The Liar's Key

“What?” Darin stayed where he was, sitting on the floor and spitting blood. He shook his head clear and looked up at me. “What was that for?”

“Father expects you at this opera of his tonight,” I mimicked the deep and condescending voice he had used when instructing me to go and burn to death. “No showing up late, or drunk, or pretending nobody told you!”

“Ah.” Darin held up a hand to his bagman who hauled him to his feet. He wiped his mouth. “Well obviously I didn’t know—”

“You didn’t go!” I roared, remembering the screams. The fierceness of my anger took me by surprise. “Martus wasn’t there! Dear Father forgot his own opera? Not a single one of Grandmother’s brood in attendance?” I raised my fist again and Darin, though two inches taller and always the better brawler, stepped back.

“It was opera for God’s sake. I didn’t expect you to go! If you hadn’t vanished the night of the fire I would have put money against you being there . . . and I was right, you weren’t!” He wiggled his jaw with his hand, wincing. “I was just doing my duty by telling you yours. Father drank too much that evening and had to excuse himself. Martus turned up for the second half and found the place in flames . . .”

“Well I did go, and I damn near burned!” I lowered my hands a touch. “And someone’s to blame!”

“Someone is. Just not me.” He wiped at his mouth with a red hand. “Quite a punch there, little brother.” He grinned. “It’s good to see you!” And somehow he still managed to look as if he meant it.

“You—” I remembered Lisa and bit off the accusation. “Were the DeVeers there that night?”

Darin wiped away his smile. “Alain DeVeer was. The shock of it killed his father, Lord Quentin—died abed later that week. Fortunately there was some kind of scandal at the house the day of the performance and the sisters were kept in. Very fortunate in fact as I’ve married Micha, the youngest of them. Just off to our country house now as it happens.”

I kept my face blank. Too blank in fact.

“Micha! You know her, surely? You must have met her?” Darin said.

“Ah, yes . . . Micha.” A good half-dozen times. Most of them in her bedroom after a difficult scramble up an ivy-clad colonnade. Little Micha, a beauty whose face shone with the innocence of an angel and whose tricks I’d had to teach the ladies down at the Silken Glove and at Madam LaPenda’s. “I remember the girl. Congratulations, brother. I wish you joy of each other.”

“Thank you. Micha will be glad to learn you survived. She was always anxious to hear the rumours about you. Perhaps you’ll come to visit when you’re settled? Especially if you’ve any words of comfort to offer about poor Alain’s last night . . .”

“Of course. I’ll make a point of it,” I lied. Micha was probably checking I was dead to set her mind at ease regarding any tales I might tell her new husband. And I doubted she wanted to hear that her brother died in a toilet after I kicked him in the face while he hauled my trousers down. “I’ll visit first chance I get.”

“Do!” Darin grinned again. “Oh! I forgot, you won’t know. You’re going to be an uncle.”

“What? How?” The words made sense individually but didn’t add up into anything comprehensible.

Darin threw an arm over my shoulder and put on a mock-serious voice. “Well . . . when a daddy and a mummy love each other very much—”

“She’s pregnant?”

“Either that or she swallowed something very big and round.”

“Christ!”

“Congratulations is what most people say.”

“Well . . . that too.” Me an uncle? My Micha? I felt a sudden need to sit down. “I’ve always thought I’d make a great uncle. Terrible. But great.”

“You should come with me, Jalan. Recover from your ordeal and all that.”

“Maybe.” Watching Darin and Micha play happy families was not how I anticipated spending my first few days back in civilization. “But right now I need to see Father.”

“Back on your travels so soon, Jal?” Darin cocked his head, puzzled.

“No . . . why?” He wasn’t making sense.

“Father’s in Roma. The pope summoned him for an audience and Grandmother said he had to go.”

“Hell and fire.” I had questions that wanted answers and I might have squeezed them out of Father more easily than elsewhere. “Well . . . look, I’m going to get cleaned up and—wait, you didn’t throw out my clothes, did you?”