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Jun. 13th, 2013 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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loathlyladyThe room was . . . sparkling. Evrial took in the crystal chandeliers, the dark polished wood reflecting the light back like mirrors, the gilded ironwork, and the ostentatious jewelry worn by many of the women and some of the men, and decided that, yes, sparkling was the word for the room. Even the snow outside the windows seemed somehow more elegant than regular snow — it seemed unlikely that stuff currently glittering outside would ever get churned into brown-black slush. She took a sip from her nearly empty glass of cider and caught a glimpse of a familiar and ornate hinge plate on one of the doors. She tilted her head up and frowned. After a second of study, she realized her first suspicions had been correct.
She had made that hinge plate. She had made that hinge plate, and some city dandy had gilded it before sticking it up on the door. It was so deceptive, covering up good, honest iron like that, making it into something else than what it really was. Scrape away that gilding and most people were bound to be disappointed by what was underneath it. And yet it probably belonged here more than she did, even if it had been laid bare and put up on the door.
A quiet snort escaped her. If she stripped out of the blue velvet dress she had on and stood in the middle of the reception room in her underwear — no, halt that thought. In the buff, because Maldynado had picked out the underwear to go with the dress, and they were not her usual style, so she was bound to attract more attention than the hinge plate.
At that moment, Maldynado returned to her side after circulating the room to preen in the glow of postwar recognition of his valorous deeds — or perhaps to collect condolences on his continued lack of a statue. He nudged her and said, “Hullo, grouch. What are you laughing about?”
“Uh.” She could not tell him about what she had just been thinking. He would get . . . speculative, and they would end up in the coat check. Again. They had attended previous social events together with similar results. Velvet did not tolerate rough handling, she had discovered. People noticed.
“I was just thinking about going to get another cider,” she said instead. Alarm flashed briefly in Mal’s eyes.
“Oh, no.” He plucked the glass from her hands. “Allow me.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Is this one of those stupid rules again? Like me somehow being unable to open a door for myself when I’m with you?” She was perfectly capable of walking to the bar on the other side of the room, even in the girl shoes she was currently wearing, and getting her glass refilled. It was not like it took an engineer to pull it off.
Mal turned one of his more winning smiles on her, but she was unmoved.
“I am a gentleman. You are my lady. A gentleman fetches drinks for his lady, and no number of ravening, enemy hordes or awkwardly placed pouffes will deter him.” He pressed his free hand to his chest. “It is not stupid. It is a matter of honor and etiquette.”
She crossed her arms.
“Pouffes?” she repeated. Honor? she thought.
“Yes, they’re little footstools — very tricky to navigate around at parties. I know a fellow who tripped over one and received a very unsightly bruise. Took three days to fade.”
“As long as that? It’s a wonder he escaped with his life.”
“Or permanent disfigurement, yes. I’ll be right back.” He started to walk away. She dropped her arms.
“Mal, you just got here! Aren’t we going to talk at all tonight?” By the time they got back to whichever flat they were going to afterward, Mal wouldn’t want to do anything but have sex and fall asleep. As irritating as he could be, she did enjoy talking to him, and they had seen too little of each other lately. It was the only reason she had agreed to dress up and come to this party with him.
“We just had a conversation,” he tossed over his shoulder.
“That wasn’t a conversation. That was a fight,” she said, but he had already gone too far away to hear her. She sighed irritably and resigned herself to wait for him. He would come back — eventually.
No one tried to chat with her while she stood in front of the potted palms to one side of the reception room, the spot where she had been parked for most of the evening while Maldynado flitted about the room. She doubted she looked welcoming, but it still stung. The closest she got to conversation was a few cordial nods from men she worked with in the new government. The other women glanced at her, but didn’t really acknowledge her. It was probably all for the best — she had never really mastered the topics that women all seemed to chatter about at parties. She couldn’t talk about fashion or hair or babies, and she didn’t know anything about business except for blacksmithing — not something often discussed at warrior caste parties. For a brief, regretful moment, she thought of Amaranthe, whom she could actually talk to, but she shoved that away. Amaranthe wasn’t here. Amaranthe was probably doing something homey with her assassin in the little house they shared near the Barracks.
Urgh, she wouldn’t think about that either. About how Amaranthe and Sicarius had come back from their trip abroad and settled into a bizarrely domestic routine, while Evrial and Maldynado were still almost dancing around each other, together but also . . . not together. She was his lady. What did that even mean? It either meant a lot — everything — or it meant nothing. They nearly always spent the night together, switching between each other’s flats, but she had also heard him call shopkeepers he was charming into giving him free items “my lady”. How could she be his lady when half of the rest of the world was his lady at the same time?
She needed a drink, and Maldynado was nowhere in sight. She didn’t really see why that should stop her, though, considering that he had left — she checked the clock hanging on the wall, as the dress did not allow for a pocket watch — twenty minutes ago.
Pushing her way through the crowd that thickened the closer she got to the people serving drinks, she restrained herself from using any of the crowd control tactics that she had learned at the enforcer academy. If fetching her own drink was frowned on, she couldn’t imagine what using the girl shoes as a weapon would do.
“Excuse me,” she said when she managed to work her way to the bar, trying to catch the attention of one of the servers. She repeated herself several times, biting back frustration as the men around her were served first. If she were back home, then someone would have greeted her by name before she said anything and started pulling her a pint of cider in the next breath. Ancestors, she did not belong here.
Her mouth quirked. And Mal did not belong back home. He wouldn’t fit in at the Hammer & Tongs any better than she did here.
Someone touched her on the shoulder and she whipped around, already glaring. Deret Mancrest stood behind her, greeting dying on his lips as he saw her face.
“Evrial,” he said, “I was going to say hello, but now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t be asking if everything’s all right. Why isn’t Maldynado getting you a drink? I can’t imagine that you’re here without him.” He looked her up and down, frowning. “Not in that dress.”
She huffed a breath, somehow embarrassed by being caught by Deret. If he had been a stranger, then she could have handled it, but Deret knew her and he belonged to the same warrior caste world Mal did. He might . . . see more than she intended to give away.
“Mal said he was going to get me a drink nearly half an hour ago, and I haven’t seen him since,” she said. “I got tired of waiting, and now I can’t get anyone to look at me long enough to order my cider.”
Deret did not look surprised to hear this.
“Oh, yes. Mirel finds that frustrating as well. She likes to go on rants about how much easier it was to get drunk in the Kyatt Islands, and the hangover cures were better, too. The rum could not compare to apple brandy, but it flowed freely, she says.” He smiled and jerked his chin over his shoulder. “We’ve claimed one of the tables over there. If you’d like to, you could join us and I’ll get the attention of the bartender for you.”
Evrial agreed, and it was galling how expediently the bartender responded to Deret. He didn’t even have to say anything — he just lifted his hand and raised an eyebrow and the fellow scuttled over and said, “My lord?” She rolled her eyes. Ridiculous.
At the table, Mirel was bent over a notepad. Strands of her dark, curly hair were springing out of the clasp she had pulled them back with, and they bounced as she scribbled. Unlike the wardrobe Mal had selected for Evrial, Mirel’s dress looked like it had been selected on the basis of the black material easily hiding stains — whether ink or cider, Evrial couldn’t tell.
“Darling,” Mirel said without looking up, “you’ll never guess who is bribing whom this month. Quite surprised me when I was eavesdro—” She glanced up and her eyes widened as she spotted Evrial. “Hello! You did not just hear me call Deret ‘darling’ or admit to anything that might be a breach of journalistic ethics, because that was gossip, not reporting.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Evrial replied lightly, setting the other woman’s glass of brandy in front of her and taking a chair to her right. From here, she could see most of the room. She scanned the room, but didn’t see Maldynado.
“Good. Where did you come from?” Mirel shoved her pencil into her hair and picked up her drink.
“She was attempting to order a drink at the bar without success,” Deret said as he settled into the chair across from Evrial’s, “so I rescued her.”
His date released an unladylike snort, unrestrained and derisive at the prospect of anyone being “rescued” from the bar at a warrior caste soirée. She glanced at Evrial.
“Do you know what really gets their attention? If you lean over the bar and serve yourself. Even if you leave money on the counter.” She sipped her drink and murmured, “So surprising. They love money in this city.”
“Yes,” Deret said, lips curling, “it gets their attention so much we are no longer welcome at three different establishments on the waterfront.”
“It’s me who they’ve disinvited — you and your patronage are still welcome back at any time, Lord Mancrest.”
“My patronage goes where you are welcome, Lady Stonecrest,” he drawled back, in what was obviously some joke shared between them. Mirel grinned at him over the rim of her glass, and he leaned toward her, removing the pencil from her hair and tucking a curl behind her ear. She blushed and looked at him from under her lashes. He returned the look and tucked the pencil away in the wire coil of her notepad.
Evrial watched this exchange with blooming jealousy. Maldynado would not have tolerated her tucking a pencil into her hair at a party — he would have clucked and fluttered at her like an agitated mother hen. Though he would have done that before they left the flat, if she had been wearing a dress as practical as Mirel’s. Hers even had long sleeves for the winter and a skirt full enough to run in, should the occasion arise. Both these were lacking in the dress Evrial had on. And she also doubted that Mal would have welcomed her being evicted from any of the exclusive establishments on the waterfront — he had become almost parochial of late, in his newfound celebrity. Not wanting it to end, she supposed. Infamy was no substitute.
TINY LITTLE BIT OF CONVERSATION ABOUT THE BRIBERY
“What is he doing? How stupid can one man get?” Deret muttered suddenly, looking past both Evrial and Mirel to something happening behind them.
“What is it, Deret?” Mirel asked, breaking off their conversation.
He tore his eyes away from whatever was happening and forced his face into blandness.
“Nothing special,” he said. “I was just watching the party. The people. Very interesting, like the society pages in the paper come to life.”
Mirel raised an eyebrow.
“You want to get rid of that section, and you hate these things. You told me before we left the flat that your plan for the evening was to corner the new minister, get him to spill some secrets, and then ignore everybody else for as long as possible. Something has to be going on.”
She and Evrial started to twist around to look, but Deret blurted, “Not worth looking!” and Mirel turned back to give him a disgruntled look, which he returned with a glare that was trying to say something Evrial couldn’t quite untangle.
“You’re worse than Mal,” Evrial said, and ignoring him, she looked behind her.
Like the hinge plate, what she was seeing took a moment to sink in. Yes, there was Maldynado in his ostentatious embroidered shirt, shades of blue and bronze and peacock green mingled together in something he assured her was tasteful. She could see it very plainly, because he was striking a pose which put his chest and shoulders at best advantage, so there was a great deal of shirt on display.
Also on display was a group of four girls in their early twenties, gathered in front of him and dressed in the sort of sweet, feminine style that she could never manage. None of their heads cleared Maldynado’s shoulder, and they were obviously warrior caste from the richness of their clothes and jewelry. No one else that young could afford it. They looked at home in the opulent reception room, and they weren’t even gilded. It was just the way they were.
Maldynado shifted position, curling his arm down low to pull the sleeve of his shirt tight and make his bicep pop. One of the girls reached out and squeezed his arm, giggling, and he winked at her, a cheeky grin on his face.
For a moment, Evrial forgot how to breathe, and then something in her chest gave way and betrayal came, followed closely by anger. A hot and potent mix, swirled through with something else sharp and painful she pushed aside for right now.
“Mancrest, give me your sword,” Evrial ground out, shoving her open hand toward him.
“Uh.” Deret looked torn. Out of what appeared to be a sense of morbid curiosity, he asked, “What are you going to use it for?”
“I need to kill Maldynado.” She gritted her teeth briefly. “Or cut something off.”
“Bad idea,” Mirel said levelly. “Too many witnesses. You’ll want to do either of those things in private.” Deret swiveled his head toward her, and she shrugged. “What? I am a journalist. I’ve picked up a few things along the way. Both those are felonies. She won’t want witnesses.”
“Evrial,” Deret said, apparently deciding to ignore his girlfriend for the moment. “It’s probably not what it looks like. Not even Maldynado would be so stupid as to flirt with four women at once at a party he’s brought a date to.”
She looked over her shoulder again at Mal, who shifted into yet another position to the rapt attention of the girls. His back to them, he winked and his mouth moved in a slow, lazy way. She could practically hear the low drawl that he was using, the same one he had used on her on many occasions. Generally when trying to talk her into something.
“What does that look like to you? Any one of those girls would follow wherever he wanted them to go right now, and I have no idea where that might be.” She scowled. “Do you?”
“I was serious about what I said about witnesses,” Mirel broke in. “Even if there aren’t felonies involved, you don’t want to people to see this fight. Let me and Deret take you home, and then you can talk to Maldynado about it tomorrow in private.” She lowered her voice. “Trust me. I’m speaking from experience.”
Evrial looked again at Maldynado, still posing and smiling, and thought about how satisfying it would be to go over to him and yell until he lost his easygoing composure, or maybe toss what remained of her cider in his face. Her breath caught. But not in front of the dozens of people currently in the room. No need for the entire city to know.
“I’ll walk,” she said. “I don’t need you to take me.”
“We came in my steam carriage.” Deret pushed himself to his feet and fished in his pocket for the keys to the steam carriage door. “Your flat is on the way to mine, so it’s not out of the way.”
Mirel stood as well, and Evrial let herself be herded toward the door. At least she was leaving. When she looked back one last time, Maldynado was still chatting to the group of girls. He didn’t look up or seem to notice as she went out the door.
***
The blue velvet dress with the shiny silk accents. The darker blue velvet dress with the gold embroidery around the neck. The slinky red dress with the slits to the thigh. The gold one she had never actually been brave enough to wear out of the house. The collection of impractical, flimsy underwear that went under all of it. A half dozen pairs of girl shoes in varying forms of toe-pinching, heel-rubbing obscenity.
Evrial threw the items into the wooden crate sitting in the middle of her bedroom. If Maldynado didn’t want her, then she didn’t want him or any of the things he had given her. The ride back to her building had been spent brooding — thinking about the night, and her thoughts that they just didn’t fit in each other’s lives came back to her again and again. She was willing to make the effort, but he wasn’t. Not if he couldn’t even manage to bring her a cider without getting distracted by a flock of girls.
Her hand paused over the training boots Maldynado had bought her. Those fit really well — the supple leather was supportive but not restrictive, and she had never had custom-made shoes before this pair. And he had paid for them with actual, tangible ranmyas. That had been a thoughtful gift.
She felt her mouth twist. Just because he was thoughtful sometimes didn’t mean that he could be thoughtful when it counted. She grabbed the boots and pitched them into the crate, on top of everything else. That only left the dress she was wearing to add to the pile.
Someone hammered on her front door when she had her hands jammed up between her shoulder blades, trying to undo the third tiny, silk-covered button. Cursing hadn’t made it any easier. Mal had helped her get dressed earlier, doing up the buttons while his breath brushed against the back of her neck as he made her laugh and actually look forward to the evening. She had thought he’d be undoing them, too.
IT’S MAL AT THE DOOR; THEY ARGUE AND EVI STORMS OFF
***
Maldynado pounded on Deret’s door, not caring how early it was. Or late. Whichever. He had sat and stewed in Evi’s flat for a while, staring at the crate of things she had tried to give back to him, before coming here.
“Mancrest! Open the door!” he called hoarsely and pounded again. Someone was going to explain to him how he got into this position, and Deret seemed a likely candidate.
The tapping of Deret’s swordstick and the uneven thump of his footsteps came through the door, and a moment later, he flung it open and glared.
“Yes? How may I help you?” he asked coldly. Though he wore only pajama bottoms and his spectacles perched crookedly on his nose, he was carrying a pocket watch, and he made a show of flicking it open. “At nearly one in the morning?”
“What did you do to Evi?” Maldynado demanded. “You took my lady home, and now she’s not my lady.”
Deret’s eyebrows shot up.
“What? I knew she was upset, but she didn’t say anything about breaking it off with you.” His voice dropped. “Not that I’m necessarily surprised, after that show you put on, but Evrial didn’t say anything to me or Mirel about doing that.”
“When she disappeared from the party, I thought something was wrong, so I went to my flat, and she wasn’t there, and then I went to hers, and she was, and she yelled at me about flirting with all those girls, and I wasn’t even flirting with them. I was only telling them about my statue.”
“Your statue,” Deret repeated flatly.
“That’s exactly what Evi said!”
“Maldynado, telling someone about a statue should involve a whole lot less winking and touching. Possibly less flexing, as well.”
“Ah,” he said after a reflective moment.
“Yes, ah.”
“Deret?” someone called from the doorway to the bedroom. Mal looked past Deret and saw Mirel standing there, hair every which way and wearing the top to Deret’s pajamas. “Is everything all right? There was shouting, and then things got quiet.”
“Everything’s fine,” Deret called back. To Maldynado he said, “Excuse me for a minute. Go sit down,” and then disappeared into the bedroom, from which murmurs and rustling issued. Maldynado closed the flat door and went and sat down on the leather sofa in the room at the end of the hallway, fidgeting and unhappy.
When Deret appeared again, he had pulled on a white undershirt and looked slightly more collected. He closed the bedroom door behind him, and carried a lamp over from the sideboard to set it on the cider table in front of the sofa. He lit it, and they sat staring at each over the light for a moment.
“Mirel says hello.” Deret slanted Mal an annoyed look. “She has to get up early, otherwise she would have told you herself.”
“I was supposed to get up early, too,” Maldynado retorted. “Evi and I were going to go out for breakfast before she went to work, but I guess that’s not happening anymore.” His anger drained away suddenly, and he scrubbed a hand over his face. “Ancestors, Deret, I screwed up.”
“Been there.”
Maldynado dropped his hand. As far as he was aware, Deret was courteous and caring to a fault. “You?”
Deret grimaced.
“Mirel and I had a rocky start.” He snorted. “Sicarius, of all people, gave me some excellent advice. He said that excess of neither pride nor caution should prevent someone from finding happiness.”
“Sicarius said that?” Deret nodded and Mal said, “I suppose he would know. I gather that it took quite a bit for Amaranthe to bring him around.”
“In your case, I would probably recommend more caution, rather than less,” Deret murmured, nearly dry, and Mal made a grumping sound. He could not deny it. Deret continued, “Would you like a drink?”
“Several,” Mal answered.
“Do you promise not to become intoxicated and morose?”
“No.”
“Do you think you could handle drunk and falling asleep on my sofa? Preferably clothed so as to not disturb my lady when she goes into the kitchen to eat breakfast?”
“Yes.” He looked at Deret glumly. “Don’t you have to get up early, too?”
Deret shoved himself to his feet.
“In the general run of things, yes,” he said, going to the sideboard again, “but I am going to spend the night drinking with my best friend and take tomorrow off, as my best friend has just broken up with his first and only long-term lover.”
“Agh!” The word lover hit him viscerally, not because of what had happened that night, but because it was a word that didn’t describe what he and Evi had at all. “Don’t say that!”
“Say what?” Deret stopped gathering up glasses and the decanter to raise an eyebrow at Mal. “Lover?”
“You said it again!”
“Why don’t you want me to use lo—”
“I’ll explain if you stop saying it.” Deret waved his hand for him to continue. “It’s not just sex. And we haven’t really talked about feelings—” he waggled his fingers in the air “—so I can’t use that term.”
“I see.” Deret tucked the decanter under one arm and then picked up the glasses and came back to the sofa. “What should I use then?”
“She my . . . she’s my grouch.” Mal winced at the way his voice went rough as he fumbled for a word to describe what Evi was to him.
In careful silence, Deret eased himself back onto the sofa and laid out the decanter and glasses.
“While I appreciate the emotions you are experiencing, I’m not using that either. That sounds like something that’s between you two,” he said and poured two measures of brandy into the glasses. Generous measures, not the piddling ones that came from only filling it to the widest part of the snifter. The kind of glass poured for a man with a broken heart.
Deret pushed the fuller of the two glasses in front of Mal. He lifted his own in a toast.
“A warrior’s health.”
“A warrior’s stupidity, you mean. I made her cry,” Maldynado said, looking at the drink sitting in front of him. The dark amber color reminded him of her eyes, which he had last seen filled with tears and hurrying out the door. “She doesn’t cry. Ever.”
“Mirel yells,” Deret said, “to stop herself from crying. It is startling to behold. I do not remember a single one of my commanding officers being able to summon an equal dread in me with something so small as a few unshed tears.” His voice turned guilty. “Don’t tell her I told you that.”
“The thing about her or the thing about your officers?” Mal picked up his snifter and took an immoderate swallow. The brandy burned unpleasantly when gulped, and his eyes watered.
“The thing about her, you buffoon.”
“Don’t tell Evi I told you that thing about her, then. Things. The things I told you about her.” He rubbed at his eyes. “How do I fix this?”
“Apologize sincerely once,” Deret said immediately, “and then accept whatever her reaction is. If she takes you back, promise never to do it again, and keep that promise.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” He groaned and dropped his head against the back of the sofa. “What if she wants nothing else to do with me?”
“Then you will be that warrior caste idiot who broke her heart and whom she is well rid of.” Deret swirled the brandy around his glass for a second, before continuing, “Maybe think about telling her some of the stuff you told me. About her being your, uh, grouch.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes. Absolutely. She will want to hear it, much more so than I did.”
Mal took another swallow, letting it roll over his tongue. This was the good stuff. Potent but smooth. That Deret had been willing to use the thirty-year-old label tonight buoyed him up a little, and to demonstrate that appreciation, he nearly emptied the snifter. He cracked Deret half a smile when he topped his snifter up, less generously than before, and Deret returned it.
Mal sipped the fresh glass, stretching this one out, thoughts of Evi swimming through his head with all the rapidly consumed alcohol. It all swirled together, leaving him some combination of sad and muzzy and reflective. He set the empty glass on the cider table and spoke what was on his mind.
“She has magnificent breasts, you know,” he said. “Big and firm, but still sof—”
Deret sputtered and coughed, the drink he had just taken dribbling down his chin.
“Drink more, talk less,” he said when he was recovered. He refilled Mal’s glass and looked at him pointedly. “Then sleep. Things will look better in the morning, and if they don’t, your pounding head will distract you admirably.”
“You’re so wise, Deret.” A memory struck him — Evi on a muddy trail, mumbling something into a journal while birds sang around them. “Evi thinks I’m wise.”
“What did I sign myself up for?” Deret muttered under his breath after a long moment.
Mal clapped him on the back clumsily, the same alcohol which was making him think of Evi also making him think very kindly of Deret.
“It’s called friendship. I’m glad you’re mine.” He frowned and smooshed his palm against Deret’s face, turning his head so he could look him in the eye. “Am I really your best friend?”
Deret looked back at him with weary surprise.
“Yes.” He was mumbling because of Mal’s hand against his cheek. “Ancestors only know why.”
“It’s because I’m such excellent company.” Mal dropped his hand and sipped his drink. It didn’t burn now at all. “And you’ve known me a really long time and haven’t managed to scare me off.”
Deret snorted.
“I haven’t managed to scare you off?”
“You’re terrifying. You remind me of . . . you remind me of Evrial. Overachievers.” He gazed into his brandy. Just like her eyes — intoxicating and brown. “Where do you think she thought she should go? When she rushed out of the flat? She left all the dresses.” Poor dresses. They looked so much better on her than in that crate.
Deret considered this briefly, massaging his cheek.
“Amaranthe’s,” he answered at last. “You came here to me. She’d go to Amaranthe.” He shoved his glasses up his nose and rushed to add, pointing, “And you should definitely not go there.”
Maldynado clambered to his feet. The floor tilted and then slowly corrected itself, leaving him swaying.
“I need to go to there,” he said. “I need to talk to her and apologize for being studip.” That hadn’t sounded right, so he tried again. “Stupip. Spud— you know, rash.”
Deret tugged on his arm, and Mal collapsed onto the sofa with boneless, frustrating ease. He stared resentfully at Deret from beneath the lock of hair in his eyes.
“That was mean,” he said.
“You are not going to Amaranthe’s tonight,” Deret said. “Let it wait until tomorrow, when Evrial has cooled off and you are sober.”
“I am sober! I am perf’ly serious. I need to tell Evi I’m sorry and that I’m never gonna do it again.” He nodded vigorously, shifting the lock of hair further into his eye. “Ever.”
“Why don’t you—” Deret sighed “— why don’t you tell me about that? Consider it practice for telling her, since we’re so much alike.”
“OK,” Mal said after some deliberation. “But you should know that you are kinda ugly compared to Evi.”
“One of my many failings,” Deret said, and then sighed again.
***
EVRIAL SHOWS UP AT AMARANTHE’S (Amaranthe POV?)
**
Deret was woken by Mirel shaking his shoulder and saying his name.
“Sweetheart,” he murmured and rolled toward her side of the bed, intent on getting some morning cuddling in before they both went to the paper. Instead, he got a face full of the back of his sofa.
He rolled back the other way and cracked an eye open. She was standing over him, his robe belted over what looked like a pair of his pajamas, and looking very serious.
“Why am I on the sofa?” he asked. He opened his other eye and winced at the light from the lamp still burning on the cider table. “Did I get drunk at that party? Did we have a fight?”
“I think Maldynado stole your steam carriage,” she said, which was not an answer he had expected to either question.
“What?” He spoke sharply and sat up. “How could Mal steal the carriage? It’s still dark out!” His head throbbed, and something about that made memories of the night surface. “He came here and we drank until we fell asleep, didn’t we?”
“Well, you drank until—” Mirel started, but was interrupted by a crash from the street outside. Her eyes widened and she scrambled to the window. After locating his sword stick, Deret followed stiffly after her.
On the street below, his steam carriage was grille first in the waste bins waiting to be picked up once the sun rose. Or, more correctly, the waste bins were pushed up onto the top of the snowbank at the side of the street, and the grille of his carriage was in the snowbank.
“Emperor’s testicles!” Deret burst out. He’d only had the carriage for a couple months.
Even as he spoke, Maldynado was reversing out of the snowbank and turning the carriage toward the Barracks. Or the safe, secure neighborhood surrounding the Barracks, where dignitaries, politicians, important figures, and Amaranthe and Sicarius made their home.
“Oh, that’s a mistake,” Mirel breathed beside him. She shoved herself off the window frame, running for the flat door. The robe flew open around her bare legs — she was not wearing anything on her legs but Deret’s bedroom slippers.
“Where are you going?”
“To get you a cab!”
Deret turned around and stared.
“Me a cab? Where am I going?”
She pulled her coat out of the closet by the door and shoved her arms through the sleeves.
“To stop Maldynado, of course. You’re his friend, you’re her friend — what else would you do?”
She had made that hinge plate. She had made that hinge plate, and some city dandy had gilded it before sticking it up on the door. It was so deceptive, covering up good, honest iron like that, making it into something else than what it really was. Scrape away that gilding and most people were bound to be disappointed by what was underneath it. And yet it probably belonged here more than she did, even if it had been laid bare and put up on the door.
A quiet snort escaped her. If she stripped out of the blue velvet dress she had on and stood in the middle of the reception room in her underwear — no, halt that thought. In the buff, because Maldynado had picked out the underwear to go with the dress, and they were not her usual style, so she was bound to attract more attention than the hinge plate.
At that moment, Maldynado returned to her side after circulating the room to preen in the glow of postwar recognition of his valorous deeds — or perhaps to collect condolences on his continued lack of a statue. He nudged her and said, “Hullo, grouch. What are you laughing about?”
“Uh.” She could not tell him about what she had just been thinking. He would get . . . speculative, and they would end up in the coat check. Again. They had attended previous social events together with similar results. Velvet did not tolerate rough handling, she had discovered. People noticed.
“I was just thinking about going to get another cider,” she said instead. Alarm flashed briefly in Mal’s eyes.
“Oh, no.” He plucked the glass from her hands. “Allow me.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Is this one of those stupid rules again? Like me somehow being unable to open a door for myself when I’m with you?” She was perfectly capable of walking to the bar on the other side of the room, even in the girl shoes she was currently wearing, and getting her glass refilled. It was not like it took an engineer to pull it off.
Mal turned one of his more winning smiles on her, but she was unmoved.
“I am a gentleman. You are my lady. A gentleman fetches drinks for his lady, and no number of ravening, enemy hordes or awkwardly placed pouffes will deter him.” He pressed his free hand to his chest. “It is not stupid. It is a matter of honor and etiquette.”
She crossed her arms.
“Pouffes?” she repeated. Honor? she thought.
“Yes, they’re little footstools — very tricky to navigate around at parties. I know a fellow who tripped over one and received a very unsightly bruise. Took three days to fade.”
“As long as that? It’s a wonder he escaped with his life.”
“Or permanent disfigurement, yes. I’ll be right back.” He started to walk away. She dropped her arms.
“Mal, you just got here! Aren’t we going to talk at all tonight?” By the time they got back to whichever flat they were going to afterward, Mal wouldn’t want to do anything but have sex and fall asleep. As irritating as he could be, she did enjoy talking to him, and they had seen too little of each other lately. It was the only reason she had agreed to dress up and come to this party with him.
“We just had a conversation,” he tossed over his shoulder.
“That wasn’t a conversation. That was a fight,” she said, but he had already gone too far away to hear her. She sighed irritably and resigned herself to wait for him. He would come back — eventually.
No one tried to chat with her while she stood in front of the potted palms to one side of the reception room, the spot where she had been parked for most of the evening while Maldynado flitted about the room. She doubted she looked welcoming, but it still stung. The closest she got to conversation was a few cordial nods from men she worked with in the new government. The other women glanced at her, but didn’t really acknowledge her. It was probably all for the best — she had never really mastered the topics that women all seemed to chatter about at parties. She couldn’t talk about fashion or hair or babies, and she didn’t know anything about business except for blacksmithing — not something often discussed at warrior caste parties. For a brief, regretful moment, she thought of Amaranthe, whom she could actually talk to, but she shoved that away. Amaranthe wasn’t here. Amaranthe was probably doing something homey with her assassin in the little house they shared near the Barracks.
Urgh, she wouldn’t think about that either. About how Amaranthe and Sicarius had come back from their trip abroad and settled into a bizarrely domestic routine, while Evrial and Maldynado were still almost dancing around each other, together but also . . . not together. She was his lady. What did that even mean? It either meant a lot — everything — or it meant nothing. They nearly always spent the night together, switching between each other’s flats, but she had also heard him call shopkeepers he was charming into giving him free items “my lady”. How could she be his lady when half of the rest of the world was his lady at the same time?
She needed a drink, and Maldynado was nowhere in sight. She didn’t really see why that should stop her, though, considering that he had left — she checked the clock hanging on the wall, as the dress did not allow for a pocket watch — twenty minutes ago.
Pushing her way through the crowd that thickened the closer she got to the people serving drinks, she restrained herself from using any of the crowd control tactics that she had learned at the enforcer academy. If fetching her own drink was frowned on, she couldn’t imagine what using the girl shoes as a weapon would do.
“Excuse me,” she said when she managed to work her way to the bar, trying to catch the attention of one of the servers. She repeated herself several times, biting back frustration as the men around her were served first. If she were back home, then someone would have greeted her by name before she said anything and started pulling her a pint of cider in the next breath. Ancestors, she did not belong here.
Her mouth quirked. And Mal did not belong back home. He wouldn’t fit in at the Hammer & Tongs any better than she did here.
Someone touched her on the shoulder and she whipped around, already glaring. Deret Mancrest stood behind her, greeting dying on his lips as he saw her face.
“Evrial,” he said, “I was going to say hello, but now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t be asking if everything’s all right. Why isn’t Maldynado getting you a drink? I can’t imagine that you’re here without him.” He looked her up and down, frowning. “Not in that dress.”
She huffed a breath, somehow embarrassed by being caught by Deret. If he had been a stranger, then she could have handled it, but Deret knew her and he belonged to the same warrior caste world Mal did. He might . . . see more than she intended to give away.
“Mal said he was going to get me a drink nearly half an hour ago, and I haven’t seen him since,” she said. “I got tired of waiting, and now I can’t get anyone to look at me long enough to order my cider.”
Deret did not look surprised to hear this.
“Oh, yes. Mirel finds that frustrating as well. She likes to go on rants about how much easier it was to get drunk in the Kyatt Islands, and the hangover cures were better, too. The rum could not compare to apple brandy, but it flowed freely, she says.” He smiled and jerked his chin over his shoulder. “We’ve claimed one of the tables over there. If you’d like to, you could join us and I’ll get the attention of the bartender for you.”
Evrial agreed, and it was galling how expediently the bartender responded to Deret. He didn’t even have to say anything — he just lifted his hand and raised an eyebrow and the fellow scuttled over and said, “My lord?” She rolled her eyes. Ridiculous.
At the table, Mirel was bent over a notepad. Strands of her dark, curly hair were springing out of the clasp she had pulled them back with, and they bounced as she scribbled. Unlike the wardrobe Mal had selected for Evrial, Mirel’s dress looked like it had been selected on the basis of the black material easily hiding stains — whether ink or cider, Evrial couldn’t tell.
“Darling,” Mirel said without looking up, “you’ll never guess who is bribing whom this month. Quite surprised me when I was eavesdro—” She glanced up and her eyes widened as she spotted Evrial. “Hello! You did not just hear me call Deret ‘darling’ or admit to anything that might be a breach of journalistic ethics, because that was gossip, not reporting.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Evrial replied lightly, setting the other woman’s glass of brandy in front of her and taking a chair to her right. From here, she could see most of the room. She scanned the room, but didn’t see Maldynado.
“Good. Where did you come from?” Mirel shoved her pencil into her hair and picked up her drink.
“She was attempting to order a drink at the bar without success,” Deret said as he settled into the chair across from Evrial’s, “so I rescued her.”
His date released an unladylike snort, unrestrained and derisive at the prospect of anyone being “rescued” from the bar at a warrior caste soirée. She glanced at Evrial.
“Do you know what really gets their attention? If you lean over the bar and serve yourself. Even if you leave money on the counter.” She sipped her drink and murmured, “So surprising. They love money in this city.”
“Yes,” Deret said, lips curling, “it gets their attention so much we are no longer welcome at three different establishments on the waterfront.”
“It’s me who they’ve disinvited — you and your patronage are still welcome back at any time, Lord Mancrest.”
“My patronage goes where you are welcome, Lady Stonecrest,” he drawled back, in what was obviously some joke shared between them. Mirel grinned at him over the rim of her glass, and he leaned toward her, removing the pencil from her hair and tucking a curl behind her ear. She blushed and looked at him from under her lashes. He returned the look and tucked the pencil away in the wire coil of her notepad.
Evrial watched this exchange with blooming jealousy. Maldynado would not have tolerated her tucking a pencil into her hair at a party — he would have clucked and fluttered at her like an agitated mother hen. Though he would have done that before they left the flat, if she had been wearing a dress as practical as Mirel’s. Hers even had long sleeves for the winter and a skirt full enough to run in, should the occasion arise. Both these were lacking in the dress Evrial had on. And she also doubted that Mal would have welcomed her being evicted from any of the exclusive establishments on the waterfront — he had become almost parochial of late, in his newfound celebrity. Not wanting it to end, she supposed. Infamy was no substitute.
TINY LITTLE BIT OF CONVERSATION ABOUT THE BRIBERY
“What is he doing? How stupid can one man get?” Deret muttered suddenly, looking past both Evrial and Mirel to something happening behind them.
“What is it, Deret?” Mirel asked, breaking off their conversation.
He tore his eyes away from whatever was happening and forced his face into blandness.
“Nothing special,” he said. “I was just watching the party. The people. Very interesting, like the society pages in the paper come to life.”
Mirel raised an eyebrow.
“You want to get rid of that section, and you hate these things. You told me before we left the flat that your plan for the evening was to corner the new minister, get him to spill some secrets, and then ignore everybody else for as long as possible. Something has to be going on.”
She and Evrial started to twist around to look, but Deret blurted, “Not worth looking!” and Mirel turned back to give him a disgruntled look, which he returned with a glare that was trying to say something Evrial couldn’t quite untangle.
“You’re worse than Mal,” Evrial said, and ignoring him, she looked behind her.
Like the hinge plate, what she was seeing took a moment to sink in. Yes, there was Maldynado in his ostentatious embroidered shirt, shades of blue and bronze and peacock green mingled together in something he assured her was tasteful. She could see it very plainly, because he was striking a pose which put his chest and shoulders at best advantage, so there was a great deal of shirt on display.
Also on display was a group of four girls in their early twenties, gathered in front of him and dressed in the sort of sweet, feminine style that she could never manage. None of their heads cleared Maldynado’s shoulder, and they were obviously warrior caste from the richness of their clothes and jewelry. No one else that young could afford it. They looked at home in the opulent reception room, and they weren’t even gilded. It was just the way they were.
Maldynado shifted position, curling his arm down low to pull the sleeve of his shirt tight and make his bicep pop. One of the girls reached out and squeezed his arm, giggling, and he winked at her, a cheeky grin on his face.
For a moment, Evrial forgot how to breathe, and then something in her chest gave way and betrayal came, followed closely by anger. A hot and potent mix, swirled through with something else sharp and painful she pushed aside for right now.
“Mancrest, give me your sword,” Evrial ground out, shoving her open hand toward him.
“Uh.” Deret looked torn. Out of what appeared to be a sense of morbid curiosity, he asked, “What are you going to use it for?”
“I need to kill Maldynado.” She gritted her teeth briefly. “Or cut something off.”
“Bad idea,” Mirel said levelly. “Too many witnesses. You’ll want to do either of those things in private.” Deret swiveled his head toward her, and she shrugged. “What? I am a journalist. I’ve picked up a few things along the way. Both those are felonies. She won’t want witnesses.”
“Evrial,” Deret said, apparently deciding to ignore his girlfriend for the moment. “It’s probably not what it looks like. Not even Maldynado would be so stupid as to flirt with four women at once at a party he’s brought a date to.”
She looked over her shoulder again at Mal, who shifted into yet another position to the rapt attention of the girls. His back to them, he winked and his mouth moved in a slow, lazy way. She could practically hear the low drawl that he was using, the same one he had used on her on many occasions. Generally when trying to talk her into something.
“What does that look like to you? Any one of those girls would follow wherever he wanted them to go right now, and I have no idea where that might be.” She scowled. “Do you?”
“I was serious about what I said about witnesses,” Mirel broke in. “Even if there aren’t felonies involved, you don’t want to people to see this fight. Let me and Deret take you home, and then you can talk to Maldynado about it tomorrow in private.” She lowered her voice. “Trust me. I’m speaking from experience.”
Evrial looked again at Maldynado, still posing and smiling, and thought about how satisfying it would be to go over to him and yell until he lost his easygoing composure, or maybe toss what remained of her cider in his face. Her breath caught. But not in front of the dozens of people currently in the room. No need for the entire city to know.
“I’ll walk,” she said. “I don’t need you to take me.”
“We came in my steam carriage.” Deret pushed himself to his feet and fished in his pocket for the keys to the steam carriage door. “Your flat is on the way to mine, so it’s not out of the way.”
Mirel stood as well, and Evrial let herself be herded toward the door. At least she was leaving. When she looked back one last time, Maldynado was still chatting to the group of girls. He didn’t look up or seem to notice as she went out the door.
***
The blue velvet dress with the shiny silk accents. The darker blue velvet dress with the gold embroidery around the neck. The slinky red dress with the slits to the thigh. The gold one she had never actually been brave enough to wear out of the house. The collection of impractical, flimsy underwear that went under all of it. A half dozen pairs of girl shoes in varying forms of toe-pinching, heel-rubbing obscenity.
Evrial threw the items into the wooden crate sitting in the middle of her bedroom. If Maldynado didn’t want her, then she didn’t want him or any of the things he had given her. The ride back to her building had been spent brooding — thinking about the night, and her thoughts that they just didn’t fit in each other’s lives came back to her again and again. She was willing to make the effort, but he wasn’t. Not if he couldn’t even manage to bring her a cider without getting distracted by a flock of girls.
Her hand paused over the training boots Maldynado had bought her. Those fit really well — the supple leather was supportive but not restrictive, and she had never had custom-made shoes before this pair. And he had paid for them with actual, tangible ranmyas. That had been a thoughtful gift.
She felt her mouth twist. Just because he was thoughtful sometimes didn’t mean that he could be thoughtful when it counted. She grabbed the boots and pitched them into the crate, on top of everything else. That only left the dress she was wearing to add to the pile.
Someone hammered on her front door when she had her hands jammed up between her shoulder blades, trying to undo the third tiny, silk-covered button. Cursing hadn’t made it any easier. Mal had helped her get dressed earlier, doing up the buttons while his breath brushed against the back of her neck as he made her laugh and actually look forward to the evening. She had thought he’d be undoing them, too.
IT’S MAL AT THE DOOR; THEY ARGUE AND EVI STORMS OFF
***
Maldynado pounded on Deret’s door, not caring how early it was. Or late. Whichever. He had sat and stewed in Evi’s flat for a while, staring at the crate of things she had tried to give back to him, before coming here.
“Mancrest! Open the door!” he called hoarsely and pounded again. Someone was going to explain to him how he got into this position, and Deret seemed a likely candidate.
The tapping of Deret’s swordstick and the uneven thump of his footsteps came through the door, and a moment later, he flung it open and glared.
“Yes? How may I help you?” he asked coldly. Though he wore only pajama bottoms and his spectacles perched crookedly on his nose, he was carrying a pocket watch, and he made a show of flicking it open. “At nearly one in the morning?”
“What did you do to Evi?” Maldynado demanded. “You took my lady home, and now she’s not my lady.”
Deret’s eyebrows shot up.
“What? I knew she was upset, but she didn’t say anything about breaking it off with you.” His voice dropped. “Not that I’m necessarily surprised, after that show you put on, but Evrial didn’t say anything to me or Mirel about doing that.”
“When she disappeared from the party, I thought something was wrong, so I went to my flat, and she wasn’t there, and then I went to hers, and she was, and she yelled at me about flirting with all those girls, and I wasn’t even flirting with them. I was only telling them about my statue.”
“Your statue,” Deret repeated flatly.
“That’s exactly what Evi said!”
“Maldynado, telling someone about a statue should involve a whole lot less winking and touching. Possibly less flexing, as well.”
“Ah,” he said after a reflective moment.
“Yes, ah.”
“Deret?” someone called from the doorway to the bedroom. Mal looked past Deret and saw Mirel standing there, hair every which way and wearing the top to Deret’s pajamas. “Is everything all right? There was shouting, and then things got quiet.”
“Everything’s fine,” Deret called back. To Maldynado he said, “Excuse me for a minute. Go sit down,” and then disappeared into the bedroom, from which murmurs and rustling issued. Maldynado closed the flat door and went and sat down on the leather sofa in the room at the end of the hallway, fidgeting and unhappy.
When Deret appeared again, he had pulled on a white undershirt and looked slightly more collected. He closed the bedroom door behind him, and carried a lamp over from the sideboard to set it on the cider table in front of the sofa. He lit it, and they sat staring at each over the light for a moment.
“Mirel says hello.” Deret slanted Mal an annoyed look. “She has to get up early, otherwise she would have told you herself.”
“I was supposed to get up early, too,” Maldynado retorted. “Evi and I were going to go out for breakfast before she went to work, but I guess that’s not happening anymore.” His anger drained away suddenly, and he scrubbed a hand over his face. “Ancestors, Deret, I screwed up.”
“Been there.”
Maldynado dropped his hand. As far as he was aware, Deret was courteous and caring to a fault. “You?”
Deret grimaced.
“Mirel and I had a rocky start.” He snorted. “Sicarius, of all people, gave me some excellent advice. He said that excess of neither pride nor caution should prevent someone from finding happiness.”
“Sicarius said that?” Deret nodded and Mal said, “I suppose he would know. I gather that it took quite a bit for Amaranthe to bring him around.”
“In your case, I would probably recommend more caution, rather than less,” Deret murmured, nearly dry, and Mal made a grumping sound. He could not deny it. Deret continued, “Would you like a drink?”
“Several,” Mal answered.
“Do you promise not to become intoxicated and morose?”
“No.”
“Do you think you could handle drunk and falling asleep on my sofa? Preferably clothed so as to not disturb my lady when she goes into the kitchen to eat breakfast?”
“Yes.” He looked at Deret glumly. “Don’t you have to get up early, too?”
Deret shoved himself to his feet.
“In the general run of things, yes,” he said, going to the sideboard again, “but I am going to spend the night drinking with my best friend and take tomorrow off, as my best friend has just broken up with his first and only long-term lover.”
“Agh!” The word lover hit him viscerally, not because of what had happened that night, but because it was a word that didn’t describe what he and Evi had at all. “Don’t say that!”
“Say what?” Deret stopped gathering up glasses and the decanter to raise an eyebrow at Mal. “Lover?”
“You said it again!”
“Why don’t you want me to use lo—”
“I’ll explain if you stop saying it.” Deret waved his hand for him to continue. “It’s not just sex. And we haven’t really talked about feelings—” he waggled his fingers in the air “—so I can’t use that term.”
“I see.” Deret tucked the decanter under one arm and then picked up the glasses and came back to the sofa. “What should I use then?”
“She my . . . she’s my grouch.” Mal winced at the way his voice went rough as he fumbled for a word to describe what Evi was to him.
In careful silence, Deret eased himself back onto the sofa and laid out the decanter and glasses.
“While I appreciate the emotions you are experiencing, I’m not using that either. That sounds like something that’s between you two,” he said and poured two measures of brandy into the glasses. Generous measures, not the piddling ones that came from only filling it to the widest part of the snifter. The kind of glass poured for a man with a broken heart.
Deret pushed the fuller of the two glasses in front of Mal. He lifted his own in a toast.
“A warrior’s health.”
“A warrior’s stupidity, you mean. I made her cry,” Maldynado said, looking at the drink sitting in front of him. The dark amber color reminded him of her eyes, which he had last seen filled with tears and hurrying out the door. “She doesn’t cry. Ever.”
“Mirel yells,” Deret said, “to stop herself from crying. It is startling to behold. I do not remember a single one of my commanding officers being able to summon an equal dread in me with something so small as a few unshed tears.” His voice turned guilty. “Don’t tell her I told you that.”
“The thing about her or the thing about your officers?” Mal picked up his snifter and took an immoderate swallow. The brandy burned unpleasantly when gulped, and his eyes watered.
“The thing about her, you buffoon.”
“Don’t tell Evi I told you that thing about her, then. Things. The things I told you about her.” He rubbed at his eyes. “How do I fix this?”
“Apologize sincerely once,” Deret said immediately, “and then accept whatever her reaction is. If she takes you back, promise never to do it again, and keep that promise.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” He groaned and dropped his head against the back of the sofa. “What if she wants nothing else to do with me?”
“Then you will be that warrior caste idiot who broke her heart and whom she is well rid of.” Deret swirled the brandy around his glass for a second, before continuing, “Maybe think about telling her some of the stuff you told me. About her being your, uh, grouch.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes. Absolutely. She will want to hear it, much more so than I did.”
Mal took another swallow, letting it roll over his tongue. This was the good stuff. Potent but smooth. That Deret had been willing to use the thirty-year-old label tonight buoyed him up a little, and to demonstrate that appreciation, he nearly emptied the snifter. He cracked Deret half a smile when he topped his snifter up, less generously than before, and Deret returned it.
Mal sipped the fresh glass, stretching this one out, thoughts of Evi swimming through his head with all the rapidly consumed alcohol. It all swirled together, leaving him some combination of sad and muzzy and reflective. He set the empty glass on the cider table and spoke what was on his mind.
“She has magnificent breasts, you know,” he said. “Big and firm, but still sof—”
Deret sputtered and coughed, the drink he had just taken dribbling down his chin.
“Drink more, talk less,” he said when he was recovered. He refilled Mal’s glass and looked at him pointedly. “Then sleep. Things will look better in the morning, and if they don’t, your pounding head will distract you admirably.”
“You’re so wise, Deret.” A memory struck him — Evi on a muddy trail, mumbling something into a journal while birds sang around them. “Evi thinks I’m wise.”
“What did I sign myself up for?” Deret muttered under his breath after a long moment.
Mal clapped him on the back clumsily, the same alcohol which was making him think of Evi also making him think very kindly of Deret.
“It’s called friendship. I’m glad you’re mine.” He frowned and smooshed his palm against Deret’s face, turning his head so he could look him in the eye. “Am I really your best friend?”
Deret looked back at him with weary surprise.
“Yes.” He was mumbling because of Mal’s hand against his cheek. “Ancestors only know why.”
“It’s because I’m such excellent company.” Mal dropped his hand and sipped his drink. It didn’t burn now at all. “And you’ve known me a really long time and haven’t managed to scare me off.”
Deret snorted.
“I haven’t managed to scare you off?”
“You’re terrifying. You remind me of . . . you remind me of Evrial. Overachievers.” He gazed into his brandy. Just like her eyes — intoxicating and brown. “Where do you think she thought she should go? When she rushed out of the flat? She left all the dresses.” Poor dresses. They looked so much better on her than in that crate.
Deret considered this briefly, massaging his cheek.
“Amaranthe’s,” he answered at last. “You came here to me. She’d go to Amaranthe.” He shoved his glasses up his nose and rushed to add, pointing, “And you should definitely not go there.”
Maldynado clambered to his feet. The floor tilted and then slowly corrected itself, leaving him swaying.
“I need to go to there,” he said. “I need to talk to her and apologize for being studip.” That hadn’t sounded right, so he tried again. “Stupip. Spud— you know, rash.”
Deret tugged on his arm, and Mal collapsed onto the sofa with boneless, frustrating ease. He stared resentfully at Deret from beneath the lock of hair in his eyes.
“That was mean,” he said.
“You are not going to Amaranthe’s tonight,” Deret said. “Let it wait until tomorrow, when Evrial has cooled off and you are sober.”
“I am sober! I am perf’ly serious. I need to tell Evi I’m sorry and that I’m never gonna do it again.” He nodded vigorously, shifting the lock of hair further into his eye. “Ever.”
“Why don’t you—” Deret sighed “— why don’t you tell me about that? Consider it practice for telling her, since we’re so much alike.”
“OK,” Mal said after some deliberation. “But you should know that you are kinda ugly compared to Evi.”
“One of my many failings,” Deret said, and then sighed again.
***
EVRIAL SHOWS UP AT AMARANTHE’S (Amaranthe POV?)
**
Deret was woken by Mirel shaking his shoulder and saying his name.
“Sweetheart,” he murmured and rolled toward her side of the bed, intent on getting some morning cuddling in before they both went to the paper. Instead, he got a face full of the back of his sofa.
He rolled back the other way and cracked an eye open. She was standing over him, his robe belted over what looked like a pair of his pajamas, and looking very serious.
“Why am I on the sofa?” he asked. He opened his other eye and winced at the light from the lamp still burning on the cider table. “Did I get drunk at that party? Did we have a fight?”
“I think Maldynado stole your steam carriage,” she said, which was not an answer he had expected to either question.
“What?” He spoke sharply and sat up. “How could Mal steal the carriage? It’s still dark out!” His head throbbed, and something about that made memories of the night surface. “He came here and we drank until we fell asleep, didn’t we?”
“Well, you drank until—” Mirel started, but was interrupted by a crash from the street outside. Her eyes widened and she scrambled to the window. After locating his sword stick, Deret followed stiffly after her.
On the street below, his steam carriage was grille first in the waste bins waiting to be picked up once the sun rose. Or, more correctly, the waste bins were pushed up onto the top of the snowbank at the side of the street, and the grille of his carriage was in the snowbank.
“Emperor’s testicles!” Deret burst out. He’d only had the carriage for a couple months.
Even as he spoke, Maldynado was reversing out of the snowbank and turning the carriage toward the Barracks. Or the safe, secure neighborhood surrounding the Barracks, where dignitaries, politicians, important figures, and Amaranthe and Sicarius made their home.
“Oh, that’s a mistake,” Mirel breathed beside him. She shoved herself off the window frame, running for the flat door. The robe flew open around her bare legs — she was not wearing anything on her legs but Deret’s bedroom slippers.
“Where are you going?”
“To get you a cab!”
Deret turned around and stared.
“Me a cab? Where am I going?”
She pulled her coat out of the closet by the door and shoved her arms through the sleeves.
“To stop Maldynado, of course. You’re his friend, you’re her friend — what else would you do?”
