“What I don’t understand,” Logan was saying to Momma K, “is why, out of all people, you are pushing Jarl’s proposals.” The name made Kylar pay attention.
“If I said it was because Jarl gave me hope, would you believe me?” Momma K asked.
A troubled look crossed Logan’s face, and Kylar saw the old naive Logan briefly at battle with the Logan who’d spent months in the Hole. “I’d believe that was part of it,” he said.
She smiled. “The fact is, Jarl’s plans are not just good for the Rabbits—they’re good for everyone. Do you know how much the average Rabbit spends when he visits a whorehouse?” She laughed at the look that crossed Logan’s face. “I was being rhetorical, Your Grace. Three silver pieces. One on drink, two for the girl. I make one silver in profit. The average merchant buys wine, a meal, sometimes tobacco, sometimes riot weed, then a girl. I keep more than a crown in profit. And when nobles visit? Desserts, dancers, bards, jugglers, aperitifs, fine wines, plus other services you’d probably prefer I not mention. I take seven crowns in profit. So, if you were a cutthroat merchant queen, which would you choose?”
Logan’s cheeks were pink, but he nodded. “Point taken.” Kylar could barely believe his eyes. Logan, talking calmly about the economics of prostitution?
“The problem with how the people have looked at the Rabbits is that they see them as grubby, uncultured, and dangerous. I see them as potential customers.”
“But you’re not hurting for money. You own, what? half of the, uh, houses of pleasure in this city?” Logan said. Momma K gave a feline smirk, and at that expression, Kylar realized that she didn’t own half the city’s brothels. She owned them all. “And I’ve heard you don’t pay taxes, ever. Even if we were able to figure out exactly which magistrates in this city take bribes and which don’t—” as Logan said it, Kylar realized Logan was speaking with the one woman in the city who could tell him—“if we removed them, you would suddenly have a raft of expenses you never had before. I can’t imagine you’d come out ahead. If you were the city’s most astute merchant, would you choose taxes or no taxes?”
“In the past twenty years, I’ve had nobles seize entire brothels no less than fifteen times. Banks I had an interest in have been seized ten times. I’ve lost sixty bouncers to nobles who resented being thrown out. In a particularly bad year, a certain high noble took a taste to killing whores, and I lost forty-three girls. When someone finally killed him, his father retaliated by burning six of my brothels to the ground, one of them with all of my employees locked inside.” The coldness in Momma K’s eyes was frightening. “So, while we can debate how many months without taxes pays for a seized brothel, ledger sheets can’t explain what it is to find your young protégé has been kidnapped. They can’t tell you what it is to live wondering how long it will be before the twist tires of her, and whether he will then kill her or release her. Your Grace, I have learned to use this city’s corruption, but I shall not weep to see it destroyed.”
Momma K’s face was turned toward Logan, so Kylar couldn’t read it, but her voice carried the ring of truth, and he heard depths to the stories that Logan couldn’t know. Momma K had been Shinga during all those atrocities. With all the Sa’kagé’s resources, she could have brought her own justice to every case through men like Durzo Blint. But with every prostitute’s death or ill-treatment, she had to decide if justice was worth the possible retaliation. After that nobleman had burned her brothels, Momma K could have sent a wetboy after him—but she’d have risked splitting apart the city in civil war. No wonder she’d turned into such a hard woman.
“I had no idea such things took place,” Logan said.
Beyond him, Queen Graesin put a hand on her crown and adjusted it on her forehead. A bolt of lightning arced through Kylar, but nothing happened. He willed his muscles to relax and stabbed the untouched filet on his plate.
“The question is, is it possible?” Logan was saying. “I mean, building a few bridges over the Plith isn’t going to change things. We’d be fighting against established interests.”
“We ended slavery, and we did it without a war. The time is ripe. People have seen so much tumult in the last year that one more upheaval—if it gives them hope—could change everything. The Nocta Hemata showed the city that the Rabbits can be brave. Pavvil’s Grove showed that they’re willing to bleed for this country. Things can be made new.”
Yes, as soon as the queen’s head explodes.
There was something about the way she said “we ended slavery.” She didn’t mean we as in we, Cenaria. If she had become Shinga around the time Count Drake left the Sa’kagé, that meant she’d either been part of abolition movement, or she had decided not to oppose it despite the enormous profits it made for the Sa’kagé. She had to be part of the reason Count Drake’s enemies hadn’t killed him. Kylar wondered at her, this woman who had taught him to read, who had championed him to Durzo, who had helped end slavery and gave the guild rats a safe place to stay in the winter. At the same time, she had ordered dozens or even hundreds of kills. She had bribed magistrates, established dens of gambling and prostitution and riot weed, extorted honest shop keepers, sprung crooks from gaol, crushed her competitors by every means, and enriched herself every step of the way. She was a fearsome woman indeed. Kylar was glad that she’d always liked him.
But none of these ideas would leave the ground while Terah Graesin reigned. Yesterday she had sealed the Warrens. Tomorrow she was going to build new bridges?
Logan and Momma K continued their discussion, but Kylar stopped listening and merely watched. Logan asked piercing questions about the city’s trades and economics, who moved what, where merchants bought which goods, what the tariffs were with different countries, how merchants avoided the more egregious taxes. That moved into history and seamlessly into what they thought of the current state of the country, from who had been hurt worst by the wars to who had cooperated with Khalidor and how much of that would be held against them, to which lands no longer had lords and who was pressing claims to them. As Kylar watched, he realized that this must be what it was like for a neophyte soldier to watch him fight. Logan and Momma wove names and histories and connections among nobles licit and illicit and business dealings and rumors through their speech like masters of the loom. Though Logan was clearly less experienced and had access to only the licit half of the city’s information, he still surprised Momma K from time to time with his analyses. And even as they were obviously engrossed in their own conversation, Logan took time to exchange pleasantries with Lantano Garuwashi at his left, who seemed intent on the queen anyway, and to make eye contact with the nobles at the lower tables who sought his glance, and thank the servers and even applaud the beaming new court bard who was terrifically talented even if he did look like a frog.
Beyond Logan, Terah Graesin was focused on her triumph, and enjoying it, accepting congratulations, drinking—dammit, poison would have worked—and flirting openly with both Lantano Garuwashi and her brother. There Kylar saw a microcosm of two reigns. Logan intent on bettering a country, Terah intent on herself.
And as the evening progressed, he realized that someone had cleaned the crown before the queen donned it. It put a decision Kylar had thought he’d already made back in his lap.
It was good to be with his friends. Here, at the high table, Kylar was suddenly legitimate, and no longer alone. He could stay here with the people he admired and loved. Momma K and Count Drake and Logan could be his companions for the rest of his life. He could find Elene and bring her back and give her this life. A life beyond the shadows. Maybe he didn’t have to be the wolf in the cold.
Gods! He was immortal! Would it be so bad to let himself have one lifetime of happiness? Drake and Momma K had ended slavery while a corrupt king reigned. Surely between Logan and Count Drake and Kylar and Momma K they could mitigate whatever damage a foolish queen did.
From the middle of the table, Queen Graesin caught Kylar staring at her. She winked.
As the feast ended, Queen Graesin stood and headed for one of the adjoining rooms arm in arm with Lantano Garuwashi. Lantano Garuwashi was graceful and intimidating in his broad, loose pants that draped like a skirt, and a silk shirt with starched tabs over his wide shoulders, leaving his heavily muscled arms bare. The rest of the high table stood next and Kylar moved to follow her. Logan put a hand on his arm and pulled a fat ring engraved with horses off a finger. “This is a symbol of your new office, Marquess.” From a pocket, he produced another, much smaller signet ring shaped with what looked like tiny dragon. Kylar recognized it. “This is the ring of House Drake. Take them. There’s life beyond the shadows.”
Kylar had given his life before. He’d died to save the woman he loved. He’d died to get money to get out of Cenaria. He’d died for refusing Terah Graesin’s contract on Logan. He’d died opposing the Godking. It had never been fun, but he’d begun to trust that he would come back. Every other death had cost him only the pain of dying. This death would cost him his life. He would have to leave forever. Start over completely in a far land. It would be like every one of his friends had died at the same time.
“You’ll make a great king,” Kylar said.
“How many men are you willing to kill for that idea?”
“It’s not an idea. It’s a dream. Now if you’ll excuse me, Your Grace, the longer people see you talking with me, the more I will sully your reputation.” Kylar turned and followed Terah Graesin into the next room.
“Your Grace,” Momma K said, returning from mingling. “I think we should stay. I hear the new bard has composed a wonderful new song.”
46
Quoglee Mars hadn’t eaten. He would eat later, if at all, with the servants. But tonight, it didn’t bother him. He wandered the tables and played whatever asinine music the threadbare nobles requested. He accepted their applause and moved on, eager to please the next batch of up-jumped plebeians.
After dinner, the castle was opened up and the tables spirited away so the nobles could mingle and have a chance to pay their respects and exchange a few words with the new queen. Entertainments had been spread through numerous rooms with desserts and liqueurs. Quoglee waited until the party had been going for a while before he mounted the platform where the high table had been. The guards who wandered the party had all wandered out, and several of the kingdom’s more important nobles were in the room—and, most important, Queen Graesin wasn’t.
Leaning his head down as if oblivious to them all, he began playing as only Quoglee Mars could play. For years, he knew, students of music would test their hand against this. Could they manage this overture in the time their tutors told them Quoglee Mars had played it? And some of them doubtless would crash through it with Quoglee’s speed, and afterward, their tutors would tell them the difference between hitting notes and milking them.
Quoglee played impetuosity and youth, fervor and passion, sudden flares of anger, tempestuous, never slowing. Around that driving center, he wrapped sweetness, and love, and sorrow, pride against love, scaling higher and higher, with tragedy following a step behind.
Then, before the resolution, he stopped abruptly.
There was a moment of silence. The cretins were all looking at him, silent, expectant, not knowing if they could clap yet. He dipped his head, not even this perturbing him.
The applause was thunderous, but Quoglee held up a hand quickly, silencing it. The room held perhaps two hundred nobles, at least a hundred hangers-on, and dozens of servants. Miraculously, there were still no guards, and what speaking Quoglee had to do, he had to do without interference. “Today,” he said in his stage voice, which carried better than a shout, “I wish to play something new that I’ve written for you, and all I ask is that you allow me to finish. This song was commissioned by someone you know, but someone who is more special than you know. It was, in fact, commissioned by the Shinga of your Sa’kagé. I swear every word of this song is true. I call it the Song of Secrets, and your Shinga wishes me to dedicate it to Queen Graesin.”
* * *
“That’s plenty far, Sergeant Gamble,” Scarred Wrable said, stepping out of the shadows in a doorway that connected one of the side rooms with the Great Hall. With a practiced hand, he slid an arm between the sergeant’s rich cloak and his back and cut through leather to bring the point of a dagger to rest against the man’s spine. “There’s nothing in there that interests you.”
“What are you bastards doing in the Great Hall?”
“No theft, nor murder, and that’s all you need to know, Sergeant.”
“It’s Commander Gamble now.”
“It’ll be the late Commander Gamble if you move that hand another inch.”
“Ah. Point taken.”
“In case you’re thinking of raising an alarm, you might want to take a careful look around the room and tell me what you see.”
Commander Gamble looked. Eight royal guards were in the room. Six of them were conversing individually with young male noblemen that the commander didn’t recognize. The two others were stationed on either side of Queen Graesin and not talking to anyone, as they were commanded not to while guarding the queen. However, another group of three nobles near them did seem especially vigilant now that Commander Gamble studied them. He cursed aloud. He’d had no idea the Sa’kagé even had so many wetboys. “Let me guess that if anyone raises the alarm, you have orders.”
“If you cooperate, not only will you and all these men live, but no one will blame you afterward. You might even keep your job.”
“Why should I believe you?” Commander Gamble asked.
“Because I don’t need to lie. I’ve got two dozen friends and a knife in your back.”
Two dozen? Commander Gamble chewed on that for a moment. “Well then,” he said. “Why don’t we get a drink? I’ve got a special bottle—down in the kitchens.”
Food paused, poised inches from open mouths, forgotten. Servants froze in the act of collecting glasses. For a moment, no one even breathed.
In a city of fatal secrets, Quoglee Mars had told everyone that he knew the greatest secret of them all. If that was the prequel to his song, what would his song hold?
Quoglee presided over the silence like the maestro he was, a smug smirk tugging at his lips. He judged the silence as if it were music, each beat of rest landing in perfect order. Then, a moment before the revelation could spark a firestorm of comment, he lifted one finger.
From the crowd, a woman’s voice broke in a single high, clear note she held for impossibly long, and then, never pausing for a breath, it devolved into a plaintive run and finally words, decrying loneliness. All eyes turned to a barrel-chested soprano in ivory that no one recognized. As she sang, she strode through the crowd until she joined Quoglee on his platform. His voice joined hers, crossing and interweaving melodies, even as the words clashed, lovers singing of love and love denied.
From the corners of the room, the instruments, light viol and muscular bass and harp, played against the voices, but by the magic of music, each stood clear. The repetition of the vocal pleas against the instrumental injunctions allowed the ear to follow one and then the next and the next. Had it been speech, it would have been unintelligible. But in music, every line was pellucid, individuated, stark in its call. A sister’s passion, a brother’s confusion, youth in turmoil, society frowning condemnation, secrets born in the bedchambers of an exalted house. A woman defiant, passionate, letting nothing stand in her way.
Though he didn’t name them, Quoglee had taken no pains to conceal the objects of his song, but as always, some nobles caught on earlier than others. Those who understood couldn’t believe what they were hearing. They searched the room for guards, sure that someone must stop this beautiful outrage. But no guard was at his post. The Sa’kagé had chosen this night to unveil its power. There was no way this could be an accident. This room, which held two hundred of the kingdom’s elite, now swelling ever more as the curious came to see what held everyone transfi
xed, was normally protected by at least a dozen of the Queen’s Guard. Quoglee sang treason, and no one stopped him. The beauty of the music and the seduction of a rumor held the nobles in a spell. It was Quoglee’s masterpiece. No one had ever heard such music. The strings warred with each other, and the forbidden love warred with itself, the music claiming this twisted love was love indeed, even as the boy twisted against his conscience and the woman demanded her rights as a beloved.
Then, as they sang, finally in harmony, having declared an armistice, surrendering to a forbidden love which must remain secret, a new voice joined the fray. A young soprano, lean, in a simple white dress joined Quoglee and the mezzo soprano, singing notes of such purity they tore the heart. In her innocence, she stumbled upon a secret that would wreck a royal house.
The brother never knew. The elder sister saw all she had, all she desired, threatened by her own sister, and in her conflicted heart, she hatched a desperate plan.
Unnoticed by the rapt nobles, a young man had entered the chamber only moments after the first notes sounded. Luc Graesin made no move to silence Quoglee Mars. From the back of the room, he only listened.
The voice of Natassa Graesin spiraled into the Hole, betrayed by her own blood, murdered. She wailed, her voice discordant, fading into oblivion, her life a sacrifice to a perversion. The music played the matching leitmotifs of fatal secrets and Cenaria once again.
“Nooo!” Luc Graesin screamed.
The musicians cut off the last, lingering notes in shock. Luc burst through the doors, fleeing. No one followed.
47
Seeing Count Drake, Kylar slipped through Queen Graesin’s entourage, but for once the casual invisibility of ordinariness failed him. A woman’s hand touched his elbow. He turned and found himself staring into Terah Graesin’s eyes. Those deep green Graesin eyes were breathtaking, especially as Kylar involuntarily stared deeper.