Liar's Moon (12 page)

After that, I resigned my commission as Lord Durrel’s champion — just turned my back on the Keep and kept on walking. It wasn’t as if there was so little to occupy my days, after all, that I had to spend them sneaking around warehouses and digging up sordid secrets. There was a war on, and lots of places I could put my talents to better use.

I turned my attentions
instead to helping around the bakery. I was objectively one of the worst cooks in Llyvraneth, but I could sift and stir if the need arose, and Aunt Grea didn’t protest too strenuously the day I came downstairs, donned an apron, and fell into kneading beside her. Business was thin at the bakery these days, though she didn’t like to speak of it; the grain shortages had pushed up the price of bread
so high that many Seventh Circle folk couldn’t afford it anymore. Grea cut her costly wheat with cheaper grains where she could, but it was hard to ignore the grumbles in the street and the dark looks from her customers.

“It isn’t
my
fault,” she’d tell them. “Talk to Bardolph.” But bakers were an easier target for ordinary folks’ wrath; little did they care that Grea struggled too.

“You don’t need to do this, you know,” she said to me one hot afternoon in the shadow of the blasting ovens. I was up to my elbows in flour that was mostly rye and punching down a ring of dough with enough force to leave dents in the table. “I’m sure you’d rather be doing anything else.”

I just shrugged and flung the dough down onto the bread board with a bang that sent flour and cats and
bakers flying. The truth was, I was mad as hells with myself, and I couldn’t even explain why. It wasn’t just that Durrel had lied to me; it was that I had believed him. I’d
wanted
to believe him. I’d looked into his eyes and thought,
He is not a murderer. He can’t be.

What an idiot I was. Didn’t I know better than anybody how thin that line was, how easy it was to cross? It would have been
the work of a moment for Koya to lure Durrel into helping her; look how easily he’d thrown away five hundred marks on that fake Sarist girl.

Look how easily
I’d
been lured in.

And so I punched and rolled and dragged bags of grain around, hoping the hot, heavy work would sweat all thoughts of Durrel Decath right out of me, until even Aunt Grea finally grew a little alarmed one afternoon
and sent me back upstairs “to cool off,” she said with a fierce glare that did not brook defiance.

Upstairs, Rat bent over our makeshift table, regarding two bottles of wine with intensity, one blond eyebrow cocked in focus. “Here,” he said, handing me a glass. “Taste this.”

I wasn’t in any kind of mood to refuse a drink, so I downed the shot he gave me. “Tastes like Grisel,” I said,
recognizing the fine, fizzy Corles wine.

“Ah.” Rat lifted a finger, then handed me another, this one in a clay cup.

“Tastes like Grisel,” I repeated

Rat gave me a look of disdain. “Heretic.” With a flourish he lifted one of the bottles to the light. “
This
is sparkling Grisel, a thirty-four-year-old bottle, in fact, which was entrusted to me by his lordship. And this” — he handed
me the other bottle, which looked nearly identical — “is not.”

“You’re counterfeiting wine? How?” Curious now, I slid into place behind the table.

“Would I ask you how you picked a pocket or got into a nob’s bedroom to steal a diamond? I think not. But since you’ve asked nicely, yes, I am attempting to fill a hole in the lives of our esteemed friends. Thanks to the embargoes against
Corlesanne, they are suffering without some of the finer things in life.”

I lifted the real bottle from the table and eyed the label. “Interesting.” But my voice sounded bored, even to me.

“And you call yourself one of Tiboran’s. Can you do the labels?”

I set the bottle down with a clink. “I told Grea I wouldn’t bring my work to her house, and I meant it. Besides, I’m helping in
the bakery.”

Rat leaned against the dry sink, arms crossed over his chest. “This is serious,” he said. “I’ve never seen you like this.”

“Like what?” I snapped, glaring at the wine labels instead of him.

“Right,” he said, and took a seat beside me at the table. “Look, if you want to help Aunt, then do what you’re good at. We don’t need a second baker when there’s barely flour enough
for one. If these grain prices keep going up, she’s going to need alternate sources of income.” He nudged the Grisel bottle closer to me. “Come on,” he said. “You know you want to.”

I looked at him. “She could get in a lot of trouble for this,” I said, although in truth the risk was minimal. Nobody was going to come hunting a Seventh Circle bakery for smuggled wine, and forged wine? Well,
the very idea of it would be so amusing to Tiboran, god of wine
and
forgers, that anyone in the liquor trade who might reasonably complain would no doubt look the other way. Besides, Rat had a point about those Grisel labels — the script had the trickiest little twist to some of the numerals, and it
might
be interesting to try replicating the blue tinge to the edges of the paper, said to be caused
by a fungus in Count Grisel’s cellars. . . .

I spent a little time on Rat’s project over the next few days, selecting inks and paper at a Spiral stationer’s, tracking down a glassblower willing to dodge the excise taxes on locally made wine. At night I stayed out past curfew, haunting
the shadows near a bar down Bonelicker Way where the pickings were never worth the effort, and did a little halfhearted forgery after getting back home in the mornings. And thus another handful of hot, listless days passed, during which I was pretty damn successful forgetting all about Durrel Decath.

Late in the week, I ran an errand for Rat that took me right past Nob Circle, to a cheesemonger’s
he liked that
just happened
to be across the street from Charicaux. I halted on the corner, watching the weird guards patrolling the Decath grounds like horseflies. Not my concern; I did not care a whit what those nobs were up to. But before I moved on, the broad arched gateway swung wide, and a handful of riders clattered up the street and into Charicaux. One was Lord Ragn, and the others —

Marau’s balls. Lord Ragn’s companions were a tapestry of Gerse elite, nobs or gentry all, from the looks of them. I spotted at least one jeweled chain of office around one velvet collar — a member of the Ruling Council. But the one who stole my breath away was tall, rigid-backed, dressed all in green. I didn’t recognize anything but her robes. The woman was a Confessor, one of the Inquisition’s
master torturers.

What was Lord Ragn doing with company like that?

I wasn’t stupid enough to hang around trying to find out.

On my way back to Bargewater, I was so preoccupied that I didn’t notice the Greenmen trailing alongside me until it was too late to move out of their way. I turned a corner, a nightstick blocked my path, and a slow, entitled voice drawled out, “Papers?”

Pox. My gut curled up inside me. I looked up to see Raffin Taradyce and a thickset partner looming over me. There was no friendly recognition in Raffin’s face this time.

“You can’t be serious,” I said, nicking a little strength from the irritation that had fueled my walk here.

“Is that how you speak to the Goddess’s servants?”

I bit back a tart reply; the other guy had a mean
look in his eye, like he arrested people just for the fun of it. Still staring at Raffin, trying to figure this out, I dipped my hand into my bodice and withdrew a packet of folded-up papers, which I held past him, toward his partner’s waiting hand. Apparently my brother’s hands-off order had expired. I tried not to show fear or impatience as Raffin and the nasty-looking thug in green pawed their
way through my single most valuable possession. The rattle of market traffic filled the languid air behind us, and the street smelled of horse dung, stale beer, and old cabbage in the low afternoon light.

“Cel-yn Con-tra
-trar
—” the partner read, with painstaking slowness. Raffin’s face betrayed the briefest flash of annoyance, and he plucked the documents from his partner’s hands.

“Celyn Contrare,” he repeated, eyeing me superciliously over the edge of the papers. “It says here that you are a member of the household of one Eptin Cwalo, Merchant of the Spiral, Third Circle, Gerse. Is that true?” He looked surprised — what had he expected? No house affiliation at all? Maybe forged papers? Mine weren’t, but Cwalo would have vouched for me, all the same.

I shrugged. “That’s
what it says. They’re your licenses.”

“Should we approach this Cwalo, check your story out?”

“What do you want?” I snapped. On the street around us, people stopped briefly to stare, before ducking their heads and moving on.

“We want what all good citizens of Llyvraneth want,” the other guard said, and his voice had gone silky and terrifying. “Peace and order in the streets. Obedience
to the Goddess. A return to a state of blessed —”

Raffin cut his partner off. “Suffice it to say, the Goddess cares for
all
her children.” There was a weird note in his voice, and I studied his face, trying to figure this out.

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, peach, why don’t you let me explain it to you?” Raffin pocketed my papers, then handed his nightstick to his partner. “Watch
this alley,” he said, pointing to a dark, twining opening between two squat storefronts. “I’m going to have a private word with the
dutiful
Mistress Contrare here.”

And then, as I stood there, confused, Raffin unbuckled his belt and passed it to the other Greenman. I felt all the air just disappear from my lungs.

“Need any support there, brother?” His partner was eyeing me with undisguised
lust, and suddenly I wasn’t confused anymore.

“Not this time. I’ll take care of this.” Raffin grabbed me by the arm and half threw me down the alley. I stumbled, cracked my knee on the cobbles, and scrambled to my feet, braced against a rough stone wall. He caught me and cornered me in a doorway, pressing his tall body over mine.

“Stop!” I cried, and to my utter surprise, he eased back
a little. The look on his face was fixed and intense — but it wasn’t
violent
. It wasn’t cruel. “What are you doing?” My voice was shaky. I was shaking.

“I’m going to ask you the same question,” he said coldly. “Shouldn’t you be in gaol?”

“What?”

“I’ve been to the Keep docks every morning this week, but Durrel’s pretty little spy is nowhere to be seen. What’s going on,
Digger
?”
There was something nasty in the way he said my name.

“Ask
him
,” I said, and my voice was surprisingly steady. “My interest in the matter waned.”

Raffin pinched me suddenly, and I cried out. “Sorry,” he said under his breath. “Must keep up the pretense.”

I glared at him, rubbing my sore arm. “Just
ask
me next time. I can scream as loud as you want. What
do
you want?”

“I want
to know where you’ve been. Why have you stopped investigating Durrel’s case?”

“Because
he did it
, Raffin.” I sighed. “Or he helped his stepdaughter do it. He’s not what we thought.”

“You can’t believe that.”

“His own father believes it.” I recalled the odd note in Lord Ragn’s voice at the party, the clouded expression I now, belatedly, recognized as
doubt
.

“Never. Decath would
move the moons for Durrel.”

I shook my head. “No, he told me. There was an incident — something in Tratua a couple of years ago?” I wasn’t aware that was a question until I heard the uncertainty in my voice.

Raffin was nodding. “I remember. He didn’t do that either.” When I just stared at him, he fidgeted a bit and finally said, “You’ll have to ask Durrel.”

“I’m asking you.”

He shrugged. “All right. There was some girl in Tratua.”

“
What
girl?”

His eyes darted up the alley toward the street, and he lowered his voice. “Her name was Evalia Mondeci, or that’s what she called herself, anyway. She was a courtesan. Pretty, young. Too smart for her own good. Durrel fell hard.”

I told myself I
did not care
what Raffin was telling me, but there I was, speaking
anyway. “Were you there with him?”

“He wrote me. Long, moony paeans about her crimson lips, her night-dark hair, her — well. The letters stopped a few weeks before he came home. The next thing I heard, she was found dead in an alley near his rooms. Strangled.”

I could feel my face contract in a grimace. I tried to relax. This had nothing to do with me.

“The way I heard it, Tratuan
authorities were minutes away from arresting him, but Lord Decath paid a fair sum to keep his boy from the gallows.”

I pulled away from him. “Thanks for the information.” I turned to leave.

His long green arm blocked my path. “Well?”

“Well, what? You realize that story makes him sound
more
guilty, don’t you?”

“Don’t be an idiot. You know he wouldn’t hurt anybody.”