Scars and Swindlers Read online

  “Don’t you dare,” she said. “I’m counting on you to fix Cadon. As for your apology, it’s all right. I knew what I was getting into, and I’ve been through worse. Besides, you gave me a house.”

  “Well, in that case, I suppose it’s all of no consequence then.” He chuckled bitterly.

  “It’s a bad world, Haid,” she said. “We’re all tainted by it.” She touched his shoulder. “I appreciate your apology.” Then she moved past him.

  He let her go.

  He waited until she had left and he had heard the door shut and latched behind her before he continued down to the basement of the Sticx.

  Cadon was kept in the pitch blackness here, in a room that Haid had done his best to make comfortable nonetheless. He could not introduce any candle or torch or any other source of flame, however, or it would mean that Cadon turned back into a mindless, violent man-beast. He only had his wits about him in the dark.

  When Haid had first conceived of his scheme in Rzymn, he hadn’t thought of Cadon as a person, but sort of as a tool, one that he would use and discard. But then, perhaps he’d thought of all of them that way, as things he’d maneuver into place to make his scheme work.

  And then, slowly, it had changed.

  First Tristanne had become a friend. He’d never had friends, not like that. Before his father had gone mad and killed every member of his family, only sparing Haid’s life because he’d been killed first, by Haid’s brother Zeir, who’d succumbed to wounds inflicted by their father and died as well—before that, he’d had friends, but he’d never known loss then, so they were simply people whose company he found diverting. Tristanne had her own pain and loss in her history. She understood him.

  In fact, she’d wanted to be there for him, to talk to him about what had happened with the cainlach, but he hadn’t thought he wanted to talk about it.

  Then, of course, I go and blurt it out to Pairce.

  First, Tristanne, then Pairce, then Sefoni. All were meant to be pawns, and none of them were that to him anymore.

  “Who’s there?” came the rumble of Cadon’s voice.

  “It’s me,” he answered.

  “You,” said Cadon, and Haid heard the bit of aversion in Cadon’s tone. Haid knew the man didn’t like him, and he’d thought it was some bit of aristocratic snobbery. Cadon had once been the Cownt of Bretigern, and he would have known Haid’s reputation as a scoundrel and swindler. He would have held the disgraced deux in contempt.

  But considering what Pairce had said, he wondered if it were more than that.

  “I’m not her pimp, you know,” he said. He had just come to the door of Cadon’s room, and he turned the knob. It seemed stupid to knock to announce his presence at this point, since they were already mid-conversation.

  “Aren’t you?” said Cadon. “You’re her employer, and you set up her engagements, like the one with me. Blazes, I should have told Pairce to lock the door. She asked if she should, and I thought it was pointless.”

  “Pardon me.” Haid paused, halfway through the door. “May I come in?”

  “Can I stop you?” said Cadon. “It seems you own me as much as you own her.”

  “I don’t own anyone,” said Haid. “But you can hardly make it without help at this point, so I would think you’d be grateful for hospitality.”

  Cadon snorted.

  “I could talk to you from outside the door, I suppose.”

  “Oh, you’re already in, and this is your place of business. I don’t care.”

  Haid shut the door. He backed into it and determined to stay there. “You care about Pairce?”

  “I suppose you want me to, don’t you? Well, mission accomplished. She’s quite good at her job.”

  Haid didn’t say anything. It was as he predicted. Cadon thought he was being manipulated. He tried to think of the right thing to say to disabuse him of this notion, but he couldn’t. “I think she cares about you too,” he settled on. “Why that is, I can’t be entirely sure. I saw her the morning after she came from being with you, and she winced every time she moved.”

  Nothing from Cadon.

  “That’s part of it, isn’t it? Why you don’t trust her feelings for you? You don’t feel worthy of them.”

  “Why are you here? To play games with my head in addition to everything else?”

  “I agree with you. It’s stupid of women to care for men like us,” said Haid. “After all, neither of us are worthy of them, are we? At any rate, whether you believe me or not, Pairce is free to do what she wills with her body and her heart, and it’s nothing to do with me.”

  “You sent her to me.”

  “It’s nothing to do with me anymore,” he corrected. “I didn’t come to talk to you about this, and I don’t care if you like me. I want to talk about the Cowntess, your stepmother, and how she did this to you.”

  “Why don’t you talk to Laidy Sefoni about it? How did you get her working for you anyway? How’d you get her away from the Cowntess?”

  “I forced her to marry me by ruining her reputation,” said Haid. “There was a bracelet we had to steal too, to get leverage away from the Cowntess and the Duke of Madigain. It’s a long story. And I don’t want to talk to her about it, because it would cause her pain to talk about it, and I despise causing her pain. If there was some way that I could ensure she was never in pain again for the rest of her life, I would do it, no matter the cost to myself or anyone else, so I’m here to talk to you. I suppose you don’t want to talk about it, and you don’t want to talk to me at all, but I don’t care. So, I’ll do whatever it takes to get it out of you.”

  Cadon let out a disbelieving laugh. “Was that a threat?”

  “I do have a candle with me,” said Haid. “Pairce tells me you despise being changed into the beast within you, that it feels to you as though you fall into a raging nothingness and you cease to exist. Shall I light it?”

  “You’d be putting yourself in danger if you did that. I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from hurting you.”

  “I think if I light the candle and snuff it out quickly, I’d be all right.”

  “I could choose to hurt you.”

  “Ah, yes, but where would that leave you? You need me. And besides, you’re in my debt. It wouldn’t be very honorable on your part.”

  “You’re quite concerned with honor, are you?”

  “When it suits me. Are you going to start talking about how you were turned into what you are, or am I going to have to convince you to do it?”

  Cadon sighed. “To the blazes with you.” But he sounded resigned, and Haid knew he’d won. “What do you want to know?”

  “I really don’t want it to be this way with us,” said Haid. “Over time, perhaps you’ll become convinced that I’m not hurting Pairce, and you’ll warm to me.”

  “I doubt it,” said Cadon. “What do you want to know?”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s hazy. I don’t exactly remember.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “I had a drink, and it affected me far worse than it should have. I passed out. I woke up in my stepmother’s dungeon, tied up, wearing nothing but small clothes, and with her leaning over me and painting symbols on my skin.”

  “What kind of symbols?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing I’d ever seen before.”

  “Utterly unfamiliar, then?”

  “Well…” Cadon paused. “I suppose they put me in mind of the carvings on the caves in the northern mountain country.”

  Haid blinked. “Hmm.” The carvings there had been made by ancient people, but the story was always that they’d been carved by fire elves. The ancient people in the mountains had worshiped the fire elves, but that was folly. There were no elves, just the living flame—the blaze—itself. And the blaze was simply a phenomenon with magical attributes, something that existed, not some mystical force that gave life to everything on earth.

  Of course, well, Cadon was here, proof of magic bes
ides the blaze, something somehow related to it all.

  “The chanting the Cowntess did, it could have been that old language,” said Cadon. “I used to go to a country estate in the mountains as a child. I had a nurse there, and she would sing songs to me in that language.”

  “Well, they do sometimes say that there are witches in those mountains,” said Haid. “I always thought that was nothing but a story, but maybe there’s some truth to it. If so, maybe we could find someone there who would know how to help you.”

  “Yes, I suppose that makes sense,” Cadon agreed, and there was hope somewhere in his tone.

  “Good,” said Haid. “That gives us somewhere to start.” He pushed off the door and opened it again. “I’ll leave you, then. I’m sure you’re tired and would like some sleep.”

  “Darain?”

  Haid paused. “You can call me Haid, you know.”

  “Darain,” he repeated. “Have you…?” A sigh. “Flames take me, never mind.”

  “What?” said Haid. “I don’t mind answering questions.”

  “You’re her employer, and she works as a… Has she ever serviced you?”

  “No,” said Haid. “I promise. Never once.”

  It was quiet.

  “Do you think I’m lying?” said Haid.

  “No,” muttered Cadon. “I don’t suppose you’d need to secure the services of whores, considering you only have to walk into a room and other men’s wives fall over themselves trying to cuckold their husbands with you.”

  “It really has never been like that,” said Haid, and something dark roiled up in him, twisting in his gut. Why did that bother him now? It never used to bother him, but now he’d spoken of the dark time too much, had given too many details to too many people, including Sefoni. Now, inside him, he had exposed some wriggling, glistening, weak part of himself.

  Blaze everything to the blazes.

  “Men like you don’t understand—”

  “Good night, Maister Whiss,” said Haid, who couldn’t do Cadon the honor of calling him Bretigern because he wasn’t the Cownt of Bretigern anymore. This man had been stripped of everything. He wanted to help the other man. He would help him. This might be a bad world, like Pairce said, but that didn’t mean he had to make it worse.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “YOU’RE LEAVING?” SAID Sefoni.

  Haid wouldn’t look at her. He’d avoided her that morning, demanding his breakfast brought up to his own bedchamber and then soaking in a bath for so long he’d needed the servants to remove buckets of water and replace it with fresh hot water twice.

  If it hadn’t been for the fact that he’d gathered everyone together, he wouldn’t have seen her at all. He would have left the house and gone to the Sticx and ignored her. He had to ignore her, because whenever he looked at her, all he wanted to do was gather her into his arms and put his mouth on any bare inch of skin that happened to be handy.

  She unmade him.

  Luckily, they were not alone, or he probably would have been kissing her.

  Both Tristanne and Pairce were there. He’d sent for Mairli, but she’d sent back word that she couldn’t get away with such short notice and asked him to fill her in on anything she needed to know at a later date. And perhaps truthfully, she didn’t need to be there. He didn’t need her for this. They were all gathered around the coffee table in his sitting room, each sitting in their own upholstered chairs. Sefoni was on a couch, perched alone in the middle.

  “I want to come along,” said Pairce. “I want to help. I want to do everything I can for Cadon.”

  “You stay here with him, then,” said Haid.

  “Well, but if I could go with you—”

  “Tristanne can come with me,” said Haid, turning to her. “Unless you don’t wish to.”

  Tristanne shrugged. “I suppose I don’t mind. But I can’t say I’m excited at the prospect of going hunting for fire elves in the mountains.”

  “Not fire elves,” said Haid, giving her a withering look. “Witches. Fire elves don’t exist.”

  “But witches do?” said Tristanne.

  “I think they’re just women who know about herbs and things,” said Sefoni. “And I want to come along too.”

  “No,” said Haid. “Not in your condition.” Then he winced, because had he said that out loud?

  Both Tristanne and Pairce looked at Sefoni.

  Sefoni’s face had turned red.

  “Forget I said that,” muttered Haid.

  “Listen,” said Pairce. “If you need tea—”

  “Forget I said it,” Haid said, his voice louder.

  “Now, wait a moment,” said Pairce. “If you’ve gotten Sefoni with child, and she’s not going to do away with it, then there’s no way that you can get an annulment to this marriage after the Rzymn job and that means—”

  “Pairce,” Haid growled.

  She rounded on him. “Even on cainlach, for blazes’ sake, couldn’t you have had the decency to pull out?”

  “So, you talked to Pairce about it?” said Sefoni in a quiet voice. “And I heard you talking to Tristanne when she woke us up. Is there anyone you didn’t tell?”

  Now, he looked at her. “My apologies, truly.”

  “You can’t know yet,” said Tristanne. “It was yesterday, for blazes’ sake.”

  “I know we can’t know,” said Haid. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud. It just came out.”

  “Is that what happened when you told Pairce about it?” said Sefoni coldly.

  “Sort of, yes,” he muttered.

  “Did you tell Mairli and Cadon as well?” said Sefoni.

  “Oh, it’s fine,” said Pairce to Sefoni. “I don’t think any worse of you for this, and no one will. Believe me, I have been in worse, far worse, situations than this. At least you’re married to him.” She turned back to Haid. “I still want to come to the north.”

  Haid got up from where he was seated. He sat down on the couch next to Sefoni. “I’m so sorry,” he said in a low voice. “It’s inexcusable of me, on top of everything else, to make it worse for you in this way.”

  She glanced at him and then away.

  Flames take him, he wanted to touch her. He wanted to put his arms around her, or to at least take her hand. He forced himself not to do that.

  “She’s fine,” said Pairce.

  “Well, you don’t know that,” countered Tristanne. “Are you all right, dove?”

  Haid gave Tristanne a frosty look. “You have a pet name for my wife?”

  “Let’s move on,” said Sefoni, smoothing her skirts over her knees. “I don’t see why we all can’t go north.”

  “Yes,” said Pairce. “Let’s do that.”

  “No,” said Haid. “Tristanne and I will go. Pairce, you can’t leave Cadon. He doesn’t trust you. And I’m not telling you how to get him to trust you, but I tend to think it might be best if you don’t go to bed with him. However, I wish you’d do something. I did bring you into this enterprise because you were supposed to be able to soothe him.”

  “By letting him rut with me,” said Pairce tartly.

  “Yes, well, obviously things have changed.”

  “What did you talk about when you were with him last night?” said Pairce. “I told you not to say anything about me at all.”

  “No, you told me to tell him that I wasn’t paying you to be with him.”

  “Yes, but then I said not to say that.” Pairce glared at him.

  “What?” Haid rubbed his forehead. He pointed at her. “Someone has to stay with Cadon.”

  “Mairli can do it,” said Pairce.

  “No,” said Tristanne. “I don’t want her in and out of the Sticx all the time.”

  “Well, Sefoni, do you mind?” said Pairce.

  “Why are you avoiding Cadon?” said Haid. “It’s obvious you care about him.”

  “Yes, well, why are you going to the north and insisting Sefoni stay behind?” said Pairce. “It’s obvious that you—”
/>   “All right,” said Sefoni. “How Haid does or doesn’t feel about me is none of your business.” She turned to him. “Just as Pairce’s feelings are none of ours. Let’s leave all that out of the discussion.”

  “There’s no discussion to be had,” said Haid. “You’re my crew. I make the schemes. Your job—all of you—is to follow my orders.”

  All three of the women glared at him.

  “To the blazes with all of you,” he said, getting to his feet. “We leave in the morning, Tristanne.” He stalked out of the room.

  PAIRCE STARED INTO Haid’s wake, narrowing her eyes. She wasn’t trying to avoid Cadon. She simply wanted to help him. Haid needed her there because he needed someone motivated to go and speak to every single old woman in the northern mountains until they found one who was an actual witch.

  But maybe Haid was right. Maybe her place was here with Cadon. After all, she was the only person on the crew who he really knew. And leaving him all alone would be hard on him.

  Tristanne had settled down on the couch next to Sefoni. “What did he do to you, dove?”

  Pairce huffed. “Oh, come now, Tristanne, she just said she didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “He feels guilty, but guilt’s cheap,” said Tristanne. “I love Haid, but I’ve never seen him with a woman, and I’ve heard all the stories, and…” She tilted her head. “If you want me to hurt him, I will.”

  Sefoni rubbed her forehead. “Please, I’m not angry with Haid. I mean, I do wish he wouldn’t have talked about it.”

  “You mean you wish you had someone who you could talk to about it?” said Tristanne quietly. “Because you can trust me, you know, and if—”

  “She said she didn’t want to talk about it,” Pairce repeated, putting more force into her words. “Leave her be.”

  “She was a virgin,” said Tristanne to Pairce. “He said he hurt her. Now there’s some possibility he’s put a babe in her belly, and you think she’s serious when she says she doesn’t want to talk?”

  “When did he tell you that?” said Sefoni.

  “What?” said Tristanne.

  “That he hurt me,” said Sefoni. “It’s not true. It didn’t hurt. Or, maybe it did, but everything hurt. The cainlach burns, and I was on fire, but he was the only thing that gave me a measure of relief. And if he really feels guilty… Blazes, I need to talk to him, because when we spoke last night, he didn’t indicate that…” She got up from the couch. She looked back and forth between the two women. “Stay out of it, if you don’t mind.”