“I can ride back to the palace with Yori and our friend here, then return with the elaymotive to drive the rest of you home,” Rafe offered.
Zoe exchanged a droll look with Yori. “I have to think there are closer options.”
Yori grinned and ducked her head. “I’ll be right back,” she said, heading out the front door.
Rafe burst out laughing. “Darien’s ubiquitous guards!” he exclaimed. “Following me or Josetta or Zoe?”
“Darien gave up protecting you a long time ago,” Zoe retorted. “Since you were always so ungrateful. But it’s rare there’s not an escort trailing me even when I don’t want one.” She gestured at Leah. “And I believe the shop is also watched, though I’m not sure it’s under constant observation.”
“I suppose I should be glad of that,” Leah said.
“You can be indignant,” Josetta encouraged her. “I always am.”
In a few moments, Yori was back, trailed by two brawny guards in severe black uniforms ornamented only with the Welchin rosette. Mally looked up at them in slight alarm, so Leah casually stepped over and swung the little girl into her arms. Mally rested her head against Leah’s throat, watching as the soldiers hoisted up the injured man and carried him outside. Leah assumed they must have a vehicle nearby.
“You can keep the elaymotive for tonight,” Yori told Rafe. “I’ll swing by in the morning to get it.”
“Thank you for everything,” Leah told her. “This has been a long day.”
Yori just grinned at her. “Interesting, though. The kind I like,” she said, turning for the door.
“Oh, wait— Is there room for me to ride with the guards?” Zoe asked.
Yori nodded. “Sure. You might want to sit up front with the driver, though.”
“I’ll be out in a minute.”
As soon as she left, Zoe said quietly, “Before you discuss this evening with anyone else, you might let me talk to Darien. I have the feeling he doesn’t want the news to spread very far—that people are getting cut up and bleeding to death.”
“It might be news that people need to know,” Josetta pointed out.
“I realize that. But maybe you could let Darien choose when to tell it.”
Josetta shrugged, and Zoe didn’t press the issue. The rest of them nodded. Leah couldn’t help wondering if this unfortunate young man had fallen afoul of the Karkans. Maybe whatever they’d done to him tonight they’d also intended to do to the young woman in the slums a couple of ninedays ago. But if that thought had occurred to Leah, it would no doubt occur to Darien Serlast as well. At any rate, she would be just as happy not to discuss the specifics of this evening with anyone. She only hoped it didn’t give Mally nightmares.
She gave the little girl a gentle squeeze, then gazed over her head to look ruefully around. Between the merchandise they’d simply dumped on the floor and the bloodied rags from their medical ministrations—not to mention the decorative candles now guttering in their own pools of wax—the shop was in pretty extensive disarray. “I’d better get here especially early tomorrow morning,” she said.
“You sleep in,” Zoe ordered. “I’ll send Annova here early. And tell her to open late.” She waved and slipped through the door.
Josetta surveyed the mess. “We could stay and clean up,” she said doubtfully.
Rafe took her arm and pulled her toward the door. “We’re all tired,” he said. “Zoe was right. This can wait till the morning.”
In a few minutes, they were back in the elaymotive, and Rafe was driving them home. Josetta sat beside him in the front seat, turned toward him, talking with great animation. Leah could hear the rising and falling tones of their voices, though she couldn’t make out words and sentences.
It didn’t matter. She wasn’t interested. She wished the ride would take forever. She sat in a perfect bubble of warmth and dark and quiet, holding her slumbering daughter in her arms.
FIFTEEN
By the time Leah made it to the shop the next morning, it was in utterly pristine condition. Every recent purchase whisked out of sight, every candle stub disposed of, every drop of blood wiped away. There were three visitors browsing the merchandise while Chandran helped a fourth one at the sales counter and Annova moved between customers.
“You really are a treasure,” Leah murmured to Annova when she had a moment. Annova only laughed.
It was another hour before Leah had a chance to talk to Chandran for a few minutes. “I understand there was some excitement here last night,” he said.
Mindful of Zoe’s instructions, Leah answered vaguely. “Yes—some poor man who looked to be both injured and in a narcotic haze,” she said. “We brought him in and patched him up and sent him on his way, but it made for quite a thrilling end to what had already been an eventful day.”
“I would be interested in hearing all the details.”
“Did you take a look through everything I bought?”
He nodded toward the door, where three new customers were just now entering. “There has been no time.”
“After we close, maybe.”
“I will look forward to it.”
As Leah had observed many times in her life, the busier she was, the faster the hours skipped by. This day was no exception. Sooner than she would have believed possible, Annova was stretching her arms over her head and releasing a satisfied sigh. “Closing time,” the older woman said. “Another good day.”
“I think we’ll have to restock half the floor!” Leah exclaimed. It was an exaggeration, but barely.
“I can’t stay,” Annova said. “Zoe has a formal dinner to attend and I promised to get back in time to help her dress.”
Leah made shooing motions toward the street. “You should have told me! You could have left hours ago!”
Annova grinned and ambled toward the door. “Don’t worry so much. Everything is fine.”
Leah laughed and locked up behind her. “I never used to think of myself as much of a worrier,” she said to Chandran. “But then I met Annova. Nothing seems to weigh on her. It makes me want to be coru.”
“I am not sure you should envy her,” he said. “I think she might have earned her light heart through heaviness and grief.”
Leah nodded. She had come to the same conclusion herself. “So, let me show you everything I picked up yesterday and we can figure out what to put on display for tomorrow.”
They passed an agreeable hour sorting through the new acquisitions. Chandran was highly complimentary about the purchases she’d made, giving her background information on some of the Malinquese and Coziquela items that she had bought just because she liked the way they looked or felt.
“Ah—that is a bride’s wedding shawl,” he said, fingering a heavily embroidered length of blue silk from the Karkades. “Very finely made. And look, a groom’s sash to match. These should fetch a handsome price.”
“Yet another prize from Captain Demeset,” Leah said, because she’d already described the man to Chandran in great detail. “I feel certain he will become my favorite supplier.”
“And you his favorite buyer,” he replied with a smile. “Especially since you took him to the elaymotive factory. He will always reserve his best for you.”
Once they had restocked the display tables, Leah invited Chandran back upstairs to give his opinion on the three canisters she’d purchased specifically to appeal to Seka Mardis. “I want you to tell me if Seka Mardis will love them as much as Captain Demeset’s cook seemed to think.”
Chandran glanced out the front door, where gaslamps carved cones of light in the deepening night shadows. They had already violated their pact to avoid being alone in quiet, intimate settings. “Perhaps tomorrow?” he suggested.
She knew she should be more wary, but she just couldn’t bring herself to be afraid of Chandran. If he intended her harm, surely he would be
the one who wanted to stay? “It won’t take that long,” she said. “And who knows when Seka Mardis might drop by again? I need to be prepared.”
He nodded and followed her up the stairs. They had just stepped into the big, open storeroom—well, “open” except for the stacks of boxes everywhere—when the interior gaslight flickered alarmingly.
“Quick—there are matches and candles by the door,” Leah said. Chandran barely had time to light two tapers before the gaslight sparked again and then went out completely.
Leah sighed. “It did this last night, too. Yori said there’s a problem in the line. Too bad I don’t know anyone who can relay my dissatisfaction to the regent.”
Chandran smiled and moved to the center of the room, where there was a small table, three chairs, and a collection of dishes and carafes of water. Whenever any of them had a free moment during the hectic workdays, they would sneak up here to take a quick break. “I imagine he has a great deal invested in the happiness of the merchants on this particular street,” Chandran said. “Someone will be addressing the problem very soon.”
She collected the canisters and sat across from him at the table. “So let’s see what we have here,” she said, prying off the lid to the first one.
It happened to hold the colorful pieces of hard round candy. “Keitzees,” Chandran said with satisfaction. “They are prized the way a very fine wine would be. Anyone with any pretense of sophistication would be delighted to receive them.”
“Well, now I’m curious,” Leah said, dipping her hand in and pulling out a yellow piece. “What will happen to me if I eat one?”
“You will feel very much as if you have had a glass or two of that expensive wine,” he said. “Though you will not have the aftereffects in the morning that sometimes occur with alcohol.”
She popped the candy in her mouth. It tasted both sweet and tart, like lemon saturated with sugar. But it left a tingling sensation on her tongue that she couldn’t quite describe. “Do the different colors have different flavors?”
Chandran watched her a moment by the friendly candlelight, shrugged infinitesimally, then took a piece of candy for himself. His was red. “Slightly,” he said. “But not enough that you should try all the different hues just to see.”
She laughed. “Should I crunch down on it with my teeth or just let it melt away?”
“It will dissolve sooner than you think,” he told her. “Just be patient.”
Already she could feel the tingle tickling down the back of her throat and fluttering in her stomach. It was a highly pleasant sensation. “I like the way it tastes,” she said. “I might want more than one.”
“I would start with one tonight,” Chandran said.
“Maybe I won’t give all of them to Seka Mardis,” she said. “Maybe I won’t give any of them to her.”
Chandran looked amused. “She does seem unlikable enough to be denied any special pleasures,” he agreed.
As Chandran had predicted, the keitzee disintegrated all of a sudden on Leah’s tongue, leaving behind a taste of citrus and mischief. She leaned her elbows on the table, feeling relaxed for the first time all day. “Well, I’ll be supplying her with veneben,” she said dryly. “That seems like a special enough treat for someone like her.”
“Has the regent secured it for you yet?” When she shook her head, he added, “Perhaps he’ll find it difficult to obtain.”
“Difficult, maybe. Impossible, no. He’s Darien.”
“You have a great deal of faith in his infallibility.”
“Oh, I think Darien has made plenty of mistakes. But I truly believe there’s almost nothing he can’t do. It’s not just that he’s so intelligent. It’s not just that he’s so determined. It’s that he has all these people around him who believe in him. From the guards and servants to all five of the primes. High and low. Of course he can get things done.”
She gestured a little too broadly, almost knocking one of the candles to the floor. Chandran rescued it as it wobbled in its metal holder. “I am sure you are correct.”
“Anyway, it’s just veneben. I could have found someone else to supply it if I had to.”
Chandran smiled at her. “Yes, I truly believe there is almost nothing you are unable to do,” he echoed. “Because you are intelligent and determined and have many people who believe in you.”
Leah threw her head back and laughed, but that made her so dizzy she straightened up quickly and spread her hands on the table to aid her balance. “I never used to,” she said. “I mean, I never had many people around who seemed to be on my side. Virrie and Taro, yes. But they were such a small part of my life until I was sixteen. I had been raised under such strange circumstances—I was half wild—I had no idea how to behave at public functions with members of the Five Families. I felt so odd and out of place. Isolated. Different from everyone else.”
She gazed down at the table and consciously relaxed her fingers. “I think that’s why I was so drawn to Rhan,” she said. “He seemed to like that I was different from all the other girls. He didn’t think I was awkward or strange—he thought I was funny and endearing.” She glanced up at Chandran, feeling the wry expression on her face. “He used that word. Endearing.”
“It is a good word for you.”
“Then it might have been,” she agreed. “But now I’m harder. I’m suspicious. And I’m—” She tapped her thumb against her forefinger, trying to pluck the word out of the air. “I’m self-sufficient. I don’t care whether or not people like me.” She laughed again, more carefully this time. “And now that I don’t care, more people seem to like me.”
“I think all of us care, all the time, whether we are liked or not. Loved or not,” Chandran said. “It is the primal human drive—to seek connection. It is the only way we can tell whether we actually exist.”
Now she leaned her cheek on one hand, since her head was just a tiny bit too heavy to hold itself up unsupported. “Did you? Seek those connections? When you were in Malinqua?” she asked. Even she could tell that the question was obscurely phrased. “I mean, the whole time you lived there, did you ever—well—I mean, your wife was dead—”
“I had a few people I could consider friends,” he said quietly. “I did not allow my emotions to engage more deeply than that. I did not feel it was— I could not in good conscience— My secrets and my crimes were too great for me to pursue deep relationships. But I was not entirely solitary, and I allowed myself to believe that was enough.”
Until you met me, she wanted to say. The keitzee had loosened her tongue to an alarming degree, but she retained enough sense not to make that comment out loud. “I didn’t. Not really. In Malinqua,” Leah said. “I mean, not true friends. I had plenty of people I would talk to, but we weren’t close. I didn’t tell them things.” Until I met you, she added silently.
“Any lovers?” he asked, so lightly that it took her a moment to realize what he’d said. And that it had probably cost him something to phrase it so casually and that she definitely shouldn’t answer him.
“Two,” she replied recklessly. “But I wouldn’t have said I was close to either of them. I didn’t even tell them my real name.”
“Is that how you gauge whether you have truly connected with another soul?” he asked, and this time he sounded deeply curious. “By whether or not he knows your name?”
Leah brought up her other hand, so now she was supporting her head with both closed fists. “You mean, what information do I only share when I trust someone entirely?”
Chandran made a small, elegant gesture. Leah noticed that he didn’t almost knock over a candle when he did so. The keitzee had not gone to his head nearly as fast as it had gone to hers. “For some people, the ultimate mark of trust is to give their bodies to someone else. For others, the body is easily shared, but the heart is kept always in reserve. I suspect that for every man and woman, the gif
t is different.”
“My gift would be— I don’t know what my gift would be,” Leah said. She had honestly never thought about it before, and her mind was too fuzzy at the moment to solve complex ideological puzzles. “Staying, maybe.”
“Staying?”
Leah nodded. “I never have, not since my mother died. I left my father. I left Rhan. I left Virrie and Taro. I left Mally. I left Malinqua.” She glanced around the room, a collection of dark, indeterminate shapes crouched around the small circle of light where she and Chandran sat. “Now I’ve come back and I want to stay—with Mally, at any rate. But I don’t know if I can. I’ve never done it.” She gave him a quick sideways glance. “What about you? What would your gift be?”
He poured a glass of water from the half-empty carafe on the table, pushed the glass over to her, and poured another one for himself. “Sacrificing, I think,” he said. “Making a grand gesture at great personal cost.”
She sipped from her glass and thought that over. “Not something you could do very often,” she said. “If sacrificing means giving away all your money or cutting off a limb or even dying for someone else.”
He smiled. “Right. But I do not think I will find too many occasions, during the rest of my life, to make such a gesture. I do not think I will find too many people for whom I would give up so much.”
Am I one of them? she wanted to ask. She didn’t need to, of course. They both knew they were talking about themselves, talking about each other. If I ever decide I love you, this is how I will prove it. The conversation made her head hum almost as much as the keitzee did.
“Well, before you do anything too drastic, you should make sure your friends would appreciate the gesture,” Leah advised. “I mean, maybe your friends wouldn’t want you to die for them. They’d rather still have you in their lives.”