House of Sand and Secrets (23 page)

I hardly see Jannik, and when he returns that evening, I am only half-awake. The exhaustion has filled up the hollows of my bones, weighted me down and turned my mind to oily sludge.

“Come on, Felicita,” he says, and under the joking tone, the strain shows like support wires.

My head is pillowed on my arms, and I feel no urge to rise from the desk I’d fallen asleep at. “This is fine,” I mumble at him. “Between this and the couch, I think the desk might be the more comfortable.” The sour copper of blood tickles the back of my throat, and I cough.

He rests one hand against the back of my neck. “I see you made some progress with your wardrobe.”

“Hush, I’ve done more than find wash-water and pretty dresses.” I manage to lever my head up. The room is dark, lamps unlit.

“Our coach is waiting,” Jannik says.

* * *

I wake in
an unfamiliar room with pale yellow bedding and walls of ivory. Despite the warm colour, the room feels unwelcoming and the smell of it is wrong. I catch a glimpse of my face in a mirrored wardrobe. “I need a bath. Dear Gris.” I must be particularly ripe by now. A hand basin in an office is no substitute. There are marks of dried blood on my pillow. I barely remember the journey here; it shifts, slippery and fractured.

“I’ve already had the servants arrange everything.”

I look up at Jannik. He’s dressed, neat and perfectly turned out. It’s like nothing happened at all to ruffle him. Maybe it didn’t.

“How are you so . . . .”

“So what?” He frowns. A knock sounds at the door. “Enter.”

The familiar face of my lady’s maid, Cornelia, appears. She’s wide-eyed, holding a tea tray in front of her and just the smell of it almost makes me cry from joy. Mrs. Winterborn must have made a speedy recovery, if the maids are already nervous as cats.

“So bloody chipper.” I am going to drink that entire pot dry and still ask for more, I can already tell.

Jannik laughs. “I’m not the one whose head got rearranged. I’ll see you at breakfast. We’ve nefarious deeds to discuss.”

After he’s gone I drink tea and listen to the household sounds of normality. Cornelia is arranging my bath and, presumably, new clothes for me. I have no idea what she’s found, as almost everything I had is currently drifting in the smoke over MallenIve.

My poor little Riona is dead because of me, I have no home, my marriage has been completely rearranged, and I am about to go into a sphynx’s nest armed only with my name, to save a man I hate. And yet I am oddly content. Languorous, even. I finish my tea and lie back, wondering what has become of my world.

After my bath, I find Cornelia has laid out a dark sage dress I last wore more than a year ago. It is distinctly Pelimburg in fashion, with a severity that is in stark contrast with the frivolous colours and patterns House Mata has made so fashionable here. There is glass beading, to be sure, but the designs are subtle, the beads merely a darker green than the dress.

I touch the silk, smooth it out. “Where did this come from?”

“Lord Pelim had your old wardrobe in storage, ma’am.”

Did he, indeed? I had thought these relics long since handed on. I smile thinly. It seems I am going to don Pelimburg armour when I face the MallenIve princes. How fitting.

* * *

“What are your
plans?” I ask Jannik. We’re in the breakfast room, and the front door bell is ringing non-stop, as parcels and orders are delivered. Distantly, the sound of voices, the papery crumple as servants unwrap our replacements for our old life.

Even in this stranger’s apartments we will temporarily call our own, Jannik is engaged in reading the Courant. He seems unflappable. He sets the paper down. “Harun first.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps to see if he is still alive.” Jannik raises one eyebrow. “Or are you ready to abandon them now?”

“Go on.” If I have to deal with that bully of a House son, I will be well fed. Eggs and bacon and grilled tomatoes and salt-fish. I’m ravenous. The past few days have caught up with me. It all seems a nightmarish blur of fire and ash and blood. And skin, and sweetness. I smile, tight and small as a new secret, before I look up again.

“While I make arrangements there, I’ll need you to set up a meeting with Carien.” He frowns. “I’m not sure exactly what you’re planning to say to her when you offer me over.”

“Ah, I have thought on it,” I say. “She still wants to paint you, as far as I know.”

“Oh, that.” His shakes his head in bitter amusement. “It seems that I shall finally have my portrait done. You can put it up in the Pelimburg University along with the rest of your family’s. That should stir a fire under them.”

“My mother may well have an apoplexy.”

“She probably deserves to have one.”

We skirt around the edges of what we are planning, blunting the reality of it with banter. We say nothing about what we have done, and what we plan to do with it. Jannik’s insecurity and uncertainty tug at me, faintly, like a butterfly-fish pulling on a line, and I wonder what I am giving away to him. It’s not as if I am so sure of my own plans that Jannik could not sense the fear beneath my bravado.

Whatever he knows, he is polite enough not to tell me, and I begin to relax. We can do this. Together, we will find out what we need to bring Isidro back.

The curious tightening around my heart as I think of his name could be from either of us.

* * *

By the time
we reach House Guyin, however, my nerves are back. The house is too cold and stark and forbidding to let me forget what we’re planning to do.

We find Harun drunk in the front lounge, stinking higher than a Lam heap out in the warren of the Hoblands.

“Dear Gris!” I pull all the curtains open and bright sunlight comes flooding in, illuminating the dust hanging in the air. The room is neglected and has a thick sour misery rubbed into the walls and the furniture. “Pull yourself together, Harun.”

Jannik hangs back, watching me rampage through Harun’s property.

“You’re an evil cow of a woman,” Harun slurs.

“It’s barely ten in the morning,” I snap back. “Is this how you plan to deal with what’s happened – by wallowing in your own filth and drinking like a bloated old rake?”

“I was trying to,” he points out. “And doing a damn fine job of it.”

“Give me that.” I snatch the half-empty wine bottle he’s holding, and tip the contents over his head. It’s only my apparently vast hidden wells of self-control that prevent me from sending the bottle after them.

“You – fuck – bloody woman.” He’s too inebriated to stand, so he rages at me from all fours, swaying like an old nilly in a knacker’s yard. It doesn’t have the effect he’d like. He clatters among the empty bottles, sending them rolling under the furniture and gathering trails of dust and Gris-knows what else.

“Oh yes, a bloody woman. How dare I come in to your house and point out to you what an enormous bullying idiot you are.” I set the empty bottle down on the table, and it clatters over and rolls off. I watch it. It’s not as if one more will make a difference to the state of the floor.

“Well thank you from saving me the trouble of saying it–”

“Shut up!”

Even Jannik starts.

“Now you listen to me, Guyin,” I hiss at him. “There are a thousand people out there who would work in your house,
bat
or not. People do not like to starve. So I can only assume that this prolonged staff problem is more down to the fact that you are a pathetic little spoiled House son who is throwing an extended tantrum because he didn’t get what he wanted, when he wanted, than in any shortage of willing labourers.”

“You know nothing of the circumstances–”

“I am not finished.” And Gris be damned, for once I will tell the truth to a House son and let hang the consequences. I’ve had enough of my own troubles and I’m too wrung out to drip pity over this idiot. Isidro is out there - anything could be happening to him - and instead of taking action, Harun will simply drown under what he thinks is inevitable.
Saints
. Saints and their bloody visions. I stamp one foot down, and Harun almost cringes before he recovers himself. “You will get over your snit, this instant. If you want us to help you, you will listen to what Jannik says, and when I return, I expect to find you in some semblance of order, approaching sober at the very least. I would ask that you are cleaned and dressed but I think I may be chasing fancies with such an unreasonable request. Now.” I crouch so that we are face to face. Even from here his breath is sour and foul. “Act like something resembling a man.” I stand. “Where is your House seal?”

“What?”

“Your House seal? I assume you still have some accounts in good standing with the banking merchants – if so, find your seal and give it to Jannik that he might organize the basics that you are seemingly incapable of organizing for yourself.”

I’m fully expecting Harun to start shouting at me. I pause, half-breathless, ready to yell again, as he clambers to his feet.

“Must you be so damn shrill,” he mutters as he digs through his coat pockets. “Here.” He tosses a silver cylinder to me and I catch it easily. The top of the cylinder has the familiar goat-like face of the Guyin unicorn in profile, worked in black glass.

“Thank you.” I hand the seal to Jannik. As I’m about to leave the room, Harun calls me to stay.

“What is it?”

“And while I’m doing all this.” He pressed his fingers to his temple and grimaces. “Where will you be?”

“Thankfully, far from you.” I slam the door closed behind me and smile in grim satisfaction as the sound sets of another round of groaning and cursing.

A bubble is rising in my chest. I think I have waited all my life to yell at a House man.

* * *

Master Sallow looks
dumbstruck when I ask him if he knows the way to a public house called the Greenfinch.

“Certainly, my lady.” He has managed to recover a little of his incredulity. First the Hoblands, and now some public house in a less-than-salubrious area – poor Master Sallow must be starting to wonder if I have lost my wits.

“Then you will take me there,” I say to him and smile. My moment of venting has left me feeling as if I could take on every damn person in MallenIve. I know where Carien likes to hide, pretending she is something more than a House brood-doe. She took me there with promises of an introduction to the artist Iynast. A promise she made good on, in her own confusing way.

I don’t remember the name of the street, but it was not far from the Greenfinch, and I will find my way on foot. I instruct Master Sallow to wait for me, and he nods.

The tea shop where she made her artistic confession is not hard to find. I push open the door and the little glass bells chime merrily as I enter. It’s nearing lunch time, and the shop is busier than before, all the tables taken by Hobs taking their brief respite from the day’s labour. They nurse porcelain bowls of tea and what appears to be the speciality, a bowl of unidentifiable greens and white porridge. A few are wealthier and have added a small fatty cut of meat to their dish. The smells of the boiled meat and strong tea and old sweat hang in the closed space. I scan the crowd of dark-haired Hobs, looking for a familiar face. Perhaps, after all, she does not frequent this place nearly as often as I had hoped. My thoughts were that it was a place where she felt safe, where she goes to ground.

As it turns out, I’m not wrong.

She’s at the small corner table, and now I see why she chose it last time. The angle of the door and the tables keeps the spot mostly hidden from the entrance. One has to know where to look.

I glide between the tables, and seat myself across from her.

She pulls her mouth in a sour moue of distaste.

“How fortuitous to meet you here,” I say. “I had rather hoped to catch you while you were still slumming.”

“Felicita,” she says. “What is it you want?”

Our earlier play of friendship is over, and I am surprised to find myself saddened. I wonder if she knows that my house was destroyed. She must. Does she know also whose hand struck the match?

“I seem to find myself somewhat inconvenienced in the realm of accommodation.”

“Oh.” She pales. “Your house. I had forgotten. I’m so sorry for your losses.” She even sounds genuine. Carien sighs. “I was shocked when I heard the news. I meant to write to you, but, I–” She looks around the room. “I had my own unexpected blows.”

I frown. The tea girl is hovering. “I’ll have redbush,” I say.

“‘Ink,” Carien mumbles.

“Should you be–”

“Do not presume to tell me how I should conduct my life,” Carien says. “Fine, I’ll have the same.”

When the girl is out of earshot I lean forward over the table. “Are you well?” Her fingers are shaking and there are deep pouches under her eyes.

“A little nauseous, but that’s to be expected.” Her face crinkles, as if she is about to cry.

“What happened?”

She looks this way and that. “I suspect, or rather, I – I do not know.” Loose strands of hair fall across her cheeks. Instead of her normal wild and earthy look, she now reminds me of a hunted animal.

I cover her hands with mine. “Hush,” I say softly. “Calm yourself. What is it you suspect?”

“It’s – that is.” She takes a rattling breath. “Garret has taken a new lover.”

That is an unexpected confession. And not one most wives would voice; it is merely something we pretend not to notice, unless the by-blows are thrust in our faces. Unless he has taken a mistress from another House. An unlikely and inelegant action.

“You know her?”

Carien scowls. “It is worse than that,” she hisses. “He has taken an animal for his pleasure. I find he has been spending his evenings at the–” She swallows, not bringing herself to say it.

But I already know. “The rookeries,” I say softly.

She goes paler still then nods almost imperceptibly. “I am revolted.”

I draw back a little, still keeping her hands in mine. “You once confessed to me that you found them fascinating, that they had magic that leaked from their skin.”

“So?” She pulls her hands free. “That doesn’t mean I would debase myself with one.”