The Lost of New Bristol (Lila Randolph Book 2) Page 8

  “She mostly does whatever needs doing in the kitchens or…”

  “Or anywhere that’s not the top floor? She’s only doing this so she doesn’t run into me. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t want to speculate, madam.” Isabel tugged the last sheet off Lila’s bed.

  “Wouldn’t, but could.”

  Isabel chewed on the inside of her check.

  “I wronged her. She has a right to be angry, but she doesn’t have a right to inconvenience you.”

  “Ms. Wilson has a lot on her plate at the moment.” Isabel blushed, looking every bit like the twenty-year-old she was. “Her brother arrived yesterday. I saw him. He seems like a charming boy.”

  “Simon spent the last six months doing manual labor. I’m sure he’s grown very charming indeed.”

  Isabel blushed harder.

  “If you asked Chef to babysit, she’d do it in a heartbeat. You can’t take care of your brother and sister all the time. You’re young. You should go out.”

  “They don’t like it when I’m gone.”

  “All the more reason for you to go. Chef practically raised me, and I turned out okay.”

  Isabel nodded, and Lila felt like an ass for interfering. Her mother had warned her about it for years, said it wasn’t her place to comment on the lives of the help.

  It was too late now.

  “Isabel, you’d tell me if Ms. Wilson didn’t want to be here, wouldn’t you? I could move her to another compound for a fresh start. I have to know if that’s what she needs. If it helps, you’re not the only one I’m asking.”

  “You think she won’t tell you herself?”

  “I think she’s never going to speak to me again. But if I find out she wants to go, and I put the question to her, I’m hoping she’ll at least nod or shake her head.”

  Isabel bowed. “I’ll try to figure it out, madam.”

  “Thank you. I value your opinion.”

  Lila stopped herself from meddling further in Isabel’s personal life and jogged downstairs, already knowing she’d be late to breakfast. Instead of darting out the front door and making up the time, she entered the kitchen. The stout, middle-aged Chef bobbed her head to an odd French polka and spread out dough with her rolling pin. “Breakfast get cancelled?” she asked, using a flour-dusted finger to turn down her music.

  “No,” Lila answered, leaning on the door to the kitchen. “I’m just running late.”

  “I heard about the auction. How are you doing?”

  “As well as I can after spending the evening with my mother.”

  Chef put down her rolling pin. “Word is some man died in front of you. It’s too soon after all that mess with Peter Kruger. How are you really doing, child?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I wouldn’t be.”

  Lila looked away. “Isabel mentioned seeing Simon.”

  “Did she blush terribly?” Chef snickered, letting the subject drop. “The girl needs to get out and find herself a man instead of a boy. I tell her all the time. Go out, meet someone. She’s a starved little bunny.”

  “Babysit for her, then.”

  “I offer all the time, but I think I’ll need to dangle the carrot first. A very big carrot with a very manly man attached to it.” She dangled her rolling pin between her legs and cut her eyes to it. “Very manly.”

  “You’re nothing if not subtle.”

  “Subtlety is boring.” Chef laughed. “Everything went fine with Simon, by the way. I picked him up at the winery, and he and his sister had dinner together in her room. They even celebrated his visit with a nice, long walk around the compound.”

  “That’s good.” Lila nodded, a bit sad that she wouldn’t get to see Simon.

  But he’d likely hate her as well.

  “That admin of yours…Sergeant Jenkins? He called last night. Told me Simon has been enrolled at Sturluson’s. He’ll start in a few days. They’re still hammering out the details. Poor kid will have to repeat most of his senior year, but what can you do?”

  Lila nodded. Sturluson’s School for Young Men was a lowborn boarding school two hundred and fifty kilometers away. It was the best that Lila could hope for, though. The school trained boys from elite lowborn families, families like the Parks, who struggled to attain highborn status. Likely the young man working the door at LeBeau’s had attended Sturluson’s.

  Her mother flatly refused to draw on her connections to get Simon back into his old highborn boarding school, the same school Pax had attended until Trevor’s death.

  She’d even been annoyed that Lila had dared to ask.

  “I’m taking him to Randolph General this afternoon to get his physical and medical clearance,” Chef said.

  “Good, take Alex along if she wants to go.”

  As if summoned, the slave entered the room, eyes widening at the sight of Lila. She turned and walked right back out of the kitchen.

  Two sightings in one day. That was a record.

  “Alex,” Lila called out.

  “Ms. Wilson,” her old friend corrected her, straightening her skirt. Only her eyes revealed the depth of her hatred. She managed to school the rest of her face into blankness.

  “Ms. Wilson. I’m attending an emergency High Council meeting tonight. Your mother and brother will be on the agenda. I can sneak you in as my attendant if you wish. It only seems right to give you an opportunity to attend.”

  Lila hoped she’d say no. She couldn’t imagine the torture of watching the group of matrons and heirs condemn members of her family to death, a death Alex clearly didn’t believe they deserved, a death she could not accept, a death she could do absolutely nothing to prevent.

  Alex stood straighter, resolved, and Lila’s heart plummeted to the kitchen floor. “I’ll go. The Wilson family does not wilt.” With that, she marched from the room.

  Lila sighed and tugged at the top of her gloves.

  “That girl needs to grow up,” Chef said. “Her mother bankrupted her entire family and has treated her like crap for years. Her brother turned out even worse in the end. It boggles my mind how she can hate you for all that now. She’ll come to her senses eventually.”

  “Before or after our hair turns gray?”

  “You’re a convenient target for her anger right now, but she’s not an heir any longer. Her attitude has no place in the great house. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it.”

  “I just asked Isabel if she’s mentioned wanting to move to another compound. I won’t do it unless it’s her choice.”

  Chef worked the dough on the counter. “You are a master of this house and of the compound, Lila. If you let her behavior slide for too long, the other workborn will notice. It won’t end well. You have to make a decision before your mother makes one for you.”

  Chapter 6

  Lila winced as she came upon Bullstow in her Adessi roadster. The stone wall encircling the compound had been pockmarked by hundreds of pebble-shaped dents, dents not made by gunfire or acid but by a bomb. Across the street, the law offices of Slack & Roberts had been cordoned off, construction equipment and wrecking balls already chipping away at the skeletal remains. The few walls left standing had been knocked into a pile, the occasional back of an office chair or picture frame protruding from the mess of wire and concrete and sooty insulation.

  Engine grease and gasoline covered most of the smell of the perfumery next door, but the discordant mix curled Lila’s restless stomach. She rolled up her window, muting the incessant beeping of trucks reversing for another load. While she waited to be waved past, she tapped her steering wheel. At least traffic was light this morning, for the businesses around Slack & Roberts had closed down while the demolition teams worked.

  The job would be completed soon, though, what with her father using his connections to rush the work. In a
few more days, the office would be completely leveled, and a different set of people would come to the site to rebuild. All evidence of Tristan’s bomb would be erased.

  Few people would know the real story.

  Even the conspiracy nut-jobs hadn’t gotten close. The blogosphere had already divided themselves into two camps: those who believed Peter Kruger had earned his rescue by following a missive from King Lucas, and those who believed Bullstow had set it up to drag the country into war. Lila had used a fake account to stir the latter group up and make them look more idiotic.

  None had managed a peek at Tristan’s AAS flyer. If they had, they might have realized that the law offices had been misusing their poorer clients, fabricating evidence against them, and providing nothing more than a fumbling defense at court. After Bullstow arbiters pronounced their judgments, the client could be sent to the mines. They’d die slowly, black lungs suffocating any proclamations of innocence.

  Tristan’s heart had been in the right place when he detonated the bomb that destroyed the building, even though his methods had not.

  Someone honked behind her, and a workman with a green sign waved her on, barely managing his jealous stare at the roadster.

  Lila snaked around Bullstow’s north gate, her engine rumbling while she waited in line to enter the compound. Oaks and maples peeked over the stone wall and the estate’s familiar marble buildings, all cut with well-worn stairs, thick columns, grand arches, and thin-slit windows. Ivy crept where it was allowed, embracing the cold buildings within. The dome of the legislature rose above it like royalty lifting its scepter for another day at court.

  Withdrawing her palm from her pocket, Lila checked for updates from her spies, but she’d only received the first wave of messages from the Randolph security office. She replied to as many as possible, yawning as a knuckle rapped on her window.

  “ID?” a young blackcoat asked as she rolled it down, his chin too soft for the first stirrings of a beard. He scanned her ID, then blushed furiously when he saw her name.

  “Chief Randolph.” He dropped his palm computer, which skittered on the asphalt. After a quick bow, he snatched it up again and typed madly upon the screen. He barely looked old enough to have reached his senior year, much less complete his cadet training. “Are you here to see Chief Shaw or the prime minister?”

  Lila rested her elbow on the roadster’s window frame and said nothing, wondering where Sergeant Daniels had wandered off to this morning. He usually worked the gate in the mornings, and now he’d left his rookie to work the gate alone.

  Slack & Roberts hadn’t even been demolished yet.

  Very sloppy.

  “I’m supposed to keep a record.” The rookie blushed again, his finger poised over the screen.

  “And I’m supposed to get tetchy about it,” she countered, finally feeling sorry for the poor kid. “I’m here to see my father. I’ll be in Falcon Home this morning.”

  The boy typed in her license plate number, a relieved grin twisting his face. “I saw you on the news last night.”

  “And?”

  The boy’s mouth worked as though he didn’t know what to say. “We live in interesting times. Made me want to join up, I guess.”

  “Join the army?”

  “I’d be promoted directly to officer after boot camp. Right on time, too. War is coming.”

  “Who says that?”

  “People here and there.”

  “People have been saying war is coming for a hundred years.”

  “Doesn’t mean they won’t be right this time.”

  “What does Chief Shaw say about that? Or your matron?”

  “Does it matter? The army needs those of us with militia training.”

  “No, they don’t. The army needs people with military training. There’s a difference between those of us who keep the peace and those of us who don’t.”

  A horn honked behind her, and the boy bowed. “See you on the way out, chief.”

  Lila pulled past the gate, sliding down the streets of Bullstow. Much like the Randolph estate, the compound had been sectioned off for different purposes. State government buildings clustered around the north gate, while the east held the city government. The boys’ schools, university, and dorms clustered together in the south. The west part of the complex held everything else: cafes, restaurants, a hotel, even a grand ballroom for parties. In the center, Falcon Home stood tall and proud. On the outside, it appeared as a sprawling mansion, but it had been cut into suites inside. It housed Governor Lecomte, the men of Saxony’s High Senate, and the prime minister whenever he stayed in New Bristol.

  Her father almost always returned during Father’s Week, that week each month when every senator in the Allied Lands turned away from government and spent time with his brood. Meetings still occurred, they just had to be important enough to warrant the interruption.

  Few things were more important to senators than their families.

  Lila pulled outside the senate’s garage. As she disembarked from the car, she spied two familiar faces marching past, people she never thought she’d see again on the streets of Bullstow, much less in blackcoats. Sergeant Muller and Sergeant Davies shared a laugh, then passed into the security office behind Falcon Home, a plain, brown-bricked building with no frills and only eight stories.

  Surely Chief Shaw’s investigation had been completed? Surely their termination papers had already been signed? The men were dirty. Both she and Chief Shaw knew it.

  Lila gave her keys to the mechanic outside the garage. He grinned immediately at the chance to play valet. He’d sheepishly asked the first time, and it had become a ritual over time, a ritual she didn’t mind because the gifted man sometimes found problems with her roadster that her own mechanics hadn’t. Sometimes, he’d even fixed them before she left the compound.

  Besides, she hated parking next to the more practical sedans favored by the senators. She might have hated it more if her father didn’t enjoy taking the roadster out for a joyride whenever she gave him the chance. He was like Senator Dubois, giddily riding Jewel’s red Firefly whenever her sister gave him the opportunity.

  Lila tugged her gloves and jogged up the stone steps of Falcon Home, shaking her head as a stiff footman extended a hand to take them. Turning, he led her toward the central staircase, a creaking oaken beauty stained in dark cherry, the newel posts carved into rosebuds. She’d given up brushing the servants off inside the mansion, for she’d gained quite the reputation as a child for mischief, and this particular gray-haired footman had been put through most of it.

  At least until she’d stopped getting caught. The staff didn’t know half of what she’d done or half of the places she’d been on the compound.

  Especially as an adult.

  Lila followed him to the top floor, past priceless oils and watercolors, past two-hundred-year-old vases filled with bouquets of hydrangeas and tulips, past rugs woven in countries Lila had never seen.

  He finally stopped before a gilded rose knocker and rapped upon the door with three brief taps. “Chief Randolph has arrived, sir,” the footman announced when her father opened the door. He gave another stiff bow and scurried away.

  “Lila girl.” Her father grinned, embracing her in a warm hug. He led her through his parlor, decorated with even more care than the rest of Falcon Home, a priceless painting of the great oracle battle queen Mildthrylth hanging in the room. The dark-haired, fur-clad woman had impaled a Roman general with a spear, a bloody, knowing smile on her lips. Her people slaughtered his men in the background.

  Lila remembered staring at it for hours as a child. She and Alex had even taken turns as the oracle queen and as the fallen Roman general. Sometimes they fought as Mildthrylth. Other times they chose the moniker of a different oracle queen who had done the same, cutting down the Romans as they liberated their queendoms a millennia and a half ago. T
he oracles had attacked on the same hour of the same day, though no one claimed to have planned it, driven by the strength and whim of their gods. They’d left only one soldier alive in each city, bidding him to run home and tell their masters not to try again.

  They hadn’t, not until centuries later.

  The Romans and the Allied Lands were still fighting the same damn war, although the Allied Lands had come together centuries ago with the Declaration of Peace. They were so enmeshed now that they’d become one, with pockets of languages and cultural quirks that merely triggered eye rolls rather than duels and confusion. It was a swirling mix of languages as well as shared history, enemies, gods, and oracles.

  Not that Lila believed in that oracle crap, regardless of her recent dreams.

  Her father led her into his dining room, and she raised a brow at Chief Shaw, sipping coffee at her father’s table. The militia chief rubbed his moustache and folded his arms over his potbelly, his stern face seeming unfamiliar this morning without his sentry cap perched on his head. If Shaw had been summoned, it meant that she wasn’t having breakfast, but an official meeting about a job.

  She’d been right to suspect as much.

  Sighing, she plopped in a padded chair across from Shaw, staring at an empty china plate with roses scrawled around the edges. She had no intention of rescuing Oskar just to give him to her father. Besides, as much as she usually enjoyed her father’s jobs, the last one had worn her out. Not only was she still tired, but she still bore the marks from it, not to mention she still had to track down the person sending her cryptic messages from its aftermath.

  Lila drummed her fingers on the table. There was another reason why she hoped they hadn’t called her in for help with Oskar. Stealing a slave from a highborn family crossed a line, a line he’d slipped a foot over last night with her mother.

  “Father, Chief Shaw,” she said, inclining her head. The staff at Falcon Home had piled the table high with pancakes, eggs, bacon, blueberries, yogurt, maple syrup, and orange juice. A bottle of Sangre had been added in the middle.