face was still sparkling with humour above the green silk. “Now look like you’re giving me a stern talking-to about being rude to your guests.”

“ I am .” Matti was trying desperately not to let his own laughter out; it was still straining against his throat, wanting to emerge and join Luca’s. “That’s going to be all over the party by the end of the night.”

“Good. The smug fuckwit deserves it.”

“I am trying to be pleasant to the Vanes,” Matti reminded him. “I shouldn’t act differently around them, remember?”

“Yes? And? I don’t have any reason to be pleasant. I’m just a serviceman who’s being paid to be here. I don’t know who they are. Which is nearly true, by the way; I had to get someone to point him out to me, given that my previous experience of his charming personality was from the wrong side of a wardrobe door.” Luca snuck a look around Matti’s arm and his smile widened. “Now he’s stalking off to the gardens. Probably to write a poem about his feelings and then set it to music.”

Matti lost the battle and buried his smile in his sleeve.

“That’s better,” murmured Luca. His fingers touched Matti’s where they were curled around the wineglass. “And that’s enough time for a rebuking, I think. Why don’t you find your brother and introduce me properly? I can collect the full Jay set.”

They found Marko doing his best to get chocolate smears on Nessa’s dress, while Merri added a reddish stain to the endeavour from some kind of fruit tart.

“Who let you two into the sweets?” Matti demanded, scooping Merri up and holding her at a determined arm’s length as she tried to twist around and inflict her mess on him, with a muffled shriek full of delight and sugar giddiness and being up past her bedtime. Once she settled, he set her down gingerly, kissed his thumb, and flicked her ear. “I’ve brought my best man to talk to the future of Jay House, not a pair of blue-winged honey hummers.”

“Merrinesh and I have already met.” Luca swept an extravagant bow in Merri’s direction.

Marko and Merri exchanged a look. Then Merri fixed Luca with her limpid brown eyes and broke into Yaghali too rapid for Matti to understand it.

“Oh, gods,” Matti said. “Mama?”

His mother sighed. “Ten minutes ago they started. And now you have come and made a fuss over it, they will not stop until tomorrow.”

“Mama will tell me if you’re being rude,” Matti warned the twins.

Marko rolled his eyes. “ Gnyet, ” he said. Matti knew that one, at least. Will not. Marko was probably right too.

“Secret twin language?” asked Luca.

“My language,” said Nessa.

“Oh.” Luca looked from Matti to the twins. The question was plain on his face.

“I don’t speak it,” Matti said. “Not well. These two, however…”

“Ah, you had other things to learn.” Nessa expertly created a fold in her skirt to hide the most egregious of the chocolate smears. She smiled at Luca, looping him into the conversation, before glancing back at Matti. “Who would you speak it to, here?”

Matti swallowed down his instinctive surge of self-blame and guilt. He also swallowed down what came next, which was a pro test. You never taught me; not like you’re teaching them . His mother had never uttered a single word of desire that Matti or Maya would be any less Glassport, any more northern. And in the Jay household, truths only had to be acknowledged when they were brought into the light.

“Your people are from Manisi, Matti told me,” Luca said to Nessa. He kicked out a chair and seated himself. One foot wrapped around the chair’s leg and began to beat gently, side of boot against wood.

“Not Manisi,” Nessa corrected at once. “The mountains. Far outside the city.”

“But still, part of Manisi territory. Right?”

“On the maps, yes. On the papers .”

Matti opened his mouth, calculated the odds that he’d make the situation worse if he tried any rose-oiling, and closed it again. Luca was doing fine; he looked interested, making a go-on kind of motion that pulled an expression onto Nessa’s face that was equal parts flattered and suspicious.

Matti pulled out the chair on the other side of Luca’s and busied himself with picking the nuts out of a slice of butter cake, while Nessa gave Luca the relevant geopolitical history. This mostly involved the dwindling Yaghali people clinging crankily to the mountains and ignoring everyone else while the city-state of Manisi and the kingdom of Narama had a leisurely decade-long squabble over the exact location of the border. When the armies were exhausted enough that the politicians nailed the border down to its current location so that everyone could go home, the mountains ended up formally Thesperan and the Yaghali went on pretending, to the extent of feasibility, that Manisi’s formal governance didn’t exist. Matti knew that things were changing, as the fingers of trade and cultural influence made their way up into the high villages. His mother’s parents had grudgingly accepted the course of the future and sent their children down to be educated at the university in the city.

Luca paid charming attention to Nessa’s colourful and affectionately biased version of historical events. The twins, still exchanging a fluid and incomprehensible rattle of conversation, had meanwhile settled themselves beneath the tablecloth. Matti lowered a bowl of cherries and was rewarded with Marko’s widest grin. Matti began to gnaw on the cake, which was lacking in structural integrity now that he’d excavated all the nuts.

He coughed on crumbs when his mother abruptly turned her attention from Luca to himself as though responding to some inner clock strike.

“Mattinesh,” she said sternly. “Hiding with your family at your own Half Moon Ball! Any moment now there will be dancing. Go and talk to people.”

“I’m hardly hiding, Mama.” Matti took another bite of cake. He wondered if the wedding would be a similar round of nobody letting him pause for more than a few moments, for fear that some phantom other group of guests was missing out on his company. An unpleasant curl of cold shuddered at the base of his throat, and he coughed again, pushing the cake plate away.

“You are absolutely right, Mrs. Jay.” Luca leapt to his feet. Matti tried to convey refusal with his eyes, but Luca tucked a hand under Matti’s elbow, and Matti stood before his brain could remind his body that it didn’t have to obey the slightest pressure from Luca’s hands. Not here, anyway. Not now.

“So that’s the accent Maya was doing,” Luca said, threading through the crowd and creating space for Matti to follow. “Hah. Outside Manisi. I think I could learn to do it, if I spoke with your mother for half an hour.”

The musicians were tuning up, the crowd in the ballroom already beginning to thin at the centre like a spun bowl, making room for the dancing. Matti found he didn’t mind the prospect. The mention of Maya had sent a fretful energy under his skin, remembering what she and Luca had discovered in Nud. This knowledge tucked in their pockets, where it was burning away.

Matti was at tug-of-war with himself over the fact that he hadn’t told his parents. Hadn’t told them any of it. He couldn’t fully justify it, when he tried to arrange the facts in weft-straight lines in his head, but he also… hadn’t told them. Anxiety dug painful fingers into his forehead at the thought. It was his job to deal with House matters so that they could focus on other things. Matti wanted to come up with some brilliant fix that would allow the whole situation to be presented as though wax-sealed and stamped. Problem, solution. It had been one of Tomas Jay’s first lessons: if you’re going to ask a question, you have to be the first one to try to answer it. No punishment for wrong answers. Just… try.

So Matti, in the few spare moments of his days—which still began at dawn with swords, and still ended late with lamplight and columns of numbers, and during which he was carefully placing roadblocks in the path of Corus Vane’s recorded sabotages in order to halt the damage—was still playing with the idea that they’d find a way to turn this against the Keseys and the Vanes. He was trying to think like Luca. It was so tempting, to think that they could somehow win . Strike a blow. Trot this truth out into the light.

Matti was pulled away from his thoughts. Luca had led him over to where Sofia was holding court, glorious in a black dress, the low-cut bodice trimmed densely with gold beads and the skirt a stormcloud of chiffon. Draped over her shoulders was a scarf similar to Luca’s, in a red so bright as to be almost pink. She was embracing the trend she’d begun for all she was worth.

Maya stood next to her, bending her dark head down to Sofia’s brown one. A golden pin in the shape of a butterfly, like the one that adorned the label of Cooper wines, clung to Maya’s pile of black hair: her own Half Moon gift. They were laughing.

The twang and scrape of the instruments was beginning to cohere into music. Sofia looked up and met Matti’s eyes, and he managed a respectable bow with his hand outstretched.

Sofia collected her floating skirts, murmured something final to Maya, and stepped forward to take Matti’s hand.

“Are you having a good night?” Matti asked as they made their way to the centre of the room.

“Excellent, so far.”

They took up positions as the musicians settled into an anticipatory, sheet-music-rustling pause, during which a quiet fell over the ballroom. The clear space around them expanded like ripples from a dropped stone. Matti had to make an effort to loosen his grip on Sofia’s hand as he felt hundreds of pairs of eyes pinned to him.

The first song whispered and then hummed through its opening bars. It was a sehassa, of course: romantic and slow, to give the celebrated couple a chance to fall into each other’s arms.

“Right,” murmured Sofia, with an almost military air of resolve. She showed no inclination to fall anywhere. She was clinging to Matti’s hand and arm as though expecting a gale and intending to brace herself against it. “Shall we?”

The music swelled, and the dance began.

Matti discovered two things quickly. The first was that dancing was a lot easier when music was playing; it seemed to give invisible help to his limbs, rendering him much less clumsy than he’d feared.

The second was that it wouldn’t have done him much good to have lessons from the most accomplished master in Thesper, because Sofia Cooper was an appalling dancer.

She apologised for it as soon as her mouth was close enough to his ear. Matti, who was spending half his attention making sure he didn’t injure her and the other half marvelling at the fact that for once he was not the most physically inept person in a room, told her not to worry about it.

“Cee keeps saying that Cooper House had no choice but to become very rich indeed, because neither of us were ever going to be married on the strength of our dancing.”

The image of Cecilia tromping across the floor as though it were a trough of first-press grapes brought a smile to Matti’s face. “Is anyone?”

An answering smile that looked more genuine peeked around Sofia’s pinched brow of concentration. “That’s what I said.”

They managed to finish out the dance in something like dignity, helped by the fact that Matti was afraid to move too much in case he took a step beyond the reach of Sofia’s feet. Sofia was one of those people whose cheeks went hectically pink with exertion. The colour clashed with her scarf.

“There, you can hand me off to endanger someone else’s feet now,” she said.

Matti hesitated, wondering if that was a signal for him to gallantly insist on the next dance as well, and Sofia patted his arm with a rueful look. “I mean it. The wedding will be about us. Tonight is about everyone else. Let’s go and do our duty.”

That left Matti’s mouth dry and sour, as though he’d been eating undersweetened lemon tarts. Of course tonight was about duty.

Matti danced with Maya, and then Joyce Amberden, and then found his hand determinedly claimed by Wynn, who was surprisingly just as good a dancer as his sister Joyce. A spike of mischief prompted Matti to offer a dance to Cecilia, making sure it was one of the more energetic ones, and she laughed her way through it with verve if not grace. He remembered just in time what Luca had said about Merri’s claim on the catskill; it might have been a ploy to enter the conversation, but Merri’s face went blissfully excited when Matti led her out onto the floor and took her through the twirls. Dancing with a five-year-old was another way to make sure nobody noticed your lack of skill, Matti decided.

He offered Marko a dance next—he’d be finding salt in his shoes for days if he did something with one twin and not the other—but Marko was yawning in Tomas’s lap, and just scrunched up a tired nose at Matti’s offer, so Matti took his mother out instead. Sofia whirled unevenly past them with her hands in Maya’s.

After an hour of dancing there was a break for the crowd to gulp down water and yet more wine. It was getting late, and most of the children and older people among the guests had already retired to their rooms or been taken down the road in coaches to one of the inns nearby.

Matti decided with regret to steer clear of the Coopers’ incredible wine for the rest of the night. It was hardly going to do his coordination any favours. He tipped some water into his palm and used it to pat down his warm face and smooth back his hair.

Roland caught Matti’s eye from across the room and made a gesture with his head as he and Wynn and a few others headed over to the grand doors, which stood open to allow the crowd to spill onto the lit terrace or down into the gardens; Matti wavered, considering, but then caught sight of Luca. His best man was standing nearby, in animated conversation with a young man Matti didn’t know. Luca’s fingers were rubbing back and forth on the side of his own jaw. Matti wanted to engulf that hand in his own until it quieted.

And he could, couldn’t he?

He waved a negative to Roland and made his way over to Luca as the music restarted and the first few couples slowly began to move across the floor.

“Mr. Jay,” said the man speaking to Luca. His tone was polite enough, his bow deep enough, that he was probably not a named member of any House.

Matti nodded in return. “May I borrow my best man?”

“Of course.” The man waved a hand and moved away.

“Is there another ritual you haven’t warned me about?” Luca asked, bestowing his smile upon Matti. “I liked the last one. It involved gifts.”

“Can you dance with that attached?” Matti gestured at Luca’s sword.

“What,” said Luca, wide-eyed, “you don’t think I can control it?”

Matti swallowed a burst of exasperation that was far more affectionate than annoyed, and held out his hand.

Luca’s expression shadowed, then sharpened, then softened. It happened quickly. Matti didn’t have time to feel more than the first stirrings of uncertainty before Luca reached out and accepted his hand, and let himself be led into the dancing. It was something like a wissel-step, but simpler than the version Maya had taught Matti, with a lot of repetition and claps and turns.

“Though you’re right, I’ve never tried to do this while wearing a sword belt before,” Luca said. “How generous of you, Mr. Jay, to offer a dance to your humble best man.”

“Humble, Huna’s arse,” said Matti.

Luca laughed at him as they fell into the steps. “Now that, I’m afraid, was less generous. Someone might overhear and get the wrong impression. Quick! Steer the conversation back into polite waters. We could discuss the quality of the food. Or the music.”

“It is nice music.”

Clap, step, clap. The laughter still adorned Luca’s eyes like glittering dust. “If you say so. I can’t tell one end of a chord from another. I’m just concentrating on the rhythm.” Luca glanced down at their feet as they parted, moved through a couple of turns in their own small circles of space, and then joined hands again. “You’re doing surprisingly well at this, by the way.”

“Now who’s being ungenerous?”

“You’ve been holding out on me,” Luca intoned. “I knew it. You have a secret genius for physical coordination, and you decided to get your revenge for the nonsense with the pocket watch by asking for sword lessons and then tormenting me by pretending otherwise. What a cunning, underhanded creature you are, Mattinesh Jay.” Luca’s eyes were darting back and forth over Matti’s face as if anxious to memorise it, and the smile that arose in response to Matti’s laugh was even more breathtaking than the act of dancing. Arousal fizzed through Matti as the steps forced him to pull Luca close, almost sharing the same air, their thighs firm together.

When the dance ended, Luca was biting his lip. Matti felt hot all over.

To recapture his composure he looked anywhere but at Luca. Maya had just finished dancing with Tino Cooper, and she was giving Matti and Luca a look that Matti was too far away to read. She turned back to Tino, picking up their conversation, and then someone moved between them and Matti couldn’t see her any more.

The next song was slower. Another sehassa, or something like it: stirring and lyrical and sweet. Matti felt the fall of his heart as though the bows of the musicians were being pulled clean across his nerves. He was already anticipating the glances, the expectation that he find Sofia again instead of staying here with his hand in Luca’s where it wanted to be.

Where it should be, murmured something in the cool voice of the flute.

He should drop Luca’s hand and find his betrothed. He should put himself in the centre of this room, to be seen, instead of lurking near its edges. He should remind himself that this was the beginning of the rest of his life, a countdown of mere days to everything his family had hoped for and a chance at sleeping peacefully through the night, next to someone he might one day be able to talk himself into wanting.

“Matti.” Luca’s thumbnail dug into the soft skin of Matti’s wrist.

“I don’t want to be here,” Matti heard himself say. His voice sounded odd.

“Then we won’t be here,” Luca said at once. “Lead on. Did you want to go outside? Get some air?”

Matti shook his head, struggling. The gardens were lit with lamps. There were people outside.

“All right. Where?”

Matti didn’t know this enormous house well, but he’d already claimed a room in it—his whole family had been allocated rooms for the night, as had every member of the wedding party and several of the other guests—and he knew his way from here to there, at least.

The glances he’d been anticipating weren’t there. Nobody was looking at them. Still Matti felt a pressure on his skin like a dive into too-deep water.

Matti moved, the decision happening at the level of his muscles rather than his mind, striking out towards the closest exit. He remembered just as his arm reached its full length that he hadn’t untangled his fingers from Luca’s, but it didn’t matter. Luca was behind him, keeping pace. Then Luca was beside him, and they had ducked out of the doorway, and Matti’s own celebratory ball was already a rising roar of irrelevance behind them.