Chapter Text
The carriage pulls up right outside the alley; even in the street’s shadow it shimmers with shellac, like wet cobbles on a dark night. With all the hansoms that clog Port City’s arteries, it’s unremarkable, just another box among many. Save that it’s here, where no one with the money to hire a cab would be caught. And save that it’s arrived right on time, just as he’s been told it would.
A boot hedges out of the shadow, followed by a narrow limb, stretched enough to be part shade itself. The carriage merely waits, hunkering down at the alley’s mouth with all the gravitas of a fat tabby used to table scraps. It could play this game all day, its hefty shape says; could he?
He edges out the barest bit more, letting the light from The Beggar’s Barrel fall across the knife-sharp planes of his jaw. A tilt of his head sets one eyes to flash like a coin, stark beneath the low-slung band of his cap. A dangerous look, he’s been told, the kind that keeps bigger boys from trying to roll the one who’s skin and bones. That’s the thing about being skinny; all it takes is a good, feral grin, and only fools want to feel out your edges.
It gets the job done too; he’s hardly got his chin up from his collarbone when the door swings open, revealing an even deeper dark inside. “Get in.”
It strikes like a whip’s lash, the air knocked clean out of him. “Me, milord?” He gives a hearty laugh, making a good show of peering around the narrow alley. Good thing there’s not enough light to show him sweat. “You’re sure you have the right pl–?”
“You are Nanaki, aren’t you?”
His soles itch as he shuffles closer, trying to stave off the burn. Another breath or two and he’d find a long walk over hot coals more pleasant than standing here. “Today I am. Though maybe tomorrow I’ll feel like someone else…”
A shadow shifts in the dim of the cab, not small. “I have little patience for mummery. Hurry up.”
He’d likened those words once to a goad to an ass, but tonight– tonight he has to catch himself before he stumbles. There’s not much pride in him, but what’s left refuses to meet his client on hands and knees, crawling up the steps like a cur. He’s got a reputation to keep, after all.
“Your wish,” he grits out through clenched teeth, taking those stairs in a single bound, “is my command.”
The inside is black as pitch and just as sticky, the shadows clinging to the corners as stubbornly as a stain. Still, he catches velvet beneath his palms, the cushion plump as any young miss, not the aching black lacquer benches of one of the city’s hansoms. Plain it might have looked from the outside, but this is no jumped-up merchant’s night out. Whatever money bought this is old, like the quarter itself.
He’d stretch his other senses to the task, but there’s no need; once the carriage has clopped and swayed itself to smoother cobbles, the shade snaps up. Lamp light pours in, painting the cab in gold.
Hardly necessary; this man is made of it. His business has never extended much to textiles– too much speculation for his blood– but the fine weave on that wool coat alone would fence enough to keep him well fed and warmly housed for a year, fingers firmly in pockets. That doesn’t even account for the linen of his shirt, or the brocade of his waist.
His fingers scour runnels through velvet. This man isn’t money, he’s a noble. No wonder even the barest command from that mouth sets him scrambling.
It’s not the first time a man more title than name has sought him out– he’s got a reputation after all, a good one. A knife with legs, a man called him once, and he’d liked that just fine. A tidy little image; one that keeps the unsavory types from trying to stiff him. But this man– this man looks nothing like those small, sniveling lordlings looking for a sure answer. No this one, this one–
This one could be a killer himself. If the calluses on his hands are a hint, he already was. Men don’t get ones like those from playing around in the training yard. This was a man used to fighting.
No, a man used to winning, unless he mistakes his guess. A dangerous sort to get in bed with, and a lethal one to get in business.
Well, let it never be said he passed up a bad idea when it sat itself in front of him. “Nice ride.”
The lord grunts, displeased. “Tell me how this works.”
His mouth itches the minute the words hit air. It’s not like this with everyone; most times he’s got a few moments– maybe even a few minutes– to dance around, to let them replace a strict order with a weaker one, maybe even slip the lead on the whole thing altogether. But his lordship here wields commands like a rider holds his reins, and oh, he’s not in the habit of letting a bucking stallion keep his head free.
“Well, I’m not sure of the mechanics.” His teeth flash, an effect lessened by the glare of the lamplight. Hard to seem so dangerous when all of him can be seen, black washed out to gray. “But they hitch the horses up front, you see, and then the driver–”
“Not the carriage,” his lordship snaps, brow furrowing like a thunderhead on a horizon. “They say you’ll do anything a man asks. Tell me how it works.”
There it is; the trap closes, and it’s steel teeth as far as the eye can see.
“Command me, mister,” he drawls, stretching his legs as long as they’ll go. It’s enough to pass beneath the bench on the other side, his lordship giving a censorious sniff. “And I must obey. That’s my gift.”
At once, the storm breaks, and with a terrible certainty, his lordship grates out, “No, boy. That’s your curse.”
It’s not that he expected business to be concluded in a rattling carriage– that’s the sort of thing one of those merchants might do, the ones that want to curry favor with the First Prince by aping one step up on the food chain– but he’s got to say, he doesn’t see the palace coming. A clandestine location sure, maybe even the guy’s townhouse if he’s got a misplaced sense of confidence, but most blue-bloods seem to know that you don’t flaunt your private problems right under the royal’s nose.
Then again, His Highness has been up wooing the North for the past few months. Turns out all those old ladies were right: when the cat’s away the mice will play. These ones just dress nicer and aim a little higher than stealing cheese.
The ambiance sits like a shroud in this lord’s study; the heavy drapes are drawn against the night, the only light coming from the steady blaze of the lamps. These aren’t like the ones in the hall, set so bright and so close that shadows are banished to the corners, but instead leave dark swatches of them, so thick he could touch them. Probably get stains as bad as ink for his trouble.
“I have very pressing business to attend to,” the lord grunts, waving away his man at the door. “See to it we’re not disturbed.”
The footman inclines, stiff as a board. “As you say, Your Grace.”
Well, that brings him up a little short. Titles by and large escape him– he understand who’s above who, but that’s more a matter of knowing who he’ll survive swiping a purse or two– but he knows that it takes some pedigree to graduate from my lord. And that one, that one–
“Sit down.” He does, fast enough to make the chair creak. His lordship– or his graceship, it seems– fixes him with a weary glare, as if he’s the one that’s been put out. “We have much to discuss.”
“Like payment?” he suggests, hopeful.
One ached brow scuttles those ships out at sea. “I have already worked out an arrangement with your, hm, employer. However–” he glances up, assessing him with a sweep of the eye like manflesh is the same as horseflesh– “should you prove helpful in carrying out this favor of mine, we might be able to work out an…additional compensation.”
That would seem promising, if he hadn’t learned from experience that a man dressed this fine touting additional compensation usually meant a stint in the dungeon. Not that he’d complain about a regular meal though; that was always a treat.
“So…” His smile slant into a smirk, kicking his heels up on the corner of His Grace’s desk. “Just what favor am I finding it in my heart to give you, mister?”
His mouth twitches, smoothing out like parchment. Well well, so his lordship doesn’t appreciate the demotion.
“You will discourage a particular personage.” A portrait skims across the dark wood; it’s nothing fancy, a sketch with a hint of color on a paper pulled out whole from its book, rough enough to be done in an afternoon. Maybe even something His Grace did himself. Young ladies whiled away the hours with watercolor; who’s to say a lord could never learn the trick?
He looks at those broad hands, marked by the blade he wears at his hip, and doubts it. “That’s some hair.”
Some eyes too; the artist– whoever they were– took some real liberties with color. Poets might compare irises to jewels, but the greenest ones he’s ever seen were more like a pair of olives left to wither on the kitchen sill. Well, except for those ones, years ago, but being half dead always made the world bright, like a dream. He misses it, sometimes, feeling like his life is more beautiful than it is.
“That it is.” His Grace has a gift for making an acknowledgement sound like a scolding. “This young woman has seen fit to insinuate herself into the prince’s inner circle. Remove her from it.”
His blood trickles to ice in his veins. A relentless itch flares across his palms, but he’s too much of professional to show as much as a shake.
“The prince, huh?” He’d seen sketches of him in the paper; a handsome guy, even if his face is all done up in straight lines, glare as piercing from the page as His Lordship’s is from across the desk. “Another one of those girls who wants to make themselves a mistress for a king’s ear, yeah? Didn’t think he’d be the sort to fall for that…”
Didn’t think he could fall for that, more like. Word on the street was that the prince royal was gifted, that one of those winged women showed up on the day of his birth and blessed him. It gave him a special sight, they said, one that made the hearts of men as easy to read as The Hangman’s sign. One look and he could tally up all a man’s sins as quick as a bookie did up his odds.
“Not the first prince,” His Grace rumbles, hesitating before he adds, “I mean the second. Prince Zen.”
Prince Zen. He knows him, of course, the way anyone on the street would, but trying to put a face to a name…
He only conjures up a chubby-cheeked child, holding the hand of the grieving queen. That’d been the last plate of him he’d seen, nearly ten years ago by his count. Surely he’s grown since then, as pretty and stern as his brother. Or maybe not so stern, if he’s fallen in with a girl like this.
“Pretty girl,” he says, tugging at a strap on his shoulder. “Shame she’s gotta go. Any particular way you want her to disappear?”
“Don’t harm her.”
He blinks, eyes so wide he can feel the stretch at the corners. For once, the itch fades, the restless run of his legs easing. “What’s that?”
“Don’t harm her,” His Grace repeats, more uncomfortable by the moment. “Not a hair on her head. Discourage her, forbid her, scare her for all I care, but I won’t have her blood on my hands.”
“Ah, but Mister.” He grins, sounding more carefree than he feels. “That’s the point, isn’t it? You wouldn’t be getting your hands dirty, I would be–”
“I understand the concept of assassination all too well,” the lord huffs, pulling at his waistcoat. “You are forbidden from indulging in it, unless your life or another’s hangs in the balance. I trust, however, it will not come to that.”
The sketch might be rough, but in it the girl smiles, the kind that stretches right up to her eyes. “Nah,” he says slouching down in his seat, spreading his legs out long in front of him. His Grace sneers at the sight. “But what’s your prince gonna think about all this? This Zen–”
“Don’t say his name.” His teeth snap shut before His Grace can even finish the request, stuck together like a mutt that’s gotten into molasses. “It doesn’t belong in a mouth such as yours.”
Well, good to see where he stands. He’d nearly forgotten with how chummy this whole chat has been.
“Then what’s His Highness gonna think?” His bitterness is hardly subtle, but His Grace seems the type to have swallowed too much poison over the years to still taste it. “Seeing as how this girl’s a favorite of his. You sure a little relocation will be enough? If he’s fallen under her spell here–”
“That is not what has happened here. Zen…” His Grace stalls out, jaw working like it aches. Must be what happens to these nobles, keeping their upper lips so stiff all the time. “You are aware of those of elevated blood are often…gifted?”
He stills, the only moving part of him the eyebrow he’s sending toward his hairline. “Are you saying those rumors are true? What next, are you going to tell me those winged women exist and flowers grow where they walk?”
His Lordship’s stern mouth turns sterner, a thin white scar where his mouth should be. “Nothing so fanciful. These…fairy stories have made much of what is quite mundane.”
Mundane. Spoken like a man who’s never had to put wax in his ears to sleep, just to keep a stray voice in the flophouse from sending him two towns west before he wakes. “You don’t say.”
“Prince Zen received a gift at his naming.” The noble hands splay flat over the wood, tension in every knuckle. “A trivial thing, I’m sure she thought. What harm could it do for a man of his position to see the best in every man he met? After a man like–”
His Grace does not gently trail off, no. His teeth snap down with a click, a hand rising to cover it. He looks away for good measure too, but it’s too late to hide the anger in his eyes, the history of wasted wrath spooled behind it.
“In any case,” His Lordship presses on tightly. “He often does not see the danger in his acquaintance until it is far too late. We have been quite vigilant about his associations, but it seems, in His Highness’s absence, the door of opportunity has once again been left open.”
He grins, sharp as a knight. “And I’m the guy you want to close it.”
“Yes.” The word is stiff as one of these cushions, just hoping he’ll bounce of it. “In so many words.”
“You do realize,” he drawls, letting his legs stretch in a lazy line. “Now that you’ve told me this, I could use this to my advantage. Make this Younger Highness think we’ll be great friends.”
With the utmost reluctance, His Lordship tell him, “You may have to.”
Well, that’s not the reaction he’d been expecting.
“I, of course, do not encourage or condone such behavior,” the lord continues, like every word is a cut, and he means to let them all bleed. “But to get close enough to speak with this girl…”
His Grace hesitates. “Do not let him come to harm. Not by injury, and not by–” he licks his lips, knuckles white where he refuses to clench them– “not by any other means. He has gone through quite enough false friends for his age.”
And he’d go through more before his time was up, but strangely– strangely, he doesn’t want to be one of them. “Got ya. Low-visibility interference.”
His Lordship lets out a breath. “If you please. I hope this does not make things…too impossible.”
“Nah.” He waves a hand at him. “I think I’ve already got an idea. I’ll just need a couple things.”
The uniform could fit better. His Grace offered to spring for having it tailored, but details take time, and he’s got the feeling if he’s gonna come out the other side of this as unscathed– no, as unaffected as he’d like to be, he’s got to work quick. So, borrowed uniform. Hems pinned and tucked. The jacket hangs off him like an unstuffed scarecrow, but still, he looks…
Official. Like he belongs here. Or he would, if his hair was long enough to cover the scar.
“But we were told by Prince Zen himself, to admit Mistress Shirayuki in as a special guest,” the guard tells him, practically squeaking his way through it. “How–?”
He smiles; he doesn’t fool himself into thinking it’s a nice one. “That order’s been revoked. See here–” he holds out the edict, all on vellum, signed and sealed– “as order by His Highness, and co-signed by–”
He blinks, eyes fixed to the signature. Marquis Haruka.
Haruka, as in the head of the lord’s council. Haruka, as in the man who raised Clarines’ princes. Marquis, as in one step down from duke.
Well, hell. Looks like maybe he’s got himself in a little over his head. And with his gift making his skin itch every moment this girl’s in the castle–
He’s got no way out.