StarCrossed. Part 39

"Koya, don't be an idiot. We know who did it. This ridiculous farce can only satisfy your own curiosity and boredom."

"Shut up, Barris." The musical voice lost almost nothing of its tenor. "Durrel didn't kill Mother. You only wish he had."

My eyes swung from sister to brother. There was tension here, but without more information, I couldn't be certain of its source. Or its significance.

"Do let's sit and discuss this like civilized people." Koya led me to a delicate, carved bench and settled beside me, but Barris lingered at the fringes of the room, like a suspicious dog that didn't want to let me out of view. "Can I offer you some refreshment? Vrena, precious, bring us some wine," she called to an out-of-sight servant.

"No - really, I'm fine." I hadn't forgotten that one member of this family had already been felled by poison, and the suspects were still at large.

Koya looked at me oddly for a moment. "I'm sure you have questions. And we have nothing to hide," she added pointedly, looking at her brother.

I glanced from sibling to sibling, realizing just how out of my depth I was. I had no experience investigating crimes; committing them, yes, but never reconstructing them, piece by piece, backward in time. The thing I really wanted to ask was who had had me arrested, but I kept that tidbit close. It might be more telling to see what they did if I didn't mention it. Instead I seized on the first thing I thought of. "I thought there were four children."

"The twins live with the family in Tratua," Koya said. "Leys and Reton. They're thirteen, and Mother felt it time to expand their horizons."

"She wanted them out of the way of her and her new plaything, you mean." Barris had moved from glowering to pacing, and he practically pounced on Vrena and the wine when they appeared.

"You didn't approve of the match with Lord Durrel?" I said.

"As if Mother ever courted anyone's approval. Here -" He gestured for me to follow, and, curious, I stood and trailed after him out of the room, Koya and the dogs behind us. Barris led us to an open breezeway, where a ma.s.sive portrait of a woman and her young son stared out onto the water.

"It's a Fioretta," Koya said at the same moment Barris said, "Does that look like a woman who cared what other people thought?"

I studied the woman in the portrait, a thick, proud figure in a stiff clay-colored gown, with blond hair drawn severely back, and startling pale eyes glaring out from the canvas. The boy - Barris, probably - looked just as defiant. Koya had much of her mother's stature, and the unnerving direct gaze, but she was more delicately built.

"Why did she marry Lord Durrel?" I couldn't imagine what that clay woman could have seen in a boy her children's age.

"To be Lady Decath, of course," Koya said. "A n.o.ble t.i.tle, not to mention a n.o.ble heir, was the one thing Mother didn't have."

Since we were being so candid, I forged ahead with my next indelicate question. "And where were you both when she died?"

"I was dining with my grandfather," Koya said promptly. "It's exactly an hour's sail between Grandfather's house and Bal Ma.r.s.e, and I a.s.sure you at least a dozen witnesses can place me there all evening."

I knew a thing or two about alibis. The more precise and elaborate one was, the less likely it was to be true. "At two o'clock in the morning?"

Barris frowned. "What?" His voice was gruff.

"Your mother was killed in the middle of the night. Her maid saw someone leaving her rooms at that hour."

"The dinner ran late," Koya said simply. "We had . . . family matters to discuss."

"What about the curfew?"

She gave a broad smile. "We're Ceid. The curfew doesn't apply to us."

Of course it didn't. "And you, Master Ceid?"

Barris set down his gla.s.s. "Unlike my sister, I don't find your questions entertaining, and I have no intention of continuing this conversation."

Koya sighed daintily. "Unfortunately," she said, "despite his efforts to suggest otherwise, my brother is entirely innocent. He was at home in Tratua when Mother died."

"Wait. You don't live in Gerse? Do you keep a house in the city?" The Ceid owned properties from the Seventh Circle to n.o.b Circle. Maybe edgy Barris's quarters would be worth checking out.

Barris gave me a chilling look. "I did," he said. "The Decath own it now."

I realized he meant Bal Ma.r.s.e. "Lord Durrel got your family home in the marriage settlement? Why?" What reason would a family as cozy and rich as Durrel's have to l.u.s.t after an ugly, hulking lump of stone like Bal Ma.r.s.e?

"My mother's house," he said. "She owned it outright. And you would have to ask the Decath, since she's no longer able to explain it."

"And you're convinced that Dur - Lord Durrel is guilty?"

"Well, who else? It was common knowledge Decath was only after her money. He was the last person seen with her before she died, and they'd been arguing."

Koya turned to me. "Anyone could see my mother and Durrel were a dismal match. Oh, the theory was sound, but once they were actually pinned together in the same house, well . . . it doesn't always work out like the strategists plan."

"Do you mean to parade all this family's shames before a stranger?" Barris said savagely. "Very well then, let's talk about your own failed marriage."

"Hardly failed," Koya said brightly. "Celyn, my husband is Stantin Koyuz. Perhaps you've heard of him."

Oh. That was an interesting development, and I should have known it. Wealthy merchant Stantin Koyuz, who had to be decades Koya's senior, was infamous for breaking the hearts of younger sons of n.o.ble families. But marriage was mandated by Celys's law, and it was difficult for a man to advance in Gersin society without a wife - at least in name. Looking up, I saw Koya regarding me, the same placid smile still on her face. I suddenly had the very uncomfortable feeling that she knew every thought inside my head. I didn't like it. I dropped my gaze.

"I can a.s.sure you, Celyn, that my marriage has nothing whatsoever to do with what happened to my mother."

"Of course," I mumbled, changing the subject. "Who do you think is responsible for your mother's death?"

"My mother," she said simply.

"Then you think it was suicide?"

Barris barked out a laugh, absolutely mirthless.

"Certainly not," Koya said smoothly. "I only meant, it must have been something she was involved in. My mother was a very skilled woman. And one thing she did particularly well was make people unhappy. Now, I wouldn't call them enemies, exactly -"

"Enemies?" That was a strange choice of words.

"I'll make a list." Koya fluttered off to fetch paper and quill. She returned and spread the paper across her lap, writing with a swift, swooping hand. "This first name is my grandfather, Mother's father. He was opposed to the marriage -"

"Because he thought Decath was too young," Barris broke in. "Koya, what are you doing?"

"He was opposed to the marriage," Koya continued as if her brother hadn't spoken. "But I doubt he'd kill anybody. Although . . ." She paused thoughtfully, then wrote another name. "You should look into her business a.s.sociates. Durrel was always trying to become involved in Mother's interests somehow, but I'm afraid he didn't really understand how things work in this family. Now, she was intimate with the Corsour family, although Emmis Corsour was no match for Mother, and she'd been seeing rather a lot of an Alech Karst recently -"

"Koya, enough!" Barris crossed the room in long, determined strides and whipped the paper from her hands. Ink splattered her hands and gown, but she just regarded him with the same patient, composed expression. "My sister is a bored, unhappy girl, just looking for some amus.e.m.e.nt," he said to me. And with that, he tore Koya's list into pieces, which he dropped, one by one, into the pooling candle flame.

"Why, brother, whatever's the matter with you?"

"I believe this meeting is over. Mistress Contrare," he added with icy politeness, "please allow us to offer our personal barge to return you to your . . . home."

I hadn't managed to ask what they knew about the magic I had seen at Bal Ma.r.s.e, but it no longer seemed like such a simple question, and my ability to detect it was hardly the sort of thing I went about boasting of to total strangers. And certainly not to these two, who were about as strange as they come. Not even waiting for me, Barris stalked toward the open doors to the terrace landing. I lingered only long enough to see Koya watching him, a tiny furrow between her brows. She rose eventually, barely brushing down her skirts before leaning in to kiss me on the cheek.

"Thank you for coming," she said quietly. "Please don't think too much of him. He's highly strung. Like Mother was." She studied my face for a moment, her wide, blue eyes dark and probing. "You'll help Durrel," she said, and there was a note of pleading insistence in her voice.

"I'm trying."

"I'm scared for him, Celyn. I don't believe he truly understands what a force this family is. Mother was but one of us. I don't know how long they'll be willing to wait for justice."

I was taken aback that her concern should be for Durrel, when it was her own mother who'd been killed, but I nodded. Finally she led me toward the terrace, pausing in the doorway.

"There was nothing between us," she said abruptly, her skirts whispering to a stop around her feet. "Except a foolish girl's infatuation with an attractive man she couldn't have, and the harmless warmth of a gentleman too kind to give her the boot in the face she deserved." Koya gave me one last smile, this one tinged, I thought, with sadness, before turning back to the house and disappearing in a sweep of silk.

Down at the landing, Barris paced the deck, where an elegantly painted skiff waited, clear blue water lapping its glossy sides. One of the sighthounds had followed him, and stood panting nervously in the humid air, its sides quivering.

"I'm sorry for that scene," Barris said. "Koya can be . . . difficult, and I'm afraid she's always known just the right places to rub me raw." He paused a moment, looking me over. "You are thinking something, and I would know what that was before I send you off."

"Only that you're too old to be Talth's son," I said.

He nodded evenly. "I'm her stepson. She married Grensl Ceid when I was but a child. She is the only mother I ever knew," he added. "Such as she was."

I made a guess. "You're responsible for her business affairs now."

"I am. Both here and in Tratua. Those I managed to keep from his lordship's grasp. But that's little change from how things had been these past two years, if you're thinking I had some motive to murder my mother."

"Stepmother."

He ignored that, which said something. What, precisely, I wasn't sure. He wasn't easily rattled, though. That part was Ceid, through and through. I was beginning to get a sense of these people; if they were going to kill someone, they'd do it thoughtfully and stolidly. As he handed me into the boat, I asked one last question.

"What position did your mother take in the war?"

"The same position she always took. Whatever was best for Talth Ceid." He looked out over the water briefly, then turned back to me. "We're not a subtle family, Mistress Celyn. We make our enmity plain, and we welcome your investigation, since it can only confirm what we know. We are aware of his lordship's history, and we know who murdered our mother. Reasonably soon, you will too. Good day."

CHAPTER FIVE.

I wasn't at all sure what to make of the family Ceid, and mulled over the bizarre way they related to each other as the boatman steered me across the Oss. Quibbling brothers and sisters were entertaining and familiar enough, but I hadn't learned much that was particularly useful, aside from Koya's vague references to her mother's enemies, and her own confession about her marriage and her relationship with Durrel. Her brother had called her bored and unhappy; unhappy enough to strike back at the powerful mother who'd yoked her to a wholly unsuitable husband? It would be more practical to kill the inconvenient husband and escape the marriage altogether. Even if Koya had wanted Durrel for herself, killing her mother didn't seem to accomplish much.

Unsettled after that meeting, I convinced the boatman to let me off in n.o.b Circle so I could walk the rest of the way home. Charicaux, the Decath family home, was nearby, and I had promised to try to see Durrel's father. I found the house easily from Meri's wistful description of the place last winter. It sat a few streets off the river, in the shadow of the Celystra's green dome, a pretty, older building of white stucco and flower boxes in the windows. A tidy tile courtyard separated it neatly from the street, giving the family within the opportunity to prove how wealthy they were, by way of ornamental fences and cultivated fruit trees. True to the Decath's neutral reputation, Charicaux flew no colored banners from its towers.

But there was one small detail Meri had omitted from her description of her uncle's home: the guards. I stopped behind a flower stall across the street to get a better look. Two men patrolled the front courtyard, heavily armed and making no effort to hide the fact. This was a curious development; these guys looked like ordinary street heavies, not the kind of neat, trained guards commonly employed by n.o.b households.

They also weren't the kind of people likely to welcome a caller off the street, and when I crossed over and rapped on the gate, a heavyset guard with a pockmarked face and a clunky gait sent me away without ceremony. a.s.sertions that I knew Lord Decath were met with sneers and a curt, "He ain't in." I gave the guard my best dazzling servant smile and promised to come back.

I pondered this curious development as I made my way back across town. With the war edging closer, life in Gerse was getting more tense every day, and I supposed it was conceivable that a man who'd just lost a daughter-in-law to murder might be nervous of his - and his wife's - safety. But I had visited one of the Decath properties before, Favom Court, a day's sail outside the city, and I'd had complete freedom of movement while there. I didn't remember any guards, or even so much as an armed retainer. Lord Ragn and Lady Amalle had opened their arms and their doors to me without a question. Yet here was their city house, fortified with armed muscle.

Well, people changed, I supposed. And a change like that was different and interesting - certainly worth investigating further.

I made a last stop on the way home, at a rag shop on Bonelicker Way, a tiny, cluttered storefront hidden between an unlicensed tobacconist and a cheap bawdy house. With no sign out front, and a tattered rug for a door, it was easy to miss, which was exactly how Grillig, its proprietor, liked things. I pushed aside the rug, wary of fleas, and stepped into the lamplit shop. Another customer was already inside, a hard-looking fellow with a pistol in his belt, leaning over the counter and studying something with great intent. It was technically illegal for the common citizens of Gerse to walk about the streets wearing firearms - but the residents of this neighborhood didn't generally subscribe to what was technically legal.

"We're closed," announced a raspy voice from behind the counter, and a squat man about my height waddled out of the back room.

"Well met, Grillig," I said, and the storekeeper gave me a frantic look and waved a stubby hand to silence me.

"I said, we're closed." Grillig shrugged when I gave the other customer a pointed look. "We're closed to nonpaying customers."

"I can pay," I said, and came farther into the shop, sidestepping the fellow with the gun. The shop was cluttered with all manner of goods - books, knives, tapestries, clothing - all of it secondhand, and most of it stolen. Grillig was the best fence this side of the Oss, or at least the cheapest. I'd been a good customer here, welcome, once. I'd often come by with Tegen to sell our spoils, and one night he'd bade me pick out a treasure to buy from among Grillig's shelves and cases. He'd meant a gem, maybe, or a blue silk petticoat like the night girls wore - something pretty and feminine. But I'd chosen a book, bound in red calfskin, full of drawings of fanciful beasts. He'd teased me for that, long after, but would lie in my arms, turning the gilded pages and tracing his slender fingers along the colored images, as I read the words aloud to him. I wondered where that book was now. Had it burned with the rest of Tegen's belongings when he was arrested?

The man with the gun lost interest in the item he was examining, and left the shop without a word. Grillig glared at me. "Never mind," he said. "What do you want?"

Information, was what I wanted to say - but asking for it outright would spook him. So I poked through the heaps of rags and dishware until I unearthed something worth buying.

"That's three marks," he said when I plopped the shirt on the counter, and "Three silver marks," when I laid the copper coins beside it. It was an outrageous price, but it might be worth it, if he could tell me anything useful.

"Fine." I dug the coins from my bodice. "How's business?"

"As if you'd care," he said sourly. "We don't hear from you for months. You're doing trade with that nip on Tower Street now, aren't you? Gotten too fancy for us Seventh Circle folk."

"The Tower Street fence?" I said. "That stings. You know if I had business, I'd bring it to you."

His furtive eyes darted past me as he gathered up the coins. "I wish you wouldn't," he said. "We don't need your trouble here. I'm running an honest business now, and -"

I looked in the direction his previous customer had gone. "I see that," I said.

Grillig leaned toward me. "My son's in the war."

"Not Orrin," I said. "What - happened?" I'd been about to say, What side? But that was a stupid question. n.o.body admitted to having sons fighting with Prince Wierolf.

The shopkeeper made a face. "Conscripted. To pay my bond after I got arrested last spring, thanks to people like you mucking about where they've no call!"

That did sting. It wasn't like I'd personally, single-handedly started the war. "I'm sorry to hear it," I said truthfully. Grillig was slippery, but n.o.body deserved to have his children sent to battle to pay for his sins.

Grillig cast a hand in a dismissive gesture. "You didn't come here to buy a shirt."

"No," I said. "I was wondering what you'd heard about the murder of a n.o.bleman's wife recently."

"That Ceid thing? Bad business. You want to know about the poison." That was the Grillig I remembered. "It didn't come from around here," he said. "There might be a handful of potioners in Gerse who deal in stuff like that. Freitag up in Sixth, or maybe Ver - nay, he's gone to the gallows. Anyway, with the restrictions and the embargoes, n.o.body wants to take that kind of risk these days."

"So you wouldn't happen to have any."

Grillig made the sign against Marau. "Like I said, we don't need that kind of trouble. My son -"

I nodded. Strange days, if the G.o.ds had figured out a way for a man like Grillig to go honest. "Thanks all the same," I said. "If you hear anything about that poison . . . ?" I slid another silver mark into the pile of coins for the shirt. Grillig scowled, but swept them all into his broad hand, nodding. I gathered up the secondhand shirt and headed for the door.

The next morning I surveyed myself before Rat's mirror. In a blue linen kirtle and a lighter blue wool overgown with matching sleeves, my hair tucked up inside a linen cap that mostly shielded my cut cheek, I could do a fair turn as the servant of a decent family with an unfortunate member in the Keep. The only problem would be if one of the guards on duty recognized me from my first visit. Which seemed unlikely, dressed as a girl and with much less blood on my face this time. There was just one more thing I needed: a visitor's pa.s.s. And I didn't have time to wait for approval from the king.