had laughed about it the evening before he had gone to present it to the dowdy little creature.
Hest scowled disdainfully as he recalled that night. Well, he had laughed about the bargain. Sedric had sat quiet, biting his lip and then dared to ask him, “Are you sure you want to go through with this? It’s the perfect gift. I’m sure that this, if nothing else, will win Alise’s regard for you. It will open the door for you to court her and make her your wife. But are you sure, really sure, that’s what you want?”
“Well, of course it isn’t!” They’d been drinking in Hest’s study, comfortably watching a gnarled apple wood log burn down to ash. The house had been quiet and calm, the curtains drawn to close out the night. The war with Chalced was over, trade was resuming, and the world was coming back to normality. Good wine and fine brandy, song and entertainment had returned to Bingtown. Inns and taverns and playhouses were being rebuilt, rising from the ashes to even greater splendor than old Bingtown had possessed before it was burned and pillaged. There were fortunes to be made. It was a wonderful time to be young and unattached and wealthy.
Then Hest’s misguided father had to ruin it all by insisting that Hest must get a wife and make an heir for the family or forfeit his right to be the sole inheritor of the Finbok family fortune. “If it were left to me, I’d live my life exactly as I am. I have my friends and my occupations, my business affairs prosper, and I have you in my bed when I want you. The last thing I need is a busy little woman cluttering up my house and demanding my time and attention. Even less do I desire squalling babies and messy little children.”
“But while your father lives and wears the Trader robe and controls not only the vote but the purse strings of the estates, you’ll have to do what pleases him.”
Sedric’s words had made him scowl, then and now. “Wrong. I’ll have to
“Well, then.” Sedric had pointed, a bit drunkenly, at the scroll in its ancient decorated case. “Then that’s exactly the item you want, Hest. I’ve known Alise for years. Her fascination with the ancient Elderlings and dragons consumes her. A gift such as that will win her to your side.”
And it had. At the time, the ridiculous price that he’d paid for the damn thing had seemed worth it. She’d agreed to marry him. After that, his courtship of her had simply followed the customs of Bingtown, as easily as following a road on a map. They’d married, his family had provided a comfortable new home and a larger allowance to him, and they’d settled in. Oh, from time to time, his father or mother would moan or complain that Alise’s belly didn’t swell with a child, but that was scarcely Hest’s fault. Even if women had appealed to him, he doubted he would have chosen one who looked like Alise. Unruly red hair, freckles thick as pox marks on her face and forearms and shoulders. She was a sturdy little woman who should have conceived easily and given him a brat right away. But she hadn’t even done that right.
And then, years after he thought she’d settled in her place, she’d had the wild impulse to take herself off to the Rain Wilds to study dragons. And damned if Sedric hadn’t supported her in the idea. They’d both had the gall to remind him that he’d agreed to such a journey as one of the terms of the marriage contract. Perhaps he had, but no proper wife would ever have insisted on such a ridiculous thing. Thoroughly incensed with both of them, he’d sent them off together. Let Sedric see just how much he’d enjoy his “old friend’s” endless whining and wearisome ways. Let Sedric remember what it was like to live peasant-poor on a smelly ship on a reeking river. The ungrateful wretch. Both of them were ungrateful, stupid, selfish, common idiots. And now to find that they’d stolen from him, that they’d taken the most valuable scroll in the whole expensive collection that the stupid red cow had assembled, was more than any man could tolerate.
He strode back to the door of the chamber and thrust his head out. “Ched! Ched, attend me this moment.”
“Coming, sir!” The voice of his steward was distant, perhaps from the wine cellar. Lazy bastard. He was never to hand when Hest wanted him.
Hest paced impatiently around the room, seeking but not finding the scroll. The bitch had stolen it! He clenched his fists. Well, she’d find out soon enough that he’d cut her off without a copper shard. And faithless Sedric as well! When he had returned from his own trading voyage to discover that neither his wife nor his secretary had returned from their ill-advised trip to the Rain Wilds, he’d been furious. Even so, he’d held back his hand until the ugly rumors that they had run off together had begun to poison his social standing. The inner circle of his friends knew that it couldn’t be true, since Sedric would no more run off with a woman than he’d develop a spine and assert himself. But there had been others in Bingtown society who had believed it and had dared to pity Hest, dared to see him as the cuckolded husband. They sympathized with him and, believing his heart was broken, had dared to advise him on how best to win her back if she did return. Worse had been the ambitious matrons who had privately encouraged him to evoke the dissolution clause in his marriage contract and find a “more suitable, fertile wife”; inevitably, they had a daughter, niece, or granddaughter who would fill the bill admirably. One widow had even dared to offer herself. Such importunings were humiliating, but the pity others offered was the worst. They seemed to think his lack of reaction to Alise’s absence indicated that he was pining mournfully for his red cow!
That was when he had sent the notices to be published in every significant town on the Rain Wild River. He’d made it known clear and plain that anyone so foolish as to extend credit to the runaways had best not expect to be paid back out of Hest’s pockets. Alise and Sedric wanted to be away from him? Fine! Let them see how well they could manage when cut off from his fortune. And it was a plain signal to all of just how little he cared what became of either of them.
Where was his damn steward? He leaned out of the door again. “Ched!” he bellowed, furious this time, and his anger was not soothed when the man startled him by saying, “I’m here, sir,” from the corridor behind him.
“Where were you? When I call you, it means I need you immediately.”
“Sir, I’m sorry, but I was admitting a guest and settling him in your visiting room. He came very finely dressed, sir, with a hired carriage and team of the finest quality. He says he has come all the way from Chalced on a ship that arrived just this morning and that you were expecting him.”
“What’s his name?” Hest demanded. He racked his brain but could recall no scheduled meetings
“He was most adamant, sir, that he would not share his name. He said it was a matter of great delicacy and that he bore gifts and messages not only for you but for someone named Begasti Cored. And he spoke of Sedric Meldar as having arranged all this months ago, and how expected shipments had not arrived and someone must pay for the delay. .”
“Enough!” Damned Sedric again! He was tired of thinking of the man. Had Sedric run off and left the threads of a business agreement to unravel? That was unlike him. He was keener on details and arrangements than anyone Hest had ever known. But then it was also unlike the sucking little tick to stay away so long from comfort and wealth. Unless this was part of some other, unknown plot against Hest. That was a very disturbing thought. Sedric and Alise had been friends since childhood. Had the two of them collaborated in some plot to steal trade business from Hest? Was that why they had vanished and not returned? What could the two trade in? Abruptly he recalled why he had summoned Ched. “Turn your mind to this. There was a scroll on that table, a very valuable one, in a wooden case with a glass lid. It was there, and now it’s gone. I want it found.”
“I don’t know. .” the incompetent fool began.
“Find it!” Hest snapped at him. “Find it now, or face charges of theft!”
“Sir!” the steward objected, aghast. “I know nothing about the contents of this room. When I first arrived, you said it was the province of the lady’s maids. Then, after you ordered the lady’s maids let go, I did not take up its care as you didn’t tell me that-”
“Find the scroll!” Hest bellowed the words. He turned his back on the man and strode off toward the visiting room. “And have refreshments sent to me while I find out what other arrangements you have bungled.”
There was satisfaction in shouting, a small relief in his tension that he could leave the steward pale and shaken, in fear for his livelihood. It would have been much better if the man had immediately produced the missing scroll, but he would eventually.
Unless Alise and Sedric had stolen it. And what of the other extremely expensive scrolls that the graceless little woman and his lackey had been acquiring for years? He halted midstride, thinking back to how assiduously Sedric had searched out costly and ancient writings for her, and how relentlessly he had encouraged Hest to purchase them, saying that it was only to keep Alise occupied. Toward the end of their time together, Sedric had even dared to assert that she “deserved” such gifts, as recompense for a marriage of convenience! Hest had countered that she had known what she was getting into when she signed their marriage contract. He’d made it plain to her from the beginning that it was about appearances, convenience, and an heir. Now he wondered starkly just how much of his fortune she’d spent on her tattered bits of cowhide and musty books. There would be an
