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“A welcome visit, Domna,” said Conor. “After a wearying day, what better resting place than here?” He produced the red paper heart from the inside of his jacket and offered it to Alys. She smiled and tucked it into her bodice.
Domna Alys was the sort of woman whose beauty gave no clue to her age. Her skin was smooth, her cheeks flushed a pale rose, her eyes wide, blue, and enhanced with the expert application of kohl and shadow. Coils of black hair were dressed high at the back of her neck, and her dress fell in elegant pleats to her ankles, revealing brocaded slippers. She was, Kel thought, just that bittoofashionable to be a merchant’s wife, and not quite richly dressed enough to be a noble. She knew a great deal about everything that happened in thecity, from the Hill to the Maze, and she kept it to herself. A madam who gossiped about her clients would not have a business for long.
She led them into the main salon, where the carcel lamps had all been lit and fresh flowers trembled in long-necked glass vases. The furniture was black lacquer inlaid with greenstone from Shenzhou, and carved screens from Geumjoseon showed images of dragons, manticores, and other extinct creatures. The room smelled heavily of jasmine and incense—a rich scent Kel knew would linger on his clothes for hours.
Joss Falconet, already draped across a green velvet sofa, waved to them in desultory fashion. He was the youngest of the Council members, having gained the spice Charter seat upon the death of his father two years ago. He was handsome, with high cheekbones and the smooth black hair of his Shenzan mother. Two courtesans shared the sofa with him already: a dark young man playing with the lace at the cuffs of Falconet’s scarlet velvet coat, and a blond woman leaning against his shoulder. Around his neck gleamed a chain of rough-cut rubies set in silver bezels. When he was pleased by a courtesan, he would pull one free and gift it to them. It made him very popular.
“Excellent,” Falconet drawled. “Finally someone to play with.”
Kel sank into a carved jade chair. It wasn’t the most comfortable item in the room, but he had no intention of relaxing just yet. “You seem to have plenty to amuse yourself with, Joss.”
Falconet smiled and indicated the rosewood table before him. On it a game of Castles had already been half set up; there was a pack of cards there, too. Falconet was an inveterate gambler and could usually convince Conor into a game. If there was no game handy, one could find them betting on which noble would fall asleep first at a banquet, or when it would next rain. “I did not mean that kind of amusement, Kel Anjuman. I am looking for a challenge, and courtesans are hardly a challenge—no disrespect meant, my dears—as they are inclined to let me win. Castles, Prince?”
Conor sank into a black armchair. “Of course.” His eyelids werehalf lowered, as if he were tired, or suspicious of something. Behind hung a mural displaying scenes from an orgiastic celebration; the setting seemed to be the marble steps of a temple, on which a crowd of young worshippers were in the act of coupling. A woman with spilling golden hair wrapped her legs around the man arched above her, her face a mask of ecstasy; a man pinned another against a leaning column, one hand between the other’s legs; a woman, her hair wound with scarves, knelt to pleasure her female companion.
Alys looked from the painting to Conor, and smiled her cat’s smile. “Refreshments, Monseigneur?”
Conor nodded, eyes already on the Castles board. A silver bell was rung, and a few moments later the doors were flung open. The room began to fill with courtesans. Some carried platters of silver and laid them down on the low rosewood tables. Oysters, shining like pearl earrings, shimmered on beds of ice; fat cherries lay beside pomegranates bursting with seeds. Cups of rich drinking-chocolate were dusted with gold and saffron. Kel caught Conor’s quick, amused look: All the foods were, of course, aphrodisiacs, intended to stoke sexual hunger.
He could hardly blame Alys; after all, she didn’t make her money from card games played in her salon. As she left the room, she laid a hand on Kel’s shoulder. He could smell the myrrh in her perfume as she said in a low voice, “That meeting you wished me to arrange—is now a good time for it?”
Kel nodded.
Alys patted his cheek. “On my signal, go to the library,” she said, and swept from the room in a swirl of skirts.
Kel turned to see if any in the room had noticed his interaction with Alys, but none seemed to have; they were concentrated on Conor. Courtesans had begun to perch themselves on the Prince’s chair like birds in the boughs of a wind-bitten tree. Others circulated within the room, chatting among themselves. The Caravel had become one of the most expensive pleasure houses in the Temple District since House Aurelian had begun patronizing it, and itscourtesans reflected the taste of its customers. All were beautiful in one way or another, and all skilled and patient. Both men and women were dressed simply, in white, like Temple sacrifices in the old days. The white clothes against all the black lacquer was a striking sight, duochrome as the face of the Windtower Clock.
A girl with red hair brought Kel a cup of chocolate; he looked at her quickly, but she was not Silla, of whom he was still fond. The last time they had come to the Caravel, Silla had told him she had saved enough money to set up her own house down the street from the Caravel. Perhaps she had already done it?
Conor captured one of Falconet’s pieces and chuckled. Kel noted it in the back of his mind, where his awareness of Conor always lived. He wondered if mothers were like this about their children—always knowing where they were, if they were wounded or pleased. He did not know; he had little experience of mothers.
Falconet, unmoved by his loss, stretched back to kiss the blond girl hanging on his left shoulder. She leaned in, her hair falling like a veil across the velvet nap of his jacket. By this time, several other wealthy patrons had arrived. Kel recognized only one of them: Sieur Lupin Montfaucon, who held the Charter for textiles. An aesthete and bon vivant, his voracious appetite for food, wine, sex, and money was known to everyone on the Hill. He was dark-skinned and elegant, with several dueling scars: one on his cheekbone, and another at the base of his throat. When younger, he had set the fashion for every young man at Court, having started crazes for everything from lynx-fur trousers to paper hats. He was now somewhere in his thirties and, Kel suspected, more than a little bitter about ceding his position as tastemaker to Conor.
He bared his teeth at the half-finished Castles board. “What are the stakes? Gold would seem dull for you, Falconet.”
“Money is never dull,” said Conor, not taking his eyes off the board. “And not all money is gold. Currently we are playing for shares in the latest dye fleet.”
“That will annoy Roverge,” said Montfaucon, speaking withsome satisfaction of the family who held the dye Charter. Most of the Charter Families, though forced to work together in the Council, disliked the others, like feral cats defending their territory.
“I will play the winner,” Montfaucon added, tossing his goldbroccatojacket across a chair back. “Though I would prefer cards.”
“You could play Kellian,” said Conor, not looking up.
Montfaucon glanced at Kel. While Joss seemed to like him well enough, it was always clear that Montfaucon did not. Perhaps his jealousy of Conor expressed itself through disliking his constant companion. After all, todislikethe Blood Royal was treason. But Kel, even when posing as the Prince’s cousin, was not royal. His only claim to lineage was through Marakand, not Castellane.
Kel smiled pleasantly. “I do not think I would present much of a challenge for Sieur Montfaucon.”
It had taken Kel years, back in the beginning, to learn all the Court’s honorifics:Monseigneurfor a prince,Your Highnessfor a king or queen,Sieurfor a nobleman,Chatelainefor a married noblewoman, andDemosellefor one as yet unmarried. Most of the nobles, having been told he had lately come from Marakand, had been patient with him. Only Montfaucon had once slapped him, for forgetting theSieur;now that Kel was an adult, he continued to use it, deliberately. He knew it was an annoyance Montfaucon could do nothing about.
“Nor, would I imagine, do you own any fleet shares, Amirzah Anjuman,” said Montfaucon. He used the Marakandi term for a nobleman to refer to Kel; it was probably intended to annoy, though it did not work. It only amused Kel to wonder what Montfaucon would think should he ever discover he was conferring a nobleman’s title on a mudrat from the gutters. One who might not be Marakandi, either. Over the years Kel had grown used to being addressed as if his background were the same as Conor’s. Not that it mattered. Being who he was, he had no history to unwrite.
“I do not. It is a shame,” Kel said. “But I see others are arriving; perhaps one could be interested in a hand of red-and-black.”
Indeed, the room was slowly filling up with young nobles from the Hill, and a few wealthy merchants. Falconet rose to his feet to greet them, ceding his position at the Castles board to Montfaucon. Kel kept a discreet eye on Conor as a group of newcomers surrounded a young, Hindish courtesan, who had before him a stack of telling cards. He was reading fortunes for nobles and courtesans alike.
Once, years ago, a fortune-teller had come to the Palace, brought by Lilibet to enhance some festivity or other. Conor had argued that she should read Kel’s fortune, too. She had taken his hands and looked into his eyes: In that moment, he had felt she could see through him, as if he were made of Sunderglass. “You will live a life of brilliant strangeness,” she had said, and then tears had come down her cheeks. He had hurried away, but always remembered: the words, her tears.
Brilliant strangeness.
