Chapter 4

CHAPTER

4

It took Luca three tries to open the street-level door of Tolliver’s agency the next morning. He blamed in equal measure the lingering dawn chill of the air, the fact that if there were any justice in the world he would have been firmly asleep and intending to remain so for several hours, and the fact that Mattinesh Jay’s near-black eyes were watching him do it.

Jay had been leaning against the door when Luca jogged up. Now he was a distractingly solid presence, and Luca’s fingers were clumsy under his gaze.

“Good of Tolliver to lend us the room.”

“Mm.” It was, to be frank, a grunt. Luca’s eyelids felt gummy and rose-thorned.

Tolliver hadn’t questioned the fact that Luca had agreed to throw in sword lessons on top of the usual best-man contract for Jay. Even so, Luca had the feeling that if any money were kept on the premises, or if the swords in the practice room were anything more than merely serviceable, Luca might not be trusted to open the office a full two hours before Tolliver himself was usually there.

Or maybe he would, given who he’d be teaching. The shift in Tolliver’s manner when he was interacting with Jay had been… interesting. Another puzzle piece that didn’t fit.

Upstairs, they shucked off their coats without speaking, and Luca was relieved to see that Jay was wearing worn-looking trousers a good few years out of style. The current fashion was for a snug fit, which Luca appreciated on someone with Jay’s physique as a general rule, but looser was better for this purpose, given that the seams were unlikely to be endangered by a bit of physical activity.

Jay was bouncing on his toes, one hand lifting to scrub through his hair, where he promptly caught his fingers in a knot and had to tug them awkwardly free. Luca, whose own hair had defeated more than one comb in single combat, could sympathise.

“So, Piere. Here we are.”

“Indeed, Mr. Jay.” Luca gave an incline of his body. Despite his general early-morning bleariness he felt a tickle of defiant excitement on the back of his bowed neck. He’d never been an employee before. He could imagine Perse’s voice in his head, the cold surprise mingled with condemnation. Our family hasn’t risen this high for you to run around playing at being in service.

In service, Luca thought, rising from the bow. And not playing at it, either: he was here and he had a job to perform.

“Can you—not call me that?”

“Not call you Mr. Jay?”

“Yes.”

“Have you misled me as to your name?” Luca asked.

“It’s not that. I want this to be something I’m doing as myself, not as a representative of my family. I don’t…”

Jay looked uncomfortable. Luca thought about how careful, how quietly hungry, and how ashamed of that hunger the man had been about the sheer prospect of indulging in sword lessons when he didn’t need them. Luca would have wagered that the swallowed segment of that sentence was: I don’t do many things as myself.

“You prefer Mattinesh?”

Mattinesh Jay’s nose didn’t wrinkle, precisely, but he screwed his mouth sideways in a way that drew his nose along with it and revealed a dimple in his cheek. “Matti’s fine. Just Matti.”

“Well, this won’t do.”

“It won’t?”

“We can hardly have me calling you Matti, like one of your dear friends, and have you calling me Piere . That’s not how these things go.”

“No?” Matti feinted towards that sideways expression again. “I called my schoolmasters by their family names.”

“And I expect they were all grey-haired, dry-voiced old men, and not handsome young things like myself.” Luca wasn’t sure what he was angling for. No, that was a lie. He did. He won himself a pause, a quick flick of Matti’s eyes down his body.

“Some of them were women.”

“There’s nothing for it. I suppose you’ll have to call me Luca.”

A silver trout of an expression darted across Matti’s face, the barbed tail of it catching Luca’s breath. He waited with unwarranted eagerness to hear his name emerge from Matti’s mouth, but instead Matti just watched Luca expectantly.

It occurred to Luca for the first time to wonder if he should have come up with a plan for these lessons. He’d first picked up a sword fifteen years ago, and had almost no memory of how his very earliest instruction had gone.

It couldn’t be that complicated. Luca knew how to do this. Matti did not. It was just going to be a matter of telling him what he was doing wrong.

Master Carriere insisted that Luca, even after those fifteen years, began every lesson with the basic forms. That seemed a reasonable place to start.

Or so Luca thought, until Matti went to pick up a sword, hesitated, and then said, “Shall I just pick any of them?”

“What? No, of course not, don’t be stupid,” Luca said, and recalibrated.

He found Matti a pair of leather gloves first. Luca had only seen one or two hand injuries sustained by beginners during training, but those had been more than enough. He steered Matti firmly away from the longer, more old-fashioned swords that might be used in a high formal duel, and towards the shorter ones with flexible blades and simplified cage-guards. He showed Matti—quickly pulling his own sword, to remind himself of the ratio—how to measure the length of a plain practice blade against his height and select the right one.

Then he showed Matti how to hold it. Then he showed him again. Then again. Every time he thought Matti’s grip looked right, he compared it to his own unthinking grip and found something different in the way their fingers were positioned.

“Does it have to be this exact?” Matti asked, after the third time he’d extended his arm at Luca’s direction and Luca had snapped, “No, now your wrist looks all wrong and it’s drooping, come here.”

Luca was not going to say he didn’t actually know which of the differences were the vital ones and which were a forgivable variation. He said, “Yes,” with all the confidence he could project through the way his temples had started to throb, and thankfully Matti nodded and subsided.

By that time it had been half a damn hour and they hadn’t even gotten to how to stand yet, and Luca was convinced Matti was going to lose patience. The man looked as calmly interested as ever, but surely it was a facade that could snap at any second. Luca felt both jittery and tired.

“Here,” Luca said, trying to rescue his mood, “let me show you a trick,” and he demonstrated how to find the weighted centre of a blade by laying it across the second finger of both hands, set far apart, and sliding them slowly towards each other.

Matti copied him. “What is this useful for?”

“It’s not,” said Luca. He flicked the sword up and caught it by the grip.

After that he tried to show Matti how to stand. If anything, that was even worse. He racked his brain for all the tricks he knew; the piece of string drawing the shoulder blades together was one. Imagining a light shining up from the forearm to the ceiling was another. Each of them seemed to work for a moment, in isolation, but when Matti tried to combine them, it all fell apart.

Luca, through his teeth, told Matti what he was doing wrong. And kept telling him.

Matti accepted every correction like a windless lake accepting pebbles dropped into it, one after another. After a while he began to wince and shake his head, as though annoyed at himself, whenever Luca opened his mouth.

Luca felt even worse.

“All right. I think I’m holding my weight lower,” Matti said. “Is this right?”

“It’s… not bad,” Luca said, dubious. Something about the man’s stance looked desperately wrong, in fact, but Luca couldn’t put his finger on what it was. “Try stepping forward.”

Matti took a deep breath, shifted his right foot with all the lightness of an iron dragged across cloth, and nearly fell over.

“I told you not to stiffen up. How can you— Oh, for— This is hopeless. You’re hopeless, ” Luca snapped. He put his back against the nearest wall and slid down it to sit with his knees tucked up. He set his practice sword on the ground with a loud clash. “ Fuck, ” he said, with feeling.

A difficult silence thrummed in the room. Luca did not want to look up and find out if Matti looked furious, or hurt, or dejected, or disgusted. Luca was just going to stare at the window and think about the nap he was going to have soon. Morning light was washing the room with pale streaks, and the city, which had never been entirely quiet, was growing louder.

“That was hardly called for,” said Matti after a while.

Luca rubbed his forehead against his knees, scrubbing a hand through his hair, which had tangled at the nape with sweat. Matti had a point, but his mildness was not soothing Luca’s annoyance. It was having the opposite effect.

“You had to insist on fucking mornings,” he said.

“Hungover?”

“Hah.” Luca tilted his head back again, and punished himself by thumping it against the wall. “That’d be a good reason. No. Surely you’ve come across the concept of people who just don’t enjoy being awake this early? Is every member of your bloody household up and greeting the dawn with cheer and goodwill?”

“More or less,” Matti said. “It helps that two of those members are five years old. Once they’re up, everyone’s up.”

“Please at least tell me someone is unable to put together sentences until coffee has been served,” said Luca, “or I shall be forced to assume you come from a family of unnatural freaks.”

Matti didn’t quite laugh, but laughter appeared on either side of his eyes, and his teeth flashed in his smile. He was unfairly handsome when he smiled. And he didn’t just have one dimple; he had a matching set. “That would be my sister,” he said. “Maya. No matter how tight money is, there’s always enough for Maya to have her morning pot. Mama calls it the murder-prevention tax.”

“She’s not one of the five-year-olds, I trust.”

“Maya? No, she’s only two years younger than I am.” Matti slid a look at Luca that was knowing enough to stop the next question on Luca’s tongue. “And yes, before you ask: same mother, all of us. The twins were… a surprise.”

In the rhythm of the conversation, this was a place for Luca to offer something in kind, as apology for snapping. Some information about his own family. He could tell the truth, there’d be no harm in it. I’m the youngest. It’s just me and my brother. Or he could invent a vast family of siblings of all ages for Luca Piere, sword for hire. He could embroider each one lavishly with imaginary traits, and sprinkle them with freckles.

Luca looked at Matti, something uncertain and wild swirling in his stomach, and experienced the vastly strange sensation of not wanting to lie. Nor did he want to peel back the paper of himself and reveal something true. Both contrary impulses seemed to stem from the swirling, like twin trunks grown up from the same seed.

No matter. Stories were fun, being entertaining was fun, but people never really wanted to hear about you, especially if the alternative was talking about themselves.

“If I’m to be best man for this wedding of yours,” he said, “I should know about any rituals I’m expected to take part in. Whose auspices will it be under?”

“Maha, on Sofia’s side. Huna, on mine.”

“Huna.”

“Patron of weavers and spinners.”

“I… yes,” Luca said. “I’ve heard of her.”

Matti had sworn by Huna the first time they met, and it had passed through Luca’s ears unquestioned. He was a poor man who acted like a rich one, and who wore a coat—a woollen coat—worth forty gold at least.

Somewhere in the depth of information retained from Luca’s poorly attended lessons, the name Jay finally caught on the appropriate hook.

“Jay. Your family makes wool?”

“Sheep make wool,” said Matti, deadpan. “But yes. My family takes it from there.”

“And what do you do, Mattinesh, for Jay House?”

Matti smiled. This time, no dimples swam to the surface. It was a collection of muscle movements unadorned by any kind of joy.

“Not enough,” he said.

“I meant—”

“I know what you meant,” said Matti. “I do a bit of everything. My father is the Guildmaster here,” he added, with painstaking pride. “He can’t be expected to oversee our House’s doings as minutely as he used to.” Matti’s voice firmed even further. “I’m glad that he trusts me with it.”

There it was: the puzzle piece. Guildmasters were politicians; if one was also Head of a House, their elected term was a busy few years for the rest of their family. Doing a bit of everything, in that context, meant that the man in front of Luca—who dressed himself and held himself as though embarrassed by his own size, and who had yet to raise his voice beyond a mild conversational volume—was likely to be single-handedly managing the business affairs of one of the most prominent Houses in Thesper’s wool trade. He wasn’t a minor member of Jay House. He was the Head in everything but name. He was the heir.

And he was watching Luca with the kind of look that was far more appropriate to the sword ring than anything else he’d worn so far. It was the look of someone waiting to be attacked, readying himself to absorb the blow. Luca, fascinated, watched this look until it faded.

“Thank you,” Matti said finally.

“For what?”

“For not pointing out that I mustn’t be very good at it,” Matti said, soft, and Luca remembered in an instant that Matti’s family business was failing; not enough, Matti had said. It was failing to the point that the scion of the House was marrying a rich daughter of another, and they could barely scrape together enough for a best man. Auspices of Maha. That was vintners and brewers, but it could mean any of a number of different Houses, and… now they were swimming even further into the vast and unplumbed waters of Luca’s ignorance in matters of business.

Luca didn’t consider himself ignorant in matters of people —far from it, in fact—but he was becoming intrigued by the mass of contradictions in an attractive wrapping that was Mattinesh Jay. He wanted to send testing attacks towards every corner of Matti’s defence, and use them to find out the truth of him.

He could have done it subtly. But often you learned just as much from the blow that was unexpectedly direct.

“Are you a bad businessman, Matti?”

“I. No.” The way Matti said it reminded Luca of a luckstone tossed in a pocket for decades: worn and small, gleaming and hard.

“No?”

“In the teeth of the evidence.” Matti ran his hand through his hair. This time no knots impeded the gesture. Luca’s own fingers still prickled at the sight. “I know what I’m doing. But Huna throws her coins, and sometimes they land in the dust.”

Meaning, Luca interpreted, that something very unlucky had happened. Some investment gone sour, some speculation that had faltered and taken Jay House’s fortunes with it. It wasn’t as though people had stopped wearing wool, or using it to cover their floors and their beds.

Luca said, “I’d have thought if it was as bad as all that, your father wouldn’t stand for the Guildmaster position in the first place. Splitting his attention, for the pittance of a city councillor’s salary…”

“He believes in doing the most good that he can, for the Guild and the city. For everyone. He’s the best man for the job, and so he does it.”

“And all the while your House is in a lot more trouble than is generally known.” Luca knew he shouldn’t ask the next question. He did anyway. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell someone all of this?”

“Who? And why? You’d have to explain how you know,” Matti said calmly. “Besides, I have witnesses to you telling me an easily provable lie, in order to extort money from me. I don’t think you want to be arrested.”

“But if I was arrested, you wouldn’t have me as your best man.”

“But I’d be awarded my money back, so I could afford to buy myself a reputable one.”

“Ah, but they wouldn’t throw in sword lessons.”

Matti’s smile, the proper one, appeared and disappeared as though a curtain had been tugged back by a curious hand and then dropped again. Carefully he found the midpoint of the sword in his hands, and held it across two fingers.

“And so the situation is like this,” Matti said. “Nicely balanced. No, right now I’m not afraid you will upset it by ruining my family’s name. What would you gain by it?”

“Nothing,” said Luca. “You’re right.”

And he wasn’t lying, he told himself. There was no reason for any of this to matter. The duellist Luca Piere had no House to work himself to the bone for, or to be married off to preserve. Or to disappoint with his personal failings. Luca Piere provided a service. His only interest was in doing his job well and being paid. Beyond that, he wasn’t supposed to know, or care, about the shifting fortunes of the people he served.

Luca was going to give this man sword lessons, stand by his side at the wedding that would resurrect Jay House’s fortunes, and maybe have the chance to give a display of his skill, if the expected challenge took place.

It was all very simple.

Yet Luca had the sensation that the ground beneath his feet—which any duellist needed to be solid and smooth, and lacking in treacherous irregularities—had begun to show a small but noticeable tilt.

“Matti!” called Maya. “Is that you, rummaging around? We’re in the sitting room.”

Matti scooped semi-dried tomatoes into a bread roll and hurriedly licked his wrist as oil trickled down it. He made an apologetic face at Joselyne, the only full-time member of the townhouse’s domestic staff, and took his lunch into the room that Maya’s voice had emerged from.

Lunch was a generous descriptor. It was midafternoon. Matti had spent the morning going over accounts with Corus Vane, after reading and then rereading the twenty-page report on some kind of tidal event that was affecting the supply and therefore the cost of sea-scarlet shells. He’d given himself a headache and counted every pen in his desk in a vain attempt to banish it. He’d exhausted a messenger girl while negotiating, via rapid exchange of notes, a date to meet with senior members from three Guilds that wouldn’t fall on a holiday or an inauspicious date in anyone’s god’s calendar. It was part of doing business, but there were some particularly busy times of year when it felt like trying to lay stepping-stones in a swamp.

He’d gone to a meeting at a coffeehouse with one of the buyers for a drapier in Sanoy, where his cup of coffee and his raskil fell like stones into his anxious stomach, and signed off on a refund for a portion of their last shipment, which had arrived with damp-rot affecting some bolts of superfine. And then to the workshop on the fringe of the East Quarter in order to sit down with five people who wanted to tell him, in indignant detail, why the issues with the burling finish were anyone’s fault but theirs. He probably should have delegated that last one to a supervisor, but their experienced seniors were almost as busy as Matti himself.

Just thinking about the pile of papers still waiting on his desk made Matti feel lightheaded. It was one of those days when he had to keep pinching the webbing of his fingers, punishing, to keep his focus. If he closed his eyes for more than a moment he found himself dreaming about a fall—not a fall into anything, not with any intent, just the act of falling. Back and back into a soft darkness that demanded nothing and expected nothing, and was what Matti imagined a solid nine hours of sleep probably felt like.

The lightheadedness, at least, might improve if he ate something. Matti was chewing a huge mouthful when he entered the sitting room and discovered that Maya’s we had not been family-exclusive.

Matti choked on his food, struggled to swallow, and coughed several times into his cuff before he managed to speak. “Sofia! I’m sorry.”

“He hasn’t eaten all day, I expect,” said Maya.

Sofia Cooper flapped her hand towards a chair. “Don’t mind me. Sit and finish your food.”

“Sofia is here to discuss plans for the events leading up to the wedding,” said Maya, as Matti gratefully sat and shoved another quarter of the roll into his mouth.

“And the wedding itself,” said Sofia. “If you don’t mind talking a different kind of shop, Matti.”

Matti shook his head, and Sofia gave him a smile. This was the first time they’d spoken since the engagement had been finalised, and Matti might have expected it to be awkward, if he’d known she was coming today. If he’d had a chance to anticipate and fret. He glanced at Maya, wondering if she’d known, and if she’d kept it from him for that very reason.

The two of them, Sofia and Matti, had been friendly in childhood in the passing way of people whose parents were friends; Sofia’s mother had known Tomas since they were children. They’d drifted apart as they grew up, and hadn’t spoken more than polite greetings to each other in years. It was deeply strange, Matti was now discovering, to look at someone you’d always thought of as a kind of distant fixture in your life, and realise that soon you would be married to them.

There was no denying that Sofia was pretty. She had a soft figure and had inherited the colouring of her Otescan mother, including thick hair the colour of acorns in the shade, today coiled at the crown of her head. All her facial features from her turned-up nose to her bright brown eyes proclaimed a kind of delicacy that was thoroughly undercut by her eyebrows. These were thick, straight slashes across the olive skin of her face, strong and expressive, and just about the only hint to her personality that existed on the surface.

“I was just telling Sofia how much I love her outfit. If she keeps draping jewel-tone scarves like that, half the city will be doing it by the end of next month,” said Maya. It was a blatant attempt to engage Matti in paying a compliment to his betrothed, and Matti would have played gamely along if he did not have a mouthful of bread and tomatoes.

Sofia, Huna save her, turned her gaze and the warmth of her smile immediately onto Maya. “You like it? It was an accident. Or a tantrum, rather. I was trying to figure out how to copy a knot that I’d seen in a portrait of Mama’s grandmother, and I gave up when I’d tangled myself in the thing. Then I liked the way it looked, so I went out anyway.”

Maya shifted closer to Sofia on the couch and reached out to tweak a loop of the scarf. “Keep accentuating the asymmetry. It’s more striking that way.”

Sofia dressed very well; Matti could see that even without Maya’s unerring eye for style. He could have priced to within a few silver the skirt that fell from waist to ankle, navy blue twill shot through with white, and belted over her white shirt was a burnt-orange tunic that looked like the kind of underworked silk more usually made into gowns. Matti also knew that the bright teal scarf looped over Sofia’s neck and shoulder was not in line with current fashions, but unlike his sister he wouldn’t have been able to state with such confidence that it had a chance of setting a trend instead of merely being remarked upon—with varying levels of snideness—as a charmingly individual expression of taste.

The snideness would dry up entirely when Sofia had changed her young House’s name for another. The Coopers needed this alliance; perhaps not as much as the Jays needed the bond price, but they needed it nonetheless. Money and success counted for a lot, but establishment counted for just as much, and a marriage was still one of the strongest bonds. The Jays were a very old name in their trade. The wedding would swing a brush and extend the patina of their unassailable respectability over Cooper House.

Sofia and Maya planned Sofia’s ongoing conquest of Glassport fashion, while Matti ate the rest of his roll at a pace less likely to cause indigestion. By the time he was shaking away crumbs, they’d moved on to talking about how perfect the Coopers’ country house was going to be for the Half Moon Ball, and Matti plunged into the discussion as well. The ball was a tradition common to most Guilds and their patron deities, held two weeks before the wedding, and it would be a larger event than the wedding ceremony itself.

“Matti has hired a best man,” Maya said, when talk turned to the wedding parties.

“That was fast,” Sofia said.

“Well,” Matti said. “I—yes.”

As with Adrean, he was unsure how to dance around the subject. Obviously, if Sofia was going to be pragmatic about it, that was far preferable to the alternative. Matti didn’t want her to be sitting here sniffing back tears.

And yet.

“You’re being very cheerful about all of this,” Matti said. “You don’t have to pretend. Everyone knows that, you know…”

“Everyone knows what?” Sofia said.

Maya made a face at her brother from behind Sofia’s shoulder, but Matti tossed caution to the offcut pile. They were going to be married. They had to be able to talk about difficult things.

“Everyone knows that you and Adrean are—that he’s—”

“Everyone,” said Sofia, “can be mistaken. And they often are.”

“You don’t have to protect my feelings, if that’s what this is.”

“Protect?” Sofia’s brows wavered. “Matti, I’m not lying to you.”

“But he’s so…” Matti made a gesture to illustrate the figure that was Adrean Vane, with his big sad eyes, his talent with a sword, and his ability to compose songs and poetry. Matti was not going to pretend that he posed any kind of serious competition to Adrean when it came to sheer romance. If he ever tried to compose a poem, he expected the inked words would peel themselves up off the paper and flee in protest. “And, well. I’m sorry, Sofia, but everyone’s heard the song.”

“Oh, Maha’s bleeding liver,” exploded Sofia. “If I could snap my fingers and wipe ‘Wildflowers Under Glass’ from the world, I would. Thanks to the one and only decent tune Adrean has ever managed to produce, half of Glassport start whistling when they see me in the street, and the other half give me sympathetic looks.” Her voice took on a dry edge. “Of course, it’s such a nice song. And of course his word on the matter is more to be trusted than mine .”

“No!” Matti looked at Maya, half an entreaty that she would make everything all right, and half hot embarrassment that she was here to watch as he tangled this conversation beyond repair.

Maya was leaning back in her seat, as though making respectful room for the strength of Sofia’s annoyance. She touched Sofia’s arm. “All right, ignore the fact that Matti’s being an idiot. We’d never take his word over yours when it comes to your own feelings, would we, Matti?”

“No,” said Matti. “But at the same time, I’m fairly sure we have to take Adrean’s word for his .”

“I—oh, I know. I do know that.” Some of the fiery air seemed to go out of Sofia. “I wish that arse of a man would get it through his overgroomed head that I’m not nursing a secret passion for him!”

“You mean you’ve already rejected him outright?” That stopped Matti short. He could believe in a misunderstanding, perhaps, an unrequited love mistaken for something else. Indistinct flag colours viewed over a vast gulf of ocean. The ocean, in this case, being the fact that Sofia was a daughter of Cooper House, and Adrean carried no House’s name at all, nor any particular inclination to turn his hands to enriching one.

“Indeed,” said Sofia grimly. “Believe me, there’s nothing romantic about someone who hears the word no and translates it through three books of love poems and his own daydreams so that it means please keep chasing me .”

Matti didn’t know what to say to that.

“Has Adrean told you he plans to challenge at the wedding?” Sofia asked.

“Not explicitly,” Matti admitted. “But he hinted. Strongly.”

“Thus the rapid hiring of a best man.” Sofia sighed. Her eyebrows appeared to reach a decision and rose with a practical air. “A good one?”

“The best I could afford,” said Matti, more or less honestly.

This didn’t change the necessity of Luca’s hiring, though it did put a different spin on things. To challenge at a wedding against the bride’s wishes wasn’t unheard of, but it was unbelievably rude. And rare enough that Matti had never heard of it resulting in a successful duel. The best man in any wedding party was considered the mortal arm of the deities overseeing the match; if he lost, it was a sign that the marriage was ill-fated and would end poorly, if not tragically. A successful challenger had no particular claim to the bride if she denied them, but they were a line scratched through the best-laid plans of mortals.

A sword-challenged wedding would be talked about for months.

A sword-lost wedding would not go ahead.

Of course, there was a general agreement that if you got yourself halfway across the bridge, the gods would be more inclined to help you across the other half. Hiring the most skilled duellist you could afford was good business sense. The gods respected that above all else.

“Then there’s nothing else to be done there.” Sofia appeared to dispel the entire question of Adrean Vane with her breath. “We can focus on more enjoyable things, like what we’re going to wear. Have you chosen a colour, Matti? We should make the decision together, but I’ll be honest: I’m hoping for gold, for my party.”

An array of swatches popped obligingly into Matti’s mind. He banished the vibrant sea-scarlet that had occupied his morning. It would look fine with his colouring, but unspeakably gaudy, and the rest of his wedding party would have to be dressed in the same shade.

He had a sudden flash of Luca, who would be standing beside him in readiness to answer any challenge, condoned by the bride or not. Luca wore his shabby clothes with what Matti thought was an unconscious self-consciousness; he was trying hard not to mind them, but he minded anyway. He would look incredibly striking in good fabric, tailored well.

“Green,” Matti said, dressing his mental image. “Not too bright. A dark forest green?”

Sofia beamed approval. “Green and gold would be lovely. I’ve ages yet to source the fabric for the gowns, but it’ll be Harte or Duvay, obviously.” She smiled at Maya. “Though I won’t even tell you how many fingers I’d chop off to be married in gallia silk. Have you ever seen a swatch?”

“Huna, yes. ” Maya’s eyes flashed with glee and they were off again.

Sofia’s fingers were probably safe. Gallia worms were notoriously hard to keep alive, and there was a monopoly on their farming in their native Ashfah. No producer had ever agreed to sell either worms or raw thread to anyone outside that country, and both the export and import tariffs on the finished fabric itself were outrageously high.

Oh, Huna’s eyes, Matti thought suddenly. Did I honestly just make a wedding decision based on Luca Piere’s hair?

“Matti?”

He blinked. “Sorry. Was I supposed to be—” listening, he managed to snatch back from his distracted tongue, but it was fairly obvious where the sentence had been going.

Sofia burst into laughter, low and gurgling like a canal in a lock, and after a moment Maya followed suit.

“No,” Sofia said. “Not really. But I’ve got something else that I want to discuss, Matti, if you don’t mind?”

Matti thought of his paperwork again, but said, “Of course.”

“Maya, could you give us a few minutes?”

Maya stood, then leaned down and touched Sofia’s shoulder; the gesture was uncharacteristically hesitant. “I’m glad it’s you,” she said. “Is that an odd thing to say?”

“You can’t tell me you’ve always wanted a sister, Mayanesh,” Sofia said, “because I know for a fact you already have one.”

Maya had darker skin than Matti, so it was near impossible to see when she was blushing, but she had a tell: her expression blanked, her full mouth momentarily a straight line. Then it dissolved into a tentative smile.

“I don’t hate my brother so much that I’d wish someone unpleasant on him” was all she said, and left the room.

It was as though some of the ease between Matti and Sofia left with her. Maya could be like that. Rose oil, their father called her. Smoothing the way and making everything seem pleasant. Maya’s rose-oiling had held back angry debtors, persuaded long-term clients not to withdraw their business, and steered dinner conversations that were veering towards dangerous reefs back into calmer water. With her out of the room, Matti felt the strangeness of the situation slipping back. He looked at Sofia and thought the word wife, experimentally. It was like trying to hold a chunk of wet soap.

“I wanted to clear the air,” Sofia said. Her hand smoothed a crease in her tunic. “I was wondering if there’s a reason you were so ready to believe that this engagement is souring the barrel of some secret, desperate romance of mine.”

It took Matti a long moment to realise what she was asking.

“No!” he said. “No. I’m not in love with anyone. I didn’t have any—hopes, of anyone.”

“Really?”

“Huna’s teeth, Sofia,” Matti said, “where would I find the time ?”

That watery laugh spouted out of her again, and Matti exhaled. He’d had lovers before, but never anything long term, and nothing for—gods, he didn’t know how many years. It just hadn’t seemed important enough. Not in light of everything else.

But he couldn’t blame Sofia for having the thought. He was already ashamed of how readily he’d accepted one popular song and Adrean’s own long-winded pronouncements as a true portrait of tragic love across class boundaries. Sofia’s contentment with this engagement was a shift in the ground. Contrary to his previous assumptions, Matti’s betrothed was not in love with someone else.

“Good,” said Sofia. “I wanted to know where we stood. And”—with a quick smile as she patted her scarf again—“I do want to set fashions, and to know more about what goes into them. If I have to marry, then I’m very pleased for it to be into Huna’s service.”

“I’m glad.” And he was. They would be fine. There was no need at all for this sour taste in Matti’s mouth, or the irrational skitter of his pulse. He remembered, like a phantom kiss on his fingers, the sensation of the sword he’d demonstrated with for Luca. Balanced. It was just a matter of keeping it that way.

“So there we are. My parents have bought your name for me, and your prestige for Cooper House.”

There was a knock on the sitting room door and Joselyne, apologetic, came in brandishing a handful of letters. “Afternoon post, Matti,” she said. “I’d have left them on your desk, but there are two Sally-eyes in the pile and another red besides.”

Matti accepted the papers, turning them in his hand to confirm that two of them bore a red wax seal with a spot of white wax in the centre, mimicking the flower that bestowed the nickname, proclaiming not only that the sender considered them urgent but that they were requesting a reply within a day.

“I should deal with these.”

“I won’t lie and say I was just leaving,” said Sofia, “but I’ve kept you long enough.”

“Thanks,” Matti said. “For…”

Everything. Saying yes. Making it easier for Matti than it could have been. Being easier than she could have been; Matti had seen enough precarious business marriages that he knew he should be grateful for something like this, where the liking was simple and, if they were luckier than they deserved, perhaps the love could be built.

Sofia lifted her chin, elegant above the bright splash of her scarf, but reminding Matti of the sturdy prow of a ship. She could have parted crowds and waves. “We do what we have to do, right?” She smiled at him. “We’ll make the best of it.”