Liar's Moon (19 page)

Instead I contented myself with leafing through the entries,
and I was surprised to see the withdrawals outnumbered the deposits. By a lot. The records went back a little more than a year, and the sums in Lord Ragn’s accounts seemed to be dwindling rapidly. There was one large influx of cash at the end of the winter, around the time of Durrel’s marriage to Talth, but after that, the decline continued. I wondered if Durrel knew his father was losing money.
But how? Bad investments? Gambling? Women? None of the usual reasons for nobs to go broke seemed to fit what I knew of Lord Ragn. I tucked the account book back into place and combed through the letters, my fingers stalling when they came to a fold of green parchment in the drawer. Loath to pick it up, I flipped it onto the desk with a letter knife, and spread it open.

It was a note from
the Matriarch at the Celystra, thanking Lord Ragn for his recent gift of a set of gold candlesticks for the convent’s chapel, and a donation of ten thousand crowns. I frowned, feeling dull and sick in the stuffy heat. Could famously
neutral
Lord Ragn, the man who had raised Meri, be secretly a Celyst? It would explain the company he’d been keeping, at least, the Councilor and the Confessor I’d
seen riding with him into this very house.

I heard the thump of footsteps coming down a flight of stairs outside, so I ducked back out to the courtyard, not even bothering to replace the letter. I did pull the office door shut behind me. Lord Ragn appeared at the base of the stairs, looking uncharacteristically rumpled, his face flushed. He stalked over to me. “Where is my son?” he said,
his voice harsh.

“Safe. For now.” My heart was pounding; between his cold greeting and the letter from the Celystra, I didn’t know what to think about Lord Ragn’s loyalties.

“This isn’t a game,” he said. “You have no idea how much danger he’s in. Lord Raffin was taken to the Celystra infirmary with broken ribs! He’s facing discommendation for this little stunt.”

My breath caught.
“Is he —”

“What were you two thinking?”

“Karst was going to kill him!”

Ragn fell back like I’d struck him. “Karst? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said stiffly.

“What does he have on you?”

He took a moment, pacing across the tiled floor, past the fountain and a bench with a blue velvet cloak puddled in the seat. He tugged and smoothed his doublet, rubbed
the back of his neck. “These are not matters I have any intention of discussing with you,” he finally said. “You must tell me where Lord Durrel is.”

I could be stubborn too. “No.”

“Damn it, girl, if they find him —”

“They won’t,” I said firmly. “I told you, he’s safe for now. But he’d be a whole lot safer if I understood what was going on.”

“It’s no concern of yours,” Lord
Ragn said in a tight voice. “The situation is under control.”

“He wants to see you.”

Lord Ragn’s eyes closed briefly, and he nodded. “I — I would appreciate that very much. You haven’t brought him here, surely?”

“No, milord.” I outlined my plan, which had grown legs on my walk over here. “This afternoon, can you book passage on a ship to Tratua?” Nobs could still travel freely
in Llyvraneth, so far as I knew. “Withdraw a reasonable sum, say, five hundred crowns, from your banking house. Send one of your men to a tailor’s — your normal one — and buy a suit of clothes and a traveling cloak.”

“Shall I buy a horse, as well?” There was almost a trace of amusement in Lord Ragn’s voice.

“No,” I said. “That would look suspicious, since the Decath already
own
the best
horses in Gelnir. But a good sword and a pair of boots, and perhaps a falcon.”

“You want him to run.”

“I want it to
look
like he’s run. Can you do that?”

Lord Ragn looked into the distance. Lines creased his forehead and feathered the skin at his eyes. “And he’ll still be here in the city? Do you think that’s wise?”

“If I could have convinced him to leave, don’t you think I’d
have done it already? He’s determined to clear his name.”

“But this is madness,” Ragn said. “To break out of prison, to —” His voice broke and he fought for composure. “You’re
certain
he’s safe?”

I felt a surge of pity. “As safe as I can make him, your lordship. But, please, if you know anything about what’s happening to him —”

“I asked you before to stay out of this,” Lord Ragn
said, but he sounded tired now, not angry.

“What does Karst want from you?” There was no question in my mind that I’d seen Karst
here
, at Charicaux, and that Lord Ragn
must
know him. So what was he hiding?

Lord Ragn sighed, shadows crossing his face. “It has nothing whatever to do with the death of Lord Durrel’s wife, but since I don’t expect you’ll accept that for an answer, I’ll try
to explain. Sit down.” He pointed me to the iron bench, and I shifted aside the velvet wrap. “You know that I fostered my niece Merista for five years.”

“Of course.”

Ragn continued. “You have no idea how costly that was for us — for the Decath. Keeping her safe, keeping her secret. The bribes alone nearly bankrupted the estate. And then when she came out as not only magical, but a party
to Wierolf’s rebellion . . .” He touched his fingers to the bridge of his nose, wincing slightly. “If she had been my blood relation, and not just my late wife’s niece, we would have lost everything. There were inquiries. The king was not pleased. We convinced him we knew nothing of Lady Merista’s magical nature, but it was a near thing. We’re lucky we still have our title, let alone managed
to hold on to Favom Court
and
Charicaux. Only my wife Amalle’s connections, and a very great fine paid directly to the king’s coffers, as well as sworn oaths of loyalty to His Majesty, saved us at all.”

I suspected Lord Ragn was sparing some of the details. Hang the estate and the title — he was lucky he still had his
head
. Meri’s parents had been in exile for much of her childhood for their
role in a previous rebellion. “And Karst?”

“I’m getting to that. As you can imagine, the Decath estate has fallen into debt since all this began. I couldn’t approach a bank for obvious reasons, so I turned to old, old family friends.”

“The Ceid?”

“The very same. Mistress Talth’s first husband and I had worked closely together for many years. His heirs were more than willing to
negotiate a settlement with the Decath, but their fee was steep.”

“Talth wanted to marry Durrel.”

He nodded. “It was an excellent match, and Lord Durrel seemed amenable as well, so we struck the bargain.” Lord Ragn shifted position, his face grim. “Unfortunately it was not the happy marriage we had all anticipated, and with the untimely passing of Mistress Talth, there has been some
. . . dispute regarding the settlement. The family Ceid has demanded I return the money from Talth’s dowry, and their requests are developing a certain uncharacteristic urgency. This Karst you’ve mentioned is employed by the family.”

“They sent him to recover the money from the marriage settlement?”

“He’s a bit thuggish and uncouth, and he’s been flexing his muscles a little more than
I’d like,” Ragn said, “but it’s been — relatively — civil. They’ve filed a claim with the magistrates, and we’re simply waiting on the court’s judgment. Some of us more patiently than others.”

So Karst wasn’t a Charicaux guard after all, just a Ceid heavy who’d been hanging around the Decath house, leaning on Durrel’s father. But he was also a Ferryman, which reminded me that something was
still off here. There was more that Lord Ragn wasn’t telling me. “What about the ear?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The
ear
. The severed ear that Karst had sent here the day before yesterday.”

Lord Ragn looked genuinely perplexed. “I can’t imagine what you’re referring to. Now, if I’ve answered your questions to your satisfaction, when can I see my son?”

I knew
that
noble tone well
enough; there was no use trying to get more information out of him today. “I can arrange something for this evening,” I said. Before my errand to the docks.

“Not tonight,” he said. “I have another engagement, and it can’t be missed.” What could possibly be more important than seeing his son? Lord Ragn must have read the look on my face quite clearly, because he said, “Dinner, with the minister
of the exchequer and the master of the king’s horse. And there is no possible way I can get out of that without arousing extreme suspicion. It will have to be another night. Tomorrow.”

Grudgingly I admitted he was right. That would also give me more time to make sure the details were in place. “I’ll send word when everything is arranged. Give my regards to Lady Amalle,” I added, rising to
leave.

“Amalle?” Lord Ragn looked surprised. “Certainly, but it will be a while; she’s at Favom Court for the summer.”

I smoothed the blue velvet wrap across the arm of the bench. “Oh, I thought — never mind. It wasn’t important.” As I turned to go, Lord Ragn caught my hands.

“Celyn, wait. Tell Durrel —” He faltered. He looked weary and spent and ground down by concerns I could
only begin to imagine.

“Tell him yourself,” I said gently, squeezing his arm. “Tomorrow night.”

I made my way back across the city, my thoughts a tangle. Did Durrel know about his father’s debts? And Raffin — had Durrel really hit him hard enough to crack bone, or had Karst turned up to “finish the job”? Lord Ragn had said Raffin would receive an official reprimand, but broken ribs and a dressing-down were hardly the worst of it. Unbidden, my list of consequences
for his participation in our scheme sprang to my mind again: the loss of his commission, arrest for treason for the escape of one of the king’s prisoners, and worse. I wasn’t convinced even Raffin was a match for the wrath of the Acolyte Guard.

Back at the Temple, the place was as crowded as ever, and I saw a handful of masked barmen and servers hauling up a huge gold-and-orange banner to
one of the balconies. I stopped to watch them, and one of the figures hanging over the balcony rail, a coil of rope over one shoulder, paused to give me a broad wave. Evidently Eske had put Durrel to work. With the mask, he’d be as anonymous as the rest of the Temple staff, and I wondered if she’d have him serving drinks next.

As the snapping silk unfurled, it revealed itself to be a device
of a golden lion, silhouetted against the rising sun. Prince Wierolf’s banner.

Eske was at my shoulder. “What do you think?” Today she was wearing orange to match, a shrieking concoction of flame and citrus, with a mask of spangled gold fur, and golden feathers tumbling through her wig.

“Of the banner or your new assistant?”

A wink. “Oh, he was too pretty to keep locked up in that
room all day. Do you know he looked at my accounts and discovered a way to adjust our wine orders so we save six hundred marks a week? You keep that boy around, Digger.”

“Um, I will,” I mumbled. “Where did the banner come from?”

“Another friend of yours, in fact.” She gestured toward a figure seated across the circular bar, his back to us. “You’re filling up my common room with all
sorts of tasty new company today, my girl. The Masked One is very pleased indeed.”

I frowned, perplexed. I could count my Gerse friends on one hand, and half of them were already here in the Temple common room. Eske walked me around the bar and the stranger turned toward us — a tall, young man with dark eyes and hair, one arm in a sling.

“Berdal!”

At the sound of my voice, the
Nemair’s groom and guardsman, now one of Prince Wierolf’s soldiers, rose from his seat and bent low to scoop me into an awkward, one-armed embrace. “Celyn! By the gods, you’re looking well.”

“And you!” I said. “What happened? What are you doing here?” I gestured curiously to his injured arm.

He gave a grimace. “Shot. At Cardoc Field a few weeks ago. It’s nothing, but I can’t ride and
shoot with just one arm, so I’ve been furloughed.”

I was brimming with questions to the point I didn’t know what to ask first. “How — what?”

Berdal grinned. “Let’s sit.” He looked roadworn and weary, but intact and as robust as I remembered him, considering his injury. Better fed than many Gersins, certainly. Maybe some of the grain that didn’t reach the city had found its way to the
prince’s army. “You told me if I ever came to the city, I could look for you here.”

“I did?” I settled in across the table from him.

“Aye, but you didn’t warn me of the size of the place — or the weather! By Marau, how does anyone live in this heat?” He plucked at the collar of his doublet.

“Welcome to the south,” I said. I couldn’t help grinning. Berdal hailed from the Carskadon
Mountains, and had kept up an infuriating jollity last winter when we were all snowbound and chilblained. “How is everyone?”

“Very well,” Berdal said, but didn’t get to finish, for at that moment a cheer went up from the crowd. We looked up to see Wierolf’s banner fixed in place proudly at the gallery rail.

“Well?” Eske had returned, and set a bottle of wine between us on the table.

“What will you do if someone sees that?” I said.

“But of course people will see it! Long live Prince Wierolf!” And she cried that last so loudly, in her echoing stage voice, that I flinched — but an answering roar rose up from the Temple’s patrons and Berdal’s booming voice.

“Long live the prince!”

“It looks good,” Eske said to Berdal. “I think we might just leave it up there
permanently.” She was awfully nervy, I thought, to flaunt the prince’s colors so brazenly, and yet seeing my god’s temple displaying the enemy standard made me fiercely proud. Tomorrow it might have the Greenmen breaking fifty years of truce between Bardolph’s and Tiboran’s people, but for now, the Temple had just declared its allegiance.

Durrel came down then and joined us, doffing his mask
and looking curiously at my companion. I introduced them, and Berdal gave Durrel a brief bow. “I’ve heard many fine things of your family, sir,” he said. “It has been an honor to serve in the guard of your cousin, the Lady Merista.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Durrel said. He pulled over a chair, turned it wrong-way around, and straddled it casually. “Is my cousin well?”

“Very well, milord,”
Berdal said. “Indeed, better than well. She is a wonder.”

Durrel gave a broad smile at that. “What brings you to Gerse?”

Berdal’s own levity faded. He glanced around, carefully poured himself a drink. “Can we speak freely here?” he said pointedly to me.

“Lord Durrel is a friend, and the Temple is as safe as any place in Gerse,” I said, and as if to punctuate that, the musicians
in the gallery struck up a lively tune hailing Bonny Prince Wierolf. I heard the men laugh. “Or we’ll all burn together, I guess.”

Berdal’s voice was low. “You know the front draws nearer to the capital. We have the support of Tratua, and we are gaining ground in the plains of Gelnir. The prince has sent me to seek out his friends in Gerse, to determine how quickly he may take the city.”

I felt a chill wash over me.

“So soon?” Durrel said. “It’s been less than a year.”

“I think the king has underestimated how tired his subjects are of the present rule,” Berdal said, looking toward the banner he’d brought us. “We hoped to get word long before this, and His Highness was concerned when no one heard from you, Celyn.”

There was no reproach in his voice, but I heard
it anyway. I’d never promised to keep playing spy once I returned home, but I supposed that wouldn’t stop Wierolf and the others from hoping. “There’s little rebel activity in the city,” I said. “Just rumors, really.” I told them about the dead Greenman we’d discussed at Hobin’s dinner party, the purple handprint beside the body.

Durrel nodded grimly. “There’ve been other stories like that,”
he said, and I stared at him. “Attacks on the Guard, those purple marks left behind. Stuff that Raffin’s told me. They don’t publicize it outside the Guard.”

“And what of your own people, milord?” asked Berdal.

“Most of the gentry still openly support Bardolph — they can’t afford to do otherwise — and the Council has declared its fealty to the king. Those nobles suspected of nursing
Sarist sympathies have been cast out of the city.” Or so heavily fined and intimidated they didn’t dare make a wrong move, if Lord Ragn’s tale this afternoon was any indication.

“Everyone is too scared,” I said. “Bardolph is squeezing the city until it suffocates, and the people are too afraid to speak up. We might not have any organized resistance left, but I can’t see many ordinary Gersins
lining up to oppose Wierolf.” I thought of the Greenmen and the soldiers patrolling every corner, the food shortages, the arrests and public executions and seizures of property. Even people who might be afraid of magic and Sarists on principle would probably welcome a change from Bardolph’s starving police state.

Berdal took this in. “Who can speak for the city on this matter?”

I glanced
at Durrel, but he frowned. We were the wrong people to ask. “Maybe Eptin Cwalo?” I suggested. “He might know.”

At the mention of Cwalo’s name, Berdal looked pleased. “Excellent. I remember Master Cwalo well. My lady trusted him completely.” He shifted his long body in his seat, looking eager to get moving. “I’ll be staying here while I’m in town. Celyn, do you think you could arrange a meeting
with Master Cwalo and whatever friends he deems suitable?”

“Of course,” I said. “Tell us more about the war.”

Durrel and Berdal and I sat together for the next few hours, in the golden shadow of Prince Wierolf’s banner, as Berdal shared tales of our friends at the front. Through the Temple’s broad, open doors, I watched the day vanish and the night rise, until it was nearing time for
our appointment at the docks.

Finally we took our leave, promising to bring word when I’d heard from Cwalo. Durrel and I returned to his room and changed into dark clothing, more loans from Eske. I dressed in breeches and boots, my hair tucked into a man’s cap. A man and a woman walking together at night would be much more conspicuous than two young men, and Durrel was known to have left
the Keep in the company of a woman, so this was an increased measure of protection for him. It was also just a little easier to go climbing about on docks if I didn’t have to worry about trailing my skirt hems in the brine.

Durrel eyed me strangely when he saw me. “You look —”

“Like your little brother?”

He grinned down at me, his hair in his eyes. “Not by half.”

“Well,
you
look like you’ve never dressed yourself before. Do I need to have Eske provide a manservant?” I shifted the laces on his jerkin so it hung properly. “You should have a sword.”

“I believe I mentioned that,” he said. “Do you think Eske could track one down?”

“No, I was thinking a real one. If we run into trouble, how are you at hand fighting?”

“You have already extracted my promise
to behave myself.”

That would have to do. I’d just have to keep Durrel away from anyone who might take his sudden appearance on the Gerse streets as the opportunity to kill him.

The rain that had blown through earlier had cooled the air, and the early moonslight tinted the deepening sky with rare summertime colors. Durrel loped easily along beside me, and I almost had to scurry to keep
pace.

“Do you wish you were out there?” he asked as we walked. “Fighting, I mean? In the war?”

The question stung unexpectedly. “What about you?”

“A Decath in the army? Perish the thought.” But he hunched into his black doublet, and I couldn’t see his face. “Gersin youths of my class never join the military,” he said. “Certainly not first-born ones. It is considered beneath our
station to scuff about in the dust with the rabble and get our hands dirty. And where would my father have sent me? Which side do the Decath support? Impossible.”

I wondered. Those peculiar payments to the Celystra, the visits from Confessors and Council members. . . . Which side
did
Lord Ragn take? “But what if you’d wanted to?”

“I told you before, remember?” he said. “I’m not allowed
to have thoughts of my own.”

“What if you hadn’t wanted to marry Talth?”

Another shrug. “He would have chosen someone else. But I could never have actually refused to go through with the match. Father had acted in the best interests of the family; what was I going to do? Throw that back in his face and disgrace the House?” He shook his head.

“So that awful woman would become Lady
Decath? Your father can’t have thought that was best for anybody.”

Durrel made a sound that was half sigh, half bitter laugh. “We didn’t know her as well as we thought. I think we’re here.”

We had reached the address Cwalo had sent, a quiet dock on the Big Silver, a few blocks away from the busier ports where I’d seen Geirt and Barris. The pier was empty and the property seemed abandoned,
but a harbormaster’s station stood a few dozen yards down the shore, with a man on duty. We could see a light burning in the little hut.

“This is a Ceid property,” Durrel said, looking it over.

“How can you be sure?”

“I recognize the address,” he said. “And there’s this.” He strode to the edge of the pier, where a sigil had been burned into the boardwalk, the stylized initial of
the House of Ceid. Gentry weren’t permitted heraldic emblems like the nobility, so Gerse’s wealthiest merchant families had turned their monograms into house symbols. I remembered the sign from Bal Marse, where it was tiled into the Round Court floor.

“We should check the place out,” I suggested. There was a boat shed, but no warehouse; whatever cargo moved through this pier moved quickly.

Durrel gave the boat shed door handle a jiggle. “Locked, of course.”

Really, people just can’t seem to remember how
handy
I can be. I had the lock tumbled and the door opened before Durrel even registered what I was doing. I pushed past him into the shed while he stared at the lock. “I’ve seen you do that half a dozen times now,” he said, “and it still catches me by surprise.”

It
looked like an ordinary storage shed inside, just a single room cluttered with ropes and nets and broken oars. “There’s a chest here,” Durrel said, picking through the mess toward a heavy trunk on the floor near the back, buried under an assortment of sailcloth and pitch jars. “It’s locked too.”

This was a strange place to hide anything, but Durrel’s box was completely out of character. With
its shiny brass fittings and embossed leather top, it was too nice, too new, and too clean to belong here. Durrel hauled it up onto a bench, and a corner caught on something, a length of cloth that spiraled out behind the case as he dragged it across the shed.

“What’s this?” I said, catching hold of one end. It was a string of flags, the small, colored pennants required by Gerse harbormasters
to identify a vessel’s home port. “Brionry,” I said, fingering the triangle of blue-and-white silk. “Talanca,” a yellow-and-red-striped square. “Varenzia,” a white ground with a black lily.

“Just like we thought,” Durrel said. “False flags to disguise domestic ships.” Scowling, he set the casket on the bench, and I popped the padlock holding it shut. “What is all this?” He sifted through
a stack of papers inside. But I recognized them immediately.