Part 3 (1/2)

”Precisely!” Mr. Wyble tilted his head. ”That is to say, I had not thought of it in that manner. But I concede there is perhaps some similarity, though I think this sentence would be more happily received. Indeed, I am sure of it. But I must say, what I've heard about you is correct, Mr. Rafferdy. It was my hope to make your acquaintance tonight. I was told I should meet n.o.body more clever than you.”

Mrs. Baydon gave Rafferdy an arch look. ”Indeed, our Mr. Rafferdy is sometimes too clever for his own good.”

”Nonsense,” Rafferdy said. ”No one can be too clever for his own good, only for other people's.” He rose from his chair.

”But you aren't going already, are you?” Mr. Wyble said.

”I have business I must attend to.”

Mrs. Baydon frowned up at him. ”Business? At this hour?”

Mr. Wyble stood as well. ”I had hoped we would have time to sit and converse, Mr. Rafferdy. It is so rare I encounter another mind sharp enough to engage my own. I would have come to speak with you earlier, but I was having the most delightful time playing cards with Mrs. Chisingdon. Have you met her? I'd be happy to introduce you.”

Rafferdy demurred on the plea his business could not wait. Mr. Wyble asked for a promise that they would continue their conversation another day, and Rafferdy granted it willingly, for nothing was easier to give away than a thing that had no worth. He made his farewell, and Mrs. Baydon rose from her seat, claiming it was her duty to see him out.

”Do return to us soon as you promised,” she said as they reached the door. ”And be safe on your journey. I have heard such frightful things about the roads of late!”

”I'll be going with the mail, which is always accompanied by a pair of the king's redcrests. Besides, I'm far less concerned about encountering a highwayman than I am Mr. Wyble!”

He gave Mrs. Baydon's hand a warm clasp, then called for his hat and cloak and was out the door into the soft night. The streetlamps blazed along the Promenade, and the lights of the Old City glittered beneath the Citadel, a mirror to the stars.

Several carriages were waiting in the street. One of Lady Marsdel's men let out a whistle, summoning the nearest one, and Rafferdy climbed in. As he settled himself on the bench, he saw a tall figure in a black coat walking down the steps of the house.

”Excuse me,” he said to the servant, ”but do you know that gentleman coming out just now?”

The servant scratched his chin. ”Him? Why, that would be Mr. Bennick. He used to come around often enough, but that was years ago. I haven't seen him since Lord Marsdel pa.s.sed on, not until this very night. I suppose he's been in the west county all this time.”

”In Torland, you mean?”

”Aye, that's where his grandfather was from. A man by the name of Vordigan. It's said Mr. Bennick owns the estate now.”

”Vordigan, you say? Then Mr. Bennick inherited through his mother somehow?” That would certainly be unusual.

”Nay, he didn't inherit through father nor mother.” The servant grinned in answer to Rafferdy's look of puzzlement. ”Mr. Bennick may have gotten his father's looks, but he didn't get his name, if you know what I mean. The word is his half brother got deep in debt to Mr. Bennick and was forced to sell the estate to him to settle the debt, then he died not long after that. So Mr. Bennick got his father's land in the end.”

Yet still not the Vordigan name. All the same, this explained Mr. Bennick's interest in the famed magician. The tall figure in black reached the street, but rather than taking a carriage he turned and was swallowed by the gloom of a side lane. Someone interesting indeed.

The servant shut the carriage door. ”Tell me,” Rafferdy said through the window, ”how long is the night to be?”

”It's to be a middle umbral, sir,” the servant replied. ”Eleven hours from dusk 'til dawn. Where shall I tell the driver to take you, sir?”

”To the Sword and Leaf, in the Old City.”

The servant raised his eyebrows, but he relayed the direction to the driver, and the carriage started down the broad curve of the Promenade. Rafferdy leaned back against the seat. So the night was to be eleven hours long? Good. Very good.

That left more than enough time for him to get properly drunk before beginning the journey home to Asterlane.

CHAPTER THREE.

E LDYN HID IN the shadows.

He held his breath, standing in the corner where the fuller's ab.u.t.ted the brewery. The drab air that threaded its way through the cramped lane spun around him, forming a gray veil. Just as his lungs started to burn, the one who hunted him rounded a bend, head sidling back and forth, jaw jutted forward. He pressed himself deeper into the corner.

His hunter stopped not five paces from him and let out a huff. ”Well, blight me, I swear I saw him come down this way just a moment ago. Now, where has that Mr. Garritt gotten to?”

The woman turned, and for a moment her eyes were directed at his hiding place. She was of an age with him, twenty-four perhaps, and would have been pa.s.sably pretty if her face were better scrubbed and her dress not so plain. However, neither soap nor ribbons could have improved her unrefined manner.

At last she turned away and rambled down the lane, the hem of her gown mopping up the gutters. He breathed in, and so starved were his lungs that even the river air-dank with the exhalations of tanneries and fish markets-seemed wholesome.

As he stepped into the lane, Eldyn offered up a silent prayer to St. Andelthy, patron to artists and the wrongfully condemned. He was grateful to have escaped another encounter with Miss Delina Walpert-though it had been a close thing. Fortunately, some instinct or premonition of doom had caused him to glance over his shoulder just in time to see her turn a corner. There had been only a moment to nip into the shadows. But, as so many times in the past, within their folds he had found blessed sanctuary.

Eldyn couldn't remember when he had learned to hide in shadows. Even as a child he had found it a natural thing, simple as a thought. He would use the trick when his father came home drunk, which he did often enough, his hand heavy and aching to hit something-usually his son, since his wives seldom endured for long. Eldyn would creep into the shadows under a staircase or behind a cupboard and wrap the darkness around him like a blanket while his father raged and bellowed, bruising wood and shattering crockery as subst.i.tutes for flesh and bone.

”Where do you get yourself to, boy?” his father would say when he woke from his stupor. He would be quiet then, sitting at the table with a bowl of gruel, but the fury would still s.h.i.+ne in his eyes, along with a crafty light. ”I wasn't so blind as that from drink. Where did you hide yourself last night when I wanted you? She taught you some trick, didn't she? That witch, your mother. She was a sibyl, I know she was. That was why no other man would have her.”

Those words never made sense to Eldyn. If she had known the trick, wouldn't she have hidden herself away as well? Instead, he had stood beside her bed, a child of seven years, holding her cold hand, watching her white face: the only thing in the world that had ever smiled at him up to that point. But she would never smile again.

Leaving shadow and memory behind, Eldyn walked up the lane and quickly turned onto a busy thoroughfare, lest Miss Walpert see him on her way back to the inn. He did not know what he had done to win her affection; surely it was through no interested looks or flattering comments on his part. One day he intended to find a wife and start a family, but those things would have to wait until he had succeeded in restoring the Garritt family name and fortune-both of which his father had squandered.

Besides, Eldyn's wife, when he did take one, would not be a Miss Walpert. Once the Garritts had been gentlemen of worth and respect; Eldyn's grandfather had once sat in the Hall of Magnates. While his father had cast the family reputation into the gutter, Eldyn was determined to raise it up again. When he did, he would find himself a proper wife, perhaps a daughter of well-to-do gentry. He must not reach too high too quickly, he knew that, but his children could expect to fare better and would see the restoration of the Garritt name completed. And once he was married, he would find a respectable husband for Sas.h.i.+e; a baronet would be a good match. No lord or magnate would have her, of course. But she was exceedingly pretty. A gentleman would be glad to take her, provided Eldyn could offer an acceptable dowry, and would keep her in comfort, if perhaps not always in style.

As for Miss Walpert, Eldyn would make every effort to avoid her, for while she was an annoyance, and dull, and had a snorting laugh, she was a good-hearted thing, and he did not want to upset her. Or her father, who kept the inn where Eldyn and Sas.h.i.+e had made their home these last three months.

It occurred to him that perhaps the best solution was to move their lodgings to another inn. However, the Golden Loom was the best he could afford; while it stood in an unsavory part of the city, it was decent and well-kept, and he didn't want to make Sas.h.i.+e move again so soon. These had been hard times for her; she had been his father's favorite, the child of his last wife, and she wasn't as accustomed to want as Eldyn was. Besides, she liked living at the Golden Loom. She had told him so just yesterday, and he couldn't remember the last time his sister had said she was pleased about something.

Eldyn walked up a steep way and pa.s.sed through the Lowgate, avoiding the eyes of the king's men who stood on either side of the arch in their blue coats and red-crested caps. He made his way through the contorted streets of the Old City, past the bell towers of St. Galmuth's, beneath the shadow of the Citadel, and toward the sober gray edifices of the university.

Though the brief morning was pa.s.sing quickly, he took a detour along a lane down which he had spied the sign of a moneylender. Most moneylenders kept offices on Marble Street, but there were a few of them in the Old City, and this was one he had not yet tried. He paused outside the door to straighten his gray coat. He kept it scrupulously clean, though it was starting to get threadbare at the elbows. Eldyn entered the office, waited several minutes to see a clerk, sat at the ink-stained table when beckoned, then presented his request for a loan of a hundred regals.

”What is the purpose of this loan?” the clerk asked, taking a sheet of paper from a drawer. His lace cuffs had evidently served to wipe his pen when no other blotter was at hand. A circle of gray fringed his bald pate.

”It is for an investment in a business venture,” Eldyn said, uttering the words in as firm a voice as he could manage. His father had always complained that he spoke like a priest.

The clerk scribbled on the paper. ”What sort of business venture?”

”I intend to buy shares in a trading company that is preparing a voyage to the New Lands.”

The clerk could not possibly think poorly of this use for the money. Trading companies were being formed at a rapid pace, now that the routes east across the sea had been charted, and many men had made quick fortunes upon the return of s.h.i.+ps they had invested in.

”And what have you to secure your loan?”

”I would secure it with my name.”

The clerk set down his pen and looked up. ”I cannot sell a name if you default upon the note.”

Eldyn moistened his lips. ”My name, then, and the shares of the trading company.”