The Exarch & the Errand Girl Ch. 04

There were no fragments in the alley, which was simply a narrow space between two buildings. No door opened out onto it, and some boxes had been stacked along one side. Rouran padded down the alley, exiting out onto the street on the opposite side. Nothing of value. She turned left, walking down a short way, looking for jade, then turned and went the other way when she found nothing. The right side of the street also yielded no jade. She still believed they had to have come down this way, she just didn't know how she would prove it.

Rouran turned back into the alley, walking down to recover the trail of fragments and just confirm for herself that the assassins had traveled this way.

Something in the corner, behind the boxes, caught the torchlight and gleamed, catching her eye.

There was not much gold in Rouran's village. Most people dealt in copper, and the few that got to silver counted themselves lucky to have such wealth. But she'd seen gold enough to know the way it held the light and how it shone. And there, in the darkness, was what she knew to be some gold, under some rubbish.

Rouran squatted down and tapped it. It was not a coin, far larger. She grabbed it, pulling the object into her hand to examine it.

It took her a moment to register what exactly she was looking at. She did not encounter many knives that had had their blades separated from their hilts, but there in her hand was a golden hilt to what would likely have been a small dagger. Rouran blew the dirt of the alley off it, turning it over and over in the torchlight. It was a simple object, barely any engraving. It seemed to Rouran to be an expensive metal to have wrought into a hilt and end up with so plain a design.

She turned it upside down. There, cut into the flat heel of the grip, was a maker's mark.

There was no way, Rouran knew, to say that this was the hilt that had held the dragon jade blade that Arthir had shattered, but she knew of no other reason there could be for such an item to be discarded. She resolved to take it to Sergeant Wair in the morning, so that he could see for himself. And if he couldn't see for himself, Rouran would make him see.

* * *

But, at least for that evening, Rouran would have no chance to. Instead, she returned to the vai Ullan estate to make her report to Lord Ked, whom she found in his library, his wife, Lady Trali, reading peacefully in an armchair nearby as he studied some ledger.

Ked shook his head as she described Sergeant Wair, and grinned when she mentioned her discovery of the dagger hilt.

"Excellent work, both in your findings and with dealing with arrogant Guards, Rouran."

"Do you think he could be reassigned, my lord?" she asked.

"I'm afraid not. He's Lord Islan's selection."

"Then, could I be reassigned? I could do much better work at your side than playing messenger between the Guard and you. You could choose a noble to act as the Council's liaison."

"Do you not think it might distract from Sergeant Wair's investigation to have, say, Lady Elina standing over his shoulder?"

"He has a Sorcerer."

"But no one in the city knows any Sorcerers save the High Council on sight. They know the Five Noble Families."

"Surely one of them has a clerk they trust that could do this work?"

"Is not one clerk the same as the other?" asked Lord Ked, glancing up at her. "Why should I ask the other nobles to inconvenience themselves?"

"Surely the Exarch deserves to have hi—" tried Rouran, but Ked cut her off.

"I used to manage quite well without you, Rouran. I will manage however long this investigation lasts as well, you can be sure. My body may be weakened, but my administrator's mind is sharp as ever. You are not so essential that I cannot spare you. And the Exarch surrendering his help is a demonstration, to the others, that I am not so special."

Rouran frowned and said nothing, staring at her feet.

Lady Trali closed her book with a snap, so loud that even Ked jumped in his seat. His wife rose up from her chair, her flowing, waving hair draping down to just below the shoulders of her gown. She fixed Lord Ked with a dark look.

"Are you quite done abusing your most loyal servants, my dear?" she asked.

"I wasn't—" said Lord Ked, but now Lady Trali spoke over him.

"He would ask you back in a heartbeat, Rouran," said Lady Trali. "But his honor, his belief in the Exarch's 'first among equals' status compels him not to. And it frustrates him so, so he takes it out on you when you tempt him."

"That is not what I was doing," said Lord Ked.

"Rouran does not have time for your feeble protestations, my dear," said Lady Trali. "She needs to help me brush my hair."

"She's my clerk, not your handmaid."

"For tonight she will suffice," said Lady Trali, as she strolled out of the library. "Come along, Widow Metil."

Rouran stared at Lord Ked, and the Exarch shook his head, sighed, then waved her after his wife.

Lady Trali had gotten far enough ahead that Rouran had to run along the corridor after her.

"You don't really need me to brush your hair, my lady," she said.

"I quite do. It's a mess," said Lady Trali, indignantly. "I let myself stay in the chair too long and nearly fell asleep."

Rouran fixed her with a hard look and without meeting Rouran's gaze, the corners of Lady Trali's mouth curved upwards. Still, she held her counsel until they'd reached the doors of her chambers.

"I intervened to prevent a fight," she said. "Come in. Despite my duplicitous nature just now, I would still like you to brush my hair."

"We wouldn't have fought," said Rouran, following Lady Trali into her apartments.

She watched as the noblewoman began slipping off her rings, settling down in a chair in front of her vanity.

"Oh, no, of course not." Lady Trali's voice dripped with disdain. "I've seen you, Rouran. I know well enough that if you get cornered, you'll turn and fight and it will go hard on the person who opposes you. And then my husband, the stubborn child, was there, closing off every avenue you had to escape. No, there wouldn't have been a fight, just a hellstorm. And Ked has too few people around him these days he trusts. I would not let him alienate one of the few remaining just to show how magnanimous he is to the other nobles."

Rouran was silent as she picked this apart.

"Pull that bench over here and sit down," said Lady Trali. "I've the brush here."

They were silent for a long while as Rouran took her place, sending the brush down Lady Trali's bright hair, dulled by the long streaks of grey that danced among the golden strands.

Rouran began to work out knots at the ends, and Lady Trali saw her focus on the task, and smiled.

"You'd abandon your task over a man?" she asked, glancing at Rouran in the mirror.

Rouran paused brushing and stared at the back of the older woman's head, picking over her words carefully.

"Is he at least a good looking man?" asked Lady Trali, pushing into the silence.

"Why does that matter?" asked Rouran.

"It doesn't," said Lady Trali. "But men are often vexsome, and a handsome man can be excused some of it."

"That seems very shallow."

"'My lady,'" corrected Lady Trali. "If you're going to insult me, you could be polite about it."

"...my lady," appended Rouran.

"And besides," said Lady Trali, continuing on as though she hadn't heard. "At my age, I feel I'm owed a bit of shallowness here and there. Better in me than in some young ones. I daresay that Sergeant Wair has some shallow thoughts about you."

"I can't imagine he does."

"No? Rouran, what do you see when you look in my mirror?"

Rouran glanced up, stared at herself a moment, then caught Lady Trali's inquisitive stare and looked away quickly.

"I see my regrets," she said at last.

Lady Trali sniffed.

"I'll have to get this mirror inspected by the Guild. I see it's been cursed. What regrets do you have about the way you look?"

"I used to be a slip of a girl," Rouran sighed. "I used to turn heads at the dances. I turned Naklas' head. They'd stumble their way to me, spluttering nonsense that they couldn't know, of course, but it was...soothing."

"Now who is shallow?"

"Perhaps you're right," said Rouran. "Perhaps it was. But I still miss it. After Naklas and my father reached an agreement, all of that ceased. And for a while, that was all to the best, because at least I still turned Naklas' head. But then even his gaze didn't linger, and by that point I'd stopped caring, honestly. And then he died and I started fishing and now that slip of a girl is—"

"A woman of substance," Lady Trali finished for her.

Rouran smiled softly.

"A happy way of looking at it."

"A true way of looking at it," said Lady Trali. "Who would your little naif of a self be today if she'd stayed a naif? Nothing but a pretty little bauble for a fisherman in a village that doesn't even have a name. The woman you became hauled a Sorcerer out of the water herself, nursed him back to health, killed a warrior of the Dragon Clans with a scaling knife, left her home and everything she knew to make a new one in Tia Vashil, and is now the Exarch's personal clerk.

"And I daresay you still turn a head or two these days," she added.

Rouran shook her head.

"People look for a woman they can sweep off her feet, not one weathered from standing in the river hauling nets, my lady."

"I suppose many people do," said Lady Trali. "But let us suppose, Rouran, that there is more than one sort of person in the world. You keep looking for those that turn their heads for the naifs, and so of course you never see a single neck crane in your direction. Because you're not some sad slip of a girl, you're a woman, and a striking one at that, and the heads you turn belong to those that see a woman, which are not the same little boys that crowded into the barn for dances and tripped over their own feet looking for that girl. One is not the same as the other, though certainly, one can learn to be the other, and the other never entirely forgets how it was."

"Hmph. Well, I would not know if I've ever met such a man."

"You said Sergeant Wair spent a great deal of time admiring Sorcerer Siara?"

"I would say so."

"Then he's one for sure."

"But—"

"He's courting a woman who is likely pushing seventy, if not closer to a century, and looks to be in her early thirties, who has practically unlimited authority over him. Not to mention her magic." continued Lady Trali. "You could not say such a man is hungering for inexperienced girls, Rouran."

"Her status is what draws him," said Rouran.

"Perhaps," said Lady Trali. "But take it from a noblewoman who once was young: the men who chase your status when you are young and the men who chase your status when you are not are two different beasts. The first is not so different from those that chase the girls at the village dances, I would imagine."

"And the second?"

"The second...well...the second is too complex to be quickly summed up. He could be a scoundrel or a thrillseeker or, maybe, a man who knows what he wants."

"How do you tell the difference?"

"Generally you don't," said Lady Trali. "Not until it is too late. Until then, you're just left wondering what he's up to, really."

She smiled and pulled her hair over her shoulder, away from Rouran's brush.

"That's enough for tonight, my dear," she said, smiling in the mirror back at Rouran.

Rouran stood, placing the brush on Lady Trali's vanity without looking at her, then making her way to the noblewoman's door.

"Thank you, my lady," she said.

"One last word, Rouran," said Lady Trali. "Of advice."

"What is it, my lady?"

"As I said, it's hard to tell one man from another, and sometimes they change their shapes. If I were you, I might stay on your investigation. If not to help the city, or help my husband, then simply to learn what kind of man Sergeant Wair truly is. Goodnight, Rouran."

"Goodnight, my lady."