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I stifled an impulse to check my boots for filth from the streets. “My lady Alaric.”
She smiled demurely as the maid reappeared with a tray carrying a crystal jug and fluted goblets with white spirals frozen in their glass stems. My hostess studied me openly as the girl served us both water, as is Lescari custom, so I returned the compliment.
There are many women who look perfection at twenty paces but fewer than half look so enthralling at ten, when the counterfeits of powder and paint, cut and drape are revealed. This was that rarest of beauties, a woman who would still be flawless when you were close enough to taste the scent adorning her graceful neck. Her complex coiffure, not a hair out of place, was the deep rich chestnut of a prize horse. Her lightly powdered skin glowed like the palest ceramic, broad high forehead and elegant nose above lips with the colour and velvet softness of rose petals. Her eyes were a blue-violet deep as an evening sea and dark and wise with experience, one of the few things giving a hint of her age. I guessed her older than me but couldn’t have said whether by two years or ten, and that suggestion of superiority made her allure both more tempting and more daunting. She smiled slowly at me as the maid left the room and the heat I felt round the back of my neck had nothing to do with the weather.
“You can call me Charoleia,” she said; lifting her glass in a brief salute.
“Thank you.” I raised mine but didn’t drink. A man might wish to drown in the depths of those peerless eyes but I wasn’t about to risk water from any north side well. “That’s how I think of you,” I admitted. “Livak told me your various travelling names but I don’t think I kept them straight.” I hadn’t imagined I’d ever have business with a woman Livak said had a different guise for every country and another for every complex scheme she devised to separate fools from their gold.
“No matter. And you can drink that.” Her smile widened to betray an entrancing dimple in one cheek. “I send the boy to buy water from the Den Bradile springs every morning. You won’t spend your Festival stuck in the privy because of me.”
I took a sip. The water was cool and untainted, black fig sliced in it for freshness. “I trust you had a good voyage?” I wasn’t quite sure how to get to the point of my visit. Charoleia was one of the many friends Livak had scattered across the Old Empire, all living on the outside of law and custom. I’d met a few of them and had found them mostly shabby, straightforward to the point of bluntness and be cursed to the consequences. But Charoleia was a lady fit to adorn an Imperial arm.
“The trip was uneventful.” She set aside her glass and smoothed the skirts of her pale lavender gown. Fine muslin was appropriate for the heat, but it’s cruelly unflattering to so many women. On Charoleia the delicate cloth simultaneously enhanced and discreetly blurred the sensuous curves beneath. “How is the young D’Alse
“Some goods were stolen but we don’t know who was behind it,” I said frankly. “Could you help find out?”
Charoleia arched a delicately enquiring eyebrow. “What makes you ask that?”
I leaned back against the cushions and matched her gaze for gaze. “Livak says you’ve a network of contacts in every city between the ocean and the Great Forest.” Livak also openly admired this woman’s intelligence and my beloved isn’t given to empty praise of anyone. “I imagine you’ll get news from places no Sieur’s man would get a welcome.”
That enchanting dimple fleeted in her cheek. “I’ll expect to be paid for my trouble.”
I nodded. “That would be only fair.”
Charoleia rose with consummate grace and crossed to a stout cupboard set in a far corner. She unlocked it with a key on a chain at her wrist. “And there’s my courier’s fee for this to settle.” She removed a small wooden box and opened it to show me a battered copper armring. So she had it.
Similar to the one I wore in form only, this one had been made in the last days of the Old Empire, had crossed the ocean on the arm of one of Temar’s still sleeping companions and by whatever route had come back to end up in a Relshazri trader’s strong room. When Elietimm enchantment had overwhelmed my waking mind, Temar’s sleeping consciousness had woken and gone in search of this ancient piece, whoever was trapped within it calling out in a voice only he could hear.
“What is your usual fee?” I kept my feelings hidden behind an expressionless face. Truth be told, they were a fine mixture of satisfaction and apprehension.
Charoleia smiled with feline grace. “How much is this trinket worth to you?”
I pursed my lips. What would be a fair price, for me and for her? Living this elegant didn’t come cheap after all, and I had some personal resources to draw on before I’d need to make an appeal to Messire’s coffers, but there are rules to every game. “Its value’s not so much a matter of money.”
“No,” she agreed. “It’s far more important.” She spun the ring on one perfectly manicured forefinger. “This holds the essence of a man in thrall to enchantments generations old.”
“If it’s the right piece.” I’ve played out games of Raven from hopeless-looking positions and won them before now.
“It’s the right piece,” she assured me. “I got every detail from Livak when she passed through Relshaz at Equinox.”
“I do hope so.” I raised a hand in demur as she offered it to me. I wasn’t about to lay a finger on the thing.
“So what is it worth to you?” she repeated softly.
“What’s your price?” I countered.
She took her time replacing the armring in the battered box before leaning back against the cupboard, her face lively with mischief. “A card for the Emperor’s dance on the fifth day of Festival.”
I blinked. “You don’t want much! Half the Demoiselles in the city would sell their little sisters for that.”
“That’s my price.” Charoleia laid a hand on the little box and smiled sweetly. “I’m sure Esquire Camarl would oblige.”
“You want an introduction?” I’d been expecting to haggle over gold but this wrong-footed me. “What would your name be?”
“Lady Alaric will do,” she shrugged. “Dispossessed and orphaned in the battles between Triolle and Marlier, she’s here to try and build a new life for herself, you know how it goes.” Now her accent was flawlessly western Lescari.
“Why does she warrant invitation to Imperial entertainments?” I asked a little desperately.
“Isn’t her matchless beauty sufficient?” she enquired, wide-eyed. “Then again, perhaps she has some family secret, some key information to assist Imperial efforts to halt the warfare brewing between Carluse and Triolle?”
“Do you?” I demanded.
“What do you think?” She dimpled at me.
“I think you’ve a scheme in hand that’ll leave some poor goose well plucked,” I told her bluntly. “If half what Livak’s told me is true, you’ll be gone by the first day of Aft-Summer, leaving empty coffers and shattered dreams littering the city. That’s your affair and Daste
Charoleia’s laugh was surprisingly hearty, a full-throated chuckle with a sensuous edge to it. “I see you have something in common with Livak. But you’re right to cover your own flanks.” She lowered luxuriant lashes for a moment. I let her take her time and drank my water.
“I’ve no game in hand, Halcarion be my witness. I’m here playing a speculation.” She resumed her seat on the daybed, tucking her skirts demurely around sculpted ankles white above silken slippers. “Your Esquire D’Alse