Arkady had grown ill; they had gone from being equals to being—something else. Arkady’s courtier clients still came to the manor for medicine and Vertus couldn’t provide it, so Nate did. Slowly, without fanfare, he had moved more fully into the manor. He still slept on his pallet in the kitchen, and Arkady’s chair in the parlor was always left respectfully empty, but it was a token gesture. Nate had taken over the lab, the parlor and the garden as if they were his by right. When there were decisions to be made, Nate made them. Vertus, for the most part, appeared to accept the change in their relationship with equanimity, but Nate felt something unsaid between them, and suspected that when it emerged it would be nothing pleasant. Even as Vertus asked advice about Arkady—should I bring him water, should I open the window, should I give him brandy—Nate could feel the servingman watching, calculating. Vertus was not stupid. Nate suspected that he knew more about Arkady’s illness than he let on. Sewn into the lining of Nate’s battered satchel was a cloth pocket that held, among other things Nate would rather keep secret, a leather wrist cuff with a tension-released blade attached: his springknife. Nate hadn’t worn it since arriving in Highfall, but he often found himself thinking of the knife when he was alone with Vertus, thinking he might feel better with it strapped inside his sleeve. Vertus was a big, solid man, and wiry was the kindest word ever used to describe Nate. He wasn’t sure wiry would be enough, if it came to a fight. He wasn’t sure the springknife would be, either.
So he stepped lightly around Vertus, even as he rearranged the contents of Arkady’s lab and replaced the sorrier plants in the garden with more useful ones. Arkady’s courtier patients mostly wanted headache powders and contraceptive sachets, which took barely any effort. It wasn’t hard for Nate to keep up his Gate Magus work, which he considered more important. His secret patients still came to the back gate, but without the need to hide from Arkady, anyone who needed help could come right through the garden and knock at the kitchen door. No messenger had come from the palace since Lord Theron had been poisoned (which was troubling, because no news of the boy’s death had come; either the antidote had worked, or the boy was dying as slowly as Arkady) but Nate hoped to take over those duties, too, tending to courtiers inside with brains stirred by drops or stomachs burned with alcohol.
In short: Nate was busy. He no longer had time to run this way and that, from the Beggar’s Market to the Grand Bazaar, seeking ingredients and information. He missed being out in the city, seeing the people who had become friendly and familiar, but there simply weren’t enough hours in the day. He needed to be available when people needed him, particularly courtiers and most particularly the riders from the House, should one come. He dared not ask Vertus to run errands for him, but he needed help. When he’d chanced upon the messenger girl in the Market again a few weeks before, still wearing her brother on her back, Nate had felt the baby’s head, pronounced it a bit firmer, and asked her if she wanted to work for him. “Regular work,” he said. “Every day. As much as you want.”
Her eyes had lit up. “Can I bring Canty?”
He’d said she could; of course he had. Bindy—that was what she called herself, although he doubted it was her given name—was irrepressibly cheerful, quick and smart and ready to laugh. While she waited for him to finish a preparation, she would play with Cantor on the floor of the lab. Highfall babies, he noticed, enjoyed the same games Slonimi babies did—peekaboo, where’s your nose, look what’s on my head, look what’s on your head—and a giggling Highfall baby was as irresistible as any other. Nate liked having them around.
After a few days, when they were comfortable with each other, Bindy asked him shyly to tell her what it was like inside the House. At first, remembering that she had a brother inside, he told her reassuring stories about the plentiful food and beautiful gardens. But she’d heard all that before. “Tell me about the Children,” she said, her voice eager. “Especially the foundling.”
He hesitated. He didn’t know if he could speak casually about the girl she called the foundling.