25. 24
The relief sagged my shoulders, as Davian invaded our group and stared daggers at Robar. He held two drinks so tightly I was surprised he hadn’t crushed the cups.
Robar took a step back, knocking into one of the women behind him, who also glared at him.
“Oh, my apologies, servant of Pain,” Vasile said, in the least apologetic voice I could imagine. “Please do forgive me, the fault is entirely my own.”
Davian turned his death stare to the mysterious man beside me. Vasile held up his hands in mock surrender.
My date turned to me, and his eyes softened. The fire was still there, that swift and sure anger only a word away, but he restrained it for me. He was searching my gaze for something. “Your drink.”
I nodded, reaching for the offered drink from him as I attempted to smile. “Thank you.”
Our fingers brushed as I took it, and he flicked his eyes away, asking me if I wanted to leave. I gave him another curt nod, and took a sip of the ale. I couldn’t taste it, not for its lack of flavour, but for the tension and fear that still nagged at my body.
“Davian, isn’t it?” Robar said, having recovered from his stagger backwards, and now trying to play it off. “I haven’t seen you at a ball all season.”
Davian kept his eyes on me for a clear second before turning to him. It was a slight, and both men knew it. He touched his free hand to the small of my back, then turned to my betrothed. “I’ve been in mourning. For my wife.”
Robar’s eyes went wide, and then he glanced at Vasile. From the corner of my eye I saw the man mouth a word. ‘Seera’. Robar spluttered, covering it with a cough as he looked at Davian again. He ducked his head. “I’m sorry, devotee. I forgot the connection.”
“She went missing,” Davian pressed. “We never found her body, though the sunners are certain she’s dead.”
“That’s awful,” Robar said, paling. “Is there any chance she’s still alive?”
Davian shrugged. “What do you think?”
It was a casual, almost rhetorical question. And yet, the intensity of the context and his gaze forced Robar to answer. He squirmed beneath the attention. “I wouldn’t presume to say. Though if she could be alive, I don’t think you should give up hope.”
“How sweet,” Davian said, though his voice was ugly with hate. He flitted his eyes to me, and I saw the question in them.
There were a number of playing troupes in Dytho, with a number of very talented players.
If my former lover had been a member of those, I might have questioned it.
But he was the son of a nobleman, and no proficient actor.
Robar had nothing to do with Seera’s death.
I could feel it, even if it wasn’t written on his eyes like a deer scampering from a hunter.
I knew our connection was over. Unwritten. And yet, it softened something to know he wasn’t her killer.
Davian did not respond, only draining his cup, and levelling a stare at the two men. “I promised Annie I would introduce her to the important members of the city,” he said. He looked pointedly at each of them, and then started to turn us. “Have a pleasant evening.”
I nodded in return, which meant I was still looking, even as Davian turned his back to them in yet another obvious slight.
Vasile waved. “And to you, Davi.” Davian tensed, but did not look back. Then the man winked at me. “Good luck, doodle.”
I swivelled, keeping my eyes firmly wherever Davian was leading us. I didn’t look at Robar again. I didn’t want to. Whatever Vasile knew, and he knew far more than I was comfortable with, I wouldn’t add fire to guesses by offering my former lover a final look.
Davian turned us towards the open doors leading to the garden. His hand on my back was as rigid as he continued to move us towards the exit.
We had both heard Vasile’s nickname. Davi. Not with the heavy ‘a’ sound that accompanied his name as a servant of Pain, but light. Ravi, but with a 'D'. It was intentional, and Davian had clearly not expected him to know his secret.
He clearly also suspected something between Robar and I. How closely had he been watching me that night in the taverna? To have recognised Robar, and seen my response to him. Had he realised I had come there for him?
Surely, there was little to be made of that. Straws only, with no thread to bind them. Without Robar’s witness, I was in the clear. My lonely memory of us was an alibi against any accusation.
Davian stepped out into the night, and helped me down the low step from the ballroom to the garden. I looked at him again, properly for the first time since he had rescued me, and realised that fire had not gone out. He looked as angry as ever as I stepped shakily onto the paving stones.
“Are you alright?” he asked me.
I blinked. Was I? The whole thing had been such a whirlwind that I hardly knew the answer to that myself. “I think so.”
He nodded, once, curt. “Keep walking. Smile. We’re just taking a walk around the gardens.”
Then he discarded his cup and led us away, his anger simmering to a boil as my hands shook on the cup in my own hand, and the other held my dress.
Wisdom’s gardens were lovely. Understated, and more wild than I would have expected from a House that enjoyed structure.
Each feature had its deliberate zone—the lawn with its bird table, the shrubbery, the flowers set into beds—but within it, everything was a little overgrown, allowed to spread roots and multiply untamed.
The twenty or so individuals who had taken to the outdoors, for the benefits of the tiny breeze and the views of the stars and grass, stuck mainly to the paved area outside the rear of the house.
Within a few seconds, we had passed those, a placid smile obediently on my lips, and were into the shrubbery, the uneven rocks making for unsteady footholds under my heels.
Davian slowed, but did not stop, keeping us weaving through the shrubbery until we reached the back corner of it, and a tree framed with a bench all the way around its trunk.
A small courtyard of stone sat at its base, and it was unlit but for the moonlight, and out of sight but for the foxes and owls that stalked the city at night.
I could see nothing of the party but the haze of light in the distance, and the empty curtained windows upstairs. I could hear little but the laughter caught in the breeze. I exhaled properly for the first time since entering the House of Wisdom.
Davian’s hand left my back, and he swivelled and fell back onto the bench. “Fucking hells.”
“Are you alright?” I asked, echoing his own question.
He laughed. It was too high pitched and too hysterical to be natural. “Not really, no. I came back from getting drinks to find you gone, and stuck between that man and Granville of all fucking people.” Davian growled. “That weasel. He knows something.”
“Granville?” I asked. I’d heard that name before. Where?
“The other man,” he replied, oblivious to my breathlessness. “I told you he was a lender. Fingers in every pie, probably has enough spies to rival Wisdom.”
I swallowed. So Vasile, the man in the taverna, was really Granville. He hadn’t wanted me to know that, at least, not until after I’d left. He had cut off Robar from trying to give his real name. I couldn’t make out his true character at all. “I’ve met him before.”
Davian’s eyes shot up. “What?”
“The night I saw Robar in the Fancy. He was there. Except he told me his name was Vasile. He seemed fine, just a normal guy.”
“Vasile. Like the river?” Davian tested the name. “I’ve only known him as Granville. What does that mean? Why the fuck was he there?”
“I have no idea. He said something about… an investment? I can’t quite recall. Maybe he owns the taverna?”
“Maybe,” Davian grunted. “Did you tell him anything?”
“My name,” I admitted. “Little else. Nothing about Robar. But he seemed to have guessed there was some connection.”
“Fuck,” he replied. “This can’t be good.”
“Granville,” I said again. More memories of that night came back to me. Later ones. “I’m certain one of Robar’s friends mentioned a Granville. Someone had told him about me. Or, at least, told him about an Ekrissian.”
Davian sat with this in silence. An owl hooted, and I finished the cup of ale.
I rolled my shoulders, reading into Davian’s quiet. “Do you think he’s involved? With Jusia’s death? With all of it?”
Davian buried his head in his hands. “I don’t know. I think it’s unlikely. Granville doesn’t deal in death. That’s not his style, he wouldn’t have been allowed to continue if the sunners caught wind of anything that bad. But if Robar owed him money, he’ll have some kind of leverage.”
I stepped around and took a step beside him.
Our hips touched, the circle of the bench keeping the rest of our bodies angled away.
I stared into the nearby bush with unseeing eyes.
These last two months had been so heavy, so fast, so terrifying, that even this peaceful edge of a garden felt full of monsters.
Davian straightened, dropping his hands to lie between his legs. “I don’t like that he knows you.”
I grimaced. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not blaming you,” he said with a growl. “I just… I saw you there, Granville touching your arm. Robar looking at you up and down.” He stopped, and for a moment, I wasn’t sure if he would say anything else. Then he tipped his head back against the tree and spoke into the night. “I hated it.”
Immediately, we were back to thin ice. To tiptoeing uncertainty. From the side I had chosen, I could only see the silver mask, and the moonlight bouncing off it. “I didn’t like it much either.”
“I could kill him. Kill them both.”
It was so monotonous that it felt almost serious. “For what?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, the hoot of an owl accompanying him. “You.”
“Me.”
“Manipulating you. Hurting you.”
I shook my head. “It wouldn’t help.”
“If they are involved in all this. It might.”
He turned on a knife edge, looking down at me. And I saw those same flames of rage, the furnace of hatred and vengeance turning him into something else. He stared at me, and I did not recoil.