Vick glanced over at Tallow. He looked like he might never have seen cutlery, let alone been served with the golden kind. Even dressed smartly in Practicals’ black, he reminded her of her brother. That apologetic hunching of the shoulders, as if he was always expecting a slap. “Some have to handle hardship,” she said.
“A little hardship would do my nephew no harm.” Filio shook his head as he watched the swordsmen shuffle about the training circle, boards polished smooth by generations of soft fencing shoes. “He has fast hands, good instincts, but so much to learn.” He groaned at a wayward lunge. “I hope he might represent our city in the Contest in Adua one day, but talent is useless without discipline—” He leaped up again. “Come on, you donkey, think about it!”
“You competed in the Contest yourself.”
Filio gave her a sly grin as he sank back down. “Have you been checking up on me?”
“You lost to the future King Jezal in the semi-final. Took him to a last touch, as I recall.”
“You were there? You can’t have been ten years old!”
“Eight.” A good liar sticks to the truth whenever possible. She had been eight when that bout took place, but she’d been huddled in the blackness of a stinking ship’s hold, shackled to a great chain with her family and a few-score other convicts. All on their way to the prison camps of Angland, from which only she would return. She doubted that memory would’ve brought quite the same delight from Filio, though, his eyes shining at the memory of past glories. People are rarely made happy by all the truth.
“The cheering crowd, the scrape of steel, the Circle laid out before the grandest buildings of the Agriont. The proudest day of my life!” He was a man who admired the pomp and structure of the Union. A man who appreciated precision and discipline. That was why Vick had worn the full dress uniform of an Inquisitor Exempt, boots buffed to a mirror gleam, hair parted with a ruler and ruthlessly bound back. Filio waved towards the flashing blades. “So, you are a devotee of the beautiful science?”
“Who isn’t?” Though in fact she wasn’t.
“And I suppose you have come to gather votes?”
“His Majesty is extremely keen that Westport remain where it belongs, in the Union.”
“Or His Eminence is?” murmured Filio, eyes never leaving the swordsmen as they jabbed and parried. “And who else have you spoken to?”
“You are my first call.” He was the fourth, but in Vick’s experience, you had to take care with the pride of moderately powerful men. They bruised much more easily than the truly mighty. “Superior Lorsen spoke of you in glowing terms. A senior Alderman, well respected on all sides. Someone who could be a unifying voice.”
“I’m flattered, of course, but the Superior is too kind. If unity was simply a matter of the right voice… Westport might not be so terribly disunited.”
“Perhaps we can help bring your city together. I know you believe in the Union.”
“I do! I have, all my life. My grandfather was one of those who brought us in to begin with.” Filio’s smile faded. “But there are difficulties. King Jezal was a known quantity but King Orso is young…” Filio winced as his nephew gave a showy flourish of his steels. “And has, by reputation, a surfeit of all the young man’s faults. Your bungling in the wars against Styria was far from helpful. And then we have Solumeo Shudra!” Filio clicked his tongue. “Have you heard him speak?”
“Briefly.”
“So persuasive. So compelling. So very… what’s that word… charismatic. Loved as only politicians free from power—and therefore from disappointment—ever can be. He’s brought a lot of people around to his way of seeing things. The Union side have no one in his class. All rather stodgy. But then it’s difficult, isn’t it, to make a passionate argument for what you already have? So boring. Whereas the delightful alternative? A bouquet of promises! A sackful of dreams! A glorious ship of fantasies, undamaged by collision with actually getting anything done.”
“So His Majesty can count on you to vote the right way?”
“I wish I could give you an uncompromising Union yes. But I fear, for now…” Filio scrunched up his face with distaste. “I can only go so far as the traditional Styrian perhaps. Here in Westport, at the Crossroads of the World, balanced between the Gurkish and the Styrians and the Union, we have been obliged to make an art of compromise. I have not lasted so long in the politics of the city by sticking too closely to any one set of principles.”
“Principles are like clothes,” said Vick, straightening her jacket. “You have to change them to suit the audience.”
“Precisely so. In due course, perhaps we can discuss my price for wearing one set of colours or the other? But it would be folly to pick a side too early. I might put myself on the losing one!”
Vick supposed she could hardly blame the man. If she’d learned one thing in the camps, after all, it was that you stand with the winners.
“Then we should talk again. As the future takes shape.” Vick stood, ignoring a sudden twinge through her bad hip, snapped her heels together and gave a stiff bow.
Filio looked rather pleased with it. But not pleased enough to promise his vote. “I hope so. But let us not waste each other’s time until we are sure of our arithmetic— Ah!” He sprang up as his nephew’s heel scuffed the edge of the Circle. “Watch your back foot, you fool! Precision!”
A rare breeze washed through Westport’s public gardens, smelling of resin, flowers and spice from the market over the wall. It made a hundred varieties of foliage flap, rustle and whisper. It flung a cloud of spray from the fountain in which the bright spring sun made a short-lived rainbow. Then a shadow fell across Vick.
“Might I sit?” A broad-shouldered woman stood over her, dressed in loose linens in the southern fashion. Dark-skinned, strong-featured, with a fuzz of clipped grey-black hair.
“I’m afraid I don’t speak Styrian,” said Vick, in common. Half a lie. She could make herself understood but might not catch every nuance, and in negotiations as delicate as these, she couldn’t risk a mistake. That, and she preferred to be underestimated.
The woman sighed. “How typical of the Union authorities to send a negotiator who cannot even speak the language.”
“I thought this was the Crossroads of the World, where all tongues are spoken. You must be Dayep Mozolia.”
“And you must be Victarine dan Teufel.”
“I have that misfortune.” Vick had reckoned the aristocratic overtones of her full name, however awkwardly it fit her now, would suit this meeting best. Mozolia was said to be a hard-headed woman of business, so Vick had chosen to present herself as a practical Aduan lady on a trip abroad. Hair neatly braided, coiled and pinned. Top button left undone, for a hint of relaxed approachability. It had been a while since she wore a skirt, and she felt no more comfortable in it than she did in her name. But then, feeling comfortable is a luxury spies are better off without.
“How do you like the public gardens?” asked Mozolia.
“Beautiful. If a little thirsty.”
“They were a gift to the city from a childless heiress to a vast merchant fortune.” Mozolia took her time arranging her long body on the bench. “She travelled the Circle of the World hoping to gather one of every kind of tree that God has made.” She waved towards a towering fur, its lower branches entirely bare, its upper ones still clinging to a few dry needles. “Sadly, not everything flourishes in our climate.” And she glanced at Tallow, wilting in servant’s livery, blotchy face beaded with sweat.