I pulled my shirt over my head and reached for my coat, the better to mask my inability to muster speech.
“What’s next?” Celia asked, all business.
“I’ve got a few ideas. I’ll come by in a day or two and let you know if anything’s panned out.”
“Do that. I’ll sound out some people I know at the Bureau of Magical Affairs, see if they’ve got anything they can tell me.”
The Crane broke his silence with another fit, and I decided it was time to take my leave. I thanked the Master, who threw me a quick wave between barks. Celia walked me to the door. “Pay attention to the jewel,” she said very gravely. “It’ll lead you to the culprit.”
I took a look back as I descended the stairs. The Crane’s coughing echoed down the blue stone, and Celia watched me from the landing, her face worried, her eyes dark.
Recent misadventures aside, I earn my meager living selling drugs, and it wouldn’t do much good to dodge the Crown if I lost my business in the process. Besides, after the day’s chaos, a simple spot of trafficking seemed just the thing to settle my mind. Yancey had asked me to show at the mansion of one of the nobles he spit for, said there was money in it. I stopped at an Islander cart near the docks and grabbed a quick plate of spiced chicken before beginning my trek.
Head straight north from downtown and you’ll come to Kor’s Heights, where the old families and the nouveaux riches have erected a paradise out of sight of the masses. Clean air replaces the stench of the iron foundries and the rot of the harbor, while constricted alleyways and compact buildings give way to wide thoroughfares and beautifully maintained manors. I never liked going there, any hoax worth his bribe knew I didn’t belong, but then I couldn’t very well ask whatever patrician wanted ten ochres’ worth of brain loss to meet me outside the Earl. I shoved my hands into my pockets and doubled my pace, trying not to look like I was engaged in an errand of dubious legality.
I stopped at the address Yancey had provided. Through a wrought-iron gate I could make out acres of manicured lawn, even the dim light of the evening sufficient to mark the dormant flower beds and groomed topiary. I followed the brick wall toward the back of the estate-gentlemen in my profession rarely go in through the front door. After a few hundred yards I came to the much smaller, much uglier servant’s entrance.
The guard next to it was a ruddy-looking Tarasaihgn with shocks of flame-red hair, uncommon among the swamp dwellers, extending in a roughly even circle from scalp to chin. His uniform was worn but well kept, and so was the man beneath it, pushing fifty but with little more to show for it than a modest protuberance above his belt. “I’m a friend of Yancey the Rhymer,” I said. “I don’t have an invitation.”
To my surprise he held his hand out in greeting. “Dunkan Ballantine, and I don’t have an invitation either.”
I took his palm. “I guess it’s not a prerequisite to stand guard.”
“It isn’t one to enter either, least not for someone Yancey’s vouched for.”
“He inside already?”
“Wouldn’t be a party without the Rhymer on hand to entertain the highborn.” He looked around with an exaggerated suggestion of secrecy. “Course between me and you, he saves his best stuff for between sets! You’ll probably find him outside, adding to the kitchen smoke.” He winked at me and I laughed.
“Thanks, Dunkan.”
“No problem, no problem. Maybe you’ll see me on the way out.”
I followed a pebble-lined path through the verdant lawn toward the back of the mansion. I could make out the sound of music and the familiar scent of dreamvine on the chill evening breeze. The first I assumed came from the party, but the second I attributed to the small, dark-skinned figure leaning against the shadow of the three- story brick estate and mumbling rhythmically.
Yancey passed me the twist he had been working on without interrupting his perfectly syncopated flow. The Rhymer’s vine was good, as always, a sticky blend but not unduly harsh, and I spiraled silvery indigo into the night.
His final bar hammered home. “Safe living.”
“And you, brother. Glad to see you made it out here. You’ve been a little shaky lately.”
“I’ve been taking a lot of naps. Did I miss your set?”
“First one, got the band on now. Ma says hey. She wants to know why you haven’t been coming round lately. I told her it’s because she keeps trying to catch you a wife.”
“Astute as always,” I said. “Who am I walking in on?”
His eyes narrowed and he took the joint from my outstretched hand. “You don’t know?”
“Your message just gave the address.”
“This the king ape himself, brother. Rojar Calabbra the Third, Duke of Beaconfield.” He grinned, white teeth sharp against his skin and the night behind it. “The Smiling Blade.”
I let out a low whistle, wishing now I hadn’t gotten high. The Smiling Blade-famed courtier, celebrated duelist, and enfant terrible. He was supposed to be strong with the Crown Prince, and he was supposed to be the deadliest swordsman since Caravollo the Untouched opened a vein after his boy lover died of the Red Fever twenty summers past. Mostly Yancey played for the younger sons of minor nobles and mid-level aristos slumming. He really was moving up in the world. “How’d you meet him?”
“You know my skills. The man saw me rhyme something somewhere, made himself an opening for me to fill.” Yancey was not given to undue humility. He exhaled a stream of smoke through his nostrils, and it pooled about his face, wreathing his skull in a spectral, sterling aurora. “The question is, why does he want to meet you?”
“I had assumed he wanted to buy some drugs, and you let him know I was the man to speak with. If he brought me up here for dancing lessons, I imagine he’ll be pissed with the both of us.”
“I dropped you the line, but I didn’t put you into play-they asked for you in particular. Tell truth, if I didn’t know I was a genius, I might suspect I’d been hired for just that purpose.”
This last revelation was enough to put paid to any good humor generated by the dreamvine. I didn’t know why the duke wanted to see me, didn’t know how he had even learned who I was-but if there was one thing thirty- five-odd years gripping the underbelly of Rigun society had taught me, it was never to draw the attention of the highborn. Best to remain another amid the uniform army of folk Sakra had birthed to serve their whims, a half- forgotten name supplied by another member of their anonymous coterie.
“Go wary on this one, brother,” said Yancey as he flicked out the end of the joint.
“Dangerous?”
He spoke with remarkable solemnity given our last five minutes’ recreation. “And not just the sword.”
The Rhymer led me through the back door and into a wide kitchen, a small army of cooks moving about frantically, each attending to an array of edibles as appetizing as they were delicate. I regretted filling up on spiced chicken, though on the other hand I probably wasn’t going to be offered a seat at the feast. Yancey and I waited for a gap in the traffic, then threaded our way into the main room.
I’d been to a lot of these little soirees courtesy of Yancey’s connections, and this was definitely one of the nicer ones. The guests were the sort of people who looked like they deserved to be out somewhere-that’s not always the case.
Although a lot of it was probably the architecture. The drawing room was three times as wide as the Earl, but apart from general scale, there was little else to compare with Adolphus’s modest establishment. Intricately carved wooden walls led up above elaborate Kiren carpets. A dozen grand glass chandeliers, each cupping a hundred wax candles, descended from a gilded ceiling. In the center of it all a circle of nobles amused themselves in the intricate patterns of a contra dance, moving in time to the band that had picked up after Yancey had stepped off. Radiating out from this core were small knots of courtiers laughing and chatting. Around them, at once ever- present and innocuous, swarmed the servants, carrying finger food and drinks of all kinds.
Yancey leaned toward me. “I’ll let the big man know you arrived,” he said, moving off into the crowd.
I snatched a flute of champagne from a passing waiter who harrumphed with disdain. The degree of contempt underlings are willing to muster on behalf of their employers is a source of continual amusement to me. I sipped my bubbly and tried to remember the reasons I hated these people. It was hard going-they were beautiful and seemed to be having a great deal of fun, and I struggled to maintain class resentment amid the laughter and bright colors. The vine wasn’t helping either, its pleasant haze dulling my well-sharpened bitterness.
Among all the gild and glitter, the figure in the corner stuck out like a broken thumb on a manicured hand. He
