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

If that had happened in the East Channel, Fulvet might have fixed it—and never mind that creating those numinata in the first place had required the inscriptors to imbue them, at the cost of their own lives. Channeling power on that scale carried a price. But the West Channel ran between the Island and the Lower Bank, so the Charterhouse had merely shrugged. Let the gnats drink tainted water: There would be that many fewer of them to cause trouble.

Scaperto Quientis had taken the Fulvet seat shortly after Letilia fled Nadežra, marking the start of House Traementis’s decline. Rumor said he was different. Less obvious about his graft, or else he’d found some lucrative source of additional income; under Scaperto, a startling percentage of the taxes raised by Prasinet, the economic seat, seemed to make their way to the public works they were intended for. It meant he was either honest… or far more clever than his predecessors.

Either one gave Renata cause to be wary.

She’d arrived not long after dawn. She finally stepped into Fulvet’s office sometime after the clock towers rang fifth sun.

Scaperto Quientis seemed built of squares: square jaw, square frame, square posture. Grey dulled the gold of his hair, and the skin around his eyes sagged into faint lines, but that only added to the impression of solidity and power. Self-confidence wafted off him like the oak and amber of his perfume. Looking at him, Renata saw an old tomcat, sure of his right to his patch of sunlight.

He leaned forward, elbows on his desk and fingers latticed into a steeple, studying her over their tips. “Alta Renata. The newest curiosity from Seteris… House Traementis licensed you as an advocate?”

Everyone agreed that Eret Quientis’s besetting sin was his bluntness. Looking at the cynical set of his mouth, Renata saw a man who might find it refreshing to be answered in kind. “House Traementis has many unpleasant memories of my mother, and I’d like to get out from under her shadow. If I can persuade you to see me as something other than her echo, Your Grace, that will carry a great deal of weight with them—especially as I believe you were once betrothed to her.” Before Letilia broke the contract and fled.

“So I was. You favor her.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “She must hate that.”

Renata merely waited.

“And now you’ve come to pay your mother’s debts?” Quientis blinked slowly, the tomcat assessing whether a mouse was worth his time. “I think you’re a bit young for me.”

He was testing her. Unlike half the Cinquerat, Quientis had no reputation for letting seduction sway him. Renata said, “I’ve done my research, and I know what is more likely to attract your eye.” She held up a leather folder. “I have a proposal for a new charter. A replacement for the West Channel numinat, to purify that half of the Dežera of mud and the filth that washes down from the rest of Vraszan.”

She placed the proposal just out of his reach, enticing him to lean forward to take it. After a moment he did, skimming the overview Renata had drafted, the furrow in his brow deepening with every line. He didn’t look surprised; political gossip must have carried word of this to him already. But the details were another matter.

Finally, he set the folder down—but didn’t return it to her. “I imagine you’re hoping this will redeem the Traementis reputation on the Lower Bank.”

“I hope it will do some good,” she admitted, “but that’s hardly my only reason for backing it. I’m renting a house in Westbridge, Your Grace, and while my own water is protected, every day I pass by the evidence of the river’s pollution. And every day I see its effects on the people around me.”

She’d rehearsed this well before coming to him, polishing her words with the assistance of both Donaia and Vargo—separately. Renata didn’t attempt to give him the pragmatic arguments; those were in the folder, Vargo’s documents recopied in her own hand. If Quientis was the sort of man to be moved by dry facts, those would persuade him. This was her chance to sell him the grand vision: a Dežera running clear in both main channels.

He let her speak, only interrupting a few times with clarifying questions. After she finished, he leaned back in his chair, his fingers a triangle against his lips.

She resisted the urge to fill the silence with more arguments. Her passion had already bled through more than she intended. If the river had been clean, would Mama have gotten sick?

“It’s a pretty idea, Alta Renata—but if it were easy to achieve, it would have happened years ago. Even if I grant Traementis the charter, you still need to execute it, and that takes cooperation from more than one seat in the Cinquerat. Religious matters like numinatria fall under Iridet’s authority, and I’m not qualified to judge whether it’s even possible to construct something like this on a permanent scale without asking the inscriptor to die for it. Prasinet will have concerns about the effect on taxation and anchorage fees in the West Channel. Argentet will find some cultural reason to intervene, because Era Novrus has to have a say in everything.”

He left Caerulet unspoken. This had nothing to do with military matters, but Mettore Indestor would oppose anything that helped the Traementis escape his blade.

“I’m aware,” Renata said. “But if I went to them now, they would say, you have no charter—why should we waste our time on this? Once I have the charter, I can begin negotiating with them.”

“And you think you’ll succeed?”

“Yes.” She let the word sit there, unadorned. A con was a confidence game: not just the mark’s confidence in the sharper, but the sharper’s confidence in herself. Renata had sold Donaia on the belief that Vargo would help them against Indestor, with nothing more than a guess and a few vague comments from Sedge to back that up; she would sell