She laughed. “I don’t know. Everything. She’s always been my favorite. Is she nice? Does she seem like she’d be good to be friends with?”
He remembered of the girl inside, the wary reserve with which she carried herself, her obvious anger. Arkady had told him he always tried to separate the four to treat them: The Seneschal made a mistake. Let them be raised in a pack like dogs. Best not to get yourself surrounded.
“Yes, she does,” he said.
Bindy was thrilled. “I knew it! I could tell.”
When he sent her off to Brakeside or Marketside or even to the Bazaar, she’d strap Canty onto her back, grin cheerfully, and come back the same way. The first time he sent her to one of the manors in Porterfield, though, she came back with hard eyes, and her smile seemed forced. The third time this happened, Vertus confronted him. “You can’t do that,” he said. “Send her around town, saying she’s from the House Magus. Dressed the way she is, with that baby on her back.”
“Are you volunteering for errand duty? Because somebody has to do it until Arkady Magus gets well.”
“She’s a street rat. Any respectable courtier would drive her off with a stick, rather than be seen with her at their door.”
“She’s been doing fine.”
Vertus made a contemptuous noise. “She’s been giving your packages to the bloody kitchen maids, and probably getting quite a lording-over as she does it, too. Get rid of her.”
Nate let his voice go cool. “Bindy stays.”
“Then find another way,” Vertus said. “This one’s bad all around.”
Vertus was right. Nate couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to him before. Bindy was Marketside born and raised; which wasn’t as rough as Brakeside, maybe, but her experience with courtiers probably started and stopped at jumping out of the way of their carriages. She was always clean, her hair neatly braided; but her dress was obviously—if skillfully—mended, many times over, and her boots had been worn by many other feet before hers. The day Derie had wrenched his memory at the plague shrine, he’d given the girl a few coins from Arkady’s chest upstairs, and told her to buy herself new clothes. Dress, boots, leggings and coat. Very plain, he was careful to say, not because he was afraid that she would come back with something gaudy, but because he wanted her to know this was a work uniform, not charity. “Picture an old lady you don’t like, and buy something she’d wear,” he’d said, and Bindy had laughed and said she knew just the one.
But whoever Bindy had in mind, it wasn’t the woman who rapped at the kitchen door the day after Nate saw Derie. This woman’s eyes were dark-ringed with fatigue, her forehead creased with worry lines, but she wasn’t old and she didn’t seem unlikeable. He could smell the paper factory fumes that clung to her clothes: this was Bindy’s mother.
Nate still felt a bit weak, but he invited her inside. She would not sit down. Unbending and severe, she held out her hand. In her outstretched palm he saw too-smooth skin left by a nasty burn, or many nasty burns. On top of it rested the coins he’d given Bindy. “Take them back,” she said without preamble. “You’ll not buy clothes for my child, magus or no.”
“I’m just an apprentice,” Nate said automatically. He made no move to take the coins.
“I know what you are.” Her tone was bristling and rigid. “Everyone says you’re a good man. They say, oh, Nora, Gate Magus wouldn’t do anything bad. Gate Magus goes all the way down. But I know people like you. I know how the world is. I do honest work. My two oldest girls do honest work and my son does, too inside. We don’t do it so Belinda can be bought dresses by the likes of you.”
Nate realized what she thought. He took a step back, lifting his hands up as if to show that there were no weapons in them; but he wasn’t being accused of hurting Bindy with a weapon. “You’ve got me wrong. She’s running errands for me, that’s all. Making deliveries. If she’s better dressed—”
“She’s dressed just fine for Marketside.” The woman—Nora—dropped the coins on the table. “Anywhere wants her dressed better is somewhere she doesn’t need to be.” She turned to leave.
“Then take her to work at the factory with you,” he said.