Delly, for a moment, seriously considered freeing herself from her contractual obligations. She’d been hoping for a couple of weeks of protecting some hothouse flower from imagined enemies, and she didn’t particularly relish the thought of having to dodge actual bullets in the defense of some gull wearing a great white bucket on her head. Then she thought of her mam with her pinhole eyes, sleeping in that collapsing woodpile of a house, and reined herself in. Not that she’d be too eager to put herself between a bullet and her mam, either, but if things stayed as they were now, Delly’d be stuck scraping her out of gutters and dragging her to hospitals until Mam finally rejoined the unfortunates of the releft. That was to say nothing of the mostly-on-the-face pustules that would be Delly’s unavoidable fate if she didn’t keep this job, get her money, and pay her fatherprodding rent. That in mind, Delly kept her filthy biscuit-chewer clamped firmly shut.
Everyone else did, too. A few seconds ticked by in silence. Miss Wexin inclined her head. Either that or the bucket had just slipped a bit: it was hard to tell. “I thank you for your bravery,” she said. Delly suppressed an indelicate snort. Miss Wexin said, “I am afraid that you will see very little of me over the next few days, as I will be spending most of my seclusion in prayer and meditation. I will be riding in my own carriage with Miss Usad and Miss Dok as my companions. I hope you will not think me churlish for not engaging with you further as I prepare for my marriage. Might I shake your hands?”
No one objected to this proposition, so Miss Wexin moved about the room to shake each of their hands. Then she left the room with Miss Usad, while Miss Dok led the rest of them after her a moment later.
Delly lagged toward the rear of the pack and was pleased when Winn lagged right beside her. “Bit odd, what?” Winn murmured.
Delly cast her eyes a foot or so upward to look at her. “How’d you mean?”
“Well,” Winn murmured, keeping her voice very low, “if that Miss Wexin is meant to be who I think she is, I’ve met her.”
“Fuckin’ truly?” Delly said, and then cleared her throat. “Pardon. What do you mean, who she’s meant to be?”
“Just what I said,” Winn said. “I met a girl named Mayelle Wexin when I was thirteen. I hadn’t gotten so tall by then, and I was with my pop, so she probably hadn’t taken much note of me.” The corners of her mouth curled up then. “Most gulls don’t take much note of me when I’m with my pop. But anyway, she would have been about sixteen then, which would make her about the age to get married now, and the Wexin clan is one of the only clans I know in the headmanship that still practices seclusions.”
“So what’s funny about it, then?” Delly asked. “Begging your pardon.”
“Don’t beg my pardon,” Winn said. “My mother always says that it wastes time. And the funny thing is, when I met her, I remember thinking what a nice low voice Miss Wexin had for a human girl.”
“And this girl had a voice like a field mouse,” Delly said. They were both whispering now, and Delly had the fleeting thought that engaging in some intrigue could only serve to fan any romantic flames she might be producing with her prospect. “Sakes. You figure she’s some kind of imposter?”
“I don’t know,” Winn said. “Maybe. Or maybe there’s another daughter I’ve never heard of rattling about in the backs of the Wexin cupboards behind all of the stacks of reprobate younger sons. I’ve only heard of the one Wexin girl of the right age, but I haven’t been in society much, these past few years. Any excuse to be out of it, really. You linger too long at the punch bowl at a society party and the next thing you know you’re engaged to a fellow with a squint and a stamp collection.” Then she gave Delly a big grin. “Soon we’ll be examining the mud under the windows for footprints and questioning members of the underworld about their connection to the entire mysterious wheeze. Nice to have something interesting to engage the old mental whatsit while at work, isn’t it?”
“I’ve got a particularly long-standing interest in being interested, myself,” Delly allowed. Then, to her enormous alarm, the teakettle of her curiosity boiled over. “You’re, ah, in society, you said?”
Winn gave a dismissive wave with one big hand. “Mother is head of clan Cynallum, and Pop works for the government,” she said. “It’s a very small clan, though. More of a biggish family, really. And in Hexos all you need to get a government posting is to be friends with the Lord-Mage, and Mother and Pop have known Uncle Loga for ages.”
“Sakes,” Delly breathed, still whispering even though they weren’t talking secrets anymore and had emerged out onto the streets, where whispering suddenly seemed much more ridiculous than it had when they were in a dim and rich and atmospheric interior. She cleared her throat and said in a normal voice, “Greatest wizard I ever met was a fella who pulled beans out of folks’ ears on the corner of Eagle and Wren Streets.”
That got a laugh from Winn, who said, “And speaking of wizards, Miss Wexin isn’t the only one about who’s hiding her face. Miss Usad’s got a bit of the old veil of wizarding illusion on her. Jolly nice little thing—I wouldn’t have noticed it if I wasn’t trained in illusions. I think she might be covering up that she wears spectacles.”
“Sakes,” Delly said again, admiringly. “High-quality ladies really are exceptional creatures, ain’t they?” She was so absorbed in the consideration of the freaks of high-quality ladies—using up all that magic just so no one would see your specs!—and of the cleverness of Winn for having figured out the trick that it took her a moment before her eyes registered the horrible sight before her and her whole body gave a startled writhe backward, as if she were an eel being shown a plate of mashed potatoes and a bottle of vinegar. “Are those horses?”
They were, in fact, horses. Eight of them, if one demanded prissy exactitude about it: four attached to a coach that Misses Wexin, Usad, and Dok were climbing into, and four more just—standing about, being held by the leady leathery mouth bits by some likely-looking lads. Plotting, probably, was what they were doing. Delly didn’t at all like the look of them. She’d watched a man be dragged almost to death by a horse once, when she was a small girl, and she’d never seen fit to enter into conversation with once since. Uncanny things, they were, with eyes on the sides of their heads.
“They look like horses,” Winn said, in a slightly doubtful tone. “One never really blinking well knows, though, with wizards about. Why? Not a keen rider?”
“Never so much as touched one of the beasts,” Delly said, keeping a wary eye trained on the nearest of the creatures.
“Oh,” Winn said, looking suddenly much more concerned than she’d ever looked while they were discussing their employer’s being a potential imposter. “Jolly bad luck, when we’re heading off on a two-day ride.”