Luckstones (7 page)

“The clasp was quite sturdy enough for walking through the
streets. If it
had
fallen off, it
surely would have gone into my bodice or petticoat, or clattered on the ground
so that I heard it.” She faltered. “At the inn, the activity of—with Col—we
were very
busy
, you see. Could not
the
activity
have knocked the clasp
open?” Her blush was so profound, it seemed to make her glow under the light,
and her hand in Nyana’s was hot.

“You would know that better than I.”

“Nya!” Velliaune’s tone was imploring. “If the Archangel is
truly lost, I’ll be cast out of the house in my shift! I’ll starve! I’m not
like you, I don’t know how to do anything but marry well.”

It’s likely your night
with Col ha Vanderon has taught you some marketable skills.
Nyana bit down
hard on that thought; voicing it would not improve the situation, and she had
promised to help.

“It won’t come to that. We’ll find the wretched sapphire and
your parents will be none the wiser. Let us think. Both you and Col say that
you wore the Archangel when you arrived for dinner; Col says you had it on
during . . . .
”

Velliaune choked.
How
readily she blushes,
Nyana thought.

“You say the clasp was too sturdy to come undone while you
were walking home.”

“It was, I swear it.”

“Then all I can guess is that it fell off, as you thought,
when you were in bed with Col ha Vanderon.”

“Nya!”

“If you can bed the man, you can hear the words spoken! If
you lost the Archangel in bed, then either it was lost in the sheets, and the
inn has it, and that maid lied—” Velliaune nodded vigorously, “or Col managed
to unclasp it while he was
clasping
you,
and
he
has it.” Velliaune shook her
head. “In either case, someone has lied to me.”

Nyana released Velliaune’s hand and rose. “I suppose I had
best find out who.”

Nyana left the Corse house in perplexion.
I have no power, no authority, no money. A
little wit, and some skill with a fencing sword, and that is the sum of it.
Well, she would have to use whatever came to hand.

Evening was drawing like an opera cloak over the city of
Meviel. Torches glittered in doorways like inconstant gems. At the Bronze
Manticore, the staff would doubtless be getting ready for that night’s
assignations. Nyana returned to her room long enough to change from the gown
suitable to visiting the Corse household back into her breeches, leathern tunic
and steel-buckled shoes. With her blades hung on her hip, she felt ready to
proceed.

Nyana’s route brought her first to the back of the inn,
where she observed a figure sneaking—there was no other word for the posture
and manner—in through the stableyard doors. Extraordinarily tall, female,
red-headed: it was Jass.

Now that is interesting.

Nyana followed after the maid as stealthily as she might;
the last thing she needed was to bring the tapster, the ostlers, or the owner of
the inn into this discussion. She caught up with Jass in one of the dim service
hallways between the stable and the kitchen.

“Wha? You agan?” The maid looked apprehensive. Why would
that be, when she had been so casual in their last conversation? Nyana was
inspired.

“I’m afraid I must ask you to turn out your pockets.”

“Won’t.”
The
syllable was sullen, but Jass’s eyes moved back and forth as if seeking a route
of escape. “Can’t make me.”

“I see the matter thusly.” Nyana smiled. “If you turn out
your pockets, I shall not have to make a fuss. If you do not, the innkeeper
will become involved, and when he learns that you were in league with Col ha
Vanderon to steal a very expensive piece of jewelry—”

“In league? I never!” Jass’s eyes opened so wide they appeared
to be in danger of rolling out of their sockets.

“Turn out your pockets,” Nyana said again.

Jass dug a raw-boned hand into her apron pocket and
produced, not the Archangel but a purse, which she held out. Nyana’s eyes
opened nearly as wide as the maid’s when she saw how much money was inside.

“Where did you get this?”

“Woun’t even gimme wha the sparkle was worth,” the maid said
resentfully. “When I foun it this mornin’ I was gon to hide it from him, sell
it or make him pay more. Then you said what about I coun’t sell it safe, an I
figurt it for a bad business, and tol him where—”

“Where?” Nyana said urgently. It was one thing to convince
the maid to give up her secret; she was certain Col ha Vanderon would be far
more difficult.

“Upstairs. In the hall—”

Nyana turned. “When did you leave him?”

“Quarter hour, maybe. At the alehouse in Pastern Stre—”
Nyana did not stay. If she were lucky, she might reclaim the Archangel and see
that Velliaune me Corse was never troubled by rumors of her night with Col ha
Vanderon. She left the inn at the back, circled around to the front hall, and
there found a stool to station behind the drapery.

She watched as several couples arrived, intent upon an
evening’s pleasure, and a drunken blade was turned away when he asked the innkeeper
to supply a woman (“The Bronze Manticore does not
procure,
sir!”). Just as Nyana had begun to lose her patience with
waiting, the door arced open just wide enough to admit a man without setting
the bells to clamor.

Col ha Vanderon slipped inside and went at once, as Nyana
had suspected he might, to the brazen manticore figurine on the trestle table
opposite the door. She watched as he ran his hands up and down the figure,
fingers seeking what the light was too dim to reveal otherwise: the hiding place
of the Archangel. Nyana knew when he had found it, for his hands stilled and he
made a noise in the back of his throat. He slid the sapphire out of its hiding
place beneath the left-hand wing; the chain and stone caught the lamplight for
a brief moment before Col pocketed them. Then, with the same care he had used
minutes before, he slipped silently out of the door.

Nyana, behind him, followed with equal stealth.

The air had cooled and the last blue glimmer of daylight was
gone. By the light of torches burning at each door, she saw the stocky figure
of Col ha Vanderon pause at the corner as if seeking a carriage for hire. When
none appeared, he proceeded on foot, not toward his rooms, but toward the
Dedenor district, where the fencing studio, her own rooms, and a sizeable
number of Meviel’s criminal populace were located.

He’s mad, or as naive
as Vellie me Corse! A gentleman, swordless, carrying a rock like that down
Hangsaman Street after dark? Perhaps he doesn’t like the throat Nature gave him
and hopes someone will vent it for him?

Nyana put her hand on the hilt of her sword and followed.

The attack came just as Col ha Vanderon turned the corner of
Hangsaman Street onto the narrower Wattle Street. Three men, large, armed, and
confident enough of a kill that they had not bothered to mask their faces,
surrounded ha Vanderon in the time it took him to take a pace.

“Stand!” the tallest man barked. Instantly, what foot
traffic there had been disappeared. If Col ha Vanderon expected the folk of the
Dedenor district to come to the rescue of an unknown gentleman, he was in for a
sad correction. “You got somethin’ we’m wantin’.”

Ha Vanderon stumbled slightly and eyed a blade that flashed
up to stop any attempt at flight.
They’re
quick,
Nyana thought.

“Why,
gentlemen
,”
ha Vanderon drawled. “What can I have that you would want?”

“A bit o’ sparkle,” the man to the right said. He was the
shortest of the three tall men, and his words came out with a shower of spittle
that caught the torchlight.

“Shut it, Cheevie,” the first man said. He reached forward
to touch the tip of his blade to ha Vanderon’s top coat button. “Gimme the
sparkle and you’ll see the morra.” A long few moments passed. Was ha Vanderon
trying to decide what he might offer these men in place of the Archangel? More
interesting, to Nyana at least, was the question of how the men had known he
had the sapphire in the first place.

The lead man pushed a little harder with the tip of his
sword. Ha Vanderon stepped backward and was prodded gently with the third man’s
swordpoint. His hand slid into his pocket.

“Well, since you must,” he said.

Reluctantly Nyana realized that, if she were to reclaim the
Archangel for Velliaune me Corse, this would be the moment. She drew sword and
dagger, stepped out of the shadow, and within a moment had the tip of her
dagger pressed against the nape of the third man’s neck.

Matters became complex. The third man froze for a moment,
then turned to face Nyana. The leader and Cheevie, momentarily shocked by the
arrival of an unanticipated assistant to their quarry, raised their blades to
chase her away, permitting Col ha Vanderon to step to his left, out of range of
the two swords. Col caught sight of her. “You!”

“I,” Nyana agreed. She tossed her dagger, hilt first, to ha Vanderon.
“A loan,” she said, and turned to deal with the third man. Despite the weighty
blade in his hand, the thief was no swordsman. He waved the blade back and
forth like a finger waggled at a naughty child; Nyana, in a move she had only
practiced and never accomplished in good earnest, beat the blade away with a
strong strike and hit true in the man’s center, feeling her point cut into his
chest, bounce along the side of a rib, then slide further. It was not a
pleasant sensation.

The man cried in outrage, then was silent as blood bubbled
up in the corner of his mouth and he crumpled. Nyana fought the urge to vomit
and tugged her sword free—the muscle of the man’s chest clutched at her
blade—because the leader was coming at her now. Looking over, she saw Col ha Vanderon
engaged in blocking Cheevie’s cuts with her dagger; at least he was not dead
already.

“Messing in business that’s none of yourn, girl.” The leader
did not seem concerned by the sight of his companion dying upon the street.

“Whose business is it, then?” Nyana stood on guard, circling
warily. This man looked far more comfortable with a blade than his companions
had done.

“More none of yourn.” He stopped and held his arm and blade
straight out, pointing at Nyana’s neck as if in warning. “You’d be wise to go home
to your Mammy.”

“Haven’t one.” The man appeared nonplussed by her air of
unconcern. “If it’s not
my
business,
might it be Jass’s?”

That startled him. The leader glanced from side to side as
if the tall red-headed woman might appear from nowhere. “How d’you—”

”Who else would have known that Col ha Vanderon had the
jewel?” she said. Nyana beat his blade away. “I thought she’d sold the thing to
him?”

The man grinned. “When we take the sparkle home, Jass’ll
turn it in for reward.” He feinted broadly at her hip.

“Clever.” Nyana parried again. “The problem is that I’m
charged to bring the jewel home to its right owner.”

A yelp from the left drew the leader’s attention for a
second; Col ha Vanderon had pinked Cheevie in the arm and taken his sword from
him. As Cheevie ran down the street, the soles of his boots flashing in the
torchlight, the leader turned back to Nyana.

“The odds have changed,” she noted. “I think you should go
home.”

“And face Jassie without nothing to show for it? Not likely.”
The leader brought his sword up in a circling motion, cutting for Nyana’s
shoulder, but she had already dropped to one knee and thrust her point deep
into the man’s underarm, the blade reappearing just below the shoulder. His
sword dropped, he screamed, and it was the work of several minutes to
disentangle her blade, wipe it down, confiscate the sword and bind the man’s
shoulder up so that he did not bleed to death on the way home.

“There. You have something to show Jassie. Now, will you
please go?”

Nyana and ha Vanderon watched as the leader walked heavily
away into the darkness. Then she turned to him.

“My dagger, sir?”

He handed her the dagger, which she slid at once into its
hanger.

“And the Archangel.”

Col ha Vanderon paused, calculation written upon his face.

“A man who comes into the Dedenor without so much as a
penknife to defend himself is not the man who can best me in a fight,
particularly with an unfamiliar sword.” She nodded at Cheevie’s blade, which
dangled in his hand. “I think the necklace simply fell off, was discovered by
the maid at the Bronze Manticore, and offered by her to you. An unexpected
gain, but not worth dying for. Give me the Archangel, sir. Or raise your
weapon.”

A moment more calculation, then Col ha Vanderon shrugged. “Right
on every count.” He slid his hand into his pocket and produced from it the
Archangel, large, blue, glittering. Nyana put it into her own pocket.

“Well. Good night, sir.”

~o0o~

Velliaune me Corse had chattered throughout dinner in
hopes of distracting her parents from the subject of the Archangel and now
found herself in the parlor, singing, “So Gently Dies the Woodland Doe,” for
their pleasure. At the song’s end, her maid whispered that Nyana me Barso was
waiting.

As soon as she could depart from her parents’ beaming presence,
Velliaune joined Nyana in her bedchamber. The moment the door closed behind
her, she wheeled round.

“Do you have it?”

“It took longer than I had expected, but—” Nyana held the
Archangel out to her, “here.”

Velliaune snatched the thing to her breast and held it
there. “Praises!” She vanished from the room. This time, Nyana had to wait only
a few minutes.

“I have given the wretched thing back to my mother, and hope
never to wear it again!” She threw her arms around Nyana extravagantly. “Thank
you, thank you, thank you! You have—I cannot tell you—if my parents had learned . . .
I can breathe again!” Indeed, she felt as light as a breeze.