“Who hasn’t?” Violetta responded, easily. “But I would not abandon you, my lady.”
Another wave of guilt surged through her, then faded in relief. She was glad for that, glad that Violetta would not leave her, not even after seeing her weakness. She took a shaking breath. “I am afraid, Violetta. I am afraid of what comes next. Because whatever took that girl, it was not plague.”
Violetta paled. “What else could it be, though?”
“More rot, come to the city,” Evelyn said. “A new threat, come to destroy our sailors, our laborers, the last lifeblood that we have. Whatever it is, whatever its cause, I brought it here, and we will be punished for it. A burned ship may be the best fate we can hope for.”
Linden Pollard was in his office the next day, and he presented her with paperwork that he could have sent by courier, just as Evelyn had expected. Still, she took up the offered quill and signed off. The Verity would be cleared, through a combination of his influence and the doctors’ inability to find any trace of actual sickness. He had no questions for her, did not know to ask about the girl, and she was more than happy not to tell him.
Once the ink was dry, he escorted her from his office, asking her about her plans for the coming social season (she had none), and if she thought Constance was an isolated event. Should they expect more sickness, more interference from what he feared would be a tightening blockade, or was it just an unhappy accident?
A spike of paranoia pushed against her spine, but she ignored it. He didn’t know; he spoke only of the obvious threats to the city. “They won’t need to,” Evelyn said. “They are learning politics. The price we get for our goods is dwindling, and the prices we pay for grain are rising. Slowly but inevitably, they are working to starve us. No bloodshed needed.”
He inclined his head, as if considering. But Officer Pollard was clever, quick-minded, and he surely already understood the shape of things. He looked around the front receiving room, with its clerks bent to their work, quills scraping over paper, then extended his arm. “Will you walk with me, my lady?”
Ah. He did have a reason for summoning her down, then. She was still wrung out from the night before, but she could not beg off with a claim of faintness. For all her delicacy, Lady Evelyn Perdanu of Perdanu Shipping did not faint.
So she took his arm, fingers taut and still on the sleeve of his uniform. “A turn, perhaps.”
They stepped out into the grey light of a morning under threat of rain. Violetta, waiting at the carriage, dropped a small curtsy as they went by. She made as if to follow, but Evelyn moved her free hand in a tiny flash of pale skin against her dark skirts, and the girl subsided.
“I must confess,” he said, when they were two blocks away from the central docks office, heading up the slope into a fashionable stretch of shops, “I don’t understand why they don’t just take the city. The Judiciary can’t fend them off, and by now we’re a half-starved hart, unable to flee.”
“They know,” Evelyn said, peering up at him through her veil. “And they would prefer us to surrender.”
“But why?”
“To humiliate us. To ensure we know our place, and our value to them.”
“Which is?”
“The people are as nothing. By now, all the traitors want are the roads and buildings, half-flooded, and perhaps a few ships if they can convince a merchant lord or two to switch sides.” The thought sickened in her belly, which still jerked and trembled within the confines of coutil and whalebone from the abuse of the night before.
Linden grimaced. “I’m surprised nobody has.”
“Perhaps some have, in small ways.” Linden stopped. He turned towards her, frowning. “Do you know something, my lady?”
She tilted her chin up, returning his piercing look. His brow was tight, his eyes shining. For a moment, her hands grew cold— but then he blinked, licking at his lips, clenching his jaw. No, he wasn’t touched. He was scared. He worried for his city, just as she did.
“Perhaps,” she said, slowly. Her thoughts went to the soldier locked in her sickroom. There were signs that the men of her club had met with military men of their own, or had their seconds carry on arrangements when they were safe in foreign lands. The prices of goods were dwindling, but not for all of them equally. Evelyn considered giving Danforth’s name to Pollard; she was fairly certain that his clerks could uncover some discrepancy in his books. He could be dragged before a tribunal. He’d be executed for treason while the Empress watched impassively from her high tower.
It would open a power vacuum, and in a healthier age she would have pursued it, profited from it. Now, though, it would only damage the failing city. It would fatten her coffers in the short term, but by next year, they would all be the poorer for it.
And that was assuming that nobody discovered her own damning houseguest.
No, she would not give his name. “I couldn’t swear to anything specific. It just seems...unavoidable.”
Pollard looked disappointed. Unsettled. He looked away from her and began walking again, and she accompanied him as if nothing had been said at all.
They passed shop after shop, all with doors open but emptier floors than last season. Instead, the streets teemed with citizens in fine clothing, blocking their ornamented carriages from rolling forward. The formerly well-to-do surrounded them, drained of cash but dedicated to being seen. It was tragic pageantry, and by Pollard’s face, he felt the sting of it. Evelyn felt more a dull disgust.
At least her dress would never go out of style, and she would never be required to join the dance. But she felt eyes on her, eyes she recognized, that recognized her in turn. Her skin crawled. With Pollard at her side, she had no hope of passing, unremarked, back into her shadows, and as they crossed the street, the door opened on a nearby phaeton. From it emerged a woman a few years younger than she was, with her hair dyed fashionably scarlet. She descended on Evelyn and Pollard in a rustle of rich golden silks, her neckline cut almost so low as to be only appropriate for a ball. Countess Gentine Urvenon, niece to the Empress, dedicated socialite.
Come, no doubt, to ask about the invitation that Evelyn had discarded the previous morning. That invitation, like all the ones before it, meant only one thing: Urvenon had need of her medicines. It was the only reason the noblewomen of the city tolerated her dour presence at their glittering parties.
“Lady Perdanu, how good to see you out,” Countess Urvenon said, curtsying slightly. She glanced between Evelyn and Pollard, her hunger for what Evelyn had to offer now eclipsed by having spotted Evelyn with male company. It would provide gossip for at least a night, maybe longer. “And may I know the name of your walking companion?”
It wouldn’t be out of character for Evelyn to simply turn and walk away, but Pollard would have been scandalized. So she held out an open hand in welcome. “Officer Linden Pollard, this is Countess Gentine Urvenon.”
“It is an honor,” Pollard said, bowing. Urvenon’s eyes lit up as she watched the pull of his finely starched uniform across his broad shoulders.
“My, an officer of the Judiciary!”
“We are discussing business, Countess,” Evelyn said, hoping to cut the conversation short. Then again, perhaps it would be better to leave Pollard to her, to let them find folly with one another. Her eyes drifted to the shifting crowds moving around them, wishing she could fade into nothing.