I’d abandoned any pretense of cleverness. I simply didn’t know enough about the Lethways to even guess at a tack. My best option was an old favorite—keep the conversation going for as long as possible, and hope something useful is revealed along the way.
I knew I’d be lucky if I even managed to sit across from an actual Lethway. If Tamar hadn’t managed to get past the butlers, my chances were slim indeed.
The cabbie wound his ponies up the Hill. We passed House Avalante, where my friend Evis lay sleeping, deep in his dark, cool crypt.
I knocked the dust off my hat and smoothed back my hair and waved at Evis, though I knew he couldn’t see.
The Lethways have a big new house three-quarters of the way up the Hill. Their blood oaks are maybe half the age and size of those that shade Avalante, so rather than lurk in the shadows, House Lethway gleamed in the bright midday sun.
It was modest, as Hill houses go. A mere three stories tall. But it had the usual high swooping slate-tile roofs and ornate leaded glass windows. There were, however, no Old Kingdom turrets, no mock crenellations along the eaves, no pretense of garrison gates where the rather plain front door stood.
And no guardhouse, and no ogres, and no dark-suited toughs with wary eyes and broad shoulders idling about, either.
I paid the cabbie, tipped him generously, and suggested he might earn another handsome fee by swinging back this way in an hour. Then I adjusted the tilt of my hat and marched toward the front door, my face set in what I hoped was an expression of forthright determination.
I didn’t get the chance to knock. I was two full strides from the Lethway’s door when it opened and a pair of stalwart gentleman sauntered out.
They wore dark suits. Their eyes were wary. Their shoulders were broad.
They weren’t quite ogres, but they weren’t far from it, either.
“Good day, gentlemen.” I stopped, rocked back on my heels, clapped my hands together as though thrilled to be meeting such devoted youths.
The pair exchanged an exasperated glance. “Wedding business,” muttered one. His companion nodded.
Sometimes, fortune smiles.
I beamed and smiled my widest.
“Weddings are indeed my business,” I said. I put a lot of cheer into it. “Walter and Walter, florists extraordinaire. We’ve managed to secure ten dozen of the eastern white roses Miss Fields requested.” I fished in my jacket’s breast pocket and withdrew the papers, which would free the Sprangs but wouldn’t pass for a flower bill on close inspection. “If one of you gentlemen could sign for this…”
“Not going to be any wedding,” offered one worthy.
“Third one she’s sent up here this week. Crazy broad,” offered the other.
“You’ll get paid,” added the first, to me. “Take the money and forget it. There ain’t going to be a wedding, you got that?”
I adopted an expression of concern. “But, sirs, I spoke to the bride last evening—”
They turned and threw open the door. “Like I said, the House will pay your bill,” said one, beckoning me inside. “But just this once. You show up here again and it won’t go so good for you. You understand?”
I slipped my papers back in jacket and nodded, deciding that the floral agents of Walter and Walter probably had little experience in trading tough talk with House soldiers.
The pair of toughs led me across a marble-tiled foyer and into a sitting room that could have used at least one window. I spent a few moments idling there, listening to the House, unable to do more than catch a few muffled footsteps and hear a snatch of conversation I couldn’t begin to follow.
An older gentleman ushered me wordlessly from the tiny sitting room, down a hall with oak-paneled walls, and into a larger sitting room that had not one window but two. Portraits kept me company, three to a wall, scowling at me from beneath the powdered white wigs and ruffled collars popular in the years before the War. None looked happy. A loud clock ticked on a mantel.
By the time I reached my third sitting room and a middling comfortable couch with dragons worked into the wood frame and claw feet, I was fighting off yawns and hoping the grumbles from my stomach weren’t audible all the way outside. I’d spent more than an hour just ambling from room to room, and I was no closer to a Lethway than I had been at home in my bed.
I wondered if I’d been forgotten, then decided the servants were merely playing a game of let the money-grubbing tradesman waste his day. I wondered how many of the caterers and reception planners that Tamar sent to Lethway just gave up and left before collecting their fees.
I listened. If anyone was moving around nearby, they were doing so in sock feet, and I doubted that.
I rose, made sure my Avalante pin was plainly visible, and sauntered out of my sitting room and into the perilous bowels of Lethway itself.
The House was quiet. If bustling was being done, it was being done elsewhere. I picked a hallway at random, ambled down it, found a flight of stairs leading up, took to them. I met an older gentleman clad in a butler’s black tails halfway up the first flight. I saw his eyes cut to my Avalante pin and then cut away.
I picked halls at random, left closed doors shut, ventured into a couple of open ones. The second floor was surprisingly empty, aside from servant’s quarters and a couple of unfinished guest rooms. I did find a family portrait—Mom and Dad Lethway, he much older than she, flanking a ten-year-old kid who must have been Carris.
No dirt on his face. No straw hat on his head. My, what a difference a few dozen copper mines make.
I ran out of things to explore, so I gathered my nerves and took to the final flight of stairs leading up.
At the top, voices and footfalls sounded. A woman laughed. Glassware tinkled. Knife and fork clattered on a plate.
Lunchtime. I headed away from the sounds and the smells, preferring to lurk a few more moments.
I wish I could claim I followed the pattern of wear on the floors or discovered Carris’s room by recognizing the patina on his doorknob as only a man his height would make. But the truth is I was guessing, and I opened every door that wasn’t locked, and his was the third one I tried.
Tamar’s picture, painted by someone with talent, hung on his wall. There was a pile of fabrics and fake silk flowers heaped on his dresser. Beside the pile was a notepad, just like the ones I use, and on it were scribbled notes.
Red fireflowers for grooms
, read one entry.
Yellow for rest.
Below that was
Meet bev. supplier tomorrow noon.
I flipped through the pad, found more of the same.
“You missed that meeting, didn’t you?” I said. “I wonder why.”
I poked through the rest of the room, found nothing suggestive of a man planning a panicked flight away from the jaws of impending matrimony. What I did find, hidden in the far corner of the topmost sockdrawer, was a box that held a golden ring.
Tamar’s ring. I’m no jeweler, but I’m no infant, either. A man on the run could sell that ring for a quarter of its worth and still finance a very long trip. The fact that he hadn’t sold it told me he hadn’t planned on leaving at all.
I put the ring back where I found it, smoothed the bedcovers where I’d rumpled them, put everything as it had been. Then I put my ear to his door and listened for footfalls outside.
It was quiet. I opened the door and stepped outside and closed it behind me.
No one saw, shouted or rushed toward me with a club.
I was so happy I could have whistled.
But I didn’t. I patted my Avalante brooch and straightened my collar and decided that since Lady Luck was smiling I’d see if she’d join me for lunch.
I marched down the hall, all pretense of sneaking gone. Why sneak? I was a friend of House Avalante, and a lunch guest at Lethway. If any mere butler dared question my presence I’d show him the bottom of my nose.
I managed to locate the dining room by following the smells. The door was ajar, and from the hustle and bustle of servants and carts I gathered I’d nearly missed lunch.
I opened the door and stepped inside. A butler whirled to face me, his sudden expression of haughty offense marred by the full mouth of mashed potatoes he was struggling to swallow.
“I hope I’m not too late,” I said, before he could speak. “I was told downstairs there would be fried chicken. I prefer white meat.”
Lady Luck wasn’t just smiling but laughing and drinking straight from the bottle. A black-haired maid started filling a plate with chicken.
The butler fell into a fit of coughing. I breezed past him and helped myself to an empty glass and a pitcher of tea.
“Green beans, too, that’s a dear.” She smiled and piled them high.
Somewhere in the coughing fit, I suppose the butler spied my Avalante pin, because he tottered off to cover his mouth, waving the maids on as he turned. I grinned and grabbed a dinner roll. It was buttered and warm.
The maid pulled a chair out for me, and I plopped onto it.
“Too bad the meeting ran long. I was looking forward to lunch with the family.” I tore into the chicken.
“Oh, sir, the Lady never takes her lunch here anymore,” quoth the younger of the two maids. “Dines in her rooms, you know. Hardly leaves them, these days.”
“Hush, Margaret,” said the other, eyeing me with something like suspicion. “Fetch the gentleman a napkin.”
“This is good,” I said, between mouthfuls. “Someone here knows her business.”
“And what business brings you here, sir?” asked the suspicious maid. I pretended to wipe an errant crumb off my lapel, in case she hadn’t seen my brooch.
“Morris ram stabilizers,” I replied. Bits of Rafe’s conversation with Evis crept back to me. “Did you know that straight-bore mining drills wear out after only eighteen days? But not with a pair of Morris stabilizers on the forepins. They’ll go twenty-six days, or better. Factor that in with the savings in site idle time and wages spent on repairs, and you’ll see an overall boost to your profits of nearly one and a quarter percent over any six-month period. And I don’t have to tell you how much that means in profits over the life of a copper mine.”
I did not, in fact, have to tell her anything of the sort, because she gathered up a stack of plates and stomped from the room. Whether she’d bought my line of mining lore or was off to fetch the headsman I didn’t know.
Margaret of the inky-black locks grinned and poured me more tea.
“My father was a miner,” she said in a whisper. “I grew up around mines. There’s no such thing as a ram stabilizer, is there?”
“There probably ought to be,” I whispered back. “Are you going to scream for the Watch?”
“Depends. Are you here to help or hurt?”
I swallowed and met her eyes squarely.
“I’m here to bring Carris Lethway home.”
She just nodded and gathered plates.
“End of the hall. Take a right. Next time, a left. Third door on the right. Be gentle. She’s a nice lady. Just sick with worry.”
“Worry about Carris?”
She didn’t answer. She scooped up plates and fled, leaving me alone with a table-f of scraps.
I did linger and finish my chicken. I’m sure that illuminated a deep-seated flaw in my soul, but, as I said, it was good chicken.
Chapter Seven
I counted doors. One, two, three.
Outside door number three sat a silver platter.
Someone hadn’t touched her lunch.
I paused, listened, heard nothing.
So I knocked.
“Mrs. Lethway?”
I barely heard the muffled reply.
“Mrs. Lethway? May I speak to you, please?”
“Go ’way.”
I winced. The Lady might have missed her meal, but she wasn’t wanting for drink. Not just a dainty sip for milady, either. I could smell whiskey through the door.
“It’s about Carris, Lady. Please.”
“My Carris? Where is he? Is he alive?”
I heard hurried footsteps behind the door and then fumblings with the latch.
Fumblings, and then a soft thud, as though a wife-sized body sank slowly to the floor.
And then snoring.
I cussed. So close. I tried a few more times to rouse the sotted Mrs. Lethway, but to no avail.
Lady Luck seldom smiles all day.
I hadn’t been able to ask Mrs. Lethway a single question, but she’d managed to answer the most important one of all.
I took off my Avalante brooch once I hit the first floor landing. Few of Rannit’s florists were also associates of the Dark Houses.
I passed servants going about their duties and got nothing but nods and smiles. I found my most recent sitting room, heard voices inside, and hesitated for the barest fraction of a second. I’d gotten what I came for, and the front door was just strides away and unguarded, but Darla had given me the hat I’d left on a hook in that room and I was loathe to leave it.
The door was ajar. I stepped through it, not smiling.
The pair of stalwarts who first met me at the door glared and converged on me.
“Where have you been?” demanded the largest.
I made the same huffing noise deep in my throat that I’d seen barkeep Eddie make at customers who dared hint that his glasses could use a wash. When that was not met with violence, I snapped my fingers under the bulky man’s nose.
“I was left waiting—me, left waiting!—in this room for hours,” I said. “Hours! I was forced to seek out a water closet. The hospitality of your House, sir, is nothing short of brutal.” I poked him in the chest with my finger. His face went purple with suppressed rage. “You may inform the groom he will need to seek the services of another florist. Do you hear? I will not stand for rudeness. Walter and Walter has a long history of being retained by the finest families in Rannit for their nuptial floral needs. We have no need of
your sort
of coin, no need at all. Good day, sir.”
With that, I turned, snatched my hat off the hook, and marched for the door.
The other man darted ahead of me and opened it for me and slammed it behind me.
I squinted in the sunlight. I was unthrashed, well fed and immaculately hatted. I had learned that Carris’s mother knew nothing of his whereabouts and feared him dead.