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

After a moment, the door cracked slightly, and a suspicious eye showed in the gap. “And your friend?”

“Orrucio,” Grey said, suppressing a smile as Leato coughed. “I would not disturb the household. Is there somewhere we can speak?”

A pause. Then she said, “You won’t disturb anyone.” The door swung wider, and she gestured them in.

Idusza Polojny was young and pretty, with big dark eyes and her hair braided in a gentle curve over her left shoulder. She could have been any street-seller or housemaid. But the wariness in her eyes suggested to Grey that she had a knife on her somewhere to protect her from the strangers she was letting into her house.

Had he seen her at the Aerie, working in the laundry? Probably. But he didn’t remember her—and that, more than anything, made him believe she was Stadnem Anduske.

That, and the way her gaze fixed sharply on him. “You’re the hawk asking after me.”

No offer of a seat, nor tea. Not even the grudging hospitality her family had shown. The parlour she led them into felt nothing like that warm house; it was clean and well-furnished, but looked like a painting rather than a home. “Yes. Though I am curious why you let yourself be found.” She hardly seemed eager to talk.

She gave him a sour look. “My mother believes every word from a szorsa’s mouth. I am not so credulous, but she would not stop insisting I contact you, and in the end…” Idusza shrugged. “This is easier.”

“A szorsa?” Grey asked, even as Leato breathed an astonished “Oh.” Grey shot him a dirty look. What had Leato done?

Idusza stared at Grey, then at Leato. “So you are not the one who paid her. This one did?”

“He… doesn’t like patterners very much.” Leato gave an embarrassed laugh. “Look, I—I asked the szorsa for advice, and she offered to help. What did she tell your mother that made you come forward at last?”

Idusza seemed willing to answer him, so Grey kept his mouth shut and tried not to seethe. “She said I might some great injustice set right. And my mother swore my womb would run dry, my looks fade, and my hair never in a wife’s braids be bound if I ignored a szorsa’s advice. As though I care for such things.” Her expression straddled the divide between indignation and petulance. “What I care for is knowing why you have gone to such effort.”

Grey knew only too well the look Leato cast his way. It said the man was about to hang permission and ask for forgiveness later.

“You know about the Fiangiolli fire? My friend’s brother died in it—”

“I know nothing of that,” Idusza snapped, too quickly for it to be anything but a lie.

“Of course,” Leato soothed. “But you were working for the Vigil at the time. Maybe you know something about who planted the black powder in the warehouse, or who set it off. Or who sent my friend a note about it, recently?”

Her arms crossed, warding herself. The silence stretched like a thread on the verge of snapping, until finally she said, “There’s no point dancing around this. You know I am Stadnem Anduske, and you think we set the fire. We did not. That was Novrus and Indestor, fighting through their lapdogs.”

Leato winced, but gamely tried again. “We don’t think you or your… friends… were involved. We only want—”

“Enough,” Grey said roughly. She might look soft, but Idusza was too hardened to give anything away.

Unless he did something to throw her off. “Strange that one of the Stadnem Anduske should play house with a chalk-faced Lig,” he said, one arm sweeping at the lovely, unused sitting room. “A flush one, by the looks of it. Perhaps we should wait and ask him what he knows about you.”

Even without the neighborhood gossip, he might have guessed. There were no heirlooms, no baubles picked up at a dozen stops along the Dawn and Dusk Roads. No weavings handed down from her gammer, the colorful silk threads faded to precious silver by time. This was no residence, nor a Stadnem Anduske safe house. Grey knew a love nest when he saw one.

The crossed arms came loose. Grey saw it coming, and let it happen; she shoved him back two good steps. Nobody worked as a laundress without building muscle. “Righting some great injustice,” she spat. “What know you of that, slip-knot? You work for those who beat us into the mud, while my man turns his back on his own f—”

She bit off her words, but not fast enough. Leato’s sudden intake of breath broke the silence that followed.

“Mezzan,” he whispered. “You’re the lover he’s been hiding away.”

It sounded insane. Mezzan Indestor, taking up with a Vraszenian lover? The moons would set in the northern sea first.

But Idusza wasn’t denying it.

“Get out,” she said, her voice trembling. With rage, with fear—maybe both. “Whatever you want, you will not find it. Get out!”

Leato started to speak, but Grey seized his arm and dragged him toward the door, fumbling it open with his free hand and steering them both onto the landing. “We are very sorry for having—”

The door slammed shut.

“—troubled you.” Sighing, Grey slumped against the wall. “That was… enlightening. But not in the way I expected.”

“Do you think it was Mezzan?” Leato whispered, cheeks pale and bloodless as he stared at the red door.

“Her lover? She admitted it.”

“No. Who set off the powder.”

Grey was glad for the wall’s support. “Why would he…”

“Because he’s with the Anduske? Or framing them? Or it was on his father’s orders, or against those orders, out of rebellion? Maybe just because he’s an asshole. I should have skewered him on my blade.”

When Grey couldn’t dredge up a response, Leato headed down the stairs, each step jolting the whole structure. “It doesn’t matter. I know enough. She’s Stadnem Anduske and Mezzan’s having an affair with her; once that comes out, Indestor will be humiliated.”

Grey took the steps rapidly, edging ahead enough to block his