“I see you’re back from the wild places,” Jorey said. “The travel agrees with you.”
“Does it? I think I just about wept when I could sleep in a real bed again. Going on campaign may be a string of discomfort and indignity, but at least I never worried about being killed by bandits.”
“There are worse things than a good, honest bandit. You were missed here,” Jorey said. “You heard what happened?”
“Exile all around,” Geder said, trying to affect a jaded tone. “I don’t know that I could have helped. I barely had any part except when we held the gate from closing.”
“That was the best part to have in the whole mess,” Jorey said.
“Probably so.”
“Well.”
The silence was awkward. Jorey sat again, and Geder walked forward. The front room, like all of the Palliako rooms in Camnipol, was small. The chairs were worked leather that time had stiffened and cracked, and the smell of dust never left the place. The sounds of hooves against stone and drivers berating one another came from the street. Jorey bit his lip.
“I’m here to ask a favor,” he said, and it sounded like a confession.
“We took Vanai together. We burned it together. We saved Camnipol,” Geder said. “You don’t have to ask favors of me. Just tell me what you need me to do.”
“That’s intended to make this easier, isn’t it? All right. My father believes he’s discovered a plot against Prince Aster.”
Geder crossed his arms.
“Does the king know?”
“The king is choosing not to know. And that’s where you come in. I think we can get evidence. Letters. But I’m afraid that if I take them to King Simeon, he’ll think they’re forged. I need someone else. Someone he trusts, or at least doesn’t distrust.”
“Of course,” Geder said. “Absolutely. Who is the traitor?”
“Baron of Ebbinbaugh,” Jorey said. “Feldin Maas.”
“Alan Klin’s ally?”
“And Curtin Issandrian’s, for that, yes. Maas’s wife is my mother’s cousin, which God knows doesn’t sound like much of a toehold, but it’s what we have to work with. She-the wife, I mean. Not my mother. She seems to know more than she’s saying. There’s no question she’s frightened. My mother has her at a needlework master’s knee as we speak in hopes of winning her confidence.”
“But she hasn’t confessed anything? Told you for certain what’s going on?”
“No, we’re still well in the realm of suspicions and fears. There’s no proof. But-”
Geder put up his hand, palm out.
“I have someone you should meet,” he said.
The last time Geder had been to the Kalliam mansion, it had been dressed for a revel in his honor. Without the flowers and streamers and crepe, the austerity and grandeur of the architecture came through. The servants in their livery had the rigid stance of a private guard. The glass in the windows sported no dust. The women’s voices that came from the back hall sounded genteel and proper, even without any individual word being audible. Basrahip sat on a stool in the corner. His broad shoulders and vaguely amused expression made him seem like a child revisiting a playhouse he’d outgrown. The austere cut and rough, colorless cloth of his robes marked him as not belonging to the court.
Jorey was sitting at a writing desk, fidgeting with pen and ink without actually writing anything. Geder paced behind a long damask-upholstered couch and wished he liked pipes. The occasion seemed to call for the gravity of smoke.
The choir of feminine voices grew louder, and the hard tapping of formal shoes came from the doorway, louder and then softer as they passed. They hadn’t come in. Geder moved toward the door, but Jorey waved him back.
“Mother will be seeing the others out,” he said. “She’ll be back in a moment.”
Geder nodded, and true to Jorey’s word, the footsteps returned, the voices reduced to a duet. When the women stepped into the room, Jorey rose to his feet. Basrahip followed suit a moment later. Geder had danced with the Baroness of Osterling Fells at his revel, but between the months and the whirl of drink and confusion that time had been, he wouldn’t have recognized her. He could see how her own features had influenced Jorey’s, especially around the eyes. Surprise touched her expression and vanished again, less than the flutter of a moth’s wing. Behind her, a sickly-looking woman with a pinched face and dark eyes had to be Phelia Maas.
“Oh, excuse me,” Clara Kalliam said. “I didn’t mean to intrude, dear.”
“Not at all, Mother. We were hoping you’d join us. You remember Geder Palliako?”
“How could I forget the man who held the eastern gate? I haven’t seen you at court this season, sir, but I understand you’ve been traveling. An expedition of some sort? Let me introduce my cousin Phelia.”
The dark-eyed woman came into the room and held her hand out to Geder. Her smile spoke of relief, as if she’d been dreading something that she thought she’d now avoided. Geder made his bow and saw Lady Kalliam’s eyebrows rise as she noticed the priest in the corner.
“Ladies,” Jorey said. “This is Basrahip. He’s a holy man Geder brought back from the Keshet.”
“Really?” Lady Kalliam said. “I hadn’t known you were collecting priests.”
“It came as a surprise to me too,” Geder said. “But please, won’t you ladies sit?”
According to his plan, Geder sat Phelia Maas on the couch with her back toward Basrahip and then took his own place across from her. Jorey resumed his place at the writing desk, and his mother took a chair near that happily didn’t block Geder’s view of the priest.
“Maas,” Geder said, as if recalling something. In truth, he’d planned precisely what to say. “I had an Alberith Maas serving under me in Vanai. A relation of yours?”
“Nephew,” Phelia said. “My husband’s nephew. Alberith has mentioned you often since his return.”
“You’re the Baroness of Ebbinbaugh, then?” Geder asked. “Sir Klin was my commander in the Vanai campaign. He and your husband are friends, yes?”
“Oh yes,” Phelia said with a smile. “Sir Klin is a dear, close friend of Feldin’s.”
Behind her, Basrahip gazed into the middle distance, his face impassive as if listening intently to something only he could hear. He shook his head once. No.
“There was a falling-out, though, wasn’t there? I’m sure I heard something like that,” Geder said, pretending a casual knowledge he didn’t have. The woman’s face went still, except for her eyes, which clicked from Geder to Lady Kalliam and back. There was fear in the way she held her hands and the corners of her mouth. Geder felt a slow, pleasant warmth growing in his chest. It was going to work. At his side, Jorey’s mother considered him with interest.
“I’m sure you misunderstood,” Phelia said. “Alan and Feldin are on excellent terms.”
No.
“I always liked Sir Klin,” Geder said for the simple pleasure of being able to lie to a woman who couldn’t lie to him. “I felt terrible when I heard he’d been blamed for the riot. Your husband didn’t suffer for that, I hope.”
“No, no, thank you. We were very fortunate.”
Yes.
“Sir Palliako,” Lady Kalliam said, “to what do we owe the pleasure of your company today?”
Geder looked at Jorey, then at Lady Kalliam. He’d meant to ask a few innocuous questions, get what insight he could, uncover what could be uncovered. He’d meant to move slowly. The way the woman held herself tighter and tighter, the fragility of her smile, and the scent of fear that came from her like the sweet from roses argued against. He couldn’t scare her so badly she left, but he could scare her badly. He smiled at Lady Kalliam.
“Well, the truth is I was hoping for an introduction to Baroness Ebbinbaugh here. I had some questions for her. I haven’t spent all the season traveling,” he said pleasantly. “I’ve been looking into the riot. Its roots. And its aftermath.”
The color had gone from Phelia Maas’s face. Her breath was fast and shallow, like a hand-caught sparrow about to die from fright.