was hard to understand his accent. Had he really said all the kings were old? She shook her head. Of course not. These people had no kings. He meant “old” as in “previously had been there but now were not.”
Ixkaab badly needed to immerse herself in the daily speech of Xanaamdaam. She had tried on the voyage, but her relatives spoke only basic merchant Xanam, preferring to remain amongst their own kind in the strange city that so loved cacao. Her many shipboard conversations with the toothless old Xanamwiinik sailmaker had given her seven fistfuls of curse words, a profound knowledge of what a Riverside prostitute would and would not do for money, and many ways to defend herself with a canvas sail needle (including where to slip it in to kill and leave no trace, which Kaab was too polite to say she knew already). She had also spent hours in her cabin reacquainting herself with their clever system of alphabet letters to make words; and she and Cousin Chokan had practiced some dance steps that the sailmaker swore were just what decent Xanamwiinik ladies did in public—even though this involved holding hands with men who were not their relatives.
It would come to her, she was sure. She just needed to talk with more locals. Kaab was good at languages. As a child she had learned this one from a family servant who’d worked for Aunt Saabim here. Her mother had wanted her daughter’s tongue to be as swift as one of the little chameleons that flitted across the sunny courtyard—her mother, who, Ixkaab realized now, had also been one of the great movers of the chocolate trade across the North Sea passage to this land. But her mother was gone to the houses beneath the earth. Instead, it was Ixmoe’s younger sister Ixsaabim who dwelt here with her new husband, keeping the Balam family at the forefront of the Northern chocolate trade. And here Kaab would stay, in the Balam family compound, until her father called her home.
“The old kings were terribly corrupt,” the agent was saying.
“So now you are ruled by the Lords of Council.”
“The Council of Lords!” The agent laughed with the patronizing amusement of one not used to hearing his language imperfectly understood. What a hick! “But here I keep you chatting, when I’m sure you are tired and would like to go home to your family.”
“I am not in the least tired,” Kaab said. “Pray, continue your most delicious explaining.”
Because, in fact, Ixkaab Balam was not at all eager to arrive at Aunt Saabim and Uncle Chuleb’s before they had had time to read her father’s hastily written letter, the letter that had accompanied her on the Wasp, the letter explaining just what she was doing there, and why she had had to leave home in such a hurry.
• • •
“Your hair was perfect already,” the Duke Tremontaine said, standing awkwardly against the passementerie on his lady’s boudoir wall. It was one of the things she loved about him; the way he always seemed to feel out of place, no matter where he stood, everywhere except in his leather-filled library. When Diane had traveled here almost twenty years ago, a callow girl about to be married to the young heir to Tremontaine, she had been so afraid that he would turn out to be cold, or arrogant, or even dull. Duke William was none of those things. “I don’t know why you must spend so much time on it.”
The duchess’s maid knew better than to smile. It was her lady’s place to contradict her husband, when she chose.
Lucinda had had cosier employers: rich, titled ladies who wanted sympathy, gossip, or even mothering from the woman who tended to their looks, their clothes, and their personal comfort. But the lady’s maid preferred to work in silence, paying perfect attention to each curl, each ribbon, each fall of lace; to the placement of each jewel on the shining bodice or tight-laced sleeve. And the duchess repaid her efforts: Diane de Tremontaine was the shining star of every social gathering. She had a certain something no one could safely imitate: a simultaneous air of fragility and confidence, of grace and poise and hesitance, the desire to please and the fullness of being pleased . . .
The Duchess Tremontaine suited Lucinda very well. She made no demands other than to be turned out perfectly every time.
“Now, madam,” the duke said, “since you are sitting quite still for the foreseeable future, would you be so good as to listen to the notes for my speech at this afternoon’s Council meeting? You know I dread these things like a visit to the tooth surgeon’s.”
“I know you do.” Diane nodded her approval of the second set of enameled hairpins Lucinda set before her. “But you always perform splendidly. I wish I could come and see you in the Council of Lords. I could watch from the gallery. But I must get dressed up and attend that dreadful chocolate party at dear Lady Galing’s.” Diane frowned down at her lap. “I don’t know what I will wear; everyone’s seen all my afternoon gowns so many times already!”
“They won’t notice the gown; they’ll be looking at you.”
“You’re a darling. Clara Galing will notice. She has an eye for such things.” Diane turned a ruby ring on her finger, contemplative. “She isn’t well, you know. Who can say how many more times we will be called upon to listen to harp music in that blue salon, while balancing those tiny saucers on our knees?” She snapped her fingers in annoyance. “If only Honora had held out, she might very well have been contracted to Galing, and have been lady to the Crescent Chancellor before she was twenty!”
“With a husband twice her age?” The duke, less than ten years his wife’s senior, shook his head. “And anyway, Galing’s besotted with Asper Lindley, now.”
“Oh is he? With Lindley? I would have thought Asper a bit long in the tooth to attract Galing.”
“Well, that’s just it.” William leaned back against the armoire, comfortably sure of his facts. “When we were boys, new come to town—thinking ourselves fine young men, of course—Galing took quite a fancy to Asper. But Asper wasn’t having any ‘dry old politician’—his very words, as I recall—he was too busy chasing other men’s wives. Someone had told him they were easy, and he was . . . eager for experience.”
Unable to nod under Lucinda’s ministering hand, the duchess pressed her lips together in amusement. “And with that shock of gold hair, and that delicate mouth, I’m sure they were only too happy to oblige him. Land!” She laughed aloud. “What a pair you must have made! The scarecrow and the ivory god.”
In the mirror, she saw her husband blush. Interesting. He’d been awkward on their wedding night, but not entirely ignorant. She’d made a point never to ask him how he’d learned, nor yet with whom. She covered her sigh with a yawn. Asper Lindley! Fancy that. Well, Lindley had her coloring, after all. No wonder William had been so enthusiastic when he met her. “What changed his mind now, I wonder?”
“His ‘dry old politician’ is not as old as he appeared to us then. And Galing is now the Crescent Chancellor of the Council of Lords. So Asper, having satisfied his taste for pretty girls (while still refusing to wed any, much to his mother’s despair), well, Asper has moved on to men of influence, while he still has power to attract them.”
It all lined up, even her husband’s slightly sarcastic tone: he wouldn’t understand why a pretty boy would play with him and then move on. William loved deep, and William loved true.
“You should see the two of them in Council,” he went on. “Sometimes I think the Crescent isn’t paying attention to anything anyone’s saying, he’s so busy staring across the room at Asper Lindley’s golden hair. I doubt he’d have looked twice at our Honora.”
“Oh, darling. Galing looks twice at everything. I’m sure we could have arranged it.” The languid duchess grew suddenly brisk. “Now, then, let’s get your notes, shall we? If you can convince the Council to lower the tax on barley water, it will be very good for us. Our barley crop has done extremely well this year.”
• • •
In the River Street Marketplace, a girl named Micah kept her eyes firmly on her turnip stall. It was a grey and muddy day, “the arse end of winter dragging its dirty tail behind it,” as Uncle Amos liked to say. Winter’s end was mucky and messy enough at home on the