Chapter 16

CHAPTER

16

Six days more.

Matti regarded Luca down the length of two swords, trying to remember five things at once and knowing he was probably failing at three of them. But Luca’s tongue wet his lips in a blatant attempt at distraction and Matti couldn’t bring himself to care overmuch. He was going to enjoy himself here, now, while he could.

Six days more.

“You’re not concentrating, Mr. Jay.”

“I am,” Matti protested, not quite truthfully. He would concentrate for hours on Luca’s mouth, if given the option. The previous night he’d watched that mouth stretch blissfully around his cock, then let it gasp broken words against his own as Luca worked himself to completion between Matti’s oiled thighs.

“Show me a Sugeen Graze,” Luca commanded.

Matti forced his attention back to the present. He took a deep breath and attacked, engaging Luca’s blade from the distal end and concentrating on the angle as he stepped closer, trying to keep a steady pressure as Luca resisted. He didn’t fool himself that Luca wasn’t making it easy for him, but there was still a pang of satisfaction as Matti finished the move, ending up with Luca’s blade forced sideways in a way that would take a few seconds to recover from. Luca nodded and stepped back.

Luca thought he was silly for wanting to keep going with these lessons, but Matti still loved them for what they were, as well as the chance to tease and talk, to drink in Luca’s graceful competence, to hear Luca laugh.

And there were other advantages.

“I still don’t think I’ve quite grasped how to direct the angle from the shoulder,” Matti said. “You should take your shirt off and show me again.”

“ Should I,” murmured Luca. “Is that what your money buys you this morning?”

Matti held Luca’s dancing gaze, feeling desire flare in his blood. “Yes, I think it does,” he said. “Well?”

Luca laughed. “Land a point using that graze and I’ll take it off.”

Matti assumed a ready stance and Luca did the same. Matti was still mustering a verbal riposte that wasn’t something too raw and too honest— I could look at you forever, I would do this forever —when the door into Tolliver’s main office opened and a slender man stepped through it, then paused once he’d let it close quietly behind him. Luca’s back was to the door. He didn’t notice, didn’t turn around.

The newcomer wore a grey coat, high-collared and severe, open over a dark blue waistcoat with pearl buttons that gleamed expensively in the light, and a pair of matching grey trousers whose lines had the heaviness of good wool. His slicked-back hair was the colour of old bronze and his face was familiar.

“Concentrate,” said Luca in his most laughing-lecturing tone. “You’re not looking at me, Mattinesh. I don’t believe you’re serious about winning your prize at all.”

The man behind Luca rolled his eyes. “Oh, forgods’— Lucastian Harte .”

There was a clatter as Luca’s sword fell to the ground. It was a sound so familiar that Matti looked at his own hand, momentarily confused at the continuing presence of the hilt there. Usually he was the one doing the dropping.

Matti thought about saying something. He thought about feeling something. He felt… nothing. His mind held a spreading numb blankness like a pool of ice water.

Luca had spun when the name was uttered. He was staring at the newcomer, though he kept darting little looks at Matti over his shoulder, and he looked pale, as though the ice water had come for him, too, and had started with his face. Which was to an uncanny extent the same as the face on the grey-suited man.

“Perse,” said Luca. “What—what are you doing here?”

“I’d say I’m surprised,” said the man thus addressed, gesturing at the sword rack with an efficient flick like a backhand slap delivered to the air, “but honestly, Luca, I’m afraid I was expecting something like this.”

Luca screwed his eyes shut, then opened them. “ Perse . I need you to leave. Just—go down to the street. I’ll meet you there. I need a few minutes.”

Perse looked from Luca to Matti and back. “Fine. A few,” he said, frostily. “But I’ll do my waiting on the other side of this door, just in case you get any foolish ideas about sneaking out the back.”

Then he was gone, back through the door, and Luca looked at Matti and Luca’s expression changed, twisted, at whatever he saw in Matti’s face.

“Harte,” Matti said, trying it out.

“I—”

“Lucastian Harte.”

He knew the name. He’d never attached a face to it, though; he’d never had any reason to.

“Matti.” Luca was standing with his palms outstretched like someone trying to soothe a horse.

For a sudden furious moment, lightning emerging from nowhere to herald the storm’s arrival, all that Matti could see was a broken pocket watch with an elaborate swirling H on its cover.

“Pick up your sword.”

“Matti—”

“I decide when we’re done,” Matti said, the words like shards of glass in his mouth. “ Pick it up .”

Slowly, Luca crouched and closed his fingers around the sword hilt. He kept his eyes on Matti as he did so. He kept them on Matti as he stood.

Matti felt as though something colder than metal had been set between his ribs and was being pressed, inch by inch, into his heart. Duelling had always seemed like a pleasant, archaic pastime, something in the realm of ceremony and exercise. A series of forms to be learned so that one could face an opponent, smiling, and have the satisfaction of the dance: attack and parry, feint and score.

But no—that wasn’t what swords were for. That had never been what they were for. Swords were for the moments like this, when all of Matti burned with the grim desire to inflict harm. He remembered, like being struck by a reflection lunging out of a mirror, the first time he had stood in this room—furious and embarrassed about being conned into betraying his family’s trust—and thrown his anger at Luca down the length of two swords.

Matti had learned a few things since then.

He picked an attack at random. The precise pattern of his feet and the calculated angle of the sword tip were things he might have been proud of, an hour ago.

Luca turned him away with a mastery that seemed like contempt.

Matti gritted his teeth and attacked again. More force, this time. More emotion. Less control. He wanted to cry and to shout, and to be anything other than this lumbering ball of need to damage. But one of the things Matti had learned was exactly how outclassed he was when Luca was fighting at his true capacity, and somehow it made him angrier when Luca just kept parrying and parrying, turning him easily aside with no attempt to strike any blows of his own, driving home Matti’s worthlessness.

“What?” Matti demanded. “You’ll only fight properly when it suits you?”

“I don’t want to fight,” Luca said. Clash . “I want to talk.”

“Oh, I’m sure you do.” Matti’s heart ached. “Do you think I’m going to let you spin me another story?”

Luca lowered his brows and abruptly turned a parry into a movement Matti had never seen before, so sinuous and incredibly quick that Matti knew it was going to disarm him. Knowing it didn’t help at all.

Now it was Matti’s sword, clattering. Something about the showy care with which Luca then crouched and placed his own sword on the ground—the consideration shown to a length of lifeless metal—stuck in Matti’s gullet and burned there.

“Stop it,” Luca said, impatient. “If you’ll just let me explain—”

Matti didn’t want to listen. Matti wanted to fight.

He didn’t realise what he was doing until it was happening. His hands felt iron-gloved as he shoved forward. If he was a mediocre duellist then he was no wrestler at all, but along with his height and weight he had the advantage of absolute surprise, and Luca tripped backwards clumsily when they collided. Matti had enough time to realise that their legs were too close together, too entangled, before he found himself toppling forward as well.

Luca gave a short cry that sounded more surprised than pained when he hit the floor, followed by a more breathless oof as part of Matti’s weight landed on him. Matti had managed to get one arm out to catch himself as he fell, but the angle was bad, and jarring force fled up from his wrist. He put his weight on it anyway, propped awkwardly, one of his thighs still between both of Luca’s.

With his free hand he hit Luca across the face.

“Ow— fuck, ” yelped Luca. He wriggled an arm in between them and tried to shove Matti off. When that didn’t work, he kicked.

Matti’s head was a haze of hot vengeance and something like a silent, dismayed scream. His body, however, was an idiot thing that knew exactly how it felt about having Luca writhing beneath it. It produced a quick surge of arousal, followed by an equally strong coil of disgust and hurt.

“All right,” Luca panted. “Fine. I deserved that. Can I explain now? Look, I know, I know I didn’t—”

“No,” said Matti, cutting him off.

“Will you just—”

“ No .” He wasn’t going to give Luca a chance to drop more lies into his ears. He lifted the hand again; Luca flinched. Still Matti’s body was responding, like a wheel set spinning and never told to stop, to the sensation of Luca stretched out beneath him. Still he wanted to drag Luca’s hand above his head by the wrist, with its capable tendons, and bite Luca’s mouth. Luca’s coloured cheeks and parted lips, the sound of his breath, the vulnerability of his fingers… somehow all of this now appeared, sickeningly, like a manipulation.

And how very easily Matti had let himself be manipulated, even with his eyes wide open.

Matti shoved himself away and climbed to his feet. His wrist ached. The words that burst from him were an accusation directed as much at himself as at Luca.

“I should have known, I suppose. When I first met you, you were running a con! On me!” A new, awful chill grabbed Matti all over. “Of course. You knew who I was. Even then.”

“I didn’t!”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I didn’t .” Luca was on his feet as well. He grabbed a handful of his own hair, looking desperate and furious with frustration. He was a good actor. He was almost wasted on the fabric trade.

“What was that business with the Vanes and the Keseys, anyway? Sowing discord, weakening my House? You just happened to overhear a conversation at a ceremony.” Nausea was rising in Matti’s throat. “You could have planted those papers yourself.”

“Of course I fucking didn’t,” Luca snapped. “You know I didn’t, you were there, Matti, think .”

Matti couldn’t think. All his thoughts jabbed at him like needles. “Harte House is about to be in direct competition with mine, and the heir apparent shows up in Glassport and—and wheedles his way into my bed? Is that it? Listens to me talk about all my business troubles, ” he spat, throat aching with horror. “Good information, for the bargain price of letting me fuck you a couple of times.”

“Matti,” Luca said, strained. “No. I came here—I—it had nothing to do with any of this. Nothing to do with your House, or mine.”

“Then why did you lie ?” Matti shouted.

Luca’s lips parted. Nothing emerged from them.

The last piece of hope in Matti had shattered. Nothing was left but this shell of anger, hardening over the well of terrible hurt. “Why else would you be here, giving me lessons, pretending you need my money? You don’t need it. Everyone knows how well Harte House is doing.”

“Just like everyone knows that Jay House is only going through a rough period?” Luca flung back.

Matti’s pulse drummed in his ears. That was a threat.

Luca stood straighter, shoulders back. He pressed his advantage. “I lied about my name. You’ve been lying to everyone for years. You’re just too hypocritical to face the fact that your family is running a con greater than anything I ever pulled in my short, stupid career. The Jays are good at seeming .”

Matti struggled to hold himself steady, trying to absorb that. There was something in Luca’s face that he recognised from their lessons. Luca had seen a weakness in Matti’s guard and was going to use it to prove a point.

This is going to hurt, Matti told himself. Brace.

But he’d never had any hope at all of protecting himself from Luca’s attacks.

“You lied for them and you lied to them, and for what? So you could have a life so fucking boring and narrow that you had to pay someone to be your friend.”

“Be quiet.” Matti could barely force the air out. He wished, horribly, that he hadn’t caught the flash of naked regret in Luca’s eyes as those words erupted like bile beneath them. “Be quiet.”

Luca shifted his weight and touched his own mouth. His hand formed a fist. His eyes flashed with something uglier. “And you’re right: at least you knew I was a con. You knew I was a liar. You’re angry because you were so desperate to believe in the story you told yourself about who I was. About what this— Fuck .” Luca half spun, as though the ground were too warm for his feet to touch it for long.

“Yes. Fine,” Matti said. “I’m naive and boring and can’t see my enemies when they’re in front of my eyes.” Luca flinched. Matti was viciously glad. “You and Corus Vane can both be very pleased with yourselves.”

“Now you’re being ridiculous. I’m not—”

“Not what?”

“Matti—”

“People I know call me Matti. You can call me Mr. Jay.” Matti found steel in his spine, at last, and let it hold him rigid. “And I think you should leave now, Mr. Harte .”

Luca’s face moved through five different expressions. It ended on a snarl. “Fine,” he spat. He left the practice sword on the floor, snatched up his own sheathed sword from the table, and didn’t bother to attach it to his belt, just clutched it in his hand as he wrenched the door open and was gone through it.

“Luca—” Matti heard, and then someone running down the stairs, and then nothing.

Matti stood in the middle of the practice room, bathed in sunlight. His hands were trembling, his head still light with fury. His eyes didn’t want to focus. He stood and waited for the panic to hit, waited for his breath to race away with itself and for his heart to do its best at exploding.

None of that happened. He just stood, once again ice-water numb and shivering all over. He counted the number of swords in the wall rack: twenty-nine. He counted them from the other end: twenty-eight. Thinking was like trying to walk in a straight line after leaping off a carousel.

He had to cope with this, somehow. He had to fix it. It was his own stupid fucking mistake, and he should have known better; he should have known the gods hadn’t meant to be kind when they shoved Luca into his path. Luca had stood here months ago and said, I can do this for you, and Matti’s mouth had gone dry at the outrageous slippery beauty of him, and Matti had forgotten to be careful.

Matti had indulged himself. Look where it had gotten him.

A throat cleared itself. Hardy Tolliver was hovering in the doorway that Luca had left open.

“Uh. Mr. Jay. Is everything all right?” Tolliver’s voice said that he knew it wasn’t, but couldn’t think of what else to say.

“It will be,” Matti said. “Somehow.”

After all, another lie could hardly make things worse at this point.

The raskil on Luca’s plate smelled of warm butter. Cheese seeped from its coils. The golden-brown pastry looked so crisp and good as to be mythical, something conjured by the gods to tempt hungry travellers.

Luca had never felt less hungry in his life.

He looked up and met his brother’s eyes across the table. After Persemaine had followed Luca’s stormy exit out of Tolliver’s and down onto the street, he’d insisted on the two of them finding somewhere to talk over breakfast. Perse claimed not to have eaten yet, but he hadn’t touched his own raskil either. Luca suspected his brother was labouring under the delusion that Luca wouldn’t yell in public. Certainly Perse wouldn’t raise his voice in public. You could probably count the number of times Perse had raised his voice in his entire life on your hands, and you’d still have enough fingers left to play cards with.

Perse should have known him better, after twenty-five years. Luca would yell if he felt like it. And right now he wanted to open his mouth and let his mortified fury surge out like a wave, but he kept his teeth clenched, kept it in.

If only he’d been able to exert the same kind of control over his voice in the practice room. Guilt at what he’d said had poured over him along with the sound of his own words, but what was he going to do, snatch them back? Some blows were unstoppable, once you’d begun.

“How did you find me?” Luca asked.

“There are only so many sword agencies. And you’re not entirely unpredictable. And in addition to that, two days ago my mother-in-law got a deeply apologetic letter assuring her of Lior House’s earnest desire to keep Mantel House’s business, and begging to know what concerns arose that necessitated her sending me to Glassport to audit their records.”

“Oh,” said Luca.

“ Oh, ” said Perse. “That did seem to have your fingerprints all over it. And once I got here, Mr. Tolliver was all too happy to tell me where his newest, redheaded duellist could be found most mornings.”

“And so you stuck your nose in where it wasn’t wanted.” A certain amount of irony tried to crowd Luca’s chest. “Did you really have to stand there and use my fucking name?”

“Yes, actually.” Perse sat up straighter. “That’s what I’m—”

“ Fuck, ” Luca burst out, the disaster crashing over him anew. “Of all the people you could have— Fuck, Perse. Well done. You always did have a real fucking gift for ruining a good thing.”

“Don’t be childish.” Perse frowned. “Is this about the man at the agency? Why would he care about your name?”

Luca choked out a laugh. His heel was tap-tap-tapping against the floor. “Because it means I’ve been spying on him, in the hopes of acquiring information about the wool industry that I can use to benefit my own House. Or take down his. Because there aren’t enough people trying to do that already.”

“Wool? Luca, you’re not making any sense.”

“I know! It doesn’t make sense, but he’s talking about it like he’s heard credible rumours. Perse, we’re not—I mean, Mama’s not branching Harte House out into wool production, is she?”

Perse looked nonplussed. Luca felt a trickle of relief. He hadn’t thought the prospect was likely, but if their mother had been considering anything of the sort, Perse would have known about it. Harte was no longer the House to which Perse owed his first allegiance, but he was uncomfortably omniscient and, more importantly, remained in close touch with their mother.

“Why would she do that?”

“I don’t know. I thought perhaps it might have been one of Uncle Raibert’s whistleweed schemes.”

“Mama might let Raibert talk her into the occasional unwise experiment, but she has more than enough sense to draw the line at diversifying the House into a whole second line of products. And you’ve got some nerve to talk about schemes,” Perse added.

Luca’s jaw twitched. “I know.”

“Sometimes I wish I’d been born the one with the same personality as Mama’s favourite brother. It’s the only reason I can think of why you’ve been so indulged.”

The restlessness in Luca’s legs crested. With great difficulty, he forced his hands flat on his thighs, pushing down, keeping himself from standing up and walking away. This was the usual point in any conversation with Perse where Luca got bored and angry and stormed out, making sure to get the last word, but failing to gain satisfaction from it. Perse’s icy silences could strike you in the back of the neck, like a stone from a slingshot, as you were leaving the room.

“Indulged?”

“Yes, Luca. Indulged. She let you continually duck out of les sons and play at swords, and she told everyone to be patient with you, that you’d come around in time. And then when the time did come for you to finally grow up and start spending time on proper tasks, you just—I mean, do you even know what Mama had to do, to get you out of that idiotic situation you created with Andri Baudrain? Not to mention his entire Guild?”

“I—”

“Of course you don’t,” said Perse, withering. “You skipped off to the seaside and left your mess for other people to clean up. As per usual.”

Luca’s shoulder ached with potential as he imagined pulling his sword and having the point to Perse’s neck, table and bakery patrons be damned. His brother would probably just curl his lip and tell Luca not to be foolish. There’d be none of that admiration that had lit Matti’s eyes when Luca first demonstrated the basic forms.

Matti . Another tide of anger and despair rose in Luca’s throat and then ebbed, leaving him with roughness and the taste of salt.

Luca braced himself. This was it. He hadn’t run far enough or lied well enough. The consequences of his own stupid actions had taken their time in pursuit, but they’d caught up with him now, and they were about to close over him like the lid of an airless box. He said, “What did she do, then?”

“Pardon?”

Luca looked his older brother in the eye. He and Perse looked terribly, amusingly alike. Everyone had always said so. Perse’s hair looked darker because he used oil to keep it smooth and flat, where Luca let it leap as it pleased. Perse dressed in sober layers and wore glasses, and Perse could add up a column of numbers as easy as blinking, and Perse was the disapproving bane of Luca’s existence.

But he was, as much as Luca writhed against the idea, right about this. Luca was lazy. Luca had failed, and failed, and disappointed, and then run away because it was the easiest thing to do.

“What did Mama have to do?”

“Apart from repaying the Guild of Artificers twice over for materials and labour costs, and making a gift of new silk rugs for their Guildhall?” A pointed eyebrow rose. “Baudrain House now holds the glassware contract for the school of chemistry at the university. Mama called in a favour with Genevieve, she’s got a lot of contacts there.”

Luca winced. Jacquelle Harte hoarded favours like a gold-sprite from a myth. His mother would hold it over his head for years, if she’d had to waste one of them on him. And yet… “She made deals? That’s it, no charges laid, it’s all forgiven?”

“And forgotten,” Perse said firmly.

Luca’s cheeks burned. “Margot Baudrain saw me. She wouldn’t have kept it quiet.”

“No charges means no crime,” said Perse. “Oh, there was some talk. Youthful spirits. An unfortunate lark, taken too far.” He spread his hands in a what-did-you-expect? kind of gesture.

It was too easy. Surely. Surely it wasn’t enough.

Then again, the crushing bad luck of having Perse walk in at that exact moment, with Luca’s name on his lips… that had the scent of the gods to it, of past deeds coming due. Kusi had been waiting for Luca to build something he treasured so that she could raise an eyebrow and break it, as Luca had broken something of hers. The gods liked that kind of symmetry.

Please say we’re even now, Luca thought. Prayed. I haven’t got much left to lose.

Luca said, uneasy, “The last person who stole from Andri Baudrain was found with two broken arms.”

“And I’ve no doubt they were a common thief. This is different,” said Perse, impatient. “There’s no point in pretending otherwise.”

Money, and power, and a weighty name. These things had protected Luca even in his absence. Luca wondered what would have happened to Luca Piere, duellist and con artist, if he’d been the one to be glimpsed in the act of escaping from Baudrain’s sprawling garden.

But nobody without a rich House’s protection would be that stupid, would they? That was the point of the broken bones. And yet it had seemed like a game, at the time. Luca hadn’t truly believed there would be any consequences to his actions until he’d locked eyes with Baudrain’s daughter, as he was halfway over the garden wall, and seen the surprised recognition on her face.

“Why do you think I’m here, tracking you down?” Perse added.

“Because your adopted House doesn’t need you to do anything useful?” Luca heard the nastiness slide off his tongue.

Perse pushed his glasses up his nose. “Because you can stop all this melodramatic silliness and come home, Luca. I was trying to show you that, when I used your real name instead of whatever false thing you’ve been living under. It’s all been fixed. Nobody’s going to call a magistrate on you, and you won’t be hauled up in front of the Guild of Artisans either. Your housebreaking stunt can be laughed off as the childish prank it was, and you can start doing your job.”

“I have a job here.” Luca’s lips were numb.

“Doing what? Physical labour? Giving sword lessons to anyone ignorant enough to believe you’re anything but a dilettante?”

“I’m not leaving Glassport,” Luca snapped.

“Luri’s thumbs, Lucastian, will you just—”

“Won’t even swear by Huna any more, will you?”

Perse rubbed his forehead. “Gods give me strength. Luca. Little though you may think it, I care about your well-being. I care about your future, and yes, the future of Harte House. I didn’t throw aside every scrap of loyalty to our family when I got married, though the extent to which you resent me for it would seem to suggest you think I did.”

“I,” Luca said, and swallowed past something that was untrue. He did resent Perse. For doing something unexpected, when he’d always been the stable one, the dull one, the one who stayed within the lines. For vacating the manacles of his illustrious future and leaving Luca to step into them. For making Luca the heir apparent, when it was the last thing Luca was suited for. “I don’t completely hate you,” Luca muttered.

“I’m still your brother. I’m simply trying to help you see sense.” Perse’s stolid gaze bored into Luca. “Help me see your side, then. What have you managed to get yourself embroiled in, here, that’s so important?”

Stuck with no alley to walk down but that of the truth, Luca explained. Not the part about the pocket watch con, and not the part where he and Matti had begun their relationship by ostensibly blackmailing each other. Not the part where he’d kissed Matti in the warm dawn and Matti had ordered him to be silent and Matti had danced with Luca at his Half Moon Ball and then made love to Luca instead of going to his betrothed’s bed, and Luca had felt something inside himself shift and crumble, terrible and wonderful, and now he was barely holding himself together against the thought of how badly he’d fucked this all up.

He left out the investigations he’d been doing into the Isadonna ’s fate; that was personal, that was for Matti . And, damn it, if Luca had been thinking clearly in the practice room, he would have tried to blurt out his half-baked findings when Matti was accusing him of—everything. Not that Matti had let him say much, by the end.

But Luca told his brother about the sword lessons, and the fact that he was engaged as Matti’s best man, and most of what they’d discovered about Corus Vane’s treachery and the Kesey fraud.

When Luca was done, Perse stared. His jaw looked as though it were considering dropping, which was a lot of facial expression for Perse.

Perse said, “Mattinesh Jay?”

“I didn’t know he was—anyone!” Luca said. “It might sound ridiculous, but…”

“Oh, I believe you. I have complete faith that you’ve never paid a jot of attention to any of Mama’s and Raibert’s attempts to teach you the basic facts pertinent to the House you will someday be the Head of.”

Luca pressed his hands more firmly against his legs, and his feet against the floor. Part of the action was reminding himself that his feet could touch the floor; that he was not a small child, legs dangling, making mutinous fork patterns in his gravy while Perse droned smugly on about the latest way in which Luca had been misbehaving at school.

“I gave him my word,” Luca said. “He needs someone to stand up. He needs me.”

The words escaped before he could remind himself that Matti had knocked him to the floor; that Matti had looked at him with hate in his eyes, and Luca had said awful things to him, and there was a good chance Matti would rather draw swords against Adrean Vane himself, and be humiliated, than speak to Luca ever again.

But that’s not really true, is it? said a treacherous voice in Luca’s mind. He’ll do whatever it takes for his family. He’ll come back to you, because you’re the best chance he’s got. He does need you. And he’ll hate you even more because of it.

Luca felt sick. Perse gazed at him for long enough that Luca’s legs gave up and began to dance silently against the floor again. Luca looked around the bakery. There was a couple nearby holding hands across the table, knuckles brushing a shared pot of chocolate. One of the women was speaking quietly, earnestly, and the other had spots of happy colour in her cheeks.

“I suppose that’s honourable,” said Perse finally. “But… a service job, really? You’re a House member, Luca. You’re better than that.”

“Apparently,” said Luca tightly, “I’m not.”

“You’re smart, I know you are. If you’d just bother to apply yourself—”

“I do apply myself.”

Perse’s eyes dropped to the pommel of Luca’s sword. “Not to anything important.”

“You don’t know what’s important to me,” Luca said, dry-mouthed. “You don’t— Oh, gods .” He slid down in his chair, lifting both hands as though to scrub the sight of his brother from his eyes. As disguises went, it wasn’t his best effort. He didn’t think he could fake an accent or a facial expression right now if he were handed half a fortune, so covering it up was his only hope.

“Luca?”

“ Fuck .” Luca could have stabbed himself in the hand, because he sounded exactly like what he was: a man about to burst into unattractive tears.

After a long, long pause, during which Luca breathed wetly into his fingers and refused to relinquish the kind blacks and sparkling browns that were dancing on his closed eyelids, Perse coughed.

“I didn’t think you cared much what other people thought of you.”

“Why would you think that ?” said Luca, bewildered. He flung his hands down into his lap and blinked defiantly at Perse. He probably looked blotchy and pinched. Just wonderful.

Perse ignored the question. “You gave him your word, you said. And you care that he might think you a fraud. He’s important, Mattinesh Jay?”

“I am a fraud,” Luca said, tired. “And I—yes, he’s— Oh, why do I have to have this conversation with you, why couldn’t it have been anyone else—” He shoved his hands up to his eyes again.

“Luca.”

“Go away. Fuck off back to Cienne. If you make me talk about my feelings I’m going to sit here and choke to death on the irony, and then Mama will be forced to poach you back from the Mantels to be the House heir again.”

There was a long pause. “I must say, this is a new kind of mess, even for you.”

“If you’re not going to leave, please at least shut up,” said Luca, muffled, into his hands. “If you fucking try to lecture me about this, Perse, I swear—”

“Luca,” sighed Perse.

Luca raised his head. His brother had his lips pressed together in a way that reminded Luca of Matti trying not to have an emotion. He was also peeling away one layer of the raskil’s pastry coils, but in an absent way, like some people scribbled waves and stars in the margins of notes. At Luca’s glance he seemed to realise he was doing it, and wiped his fingers on a napkin.

“Do you know why I married Melisette?”

Luca knew the business reasons, but he knew that there were stickier ones as well, and right now he was heartsore enough and angry enough at his brother to speak the latter aloud.

“I had rather assumed that it was because it was convenient for you to have a wife who’d already gotten herself pregnant.”

Perse didn’t look offended. Or at least no more offended than he usually did. “It was. But Mel didn’t have to marry me. She could have had Charls on her own, and taken her time finding a partner.”

Luca had to admit the truth of that. Marriage to Melisette Mantel had been a quick foothold to luxury for Persemaine Harte. Any number of people would have leapt at the chance to marry into the extravagantly prosperous Mantel House, or to form an alliance by taking Mel into their own, even if she did come with a son inconveniently fathered by someone else.

“Why, then?” he asked, when it became apparent that Perse was waiting for proof that Luca was listening.

“She married me for the same reason I married her.” Perse looked down at his long fingers, folded on the table, neat. Everything about Perse was neat. “Because we were in love. We are. In love.”

The word love sounded very strange in Perse’s stuffy voice.

“You’d barely known each other a month when it was arranged,” Luca pointed out.

Perse’s fingers shifted. A new, passionate expression entirely failed to appear and transform his face. He was the same stern Perse as he’d ever been. As for Melisette, she was a quiet, thin woman, pale and dull as though she’d been rinsed before her colours had had a chance to properly take. Even beyond that—and Luca would be the first to admit that his tastes ran for the most part towards men, so his judgement of her looks was beside the point—Luca had never found her company interesting or her personality compelling. The idea of a whirlwind romance sat as strangely on her as it did on Perse.

“Nevertheless,” said Perse.

“Well, thank you very much. What an illuminating piece of information. How kind of you to wave your apparent love match under my nose, when I’ve managed to get myself hopelessly attached to someone whose right to marry someone else I am contracted to defend.”

“That’s not what I—” Another put-upon sigh. “I am attempting to show you that I might understand — Oh, I don’t know why I bother.”

Silence fell. Luca’s anger settled like soap bubbles. Despite Luca’s dramatic claims, he was a lot more comfortable waving his emotions around than Perse was. And Perse was sitting here, once again dissecting a pastry with his clean fingernails, and talking about his feelings.

“All right,” Luca muttered. “Sorry.”

“So you’ve misled this man Jay. What are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Run away?” said Perse coolly.

Luca narrowed his eyes. “Is this a clumsy attempt to manipulate me into coming back with you after all?”

“That would be ideal, yes. But actually, it’s an attempt to discover if you have anything resembling a plan.”

Luca barked out a short laugh.

“Yes. Indeed.” Perse pushed his glasses up his nose. “This strikes me, Lucastian, as an excellent opportunity to learn a new skill.”

Matti was almost sure that swimming would help. In the past— the past, as though it had been years since Luca whirled into his life instead of merely feeling like it—he’d often been midstroke, nothing in his mind but the slosh of salt and the sound of breaking waves, when a solution to a business problem would slide across the surface of his thoughts.

He wasn’t optimistic. He could swim for days and not solve this. How did you solve the slow surrender of yourself to another person, like a dwindling stack of coins at a card table, only to look up from your empty hands to see the cold triumph of your opponent?

But it would help . His neck was knotted and he was queasy with worry.

There was, however, the stack of papers waiting for him on his desk, of letters to be answered and reports to be read, and the fact that he had an early meeting scheduled with three of Jay House’s senior buyers. The buyers had been both chafing and chirpy since Matti’s engagement was announced. They were all shrewd bargainers, but they liked having money to play with as much as anyone else, and they hated having to pass over good lots because Matti had ordered conservative practice. They smelled gold; they knew their budgets were about to be expanded, and they were going to respectfully demand to know why Matti couldn’t sign off on the expansion now .

Matti wasn’t sure he’d be at his best in this meeting, let alone able to read more than a few pages before the pain in his neck crept lovingly around to his temples. He should delay the morning’s work and go swimming.

He should go home and deal with things, as he’d always dealt with things.

He should go swimming.

It took Matti a few minutes of near-paralytic indecision, during which he leaned against a lamppost and counted cobblestones, before he firmed his hand into a fist and set off for home. He’d caused this fucking mess by letting himself be distracted from his responsibilities. He could hardly justify abandoning them further so he could have a fit of self-indulgence about his feelings.

He ran into Maya, almost literally, two steps inside the front door of the house. Her smile faltered at once. “Huna’s thumbs. You look awful.”

“Oh,” Matti said, vague as he could manage, and eyed the stairs. Maya stepped in front of them.

“What is it? What’s happened?”

Matti found the words Nothing you need to worry about lining themselves up helpfully, but he choked on them. They were even more of a lie than usual.

Maya’s mouth set into serious concern. She took hold of his arm. “ Matti .”

“Come upstairs,” Matti said. “I’ll tell you.”

“ Joselyne, ” Maya called, not breaking eye contact.

When Joselyne appeared she was herding the twins towards the front door, pushing string bags of lunch into their hands. Matti had arrived at the most chaotic hour in their household. He ruffled Marko’s hair and flicked Merri’s ear as they left, and the headache began to worsen as he did so. It wasn’t just his own future he’d put at risk.

“Matti’s not feeling well,” Maya was saying to Joselyne. “Tell whomever comes to meet with him this morning that they’ll have to come back tomorrow. If there’s anything urgent they can leave a Sally-eye. Yes?”

“I’m not—” Matti protested—he’d worked twelve-hour days while miserable with fever, during the winter—but Maya squeezed his arm hard.

“Nothing that can’t wait a day?” she said.

After a moment, Matti nodded, surrendering.

“Easy done,” Joselyne said. “Can I bring you something, Matti? We’ve no chocolate, but there’s tea.”

Matti declined tea. Minutes later he was shut in his study, leaning against the edge of his own desk while Maya stood with folded arms and worried expression in front of him. They’d been here before, many times. Matti thought of the list in Corus Vane’s lockbox, and had another moment of disorienting doubt as everything he thought he knew about the last few months wavered.

“What is it now?” Maya asked quietly.

Matti covered his face with both hands and rubbed his eyes. It was an act of cowardice, buying time, but he couldn’t think of how to start.

Maya said, “Whatever it is—”

“Luca Piere’s not Luca Piere,” said Matti. “He’s Luca Harte. Lucastian Harte.”

There was a long silence. When Matti gathered his nerve to lower his hands, Maya was staring at him.

“Well, fuck,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Spying?”

Matti gripped the edge of the desk. “We have to assume so, don’t we? He denied it—yes, exactly,” at Maya’s snort.

“What did he say he was doing, then? A nice holiday in Glassport, see the ocean, wave some swords around, pretend to be nobody?”

“He didn’t say anything.” Only the determination not to lie further to his sister forced out the next words. “I wasn’t in the mood to let him talk.”

Maya came and stood right in front of him, sliding her arms around his shoulders. Her cheek pressed against his and Matti squeezed her waist with one arm, feeling himself exhale as though it had been hours since he’d last done so.

“How did you find out?” she asked, releasing him.

Matti told her about the sudden arrival in the practice room of Luca’s brother, Perse. The one who had an enthusiastic interest in wine, Matti remembered. Unless that had been a lie as well.

Maya frowned. “Seems clumsy, to stumble into your brother’s spy operation and immediately break his cover. Unless it served their purpose, somehow, but I can’t think what they’d gain by you finding out now .”

“The brother’s not Harte anymore. Married into another House, a year or so back. I remember hearing about it. He might not have even known about it, if it’s Harte business.”

In which case it was a terribly unlucky coincidence for Luca, and Perse had certainly seemed to be seeking him out to a purpose. The whole thing was odd. Matti had the wild urge to track Luca down and fire questions at him, hooking the answers out one by one until the picture was clear. But it would be useless if the answers couldn’t be trusted. The entire foundation of Luca and Matti’s relationship—whatever it was—had been built on shifting, treacherous sand.

“In any case, I hope you punched the son of a whistleweed worm.”

“Yes.”

“I—wait, yes? You did hit him?”

Matti nodded. Maya looked fleetingly impressed.

“It’s a mess,” she said. “But I’m sorry. I know how much you liked him. At least you found out, and at least you didn’t— Oh, Huna’s dripping slit, Matti, you didn’t .”

Matti blanched, and then felt like an elderly aunt, but it couldn’t have been worse than whatever she’d seen in his face to trigger the obscenity in the first place. “I didn’t what?” he managed, stalling.

Maya’s eyes narrowed. She spoke with deliberation. “You didn’t start sleeping with your best man. Because you said you could cope with it, and I believed you.”

The hot, roiling shame was back. Matti thought about the night of the ball, about Luca’s head flung back and mouth open around cries of pleasure. Luca lying on Matti’s chest telling stories about his scars. Luca kissing him, teasing him about the scarf Matti had bought him because of how well it would look. Matti had thought he was making bright memories to keep in a corner of his heart and bring out to admire in the years ahead. Now they were rot-tainted, like wool gone damp.

“Clearly, I couldn’t cope with it!” he snapped. “I—gods, Maya, I liked him. Whatever version of himself he was playing. I liked him so much.”

“I can see why,” she said, grudging. “I can’t believe him. Well, no, I can believe it of him, the good-looking, fast-talking little shit.” Her frown snapped to Matti. “I can’t believe you ! I thought you liked Sofia, you said you were glad it was her! You didn’t mind marrying her, I thought.”

“I don’t mind,” Matti said. “I don’t mind marrying where there’s nothing more than friendship. Just like I don’t mind that I’ve never had a chance to do what I want, I don’t mind that everything’s on my shoulders, that Dad’s stupid need to throw himself into what’s best for the Guild and the city means that I’m the one pulling our whole family out of this.” The air was hot in his chest and he couldn’t stop. “I don’t mind that Dad married Mama for love and no money but nobody has ever thought I might want to do the same, I don’t mind that the only time I’ve ever had something truly for myself has been—has been—”

Had been a beautiful, overly dramatic man laughing at him and teaching him badly and coming unravelled under Matti’s hands, and lying with every fucking breath . Matti’s arms were wrapped around himself, overtight and trembling, his breath starting to hurtle towards the panic that hadn’t come at Tolliver’s. It seemed only fitting that this was turning into a pattern, an unmendable tear in Matti’s fabric left by the deliberate spikes of Lucastian fucking Harte.

Matti forced himself to breathe and to count the breaths. One, two. In and out. He’d caught it early enough that he managed to settle it.

“Matti.” Maya’s voice caught. “I didn’t know.” He’d never seen her this shocked. He’d never seen the guilt that was starting to creep across her face.

“I’m sorry,” Matti said at once. “I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry as well. And we’ll talk about it. Later.” She reached out and touched his jaw, briefly. “Right now we need to talk to Sofia,” she said, sending Matti’s gut hurtling towards his ankles. “I’ll go myself. The Coopers do business from home in the mornings, like us—she’ll be there.”

“Sofia?”

“You don’t have a best man anymore, and Adrean is still determined to challenge for her. This is officially her business too.”

The part of Matti that was used to keeping secrets wanted to protest that surely Sofia didn’t need to know all of it, but he couldn’t muster the energy to argue with his sister. Not when she looked that stubborn. Not when he’d already spent more anger this morning than he usually showed in a year, throwing his hurt in Luca’s face and driving him to the floor. The crackling pathways of fury within Matti had turned to dull threads of hopelessness.

Maya ordered him to have some of that tea, or possibly a nap, while he waited, and she left for the Coopers’ with that worried, determined look still lingering on her face.

Matti wrote off napping as impossible, but went down to the kitchen and made his own tea while Joselyne, chopping potatoes, demanded reassurance that he wasn’t on his deathbed. Matti couldn’t blame her, given the cancelled meetings. He escaped to the sitting room with the pot and three cups on a tray. By the time Maya returned with Sofia it was cooling and likely oversteeped, but he poured it anyway.

Maya had already explained most of the situation. For a moment Matti felt indignant at that, but then was flooded with relief that he didn’t have to admit to his mistakes all over again.

Sofia didn’t look angry, which seemed a minor miracle. Her brows were a dark, thoughtful line.

Still, Matti owed her an apology, and he gave it, at length.

When he was done Sofia said, in the tone of one offering a concession, “He was very charming when I talked to him at the Half Moon Ball.”

Somehow it had not crossed Matti’s mind that Luca might have spoken to Sofia beyond their introduction at the wedding party’s gift ceremony.

“Yes,” he said. “He is very charming.”

“You know, Cee tried to tease me with the idea that you might be having a fling with your best man, when nobody could find the two of you for the last dance. Oh, I don’t care about that, ” she said with a dismissive wave. “Not much, anyway. We’re not married until we’re married.”

“But we still have to get through the wedding,” Matti said, bringing them back to the central problem. “Tolliver might agree to refund his contract as a favour, but it’s unlikely. Luca technically hasn’t breached it, and—I’d have to explain who he is, and why I don’t want him anymore.”

Maya and Sofia looked at each other, and they all sat in silent agreement that the damage should be contained as much as possible.

“Maha’s feet,” said Sofia. She touched the delicate gold chain at her wrist. “What a mess. I’d pay the fee for another best man myself, but there’s only the one agency in town, so we’d run into the same problem.”

“Maybe we could poison Adrean,” said Maya. “Then Matti wouldn’t need one at all. And we can tell everyone that Luca Piere left town. Fell in a hole. Something.”

“We don’t know what Luca’s going to be telling everyone,” Matti said suddenly. “If he wants to ruin Jay House, he could just let half the city know how badly off we are.”

“We don’t know what he’ll do,” Sofia agreed. “Which means we can’t do anything about it, so let’s focus on what we can do.”

“I can go to his boardinghouse and pull his liver out through his lying mouth,” said Maya. “I’ve got the address.”

Sofia coughed and patted Maya’s hand. “And if he decides to go down the gossip route, I’ll be right there handing you the pincers. I’ve had enough of men starting talk about my personal life. But we can attack the Kesey House situation in the meantime, don’t you think?”

Matti blinked at this swerve of topic. Maya had clearly passed on—or had been passing on, for quite some time—more of the situation than he’d thought.

“Maya.” Sofia had a brisk organisational look about her now. “You saw that mislabelling with your own eyes. That’s more than a paper trail. That’s true.”

“Yes,” said Maya.

Matti struggled with the morass of his thoughts. It made no sense for Luca to have called Matti’s attention to the conspiracy between Corus and Kesey House, unless he’d decided to use Matti to take the Keseys out of the market first. That was plausible; the Jays were arguably in the weaker position. If Harte could leverage the Jays against the Keseys and then move to undercut and work against them, fast and mercilessly, taking advantage of Luca’s knowledge, they could establish themselves in the market gap.

But why not let Corus keep on weakening the Jays, in that case? Or was that a calculated loss, to win Matti’s gratitude?

“Matti,” Maya was saying. “I know I said to wait, and I’ll let you decide, but… I think you should tell Mama and Dad now.”

Matti’s heart slammed down. The look on his face, at the very idea of having to do this again—talk through his failings and his selfishness again, and to his parents —must have been stark and ugly, because Maya fluttered her hands immediately in a warding-off kind of motion.

“Not everything! Not while we don’t know what Luca might do. But about the Keseys. And definitely about Corus.”

Luca’s voice whipped at Matti: You lie for them and you lie to them.

Enough, Matti thought. No more.

“All right,” he said. “Yes. You’re right, they should know. Dad is the right person to come down on the Keseys about the fraudulent labelling, though it’s going to be hard to denounce them to the Guild without more proof than a rival House member’s word. It’ll look like Jay House is taking advantage of Dad’s position.”

“About that.” Sofia raised her hand like a schoolgirl. “The problem is that you can’t easily tell what went into blended wool once it’s turned into fabric, is that it?”

“Yes,” said Maya.

“What if you could?”

“But—” said Matti.

“I know.” Sofia was smiling now. There was a look in her eyes that reminded Matti, alarmingly, of Luca. “You children of Huna are going to have to help with the details, but I think I might have an idea.”