He grunted and idly reached out, toying with the paper without unfolding it. “This had better be earthshaking news, Rook. Every moment you are gone from your duties to Gaius risks your cover. I should be unhappy to lose such a valuable tool over a foolish decision.”
She fumed with anger, but kept it inside and bowed her head again. “My lord, in my best judgment, that information is an order of magnitude more valuable than any spy, however well placed. In fact, I’d bet my life on it.”
Kalare s eyebrows lifted a fraction. “You just did,” he said quietly. Then he opened the paper and began to read.
Any man with Kalare’s power and experience concealed his emotions and reactions as a matter of course, just as Rook hid her own from the High Lord. Anyone with sufficient skill at watercrafting could learn a very great deal about a person from those reactions, both physical and emotional. As a matter of course, the most powerful lords of Alera trained themselves to restrain their emotions in order to foil another’s crafting.
But Rook did not need to make an effort to read the man with crafting. She had a knack for reading others, honed over the years of her dangerous service, and it had nothing to do with furycraft. She could not have picked out any single change in his features but was perfectly certain that Kalare had been startled and badly shaken by the news.
“Where did you get this?” he demanded.
“From a palace page. He overslept and had to sprint for the windport. As we are friends, he asked me to deliver his messages for him.”
Kalare shook his head. “You believe it genuine?”
“Yes, my lord.”
The fingers of his right hand began a flickering, twitching, trembling motion, drumming quietly on the desk. “I would never have thought Gaius would make peace with Aquitaine. He hates the man.”
Rook murmured, “Gaius needs him. For now. Necessity can trump even hatred.”
Her heart fluttered as that last phrase left her mouth tinged with a featherlight portion of bitter irony. Kalare did not notice. His fingers twitched even faster. “Another year to prepare, and I could have crushed him in a single season.”
“He may well be aware of the fact, my lord. He seeks to goad you into premature action.”
Kalare frowned down at his fingers, and they slowly stilled. Then he folded the message, over and over again, eyes narrowed. Then his lips parted, baring his teeth in a predatory smile. “Indeed. I am the bear he baits. Gaius is arrogant and always has been. He is certain that he knows everything.”
Rook nodded, adding nothing.
“He is about to learn that this bear is a great deal larger and more dangerous than he believed.” He stood up, jerked on a summoning bell’s cord, then beckoned and caused his furies to open a nearby chest and to toss a dozen rolled maps onto its surface. “Pass the word to my captains that the time has come. We mobilize and march within the week. Tell your people to put pressure upon the Cursors again.”
Rook bowed. “Aye, my lord.”
“And you…” Kalare smiled. “I have a special assignment for you. I had thought to attend to it personally, but it would seem that I must take my vengeance by proxy.”
“The Steadholder?” Rook asked quietly.
“The bitch from Calderon,” Kalare corrected her, a dangerous edge in his voice.
“Yes, my lord. It will be done.” She bit her lips. “My lord… if I may?”
Kalare gestured at a door on the other side of the study, a solar for reading and entertaining intimate guests. Rook crossed the room and opened the door upon a spacious chamber with thick carpeting, richly furnished.
A small girl with glossy black hair sat on the floor with a young maid, playing with dollies. When the door opened, the child’s caretaker glanced up, rose, bowed to Rook, and retreated without another word.
“Mama!” shrieked the child in glee. She rose and rushed over to Rook, who caught her daughter up into a tight hug. “I missed you, Mama.”
Rook squeezed tighter, and awful, bitter tears escaped despite her determination not to weep. “I missed you, too, Masha.”
“Is it time, Mama?” her daughter asked. “Do we get to go to the country and have ponies now?”
“Not yet. But soon now, little one,” she whispered. “Soon, I promise.”
The little girl looked up at her with enormous eyes. “But I miss you.”
She hugged the child close to escape the pain in her eyes. “I miss you, too. I miss you so much.” Rook sensed Kalare’s presence behind her, in the doorway to the solar. She turned and faced him without looking at his eyes. “I’m sorry, little one. I can’t this time. I have to go now.”
“B-but you just got here!” Masha wailed. “What if I need you and I can’t find you?”
“Don’t worry,” Kalare told Rook in a smooth, gentle voice incongruous to the hard glitter in his eyes. “I’ll make sure my faithful retainer’s daughter is safe. You have my promise on that. I value your loyalty very highly.”
Rook turned away, putting her body between Masha and Kalare. She hugged the weeping little girl as a trickle of bitter, furious, terrified tears washed over her face.
She heard Kalare turn away and walk back into his study, chuckling under his breath. “More than he bargained for. Far more indeed.” Ehren sat at the rickety desk in the open-walled bungalow, sweat dripping off his nose and onto the accounting ledger before him and beading into droplets upon a leather slave’s collar that would streak infrequently down his thin shirt. The Sunset Isles could grow hideously warm in the summer, though thank the great furies that it was finally beginning to wind down. Bugs swarmed around Ehren’s head, and tiny swallows darted through the wide-open wall windows, snatching at them. His hand cramped every few moments, forcing him to set aside the quill pen he used. He had just laid it down when a cadaverously thin man strode through the door.
“Ehren,” he snapped, the name viciously snarled. “By the bloody crows I didn’t buy you to sit around staring out a window.”
Ehren’s frayed temper made the thought of breaking the fool’s neck rather tempting-but a Cursor did not allow such personal matters to interfere in his duties. His job was to remain invisible in the Sunset Isles, watching and listening and sending reports back to the mainland. He picked up the pen again, ducked his head, and said in a meek voice, “Yes, Master Ullus. Sorry. Just resting my fingers.”
“You’ll rest them in a gibbet if I see you lazing about again,” the man said, and stalked over to a low cabinet stocked with dirty glasses and bottles of cheap rum. Ullus immediately set about the task of making the glasses dirtier and the rum more worthless, as he did most days, while Ehren continued to labor on the impossibly incomplete accounts ledger.
Sometime later, a man came into the room. He was not large, but had the lean, seedy look Ehren had come to associate with the pirates who would terrorize merchant shipping before slipping back into the myriad hiding places in the Sunset Isles. His clothing showed much wear and exposure to salt and wind and sun, and he wore mismatched bits of finery, the decorative trophies of a successful pirate.
And yet… Ehren frowned and kept his eyes on the ledger. The man didn’t carry himself like a pirate at all. Most of them tended to be as ragged, undisciplined, and unkempt in mannerism as in appearance. This man looked cautious and sober. He moved like the best professional fighters, all relaxed awareness and restraint. Ehren judged that he was no pirate at all, but a cutter-an assassin who would trade death for gold if the price was right.
Ullus rose to his feet and rocked unsteadily back and forth on his heels. “Sir…” he began. “Welcome to Westmiston. My name is Ullus, and I am the senior trade manag-”
“You are a fence,” the man said in a quiet voice.
Ullus dropped his mouth open in a facade that would not have convinced an intelligent child. “Good sir!” he exclaimed. “I do not know where you have heard this slander, but-”
The man tilted his head slightly and focused his eyes on Ullus. Ehren’s master was a drunken fool, but neither too drunk nor too foolish to recognize the danger glinting in the man’s eyes. He stopped talking, shut his mouth, and swallowed nervously.
“You are a fence,” the stranger continued in the same quiet tone. “I am Captain Demos. I have goods to liquidate.”