Just as Ren herself was hidden away. She breathed slowly and evenly, nerves beginning to thrum with familiar excitement.
By the end of today, the nobles of the city would know Renata Viraudax’s name.
The Rotunda, Eastbridge: Suilun 4
The Rotunda, situated on the Upper Bank side of the Sunrise Bridge, was a marvel of beauty and magic. Under a vaulted glass dome etched with colored numinata that kept the interior cool in the day and lit at night, a wide marble plaza allowed for casual strolling and diverting entertainments. In the center, a small garden offered benches where patrons could rest their weary feet. Around the perimeter, shops presented the finest imbued wares for the delight of those who could afford them.
Twice a year, in the spring and the fall, merchants from Seste Ligante arrived bearing the newest fabrics and fashions, setting up displays of their wares in the Rotunda. And all the nobles and delta gentry of Nadežra flocked to the seasonal Gloria, to spend, to see, and to be seen.
Despite her resolve to think only Renata’s thoughts, Ren couldn’t keep her pulse from quickening as she passed through the Rotunda’s grand archway with Tess in tow. She’d often peered at the riches beyond, but she’d been inside only once before—with Ondrakja, not long before everything fell apart.
The scheme had been an audacious one. Ondrakja came in first, dressed as a rich merchant from one of the upriver cities, and examined some jewelry. While the jeweler’s back was turned, a sapphire bracelet vanished. The Vigil constables guarding the Rotunda searched Ondrakja from head to foot, but found no sign of the gems, and the only people near her when the bracelet disappeared were nobility they dared not accuse. The hawks threw her in jail for the night on principle, but the next day they let her go.
Half an hour after Ondrakja was quietly force-marched out of the Rotunda, a beautiful girl who presumably belonged to one of the delta houses came up and browsed the jeweler’s wares. It had been laughably easy for Ren to remove the bracelet from the putty Ondrakja had stuck to the underside of the counter, then walk out with no one the wiser.
Ondrakja had been so pleased with her for that one. She’d bought Ren a bag of honey stones to suck on, and let her wear the bracelet for a whole day before it was fenced.
“May I help you find someone, alta?” a man asked, stepping too close to her side. “You seem lost.”
Djek. A hawk!
“Just taking in the view,” she said reflexively. Long hours of practice paid off; despite the skin-shock of fear, her words came out in the clipped, fronted vowels of Seteris.
She got a second shock when she looked properly at the man who’d addressed her. Since when are they making Vigil officers out of Vraszenians? His accent was cleanly Nadežran, but there was no mistaking him for anything other than full-blooded Vraszenian, with his thick, dark hair—trimmed short though it was—and sun-bronzed skin.
Yet he wore the double-lined hexagram pin of a captain.
Maybe they just thought he looked too good in dress vigils to pass up. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with the lean build of a duelist rather than a soldier, his eyes a deeper shade of his coat’s sapphire. Apart from his heritage, he was exactly the kind of man Nadežra’s elite would prop up in a corner as decoration at an event like this.
But she’d used her own pretty face as a tool too often to let someone else do the same to her.
He stepped closer to avoid a passing couple, and Renata found herself expertly edged aside from the traffic. “Your accent—you’re from Seteris? Welcome to Nadežra. Is this your first visit to the Rotunda?”
“It is indeed.” She let her gaze drift across the tables and mannequins displaying wares for this season’s Gloria. “I must say, it is… interesting, seeing what happens to Seterin fashion in its journey here.”
Just a touch of condescension. To the Seterins and Liganti across the sea, Nadežra was a foreign backwater. Letilia had never hesitated to heap scorn on it, and her daughter wouldn’t have shed those prejudices entirely.
The captain nodded amiably rather than taking offense. “The Rotunda can be distracting for those unused to it—and the pickpockets who manage to sneak in like to take advantage of that. Allow me to escort you until you get your bearings.”
The worst thing she could do would be to hesitate. “I’d be grateful,” she said, motioning for Tess to fall back a few steps. A Seterin woman who hadn’t grown up among Nadežra’s political tensions wouldn’t turn her nose up at the escort of a handsome Vigil captain, even if he was Vraszenian. She laid gloved fingers on the sleeve of his coat. “Your uniform is that of this city’s guard, I believe? No pickpocket will dare approach if I have you at my side.”
“Captain Grey Serrado of the Vigil, yes. And I will make certain they do not, alta.” He drew away from her touch, his smile betraying not a flicker of interest in her flirtation.
Serrado. She rolled the syllables around in her mind as she returned the introduction, comparing them against his appearance. Szerado. And “Grey” was hardly a Vraszenian name. So he was one of those types—the ones who tried to separate themselves from their origins, in hopes of currying favor with the Liganti.
Ren might play the role out of necessity. He was a slip-knot by choice.
She pushed the thought away. It wouldn’t matter to Alta Renata. “This way looks more interesting,” she said, glancing to the left when Serrado would have led her right—as though she didn’t know the ebb and flow of the Gloria.
“The promenade progresses earthwise for the Autumn Gloria,” Serrado explained, following the rest of the foot traffic that curved rightward from the entry. “In the spring, it circles sunwise. You’ll find the newest and most expensive goods at the start, and the overlooked treasures near the end.”
“Is that so.” She stopped at a table of perfumes. The woman behind it sized her up in a blink and glided forward, inquiring whether the alta would like to sample any of the scents. Renata allowed her to unstopper a few bottles and wave their wands under her nose, then dab a touch of one to the inside of her wrist. It smelled of eucalyptus, mellowed by something earthier beneath, and the seller promised the scent was imbued to last all day. Buy something now, to show that I don’t care about cost? she wondered. Or demonstrate my taste and discretion by refraining?
She was beginning to attract notice, and not just from the shopkeepers. Some of that was because she looked both noble and unfamiliar, but mostly it was due to her clothing.
Even amid the splendor of the Gloria, she stood out like the blue of autumn skies. Her underdress of gold-shot amber silk was simple almost to the point of austerity, but the azure surcoat showed Tess’s fine hand at work. The bandeau was stitched with clever tucks, lifting her bosom rather than crushing it flat. The surcoat’s bodice lacked the rigid stays meant to give it a straight shape; instead it was tailored almost like a man’s waistcoat, tight through her waist and flaring over her hips before falling into the apron-like panels of the fore and back skirts. On those Tess had exercised restraint; the beauty of the embroidered leaf motif came from quality rather than quantity—turning their tight finances into a virtue. Subtle imbuing made the gold threads shift with the colors of the season. Nobody could look at such a dress and doubt that Alta Renata had paid a small fortune for such work.