Free Kalimpura (Green Universe) by Jay Lake Page A

but she did not immediately reject my explanation. I was right in guessing that Lampet was the sort to have skulks and sneaks coming in at all hours. “Don’t your sort usually present themselves to Master Roberti at the little gate?”
    “I don’t know any Master Roberti,” I replied. “I report elsewhere.”
    Cook’s glare did not change. “There is no Master Roberti. Good that you did not lie. Go on, then, but give me back my jelly pan.”
    I handed it to her, pulled up the hood on my stolen robe, and slipped into the hallway beyond. Just as well I had not fought in the kitchen. The world needed more cooks and fewer assassins.
    *   *   *
    Beyond was a reasonably conventional layout. The Red House was a turreted folly of the sort popular in the last century of the Duke’s reign, and so did not have the sweeping, pillared front hall of so many older homes and buildings of its class. Rather, a long, full-height corridor joined the back to the front with staircases rising from each side to internal balconies on the second and third storey. There would be a ballroom nearby, a parlor, and a formal dining room. Bedrooms upstairs, with possibly another set of parlors and studios on the second floor.
    All of it offices now, of course. Though this hall was empty of clerks and their files—nothing like the chaos at the Textile Bourse, where the Interim Council carried on the messy business of the city.
    Realizing that I did not see bureaucrats at their work here, I understood that the Reformed Council wanted to rule, but were not so much interested in governing. While I could sympathize with that view as a matter of principle, as a practical matter, it seemed a terrible way to run a city.
    Lampet would be up there, I was certain of it. He wasn’t the sort to have an easily accessible office on the ground floor. One would have to walk a distance through halls to reach him. Then wait a while.
    Lacking my misappropriated jelly pan, I swept a Hanchu vase of dried roses thin and crackling as paper off a delicate Siengurae period side table and trotted up the nearest stairs. One of the best ways to be invisible in a busy place was to carry something and look certain of yourself. The people upstairs would not be jealous of their positions, and so to them a servant was just mobile furniture. All the better for remaining unnoticed.
    So long as I didn’t run into any senior maids up there.
    *   *   *
    I walked at a servant’s pace—swift without hurrying—past the stairs toward the far end of the hall on the second storey. It seemed wiser to scout all the doors before I started opening them and blundering into people. At the corresponding T-intersection on the east end of the house, I turned and saw two of Lampet’s lads in their Conciliar Guard uniforms. Big lumps, as they all seemed to be.
    He was the kind of leader who distrusted intelligence in his underlings. I could work with that.
    “Fresh flowers for m’lord,” I muttered as I approached the door with my chin tucked down. Fresh my ass—these were dry as Mother Iron’s twat, but you work with what you have.
    One of the guards huffed elaborately, then deigned to open the door.
    I whispered a shy thank-you and stepped through.
    *   *   *
    Lampet’s office had been a solarium once. Angled glass formed much of the ceiling and outer wall, while light flooded across the green and white tiled floor. Unlike the rest of the house, which was paneled in classically dark wood, this room had been finished in something blond and very fine-grained. A set of green leather wingback chairs was drawn up by a fireplace that had obviously seen much use in the recent winter. A large, very clean desk stood under the window, a bar nearby displaying a generous selection of wines and liquors.
    Councilor Lampet sat behind it dressed as if for a court appearance and picking at his fingernails with a letter opener—no, I realized, a stiletto much like the one the Quiet Man