“There must have been a great deal of gossip about Her Grace, after the Divinity’s announcement.”
“There…was.” Lady Verr’s brows lifted. “I am afraid…well, if I must tell the truth, I think she will surprise them. There was a great deal of speculation about the identity of her mother, and curiosity as to why a sacred Daughter of the Stars was sucha great secret. Some suggested that Her Highness must be…lacking in some way.”
She sounded apologetic, but that was only a coat of lacquer. That hateful society mask was one of the things Miche despised most about the capital, an affected blandness impervious to any amount of cruelty.
He always felt a mean compulsion to shatter it.
“It makes an entertaining story,” he drawled, already contemplating how he might punish whoever was spreading the slander.
“It is also a strangely specific story to seize upon, in the absence of any evidence,” Juste remarked. “Who would benefit from such a tale? That is the line to follow. Do you recall if anyone took particular pleasure in repeating it, my lady?”
“I would have to think.” Her eyes went momentarily distant. “It was a great many people, I don’t know if I could guess who was first. I wonder why that particular detail…”
“We heard it, too,” Miche recalled, his gaze meeting Juste’s. They had heard that lie in Aldeburke. Was that a coincidence? Or was someone in Aldeburke telling tales?
“I will be interested to hear what you discover, Lady Verr,” said Juste, neatly shifting the discussion as Ophele returned, grumbling. “Your Grace. We were just discussing a new area of learning.”
“Oh?” Ophele approached, her face guileless.
“Cryptography,” Juste replied, so silkily that it made Lady Verr stiffen with alarm. “That is the decoding of ciphers. You have heard of the discipline?”
“I read about it,” Ophele said, looking interested. “We have ciphers? Do I have to learn them?”
“You will learn many codes, in time,” Juste replied, with a hint of wickedness. Reaching into the breast pocket of his doublet, he plucked out the slip of paper from the barracks.“This was discovered in one of the training yards, my lady. I have no expectation that you will decipher it, though we will discuss the methods for such work in time. But what could you tell me about this message now?”
Ophele took it, frowning.
“Second storehouse?” she read aloud. “In the barracks? I’ve never seen any writing like this. It’s not any Imperial alphabet, is it? Do we have any foreign soldiers or mercenaries?”
“A few former mercenaries,” Juste conceded. “But none in Tresingale.”
Ophele leaned against the long table, thoughtful. Juste was content to let her contemplate it; indeed, there was a very small smile at the corner of his mouth, a satisfaction that only someone who knew him well would recognize. This interlude was not just about providing the Duchess of Andelin a new puzzle to play with.
“It makes it sound like an inventory, but it isn’t one, is it?” she mused. “Unless it is a very short one.”
“Why do you say that?”
“There aren’t any numbers. Unless maybe these repeated symbols are numbers,” she said, tapping the paper. “But those aren’t whole words between them, are they ideograms? Look…”
Obliging, Juste bent with a solicitousness that made Miche want to smack him in the back of his diabolical head. No doubt Ophele would have some useful insights, but the parchment in her hands was not the message Juste was sending.Thatwas directed at Lady Verr, who had not been invited to participate in unraveling this mystery.
And why was that?
Miche’s quill scribbled on. There must besomereason that Duchess Ereguil had commended Lady Verr for Ophele’s companion, but he was blasted if he could see it. There wassomething predatory in the way she watched Ophele, alert for the least crumb of information.
Perhaps it was too much to expect a Rose of Segoile to put the game aside long enough to be afriend.She ought to be alerting her lady to the real game afoot, not listening to gossip and pretending to be invisible.
Though perhaps that would be an awkward conversation in this case, Miche conceded, bending his head to conceal a grin. Juste hadn’t offered Lady Verr the message for a reason. He suspected she knew something about it, and he was using Ophele to make the lady sweat.
Chapter 11 – An Experiment in Lace
It had been some time since Ophele had enjoyed the simple pleasure of a kitchen.
The scents of herbs and spices. The curious, almost magical transformation of batter and dough into cake and bread. Even Wen’s puffing and blowing that duchesses had no business near an oven and the sacred white line on the floor had beenheridea couldn’t dent her enthusiasm.
Watching the familiar motions of Azelma’s hands as she worked a mound of dough, Ophele thought that all she needed was an old wooden stool to sit upon and she would be perfectly content.
“What are you making?” she asked, squeezing out of the way of one of the kitchen boys. The long, narrow kitchen was delightfully warm, and she was pleased to have a few minutes to visit while Lady Verr was dropping off letters at the storehouse office. She had been dying to see how Azelma was getting on.
