There went Ennersin, sweeping by Garth without noticing him. Diamandis watched him go in distaste, then turned and saw Venera watching him. He spread his hands and shrugged. She made a dismissive gesture and smiled back.
Time to mingle; the party wasn’t over yet and her head felt fine. It felt good to reinforce her win with a gracious turn about the room. For a while everything was a blur of smiling faces and congratulations. Then she found herself shaking someone’s hand (the hundredth, it must have been) and looked up to find it was Jacoby Sarto’s.
“Well played, Ms. Fanning,” he said. There was no irony in his voice.
She glanced around. They were miraculously alone for the moment. Probably a single glance from under Sarto’s wiry brows had been enough to clear a circle.
All she could think of to say was, “Thank you.” It struck her as hopelessly inadequate for the situation, but all her strategies had been played out. To her surprise, Sarto smiled.
“I’ve lost Ennersin’s confidence,” he said. “It’s going to take me years to regain some allies I abandoned today.”
“Oh?” The mystery of his reversal during the vote deepened. Not one to prevaricate, Venera asked, “Why?”
He appeared puzzled. “Why did I vote for you?”
“No—I know why.” The key was again unspoken of between them. “I mean,” she said, “why did you come out so publicly against me in the first place, if you knew I had that to hang over you?”
“Ah.” It was his turn to look around them. Satisfied that no one was within earshot, he said, “I was entrusted with the safety of Sacrus’s assets. You’re considered one of them. If I could acquire you, I was to do that. If not, and you threatened to reveal… certain details… well, I was to contrive a murderous rage.” He opened his jacket slightly and she saw the large pistol he had holstered there. “You would not have had a chance to say what you know,” he said with a slight smile.
“So why didn’t you…”
“It is useful to have an acknowledged heir of Buridan controlling that estate. This way we avoid a nasty succession conflict, which Sacrus would view as an unnecessary… distraction, right now. Besides,” Sarto shrugged. “There are few moments in a man’s life when he has the opportunity to make a choice on his own. I simply did not want to shoot you.”
“And why tell me this now?”
His mouth didn’t change from its accustomed frown, but the lines around Sarto’s eyes might have crinkled a little bit—an almost smile.
“It will be easy for me to tell my masters that the pistol was taken from me at your door,” he said. “Without an opportunity to acquire or silence you, letting you win was the expedient option. My masters know that.” He turned away, then looked back with a scowl. “I hope you won’t give me reason to regret my decision.”
“Surely not. And my apologies for inconveniencing you.”
He laughed at the edge in her voice.
“You may think you’re free,” he said as the crowd parted to let him through, “but Sacrus still owns you. Never forget that.”
Venera kept her smile bright, but his parting words worried at her for the rest of the evening.
11
Muscles aching, Venera swung down from the saddle of her horse. It was two weeks since the confirmation and she had lost no time in establishing her rule over Buridan—which, she had decided, had to include becoming a master rider.
She’d knocked down two walls and walled up the ends of one of the high-ceilinged cellar corridors, forming one long narrow room where her steed could trot. There were stalls at one end of this, and two workmen were industriously scattering straw and sand over the plating. “Deeper,” Venera told them. “We need several inches of it everywhere.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The men seemed unusually enthusiastic and focused on their task. Maybe they had heard that the new foals were to arrive later today. Probably it was just being in proximity with the one horse now residing here. Venera hadn’t yet met anyone who didn’t share that strange, apparently ancient love for horses that seemed inbuilt to humans.
Venera herself wasn’t immune to it. She patted Domenico and walked down the length of the long room, trailing one hand along the low fence that bisected it lengthwise. Her horsemaster stood at the far end, a clipboard clutched in his hand; he was arguing quietly with someone. “Is everything all right, gentlemen?” Venera asked.
The other man turned, lamplight slanting across his gnomish features, and Venera said, “Oh!” before she could stop herself.
Samson Odess screwed his fishlike face up into a smile and practically lunged over to shake her hand.
“I’m honored to meet you, Lady Thrace-Guiles!” His eyes betrayed no recognition, and Venera realized that she was standing in heavy shadow. “Liris is honored to offer you some land to stable your horses. You see, we’re diversifying and—”
She grinned weakly. It was too soon for this! She had hoped that the men and women of Liris would be consumed by their own internal matters, at least long enough for her new identity to become fixed. If Odess recognized her the news would be bound to percolate through the Fair. She didn’t believe in its vaunted secrecy any more than she believed that good always triumphed.
She let go of Odess’s hand before he could get entirely into his sales pitch, and turned away. “Charmed, I’m sure. Flance! Can you deal with this?”
“Oh, but Master Flance was unable to resolve one little matter,” said the horse master, stepping around Odess.
“Deal with it!” she snarled. She glimpsed a startled look in Odess’s eye before she swept by the two men and into the outer hallway.
Well, that had been an unexpected surge of adrenalin! She laughed at herself as she strode quickly through the vaulted, whitewashed spaces. In the half-minute it took her to slow down to a stroll, Venera took several turns and ended up in an area of the cellars she didn’t know.
Someone cleared his or her throat. Venera turned to find a man in servant’s livery approaching. He looked only vaguely familiar but that was hardly surprising considering the number of people she’d hired recently.
“Ma’am, this area hasn’t been cleaned up yet. Are you looking for something in particular?”
“No. I’m lost. Where did you just come from?”
“This way.” The man walked back the way they had both come. He was right about the state of the cellars; this passage hadn’t been reconstructed and was only minimally cleaned. Black portraits still hung on the walls, here and there an eye glaring out from behind centuries of dust and soot. The lanterns were widely spaced and a few men visible down a side way were reduced to silhouettes, their backdrop some bright distant doors.
“Down this way.” Her guide indicated a black stairwell Venera hadn’t seen before. Narrow and unlit, it plummeted steeply down.
Venera stopped. “What the—” Then she saw the pistol in his hand.
“Move,” grated the man. “Now.”
She almost called his bluff. One of those quick sidesteps Chaison had taught her, then a foot sweep… he would be on the floor before he knew it. But she hesitated just long enough for him to step out of reach. Caught unprepared for once, Venera stumbled into the blackness with him behind her.
“You’re in a lot of trouble,” she said.
“We’re not afraid of the authorities,” said her kidnaper contemptuously.
“I’m not talking about the authorities, I’m talking about me.” The stairs had ended on a narrow shelf above an indistinct, dark body of water. It was dank and cold down here; looking left and right she saw that she was standing on the edge of large tank—a cistern, no doubt.