Which means he’s alotbetter at this than I thought.
This is not the fumbling boy who I could bully with a plate of specific and evocative sausage.
Helooksmuch the same: black hair neatly combed, not so much as a wrinkle on his linen shirt, tidykrebatte, and charcoal wool waistcoat.
But he’s rolled up his sleeves, businesslike, and now that he’s no longer drowning in that enormous coat, he looks less like a gawky academic and more like a . . . well, still a gawky academic, but with better posture and at least five knives on him that I can see.
“I can speculate where all thesegildencame from,” he says crisply, “but we both know that’s the Eisendorf jewelry. Let’s see . . . ‘Removal of property with intent to steal, of the sum value of onegildenor greater, shall be considered grand larceny and punishable in accordance with local laws.’ I’m fairly certain that jewelry’s worth more than onegilden. You’ll have to tell me, though, what they do to thieves in Bóern.”
There’s a reason the coins are all stamped with a crown on one side, a skull on the other. One side’s for the great thieves. You can guess which side is for the little ones.
Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
There’s one role I can always fall back on, and that’s the helpless, gobsmacked yokel. I crumple my face and collapse into the vanity chair, keeping my breath shallow to force blood to my cheeks. “P-please, sir, it’s not my place to ask where she goes, I’m just her maid—”
“Vanja.” He’s consulting his little notebook, which still has coffee stains on the edges. “Vanja Schmidt, I believe? That was the family name they had for you at Castle Falbirg.”
“That’s my cousin, she got me this job so I could feed my mother, she’s sick,please, sir—”
Emeric sighs. Then he reaches over and yanks the bit of gauze off my cheek.
The ruby teardrop twinkles in the firelight.
Emeric flicks the gauze aside, pointedly. And he waits.
“Scheit,” I mutter after a moment.
Emeric folds his arms. “Mm-hm.”
I slouch back in the chair with a defeated scowl. “All right, Junior. When did you know?”
I ask for two reasons. One is that he looks very pleased with himself. That means he’s absolutely certain he has me dead to rights, and I want to knowhow.
The other is that I managed to grab a hairpin from the vanity, and I think I’m ready to start picking the shackles.
“I confirmed it last night, at Eisendorf Manor.” Emeric walks back to the hearth and takes a spill-stick from the copper urn on the mantel.
He glances back at me, and I look sufficiently sulky and humbled. It’s not entirely artificial; I’m a little embarrassed he caught on that fast.
“Though truth be told, I’ve had that theory a week now,” he continues, and he eventalksdifferent, words clipped and precise, holding the end of the spill-stick to the fire. The long, thin scrap of wood kindles, and he walks it over to another candelabra, his leather-bound notebook tucked under an arm. “I took the liberty of visiting Sovabin first.”
“Cheater,” I grumble.
“Dame von Falbirg gave me a very clear account of her daughter, Gisele,” he continues as if he didn’t hear me, though an eye roll says otherwise. “Soft-spoken.” He lights a candle. “Preferred the outdoors to socializing.” Another candle. “Fond of books.” The third candle lights, and he gives me a significant look from across the room. “Not fond of drinking.”
What an insufferably melodramatic little bastard he is.
“Have youmetAdalbrecht?” I ask dryly. “You tell me you wouldn’t dive headfirst into a wine cellar if you were marrying that.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Fair point. However, the thefts started in Bóern only after Gisele arrived, implicating either her or someone from her entourage. The dame told me about the pearl necklace she gave her daughter, but that enchantment alters only the wearer’s appearance, not their personality. Besides . . . there was the matter of the pennies. You couldn’t stop leaving them, could you?”
That hits me in the throat. The flush on my face is real now. “Anyone can leave a penny.”
“But you left twelve of them, crown-side up, in the homes of twelve noble families, after you robbed them blind. That’spersonal, Miss Schmidt. You wanted them to feel helpless. You wanted them to know it was you.” He sounds like he’s reading a prescription, like I’m a strange insect under a glass, and I despise how clinically he’s saying aloud something I’ve never spoken of to anyone. “Gisele had no reason to hold a grudge like that against other nobility. But her chambermaid, the one who conveniently vanished?”
He’s trying to make me angry. And it’s working: It feels like he’s casually rifling through my wardrobe, getting too close to the ugly things shoved in the back. How much did the von Falbirgs tell him? Did they explain their humiliating nicknames? How they made a lonely little girl sleep with the rats?
How I came by the scars on my back?
