started teaching Bindy some elementary herblore (she was his apprentice, after all) and she drank it in like a starving cat with a saucer of milk. She caught his mistakes now. And nagged at him all the time to take better care of himself, to eat or sleep or have some brandy. Her efforts brought tears to his eyes.
The mood swings: elation, tears. That was the Work showing itself, too.
The boy, George, skulked out of the room. “Grandson?” Nate said.
“Just a stray.”
“It’s a hard time to be taking in strays. You’re good to do it.”
She sniffed. “Wouldn’t let a dog go to one of those orphan halls. The factories will get him eventually, anyway.”
On his way home, he stopped at the Grand Bazaar. The awnings were dusty and faded, and rat droppings collected in the corners. The few merchants who still bothered to set up sold goods too frivolous to be stocked by the company stores: cheap jewelry, bolts of grubby viscose, acrid perfumes. Leda, one of Nate’s favorite herb sellers from before the coup, had moved from a large fragrant stall in the center to a chair behind a rickety table. She sat with her arms folded and groused at the guards, a few sad sprigs of spindly oregano and basil laid out before her. “Afternoon, Leda,” he said. “How’s your grandson? Headache any better?”
Leda gave him a huge, too-white smile. She’d been very grand before the coup, and still used acid to whiten her teeth even though Nate had promised her the habit would lead to her losing them. “Aren’t you kind to ask,” she said. “Seems to bother him most in the morning. Probably something to do with the damp.” Meanwhile, her foot crept out, independent from the rest of her body, and pressed down on the end of one of the wide wooden planks. The other end lifted up, revealing a cavity under the floor. Now they were carrying on two conversations: one in their normal voices, in case anyone passed by, and the other under their breath. “My sister used to be like that. Willowbark? Took funny in the damp.”
“Some people do,” Nate said. “Opium. Has she ever tried camphor tea?”
“On the left. Camphor, you say? Sounds awful.”
“It is. Tastes hideous. Looks dry. You can add honey, but I can’t decide if that makes it better or worse.”
“Fresh as it comes. Perhaps I’ll try that with the boy, then. That something you can make, the camphor tea?”
She was a strong negotiator. She was also one of the few herbmongers in New Highfall who managed to bring in opium, along with valerian, pennyroyal and basically any other herb with an actual use. Bartering care had never worked with Leda, and Nate couldn’t sew, so he ended up parting with most of his weeks’ credit vouchers. Which were valuable, because they came from the Seneschal and were good anywhere. As he slipped the small wrapped package into a hidden pocket in his satchel, she winked and said, “For all his headaches, he’s a clever little thing, my grandson. Stay and hear the clever thing he said?”
Nate wasn’t sure the grandson even existed. “I always like a clever story,” he said.
Without missing a beat the foot pressed a different board, Leda prattling all the while. Something about a puppy. Inside the revealed compartment, a handful of dull metal vials gleamed against black fabric, carefully arranged to catch the light. Not that they wouldn’t shine on their own, for anyone who really wanted them.
“Hilarious,” Nate said, when she paused, “but I have to move on.”
The foot slid away from the board. The vials disappeared. “Good day then, magus.”
“Good day, Leda,” he said.
* * *
He heard Bindy talking in the kitchen as he opened the front door of the manor. She sounded animated and cheerful in a way he hadn’t heard in weeks. A male voice answered. As he hung up his coat and hat, Nate wondered, surprised, if she was speaking to Charles, who generally avoided her like she was contagious. But the man’s voice was too deep, and the accent was wrong. Charles, like Nate, hadn’t entirely been able to shake the Slonimi lilt in his voice, and his consonants were courtier-sharp. The voice in the kitchen was pure Highfall.
No. It was pure House. Nate went tense.
In the kitchen, a fragrant pot of cinnamon tea simmered. Bindy sat at the table with a man whose face made Nate’s brain spin in alarmed circles. That broad face, those sandy