Oracle: The House War: Book Six (7 page)

Jester didn’t particularly like the Master of the Household Staff; he did, on the other hand, admire her. No rank—not even The Terafin’s—was proof against her ire or her suspicion. If she treated the new maids and servants like carpeting that needed to be thoroughly beaten and trod on, she treated anyone that way. She was not particularly fond of the West Wing—but she was not particularly fond of the House Council, either. He knew almost nothing about the Master of the Household Staff, and the servants were incredibly reluctant to talk about her at all—as if she, like ancient creatures of myth, were invoked by the mere mention of her name.

But he knew about her small garden. He knew about what she grew there. He knew that, on three separate occasions, men—always men—had fallen extremely ill shortly after they had overstepped the bounds of their authority. He had not lied to Haval; none of them had been Household Staff. One had died. If The Terafin suspected foul play—and certainly the servants did—she had said, and done, nothing.

But House Terafin harbored men and women of great ambition, as any House did, and she accepted the behavior that did not politically embarrass her House, either externally or internally. She, therefore, had many men of the caliber of Ludgar under her auspices. She had passed them on to Jay.

It wasn’t Jay who had deposited Jester in the Council Chambers as Finch’s adjutant—it was the previous Terafin. He had spoken no more than a handful of words to the woman whose House Name he bore; he had spoken several thousand
about
her, but not in her hearing. She occupied a central role in his thoughts, which he kept largely to himself.

The only exception to that—and it was a rare exception, and prone to make him uncomfortable after the fact—was Finch. He knew where Jay had found Finch; she had found Jester in the same place. He knew that Finch had been sold to the brothel by her family, that she’d been saved as something “special,” and that if she escaped, she had nowhere to go. The only people likely to offer aid were also likely to abuse her in exactly the same fashion, without the need to pay someone else for the privilege.

Speaking to Finch was speaking to someone with a breadth of common experience—and neither of them talked much about that past. Neither of them spoke about Duster. Jester vastly preferred not to speak about unpleasant things; they caused pain, to no one’s amusement or benefit.

But he thought, as he mused in the interminable carriage ride to Ludgar’s, that Haval had observed what Jester himself rarely thought about for long: Finch was important to him. All of the den was, but Finch occupied a space no one else did—or would. He was not, had never been, in love with her; he frankly doubted the existence of that emotion, at least as it pertained to himself. She was like a sister to him; sometimes an older one, sometimes younger. He really never thought more about it than that.

But it was clearly obvious to Haval, and that irked him. Nobody took Jester seriously enough to search for his weaknesses; Haval, almost unobtrusive, had merely noted them. And he had shown, in one baffling and inexplicable meeting, a willingness to use them.

What did he want?

He had asked Jester to work for him. He hadn’t explained in exact terms what he expected, but the specific lack of explanation made clear—to Jester—what that work entailed; subtlety and possible sleight of hand. Jester would not be surprised if it involved more than that and, frankly, of a more dubious legality.

The clothier had waited until Jay left to make his offer of employ. This said something to Jester. He had no doubt that Haval had discussed the possibility with Jay—but every doubt that he had made clear what he wished Jester to achieve. Yet Jay trusted the old man.

Trust was a luxury she could not afford. They were all far too trusting for Jester’s liking; all except Finch, and no one considered Finch naturally suspicious. She wasn’t. She didn’t sort people into trustworthy and untrustworthy; she didn’t appear to make judgments at all. She accepted them as people—and she knew full well what people considered respectable by a vast swathe of humanity were capable of.

He adjusted the ring on his finger. It identified him as ATerafin, but frankly, anyone could wear one, if they could find a jeweler willing to create it. Ring on hand, he generally chose not to wear House colors. All official correspondence was delivered by House messengers; as Jester had not been sent in that capacity he had no desire to appear to be one—although he had, a handful of times in the past, chosen that camouflage when it suited his purposes. Finch had not elected to use the official service, for reasons of her own; Jester was the informal option. Informal or no, Ludgar would be well aware that Jester served—occasionally—as her adjutant; any message he carried would therefore be weighed with that knowledge in mind.

It was not the first time he had been sent to both carry and fetch messages. It was unlikely to be the last. In truth, he enjoyed Ludgar’s company; the man had a sense of humor, something often absent in the pompous and pretentious. He did have a healthy sense of his own importance—but Jester found that true of most of the Terafin merchants, especially those who spent half of their life at sea, as Ludgar did.

He would not have considered Ludgar a threat, although he was well aware that Ludgar could throw his weight around when it suited him; Ludgar was both ambitious and practical. Practical, smart people were generally predictable if one understand the paradigm in which they worked: they took calculated risks, not stupid ones.

Was Ludgar involved?

He had certainly paid court to Finch—in her role as House Council member—when things appeared to be up in the air; he had kept an otherwise respectful distance since then. Very few people were afraid of Finch; very few were not wary of Lucille, and Lucille had practically posted signs on Finch’s forehead warning people off.

Ludgar, however, knew how to charm Lucille. She didn’t trust him, but liked him in spite of herself. He was capable of subtlety when he chose it; he didn’t choose it all that often.

Then again, he was a giant of a man in almost all ways. It was rumored that he hoped for a position equal to Lucille’s or Jarven’s, and Jester admitted it was a possibility—but he privately thought the man would go mad within the month trapped as Jarven was. Jarven was canny, competent, and seemed to care less for his personal dignity—or authority—than the much more voluble Lucille.

Jester didn’t believe it.

L
UDGAR LIVED ON THE Isle. Had he chosen to forgo the more prestigious address, he might have commanded a large manse with equally impressive grounds; on the Isle, all the money in the world couldn’t buy that. Birth might, or marriage—but most of the land was owned by older and wealthier merchant families. Ludgar was not among them, which was perhaps a second reason to admire him. He made no bones about his mean birth; on the contrary, he treated it as a matter of pride.

Pride did not, in any way, make him kinder; it made him more like Haerrad. Were it not for Haerrad’s actions against Teller, Jester would have remained largely neutral toward him; he considered Haerrad to be dangerous, but he was a full-frontal danger. He never pretended to be anything other than he was: ruthless, brutal, domineering. Ludgar was not Haerrad, but he had built a reputation among the Terafin merchants that was similar; Haerrad had the birth and breeding to assume a seat on the House Council. Ludgar did not.

Neither did Teller or Finch—yet they, unlike Ludgar, had been granted that status within Terafin.

The thought made him uneasy today. Jester had accepted The Terafin’s decision—and command—as the act of desperation it was; The Terafin had not offered either Finch or Teller a choice. She had made clear that she wanted Jay as Terafin, and installing both Finch and Teller on the Council was meant to shore up Jay’s claim if The Terafin herself was dead. But he was aware that no other ambitious ATerafin was likely to accept it as easily.

He glanced at the sealed message he carried. Finch seldom chose to correspond with Ludgar, although Ludgar offered her a diffident respect he seldom offered any other member of the House Council. Indeed, he offered the same respect to Lucille and Jarven, and no others that Jester was aware of; he had not been witness to any of the private meetings between The Terafin and Ludgar. Jay hadn’t summoned him to an audience since she’d taken the chair—she’d held three formal audiences in all, and Ellerson had been pinched and oh-so-correct for three days on either side of each.

He grimaced, shying away from thoughts of the domicis when he saw where his thoughts were leading him. Ellerson was Jay’s problem, if he was now a problem that could be solved.

Ludgar, however, was not.

Jester didn’t play politics. He hadn’t lied to Haval, although he had no qualms about doing so; he was lazy, and liked to remain free of entanglements. He kept an eye out for the den, inasmuch as he felt it could be done. Carver had taken the lead there; no one knew as much about the inner workings of a great house than its staff of servants. Not all of the servants cared for Carver’s presence, but all of them accepted it, even the dour and humorless Master of the Household Staff.

But Carver was gone. The specter of his absence haunted that same staff, although only Merry obliquely begged for any news that might come their way.

In the absence of any responsibility, Jester had taken to the life of a well-to-do idle patris; he spent time drinking with some of the younger Senniel bards because he found them disarming and amusing. But it wasn’t their company he craved, although many did; it was the way they could work a room. He watched them.

Jester didn’t expect that people would like him; given his birth and his lack of connections, there was no immediate advantage in even the pretense of collegiality. But he did believe that collegiality was a skill like any other; it could be practiced. It could be learned. He wasn’t particularly interested in being liked as himself; he wasn’t even certain what that meant.

Bards were not considered the apex of political power, but bards could be found gathered wherever the powerful gathered. They offered each other polite, subtle warnings where warnings were necessary; on more than one occasion he had seen them control the flow of liquor, gauging the belligerence of the audience.

Ludgar was, unfortunately, a mean drunk. He was at his most insecure—and therefore least pleasant—when alcohol had been served too freely and the room was too highbrow. It amused Jester to watch; he was not enamored of the people who considered themselves the ruling class, and he took perverse pleasure in their humiliations, large and small.

But Finch was now one of them. He grimaced. Jay was at the head of the class. She hadn’t changed in any obvious ways—behind closed doors. But she was The Terafin. It didn’t matter where she’d found Jester—or Finch, if it came to that. Rath had taken her by the scruff of the neck, and shaken information about The Ten and the various merchant houses into her. It had been a source of frustration and conflict between Rath and Jay, and Jay had acquiesced only—in Jester’s opinion—because she needed a place for the den to live.

She’d found it easier when Teller asked if he could sit in on the lessons, presumably because misery loved company. But Teller found Rath’s knowledge fascinating. He didn’t join Jay out of any sense of long-suffering obligation.

He didn’t join many of the weapons lessons, either. Jester did. Not because he found them fascinating—he had a strong aversion to bruising, which was impossible to avoid—but because he thought it would be practical.

It hadn’t proved as practical as the lock picking. That was one of the few lessons in which Jester had instantly excelled. Rath had also taught them how to pick pockets, cut purses, and sneak into a house through the front door. Jester felt no particular qualms about doing any of these things; Jay, however, did. She allowed theft only when the only other option was starvation. She put the den first—but what she’d wanted for the den was not that they live up to the name.

She’d wanted what they had now.

Jester watched the passing streets slow as the carriage approached its destination. She wanted what they had now, but even she could see that absent fancy clothing and larger fortunes, the games the patriciate played were almost identical to the games the dens in the holdings did. They had to be more subtle than street dens, sure. They had to understand the laws in order to not quite break them.

But the spirit beneath all their polished sophistication was the same. They staked a claim to their turf, and they demolished all challengers. If they were prevented from killing those challengers, it wasn’t because they had scruples—most didn’t, in Jester’s opinion—but because they had so much more to lose if they were caught.

They were much better at not being caught than the dens in the holdings; they didn’t run. They deflected. They sent letters. They held dinner parties and larger entertainments. If they were hunted, they were hunted with care, and with the tools given the rich: the Merchant Authority, the Port Authority, the weight of guilds.

If you bought into the system—if you could afford to do so—and you played by the nebulous social rules of the patriciate, the system had a percentage in keeping you relatively safe. You just needed to understand the game being played. Sometimes—most times—it was like cards. You played the hand you were dealt. But if you were adroit and you could handle misdirection with aplomb, changes could be made. They weren’t without risk, but Jester was insulated by House Terafin. He’d misplayed his hand once or twice in the early years, and he’d been burned—but Jay had protected him from the worst of it: he still had the House Name.

He believed he would always have that, and he learned from his mistakes. He spent more time with the bards. He learned how to give offense in a way that made it difficult for the offended man—or woman—to acknowledge it; he learned the subtleties of the interaction. He learned when power was theoretical, and when it was an act of consensus, a delicate balance of unspoken agreement.

People consented to be ruled. Rath had said that, time and again—but in Jester’s youth, no consent had been asked, and none required. He’d had no desire to end up in a brothel, and little choice; he was physically weaker, he had no protectors, and he was therefore at the mercy of those who were stronger. He’d come, with observation and time, to understand that Rath had been right: people with money consented to be both bullied and ruled.

 • • • 

Ludgar’s single nod to his seafaring past was the attendant who answered the door. He was not, precisely, a domicis; nor was he by any stretch of imagination a patrician steward. He was first mate to Ludgar’s captain, a scarred, windburned man who was missing a tooth. He kept his mouth shut for the most part, and the tooth wasn’t prominent, but it was obvious to Jester. As obvious was the fact that he was not comfortable in the clothing these duties on the Isle demanded; nor was his Weston as smooth and polished as Jester’s had become.

Jester liked the man better for it. Servants were never addressed directly; Jester offered a casual nod and his most winning smile. “Ivarr.”

The man grinned back, relaxing. In repose he looked infinitely more dangerous; he slid out of the confining element of patriciate servant, which suited him poorly. What was left was a man more comfortable with daggers on a heaving deck than cutlery at a dining table.

“Jester. It’s been a while since you’ve been sent to fetch and carry.”

“Not nearly long enough,” Jester replied.

“You’re here for himself?”

“I am. And as recompense for my service as messenger boy, I’ve taken the liberty of procuring one of The Terafin’s finer vintages.” He withdrew a bottle from the folds of his cloak and showed it to Ivarr; he didn’t, however, hand it off.

Ivarr whistled. “Taken the liberty, have you?”

“Aye.”

“They’ll notice that one’s gone missing, mark my words.”

Jester shrugged. “It’s early enough in the morning I thought I’d give Ludgar incentive to get out of bed. He was out late last night.”

Ivarr frowned. “I don’t know where you heard that, but you need a better grade of informant.”

“I heard it from Scoville.”

“Aye, well. Himself was
invited
to attend Patris Winhaven.”

“So was I. His wine cellar’s good, and he usually invites men and women of note, but the man is a pompous windbag.”

Ivarr laughed. “That’s kinder than what Ludgar says.”

“I’m a smaller, weaker man,” Jester replied, with the same easy grin, “and I have more need to watch my words—at least the words that will travel back to Winhaven.”

“I’ll tell himself you’re here. Head on into the far room.”

“The parlor.”

“That’s the one. I’ll be by with glasses.”

“Bring three.”

Ivarr’s frown could have soured milk. “I’m not invited to drink when the guests are of import.”

“I’m an errand boy, as you’ve said, and I’ve no intention of letting Ludgar polish this off on his own. I suppose you
could
bring just one glass on the off chance Ludgar insists on patrician formality.”

 • • • 

Ludgar arrived in the sitting room within the half hour. In that time, Jester conversed with Ivarr and glanced at the shelving upon which very prettily bound books sat. He very much doubted Ludgar had read them, but noted by their titles that many were of recent vintage. The furniture itself had seen a notable upgrade since Jester had last paid a visit; the glasses that Ludgar procured were likewise new.

None of this was suspicious in and of itself, but Haval’s bland words had done their work; Jester was alert. Alert, however, meant Jester became far less formal; he chose to shed the subtleties that Ellerson had done his best to instill. The desire to please, to appeal, was at its strongest when danger was present; Jester worked with it, rather than against it. He eased himself into a chair, adopting a seated posture that Ivarr wouldn’t notice and Ellerson would have disliked in the extreme.

“Jester,” Ludgar said, as he entered the room. He cast a glance at Ivarr; Ivarr shrugged. Ludgar was at home in this house, and Ivarr did not consider Jester to be a threat.

Neither, if it came to that, did Ludgar, who not only took a seat, but dragged it across the carpet to bring it closer to both his visitor and his visitor’s theoretically fine vintage.

Jester chuckled. “I’m aware I’m not the star of this show,” he said, handing the bottle to Ludgar for the merchant’s inspection.

Ludgar did not whistle, as Ivarr had. His eyes rounded slightly, and then narrowed far more noticeably. He set the bottle down on the table between them as if it were now the stakes for which a hand of cards might be played.

Which is why Ludgar was captain to Ivarr’s first mate. He did not, on the other hand, demand that Ivarr retreat into invisibility. Jester noted that Ivarr didn’t pull up a chair. He was watching both Ludgar and Jester as if he was trying to figure out the game now being played.

“I’ve been informed that you’ve been sent with a message?”

“I have.” Jester shifted in his chair and removed the scroll case Finch used in moderately important correspondence. It was sealed; the seal had not been broken. Long years of practice had made clear just how tricky breaching such a seal was if one wanted to read a private message without either sender or receiver being aware of the intrusion.

It was not, however, impossible.

Ludgar’s frown was a natural part of his face. “You don’t know the contents of this message.”

“It wasn’t verbal, no. In general, Finch doesn’t trust me with important verbal messages. She feels I get too distracted.”

Ludgar lifted a brow in the direction of the unopened bottle. “Not without cause.”

Jester offered an unrepentant smile. “I’ve never said she’s a fool.”

“She sent the wine?”

“Let’s just say it came with her message.”

Ludgar did smile, then. “The steward of the cellar’s going to be blue in the face at the loss.”

“It wasn’t doing anyone any good in the cellars,” Jester pointed out. “And The Terafin has never developed an aficionado’s sense of wine.”

“Meaning you think she won’t care, is that it? She will, boy, when she sees the value this bottle has in her steward’s books.”

“I, however, have had the good sense to develop an appreciation for the finer things. May I?”

Ludgar grinned. “With my permission, yes.”

“You’ve learned grace and the manners of a gentleman,” Jester replied. He reached for the bottle and fished a corkscrew, with a suitable lack of elegance, out of a pocket. He did not appear to be watching Ludgar with any concern; he was.