Savine was not often lost for words, but she hardly knew how to reply. “I had no idea you picked the leaders of the Union.”
Bayaz only smiled wider. “Recognising one’s own ignorance is the first step towards enlightenment. Lady Savine. Your Eminence.” He gave them a brief nod and strode off jauntily down the Kingsway, the tails of his expensive coat flicking behind him.
Savine’s heart pounded as she watched him go. As if she had parried a few thrusts to the heart, rather than replied to a few strange remarks. She used to be razor-sensitive to the subtext of every conversation. The dangers lurking beneath the surface, like rocks to the unwary vessel. But she hardly trusted her own instincts any more.
“What exactly was he offering me?” she muttered.
Her father gave a bitter snort. “The First of the Magi never gives, only takes. That was not an offer to you, it was a threat to me.”
“Threats, and blackmail, and banks?” It was one of those moments when you realise the world may not be quite what you had thought it was. She had been experiencing a lot of those lately. “What kind of wizard is he?”
Her father frowned up at Bayaz’s towering statue. “The kind you obey.”
“I’ve been made some outrageous proposals,” Savine threw over her shoulder to Zuri as she pulled off her gloves, “but that must be the first time a statue on the Kingsway has been put on the table…”
She became aware of the muffled burble of conversation from the door to her mother’s parlour. Odd, that she should have a visitor so early. It usually took something special to get her out of her bedroom before lunch.
Zuri had her black brows significantly raised. “I believe Lady Ardee might have an outrageous offer of her own to put to you.”
“My mother and I are not on the best of terms at the moment.”
“I realise. But the scriptures say those lost in the desert should take such water as they are offered.” She gently swung open the door. “No matter who it comes from.”
Her mother’s voice spilled out as Savine stepped suspiciously into the room. “… my husband might as well be dead, as far as that department goes, and then— Savine, you’re here!” She smiled over from the cabinet where she was, it hardly needed to be said, pouring herself a glass of wine. “We’ve a visitor.” Another woman was rising from a chair, something of a military cut to clothes mud-spotted about the hem from riding. “This is Lady Finree dan Brock.”
Savine prided herself on being hard to rattle, but Leo dan Brock’s mother in her own mother’s parlour was not an easy thing to write off as coincidence. Especially when she was currently carrying the woman’s grandchild.
“Savine.” Lady Finree took her hand in both of hers, and a fearsomely firm grip it was, too. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
“All good, I hope.”
“Mostly.” Finree dan Brock had an unflinching stare that even Savine found slightly intimidating. “But a woman who produced only good reports would not be fighting hard enough. I am a great admirer of your achievements as a lady of business.”
Savine assumed her sweetest smile while she tried to work out what was going on. “As I am a great admirer of yours as a Lady Governor.”
“All I did was mind the shop for a few years.” Finree dan Brock sat as if for a business discussion rather than a social call. “My son Leo governs Angland now.”
Savine refused to react. “So I hear. What brings you to Adua?”
“An invitation to Lord Isher’s wedding.”
“It’ll be the event of the season,” said Savine’s mother, “though if you’re asking me, the man’s a bloody viper. Wine, Savine?”
The conversation with Bayaz had felt somehow dangerous. This felt even more so. Savine had a sense she would need her wits intact. “Not for me.”
“Lady Finree?”
“No, but don’t let me stop you.”
“You won’t stop mother drinking unless you brought a few fathoms of chain with you.”
Savine’s mother plopped herself down on a chair, making a perfect triangle of the three of them, wiped a streak of wine from the side of her glass and sucked her fingertip. “You’re salty this morning.”
“I don’t care for the feeling of being ambushed,” said Savine, looking from one woman to the other, both formidable in their own ways and as a pair positively daunting.
They exchanged a glance. “You go,” said her mother. “I’ll chime in if needed.”
“My son has inherited a weighty responsibility,” said Lady Finree. “One that he is in some respects well suited for, but in others… less so.”
Savine could well imagine. “He’s hotheaded, ignorant and reckless, you mean?”
“Exactly.” Savine should not have been surprised. A woman who had faced down an army of screaming Northmen was unlikely to be put off by a little plain-speaking. “You, meanwhile, are known to be cool-headed, calculating and patient. It seems the two of you are complementary.”
“Fire and ice!” threw in Savine’s mother between sips.
“My son likes to think he can do it all but, like his father, he has always needed someone beside him. Someone to give good advice and make sure he takes it. Someone to guide him to the right decisions. There comes a time when a mother can no longer do that for a son.” She raised her brows expectantly.
Savine did not like the way this was going. “I’m not sure what I—”
Her mother gave an explosive sigh. “Don’t be obtuse, Savine. Lady Finree and I have been discussing a match between you and Leo.”
Savine blinked. “A marriage?”
“Well, not a bloody fencing match.”
Savine stared from her mother to her prospective mother-in-law. It was an ambush. An expertly prepared pincer movement, and she was outflanked on both sides.
She lifted her chin and played for time. “I’m not sure the two of us are suited. He is a good deal younger than—”
“I understand you felt differently when he last visited Adua,” said Lady Finree, looking at her significantly from under her brows.
It took a moment for the implications to sink in. “He told you that?”
Savine’s mother raised a hand. “I told her that.”
“How the hell did you find out?”
“Don’t be cross and don’t be coy. Neither suits you. Zuri is worried for you, as a good servant should be. As a good friend should be. She is thinking of your best interests. We all are, believe it or not.” Her mother leaned forward, holding her eye, and put a reassuring hand on Savine’s knee. “She told us about your… situation.”
Savine’s face burned. She found she had put a hand to her stomach and angrily snatched it away. She was used to stabbing other people with their secrets. She did not at all enjoy being impaled on one of her own.
“Forgive me if I am blunt,” said Lady Finree. “I have spent much of my life around soldiers—”
“Fancy that,” snapped Savine. “So did mother, in her youth.”
“It’s a shame youth has to end,” sang Savine’s mother, fluttering her eyelashes. Then she gave Savine’s knee a parting pat and sat back, murmuring out of the corner of her mouth, “You see that bluntness won’t be a problem.”