Chapter 53

Mistakes had been made.

“A satyrian, Lady Angharad!” Cleon Eirenos exclaimed for the fourth time, eyes bright as stars. “Between that and the robbers, it was an encounter worthy of song.”

She hadn’t even killed the thing, she mutinously thought. So why was half of Chalcia convinced she had saved them from being murdered in the night by a tower-sized satyrian leading an army of lupines? A few of them had cheered her at breakfast, this was the opposite of spycraft! And she knew the source of it all, too. When she came down for porridge Mistress Katina had winked at her and loudly refused to be paid the second half of the travel fee because ‘saved my life, you did’.

While Angharad suspected the old woman had been trying to do her a good turn, the rumors spawned by whatever she said the previous night had swiftly got out of hand. While it was true satyrians were clever enough to use tools and open gates, they rarely attacked towns and certainly did not raise massive packs of lemures to do so. Chalcia was safe: it was a walled town, with an informal militia guarding it. A fact that Angharad knew for certain because its captain had come to shake her hand.

Apparently by the second wave of retelling the highwaymen had been decided to be working with the lemures. These vile traitors were, Angharad was informed, plotting to destroy the town with the satyrian’s help so they might loot it afterwards.

It had been too much to hope for that these wild tales would not reach the Eirenos manor, and sure enough Lord Cleon himself came riding with the carriage having already drunk deep of the nonsense. Like everyone in Chalcia, he seemed convinced that her protests about the significant exaggerations were a mark of humility instead of Angharad stating the bloody facts.

As the alternative was a slow, infuriating descent into frothing madness Angharad instead grasped for anything at all that might change the nature of her conversation with the lordling riding besides her carriage. The Eirenos estate was not enormous but neither was it small, and barely half an hour out of Chalcia they had passed its boundary stones. The private road to the manor was in much better state than the one she had suffered over the last few days, which she complimented him on. He demurred in accepting her words.

“When Minister Floros was still regent, she passed a decree that every estate must maintain a road finely enough that the tax collectors could reach the manor within,” Lord Cleon told her. “Else a most unpleasant fine will be inflicted on the owning household.”

Clever of Lady Floros, Angharad thought. A ruler telling a noble household how to rule their own lands was sure to be met with resistance and rebellion, but to coach it in terms of tax collectors being able to reach said household would make any defying such a decree sound like they were avoiding paying their taxes instead or fighting to preserve their privileges.

A shame this cleverness had not also been put to work turning the roads of Tratheke Valley into something less deserving of indignation.

It was a pleasant enough trip to the estate chatting with an eager Lord Cleon, until they were past the outskirts and approached a small cluster of hills. Up a shallow slope, past the rise of the largest hilltop, finally waited the Eirenos manor.

It had a long, lime-white rectangular façade with a slightly angled red tile roof, and though it was not particularly large Angharad thought the row of large glass windows on the second story more than made up for it. Twin stairs – with a small passage between them slipping below and to the back the of the manor – went up to a triad of plaster arches bordering an open vestibule. There were shuttered windows on either side, and further out on the estate another two buildings. A guesthouse, Angharad decided, and some sort of annex.

The grounds were more impressive, a large pond flecked with slender reeds out front and a garden in the Asphodelian fashion spreading out in every direction: a mere step away from being wild, loosely paved paths winding through groves of orange and lemon trees as silver-leafed shrubs and long grass grew in clusters. Near the guesthouse, to the side of the manor, was a manmade clearing ringed by trees bearing yet-unlit lanterns, long tables already set in anticipation of the reception tomorrow. There was even a stone floor in the center for dancing.

Lord Cleon rode ahead, to make room for his coach, and Angharad saw through the gap in the drapes that on the front stairs waited a handful of servants in dark green livery. One of them bowed to the lordling and took away his horse after he dismounted, leading it around the back. As the coach began to slow, she watched the young lord be fussed over by a… sister? No, she corrected as the coach closed the distance. The fair-haired beauty embarrassing Cleon Eirenos, despite her youthful looks, wore too fine a dress to be anyone but his mother.

Angharad had not met many women taller than her since leaving Malan, but Lady Penelope Eirenos came close – and wore that height rather differently. Hair of red gold, wavy and so long it must reach down to the small of her back, crowned an elegant face with seductive lips and vivid green eyes. The hourglass figure barely contained by a loose pale blue gown had Angharad struggling not to stare, disbelieving that Lady Penelope was old enough to have a son. She looked barely thirty.

No wonder Lord Artemon had bought a herd of horses. Angharad might also be tempted to the unwise to put a smile on such a beauty’s face.

The coach came to a halt, and after the door was opened for her she was welcomed in a whirl of attention. Lord Cleon introduced the eldest of his servants, though none were named majordomo, and then pulled his mother away from giving orders to introduce her properly. Her beauty grew all the more dangerous from closeness, the slight marks of aging that Angharad now noticed – subtle laugh lines and wrinkles – only adding a certain undertone of maturity to the curves and smiled.

“My mother, Lady Penelope,” Cleon introduced.

“It is a pleasing to finally meet you, Lady Angharad,” Lady Penelope smiled.

“The pleasure is all mine,” Angharad assured her.

She had restraint enough not to seek to kiss her hand, trading curtsies instead. Lady Penelope had arranged refreshments, and while her luggage was brought upstairs she sat for lemon water and small talk. It was inevitable, of course, that questions would be asked about the run-in with the lemures and the poachers. Angharad did her best to dispel the rumors, with some degree of success.

“It is still quite the feat to drive off a band of poachers then escape a satyrian and his hunting pack,” Lady Penelope said.

Her gown wasn’t even all that revealing, Angharad reminded herself. It mere drew the eye to the slim waist and the contrasting curves around it.

“If Mistress Katina had not scared off the third poacher, I expect it would have gone quite differently,” she replied. “If we had still been skirmishing when the satyrian arrived…”

“I’m sure you would have found a way,” Lord Cleon firmly said. “Your heroics made a strong impression on the people of Chalcia.”

He shot a look at his mother after the words, the moment that passed between them hard for her to decipher. Lady Penelope, after the refreshments were well emptied, suggested that Angharad be given a tour of the manor’s surroundings. She accepted, naturally. Much of what she had come here to accomplish must be through talk with Cleon Eirenos, and a walk was fine enough setting for that.

Lord Cleon was eager to show her the grounds, though he took care that his enthusiasm would not go beyond what her limp allowed. He kept an eye on her stride, a hawk for signs of pain or exhaustion, and Angharad could not quite decide whether she was irritated or impressed. Regardless, it was gallant.

Cleon was not the kind of man she would consider handsome. His shorter stature and wisps of a mustache did not help. Yet he seemed to her a lord of respectable character and his conversation was engaging as he guided her through the garden around the manor, though she glimpsed through his affected calm the occasional burst of nerves.

She suspected he had rehearsed some topics, too, given the almost literary turns of phrase he occasionally used.

After an hour, in deference to her tiredness he suggested they retire to the manor for a time so they she might rest before he took her to hunt quail in the nearby woods. There had, to her mild frustration, been little opportunity for her to ask about what she had come to investigate. Patience, she reminder herself. Lord Cleon was younger than her, by a year, but he was no fool. She must not be suspicious in her questioning.

A room had been prepared for her on the highest story of the house, along with Lord Cleon’s own and that of Lady Penelope, and Angharad’s affairs had already been brought up. She napped for an hour, as offered, and had a small midday meal with the Eirenos.

Lord Cleon had dressed for the woods and ate carefully, constantly looking her way as if afraid that some small breach of etiquette would sour her on him, while Lady Penelope eyed the scene with open amusement. The beauty languorously ate orange slices, the light come through the window catching her mane of hair and wreathing her in gold. Her pale blue gown, cut in that Asphodelian way that evoked ancient chitons, should have been loose but was too filled by a splendid figure for it to be so.

It was an effort not to stare at those elegant fingers as she ate her meal, leaving most of the conversation to Lord Cleon as she observed them.

They went hunting afterwards, she in her traveling clothes and he attired like a proper woodsman. Angharad was no great huntress, but she knew how to use a fowler and Lord Cleon assured her the quails in the nearby woods made for easy hunting. The manor raised some of them in captivity before releasing them, to weaken the breed. The young lord offered to carry her gun, but she tucked it under her arm instead.

Within the turn of the hour he’d twice startled a quail into flight and snapped a shot that downed it, while her own struggles were… mixed. She caught a wing, once, but honesty compelled her to admit it had been pure chance. She’d simply never had to line up a shot so quickly, or on so small a target.

Angharad was not used to being unskilled and must not have hidden her frustration as well as she thought.

“New to fowlers, I take it?” Lord Cleon said.

“My father was a fine huntsman, but I never took a deep interest,” she admitted.

Mother had dabbled, but she’d always said that if she was to head out and kill an animal it might as well be a whale so the profit would be greater than a pot of stew.

“I imagine the sword took up much of your time,” he said.

Angharad shot him a surprised look. She had never spoken of being a mirror-dancer in Tratheke society.

“I asked a well-travelled cousin about your silver marks,” Lord Cleon admitted. “I apologize if you feel it untoward of me.”

“It is nothing hidden, the stripes are meant to be seen,” Angharad assured him. “It is only…”

She hesitated, looking for a sentence that would be neither a lie not too revealing a truth.

“I understand,” he grimaced. “The cane took the place of the sword.”

“Something like that,” Angharad precisely replied.

“In the interests of honesty,” Lord Cleon said, “I followed advice and also asked one of the royal sniffers as to whether or now a god endowed you with contract. I was informed that you were, though I know nothing more of the matter.”

She gritted her teeth, but curtly nodded. It was not an unreasonable precaution when inviting a foreign noble into your home. Indeed, it was to his honor that he would so straightforwardly tell her of it.

“Such knowledge can be asked for?” she said, surprised.

“If you ask coin in hand,” he said.

Angharad felt a silver of contempt. Not for Lord Cleon but the contractor taking bribes for secrets even when in the service of the Lord Rector of Asphodel. Sniffers were rare and valuable enough even the lesser of their kind would be able to take such liberties, which spoke well of Song. She was anything but the least of such contracts, yet held discretion as a virtue. Almost to a fault.

“I am contracted myself,” Lord Cleon continued. “It is a strange thing, to hold a god so close.”

Angharad raised an eyebrow. Not how she would have described it, but then she feared the Fisher as much as she respected his power. Closeness was not something she sought from that old monster.

“How so?”

“They see our weaknesses,” he said, “but in such a tight embrace it is inevitable we might glimpse theirs as well.”

The Fisher, Angharad thought, was the last entity she would associate with weakness. It abhorred the concept, and even as a diminished prisoner the great spirit remained a fearsome thing.

“I prefer to keep mine at arm’s length,” Angharad admitted. “We do not often see eye to eye.”

“I can sympathize,” Lord Cleon nodded. “Mine grew… odd, as time passed. Harsher, even as the granted boon thinned. I might not make the same choice now I did then.”

“Oh, mine thins not at all,” Angharad murmured. “Sometimes I worry of that.”

They left it at that, neither inclined to speak more in depth of their contract. Angharad knew, of course, of his. Song had skimmed his contract and told her of it. She felt guilt at that, but a shallow sort. He, too, had asked a sniffer about her. Angharad’s was simply the finer of the two.

They pushed deeper into the woods, Lord Cleon taking the time to show her how to more quickly snap a shot, and as the topic was on hunting she guided the river where she needed it to flow. First as to the many hunting grounds to which the Eirenos had rights, and his own experience with them. Then to what she wanted to know.

“I am told that the lictors patrol the valley in depth, now that there has been some trouble in the hills,” Angharad innocently said. “Do they not scare off the game when you take the field?”

He hummed, wiggling his hand.

“Most of the patrol routes have been the same since my father’s youth,” Cleon told her. “They do not change, and none come anywhere close to our hunting grounds. But there have been a few changes in the last few years, it is true.”

He frowned.

“The Lord Rector – it only began after Evander Palliades took the throne – claims the new expeditions are to drive back lemures, but before that mischief began in the hills there was no true need for that,” he said. “There has long been rumors that arms are being smuggled into Tratheke, so I have wondered if it might not be an attempt to catch the smugglers.”

“Smuggling from where?” Angharad said, as if disbelieving.

“The western hills, near the mountains,” he said. “That is where they stomp around most. It’s not done wonders for stag hunts in that slice of land, but it was always better out east anyhow. No great loss, though it sometimes has me thinking of selling our lodge out there.”

She considered, for a moment, telling him of the blackpowder and arms she had found in the wrecked carriage where the poachers had waited. Yet, weighing the matter, it seemed like there was little to learn by telling him. More importantly, it might be she had narrowed down where the entrance to the shipyards might be hidden: out in the western hills, near the mountains.

Not exactly a small stretch of land, but knowing that Eirenos lodge there was close enough to the patrols for hunting to be affected should help narrow it down.

Having learned as much without need for true skullduggery pleased her greatly, lifting her mood on the way back to the manor visibly enough Lord Cleon almost commented on it. He thought better, though, and instead began to tell her of the feast he was to throw the following evening.

“It will be mostly families from our part of Tratheke Valley,” Cleon said. “The Pisenor, the Saon and the Iphine foremost among them. From further out there will be only Lord Arkol, who did business with my father, and Lord Gule who was kind enough to accept my invitation.”

Angharad blinked in genuine surprise.

“The ambassador from Malan?” she checked.

Cleon seriously nodded.

“He has been a benefactor and something of a mentor, these last few years,” the young lord said. “I am pleased he was able to spare the time, given his duties.”

“Ah,” Angharad said. “That shipyard business, yes?”

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Lord Cleon inclined his head.

“What the Kingdom of Malan wants with skimmers I know not, given their lauded ironwood, but I suppose everyone wants a piece of the Lord Rector’s pie these days.”

He paused.

“Good on him,” the younger man feelingly said. “Minister Floros can play the paragon all she likes, the lords of the valley know better.”

Angharad’s brow rose.

“I must admit I have heard little but compliments of Apollonia Floros’ character,” she said.

Even the Lord Rector seemed to respect her, according to Song, and they were sworn enemies.

“Oh, I’m sure she’d rather die than dirty even the least of her handkerchiefs,” Lord Cleon sardonically said. “Honorable to a fault, Apollonia Floros. So much that the very day the regency ended she withdrew all her troops from the capital and dismissed all her vassals and allies from positions of power.”

Angharad’s eyes narrowed. An honorable act, yes, yet…

“How many such appointments were there?”

Honor could be a knife, a daughter of Peredur well knew. Cleon grinned unpleasantly.

“Near every key post in the capital and valley,” he replied, and she winced. “And she had been resisting building back the lictors for years, volunteering her own men to patrol instead to raise the crown’s income. So when she pulled everyone out…”

“Chaos,” Angharad quietly said.

As if most the officers on a ship died overnight, leaving it to drift aimless and angry.

“The Lord Rector spent the first year of his reign struggling not to drown in that mess,” Cleon said. “And when the man proved his mettle, kept his head above the water, what was said?”

He wrinkled his nose in disgust.

“Praises for Minister Floros, at having taught him so well,” he scorned. “As if she had not just set a fire and watched with her hands in her lap as he fought to put it out.”

“Such disorder must not have endeared her to the valley lords,” Angharad ventured.

“It is good of you to think so,” Lord Cleon coldly laughed. “But you think too well of my fellows. Sleeping in a viper pit for too long has a way of making one grow scales. Apollonia Floros was firm and just and most importantly of all she ruthlessly ground the Trade Assembly beneath her boot.”

“While the Lord Rector has pursued a more… measured policy,” she delicately said.

Meaning he was not powerful enough to grind anyone under his boots and needed the Assembly’s support against the Council of Ministers besides. Lord Cleon nodded.

“I understand that in Malan honor is greatly prized,” he delicately said, “but most of my fellow lords prefer profit to principle. Even those with fine reputations. I would not have-”

And suddenly he hesitated.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

He coughed.

“I understand that Lord Menander is something of a patron of yours,” Cleon said.

Angharad cocked her head to the side.

“While we are acquainted, and it was arranged for him to introduce me into Tratheke society, I do not consider him close to me,” she said. “We are not overly familiar.”

He searched her face for a moment, then nodded sharply.

“Good,” he muttered, then his voice firmed. “Good. Menander Drakos likes to act like the court’s kind grandfather, a man who takes no sides, but he is as ruthless as the rest of them.”

His lips thinned.

“My father, you might have heard, once tried to begin rearing horses.”

“I had,” Angharad cautiously said.

“Then you will also have heard it was a fool’s venture that nearly bankrupted our house,” Cleon said. “Lord Menander was the one who helped him obtain the horses, negotiating on his behalf, so he knew exactly how deep the debt ran and what our means were.”

The young lord clenched his teeth.

“And when the interest payments began to pile up, he slid in with his snake’s offer,” Cleon said. “There could be no loan, but oh he did love antiquities. And House Eirenos could buy them back when they had the means, he swore.”

Angharad’s eyes sharpened. That sounded exactly like what Song had tasked her with finding out.

“He bought house treasures,” she said.

“Gobbled them up like a pig at the trough,” Cleon bit out. “Always hungry for more. My family was granted treasures by the Lissenos, Lady Angharad, over our century of service to that line. Now they serve as adornments in his many manors instead. The man bought up everything he could, from paintings to papers.”

“He bought the whole collection?” Angharad asked.

The young man snorted.

“We’ve some correspondence in the annex safe still, I think, along with some statues,” he said. “Only dregs remain.”

The annex, was it? That was where she must look for what Song wanted. Tomorrow, Angharad thought, during the reception. It should not be difficult to feign exhaustion and sneak off. It could also be true, she reflected, that the desired information might now be in the hands of Menander Drakos. Bought years ago. In truth that might be best for the Thirteenth. Lord Menander knew of the Watch investigation and might well accept a request from Song.

“You have righted your house,” Angharad said. “Can you not buy them back as he promised?”

“He has been putting me off,” Lord Cleon darkly replied. “I thought to take this to the Lord Rector, but I was advised otherwise by Lord Gule. There are other recourses, he showed me, which would not bring shame to my father’s name.”

Sensible. Lord Gule was induna by birth, he would understand better than most the necessity of maintaining one’s name.