“That could make all the difference.” Savine closed her eyes and breathed a long sigh. “If they can pin down the King’s Own, stop reinforcements arriving, we might not need to fight at all.” She hoped, she prayed, they did not need to fight at all. “Who did you deal with? Risinau?”
“No.” Broad took off his lenses to wipe them on a corner of his shirt. Savine got the feeling it was definitely bad news this time. “Judge.”
“The woman who hanged all those people in Valbeck?”
Broad winced, mouth open, as though wondering how much to say. In the end, all he said was, “That’s her.”
Savine felt another surge of panic, slipped the box out of her sleeve and into her trembling hand, snapped it open. Water had got inside, the pearl dust made useless paste. “Damn it!” she snarled, flinging it against the wall. Right away she felt foolish. “Sorry. Not very graceful.”
“These aren’t very graceful times.”
“Can this woman Judge be trusted?”
“I’d sooner trust a scorpion,” said Broad, hooking his lenses around his ears again.
“We’ll just have to hope for the best.” Savine gave a little gasp as her baby shifted, put a calming hand on her stomach. “Is war always like this?”
“It’s when the enemy arrives things really turn to shit, begging your pardon.”
“Let’s hope they never arrive, then,” said Savine.
“Hope can’t hurt.” But Broad gave the strong impression that he did not think it would help much, either.
“Could you tell His Grace what you’ve told me?”
“Aye. If I can get a word in.”
Savine waved Zuri over. “I fear I need my bucket again.”
Liar, Liar
“Lord Governor Brock’s headquarters?” asked Vick, sitting easy in her saddle but with an expression that said she’d no time for nonsense.
The corporal barely looked up from his sizzling pan, just waved her on. One of the soldiers gave her a weak smile, then went back to scraping mud from a boot. None of them challenged her as she nudged her horse past, but that was no surprise.
She’d always been the best liar she knew.
From as early as she could remember, little Victarine dan Teufel, doted-upon youngest daughter of the Master of the Mints, had known she didn’t feel things quite the way other people did. Or at least that her feelings never made it to her face. What a solemn little child. How cold you are! Say something, Victarine, I have no notion what you are thinking.
So she had taught herself to fake it. Sat cross-legged in front of her mother’s little mirror, rehearsing shy smiles and hurt frowns, squeezing out the tears, practising until she could blush on demand. Such an expressive daughter. How animated she is! Her feelings are written on her face, poor thing.
Then one day she broke a treasured vase, and blamed her brother, and maintained a perfect air of baffled innocence while he turned red and angry. Her mother punished him for her crime, and made him apologise to her for lying into the bargain, and gave her a slice of fruit tart as a reward. So little Victarine learned early what the truth is worth. Good lying isn’t so much about what you say as how you say it. Amazing how far you can get if you stick to a straight line and look like you’ve got every reason to be there.
So Vick crossed muddy fields choked with rebels and ruined tents, not skulking on the margins, but trotting through the midst of the slimy chaos, eyes ahead. She tutted in disgust as two soldiers argued over a canteen. She hissed impatiently at a crowd trying to shift a mired wagon. She ordered a whole queue of bedraggled men outside a slumping soup-tent to get out of her way and made them grumpily shuffle aside.
She’d always been the best liar she knew. But like anyone who wants to truly master a skill, young Victarine dan Teufel had built on natural talent with painstaking practice.
She’d made herself a student of behaviour. Noted giveaway twitches of the eyes, telltale movements of the hands, observed them in others, suppressed them in herself. She’d practised on the servants, then on her family, then on the powerful men her father met with. She’d learned to keep always as close as she could to the truth. To shape her lies to her audience like a key to a lock. To shape herself. Not only to tell them what they wanted to hear, but to be who they wanted to hear it from.
She would be dealing with nobility today, so she became nobility, shoulders confidently back, chin proudly raised. She was Victarine, with the big “dan” in her name and disinterested scorn for anyone without it. She’d pinned her hair up. A plain dealer, hiding nothing. On reflection, she pulled a few strands free for a softening touch. Simple clothes, but not cheap. She’d decided a skirt was pushing it, but she’d opened one more button of her shirt than usual, rolled the sleeves once to show her wrists. Unguarded. Even a little vulnerable. Finally, she’d made Tallow flick her with road muck. She had been riding hard on a vital mission, after all.
“Who goes there?” snapped a sergeant, pointing a polearm and a belligerent expression.
He was guarding the gates of a fine old manor house which, judging by the lion-and-hammers standard planted in the churned-up ornamental gardens, Brock had commandeered for his headquarters. She sized the man up at a glance. Moustache waxed and breastplate polished even in the midst of this mess. A self-important stickler who took himself far too seriously.
“My name is Victarine dan Teufel.” In the smooth, clear noblewoman’s accent her mother used to have. “I need to speak to Lord Governor Brock.”
He frowned up, looking for something to distrust, but she gave him nothing.
“You could be a spy,” he said, grudgingly.
“I am a spy.”
He stared at her, caught off guard.
“On your side.” She leaned down, glancing left and right, using an urgent whisper, as if she’d picked him and only him to trust with a secret. “And I have a message from Lord Marshal Brint that could change everything.”
Important news, for the important man. He puffed himself up, turned frowning to the busy yard. “Clear a path there! This woman needs to see the Lord Governor!”
She’d always been the best liar she knew. Then the Practicals dragged her from her bed in the night, and her family was sent to the camps in Angland. Young Victarine dan Teufel had buried her fancy name in a shallow grave and become just Vick, and lying had gone from a game to a means of survival. In the years she’d spent in that freezing hell, as her family died one by one, she’d only told the whole truth once, and that was the day she got out. She’d hammered her face into a vizor of blank indifference that no shock, no pain, no terror could dent.
Which proved to be a very good thing as she was shown into Leo dan Brock’s borrowed dining room. From what she’d heard, he was one of those vain men of action who can’t wait to believe what they want to. But he wasn’t eating breakfast alone. Standing nearby, big hands clasped, looking mightily surprised to see her wander in out of the muddy morning, was her old comrade from the Breakers, Gunnar Broad. Worse yet, sitting on the other side of the table was the heavily pregnant daughter of Vick’s previous employer, Savine dan Brock.
What Vick thought was, Shit. What her expression said was, Good, you’re all here.