The Mask of Mirrors by M. Carrick; (lightest ebook reader txt) 📗

hired—that the only people visiting Renata’s townhouse were messengers. It might just be that Renata hadn’t yet set up her household fully… but she’d been in Nadežra for several weeks. If she was planning to stay, he would have expected her to settle in more by now.

Or she was just feckless. She’d come home on foot two weeks ago, her hair all tumbled down, with her maid supporting her. It could mean a wild night, typical of a noble without a care for practical matters.

“What about other contacts among the nobles?” Grey asked. Any suspicious meetings would be happening outside Renata’s house, but the maid might have dropped a hint.

“Lots, but none that seem like she’s working with anyone.” Then Ranieri laughed. “Oh, but you should have seen Tess go off like a firecracker when Indestor came up. You heard the story, sir, about Alta Renata losing her glove to the Rook? You’ve never seen a woman so frothed about a missing glove! Never would have guessed that girl had such a tongue on her—could have scorched the water from the West Channel and left a dry bed.”

“It was an offensive demand,” Grey said curtly. “And the Rook is a criminal.”

“No, not the Rook! Mezzan Indestor, for being an ass. And his father for having such a useless son, and unto the seventh generation. No love there from maid or mistress.” Ranieri grinned. Hawk he might be, but he’d picked up Grey’s distaste for the house that oversaw the Vigil.

Grey was less amused. It sounded like his superiors weren’t using Alta Renata to gain leverage over House Traementis—but that meant Donaia had wasted his time with this investigation. Time he could have spent helping those children… or pursuing Kolya’s killer.

Still, he’d promised Cercel and Donaia both that he’d do his best. He would pull the street children off watching her house—that was coming out of the Vigil’s coffers—but Renata’s finances might bear a closer look before he gave up. And he didn’t see much point in straining Ranieri’s conscience any further by having him dig around Tess.

Grey was about to say so when a furtive movement caught his eye.

It was the patterner. Her latest client had given the deck its final shuffle and returned it to her. But she was facing Grey, and when she straightened her shawl to accept the deck, he was at just the right angle to see her swap it for another—one that was undoubtedly stacked.

He pushed off the post and wove quickly through traffic. She’d laid out the spread by the time he reached her. Grey caught her wrist as she reached for the cards of the past.

She wrenched free, but not before he twitched aside the edge of her skirt with his other hand and pulled out the swapped deck from under her knee. “I suggest you waste your money somewhere else,” he told the mark, not breaking his gaze from the szorsa.

She twisted her face away. Sputtering indignation, the mark scooped up his offering from her bowl and huffed off. Grey dropped into Vraszenian to be sure the woman understood him. “And I suggest you cheat your marks with words alone. I see you cold-deck someone again, and every card you have I’ll throw into the nearest canal.”

She didn’t even spit a curse at him. Just swept up both decks and ran.

Grey didn’t bother giving chase. The momentary flash of righteous indignation passed, leaving him hollow. If Kolya had seen him treat a szorsa like that…

Passing clouds dampened the fading sunlight, heralding a spatter of rain. A shiver passed through Grey, leaving goose pricks in its wake. The szorsa had left her blanket and bowl. Fishing out two centiras from his pouch, he dropped them into the vessel to appease Ir Entrelke Nedje.

“Sir?” Ranieri said from behind him.

“Go home,” Grey said heavily. “Don’t worry about prying any more into the maid. I’ll take care of it.”

But after Ranieri left, Grey didn’t return to the Viraudax nonsense, nor even go back to the problem of the sleepless children. Instead he headed to the nearest labyrinth to beg forgiveness from his brother’s spirit.

Coster’s Walk, Lower Bank: Suilun 24

Ren sagged against the crumbling plaster of a butcher’s shop and pressed her hands to her mouth, trying not to hyperventilate.

Why did Grey Serrado have to pick that moment to visit Coster’s Walk? Dressed like a proper Vraszenian, talking to some pretty youth she would have taken for a night-piece trawling for customers if he hadn’t seemed so painfully shy. She’d been tempted to eavesdrop, but self-preservation took priority. The last thing she could afford was for Serrado to notice that the nearby szorsa looked oddly like Renata Viraudax.

But her nerves made her clumsy, so that he spotted her swapping decks. She shouldn’t have taken the risk—but she’d been out there all day, hoping to snare one person in particular. Nikory, the leader of the Fog Spiders, who street rumors said operated under Derossi Vargo’s command.

Renata couldn’t look into Vargo’s criminal activities, but Arenza Lenskaya could.

It was useful that a fine alta like Renata Viraudax wouldn’t set foot outside her house before sixth sun, or receive guests before fifth. That left Ren the morning hours in which to put on a different mask and work her way through the Old Island and the Lower Bank. She didn’t dare stray too close to the people she’d known from her days in the Fingers, but the city’s Vraszenians were another matter.

She’d never really been one of them. Without makeup, her half-northern heritage showed. Ren was hardly the only Vraszenian to carry the blood of an outsider, but the kretse could be insular, and some of those traditional lineages didn’t tolerate outsiders among them. Ivrina Lenskaya’s family had been of that kind. As a result, she’d had to raise her daughter outside the networks of lineage and clan affiliation that still bound most Vraszenians—those from the free city-states of Vraszan—into a solid fabric.

In Nadežra, the