4. N #4
She blinked at that, clearly expecting to haggle.
“What’s more, if you exceed my expectations, there will be additional rewards.”
He could hear his wife now; You catch more vermin with sweet bait than chasing them around the room with clubs.
Should he? Well, why not. She was pleasant to look at, and his wife might enjoy her company—which would free him of some of the need to cosset her.
“And if you exceed my expectations by a great deal, there will be a permanent place in my household as first lady in waiting for my wife, which will include the first degree of ennobling, a private suite, and food from our table.”
Nora’s expression wavered, a mix of hope and skepticism.
This would be the sort of security that no one from her birth-class ever saw.
He smiled to himself. The long-term promises would bind her in more than the ration coupons, would draw her into throwing her lot in with him, and protecting his interests.
Amazing what a few well-chosen words could do …
a vague promise of a place at his table tomorrow.
She would have to deliver her part up front, well before it became his turn to reply.
He watched her head come up, and she gave him a wary look as she drew the second conclusion from his offer …
ennoblement, dresses, a private room … a lady in waiting.
Well, there were different kinds of waiting a lady could do …
such as waiting for the ladywife to go to sleep, before the lord made his visit.
It wasn’t really what Haldeen had been offering, but Nora was attractive, and by then, who knew how cold his wife’s bed might be?
Best to keep his options open. He watched as she worked through the implications.
She didn’t look pleased by the thought, but after the initial skittishness … she hadn’t bolted either.
He placed the small writing table where she could sign …
normally a servant’s task … but a few small inconveniences to ensure there were no witnesses.
She read the contract carefully, twice over, then dipped the pen in the inkwell, and began writing in a neat and firm hand.
He leaned around to see what she added. Every damned thing he’d promised on the spur of the moment …
the cursed woman had an excellent memory.
On the one hand that meant that he was not going to be able to trick her. On the other—it meant that, on the surface at least—she was going to be perfect for the job, Provided at least that she could get the subject … it … to trust her. One less thing to worry about.
Nora finished writing, blew on the ink to dry it, then turned it around for him to review.
He nodded, and she signed, adding a small flourish.
He quickly scrawled his own name, then let out the breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding.
He caught a light whiff of perfume. Something light and floral.
He took the leather folder from the desk and began counting ration coupons.
“One hundred twenty-eight,” he said.
He handed them to her. She counted them again, for good measure, something left him feeling both irritated and unsurprised. He used a whisper of magic to melt the wax, then pressed his seal down onto the contract, making it binding.
“My copy to register?” she said.
He swore inwardly. He had not counted on this.
The prose and terms very quickly departed from those of a standard services contract.
The drafting made the legalese dense as lead, but a talented legal mind would be able to parse and infer what she was doing for him.
Eyebrows would go up if it was read too closely, and he was certainly outside of his authority.
Best to be innocuous and obscure. Just another skilled trades contract. Routine. Nothing to see here.
He shrugged. He set the contract next to a blank sheet, and began the incantations to bind the one to the other. He’d forgotten about the alarms, and they blinked as the ambient magic flowed, making each a perfect copy of the other. He started to roll one up, until she interrupted him.
“Please” she asked, “may I?”
He passed over both copies, and damned if that woman didn’t read every word of both, making sure they were perfect matches.
When she was done, he rolled up one copy with an air of nonchalance he didn’t feel. He gave the copy to her with a little bow. He meant the gesture to be sardonic, a trifle to indulge a subordinate.
“All right,” she said, “that’s done. Now, just what have I gotten myself into?”
He took a deep breath. He and Andaleisia had discussed how to handle this. It had been his idea to bury the awkward parts under the thick coating of pure and undiluted balderdash. She advised him to stick to the truth as much as possible. Less to remember that way.
“You may not be old enough to remember when I was tasked with creating a Gate to another world?” he said, making it a question.
She nodded. “I was a child, but yes. And if I recall, it worked, but the city was—Aubergine?”
He nodded in turn.
“Yes. Aubergine. The city came under a massive Predator attack, and all the underclasses rushed it and—it fell.”
She frowned in thought. “I suppose I just assumed that once the city went down, the Gate failed and that was the end of that experiment. I don’t recall hearing anything more about—” Now she looked at him keenly.
Truth so far. Now for the balderdash. “While calibrating a test instrument, a routine use of one of the Transfer Gates, actually, we ummm”—he paused to invent a technical-sounding and utterly meaningless word—“detuned a Gate by accident, somehow linked to that World Gate,
and brought through a living being from that other world.”
Nora stared at him, incredulous. “You did what?”
He prepared to start again, and she cut him off with her hand.
“A person. A real, live person. From another world?” Her pupils dilated with excitement. Can’t fake that, he thought.
“Yes. She isn’t entirely alien, although to look at her you’d think she was. She speaks a kind of gutter-tongue. We have her here, and we need you to teach her how to speak properly, and learn as much as you can from the list, as quickly as you can.”
Nora took a very long time to work through that …. “She speaks, sort of speaks?”