House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)(24)

Carien sets down her tea, clasps her fingers together and leans closer to me, conspiratorial. Dark brown curls have escaped their glittering hair pins and they cast winding shadows along her cream throat. “I want your bat.”

The Splinterfist head was right about House Eline’s involvement. I draw back from her, my upper lip twisting in a snarl of disgust.

“He’d make a beautiful subject,” she continues. “All that contrast.” Her fingers uncurl to dance patterns in the air.

I freeze, trying to understand what she has just said. I had visions of her peeling the skin from Jannik with a silver knife, and now it seems she wants nothing more than to pin an image of him up alongside her kitty-girls and serving Hobs. She wants to capture him in her savage colours. The sweat turning cold on my back leaves me feeling clammy and ill, and perhaps I have misunderstood everything. My thoughts crystallize. “Wait, you want to paint him?”

“Do you think he’d agree to sit?”

I’m about to tell her she’d do better to ask him herself, when I remember who I am supposed to be, and what has been said between us. The way she shivered when she talked of touching the vampires. Her interest in Jannik still disturbs me. Never trust them, Felicita. “I could tell him to do it, if I wished.”

“Ah,” says Carien, and she draws back with a viperous ease. “And what would make you wish such a thing?”

We are back to playing games. There are vampires dead on the rubbish heaps. We are not tea girls or artists or poets. We are House pieces on the game board. “I seek an audience – a business meeting – with your husband.”

“And in exchange you’ll bring me your bat?”

I shrug. “I’ll give you the opportunity to discuss the matter with him.”

Carien covers her scowl by taking another sip of her tea. “I thought you would make him agree to sit for me. Is it really so much to ask for the damn thing to sit still for a few hours?”

“He has better uses than as a model. I need him in the Pelimburg offices. If he feels he hasn’t the time to waste … .”

“Your glorified bookkeeper,” she says. “I don’t see how he’s any more important to you than one of the serving Hobs.”

“And indeed, he isn’t, but he is still mine.” I stand and take out my purse, scattering brass on the wood.

“You’re leaving,” she says flatly. She thinks she has me trapped here, coach-less.

“I am.” That wildness, that Dash-like thing that draws me to her, I must never forget that it is also dangerous. I have no desire to be caught again in the webs of someone else’s schemes.

She thinks I am a fool she can cow by taking away my security? I’m not some little girl lost who can’t so much as hire a public carriage. I walk out into the narrow alleyway. It’s dark now, an afternoon thunderstorm is gathering and the air is electric.

Somehow, I doubt I’ll hear from Carien again. And her interest in Jannik that so unnerved me – it was merely her desire for some new toy to occupy her time, a thing to paint and put on show. That’s all.



*



The next morning before breakfast I gather my sketchpad and inks, and make my way down to the gardens. Our odd meeting has inspired me to go back to my botanicals. Master Bermond, our head gardener, sees my approach, and has one of his staff bring my folding stool from the shed. He takes it from the boy with a flourish worthy of any gentleman, and waits for me with gruff indulgence.

“And which poor vegetable takes your fancy today?” He is not a man prone to smiles, but his good humour skates just under his voice. He finds my desire to paint and catalogue all the plants in the gardens a source of endless amusement.

I smile at him. “The purple bush – the one that’s just come into flower?” I point at the rambling shrub with the small compound leaves. Tiny butterfly-like flowers of a deep lilac are blooming between the bright green foliage. I see it everywhere around MallenIve, throwing vast sprays of flowers over the walls, or growing wild in the parks. It is not a plant familiar to me from Pelimburg.

“Sleepseed,” says Master Bermond. “Sometimes called pass-us-by.”

“And why is that?” I settle down on my stool, set my small easel out and prepare my inks.

“The Hobs say it wards off lightning.”

“Useful.” I draw a clean black line. With the first mark now made, my task is set. I concentrate on the bush, on the placement and size of the leaves, on the intricacies and individualities of the plant. “In a city like MallenIve, at least.” The summers here are punctuated with regular storms, brief and ferocious. Many of the houses have tall rods to charm the lightning away from their roofs. “If unlikely”

Master Bermond warms to his talk. At first, when I came out into the gardens to begin my new botanical, he found me an insufferable irritation, but soon discovered that I wanted to hear all he could tell me about the various plants. In our way, we have become friends, united in our desire for knowledge. Or rather; my desire for it, and his desire to share it.

I keep note of all he tells me and leave room next to my picture for his words. Later, I will go to the kitchens and ask Mrs. Palmer and her bevy of girls for the women’s knowledge, which is always different from men’s. Sometimes surprisingly so. Like Master Bermond was when I first had the temerity to enter their domain, the kitchen staff were wary and close-lipped. Now they share their secrets, and reward me for my interest with a mother’s wry amusement. As if I were a curious child, Mrs. Palmer hands me cups of strong tea and buttered griddle cakes topped with fig jam while I listen to the kitchen’s wisdom. Even the head housekeeper Mrs. Winterborn – a woman with a narrow, stern face who manages to frighten even me – sometimes peers in to add her own thoughts.