Mags took it, and smiled. The address was not far from Councilor Soren’s home, and the Councilor—and more especially, the Councilor’s niece Lydia and her friends—were acquaintances of his. No one would think twice about seeing him ride past, and he was overdue for a visit.
Now he just had to somehow squeeze time in for that visit. From somewhere. And make sure Lena was all right. And help find some way to make her feel better if she wasn’t.
And then there was that Kirball thing that Caelen wanted him to look into.
He sighed. Things were just never simple. “Yessir, I’ll hev a look, soon’s I kin.”
“Chamjey?” Lydia said, with curiosity. “Why don’t you ask uncle about him instead of me?”
“Cause yer uncle’d tell me what he was. I wanna know what he does.” Mags grinned at her. It was pure luck finding her alone like this, and he’d snatched it up. “Yer servants all talk to ye, so I wanta know what they tol’ ye. They prolly wouldn’ tell me, cause I ain’t family.”
He was “paying” for his information by serving as a yarn-holder while Lydia wound skeins of extremely fine, soft yarn into tight little balls for the lace shawl she was planning on knitting. Lydia and Soren had an unusual relationship with their servants—unusual by the standards of the wealthy, that is. They knew all of them by name, about their lives, and treated them as people rather than furniture. If there was anything more to Chamjey’s mysterious comings and goings than Nikolas already knew, the servants would certainly have told Lydia.
“What he does, well, hmm,” she said thoughtfully. “Ana was telling me the other day that some of the servants think he is having an affair or keeping a mistress, but she doesn’t think so.”
“Huh.” That would be a bit of a laugh on Nikolas if a clandestine affair was the cause of Chamjey’s behavior. “Why not?”
Lydia smirked. They were sitting in her solar, with lovely sunlight pouring through real glass windows down onto both of them, and with a crackling fire on her hearth it was almost as warm as summer. Lydia had pulled back her tumble of red curls with a green ribbon, and was wearing a deceptively plain green wool dress to match. But Mags knew, thanks to Lydia’s own expert ongoing tutelage in such matters, that appearances were indeed deceptive. The wool was the finest of chirra underfur, the gown was expertly tailored, of a design that would not fall much out of fashion, ever, and green was a very, very hard color to dye. Only red was harder. Lydia’s “plain” gown probably cost more than some of the velvet and satin outfits that the highborn paraded around in at Court. This was the sort of thing that was passed down through generations as an heirloom, for it was easy enough to put it in fashion with a new collar, belt, trim, undergown or overgown.
Lydia had even explained to him why it was that red, green, and white had been chosen respectively for the Bards, Healers and Heralds. All three colors were expensive and difficult to dye—or, in the case of Heralds’ Whites, to bleach and keep pristine white. All three were, as a consequence, immediately recognizable at a distance. And all three would be very, very hard to counterfeit properly, in no small part because they were expensive. People who were trying to pull scams generally spent as little as possible to do so. It wouldn’t be impossible for someone to try, but it would be unlikely.
Even Lydia’s gown was not the brilliant green of Healers’ robes, but a much more muted, darker color.
She set the ball of wool—dyed to match in the same batch as her dress, she had told him—down in the basket at her side, put another skein on his outstretched hands, and began winding again. “Well, the first thing is, according to my maid, Chamjey isn’t going out at an hour when his wife wouldn’t miss him. When he goes, he’s dressed very quietly, not his usual style.” She made a face, which told Mags that the “usual style” was probably flamboyant and ostentatious. “A man going to see a new mistress would dress up to impress her. He doesn’t bring any presents, either, which a man with a new mistress does. But the big thing is that Chamjey’s wife is sporting some very expensive new presents herself, and she is looking uncommonly satisfied about them. Now, that might mean that Chamjey has a new mistress, and his wife is getting expensive gifts in an attempt to mollify her. But that only works if the wife is perfectly happy with her husband going off with another woman. That’s not true of Mira Chamjey; she is very jealous, and if she knew about a mistress, she would scalp him and skin the woman. So he is bribing her, but it’s not to let him have his fun.”
Mags nodded, now very glad that he had come to Lydia before he had scouted the ground himself.
“So—” he prompted.
“I think it’s a business deal, and I think it’s one that’s underhanded, and I think he’s trying to work it through a third party.” Lydia nodded decisively, the ball of wool growing in her fingers as if by magic. “The fact that he is trying to do it through a third party makes me fairly certain he thinks he would be in trouble if he got caught at it.”
“See now, tha’s where yer losin’ me,” Mags admitted. “I dun see how a sharp deal could get a man in trouble wi’ Crown.”
“It depends on what kind of a sharp deal it is,” Lydia replied. “Suppose—just suppose—someone had had an absolutely accurate idea of when that blizzard that caused us so much trouble this winter was going to strike, how long it would last, and how badly food and wood supplies would be hurt until everyone dug out. First of all, it would be his duty to report that, so that all of Haven could have gotten prepared. But let’s just suppose that he didn’t. Let’s suppose that instead, he got several warehouses and filled them up with staple foods and firewood and didn’t sell them until just before the blizzard was going to hit. And then he opened them up and began selling things at twice their normal value, and once the blizzard hit, then sold them at three times their normal value. That would be a sharp deal, but it would also get him in a lot of trouble.”
Mags nodded. That made sense.
“There are other things, too, that’s just one example. So have you got any ideas?” she asked.
“Think mebbe. Reckon I’d better be right careful ’bout how I follow ’im. It’ll be hard t’ do it the usual way. This street ain’t crowded, so I’d stand out no matter what I looked like.” He scratched his head. “Round here, ev’ servant has house uniform, an’ ye cain’t jest wander about ’less ye got the right uniform, or ye look like ye belong here.”
Lydia tilted her head to the side. “If that’s all that’s stopping you—” then she paused. “No, that wouldn’t work, would it? If Chamjey is doing something underhanded, seeing someone in uncle’s livery following him—”
Mags chuckled. “Which’s why I ain’t asked ye,” he replied.
“I’ll leave it to the expert then,” she said with a grin. He made a face at her.
“Ain’t no expert. More like ’prentice. ’Prentice bein’ set his first task t’ do on his own.” He laughed self-deprecatingly. “So I reckon this ain’t anythin’ like—really important. More like t’ see if’n I kin find out anythin’ on m’own.”
Lydia blinked solemnly at him. “I think you’re probably underestimating yourself, but—” She shrugged. “Well, maybe not, maybe you’re right. So how is poor Lena?”
He refrained from rolling his eyes. “I dun know why she’s so upset. Weren’t like she ever saw her pa, or he saw her.”
Lydia wound up the last of the wool deftly. “I’d say ask Amily. She has a father that’s just as famous, so maybe she can explain it.”
With his hands now freed he could scratch his head. “Reckon I will,” he said. “And thankee, Lydia.”