Chapter 19

CHAPTER

19

The day before he was due to be married, Matti woke up to the faint nausea that he hadn’t felt in nearly a year—the nausea that the swimming had managed to banish—and also to two small lumps of bodies burrowing themselves industriously beneath his covers.

“ What— Huna’sarse, Merri, what are you doing . I nearly kicked you off the bed.”

A head of mussed black hair above deep dimples appeared halfway down the bed. “ Arse, ” Merri said, savouring it.

“Arse!” echoed Marko. Both twins knew rude words when they heard them.

“Wonderful.” Matti put a pillow over his face and then removed it resignedly. The household was awake. He was awake. He had things to do.

“Joselyne said we were under feet,” Merri offered as explanation, and resumed burrowing.

“So you’ve decided to be under my feet instead,” said Matti, wriggling the feet in question. Merri gave hiccups of muffled laughter as Matti’s toes found the tender skin of her stomach.

“Joselyne’s making lemon curd,” said Marko.

Matti detected a certain stickiness to the face that his brother was currently rubbing against his shoulder and sheets, and realised that he and the twins had been tactfully assigned to keeping one another out from under feet—foot—while Joselyne put the finishing touches on the council breakfast.

By the time Matti had dressed and made his way down from the top floor of the house to the lowest, the breakfast was underway, and the smells filling the corridor were enough to banish his nausea and make his stomach rumble as though he’d never broken his fast at yesterday’s feast. He and the twins ate lemon curd on thick slices of white bread with a shattering crust, and grilled cubes of lamb threaded onto rosemary sprigs, and great dollops of cherries stewed in lacha and stirred through whipped goats’ cheese.

Matti watched Marko’s and Merri’s faces become mirrors of progressive mess, and thought: This is what it should be like . No more counting every bronze and feeling guilty over everything that wasn’t essential. No more gradient of splendour from the perfectly kept public rooms of the Jay townhouse to the modest and half-stripped bedrooms. He set down his spoon and closed his eyes, the food souring on his tongue, torn again between anxiety and hope.

From there Matti went to the dining room to politely greet the members of Glassport’s city council who had accepted Tomas’s breakfast invitation. The pre-wedding breakfast was not a ritual under anyone’s auspices, just a social tradition that had perpetuated itself because people liked parties and Guildmasters liked expanding the celebrations around their children’s weddings. It would have looked odd for Tomas not to hold one.

That said, it was odder for the invitation to actually be accepted by anyone except the host’s friends.

“Guildmaster Martens,” Matti said.

He managed, he thought, to sound only mildly surprised.

Lysbette Martens had shrewd blue eyes, set deep in a bony face, and a high knot of blond braids showing streaks of silver. She wore an old-fashioned style of shirt, white cotton with narrow sleeves and folds of gorgeous lace falling from her throat, tucked into black trousers, along with a belt in pale pink leather and matching teardrop earrings of what looked like rose quartz.

She could have looked fragile, but didn’t. She looked like the marble on which her House had made its fortune, and the way her face cracked and rearranged itself into a smile was disarming.

“Call me Lysbette, Matti,” she said. “If you’re exasperated enough while you do it, I’m sure you’ll sound just like your father.”

“Thank you for coming,” said Matti, who had never learned to enjoy being disarmed unless it was—

Well. Unless.

“I was hoping to have a word with the groom-to-be.” Lysbette glanced towards the door. “In private?”

Matti searched the room. His father was in a cluster of council members still seated and drinking coffee at one end of the table. Matti caught his mother’s gaze—she was resplendent today in an orange jacket embroidered with filigree green leaves and a black scarf looped in Sofia’s new fashion—and she made a subtle, resigned face at him before returning to her own conversation.

Lysbette was politely pretending not to notice his hesitation. Matti’s curiosity stuck him like a burr.

“Of course,” he said, and led Lysbette to the sitting room. She didn’t sit. Matti didn’t either.

She said, “I imagine things will be different for you, after tomorrow.”

“Were you hoping to give me advice on married life, Guildmaster?”

“I know how hard you must work, Matti, considering your father’s other responsibilities.” The words were sympathetic. Her eyes were like cool gems. “It must be a relief, thinking of the resources that a bright girl like Miss Cooper can bring to Jay House. I’m sure you’re the last person who has to be told that running a House with a small family is exhausting.”

“We don’t mind working hard,” said Matti. He could feel that his guard was being tested, and he didn’t know why.

Lysbette took a few steps towards the empty fireplace as if admiring the designs of the iron frame, then turned again. Her hand drifted out to rest atop the back of a chair upholstered in silk brocade.

“And next year Glassport hosts the Negenhal,” she said, as though offhand. “The council will be even busier than ever, putting together the preparations for that.”

“Yes.” Matti waited.

“If Tomas stands for Guildmaster again—”

“ If, ” said Matti. “He will. And I think you know he will.” He was sick of implications and half-truths. He wanted to take a risk, to be bold—not as Luca would, but as himself. Straightforward.

He took a deep breath.

“We know what Corus is doing,” he said.

Lysbette’s sculpture of an expression slipped, her eyes widening, and Matti knew. She was involved, somehow.

It was like being squeezed between twin rollers of dismay and relief. Up until that moment Matti had half convinced himself that the Martens connection was something that Luca had spun out of nothing. A diversion to keep Matti’s eyes away from what the Hartes were doing, handily invented after Matti had told him about Lysbette’s possible motives to hurt Tomas and his House. After all, where was the evidence?

Nowhere, except in Lysbette’s fingers clenched pale around the top of the chair. And even now she was releasing them and clasping them in front of her, well on her way to perfectly composed once more.

Matti pushed on before she could speak. That was what you had to do, with liars.

“You’re paying him, too, as well as the Keseys? Sabotage can’t be worth much to you, or he’d live in a better house.”

Lysbette gazed at him for a while. Her chest rose and fell beneath the impeccable layers of lace. Now that she’d had a chance to recover, Matti couldn’t read her as easily, but he thought there was still some surprise there, beneath the calculation.

She was probably arriving at the same conclusion that Matti had reached before he let himself speak: that even if Lysbette went straight from here to Simeon Kesey and Corus, to warn them that the Jays had found them out, it wouldn’t make much difference now. After tomorrow this would all be over, one way or another.

Finally Lysbette sat down on the chair. She said, dry as paper, “Or Vane is smart enough not to flaunt wealth he shouldn’t have.”

“That wasn’t a denial.”

Half a smile appeared. “Hm. If I’d known you were fishing, it would have been. Honestly, Vane would be doing better for himself if he could keep a leash on that lazy son of his. To be relying on his father for an income, at that age…” She shook her head. “Not like you. You’re a responsible boy. Tomas knows how to raise them, I’ll give him that.”

“This isn’t about me,” said Matti.

“It is about you.” Lysbette’s smile didn’t move. “It’s about Jay House. You should have adopted Adrean Vane, my dear. Then you’d never have had this problem with Corus. Anyone thwarted in their heart’s desire can turn dangerous.”

Matti heard the warning there, but his mind was spinning off down the path her words had opened up. House adoption? Perhaps his parents had discussed it once, long ago, but—

“Dad wouldn’t,” he said.

“Of course not,” said Lysbette. “It would weaken his political position. Tomas Jay could never be seen admitting that House status is, still is, and is going to remain, the ultimate goal for anyone with ambition to wealth and influence in the Nine Free States.” She fixed Matti with a wry look. “Now that you’re about to be married for money, your sister had better keep a sharp eye on her own prospects. I wouldn’t be surprised if Tomas encouraged her into an outdoor wedding. For the look of it.”

It was like trying to follow Luca at his most sinuous, his most lazily brilliant. Matti forced himself to keep his eyes on Lysbette’s, and adapted. “It’s not about the look, ” he said. Even so, he thought about the shabbiness of the Vane house with a twinge of discomfort. “It’s what he actually believes.”

“I know,” said Lysbette. She leaned her elbow on her knee, a tired gesture. “This would all be so much easier if he didn’t. Arri save me from fucking idealists.”

Realisation fell onto Matti. “You don’t give a shit about our House,” he said. “You don’t care if we prosper or fail. You just want Dad off the council, so you can have your precious votes for your precious canal. You want him to quit as Guildmaster.”

“And for any normal person,” said Lysbette Martens, exasperated, “watching their House crawl to the brink of ruin would do it.”

Matti thought suddenly of Corus bringing the first rumours of Harte House’s expansion plans to Tomas, not to Matti. Corus would have known that Matti tried to insulate his father from business details. It made sense, if one of the people employing Corus as a spy wanted to see Tomas quit politics and scurry back to the business of his failing House.

“I won’t apologise,” Lysbette added. “I’m doing what I have to do to secure the future of my House.”

Matti priced her outfit with two long glances, and made it obvious he was doing it. Annoyed colour appeared over Lysbette’s cheekbones. Matti thought about his brother and sister, about cherries and laughter and doing without. His anger felt like moonwater lining his throat, first cold and then hot.

“Your future looks fairly secure to me,” Matti said. “Will getting your hands on that marble a few weeks sooner really make such a difference?”

“You’re a child of Huna. You know what it is for fortunes to rise and fall at the whim of trends. There’s a demand for red marble facades in the south of Ashfah now, but who knows how long it will last? It takes long enough for ships to cross the Straits, and stone sinks faster than wool if the seas turn rough.”

Matti made himself absorb that barb without flinching.

“This is how it works,” said Lysbette. “When you’re successful, you take your turn as Guildmaster, and you do your bit for the city. But you also get what you can for your Guild and your House. Everyone knows that. Everyone plays along. Except Tomas.”

“So you thought you’d ruin us,” said Matti, flat.

“The Keseys want to ruin you. And they also want a Guildmaster who’s less concerned with working hours and industry standards. Me—yes. I want him off the council. I want a Spinners and Weavers Guildmaster with the sense to vote my way and accept my help for whatever they want in turn.”

“You’re being very frank,” said Matti, “and I stopped fishing a while ago. You have to know I won’t keep this secret.”

Lysbette’s sapphire gaze met his and Matti knew, before she said it, what her response would be. “Your word? My word? Would you put them in the marketplace against each other, Matti Jay? You haven’t any proof against me. I think you’d have produced it already, if you did. And I know that your House is faltering.”

That struck up a sickly echo from months ago. Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell someone?

Matti remembered the slide of his finger, careful, beneath an unfamiliar blade. Balancing. And so the situation is like this.

“As you said, I’m getting married,” said Matti. “We won’t be faltering much longer. Withdraw your support from Corus and the Keseys. Let us deal with them. Corus won’t be working for us much longer.”

“Do you expect me to bow out?” said Lysbette Martens. Her shoulders were perfectly straight. Luca would never have needed to pinch his fingers between them. “I can make life difficult for you in other ways. But I wouldn’t have to, if you talked your father off the council. He might quit if you asked.”

Matti was more than a little impressed that this woman had the audacity to come into his house, admit to everything she’d done, and still try to make a deal. This, he suspected, was why she’d wanted to speak to him in the first place.

Lysbette pressed her advantage into his silence. “It won’t cost you anything to have this canal built. Your House might even benefit.”

“That’s true,” Matti allowed, thinking about Collins and the Barlow wool market. “But it would cost my father something, and I’m loyal to my family.”

“Is all of your family loyal to your House?” returned Lysbette. “House prosperity and family loyalty are supposed to be the same thing. It’s unfair of Tomas to make you choose between them like that.”

Matti squeezed his eyes shut, fighting agreement. Opened them. “Someone has to think about the bigger picture, or society collapses.”

“Leave the big picture to the gods,” said Lysbette. “All they want is for us to get ourselves halfway across the bridge, and they’ll help us across the other half.”

The idiom sounded hollow in Matti’s ears for the first time. He tasted his words before he said them.

“But who builds the bridge?” he said. “And on whose backs is it built?”

Lysbette let out a long sigh. “Arri wept. You’re just as bad as your father.”

No, I’m not, Matti thought. By your standards I’m better, because for a long moment there I was tempted to take your deal.

He thought of what Maya and Luca had told him about the working conditions at the Kesey workshop. A quiet, dark trickle of poison somewhere within him, the worst of his resentment against his father, flowed out through his feet and was gone. He stood firmer without it.

“You can’t build on the backs of the voiceless forever,” he said. “And I wouldn’t want to be part of a state that does.”

Lysbette Martens nodded, as if she too had felt the finality of Matti’s decision. She stood. She spread her hands with a flash of rings. “Well, young Mr. Jay. You have nothing over me. And I have nothing over you. So go and get married. Banish Corus and name a new senior agent. We’ll keep playing the game, and we’ll see who comes out on top.”

By the middle of the afternoon, there wasn’t anything left to do.

The Jays and the Coopers had visited the Spinners and Weavers Guildhall to approve its decorations—a whole new set of wall hangings had been pulled from the Guild’s vast and mothballed storehouses, chosen for their depictions of romance or the predominance of green and gold in their colours—and they had spoken to Rowain Duvay. As the Deputy Guildmaster, Duvay would be performing the ceremony. He deserved to know, Sofia had pointed out dryly, that there was likely to be a response when he paused after the ritual question: Does anyone wish to challenge against this marriage?

The Coopers had invited Matti to lunch. The Jays had invited Sofia to dinner.

And now Matti stood looking at Sofia over the expanse of a gorgeous bedspread, a wedding gift from one of the best drapiers in the city, in the bedroom in the Jay townhouse that would be theirs to share from tomorrow night onwards. It was a clean and lovely room with small touches of personality to it that only served to make it more strange, more dissociated from anything that felt real to Matti. But this was what was real.

The embroidery of the bedspread was rough beneath Matti’s fingers. He ran his hand over it in circles, watching the patterns blur, fighting harder than he’d fought in months to keep words inside his mouth. This was real. The happiness that Luca had brought to life within him was a lie. And the last time Matti had let himself be selfish, he’d followed the icy slope until his feet went out from under him, and he’d crashed them all into the consequences of that lie with bruising force.

“Matti,” Sofia said.

He looked up. Sofia’s eyebrows were worried, and for a wild moment Matti wondered if they were both on the verge of pulling back, despite everything—perhaps they could blurt it all out here, now, let their truths smash and mingle into a cleaner kind of wreckage. Ever since the conversation with Lysbette he’d felt a pressure behind his eyes as though grimy handfuls of lowest-grade wool were being crammed into his skull, just as they were stuffed into cushions. Something had to crack.

“Are you in there, Matti?” came Tomas’s voice from down the hall. “You’ve a visitor. Your best man is here.”

Matti rocked back on his feet, as though the idea of it was a blow.

“Matti.” Now Sofia’s eyebrows looked downright concerned. Matti had shown her the note that Luca had sent; he’d given up on the idea of keeping secrets from her and Maya, and it had been a relief. He’d lost faith in his own ability to think about the situation with the levelheaded sense he used to pride himself on.

“What am I going to do,” said Matti, “tell Dad to send him away?”

Sofia said, swift, “No.” She stroked a hand over her artfully draped scarf—searing amethyst, today—as if for comfort. She knew what it was to care about how things looked.

Maya was waiting for them at the base of the stairs.

“Where is he?” asked Matti.

“Still on the doorstep,” said Maya. “He was polite to Dad, but he refused to step inside until you’d said he could.” A quick thinning of her lips. “He was a bit dramatic about it.”

“I’ll bet he was.” Before he could talk himself out of it, Matti opened the front door of his own house, stepped through, and closed it behind him.

Luca was standing on the second step, looking out onto the street. It was a warm, bright autumn day. In the sunlight the back of his head was like—like silk, Matti thought helplessly.

Luca turned around when the door clacked shut.

“Huna’s teeth,” Matti said, aghast. All his resolve not to speak first had fled at once. “I didn’t think I’d hit you that hard.”

Luca looked blank, then lifted a hand to the bruise that framed his left eye and coloured his cheek like poorly applied paint. Set against the vivid purpling, the grey parts of his eyes were almost blue, the brown parts almost green. I mark easily, he’d said.

Then, to Matti’s surprise, Luca grinned. “Mattinesh,” he said, “what you gave me was a slap, more or less. Don’t worry. This is courtesy of someone much less good-looking than you, who mistook me for someone with a heavier purse than I actually possess. An easy mistake for a person to make, as you’ll recall.”

Matti found his mouth trying to smile. “I—”

“Fuck,” said Luca, abrupt. “No. I knew I’d fuck this up. That’s not what happened. It’s what I’ve told everyone else happened, but… I’m going to tell you the truth. All the truth.” A deep breath. “If you’ll let me. Can I talk to you? Alone?”

His lower lip had been split too. Matti didn’t realise he was reaching to touch it until his thumb was a whisper from Luca’s mouth, and it was Luca whose breath shuddered out of him and who took hold of Matti’s wrist, darting-fast, as though he were wary of the contact. Matti snatched his hand away. Luca let him go.

“Not alone,” Matti said. “I don’t think I can… I think there are other people who deserve to hear what you’re going to say.”

Luca didn’t look happy, but he nodded.

Matti had told his parents about the Keseys, and about Corus, but not the truth about Luca. Now he told them only that his best man was visiting for a final discussion with himself and Sofia about the wedding, and about how things would proceed when Adrean Vane made his inevitable challenge.

His mother offered to have Joselyne bring in biscuits. Luca was beginning to look like a trapped cat. It made Matti feel better.

“No, thank you,” Luca said to the offer.

“Then for dinner, stay,” Nessa said cheerfully. “There will be one tradition or another to say that you should. Or we can invent one.”

Finally the sitting room door was closed and it was just the four of them. Maya and Sofia seated themselves together on a couch, and the glances Luca darted at them would have made Matti laugh under other circumstances. They did have the air of a pair of magistrates, or a particularly ill-disposed audience at a musical performance.

Luca reached into his jacket and pulled out a sheet of paper folded into quarters, which he held out to Matti.

“What’s this?”

“A very small part of what I owe you,” said Luca. “Or, actually, an attempt to figure it out.”

Matti’s curiosity got the better of him. Unfolded, the paper was full of scribbled calculations. Many of them were crossed out or scrawled in angry lines. They began with a proposed loan, a sum of money: two hundred gold.

“I’d never charge this rate of interest” was Matti’s first comment.

“Not to a friend,” said Luca. “I thought I’d better err on the side of what you might charge someone you really disliked.”

“Not to anyone, ” said Matti, obscurely injured. But he kept reading. He followed the calculation, the interest owing on a loan of that size over the precise time since he first met Luca, all the way to the bottom of the page. The final sum of money owing, capital plus interest, was circled.

“This is wrong,” Matti said finally. “You made at least two major mistakes. Here and here.”

Luca made a pained, breathless sound. “I told you I’m no good with numbers.”

Maya was making demanding gestures. Matti passed her the paper to look at. “You told me a lot of things,” he said to Luca. “How was I supposed to know which ones were true?”

Luca ran a hand through his hair. His eyes were wide and entreating; the parts of his face not swallowed by the bruise were pale. He wasn’t moving with his usual ease. Matti wanted badly to take Luca in his arms, to make him laugh and forget the pain. To smooth his tongue over Luca’s damaged lip and hear him hiss; to kiss him until they both forgot to care if it made him bleed again.

“The truth,” Matti said, only half sure he was about to hear it.

“All right. Yes.” Now that the paper wasn’t in Luca’s hands, he clearly didn’t know what to do with them, and he settled one on the hilt of his sword with relief. “I honestly didn’t know who you were when I first approached you. And I was never trying to spy on your House. I didn’t even know you saw my House as a potential competitor, until you mentioned it in passing.”

“And then… what?” asked Matti. “Once you knew, you had to guess how I’d react when I found out.”

“Yes. Thus the not telling you .”

“I see,” put in Maya, from the couch. “That worked out so well.”

“You weren’t going to find out!” said Luca, firing up in return. He didn’t even glance at Maya; his attention was all on Matti. “My brother’s sudden appearance was not in the plan. Not that there was a plan.”

“You should have told me,” said Matti.

“I… I’ve tried to explain this to you, in my head, so many times. I know it sounds stupid. Of course if I could go back, I’d tell you. I’d tell you everything. But I didn’t think it would matter.”

“No,” said Matti, hearing the cutting edge of his tone. “No, why would telling me the truth about who you are ever matter ?”

“It didn’t matter because I didn’t get to keep you !” Luca yelled. “Because I was just the person who tried to con you, and the person giving you sword lessons, and then I was just the person you were fucking as a farewell fling to freedom, before you threw yourself away on a marriage that was going to make you miserable!”

Matti felt as though the world had paused. He couldn’t look away from the sudden wash of fear, quickly replaced by defiance, that filled Luca’s face.

The silence was horrible.

There was, eventually, a very small cough from Sofia. To Matti’s relief, it sounded more like someone heroically fighting down laughter than someone about to erupt with rage.

She said, “Matti, are you sure you don’t want us to leave…?”

Matti was a hairsbreadth from losing his grip and saying yes, and letting Luca keep on spinning him some outrageous story that Matti would desperately want to believe, and Matti would feel all the anger he’d spent five days nursing crumble within him as he stepped forward and got his hands in Luca’s hair—

“Actually,” said Luca to Sofia, “you should probably hear some of this too, Miss Cooper.”

Deliriously into Matti’s mind fell the idea that Luca was going to do a blow-by-blow description of exactly how Matti had fucked him—exactly how he’d sucked Matti’s cock—right here and now in front of Matti’s sister and betrothed. He managed to banish it as absurd, but not before he’d had to turn a sharp inhalation into a coughing fit.

Sofia’s eyebrows rose like a pulled-taut archer’s bow. Her voice had something of the arrow to it when she said, “Are you planning to challenge for my betrothed, Luca Harte? Do I need to hire a duellist of my own? I warn you, I can afford the best.”

Luca threw a look at Matti that was raw and transparent as broken glass. It cut cleanly through something in Matti that had knotted itself irredeemably. He felt punctured, released, as though half of his heart’s blood were flowing along a new route.

“There’s a reason why I didn’t come to see you sooner,” Luca said. “I was waiting for a letter from my mother. I told you, I never thought we were competitors. But you had all these reasons, good reasons, to suspect that Harte House was branching out into wool. Not even Perse could tell me why Mama would be looking into hiring ships that leave from Fataf, or new Glassport warehouses, when all our raw silk is native Thesperan. So I asked her myself.”

Luca pulled out a small scrap of fabric. He hesitated, then gave it to Sofia, whose brows drew together thoughtfully and then shot high.

“Gallia silk,” Sofia said.

“ Gallia .” Maya’s hand was at her mouth. “But—how would your House make it? It’s illegal to export the worms or the raw thread.”

“The Ashfahani trade council is lifting that embargo,” said Luca. “Very soon. We’re buying up saplings of brindle basil and the worms along with them, we’re importing them, and we’re going to do everything. Pay for Ashfahani farmers to train our people. Process the raw thread. Weave it ourselves.” A flash of a smile, sharp and proud.

“Huna wept,” breathed Maya. “This is enormous.”

“And it’s secret,” said Luca. “Or it has been. Mama said she hadn’t planned to announce for another few weeks, but—I asked her for something I could give you.”

Yet another letter emerged from Luca’s jacket. This one had a broken wax seal, stamped with the same H that had appeared on Luca’s broken pocket watch. Luca held it out to Matti. His eyes, above the letter, were tense and clear.

“Read it,” Luca said.

Matti read the letter from Luca’s mother in silence. When he was done, he handed it to Maya and Sofia, whose heads bent over it together.

Matti would have worked out the gist of it from Jacquelle’s reply, but Luca was suddenly glad that his own initial letter wasn’t there to be gazed at too. Perhaps if he and Matti were doing this without an audience. But the total shattering of Luca’s priorities and the rebuilding of them around his wretched heart were surely obvious enough, without the proof in his own hand as well.

He’d written: I find myself owing a debt of honour. I need whatever concession, whatever advantage we can arrange, for the benefit and enrichment of Jay House. I’m asking this of you as my Head of House, Mama, and I’ll owe you a favour in return. No limits.

Knowing, of course, that there was only one thing that Jacquelle Harte now wanted of her beloved, irresponsible second-born heir.

“Luca,” Matti said.

“I think it will help,” said Luca.

“Yes,” said Sofia. “This changes the game. This is all very promising. But Matti…” She paused. Next to her, Maya folded her hands in her lap as if to keep something invisible contained. Sofia said, “I want to know what you want to happen next. I think you owe me that much.”

“What I want?” Matti sounded hesitant, as bewildered as ever at the idea that what he wanted might be important. It was heartbreaking.

Of the two of them, Luca was the con artist. And yet Luca knew he’d been right: Matti was just as much a liar, even if the shape of it hung differently on him. Matti was the one to whom honesty, real honesty, truths scraped right out of the chambers of the heart, came the least easily.

“I haven’t finished with my truths yet,” said Luca. He felt as though he were flinging himself off a cliff, but it would give Matti some breathing space. Show him that he didn’t have to be vulnerable alone. “Though I’ve been going at them backwards. The gallia silk is why I wasn’t spying. Don’t you want to know why I was here in the first place?”

“You said…” Matti frowned. “I can’t remember. Something about being a clerk, about what your family wanted…” He looked at the letter, realisation visibly falling over him.

“I can’t do anything with numbers,” Luca said. “It’s never been a secret. My mother hired tutors. One of them locked me in a room and said I couldn’t come out until I finished my worksheets; I told Mama and she fired him, and after that nobody ever forced me to do anything. I didn’t see the point in working hard at something I hated, so I didn’t. I went to sword lessons instead. It didn’t matter . Perse was the one who was going to be the Head of our House.”

“And then Perse married out,” said Matti.

Luca nodded. His cheeks were hot. “I thought I was lazy. But I—no, I was lying about that too. I literally can’t do it. And the thought of having to do it anyway, of everyone knowing I was incapable—I didn’t deal with it well. Obviously.”

“Don’t tell me,” said Matti, dry. “You did something stupid.”

“I started running cons. And I robbed the Artisan Guildmaster in Cienne, Andri Baudrain. I stole the best piece in his collection, a silver inkstand with opals, and—look, I thought everyone would realise it was a joke, I was going to give the fucking inkstand back, but then I knocked over a sculpture of blown glass that was standing on a cabinet in his study. It was huge. Gorgeous.” He breathed through a slow churn of irrational panic. It was done . It was dealt with. He’d wear the bruises on his face for weeks, but he could walk into Cienne without being thrown in the city jail for robbery or dragged into Kusi’s Guildhall to face her justice.

He still couldn’t help dwelling, for a cold brilliant moment, on the memory of time slowing down as his sleeve caught one delicate, gold-streaked flourish of glass, and the whole sculpture lurched and fell.

It had made a sound like high bells, striking the ground. Luca had laughed at the noise and at the explosion of fragments like a wave breaking over his ankles. He remembered that. He remembered laughing, and he remembered the hot fingers of recklessness and dismay that had squeezed his heart when the laughter stopped.

“It was the Guild’s patron-gift,” he said. There was a sharp in take of breath from Sofia. Luca tried a smile on her, and it made his lips smart. “Yes. Here’s an interesting fact for you. The Artisans don’t keep theirs in the Guildhall; they loan it out to the Guildmaster, as a symbol of Kusi’s favour embedded in their dwelling. Because I needed to bring an entire Guild and their goddess down on me as well. That sculpture had been the heart of the Guild in Cienne since before the first Negenhal. Before the Nine Free States. Do you know how long it takes, how expensive it is, to create and consecrate a new one?”

Not even Luca knew, really. The patron-gift of the Spinners and Weavers in Cienne was a rug of wool and silk that was hung behind glass in the foyer of the Guildhall, a miracle of geometric design in glowing shades of purple and red and blue. It was old and beautiful and revered, and if the Guildhall ever caught fire, it would be the first thing any of Huna’s children would rescue.

He went on, “Anyway, Baudrain’s daughter saw my face, as I was escaping, and he was going to have me arrested.”

There was a silence from the Jays and Sofia that Luca couldn’t kid himself was the slightest bit impressed.

Finally: “That is stupid. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!” said Matti. “What were you thinking?”

“ I wasn’t, ” Luca snapped. “Don’t you get how I work by now? I wasn’t thinking. I was doing . I was trying to be someone who didn’t have to deal with any of my actual life, and I thought, well, that person would see Andri Baudrain as a challenge, and teach themselves to pick locks, and even if they were caught they’d laugh and be brave and get out of it, somehow.” His mouth was so dry. He swallowed. “But I only got out of it because I’m the heir to a House and my mother knows how to use her connections. That’s what Perse was here to tell me. And I’m not brave, because I ran away, figuring that would let me start over as—whatever I wanted.”

“Why?” asked Sofia.

“Why?”

“Yes.” Her brown gaze was level and calm. “What’s the worst that would have happened? Yes, you’d have been arrested and tried in the city courts for robbery or trespass, and the Guild of Artificers would have claimed reparations under Kusi’s auspices. Your House would have had to pay fines. Enormous ones, yes, but—was it really worth running away?”

Luca stared at her as stale panic exploded in his temples. He had no idea how to explain the sheer, mind-wiping horror he’d felt at the thought of standing trial— twice —while all of Cienne watched, and whispered, and knew that he was a failure and a black smudge on the bright name of the House he was supposed to inherit. It was the desperation with which he’d wanted to win Maya’s approval, blown out to the scale of a city full of people he loved.

And at the time, it had landed square on top of the knowledge that he’d be just as much a disaster if Harte House’s fortunes were actually placed in his hands, that he was already seeking a way to escape the path that had been laid out for him.

Of course he’d fucking run.

He was fumbling so hard to fit that into words that something even truer and more bitter slipped out around it.

“I don’t know if it would have been fines,” he said. “I don’t know if my mother would have paid them. She was already losing patience, because I didn’t want anything to do with House business. I thought—surely this is the line. This is where she stops indulging me.”

“You thought your mother would refuse to pay? Have you serve a jail term?” Sofia asked, in a thoughtful tone that suggested she wouldn’t have blamed Jacquelle one jot.

“To teach me a lesson? Yes. I was so scared she would, I didn’t want to stick around and find out,” Luca managed. “I told you: I’m not brave. When Baudrain’s men found me two nights ago I nearly vomited, I was so scared.”

“Ohh,” said Maya. “And that explains the bruises. I was getting curious.”

Matti stepped forward again, and this time Luca didn’t have any self-preservation left in him at all, because he let Matti touch his mouth; he let Matti trace the edge of the bruise, and let himself drink in the concern and the tenderness in Matti’s fingertips. Something was finally shining through the cracks of Matti’s expression. It looked so close to forgiveness that Luca’s heart soared despite himself. If he didn’t think it would hurt so much, he would have thrown himself onto his knees and begged.

“Matti,” he said, and realised to his horror that he was shaking.

“You’re a fucking disaster,” Matti said, and dragged Luca into his arms.

“ Ow, ” said Luca into Matti’s neck, but he tried not to say it too loudly. Fuck his ribs, anyway. The last thing he wanted was for Matti to let go. The first thing he wanted was to kiss Matti, but he was going to let Matti decide when that happened again.

For now it was a sheer relief to be able to lean against someone, to have someone behave as though he were in need of comfort. He had been scared, when Baudrain’s men found him. He’d been terrified, and it had tangled itself up with the terror he felt that Matti would never want to see him again, and now all of that was melting away.

It wasn’t very long before Matti released him, but Luca felt like a new person.

Matti looked at his feet, then at Luca, and then at the girls on the couch. “Ah. What were we talking about?”

“Before Mr. Harte sidetracked us,” said Maya, “Sofia was asking you what you want, Matti.” She pushed back a wisp of hair. Her eyes were bright but mirthless. “Though we might have arrived at an answer nonetheless.”

Matti’s shoulders settled. “I want… something more. Something that isn’t bales of wool and half-truths and lines of numbers from the moment I wake up to hours after I close my eyes in bed. And I’m afraid it would be so easy to marry Sofia”—with a nod in her direction—“and just keep on doing what’s expected of me.”

“Easy?” Luca demanded. “You said you’d hate it.”

“Yes,” said Matti, steady and bleak. “It would be very easy to keep on doing things I hate.”

The look on Sofia’s face was, Luca thought, predominantly relief. She said, “I did ask you at the start of this, Matti, whether you had feelings for anyone else.”

“I didn’t. Not then.” After a moment Matti added, “Would you have refused the engagement, if I did?”

“I don’t know.” Sofia sounded a little surprised at herself. “You thought I was in love with Adrean, and that didn’t make a difference to you.”

“No, it didn’t. We needed the money too much.”

“And now you don’t need it? Is that”—she waved at Jacquelle’s letter, which she’d set down on a side table—“enough? You’ll know best of all of us.”

“Enough for a reprieve,” Matti said.

“There’s more,” Luca said. “I’ve got something else, something big, but—for it to have the best effect, I think the wedding should still happen tomorrow.” Matti’s shoulders curled and tightened at once. Luca went on quickly, “Not the marriage. But we have a perfect public forum, in front of half the Guild, and Vane and Kesey will be off guard. It’d be a shame to waste it.” He added, “Will Guildmaster Martens be at the wedding?”

“Oh, Huna’s tits.” Matti snapped his fingers. “Luca, you don’t know what happened this morning.” And he told Luca about a conversation he’d had with Lysbette Martens. Maya and Sofia looked unsurprised; Matti had clearly already shared the details with them.

One last secret thrummed on Luca’s tongue as the pieces fell into place, but he swallowed it. He wanted this to be big. This time, he wanted the glorious shattering to be a deliberate act.

“But yes,” Matti finished. “Lysbette will be there tomorrow. All the council members will.”

Luca nodded. “Good. I want her to see this play out. As a warning, if nothing else.”

“You’re saying you want them to have a wedding,” Maya said to Luca, “but not get married.”

“We have paid for everything,” said Sofia thoughtfully. “And I do look very nice in my dress. How are we supposed to start this new fashion you’ve set your heart on, Maya, if we can’t parade ourselves in front of the Guild in all our finery?”

One of those sun-bright smiles broke out on Maya’s face under Sofia’s teasing gaze. “I suppose that’s true.”

“Sofia,” said Matti. “I should have asked this right away. What do you want?”

“I certainly don’t want to marry someone who’ll hate it,” said Sofia promptly. “But I think what you’re asking is, do I want to marry you . And the answer is no.” She and Matti looked at each other for a few silent moments. There was a solidity to Sofia’s stance that Luca admired, as though nothing could have possibly thrown her off-balance. She deserved far better than to be someone’s duty, and she clearly knew it.

Matti must have seen something to that effect in her eyes, because he smiled ruefully. Sofia added, “And I have to admit, I want to see what Mr. Harte’s idea of playing this out looks like.”

“A wedding, but no marriage. Luca… are you going to throw the duel? Before witnesses?” A light brimming of irony touched Matti’s words. “That’ll be your reputation gone. You’ll be kicked out of your Guild.”

Luca forced himself to shrug, then swallowed a wince as his ribs twinged with pain. If Adrean Vane knew how to use a sword, and how to read someone’s weaknesses, Luca might still manage to lose the duel without any pretence at all. “It’s a good thing I no longer plan on a long-term career as a duellist. I’ll have to fall back on silk.”

“I’d rather you didn’t throw it, if that’s possible,” said Sofia. “If Adrean challenges and wins, the talk will only get worse. He’ll only get worse.”

“Worse than what?” said Matti. “I thought you could handle the gossip.”

Sofia didn’t say anything. It was Maya who said, in a hard voice, “Some men take rejection as a negotiation. And not in a good way.”

Luca felt an unexpected surge of sympathy for Sofia. He’d met men like that; he’d heard the way they talked when surrounded by what they considered friendly ears. He’d even seen the ugly side of one of them himself, after a monthlong liaison that Luca had broken off. He’d watched with startlement as the man’s self-assured manner, which bordered on arrogance in a way that Luca had quite enjoyed at times, turned to vitriol and possessiveness. It was just another version of the entitlement Adrean’s father had shown in deciding what he was owed for his service to the Jays, and then thinking himself justified in turning traitor when it wasn’t given.

When it had happened to him, Luca had the advantage of a sword and knowing how to use it. Sofia had wit and money and a forceful personality of her own, but it clearly hadn’t made a dent in the story Adrean had been telling himself—and the world—about their tragic romance.

“It’s simple enough to stop a wedding at the business end,” said Matti. “The Deputy Guildmaster is going to ask us if we accept each other. We just say no.”

Maya narrowed her eyes at Luca. “Hold on,” she said. “You said there was something else. You still haven’t—”

The door to the sitting room cracked open. It was Tomas. “Dinner’s on the table. And, fair warning, Nessa is instituting a no-wedding-talk rule for the duration of the meal. Are you all done in here?”

“Nearly.” Luca threw Tomas a smile. “Matti, Miss Cooper, you go ahead. I want to talk to Mayanesh for another minute or two. Wedding-party secrets. Not for the bride and groom to hear.”

Matti and Sofia gave him similarly suspicious looks, but they followed Tomas out of the room.

“Are you going to tell me this something else?” Maya asked, when the room was empty but for the two of them. “This mysterious big thing that you, who can’t calculate a simple loan, are convinced will pull our House out of ruin?”

“Yes,” said Luca. “I am. But I have some questions for you first.”

Maya smoothed her skirts on either side of her and raised hereyebrows— Yes?

“Why haven’t you offered? I’m assuming it’s because you think she’s had enough people’s feelings imposed on her without her consent, but I’m keen to hear if it’s something else.”

Maya’s mouth made a straight line. “What are you talking about?”

“If it helps, I don’t think it’d be all that much of an imposition. Just from watching the two of you.”

“You—”

“Come on, Mayanesh,” said Luca. “How long have you been in love with your brother’s betrothed?”