Dace arose, hoping the steward was preoccupied.
Hag’s luck prevailed: the gaunt stick still lurked by the servant’s stair, engrossed in a whispered discourse with the stranger, who was cloaked and hooded for his anonymous exit. Interrupted untimely again, both parties stiffened.
“You!” barked the steward. “Still slinking about? I’ll have your severance forthwith!”
The turncoat priest coughed. “I’ll be about my business.” He breezed toward the back door on the pretext he had lingered for casual gossip.
No chance to expose the curtailed encounter as a collusion: the steward squared off like a blood-letting weasel for Dace’s immediate quittance.
Except that a sturdy obstruction blocked egress through the kitchen. “If you’re tossing my help out, that’s stinking spite.” The cook’s bull-dog jaws gnashed the carved-ivory shim he kept for picking his teeth. “Manda’s moping in the privy, and I can’t be hauling the water myself. Not with these feet! My bunions would hobble me in a chair with a hot brick for a fortnight.”
The steward sniffed in rapacious disgust. “Send Quince.”
“I would.” The cook smirked. “The brat’s scarpered. I’d waste the morning chasing his hide to no purpose.”
Dace seized the desperate initiative and braved the cross chop of argument. “I’ll finish the errand, if I can get past.”
“Hurry on,” the cook groused. “I’ll be needing eight trips with the buckets at least.”
“Work up a sweat all you like in the street.” The balked steward glared above his starched collar. “Just don’t expect to be let inside if you show the gall to come back.”
Dace barged past. “The master,” he said, “will allow me a hearing before I’m excused.” To the obstreperous cook, he remarked, “You want your filled cauldron? Then appeal to his Lordship for his final word on my case.”
“The master won’t trouble himself!” the supercilious steward insisted. “Or weigh an upstart’s claim above mine.”
“Wouldn’t he?” The cook chomped on his toothpick and grinned, pleased to hackle his rival.
Dace seized the impasse. Slim as a mackerel and quick on his feet, he accepted the corpulent cook as his shield and retreated into the kitchen. Two steps ahead of the thwarted steward, he snatched the buckets and fled.
But his narrow escape only drove his vengeful antagonist to act on the sly. Seven round trips to the well occurred without any counter-move. The eighth and the last forced a detour to duck some carousing sailhands on shore leave. Hawkers with hand-carts and the mobs by the trinket sellers drove Dace the long way around the money-lender’s walled mansion. Collar stuck to his neck and chafed shoulders aching, he gulped air reeking of fish offal and jetsam stranded by the ebb-tide. Shoreside, the overseers barked at their stevedores, while the sun-baked heat off the docks sweltered into the breezeless shimmer of midday.
Dace pushed on. Braced for the steward’s revenge, and dazzled as he stepped from the shaded lane back into the street, he received no warning as an on-coming body crashed into him. Encumbered by the yoke, he swore murder, while the pails slopped and drenched his shoes.
“Give over the buckets. Right now! To me!” snapped the reckless female who clutched at his jacket.
Irritable, astonished, Dace recognized the plain-faced scullion who snitched. “The steward’s sent you to replace me?”
“No!” The raw-boned girl mopped a forehead plastered with dingy bangs. “Cook’s whim chose to spare you. Hurry! The constable’s sent the armed guard. Under the steward’s sworn accusation, they bear a sealed writ for your arrest.”
Dace floundered to grapple the malicious riposte. “On what charge?”
“Sneak thief. He’s claimed you lifted property.” The scullion rolled her eyes, impatient. “Hand off those buckets! Don’t let the watch catch that evidence on you.”
“They give a rat’s arse for a brace of old pails?” Dace shrugged off the yoke, scared to reeling.
“Are you daft?” The scullion’s lip curled. “Mail shirts would issue a warrant to nab you for carrying fleas at a twopenny bribe.”
Dace scarcely believed the girl routed a strategy aimed to ruin him. “You must hate the steward past measure,” he said.
The drudge muscled his burden, her dish-water eyes bright with hatred. “That devious creep only makes my life miserable. But flouting cook’s orders gets me a beating.” She turned her cheek, already puffed by the weal that drove her compliance. “Go! Run. I’ll hurt worse if the guard sees you with me.”
Spurred by the tramp of hobnailed boots rounding the bend by the harbour-master’s, Dace darted down the noisome alley behind the fishmonger’s. He shucked his jacket, turned the livery lining side out, and shoved back into the hurly-burly press of the main street.
Reprieve would not last, with the house barred against him. East Bransing sold indigents to the galleys, and the thieves’ gangs extorted whoever sought refuge in the warrens beneath the board-walk.
Dace had until dusk to clear his disgraced name, against stakes more sinister than any snob servant’s enmity. If he were to languish in lock-up, then be dispatched to sea on a false arraignment, Lord Lysaer would remain at the mercy of a possible temple conspiracy.
The steward might be complicit, with the gentleman’s house near the water-front perhaps too conveniently rented. More than staff might possess the keys, which left Lysaer’s back lethally vulnerable.
Dace rubbed the thread concealed in his left wrist. Features too old for his natural years, he rued the day he had given consent to the affairs of Fellowship Sorcerers. His true form as a woman might side-step the town watch, even assume a street child’s garb and join the loud-mouthed ragamuffins who played stickball on the doorsteps of the wealthy. At least as an urchin, he could watch the door. The forfeit advantage of Davien’s disguise scarcely mattered if his liege fell to a predatory conspiracy.
Undecided which way to turn, Dace fretted, while the pooled midday shadows lengthened towards afternoon.
Summer 5923
Undercurrents
The steward rushed into the lord’s private study seconds after the tinkle of glass disrupted the household quiet. He noted the smashed casement rondel first. Then, in sepia shadow, the master himself, seated across from the sparkle of fragmented glass. Lysaer s’Ilessid had turned his stuffed chair from the desk, the medallion carpet scuffed where the lions’ paw feet had furrowed the pile. On the papers behind, the inked quill just laid down suggested the day’s correspondence, rudely interrupted.
“Light preserve!” gasped the steward, breathless from his sprint. “You’re unhurt?” His solicitous fuss met rebuff although the gentleman said nothing. A fair man informally clad, cuffs turned back and his collar unlaced in the heat, should not possess such a magisterial bearing.
To mask his inquisitive interest, the steward temporized stiffly, “Does my lord have enemies?”
Arctic blue, Lysaer’s eyes, in a face chiselled clean of expression. Unlike other pedigree lordlings, he never unbent under chatty sympathy. A faint sparkle of glass sequinned the wrist he raised from the chair arm. His clenched fingers, uncurled, served his stinging reply: nestled into his palm, the pried chunk of cobble-stone a vandal had tossed from the street.
“Children!” The steward huffed in disgust. “Poor-quarter ruffians at their careless games. Rest assured, I’ll summon the watch. They’ll haul the insolent wretches into custody straightaway.”
Lysaer’s mild response struck the note green ambassadors always mistook for agreement.