Chapter Five

The next day, Cay went to Lord Ondrei Noresposto's villa for tea.

This part of Cay's plan was unpleasant, and he felt slightly sick as he presented himself at Ondrei's door. Ondrei had been kind to him from the moment they'd met. To entangle him in this business was a betrayal. Cay knew it.

But if he was going to give false information to the envoy, he needed a plausible source. During their awful last meeting, Fierar had seized upon Ondrei as his informant, and however he wracked his brain, he could not think of a more tenable solution. So now he was deliberately drawing the attention of the enemy to his friend, with planning and forethought, and it was an ugly and mean thing to do.

But it wouldn't be the first time Cay had done something ugly in desperation, and if anyone was safe from the long reach of the Grup, it was Ondrei. His friend was insulated by money, birth, and power. Surely, this sordid business could not touch him. He would be fine.

Surely, he would be fine.

"Hello, darling!" Ondrei welcomed him to a spread of food and drink that would have put the prince's ball to shame. "I was so pleased to receive your note. Your trees are full of peaches, and your dovecotes producing eggs, are they not?"

"Indeed they are." Cay smiled at him. "I'm not here to ask for help, only to enjoy your company."

"I'm glad of it. You may always call upon me for any reason at all."

Ondrei was the same as ever: large, hearty, perhaps a little dim; a loud and flirtatious exterior covering a warm and generous heart. He plied Cay with food and drink, regaled him with the latest gossip, and consulted him about the current fashions. Ondrei loathed the current style for ruffled flounces on both gowns and shirt fronts and refused to wear them; Cay argued that, deployed judiciously, they enhanced the wearer's figure. They quarreled genially over their liver paste on toast, cheese, fruit, and cake.

"And, of course, balloon embroidery is going to be very hot this winter," said Ondrei. "I hear the tailors and modistes are working their fingers off to add balloons and other Uncanny Aviator touches."

"Really? And what does balloon embroidery look like?"

"Circles."

Cay laughed. "Well, I can certainly sew a circle. Perhaps I will join this fad and stitch circles on my lapels. I shall be all the rage."

"You make the rage," said Ondrei. "Whatever you do, society will eagerly follow."

"Perhaps, since the Uncanny Aviator is rescuing Chende, I will incorporate Chende designs."

"I've no notion what Chende designs could be."

"Patterns. Rather angular. Lucenequans like vines and leaves and nature motifs, and Muntegrise tend to embellish with lace or gems rather than embroidery. Chende do patterns of straight lines to make squares and stars. Triangles, sometimes."

"I had no idea," said Ondrei. "How do you know?"

"Oh... well, you know, more Chende live in Turla than in Valette. I mean, they used to, before the Grup." Cay decided it was time to change the subject. "Ondrei, perhaps you could help me with something."

"You know I am at your service, darling." Ondrei set down his plate and looked attentively at Cay.

Cay took a deep breath. "I don't ask you to betray Adrio's confidence. I know you are his loyal friend, and I would never ask you to tell me anything he asked you not to. But—" Cay cleared his throat. "But things are rather tense between us, you know, and I don't—I don't know why. I've never known why. And Winter Solstice is not so far away. We had only known each other a little for the last one, so we did not exchange gifts. But this year, I wanted to be sure of getting him something for our first Solstice together. But now, right now, it's very. Difficult." He closed his eyes and pressed a hand to his forehead. "Forgive me, Ondrei. I'm babbling."

"It's all right, Cay," said Ondrei, his voice gentle.

Cay took another deep breath and tried again. "I love Adrio. And I would like to buy him a suitable gift to make him understand I still... my feelings..." Gods, just speaking of this made a lump form in his throat. He swallowed. "But it's difficult to imagine what I could get him. It seems nothing I say makes any difference. And I do not ask you to share his confidences, but I wonder if you have any ideas."

Ondrei said nothing. Cay kept his eyes downcast, waiting.

He hadn't intended to ask about this. But last night, after all the servants were abed, he'd silently climbed the stairs and let himself into Adrio's rooms. Lighting a lamp, he'd spent two hours on his knees in front of Adrio's closed cabinet, probing at the lock with a bit of bent wire. He'd picked away at it until his fingers ached, and the little padlock remained firmly closed. Either Illo's instructions—easy-peasy—were hopelessly optimistic, or Cay's fingers just did not have the knack. He was mightily tempted by Illo's second suggestion—to just smash the cabinet open—but of course, he could not possibly explain the wreckage. He'd surrendered and gone back to bed eventually, but he ached with loss. The silence of his room, the place where he slept and bathed, the scent of him...

And Ondrei knew. Cay looked up at Ondrei through his eyelashes, and it was plain that Ondrei knew and would not say.

"I would very much like to be as good a friend to you as I am to Adrio," said Ondrei after a pause, "and offer you all the assistance I can. But I am constrained by my honor from giving you any help in this matter. I am heartily sorry for it, Cay, but you must ask him, not me."

Cay nodded.

"For what it's worth, I think he's being a donkey. I have argued on your behalf. And, further, I can assure you of this: although I cannot tell you his current errand, I can promise it has nothing at all to do with his feelings for you."

"Current errand? Do you mean his trip to Lodola?"

Ondrei drew a breath.

Cay opened his eyes wide. Ondrei's face wore a stricken expression.

"He didn't go to Lodola," Cay realized. "Oh. Oh." Cay pressed the heels of his hands over his eye sockets hard enough to make stars dance in the darkness behind his eyelids. "Oh, the liar. I am going to murder him."

Ondrei made a distressed sound. "I have a foolish flapping mouth. Forget I said anything, won't you? Cay. Cay, don't cry."

"I'm not." Cay removed his hands and blinked the tears out of his eyes. "I'm not crying over him. Damn him. Who does he—" Ondrei grimaced with regret. "No. No, I'm not asking you to tell me, I just— Augh!"

Ondrei managed a smile. "Sometimes you are very Muntegrise, darling. In Lucenequa we don't say augh. We say, ‘Oh dear, how terribly awkward.'"

Cay sniffed and wordlessly agreed to joke, to lighten the conversation. "How like a golden stag falling into a ravine and breaking its neck."

Ondrei offered his handkerchief. "Precisely. You'll be a master of Starlight Conversation yet."

Cay took great care with his appearance for his meeting with Hob Fierar. He spent an hour touching up his hair. Enhancing his eyelids with subtle hints of makeup, he smiled a little bitterly at his reflection. He had no desire to seduce the envoy (in spite of the stupid insinuations of his stupid husband), but looking good was never a bad idea.

"What are you doing?"

Cay was in his third-floor suite, a set of rooms which at that time he almost never used, black-fingered and stinking as he massaged goo into his hair. He whirled at the voice. Adrio came into the room, nose wrinkled.

"You're home!"

Adrio had been gone for several days on some business; Cay hadn't expected him to return until tomorrow. He looked handsome and wind-flushed, slapping his riding gloves against one lean thigh. Still in his riding clothes, he'd obviously come straight to Cay upon his arrival.

"You stink like mouse piss and old onions."

"Oh!" Cay's welcoming smile vanished; he grabbed his discarded shirt and threw it over his head. "Go away! I'm disgusting!"

"You really are." Grinning, Adrio touched an exploring finger to a dribble of dye running down the side of Cay's neck, and Cay shivered at his touch. "Husband, is this dye?"

"Husband, you aren't supposed to see this."

"You dye your hair?"

Flushing, Cay said, "Obviously."

"Why?"

No, no, no. Cay's heart quickened with fear. This was bad. What a foolish deception. He should have known he would be caught out, eventually. Unable to come up with a good explanation, he resorted to distraction. Pretending embarrassment, he said, "Because I am extremely vain, and I want you to think I'm pretty." He peeked at him from under his shirt. "And I am not pretty at the moment, so go away."

"No." Adrio took a towel and gently blotted smudges of foul-smelling dye from Cay's neck and shoulders. "What a fox's song you sing. You'd be the most beautiful man in Valette if it all fell out."

"Ah, no. You're the most beautiful man in Valette. I'm only crafty. I've spellbound you with my crafty ways."

Cay was teasing, but Adrio's eyes had gone serious. He said, very softly, "Have I dishonored you, Cay, that you would dishonor me, and our marriage, with secrets? Only tell me, and I will set it right, for I would have no falsehoods between us. Even in so inconsequential a matter as the color of your hair."

Damn. Quelling his impatience, Cay smiled at him as prettily as he knew how. "How dare you call my hair inconsequential."

Adrio was not diverted. "You once told me you have your mother's hair. You said you and Kell don't look alike because she takes after your father and you take after your mother."

What a stupid thing to say. He'd need some embarrassing confession, some painful childhood secret, to make Adrio comfort him instead of picking at his lies, and soon. But at the moment he was too flustered to think. He changed tack.

"Perhaps someday I will tire of being so very, very obviously a black-haired Muntegrise among you golden Lucenequans, but not just yet. It is only pride, love. Don't fret. Now go." He pushed Adrio a little with his fingertips. "Go and relax for a quarter of an hour. Let me enhance myself, and I'll see you when I'm done."

"I'll go," agreed Adrio. But he leaned closer and brushed his lips against Cay's, a soft kiss, a promise of more. "But attend: there's no secret you could tell me that would make me love you less. Do you hear me, Husband?"

Cay smiled weakly. "Yes, Husband."

"And, did I have a secret, I would want to be able to trust your love to remain as true."

Cay could not quite meet his eyes. "Adrio, the dye will eat into my head if I don't wash it out soon. I will welcome you home properly, I vow, once I've washed up, but now you must save your sweet words and go away."

When Hob Fierar arrived, Cay was dressed in soft dark clothes of his own design. The perfect tailoring of his deceptively simple suit emphasized his waist and shoulders. He wore no adornment but his wedding ring.

"Lord Cay." The envoy bowed. "I hope you have something for me."

"Not here," said Cay. Rain drummed on the windows, so he threw a cloak around his shoulders before stepping outside, closing the door behind them. "Is there some private place we might talk?"

"We can imitate your lord husband and take a reserved room at a tavern," suggested Fierar. "He does not seem to be in Valette right now. Where has he gone?"

"Not here," Cay repeated.

He covered his head with the hood of his cloak and walked through rainy streets, down the hill toward the water, to a small, respectable inn near the docks, frequented by fishermen and stevedores. He went in first, asked for a private room, and hung up his cloak by the smoking fire while he waited for Fierar to join him.

The envoy came in, shedding his dripping hat. "Now, Lord Cay. Enough stalling."

"I have no desire to stall," said Cay shortly, "only to be private. My lord's servants have big ears." He took from his pocket the stained, half-burned packet of papers he'd prepared, but before he handed them over, he said, "Envoy Fierar. Attend to me, please. My husband is entirely innocent of all of this. What I learned, I learned from someone else."

Fierar smiled. "If you are honest with me, there is no need to fear. Where did you say Lord Adrio had gone?"

"To Lodola. My discovery was made yesterday, after he left."

"Go on."

Here it was, the moment he betrayed his friend.

"I found these notes when I visited Lord Ondrei Noresposto for tea. He was burning them in his fireplace when I entered the room. He'd intended to drop it into the fire, but it fell on the hearth and went out; when he left the room for a moment, I snatched it up and put it in my pocket."

"What is in those papers?"

"See for yourself." Cay handed them over.

Fierar carefully unfolded the stained, torn, half-burned packet of papers and spread them out on the table.

There, in cheap purple ink, were drawings and plans. Drawings of ships, baskets, and smoke-balloons rigged with sails and rudders. Drawings of cannons and buckets of hot oil. Graphs and charts marked with mysterious numbers and symbols. Around these images were notes in shaky, messy handwriting: descriptions of different weights of silk, descriptions of sewing and weaving techniques, speculation on the best kind of smoke to produce levity (Straw? Tobacco? Dampened sackcloth? More experimentation needed) and dozens of mathematical equations. The papers were illustrated with arrows and numbers and notes: Air flow, Rate of levitational force, and Carrying capacity. All of it was dirty, smeared, the ink dissolved in places, the paper itself charred in others. Illegible, but suggestive.

Hob Fierar studied every page silently, bending close to try to read the inscriptions. After a long silent while, he wheeled to look at Cay, who was forced to smother his smile of pride.

"Are you telling me," said Fierar slowly, "Lord Noresposto is the one who flies Chende workers over the mountains into Lucenequa?"

"Certainly not. I am telling you Lord Noresposto had these papers in his possession."

"And you claim they just fell before your eyes yesterday? The very answer to the question I asked you?"

Cay shrugged. "I was fortunate."

"Indeed." Fierar smirked. No doubt he assumed Cay had stolen or blackmailed the papers from Ondrei. There was a Lucenequan saying: The scorpion believes the butterfly will sting. Cay said nothing.

"These equations," murmured Fierar, tracing a forefinger over the crumpled pages. "Do they say how to make the smoke-balloons? How to navigate them?"

"I cannot understand them," said Cay with regret. "I have no idea what they say."

Fierar was talking to himself more than to Cay. "This—this diagram here, with the compass. Does it show how the balloons can be steered against the wind? Because in summer, the prevailing winds are almost always from the southwest. Balloons would be carried easily north, not south. But if one could steer them, to go where one would..."

Thrilled that Fierar was following the clues he had put in the papers, Cay said, "I've no idea. But sailing ships can sail against the wind, surely?"

"Indeed... And these dots... Is this a constellation? A star map?"

"Mm?" Cay looked at what Fierar was pointing at. The dots were almost surely droplets of tea. "Why, you could be right."

"Ondrei of Noresposto," mused Fierar. "Surely the man can't be as much of a fool as he pretends. It must be a ruse. He poses as an ineffectual fop so that no one suspects him of being the so-called Uncanny Aviator."

Cay remained silent, horrified at the direction of Fierar's thoughts. Ondrei, living an elaborate double life, concealing some secret identity? It beggared the imagination.

But if Hob Fierar's attention was on Ondrei, it wasn't on Adrio. Or the real deliverer of the Muntegrise Chende.

Hob Fierar straightened after a while and carefully refolded the pages. "I must show these to the natural philosophers at the University of Turla. I have tried speaking to the scholars at the university here in Valette, and they were deliberately obstructive. I could not even get them to admit it was possible. But this... this shows it is possible."

"You are returning to Turla, then?" asked Cay, as neutrally as he could.

"I dare entrust these to no other messenger." He put the pages in the interior pocket of his jacket. "But I will be back, Lord Cay, and when I return, I expect more."

"More?"

"More. Lord Noresposto is either the Aviator or knows who he is. Which? Where does the Aviator keep the smoke-balloons? From whence does he launch? Where in Turla does he land them, and how does he do so unnoticed? Is there only one balloon or a fleet of them? An armada? I must know more, Lord Cay."

"I found this only by purest chance," said Cay.

"Of course," drawled Fierar.

"No, truly. I am not Lord Noresposto's confidant—"

"Then become his confidant," snarled Fierar. "Become his lover."

"Sir, everyone knows Lord Noresposto does not have lovers."

"Then drug him. Spy on him, blackmail him. Do what you must, Lord Cay, and find me answers." He tapped his breast with his hand, patting the papers in his pocket. "Do it. If the snows hold off, I'll be back in a month. Give me answers, Lord Cay, or I shall use what I know, and all of Valette will know what Lord Lodola's pretty husband really is."

Fierar turned on his heel and headed for the door.

Cay could not let him walk away on that note. The man was Grup. The violence of the coup was still in Cay's mind: the searches, the executions, the shots fired into crowds.

"One more thing, sir," said Cay.

Fierar paused. Perhaps the formality of Cay's tone caught his attention, or the way Cay stood.

"You have repeatedly made threats against Adrio Santauro, Heir of Lodola. Understand me. If you touch him, I will touch you. If you harm his reputation, I will destroy yours. If you damage his property, I will burn your home. And if you hurt him, I will kill you."

"Lord Cay!" Fierar raised his eyebrows and fluttered his hands in a mockery of fear.

"If you know my past, you know not to make an enemy of me," added Cay.

Fierar sneered and left without a word.

Cay's knees were trembling when he left the inn. His head floated with a strange combination of relief and elation and terror.

He'd done it. He'd fooled Hob Fierar. And better—better than he'd hoped for—he'd sent Hob Fierar away. The envoy was leaving Valette, leaving Lucenequa, and going back to his masters in Turla. He'd cast absurd suspicion upon a friend, he'd distracted attention from his husband, and he'd made himself safe.

For now.

Cay didn't want to go home, so he walked toward the university. Perhaps he would catch Kell between classes, buy her food, tease her about her social life, and ask her to try to explain fluxions to him again. And if she was not available, he could climb up to her dorm room and wait. Or he might walk around the old stone streets of the university quarter, look up at the ancient towers, and pretend he was a poor student, consumed with worries about an exam, a paper, or a boyfriend.

Rain pattered on his shoulders and back as he walked, soaking into the wool of his cloak. It was a warm misty rain, not unpleasant on his cheeks, and the wind from the southwest smelled of salt and the sea. A Lucenequan autumn rain, nourishing the green Lucenequan vineyards and orchards, filling the broad wandering Lucenequan rivers.

In Muntegri the rain was sparser and icier. It fell harder; some autumns, it did not rain at all. Muntegri's fields were dry and full of stones and frost. Muntegrise ate potatoes and turnips, cabbages and oats, mutton and goat cheese. If they had money, they bought fruit, grain, and pork from Lucenequan traders. They must be hungry in Turla in the years since the roadblock had gone up. Or maybe someone was smuggling foodstuffs over the mountains, as well as refugees. Maybe the powerful were eating Lucenequan ham while the ordinary people grew thin.

In the mountains between Lucenequa and Muntegri, this gentle rain would be snow. This breeze was warm and wet; snow would fall on the Road and then melt. A rider on a good horse could take the Road from Lucenequa to Muntegri, through the mountains, in a snow like that.

But if the winds shifted to come from the north and autumn turned early to winter, the rain would turn to ice, and the snow would come down hard, blocking the Road more surely than any Grup patrol. Then nothing would pass between the two countries, not unless someone had indeed mastered the Principle of Levity.

If the wind blew right, Hob Fierar would be trapped in Muntegri until snowmelt. The Chende would be trapped in their Muntegrise camps, with no possible rescue, unless they truly could fly.

But Cay would be safe until spring.