Si glyph [https://i.imgur.com/mHhTdaF.png]

Karina vai Anemari was not what Simon had expected. She was a large woman — tall, wide, and fleshy. Her square brown face was framed by wavy brown hair that surely wasn’t her own. He tried to imagine her twenty years younger, to compare her to the gentle beauty of his mother, but could not. She was all too uniquely herself, from the direct gaze of her slightly prominent eyes to her fashionably pointed pink silk slippers. 

The sitting room she inhabited, with its floral prints and bow-legged furniture, seemed of a piece with her. Perhaps she’d grown into it, like the stunted orange tree in its too-small pot.

She poured tea into delicate porcelain cups. ‘I can’t imagine what brings you to see me. Not that I mind. These days my children only visit when they want money.’

The flowery little chair Simon perched on was uncomfortable. He rubbed the stumps of his missing fingers. Why was he here? He should be looking for work, though he’d had no success in three long weeks of searching — no one seemed to want a middle-aged man with one good leg and one good hand.

He had no job, no money, and too many worries already. Why pry into the past?

When he’d first been told of his father’s death and disgrace, he’d been too shocked to ask questions. Then exile to Sark had cut him off from the House, and there had been no one to ask, even if he had wanted to. So he’d pushed it from his mind and refused to dwell on what he’d lost.

But in Athanor, the past couldn’t be escaped so easily. It was everywhere, shaping his present and future, and his family’s. 

And it was a lie.

‘I wanted to ask you about my father,’ he said. ‘You knew him?’

She giggled, and the stream of tea shook and slopped into the saucer. ‘Oh, I certainly knew him.’ She smiled archly. ‘Dear Idan.’

Heat rose to Simon’s face. It was bad enough to imagine his father having an affair with anyone, but this shameless, smirking creature… He drew the teacup toward him.

A gull soared past the window, riding the sea wind on motionless wings. House Anemari was on the seafront, projecting out over the water like the prow of one of their great ships.

She laughed again. ‘You’re wondering what he saw in me. I wasn’t always old and ugly, you know.’

Simon cringed inwardly. Had his thoughts been so transparent? ‘No, of course not. I mean, you aren’t now. I mean—‘

She flipped her fingers, dismissing his embarrassment. ‘Don’t fall over yourself to be polite, boy. I’m not a fool.’

He picked up the tiny cup, awkward with his left hand, and sipped the tea. Hot liquid scalded his tongue.

‘So what did you want to ask this old woman?’

Was my father a liar? Was my father a thief? ‘My father...’ He hesitated, unsure how she would react, unsure too, whether he really wanted to know the answers. ‘I was told he killed himself.’

She snorted. ‘As if. Idan would never do that. At least, not where I would find him. He would never be so untidy or inconsiderate.’

‘Where did he…?’

‘An apartment he had rented for us. Downtown, a small place, nothing fancy. We both had keys. I was expecting to meet him there, opened the door, and — he was hanging.’ She shuddered.

Cold settled in Simon’s stomach. He hadn’t wanted to believe his father had had an affair, and with this woman of all people, but the pain in her face was undeniable. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to upset you.’

‘It was long ago.’ She sipped her tea. ‘But why ask about this now? It’s rather late to think of avenging his death, or whatever.’

‘When he died, I was exiled from Athanor. I’ve only just returned to the city, and now I’m here, it occurred to me I know very little about what happened.’ And he wanted to know, because either Uncle Aric had lied to him, or his father’s whole life was a sham.

‘Yes.’ She turned her empty cup in her hands, eying the dregs. ‘That’s the Oryche way. Bury Idan, pack you away, bury the whole thing. They do like their secrets, don’t they?’

Simon shifted uneasily. Her words struck too near his own thoughts. ‘You think they wanted it covered up?’

‘I think it was an embarrassment to Oryche. Idan didn’t kill himself. He was murdered, I’m sure of it.’

‘Do you have any proof?’

She shook her head. ‘I knew Idan, as well as anyone knew him. He wasn’t suicidal, and if he was, he wouldn’t have done it that way. Nothing violent or messy.’

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‘But who wanted him dead?’ Simon watched her expression. ‘Your husband?’

‘Ket?’ She raised her painted eyebrows. ‘I doubt it. More likely his wife.’

Simon fumbled his teacup. It dropped into the saucer on its side, spilling brown tealeaves on the white cloth. ‘My mother?’ It was ludicrous. ‘You joke.’

Karina shrugged. ‘He meant to divorce her.’

‘He wouldn’t. He couldn’t have.’ Among the Anemari, a divorce might not be remarkable, but no Lord of the Oryche would do such a thing. It was simply unthinkable. He picked up the cup and saucer, not knowing why or what he intended to do with them. 

‘That shocks you?’ She eyed him with sly amusement. ‘Really? From what I heard, she was hardly a wife to him.’

‘My mother loved my father. They loved each other. You know nothing. Nothing.’

‘More than you, it seems. If it wasn’t her, I’d look to her family. Ask Numisma what a divorce would mean.’

He slammed the teacup and saucer onto the table. The little sugar pot tipped, spilling jagged white lumps. Tea dregs spotted the white cloth and the white sugar, and he didn’t care. He strode from the room without another word.

Sheer anger carried him along the docks, past ships and warehouses and into the trader’s district before he recalled he had meant to go home, and this wasn’t the way. He stopped and got his bearings, his mind still churning in angry confusion. How dare she? The lying bitch. Smug, lying Anemari bitch.

Simon ducked under the eaves of a shop. On the smoggy streets of Athanor, heated from below by the mountain’s banked fires, one could forget it was winter. The wind on the docks had been ice-edged though, and now stray flakes of snow spotted the pavement, melting as they fell. He breathed deeply, calming as he watched the white specks drift down.

He’d gone to Karina hoping to learn—what exactly? That his father hadn’t had an affair with her? Much as he hated the idea, he had to admit their was little doubt. She hadn’t lied about that. There had been some sort of relationship.

As a child, he hadn’t thought about it, but his mother’s long trances and bouts of religious mania must have affected his father. Perhaps it wasn’t surprising if he’d looked elsewhere for… physical affection. Surely, it couldn’t have been more than that, not with that vulgar, sly Anemari creature.

Down the street on the opposite side, a man hunched in the doorway of a merchant’s premises. He was watching Simon. Not staring, but he was loitering, and every now and then glancing his way. He was young, and dressed like someone who worked on the docks. The gold hoops in his ears made Simon think he might be a sailor.

Simon frowned at him. A group of sothron traders flowed between them, chattering in their own tongue and hiding the man from view. If he was a thief, he had remarkably poor judgement: Simon had only a few pence in his pocket.

He resumed walking. The snow wasn’t heavy, not like the storms on the plains. It was just a chill dampness in the air.

Anemari women did have a reputation for flexible interpretation of their marriage vows. Their husbands sailed the House ships, away from Athanor for weeks and months as they traded all round the Circle sea, leaving the women to run the House and all Athanor-bound business. It was only natural for such independence to extend to other areas as well, or so the gossip ran.

Simon doubted that Karina’s husband had simply ignored or accepted her behaviour. Anemari men were known for their jealous rages, often settled by knife fights on the docks. If anyone had murdered his father—and that still seemed unlikely, whatever she believed—an enraged Anemari husband had to be chief suspect.

His father certainly couldn’t have intended to divorce his mother. That was an outright lie. They’d been happily, or at least contentedly, married for more than twenty years. For him to cast her aside after so long, even with good reason, would have been a grave insult to her and the whole of House Numisma. Much easier for a couple to remain married while living separate lives, the man discreetly keeping a mistress if he felt the need…

Simon swallowed. All through his childhood, as far back as he could remember, he hadn’t seen his father and mother together except for formal House events. How could he not have realised? 

Ask Numisma what a divorce would mean. He didn’t have to. On his father’s death, his mother’s dowry settlement had reverted to her. If his father had divorced her with reason, that money would have remained his property, to dispose of as he saw fit.

Numisma took their religion seriously, and their gold even more so. Added to the deep insult of a divorce— He shook himself. He couldn’t allow that woman’s lies to infect his thinking. His mother was the gentlest soul in the world, and she had loved his father in her own way; she would never have wanted him hurt. She wouldn’t.

At the edge of his vision, a shadow slunk behind him, slipping from shop front to shop front. Simon paused to glance and confirm it was the same man he’d seen earlier. Strange. He was being followed, and none too subtly. Why?

Whatever the reason, he disliked it. If the man was a thief, there was one certain way to be rid of him.

From the city’s earliest recorded history, the Great Market of Athanor had been considered a wonder of the world. It had been huge when Simon was a child, and now it was four or five stories high in places, with five and a bit wings extending from the main concourse like some lop-sided sea-creature intent on devouring the city centre. One could climb a cast-iron spiral stair to a dizzying height, eat an expensive meal with a god’s-eye view of the city, then descend past the merchandise of a thousand distant lands all the way to the third level of the undercity.

Added to all these marvels, it was the one place in Athanor a man could walk with a pocketful of gold and be relatively sure of not being robbed.

Simon entered through a doorway marked with the Anemari emblem of a stylised ship at sea, and strolled into the main concourse. Hundreds of shops lined the cavernous hall, through which a tide of people flowed in constant, changeable, chattering motion, their noise subdued by the acoustics of the vaulted ceiling. Simon elbowed his way into the crowd, confident his tail wouldn’t follow him further.

The traders of the Market employed guards, armed with cudgels, to ward off pickpockets and shoplifters. Anyone they tangled with could expect to be soundly beaten and thrown out, generally into the harbour.

Simon worked his way along the concourse, past displays of exotic caged birds, glittering jewellery, pungent spices, rolls of rainbow-bright sothron silk, dazzling cold-lamps large and small, ingenious whirring machines, and far-traded curios of doubtful worth. Truly, in Athanor, everything could be bought — for a price. He climbed the stairs to the second floor, where the crowd was thinner and quieter.

He hadn’t gone far when his eye was caught by a necklace on a jeweller’s stall. It was similar to the pendant he’d made Lorie for her birthday, which Chase had stolen along with the family’s other valuables. He stopped to examine it more closely, and had just picked it up, when he noticed a man standing alone, peering around as if he’d lost something. Or someone.

It was the young man who had followed him earlier.