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

“Yes, yes, noble cause and all that. I only meant that she’s interesting. Don’t get in a pother, girl.”

Carinci waved Fadrin to push her onward before Donaia could take exception to being called “girl.” With a shake of her head, Donaia went to support Giuna in a conversation with a delta son, leaving Renata to begin her own reconnaissance.

That was when she saw Derossi Vargo.

He stood on the threshold between the ballroom and the gardens, the light limning him from behind and hiding his face mostly in shadow. He hadn’t yet spotted Renata; his attention was fixed on Carinci. So fixed that Fadrin almost rolled her chair right through him before he collected himself enough to step aside.

The light caught his expression then, stone hard and revealing nothing. But his body wasn’t as well-masked: His hand stretched out as though he yearned to stop her, then clenched into a fist. He struck his thigh in… anger? Disgust? With Carinci? With himself? Renata couldn’t tell.

After a moment’s hesitation, she approached him. Halfway there, the light caught something else: a flash of color on his lapel that quickly scuttled into the shadows of his high, folded collar.

It startled her enough that she said exactly what she was thinking. “Did your lapel pin just run for cover?”

Tearing his gaze from Fadrin wheeling Carinci away, Vargo glanced at his collar, then at Renata. His stony expression relaxed into laughter. “No. That’s Peabody.”

She raised an eyebrow. Still chuckling, Vargo dipped his fingers into the shadows. When he drew his hand back, a large spider with symmetrical splashes of sapphire, indigo, emerald, and crimson across his abdomen was riding the back of Vargo’s glove. “Alta Renata Viraudax, Master Peabody. Say hello, Peabody.” Vargo raised two fingers, and the spider, to Renata’s utter astonishment, raised its third set of legs and presented its colorful abdomen in response. Vargo stroked a finger over its fuzzy midsection. “Good boy.”

It was unquestionably the same thing she’d noticed on Vargo’s coat at the Gloria, riding quietly enough that she’d mistaken it for a pin. It was also the gaudiest spider she’d seen in her life: a king peacock, the emblem of the Vraszenian Varadi clan. She’d heard about them, but never seen one.

“That… is quite eccentric of you. Do you call him Peabody because of the peacock coloration?”

“No. It’s because he was about the size of a pea when I got him.” Vargo tried to coax Peabody back into the shadows of his collar, but the spider was having none of it. He turned about and continued to wave his legs at Renata in a complex pattern that was probably very appealing to lady spiders. “Stop flirting, you old reprobate, before someone sees you and decides you need to be smooshed.”

His choice of word almost made her laugh. She’d seen the elegant man-about-town, the efficient businessman, and a fleeting glimpse of the crime lord Sedge worked for, but “smooshed” made him sound briefly boyish. He seemed genuinely fond of his pet.

A few more nudges got the spider to scuttle back to his hiding place, and with him went any softness in Vargo’s expression. Drawing Renata to one side, he said, “I would ask you to dance, but I think that would do my reputation more favors than yours. I don’t suppose you’ve spoken with anyone from Indestor yet? Mettore and Mezzan might be unapproachable, but they’ve got more cousins than Mettore knows what to do with. It might be worth your time to charm one. Breccone Indestris, for example. He’ll be the inscriptor for the register.”

Renata wasn’t about to admit that her plans for the evening went well beyond chatting up someone who’d married into the house. “Of course. Eret Indestor’s activities must involve more than just himself; I have some ideas for where to hunt evidence of that.”

“While I wander around being a model curiosity for Faella Coscanum to gossip about, in the hopes someone besides you might speak with me.” Stepping back, he swept the skirts of his coat aside and favored her with a bow even an etiquette teacher couldn’t fault. “I bid you good evening, alta. May you see the Face and not the Mask.” Coat swinging and bootheels clicking, he sauntered back into the ballroom as though he had every right to be there.

Settling the mask of her persona in place, Renata went forth to do battle with high society… and plan a break-in.

Isla Indestor, the Pearls: Pavnilun 5

High society came first, and she made good use of the next four bells.

Mettore Indestor might have set himself against House Traementis, but all the delta gentry who administered charters on his behalf were present for the celebration, and they weren’t as inflexible. While Renata didn’t expect she could turn anyone directly against him, she didn’t have to. Many people still wanted to hear about the fight with the Rook from someone who’d been there. She was in the middle of her third recounting of Mezzan’s embarrassment when the servants invited all the visitors to gather in the ballroom for the announcement of the betrothal.

The two families stood in the gallery above, a long line of Indestor on the right, Coscanum on the left. Seeing them truly hammered home the dwindled size of House Traementis: There were older generations and younger, husbands and wives married in, cousins to every degree. Most Nadežran families didn’t keep quite so many people on their register, allowing more distant kin to break off and form their own lineages, but the privileges granted by an ennoblement charter meant that some houses found it advantageous to band together in large numbers.

Renata stood with Donaia, Leato, and Giuna, not even the half step behind that an unregistered cousin might expect. The color in Giuna’s cheeks hadn’t faded—possibly because she hadn’t left the dance floor since they’d arrived, floating from partner to partner. She was more intent