She must be worried, if she was admitting so much. Yes, Grey had suspected—would have suspected even if Vigil gossip didn’t sometimes speculate—that House Traementis was struggling more than they let on. But he never joined in the gossip, and he never asked Leato.
Leato… who was always in fashion, and according to that same gossip spent half his time frequenting aža parlours and gambling dens. Does Leato know? Grey swallowed the question. It wasn’t his business, and it wasn’t the business Donaia had called him for.
“That last shouldn’t be too hard to determine,” he said. “I assume you know where she’s staying?” He paused when Donaia’s lips flattened, but she only nodded. “Then talk to her. If she’s truly Letilia’s daughter, she should know details an imposter wouldn’t easily be able to discover. If she gives you vague answers or takes offense, then you’ll know something is wrong.”
Grey paused again, wondering how much Donaia would let him pry. “You said you had enemies she might be working for. It would help me to know who they are and what they might want.” At her sharply indrawn breath, he raised a hand in pledge. “I promise I’ll say nothing of it—not even to Leato.”
In a tone so dry it burned, Donaia began ticking possibilities off on her fingers. “Quientis took our seat in the Cinquerat. Kaineto are only delta gentry, but have made a point of blocking our attempts to contract out our charters. Essunta, likewise. Simendis, Destaelio, Novrus, Cleoter—Indestor—I’m afraid it’s a crowded field.”
That was the entire Cinquerat and others besides… but she’d only stumbled over one name.
“Indestor,” Grey said. The house that held Caerulet, the military seat in the Cinquerat. The house in charge of the Vigil.
The house that would not look kindly upon being investigated by one of its own.
“Era Traementis… did you ask for any officer, or did you specifically request me?”
“You’re Leato’s friend,” Donaia said, holding his gaze. “Far better to ask a friend for help than to confess our troubles to an enemy.”
That startled a chuckle from Grey. At Donaia’s furrowed brow, he said, “My brother was fond of a Vraszenian saying. ‘A family covered in the same dirt washes in the same water.’”
And Kolya would have given Grey a good scolding for not jumping to help Donaia right away. She might not be kin, but she’d hired a young Vraszenian carpenter with a scrawny kid brother when nobody else would, and paid him the same as a Nadežran.
He stood and bowed with a fist to his shoulder. “I’ll see what I can discover for you. Tell me where to find this Renata Viraudax.”
2
The Face of Gold
Isla Prišta, Westbridge: Suilun 4
Some things were worth paying good money for. The materials for Ren’s clothing, for example: Tess was a genius at sewing, but even she couldn’t make cheap fabric hold up to close inspection.
The mirror Ren arranged next to an upstairs window was another one of her investments, as were the cosmetics she set in front of it. The one contribution her unknown father had made to her life was hair and skin a few shades lighter than her Vraszenian mother’s—light enough to pass for Liganti or Seterin, with help. But making herself look plausibly like Letilia Traementis’s daughter took extra effort and care.
Ren angled the silvered glass to take advantage of the natural light, then brushed powder across her face, making sure she blended it up into her hairline and down her throat. Years cooped up indoors as Letilia’s maid had done a fair bit to lighten her complexion, and the oncoming winter wouldn’t afford her many opportunities to be in the sun, but she would have to be careful when the warmer months came. Given half an excuse, her skin would eagerly tan.
But at least she didn’t have to worry about the powder rubbing off. All her cosmetics were imbued by artisans like Tess, people who could infuse the things they made with their own spiritual force to make them work better. Imbued cosmetics might be more expensive, but they would stay in place, blend until their effects looked natural, and not even irritate her skin. Imbuing didn’t receive the respect given to numinatria, but compared to the pastes and powders Ren had used back when she was a Finger, these seemed like a miracle.
Switching to a darker shade, she thinned the apparent shape of her nose and made her eyes seem more closely set, adding a few years to her age by contouring out the remaining softness of youth. Her cheekbones, her mouth—nothing remained untouched, until the woman in the mirror was Renata Viraudax instead of Ren.
Tess bustled in with an armful of fabric. She hung the underdress and surcoat from the empty canopy bars of the bed before flopping onto the dusty ropes that should have held a mattress.
“Whoof. Well, I can’t speak to the state of my fingers or my eyesight, but the embroidery’s done.” She held her reddened fingers up to the light. “Wish I could just leave the insides a tangle, but it’d be Quarat’s own ill luck if a gust of wind flipped your skirts and flashed your messy backing for the world to see.”
She stifled a giggle. “I meant your embroidery, not what’s under your knickers.”
A masquerade was more than just its physical trappings. “Tess.”
The mere pitch of that word was enough to remind her. Renata’s voice wasn’t as high as Letilia’s—that woman had cultivated a tone she referred to as “bell-like,” and Ren thought of as “shrill”—but she spoke in a higher register than Ren. Now she said Tess’s name in Renata’s tone, and Tess sat up.
“Yes, alta. Sorry, alta.” Tess swallowed a final hiccup of laughter. Her part required less acting, but she struggled harder to get into it. With her round cheeks and moss-soft eyes, she’d been one of the best pity-rustlers in the Fingers, but not much good at lying. She stood and bobbed a curtsy behind Renata, addressing her reflection. “What would the alta like done with her hair?”
It felt uncomfortable, having Tess address her with such deference. But this wasn’t a short-term con, talking some shopkeeper into believing she was a rich customer long enough for her to pocket something while his back was turned; she would need to be Renata for hours at a time, for weeks and months to come. And she needed to associate every habit of manner and speech and thought with Renata’s costumes, so they wouldn’t slip at an inopportune moment.
“I believe you had some ribbon left over,” Renata said. “I think it would look lovely threaded through my hair.”
“Oooh, excellent idea! The alta has such a refined sense of style.”
Tess had never been an alta’s maid. While Ren had run herself ragged satisfying Letilia’s petty demands, Tess had been sewing herself half-blind in the windowless back room of a grey-market shop. Still, she insisted that obsequiousness was part of the role, and no amount of correction from either Ren or Alta Renata could stamp it out. Sighing, Renata put in her earrings—formerly Letilia’s—while Tess retrieved ribbon, brushes, needle, and thread, and set to work.
Tess’s skill at imbuing went toward clothing, not hair, but by some undefinable magic she twisted the strands into a complicated knot, turning and tucking them so the outermost parts were the ones bleached lighter by sun and wind, and the darker sections were hidden away.