Page 9

Three

The next morning, twenty-six cards were delivered to the suitors who’d provided, as Percy put it, “poetry that wasn’t thoroughly atrocious,” and nobles started tumbling frantically into their carriages.

Messengers ran across the city. Gossip papers shuffled between drawing rooms at a frenetic pace.

One or two wealthy suitors put on their sturdiest boots and went out on their own.

The second test for Yves’ hand had begun, and no one wanted to miss what he had in store for the winners.

Lord Seven Lacks went to the blacksmith and ordered a rush job for a sleigh bell. He was the youngest of seven, as everyone in Staria knew, thanks to his mother’s naming system, and had gained his wealth through no small amount of cunning.

The blacksmith raised her brows. “One bell? We usually do a strip at least.”

“Just one,” Seven said, “but it has to be perfect.”

The blacksmith braced her hands on her knees. “You could go to a jeweler.”

“No, no. You made the bells for Lady Metworth’s wedding. It has to be like hers.”

“Yeah, but I made those out of scraps.” The blacksmith shook her head. “All right. I guess I can manage it.”

“You must,” Seven said. He drew himself up with an air of tragic grace. “It’s a matter of love.”

The blacksmith looked him up and down. “Well,” she said at last, “it ain’t my business what you lords get up to, I’m sure.”

An hour later, Lord Yeltsey’s maid Pippa found him standing on the back of the couch with a knife in one hand. He was sawing fruitlessly at the bell-pull, and he turned to look at her with an edge of terror in his eyes.

“My lord!” Pippa cried. A number of other servants came stumbling behind her, carrying bowls of hot water, towels, and bandages. “Is that why the bell’s been going off? We thought you had a fall!”

Lord Yeltsey slumped his shoulders. “I’m dreadfully sorry, Pippa. It’s the bell.”

“Yes, my lord,” Pippa said, giving her fellow servants a worried glance. “I can see that.”

“It’s just that I need it,” Lord Yeltsey said, as yet another servant appeared to watch the show unfolding in the parlor, “for a man.”

“Yes, my lord,” Pippa said, in the conciliatory tone she used when her baby sister threw a tantrum over her favorite bowl. “For a man. Why don’t you step down off the couch, my lord, and we’ll get that bell for you?”

Lord Yeltsey looked down, wrapped a hand around the bellpull, and whispered, “I’m not entirely sure I can.”

“Not to worry, my lord,” Pippa said, and rolled up her sleeves. Really, the nobility were woefully helpless on their own. “I’ll get you down in no time.”

Lord Theobold Marteau, who liked to think of himself as fairly practical, knocked on the door to the House of Onyx that afternoon.

“I’d like a bell, please,” he said, when a young man opened the door.

“What?” The man twisted around to look over his shoulder. “Why?”

“It’s the contest,” Theobold said, and held out the card he’d received at breakfast. “It says, Present a bell from the most welcoming parlor in Staria. That’s here. This is the most welcoming parlor, because Yves is in it.”

“Oh!” a familiar voice cried from the depths of the house. “That’s clever! Percy, do you have a bell somewhere?”

A minute later, Theobold was pleased to find Yves himself at the door with a bell, looking impish and lovely in the morning light. “Have I won?” Theobold asked.

Yves looked down demurely, and Theobold felt a thrill of triumph. “You’ll see.”

In the garden of his rented house, Raul Vitrier was having a crisis.

“I couldn’t say a word about the marriage at the play.” He was sitting on a stone bench with his head in his hands. Charon stood a few steps away, arms crossed, trying not to resent the poor, dejected man slumping on the bench. “I meant to. The words simply wouldn’t come.”

“It probably wouldn’t be right to continue to give you an advantage,” Charon said.

“Oh, I know, especially since I can’t even say what I mean. Does he always do that?” He looked up at Charon—not into his eyes, but at a spot behind his shoulder. “He disarms you, and the next thing you know, you’re agreeing with whatever he says to have another minute of his company.”

Charon made a noncommittal noise. It was unsettling how quickly Raul had picked up on Yves’ easy charm. Most people were too besotted by him to notice the work it took to appease his dominant clients.

“I’ve never met anyone who made me feel so…

” Raul gestured helplessly, “warm. Surely you must know. He makes you feel like you’re the only person in the world.

I do wonder if his other suitors will be so accepting when he isn’t at work.

Because it is work. That’s why I stay in the workroom at home.

I don’t have to be anyone other than myself. ”

Charon thought of the Yves who lounged in his room when the night was done, clever and bright, with an acerbic tongue and a wit that his clients rarely saw.

How many dominant clients would have accepted Yves calling them a liar, as he had to Charon the night before?

Perhaps a submissive benefactor was still a viable option.

“He likes cats,” Charon said. Raul’s brows came together in apparent confusion.

“He feeds them in the garden, and he knows where most of the cat sanctuaries are in the city. He even tried to rescue a possum once. If something has fur and a tail, he probably loves it. That’s the only advice I’ll give you. ”

“But the test mentions a bell from a parlor,” Raul said, pulling out a card from his breast pocket. “Surely they don’t have parlors for cats? Well, thank you, anyway.”

As Charon left Raul’s garden, he spotted black hair disappearing behind a carriage with an owl on the crest. He paused, sighed, and walked around it. Oleander, who was crouched behind the carriage as though they wanted to steal the crest off the door, jumped up guiltily.

“What were you doing there?” Oleander asked. “At that noble’s house?”

“Not a noble,” Charon said, and started walking off. Oleander followed, as he suspected they would.

“If you’re moonlighting, you know that’s against the rules,” Oleander said. “Is that what you were doing? Getting extra clients on the side?”

Charon gave Oleander a long look. He wasn’t sure what to think of them.

Oleander was a Katoikos through and through—they believed that submissives were best in positions of power, as they were suited to serving the populace.

Katoikos typically expected dominants to do domestic and manual work to support their submissives.

Oleander barely tolerated Laurent because he was married to Sabre, a submissive who was powerful enough that his dominant husband could play at having a position as a house lord.

They were baffled at the Starian noble custom of favoring dominants as heirs, and still had to be goaded into doing chores.

They seemed to have a particular grudge against Yves, which made their pointed questions about Charon odd.

“You can tell me if Yves has you running errands for him, you know,” Oleander said. “I’m also from Katoikos. I know it’s easy to be swayed by a submissive who acts like he can’t walk without a dominant’s hand on his arm. I can help set him right.”

“I’m not here on Yves’ orders,” Charon said. It was no good trying to convince Oleander that they weren’t both from Katoikos. “I have my own business in town.”

“With him?” Oleander looked over his shoulder at Raul’s house. “What kind of business?”

Charon simply kept walking.

Oleander groaned. “Why is everyone so cryptic here? Yves has his little game, Simone won’t say a word to me about it, and people keep acting like Lord Laurent has some kind of magic aura.”

“He does have magic,” Charon said.

Oleander rolled their eyes. “Most magic is trickery, unless you’re Mislian. And he isn’t Mislian, is he?”

“You’ll figure it out.” Charon left Oleander frowning in confusion in the middle of the street.

“All right, then,” Oleander shouted. “Maybe I’ll see what that friend of yours is up to myself!”

Charon sincerely doubted Oleander could learn anything from following Raul, but they were welcome to try.

Charon stopped at a bookseller to arrange a donation and made his way back to the House of Onyx.

Laurent was standing out front with a basket of bells, which jingled slightly as Laurent spoke to a messenger.

The messenger nodded and ran off with a packet of notes as Charon approached.

“And here I thought things were settling down,” Laurent said.

He smiled at Charon. He rarely relaxed his guard unless he was around Sabre or his sister, but managing Yves’ marriage contest seemed to be taking a toll.

Charon took the basket and followed him into his office, where Laurent collapsed into his chair.

“I should really read these letters,” Laurent said, gesturing to the cards towering over his desk. “I need to think of something other than last-minute ballroom acquisitions and the other House lords complaining about runaways.”

“Runaways?”

Laurent sighed heavily. “Apparently. There have been three so far. Every now and then, a courtesan thinks they can skip out on the debt they owe their house and find a new life somewhere else. It can work if you don’t have a family who’ll be saddled with the bill in your absence.

Three at once is excessive, but it’s the House of Iron’s fault for saddling them with extra housing debts in the first place. ”

“There’s a rumor that King Adrien intends to elevate one of the House lords,” Charon said. “If one man were to have oversight over the others, the rules over debt prices could change.”

Laurent gave Charon a knowing look. “That man would have to be a masochist to take on the headache.”

“Or he’d have to be married to one.”

Laurent smiled. “This is why I’m going to miss you, Charon. How did you guess that I throw my hat in the ring?”

“Your ambition exceeds your common sense.”