Chapter 15

CHAPTER

15

“Enough. We should stop for the day.”

Luca lowered his sword and wiped sweat from his forehead. Matti sounded half-winded, and he was bent over, breathing with his hands braced on his legs. He’d let Luca push him hard today, and Luca had been in the mood to push.

Honestly, Luca had half expected not to be working with swords at all, in these last couple of weeks before Matti’s wedding. It was hardly the best way to take advantage of their remaining time before Matti vowed himself to Sofia and became officially off-limits.

But Matti hadn’t been lying when he said he enjoyed the sword lessons. So the sword lessons continued.

And if Luca sometimes rewarded good form with a brush of his fingers against the front of Matti’s trousers, or if he tested Matti’s concentration during the basic forms by giving an explicit litany of how he’d fucked himself on his own oiled fingers the previous night… well, that was simply him exploring novel teaching methods.

“By the way,” said Matti, when he straightened up. “I have something for you. A gift.”

Luca thought vividly and immediately of the green scarf and the fading mark on his hip. Matti crossed to where his jacket was folded over the sword rack, and pulled something from one pocket, which he then held out to Luca. It looked like the kind of fuzzy ball meant to amuse a baby or a cat. Its true nature was only apparent when Luca turned it in his hands.

“Socks,” said Luca. “Congratulations, Mattinesh, you have achieved an originality in gift-giving previously only achieved by my brother, who I suspect only gives socks as a form of protest to people who don’t appreciate his taste in wine, and—actually,” as Luca’s fingertips finally caught up with his mouth, “these are lovely. I’ve never felt anything like this.”

“It’s gold-foot lambswool from the Barlow territories,” said Matti.

Luca inspected the socks with a greater degree of interest. The wool was so soft and slippery he wanted to rub his cheek against it, and it was dyed the blue of winter skies.

“For the cold, when it comes.” One of Matti’s dimples peeked through. “To prevent chilblains.”

For once nothing flippant lined itself up to emerge from Luca’s mouth. It was such a simple gesture and Matti had delivered it so casually. Luca remembered Maya with her precious basket of cherries, and how she’d spoken of Marko’s fondness for the fruit. Luca rubbed the wool between his fingers again and wondered with an aching pang if this was what it was like to be part of Matti’s family, where the language of love was these small personal details.

Was there really no way for them to hold on to a semblance of friendship, past Matti’s wedding? In ten days’ time, when Matti was married and Sofia’s bond price paid, Matti would have money enough to pay for his own sword lessons—legitimate ones. Maybe Luca could persuade him that instead of engaging someone who actually knew how to teach, he could keep Luca on. Luca was improving. They’d both said it.

Maybe Luca would manage to be satisfied with that; maybe he would somehow manage to have Matti in his life without constantly wanting to be kissed against walls and ordered around. Maybe he would be able to touch Matti, guiding him through each motion, without longing for another kind of touch entirely. Without taking what he wanted.

And maybe the snow clouds of Barlow’s winter would come and envelop Glassport in a summer’s-end blizzard.

Stop planning, Luca told himself fiercely. You’ll just disappoint yourself.

He went and took demanding hold of Matti’s shirt front. “Thank you for the socks, Mr. Jay. A very thoughtful gift. It almost makes up for the fact that I can think of three better ways that I could have worked you into a sweat this morning.”

Matti laughed and took Luca’s face in his hands. Gods, Luca was never going to get enough of the way Matti kissed him. It was like standing in the direct beam of a lantern. Deep, hot kisses, leaving no part of Luca’s mouth unexplored, until Luca was nearly gasping.

“Come over tonight,” Luca said, once he’d been released.

“Not tonight,” Matti said, rueful. He raised a hand above his shoulder and let the fingers fly wide. Maya had made the same gesture. Like the ear flicking, it seemed to be part of the Jay language of physical expression. “The daughter of one of our buyers is holding a dinner party. Maya and I have promised to show our faces.”

“House duty calls.” Luca tucked two fingers into the closest gap in Matti’s shirt, just far enough to find skin. “Tomorrow night?”

Matti reached down and closed his hand over Luca’s. Luca could hardly be blamed for seizing the opportunity to lift their joined hands to his mouth, letting his lips drag thoughtfully over Matti’s knuckle.

“Tomorrow,” Matti agreed, with a gratifying hitch in the word.

Luca went back to his boardinghouse for breakfast. He was tempted to stop by Erneska’s for raskils, but he, too, was learning what it was to be aware of how much money was left in his purse, and at least the Vaunts included breakfast in the rent. His next job through Tolliver’s wasn’t for another few days. Luca, who had always lived on an extremely generous allowance, had discovered his least favourite part of the duellist’s lifestyle: the fact that one had to rely on infrequent large payments instead of a steady income. Which meant planning. Budgeting. Doing sums.

So far Luca had chosen “just don’t buy anything extravagant and hope for the best” as his approach. So far, it was working. He’d deal with any crises as they arose. He always had his less legitimate skill set to fall back on, after all.

And he was planning to give those skills a good airing today.

Luca wrote a letter as he sat at the dining table. It was quiet. The only other person eating at that time was Daz Haslai, one of the other long-term boarders: a tiny young person with wide cheekbones and the dangling Daz earrings of those Ashfahani who declined to be named either male or female. They were half a year away from finishing their physician’s training, and their pile of books put Luca’s single sheet of paper to shame. Crumbs of daisy-cake and the occasional drip of coffee tumbled from their lips as they read, muttered, and stabbed their finger at the pages.

Dinah Vaunt refilled Luca’s cup of coffee and leaned against the table next to him, eyes unabashedly curious on his letter. Luca relaxed his hand, paused, dashed off a signature that looked nothing like his own, and then flapped a hand over the ink to dry it.

“Any exciting plans for today, Miss Vaunt?” he asked, to distract her.

“Mama’s decided we’ll be cleaning the windows and rugs, how absolutely thrilling. And I was meant to be meeting Stefan this evening, but apparently the theatre’s director is having some sort of tantrum and all the sets have to be rebuilt and repainted before the new play opens next week, so I won’t see him for days.”

“The scoundrel,” said Luca, sipping coffee. “Abandoning a lovely girl for such fripperies as paid employment. Allow me to comfort you in your hour of desolation.”

Dinah made a threatening motion with the coffee pot. She never took Luca’s flirtation seriously, and was just as likely to flirt back as to pretend offence, depending on her mood. “What about you? Going to stab anyone today?”

Across the table, Daz Haslai appeared to decide that they couldn’t study under these conditions, or possibly realise they were late for a lecture; they threw back the rest of their cup and swept out of the room with their armful of books.

Luca considered a couple of amusing lies about his plans for the day, but the truth would do just as well. “I’m looking into something for my friend. The one who’s visited me here a few times.”

“Ooh, Mattinesh Jay.” Dinah’s tongue curled around Matti’s name as though she liked the sound of it. She glanced in the direction of the kitchen before pulling out a chair and sitting next to Luca. She took a hard-boiled egg from the bowl and began to peel it. “Mr. Mattinesh Jay who’s engaged to Miss Sofia Cooper. And you’re his best man.”

“That’s right.” Luca had learned Dinah and her friends were a rich archipelago of information about the people of the city. “What else do you know? What’s the gossip about him?” he asked. “You hear everything.”

Dinah shook both salt and pepper over her denuded egg and took a bite. She chewed slowly and swallowed primly. “I’ve got ears. And eyes. If your handsome House friend Mr. Jay snapped his fingers at me, I wouldn’t be waiting around for an apprentice set painter, I can tell you that.”

Luca’s letter was dry now. He folded it carefully in three and put in inside his coat as Dinah, between bites of her egg, told him what was generally known about Matti. That he did most of the work of Jay House, which was going through a rough period at the moment—Dinah’s friend Elodie’s cousin’s husband had been laid off as a weaver from one of their workshops—but which was still talked of as a good, solid, respected House. That this marriage was obviously a business match to help shore up Jay House’s fortunes, given that everyone knew Sofia Cooper was tragically in love with the penniless son of Jay’s agent.

“And of course everyone knows he’ll challenge at the wedding.” Dinah heaved an envious sigh. “Osta’s open palms, what I’d give to be there. Don’t you feel a little bit bad for your part in it? Standing in the way of true love, all so these big Houses can keep marrying their children off for profit?”

Luca had bitten his tongue at the first mention of Adrean. “It’s the job.”

Dinah frowned in disapproval at Luca’s lack of a romantic soul. “You said you’re on business for the Jays today? Is it something for the wedding?”

“In a way,” said Luca. “I’m hoping I can find a wedding gift.”

“This is Glassport,” said Dinah, lofty with local pride. “You’ll find something. Where are you going to start?”

Luca beamed. “The library.”

True to his word—in this instance, at least—Luca started his day at the Glassport City Library. He’d not been inside any of Cienne’s libraries since he left school, but he remembered the atmosphere, a kind of busy, ponderous quiet that made him want to drop crockery on the polished floor simply for the satisfaction of the noise. The entry hall led to a pair of crossed staircases beneath a huge, arch-shaped clear window, and through a door in the centre Luca could glimpse an even larger room full of desks and lamps. In the middle of the entry hall was a circular desk.

“Excuse me,” Luca said to the person seated behind it. “Do you have newspaper archives here?”

This man did not look like Luca’s idea of a librarian. He was large, with hair the colour of cured leather pulled back in a rough ponytail, and he had an attractively stubborn square jaw.

“We certainly do.” The librarian fumbled for a pair of glasses and put them on. “Can I help you with something?” The eyes behind the glasses swept over Luca in an appreciative way that Luca wanted to pull into his lungs like the smell of bread.

“Oh,” Luca said, just the wrong side of suggestive. “I do hope so.”

Luca quickly learned that the large librarian’s name was Jem, and also that librarians and archivists fell under the auspices of Ibur, like bookbinders and printers, although in some of the more northern cities they aligned themselves with Hazi instead. Jem himself had little patience for writers and their god.

Luca nodded his way earnestly through this explanation, admiring the thickness of Jem’s thighs as the man led him into the newspaper archives and showed him the indexing system. Under normal circumstances he’d be flirting with real intent. Jem was precisely his type. But he felt only a mild, dismissible spike of interest. Trying to imagine Jem’s large hands—so careful with the index cards—on his body, he ended up thinking longingly of Matti instead.

“Ships, lost at sea.” Jem handed over a small stack of cards. “We haven’t indexed by anything else, so you’ll have to look through them to find the ones mentioning Fataf, but if it’s in the Gazette archives you can assume it’s relevant to Glassport society in some way.”

“I’m sure I’ll manage.” Luca gifted Jem with a smile. “Thank you so much.”

He’d told the librarian he was a research assistant from a university in Sanoy. At least that persona matched the shabbiness of Luca’s coat. When Jem had disappeared back to the main desk, Luca laid that coat over the back of a chair—Glassport’s weather was cooling, as the summer grudgingly made way for autumn, but it was warm and stuffy in this archive room—and set about finding what he needed.

Maya had been right. The Isadonna was the most recent of five ships to be lost with all hands, and never recovered, in the crossing between the port cities of Fataf and Glassport. All five of them had been mentioned in the Glassport Gazette, even if it was only a throwaway inch of space in the shipping news column. Luca jotted down their names and the dates of the reported wrecks, and didn’t linger in the room. The quiet was making his ears itch.

He did linger at the entry desk on the way out, leaning on the inlaid leather surface of it to thank Jem again. No harm in leaving a good impression.

From there Luca made his way down to the dockside neighbourhoods, where the streets narrowed and the harbour was visible in glinting slices, the air thicker with the smell of salt and fish. He asked directions to the harbourmaster’s office, where he changed his cover story to that of a put-upon clerk from one of the larger insurance companies, here with a letter of instruction from his superiors.

“I might need to come back and look at the details of ships that were merely crippled, or had their cargo damaged to the point where it couldn’t be sold on, but for now I’m just looking at those which have sunk without trace. Five in all. The Good Hearth, the Lucretia, the—”

“Harbour records are public access,” said the harbourmaster’s secretary, a bored-looking blond boy with the stained fingertips that bespoke a golden-tar habit. He barely glanced at the letter that Luca had taken such pains with at the breakfast table, and jerked his thumb in the direction of an open door. “Help yourself. Hope you’ve got dates, ’cause otherwise you’ll be paging through the stuff until you go blind.”

Luca ducked his head with the impatient gratitude of someone whose job depended on not making trouble, and scurried through the door with a mild jab of disappointment that it hadn’t been more of a challenge. When he located the records room, he could see what the boy had meant. The harbourmaster’s records filled a room cramped with shelves, each one holding a series of large, thick leather-bound books.

The records were, indeed, arranged by date. Nobody was watching Luca; there was nobody to see if he went straight for the ill-fated Isadonna and her cargo of black libelza wool, but some mixture of mischief and pride made him seek and write down the same details for the other four ships.

Date of voyage lodgement. Date of leaving Fataf. Expected date of arrival in Glassport. Date ship classified as lost. Name of House financing the voyage, if applicable. Name of House from whom the ship was hired.

After a moment’s thought, Luca took down one of the newest record books, which covered the week he himself had arrived in Glassport. It took longer to find what he was looking for this time, but eventually he found a single entry noting that the Lady Jenny had arrived on a return voyage from Elluthe, having been hired from Lior House for the use of Jessamy House.

“Hah,” Luca said to the empty room. “Maybe someone is moving a lot of parts after all.”

As he was about to flick the book closed, Luca’s eye snagged on the name of Mantel House. He checked the name of the shipping House, too, and smiled. This room was about as far as Luca’s vague planning had taken him, but the next step had just suggested itself.

He bought a lunch of spiced fish and onions wrapped in flatbread from a street vendor, then made his way back to the boardinghouse, where he changed his worn clothes for a much nicer shirt and a navy blue jacket that he’d been given to stand swordguard at a naming ceremony. Luca’s wardrobe had expanded in odd directions since he’d arrived in Glassport. He let his fingers brush over the waistcoat in forest-green satin, cool and perfectly cut and never worn, that he would don to fulfil his duties as Matti’s best man.

Dinah and her mother were in the courtyard, Dinah clearly relieving her feelings in regards to Stefan by whacking the daylights out of several rugs. Luca indulged in an action that would have lost him his precious canal-view room, if he were caught, and picked the lock of another boarder’s room in order to liberate Mr. Heughnessy’s spare glasses from his bedside table. Heughnessy was an elderly teacher, on the verge of retirement, who loved to tell stories about his travels and about his large, ungrateful, disappointing family. Luca had spent a few evenings in the man’s room, being a good audience and drinking tea. He knew exactly where the glasses were—and the bottle of hair oil as well.

Soberly clad, hair slicked down, document bag slung over his shoulder, Luca retraced his steps a few blocks, back in the direction of the harbour. He stopped in front of a large, square, redbrick building that stood just shy of a street corner. The faded lettering across the front of the building proclaimed LIOR .

Luca paused outside the front door to slip the glasses on. He took a breath and let his brother’s persona settle over him. The playacting at the library and the harbour office had been more for fun and deniability than anything else. Public access was public access, and there was nothing incriminating or unusual in what Luca had discovered so far. This would be the really fun part.

He didn’t bother to knock. He pushed the door open and strode inside.

The ground floor was a warren of desks and people and squat brick pillars in place of supporting walls. Luca imagined a wooden rod holding his head atop his spine and stalked towards the desk directly in front of the entrance.

“Hello. I’m here on behalf of Mantel House. Who can show me the way to your client records room?”

“Sorry, what do you need with our records?”

The girl behind the desk had an astonishing pile of red-blond hair that clashed badly with her yellow shirt. Mr. Heughnessy’s glasses were not strong, but Luca could already feel a strain behind his eyes as he focused on her face. He tried to channel that into an expression of impatience.

“Nothing I want to explain three times. Who am I speaking to?”

“My name is Erica Lior,” she said, vocally holding her House membership out like a shield.

“Very well, Miss Lior. I want to speak to your Head of House.”

“He’s not available right now.” Erica rang a bell on her desk and an even younger woman dashed up. “Fetch Uncle Dan,” Erica said. She was trying to hold eye contact with Luca, but Luca let his gaze sweep over the room and his lip twitch towards his nose as though he were finding the entire scene wanting but would never be so vulgar as to say so aloud.

The next person to stride up to the central desk, where they were beginning to gather an audience of sidelong glances, was a burly man with a brown waistcoat and the general air of a relaxed highwayman.

“Danforth Lior,” he introduced himself. “What seems to be the problem?”

“My name is Persemaine Mantel. My mother-in-law is Genevieve Mantel.” The two Liors exchanged a look that Luca felt was promisingly alarmed. “You may know her as the woman who is currently considering her options for when our shipping contract comes up for renewal.”

“Mr. Mantel,” said Lior, with a new slathering of respect over his voice. “We are quite used to doing business with Mantel House’s agents in Glassport—”

“I’m quite sure you are. And I had quite assumed that my personal presence here now, to audit the records of your House’s work on behalf of my own, would emphasise for you the seriousness with which my Head of House takes her contractual relationships.”

Luca was raising his voice, even as he hammered all the personality out of it beyond the spirit of disapproval. Their surreptitious audience had become one where people were pausing halfway across the floor or looking up from their own conversations in order to watch.

“Is there some particular concern?”

“Oh, certainly, I’ll just shout my business on your public floor for the world to hear, shall I?”

Lior was beginning to look grimly flustered. “Perhaps if you come this way, sir, to my office—”

Sir. Luca had this one in hand. He heaved a sigh, now enjoying himself thoroughly. “My time, sir, is both limited and valuable. I’m sure you understand that. Or perhaps”—with a glance up and down the man’s outfit, which if Luca was honest was perfectly unobjectionable, if rather dull—“you do not.”

Behind the desk, Erica Lior blanched. Her uncle weathered it better. “Our client records are stored on the next floor,” he said, and gestured Luca to a corner staircase with an open arm.

Luca steered his haughty gait towards it. “And you keep duplicates offsite, I would hope.” He sniffed.

Danforth Lior knew how to handle himself in front of a representative of one of Thesper’s most prosperous Houses. He managed to keep his face straight as he led Luca through the building, though his temper manifested itself in the force with which he shoved the door of the record room open.

A girl wearing trousers and a lavender tunic was atop a stepladder on one side of the room. At the bang of the door hitting the wall, she jumped, and a pile of papers and folders slid from her arms and fell to the floor, where it slithered in every direction like she’d dropped a jar of papery snakes.

“Rikke,” Lior barked. “Itsa’s crown, girl, will you get hold of yourself?”

Rikke climbed quickly down. She was skinny and coltish with two plaits of Harbekan white-blond hair. “Sorry, I’m sorry.”

“You’ll give Mr. Mantel whatever assistance he requires,” Lior ordered. He nodded at Luca and then strode away, transparently relieved that Luca was someone else’s problem now.

Luca caught the hastily stifled poison on the girl Rikke’s face as she watched Danforth Lior leave. Just as hastily, he dropped the Persemaine expression from his own. He’d replaced it with something a lot warmer by the time Rikke looked at him.

“Here, let me give you a hand,” he said, and moved forward to start scooping up papers.

Rikke was nearly smiling by the time they’d set all the paper on a table. “Mantel House? I like your mirth-flower soap.”

“Thank you, Rikke. It’s always nice to hear that our products are appreciated.” Luca jerked his head towards the door. “ He doesn’t seem the appreciative type, in general.”

“No,” said Rikke. “No, he isn’t.”

Luca smiled and levelled a sympathetic look at her over the top of his stolen glasses. It made his eyes feel better. “Some people don’t realise how hard clerks work, do they?”

It was wonderful, Luca thought five minutes later, how happy people were to talk about themselves, and how much you could steer them into doing for you while the talking was taking place. In addition to mirth-flower soap, Rikke Galoys loved and had strong opinions about raskils; she swore by Agate Lane Bakery, and made a dismissive snort at the mention of Erneska’s. She had worked as primary archiving clerk for nearly two years and she was not, obviously, a named member of Lior House.

“Mama was, though.”

“Oh?” Luca asked, encouraging, as she passed him down a thick folder of records. She did not seem to care at all that none of what Luca had asked for so far related in any way to Mantel House. “What happened?”

“She had a screaming row or seven with Grandpa Giles. She went for an outdoor wedding, to enrage him—said she’d rather wear a name with no status than wear his for a moment longer—and Dad loved her enough to go along with it.”

An outdoor wedding, so named because it involved someone leaving their House and not entering another, was remarkably rare. Most people married in, not out . Luca gave an appreciative nod. “So what are you doing back here working for them?”

Another almost-smile. “Enraging her, ” Rikke said. “Or mending bridges. Depends who you ask.”

Soon Luca was ensconced at a table with records spread in front of him, taking yet more notes as Rikke re-sorted and re-filed her mess of dropped paper. He found the records relating to the final voyage of the Isadonna, ship of Lior House, contracted out to Jay House. He took down the names of its crew members and some of the details of the contract, which had been signed by—yes—Corus Vane, on behalf of his employer.

The very first record of the Lady Jenny, which took Luca and Rikke nearly half an hour to track down, showed it entering Glassport on a short trip from Port Gull, several months after the wreck of the Isadonna . The client listed for that voyage was Kesey House.

Sometimes people were just lazy enough, Luca thought. Something sweet and pleased happened in his gut, like a trickle of new-brewed cider.

The records relating to Lior’s purchase of their ships were, Rikke told him, probably in a cabinet in the acquisitions office. Luca waved her offer to fetch it aside; he didn’t actually need it, and it would call attention to what he was digging into. He set himself to taking down the Lady Jenny ’s details and crew members instead. That done, he asked idly if Lior did any work for Martens House—no, was the answer, the Martenses had their long-term shipping contract with Kenninck House—and then tapped his finger on the folder for a while before asking for all the contracts with Mantel House for the past year. Other than providing cover, they’d be useless to his present purpose, but maybe he’d find something he could use to needle his brother with later. Perse hated not being the most knowledgeable person in a room.

Despite the fact that this was a lot like schoolwork, like House work, Luca’s enjoyment was undiminished. Somehow it made a difference to be doing it on someone else’s behalf. And nobody was standing over his shoulder, forcing him to look at rows and columns of figures and insisting that it was easy, that it was essential for Luca to understand, and if he’d just concentrate —

This, though. This was people. This was disguises, and slipperiness, and stories. Luca could handle those any day.