The Book of Kings Read online

  She announced, “I’m ready to see the workroom.” The place where Tess Tardo had spent her days might tell Pia something, although Pia didn’t wonder why the niece no longer wanted to work for the aunt.

  When the door opened, six human heads swiveled up from where they were bent over six wooden ones. The wooden ones were eyeless and earless and had no mouths; the human ones wore cloth caps over their hair and darted quick, curious looks at Pia as they rose to stand beside their work stools and waited to hear whatever the milliner had to say.

  “Keep on,” she ordered, and all six women sat down again, twelve hands and one hundred and twenty fingers immediately busy, like a classroom of students anxious to show a feared teacher that they were working diligently on the assignment, that they were being good.

  R Zilla stood at the front of the room, considering each table, one after the other. Then she wheeled around abruptly and returned to the shop.

  Pia remained where she was for a brief moment, hands in her trouser pockets in a pose her brothers often struck, but none of the women even looked up at her, so she followed R Zilla.

  Back in the sunny salesroom, the milliner positioned herself behind the long table and indicated that Pia should stand facing her. “About your payment,” she said, and waited.

  Pia folded the notebook back into her pocket. “The usual rates, fifty now and fifty more if I succeed.” She pocketed the coins R Zilla gave her from a money box and announced, “I’ll report back to you when I’ve learned something.”

  “You haven’t asked where you can find the girl,” R Zilla pointed out.

  “I don’t need to,” Pia pointed out right back, and the shop bell rang before either one of them could say more.

  A woman wearing a broad, sunflower-yellow hat, peacock plumes waving, followed her daughter into the shop. Pia recognized them both. The mother was someone her own mother kept trying to make a friend of, and the girl was Clarissa, from the Hilliard School, someone for whom Pia had little affection (the feeling was mutual), someone in whom she had little interest (also mutual), and someone of whom she expected the worst and was never disappointed. She looked around, but the open room offered no hiding place.

  Clarissa entered talking, assuring her mother, “I am old enough. It wouldn’t be a hat like that one—” She waved a hand at the black hat in the window. “I know better than that. My hat would be designed especially for me, Mamà, and I’d be the only girl in my school to have an R Zilla hat and everyone would know that you were the best, most generous mother in the world. All the other mothers would wish they’d thought of it. Don’t you see? Won’t Papà be proud of us?” She was smiling up at her mother and shaking her head so that her curls bounced while keeping one eye on the milliner.

  R Zilla had an eye on the girl, too, but it was the mother to whom she spoke. “I see you wear the hat I made for you last April. It’s quite elegant, if I say so myself. And this is your daughter? I’m very pleased to meet you, Miss. You will wear hats well, I can see…”

  By then, Pia had slipped through the door and onto Barthold Boulevard, where she moved quickly out of view. Not until she was alone did she allow the grin to spread itself all over her face. Clarissa hadn’t had a clue. She’d thought Pia was a boy, just as R Zilla had, just because she was wearing clothing she’d taken piece by piece from her brothers’ closets. Max wasn’t the only Solutioneer in town.

  —

  Her hair back under the checked cap, Pia stood in the narrow street, looking into the window of Tess Tardo’s shop in the old city. Displayed there were wide-brimmed summer hats woven of straw and decorated with plain ribbons or delicate cloth flowers, as well as bonnets and boaters and sun hats and even a child’s hat, made to fit a tiny head. A bell over the door rang as she entered the shop.

  At the sound, the milliner turned from her worktable, smiling. Tess Tardo was a tall woman, no longer a girl but still young, wearing a simple white blouse and a plain blue skirt. Her brown hair was piled messily on her head, and her brown eyes welcomed a customer.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am,” Pia said, the way she thought a boy looking for work would talk to a possible employer. She’d worked it all out in her head. Removing her cap, she said, “You should hire me as your assistant.”

  Tess Tardo said nothing.

  “You make the hats, the assistant sells them,” Pia explained.

  Still Tess Tardo didn’t speak. She stared intently at Pia, like someone working hard to understand a foreign language.

  “I could be that assistant,” Pia concluded. Really, she’d thought Tess Tardo was quicker than this.

  Tess Tardo merely raised her eyebrows.

  “Or apprentice,” Pia said. She’d just had the idea. “I can pay.”

  “If I cared about coins, wouldn’t I have stayed on with R Zilla?” the milliner asked.

  Tess Tardo’s voice was not friendly. Pia had a lot of experience with unfriendly voices, so she knew. But what did the milliner have to be hostile to her about?

  Pretending ignorance, Pia asked, “Were you with R Zilla? Why did you leave?”

  “Take yourself off now,” the milliner answered, and turned her back. “I have inventory to produce.”

  Pia was cross. How could she complete her case if Tess Tardo acted like this? She opened her mouth to say…say something, she didn’t know what might come out, something to make this stubborn woman change her mind.

  The bell jingled and a red-cheeked girl entered, asking excitedly, “That boater I tried on yesterday? In the window? Can I try it on again, please?” She set a small cloth reticule on the counter.

  This would be a sale, Pia knew. Tess Tardo now ignored Pia, who stood with her hands jammed into her pockets, thinking hard.

  When the girl had left, boater perched on her dark curls, Pia spoke quickly, before Tess Tardo could object. “I know about business. I can keep books. I could make advertisements to put in shop windows.”

  Tess Tardo folded her arms over her chest. She had large, long-fingered hands that looked strong enough to wring a chicken’s neck. When she sighed, as she did now, it was not a sound of weakness, nor of sadness or resignation, but of boredom—or perhaps exasperation. Pia couldn’t tell which. The milliner spoke slowly. “I don’t know who you think you’re fooling. You’ve been in here before and you’ve cut off your beautiful hair. There are too many untruths circling all around you, like flies. I don’t know what you’re up to, young woman, but I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”

  Taken by surprise, Pia admitted it. “Your aunt thinks I’m a boy.”

  “She never sees past her own nose,” Tess Tardo declared.

  Pia was getting panicky. Max never panicked, she was sure of it, but she couldn’t stop herself. “I could help you. I could sweep. I could buy ribbons, I could—”

  “No,” Tess Tardo said, so firmly that she didn’t even have to shake her head for emphasis.

  “How can I do my job if you won’t even talk to me?” Pia demanded. Even while the words were tumbling out of her mouth, she told herself, No wonder Max doesn’t want you for a partner. She couldn’t really blame him, which was a discouraging realization.

  It was also infuriating. Wasn’t she even going to have a chance? She glared at Tess Tardo. “If you won’t talk to me and you won’t let me find out what your business is like and why you like it—because you do like it, don’t you? Otherwise, why would you stay here when your aunt wants you back? Although I don’t blame you, even if you do have to work alone and your shop isn’t at all as fancy, or comfortable, those women in the workroom didn’t look happy to be there, working for her. She isn’t…” Pia waited impatiently for the right word to come to her.

  “Isn’t a nice person?” Tess Tardo suggested. “Cares only about her own success? But what do you mean your job? I thought you wanted to work for me.”

  “Well, I’m working for your aunt,” Pia told the woman. “That’s my real assignment. Your aunt hired me…Actual
ly she wanted to hire my…I’m the assistant,” Pia said. “To Mister Max, the Solutioneer, you probably haven’t heard of him, but he—he has cases he’s hired to work on, but he’s busy with something else”—that was one way of putting it, Pia thought, even if what he was busy with was going out of business—“so your aunt had to take me instead. She’s not too happy about that. She wants me to find out what it will take to get you back working for her, and she does have the law on her side. Do you know that? Because the apprenticeship contract you signed has two more years on it. That’s my job, to find that out for her, and how can I do it if you won’t even talk to me?”

  After a long minute, Tess Tardo had a question. “Why would I tell you?”

  This, Pia had no doubts about. “Because then I can go back and say nothing will change your mind. She said you were pretty stubborn and I don’t blame you. If you ask me, I’d much rather work for myself than her. I like your hats better, too, if you want to know.”

  Now the milliner seemed thoughtful. “I like my hats better, too, but she’s right. I did sign a contract, didn’t I? Also…I need to think about this. Come back later,” she told Pia. “Come back in an hour, but in a skirt and, please, without that cap. My aunt might not mind lies and pretenses, but I do.”

  Pia didn’t waste words. “One hour. I’ll be here,” she said, and left before Tess Tardo could change her mind.

  —

  When Pia returned, wearing a sundress and sandals, Tess Tardo announced her decision without being asked. “You can tell my aunt that I’ll come back if she makes me an equal partner, allows me to show my own designs and ask my own prices for them, and gives me sole management of the workroom. Just management, tell her that, nothing more, I don’t need to be involved in hiring or firing—as long as the wages are fair.”

  Pia didn’t need her notebook to remember three things. “Why the workroom, too? Won’t that make your job a lot more complicated?”

  “Maybe, but it pays off. If Aunt were a better employer, she’d get better work out of her people and also they wouldn’t run off as soon as they could, to work for someone kinder, or who pays more, or to get married. One girl went back to working on her father’s pig farm just to get away from Aunt. They’re proud to be good enough to be hired by her, but they don’t stay long. But they do like me and I like them. We work well together. Tell all that to my aunt, and we’ll see what she says. You know, even with what you’ve done to your beautiful hair, a boater would suit you.”

  —

  It might have been easy to find out what Tess Tardo wanted, but it was not easy to make R Zilla even listen to her niece’s terms. As soon as Pia, back in her boy’s clothing, spoke the word partnership, R Zilla began to stomp around her showroom. It wasn’t enough to sputter angry protests—“Upstart minx” and “Too sure of herself by half”—or to slap her hand down flat on the tabletop in anger at just the suggestion of equality. R Zilla also changed the hat displayed in the window, then put it back again, then tried a third choice, all the time muttering, “Impossible. Unthinkable. Arrogance of youth. Ruin me in a year, she would.”

  Pia realized that she had made a tactical error. She’d been so busy rushing to change out of the dress and back into trousers and cap that she hadn’t made a plan. She should have pretended that it was her own idea, and added some other, entirely impossible conditions for R Zilla to be outraged by. Then she could have dropped the impossible ones and pretended to settle for the ones Tess Tardo had demanded. Max would have done better. R Zilla was stomping around the showroom and ranting on without a glance at her detective, and Pia knew she was going to have to accept failure. She said, “That’s that, then,” and turned to leave.

  “Where are you going?” R Zilla demanded. “Are you quitting?”

  “You just said you didn’t want to—”

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t. Did I? You don’t expect me to relish the thought of giving up half of my business, do you? Of having an equal”—spitting out the word as if she couldn’t stand to have it in her mouth, and spitting out the next as if it tasted just as bitter—“partner. And if I know my niece, that’s not all she’ll want.”

  Pia didn’t bother trying to understand.

  “She won’t compromise, that girl,” R Zilla went on. “Stubborn as a mule. What else did she say?”

  “She wants you to show her designs—”

  “Hats any nobody can afford,” R Zilla grumbled, but she stood planted right in front of Pia, and fixed Pia with a beady glare. “And ask her own prices for them, too, I expect.”

  She did know her niece, Pia had to admit that. So maybe this partnership was a good idea, if the two women really did understand each other. “Also, she wants to have charge of the workroom. Sole management is what she said.”

  “I guessed as much,” R Zilla muttered. “Did she tell you why she walked out?” The milliner shook her head in disbelief. “When Tess quit, it was because she didn’t like the way I talked to my girls. I told her it was the same way I talked to her, but she just said she didn’t like that, either, and she’d had enough. When I saw some shopgirl wearing one of the little bonnets Tess liked to draw, I knew. She can’t fool me,” R Zilla announced.

  “What do you want me to tell her?” Pia asked, plain and direct. She was no good at being subtle and tricky and she guessed she never would be. Not like Max. But maybe she didn’t have to be. Maybe the plain truth was the best way for her. She tucked that insight away, to be brought out and used when the right time came. For example, the time when she was pulled out from under an overturned lifeboat and some furious sailor demanded to know what this well-dressed boy was doing there and dragged her along to see the captain of the Estrella, who wouldn’t be at all pleased.

  The plain truth it would be, so Pia asked, “Do you accept her terms? Or not?”

  “You can tell her I’m willing to meet with her, and talk.”

  “I don’t think she wants to talk about it,” Pia pointed out. “I think she wants a yes-or-no answer.”

  “I didn’t ask you what you thought,” the old lady snapped.

  “I’m telling you anyway,” Pia snapped back.

  R Zilla continued snapping. “All right, then. Yes. I do.”

  And Pia had solved her first case. She’d done it, and by herself, and successfully. She couldn’t wait to tell Max. She turned to leave.

  “On one condition,” R Zilla said.

  Pia didn’t groan, but she wanted to. She turned around. “What condition?”

  “She has to come back and live in my house.”

  These two women were ruining her day. “Why would she want to do that?” Pia demanded.

  “Because if she doesn’t, there’ll be no partnership. Also,” the aunt announced, with a smile that was very pleased with itself, “I’ve made her a separate apartment. You might advise her as well that I’m thinking of making other changes in my life, and a dog might be involved.”

  Pawn to King

  Because it was now August, the fine, steady rain felt to Max almost like a warm mist as he went to Joachim’s for another lesson in landscape drawing. Joachim greeted him gloomily. “Rain before seven, clear by eleven, so I’ll be out painting in the garden later. When I’m in the garden, she can see me. She brings treats for Sunny and says she has to talk to me about hanging pictures in her shop. It’s a hat shop,” he pointed out, as if Max didn’t already know that.

  “Her clients are society ladies,” Max pointed out right back at him. “If they see your pictures in her shop, they’ll start buying them for their own houses. Won’t that be a good thing for you?”

  “I wish I didn’t have to earn a living,” Joachim answered. “She’s trying to get me to like her by winning Sunny’s affections. What kind of a person takes advantage of how simple a dog’s heart is?”

  Since he, too, hoped to take advantage of the dog in the same way, Max didn’t answer the question. Instead, “Sunny’s coming with me this afternoon.”

/>   “Good idea,” Joachim said. “That way she can’t use the dog as an excuse to come in.”

  “She might not come today,” Max suggested hopefully.

  That possibility made Joachim almost cheerful. “Or tomorrow, either,” he said.

  “Or tomorrow, either,” Max echoed, with a tone to his voice that made the painter look sharply at him. The boy had no expression on his face, but there was something dancing in his eyes, those eyes that always reminded the artist of his palette, which had drunk in so many colors over the years that it possessed a color of its own, a color without a name and impossible to reproduce. Could the boy be laughing at him?

  —

  After lunch, the sun did come out to dry the roads and fields, so Max and Sunny boarded The Water Rat at the city docks. At Summer, the two left the ferry, along with other holidaymakers who were taking advantage of a hot afternoon to stroll along the lakefront and have ice creams and sodas in the cafés, to visit the many small shops, and maybe, even, to catch a glimpse of some member of the royal family out for the same lazy stroll. Slowed only a little by Sunny’s friendliness, Max left the town and headed for the deep meadow on the lakeside, tantalizingly close to the high gates that were the entrance to the summer palace.

  —

  The guards noticed him right away. That was their job and they took a long, careful look. However, it didn’t do to rush at everyone who came within a hundred yards of the gates to accuse them of being up to no good, so the four guards only kept close watch on the young man and his galumphing dog, who wandered together into the meadow.

  Was this someone dangerous? they wondered. Not everyone who wore a beret was an artist. Some of them were only French. Although this was not merely a beret—it was a bright crimson red, and the young man was carrying what could be a drawing pad.