Vespasien woke to the feel of someone fluffing the pillows near his head. He groaned and opened his eyes.

A woman he recognized from a tryst in the laundry-rooms looked down at him and giggled.

“That’s enough, Lisette,” a rough female voice said sharply. “It’s clean. Leave.”

The washer-woman bundled up a pillow and pillowcase that was stained the dark brown of barley wine, bobbed a curtsey at someone behind him, and hurried from the room. The door banged shut.

Groaning, Vespasien sat up. He frowned when he realized Auldin Laelia was in a shift at the door, her sleek body exposed against the sheer material.

“Feel better?”

She was irritated with him. Must have been a bad night.

Vespasien considered that as he struggled to remember. Aside from the wine and the odd warnings she’d given him on the bed, he didn’t recall much of anything. “You didn’t enjoy yourself,” Vespasien hedged.

Laughter, filled with delight. “Oh I did. Very much so.”

At that, the door sounded with an insistent knock. Her lanky page, Marin, tapped on the door. Laelia opened it. “Yes?”

“Cook says breakfast will be ready in another half an hour. It’d be ready now, ‘cept for his pastry.” Mirin gave Vespasien a glare that suggested the boy thought he was wasting his time.

“That’s fine,” Laelia said. “Bring it when it’s done.” She shut the door behind him.

Vespasien was frowning. He glanced back at the window-seat, saw the sun approximately where he had left it, glinting on the empty wine bottle. He peered at her, questions nagging at his mind. “It’s still morning?”

She smiled and slid into the bench, daintily setting the empty wine bottles aside. “It seems you can’t hold your liquor, Vespasien. At least not like young Marin. The boy sneaks wine from my cabinets every chance he gets.”

Vespasien knew that he had failed some sort of test, but he chanced sitting down across from her anyway. If the Auldin was furious with him, she was an excellent actress. That meant he must have done something other than vomit all over her pillow and pass out like a fool. If only he could remember. Clearing his throat to hide his embarrassment, he said, “The boy is a relative of yours?”

“Distant,” Laelia said, replacing the wine glasses with a fine Etroean pearlstone tea set. He smelled hot spices on the steam rising from the spout. “Of the Riverwatch line. I keep him as a favor to Aldric, since Rhydderch wouldn’t take him.”

Vespasien perked up at Rhydderch’s name. “Oh? Why not?”

Laelia laughed. “Because my suspicious old uncle has never had a page or a manservant in his life. He even makes his own bed in the morning.”

That surprised him. “Rhydderch? Truly?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “There was a big stink about it, many years ago. He and Agathe almost came to blows.”

“Over bedsheets?”

Laelia shrugged. “She thought his refusal to let the staff into his room was insulting, which it is, I suppose. She tried to force the issue, tried to rework his spells, but he had her brother Wynfor create an enchantment strong enough to keep her out. Even Rees took up his cause. It’s one of the only times I’ve ever seen Agathe bow out of a fight, and never with a Vethyle.” She shook her head, obvious admiration in her hard face. “That man should be wearing the Vethyle crown.”

She took the pearly iridescent kettle in her hands. Delicately, she poured him some tea and set the cup in front of him.

“You have good taste,” he said, motioning to the expensive Etroean set that was even now being warmed by the glow of the sun. He didn’t know what else to say, so bewildered was he by the morning’s events.

She smiled at him, bewitching in her emerald gown. “I thought you would appreciate it.” She took a sip. “I’ve been wondering something about you, lord merchant.”

“Please, call me Ves.”

“Ves,” she said, tasting it on her tongue. She nodded. “I’ve seen you dangle just about every woman in the Spyre on your arm, yet you avoid my aunt Cyriaca like the plague.”

Vespasien frowned, wondering her game. Considering that he had just bedded her, he knew there was extra meaning in the statement, but struggled to piece it together. To give himself extra time to consider, he said, “She’s your aunt? I thought you were older than she.”

“By twice the years,” Laelia agreed. “My father was Marius Vethyle, Cyriaca’s older brother. A powerful Auld, though he grew ill and died in his youth, bequeathing me to his older brother. Rhydderch.”

Vespasien leaned forward, interested, now. “Marius…he died over a century ago. Just how old is Rhydderch? I heard rumors he fought in the war with Etro, but that was almost three hundred years ago.”

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“He did,” Laelia said, smiling. “Right alongside Agathe, Wynfor, Nerys, and Brael.”

She didn’t seem annoyed at the way the morning’s events had transpired. If anything, she was proud to tell him about Rhydderch. And, to be fair, it was a tall accomplishment. The people of his homeland lived a century at most, even with the Spyre’s longevity serums. Still, there was something odd about the way she was looking at him, waiting for him to ask the questions.

Tentatively, Vespasien said, “I thought the Vethyles did not maintain enough veoh to live that long.”

Her eyes hardened instantly. “Rhydderch does. He’s the Vethyle key to breaking the Ganlin stranglehold on the Auldheim’s scepter. The infuriating man just needs to breed.” A small smile came over her lips, “Something, I’m told, he might have finally started doing as of last night.”

Vespasien tried not to choke on his tea at the thought.

“Not with his dogs,” she said sharply. “That girl you terrified the night before. The staff tells me he’s sleeping with her.”

This really began to nag at him. “Truly? I heard he’s been a bachelor for…”

“Four hundred years,” Laelia said. “Let’s hope the old coot still has ink in his pen.”

Vespasien stared at her. “You want him to bastardize the blood?” It was completely unexpected—in Etro, a girl would be killed for carrying a royal babe to term.

Laelia laughed. “If he produces an Auld, that’s the only blood that counts.”

Aulds are the royalty here, Vespasien reminded himself. Agathe herself could have a barren child and it could end up working in the spark mines. He cleared his throat. “Where did he find this girl? She looked like a street urchin.”

“Who knows,” Laelia said. “I stopped trying to predict what Rhydderch is thinking long ago. But if he’s finally tired of the solitude and wants a pretty young whore to break the monotony, he has my blessing. And my fertility spells.”

Vespasien perked up at that. “Spells?”

Laelia gave him a deliciously evil look. “I intend to make sure that ink is put to good use. Every drop.”

Vespasien glanced at the door, something about the conversation not sitting right with him. “I cannot see Rhydderch keeping a child.”

She laughed. “Do you jest? Rhydderch has all but raised every Vethyle auldling at the Spyre, and even a couple Ganlins, as well. He goes to the newcomers’ wing and reads them to bed each night to keep them from getting homesick. Children adore him.”

Vespasien cleared his throat. “Yes, but would he want one of his own? He might have the whore take…precautions.”

Auldin Laelia’s eyes darkened. “Rhydderch can go to hell. I’m going to make sure the girl never eats a meal at the Spyre that isn’t laden with veoh. The moment he gets her pregnant, we’re scurrying her off to the Riverlands until she gives birth. Rhydderch will just have to cope. It’s for the clan, not for his ego.” Then Laelia’s face cleared and she smiled at him. “But we digress, dear Vespasien. You were going to tell me why, of all the women you’ve dawdled on your knee here at the Spyre, you’ve avoided my aunt like burning coals. You’ve even allowed the silly fool to think you sleep with men. Why is that?”

“I think she’s a shallow, twittering bird with feathers for brains and nothing to offer this world but the stuff that comes out of her ass when she’s at the chamberpot.”

Vespasien blinked at his own brazenness. He knew Laelia despised Cyriaca, but he had always been careful in what he said around her. After all, the woman sitting across from him was Cyriaca’s kin.

A smile crept back across Laelia’s face, her blue-white eyes bright with pleasure. “So. You believe my dour uncle sleeps with his hounds and that my delightful aunt is a dithering idiot. I wonder what must you think of me.”

Vespasien peered into her eyes and saw the first vestiges of the cunning that Rhydderch had warned him about. Something was very wrong here.

He had to be very careful about this, he decided. If he said the wrong thing, he could be thrown in irons. If he said the right thing, he could be outed as a spy.

“From what I’ve seen, I think you are the power behind Cyriaca’s fluff,” Vespasien said. “You are at the Vethyle’s head in all but name.”

Laelia grunted, then glanced out the window and took another sip of her tea. “Perhaps. But it should be Rhydderch.”

“Rhydderch?” Vespasien said, distracted by the sudden softness in her voice.

“Yes,” she snapped, startling him with its ferocity. “We have an Auld of four hundred years—as old as the Auldheim herself—who has never once fathered a child and has turned down the Vethyle crown a dozen times. It’s almost as if he doesn’t care for our clan, only himself.” She set her teacup down a little too hard, chipping its base.

“I want you to give him something for me, Ves,” Laelia said. “Rhydderch has always craved hounds of a certain bloodline, and until now, the Gleschean king has been unwilling to part with them. I have two of them in the city, now. It will be a good start toward convincing him I’m ignorant of your plans to spy on me.”

His instincts kicking in, Vespasien calmly laughed, keeping his every muscle in check. “Spy on you, Auldin? That’s ridiculous.”

“About as ridiculous as his scheme to keep tabs on me by getting you into my bed.” She smiled. “Which, by the way, you’ll continue to share with me. I enjoyed myself immensely.”

Every muscle in Vespasien’s body stiffened. He floundered for words like a beached fish. “How?” he managed.

“How do I know you’re here to spy on me, or how do I know Rhydderch will not suspect a double-cross?”

“Both,” he blurted, staring.

“I know you’re here to spy on me because I know you didn’t touch that whore of his. I know that Rhydderch also knew the same, and that he tried to distract anyone who had been paying attention with the knowledge that you had, indeed, been the one to attack his hounds—something I suspect he probably used to blackmail you, which would explain your distinct lack of fear last night. Had I been reading you correctly, you were more shocked and irritated than afraid, suggesting the two of you had previously reached some sort of accord. Knowing what I know about Rhydderch, I suspect it had something to do with me.”

Vespasien found he was breathing through his open mouth. He shut it.

“I know that he will not suspect a double-cross because I’m going to give you every tidbit of information he asks you to glean from me. Further, as soon as you give him the hounds, he will be obligated to track down the source. The moment he finds out they’re from me, he will confront you, and you will tell him that I tried to coerce you into becoming my pet spy.”

“I’m not—”

She held up a hand. “Then, if he thinks I want you to spy on him, he will not suspect my true purpose, which is to get that sonofabitch to finally take the Vethyle crown. Through dirty tricks, if I have to.”

Vespasien stared at her. “You want me to spy on him?”

She laughed. “No. I was his surrogate daughter for most of my life. I already know how he thinks.”

A knock at the door broke Vespasien out of his speechlessness. He stood up hurriedly to get it, but Laelia quickly caught his arm. “I’ll do that,” she said with a smile. As she moved her hand away, Vespasien saw a long, narrow scar across her left palm, one that had a strange touch of black to it, almost like it had been tattooed there. “I don’t make the same mistakes Rhydderch does. If a barren man touches my door without permission, he won’t live to kill my hounds.”

Vespasien swallowed and sat back down.