The Mask of Mirrors by M. Carrick; (different e readers txt) 📕

She remembered a time when House Traementis had been as powerful as the Indestor family. They had held a seat in the Cinquerat, the five-person council that ruled Nadežra, and charters that allowed them to conduct trade, contract mercenaries, control guilds. Every variety of wealth, power, and prestige in Nadežra had been theirs. Now, despite Donaia’s best efforts and her late husband’s before her, it had come to this: scrabbling at one Dusk Road trade charter as though she could milk enough blood from that stone to pay off all the Traementis debts.

Debts almost entirely owned by Mettore Indestor.

“And you expect me to trust my caravan to guards you provide?” she growled at the proposal, her pen nib digging in hard enough to tear the paper. “Ha! Who’s going to protect it from them? Will they even wait for bandits, or just sack the wagons themselves?”

Leaving Donaia with the loss, a pack of angry investors, and debts she could no longer cover. Then Mettore would swoop in like one of his thrice-damned hawks to swallow whole what remained of House Traementis.

Try as she might, though, she couldn’t see another option. She couldn’t send the caravan out unguarded—Vraszenian bandits were a legitimate concern—but the Indestor family held the Caerulet seat in the Cinquerat, which gave Mettore authority over military and mercenary affairs. Nobody would risk working with a house Indestor had a grudge against—not when it would mean losing a charter, or worse.

Meatball’s head rose with a sudden whine. A moment later a knock came at the study door, followed by Donaia’s majordomo. Colbrin knew better than to interrupt her when she was wrestling with business, which meant he judged this interruption important.

He bowed and handed her a card. “Alta Renata Viraudax?” Donaia asked, shoving Meatball’s wet snout out of her lap when he sniffed at the card. She flipped it as if the back would provide some clue to the visitor’s purpose. Viraudax wasn’t a local noble house. Some traveler to Nadežra?

“A young woman, Era Traementis,” her majordomo said. “Well-mannered. Well-dressed. She said it concerned an important private matter.”

The card fluttered to the floor. Donaia’s duties as head of House Traementis kept her from having much of a social life, but the same could not be said for her son, and lately Leato had been behaving more and more like his father. Ninat take him—if her son had racked up some gambling debt with a foreign visitor…

Colbrin retrieved the card before the dog could eat it, and handed it back to her. “Should I tell her you are not at home?”

“No. Show her in.” If her son’s dive into the seedier side of Nadežra had resulted in trouble, she would at least rectify his errors before stringing him up.

Somehow. With money she didn’t have.

She could start by not conducting the meeting in a freezing study. “Wait,” she said before Colbrin could leave. “Show her to the salon. And bring tea.”

Donaia cleaned the ink from her pen and made a futile attempt to brush away the brindled dog hairs matting her surcoat. Giving that up as a lost cause, she tugged on her gloves and straightened the papers on her desk, collecting herself by collecting her surroundings. Looking down at her clothing—the faded blue surcoat over trousers and house scuffs—she weighed the value of changing over the cost of making a potential problem wait.

Everything is a tallied cost these days, she thought grimly.

“Meatball. Stay,” she commanded when the hound would have followed, and headed directly to the salon.

The young woman waiting there could not have fit the setting more perfectly if she had planned it. Her rose-gold underdress and cream surcoat harmonized beautifully with the gold-shot peach silk of the couch and chairs, and the thick curl trailing from her upswept hair echoed the rich wood of the wall paneling. The curl should have looked like an accident, an errant strand slipping loose—but everything else about the visitor was so elegant it was clearly a deliberate touch of style.

She was studying the row of books on their glass-fronted shelf. When Donaia closed the door, she turned and dipped low. “Era Traementis. Thank you for seeing me.”

Her curtsy was as Seterin as her clipped accent, one hand sweeping elegantly up to the opposite shoulder. Donaia’s misgivings deepened at the sight of her. Close to her son’s age, and beautiful as a portrait by Creciasto, with fine-boned features and flawless skin. Easy to imagine Leato losing his head over a hand of cards with such a girl. And her ensemble did nothing to comfort Donaia’s fears—the richly embroidered brocade, the sleeves an elegant fall of sheer silk. Here was someone who could afford to bet and lose a fortune.

That sort was more likely to forgive or forget a debt than come collecting… unless the debt was meant as leverage for something else.

“Alta Renata. I hope you will forgive my informality.” She brushed a hand down her simple attire. “I did not expect visitors, but it sounded like your matter was of some urgency. Please, do be seated.”

The young woman lowered herself into the chair as lightly as mist on the river. Seeing her, it was easy to understand why the people of Nadežra looked to Seteris as the source of all that was stylish and elegant. Fashion was born in Seteris. By the time it traveled south to Seteris’s protectorate, Seste Ligante, then farther south still, across the sea to Nadežra, it was old and stale, and Seteris had moved on.

Most Seterin visitors behaved as though Nadežra was nothing more than Seste Ligante’s backwater colonial foothold on the Vraszenian continent and merely setting foot on the streets would foul them with the mud of the River Dežera. But Renata’s delicacy looked like hesitation, not condescension. She said, “Not urgent, no—I do apologize if I gave that impression. I confess, I’m not certain how to even begin this conversation.”

She paused, hazel eyes searching