Crown Jewel Read online

"Gods strike you both!" Celeste snapped. "I am not a festival prize." He finally pushed Lazzaro away and made to move past him—but stopped short as the stranger caught him up. "Leave me alone, Marco. I am attending you tomorrow night, not now."

  "You will attend me now or—"

  Lazzaro pulled Celeste back again. "Back off," he ordered Marco. In reply, Marco took a swing at him, which Lazzaro neatly ducked, before countering with the same. Marco only came at him again, this time with a glint of silver in his hand, and Lazzaro lost all patience. He had come out tonight for revelry, not violence. Catching the man's wrist, bending it until he was forced to drop the dagger, he threw the bastard over the low balcony so that he landed in the lush greenery below. Bastard attended to, he turned back to Celeste. "Are you all right?"

  "I am perfectly capable of defending myself," Celeste said coldly. "If you think playing the hero you masquerade as will get you more free kisses, then you are as arrogant and foolish as he."

  Stiffening as though struck, Lazzaro stared at him a moment. He reached into his purse and withdrew a single sovereign, holding it up so that Celeste could clearly see it—then let it drop to the ground at Celeste's feet. "For your lips, courtesan. I bid you a warm and pleasant night." Lazzaro strode past him, never glancing in Celeste's direction as he went back across the pavilion. He did not stop as he reached his table, but walked past it, ignoring Benito when he called out.

  He walked down the wide stone steps that led up to the pavilion and across a smaller courtyard, fighting through the boisterous crowds until at last he reached a smaller, deserted street. Alone at last, he could no longer ignore his thoughts. The entire debacle would certainly teach him to…except he was not entirely certain what it had taught him. Not to flirt with a courtesan? Not to think he could ignore the boundaries of their respective stations? That Celeste would never see past the sovereigns? Lazzaro sighed and told himself whatever the lesson, it had been learned. That was the last time he spent money on a jewel.

  His tolerance for revelry banished, he tried to put his mind back to the frustrating and fruitless task of finding his mother's killer—but wine and humiliation still buzzed in his head, making concentration impossible. He thought of his mother, how happy she had been the day of her death, and felt ashamed. They had never been as close as maybe they could have been, but he had loved her and she him. Many a woman in her rare position would have rid herself of a child or used him to milk all she could from his father.

  The beautiful and gracious Lady Salvai, however, was no ordinary woman. She had begun life as an actress and raised herself to the level of an affluent cut flower. Then, straight out of one of the silly tales from the boards she had once tread, she had become lover and beloved of the King himself. A few years after their affair had begun, she had born him a son—a son she had hidden away in a monastery until he was thirteen, before finally calling him home to her side. He had never been happier than on the day he had received her letter ordering him home, except a week after when he finally reached home and embraced his mother for the first time in years.

  She had been a lovely, vibrant woman of rare integrity—and she had been poisoned in the sanctity of her private chambers, murdered long before she should have died. Now, Lazzaro was too busy sulking over a whore to focus on finding her killer.

  "Your grace!"

  The shout, the fear in it, struck him just as the scuff of boots registered, and Lazzaro whipped around—barely avoiding the knife that would have landed in his back. Instead, it sliced his arm, so sharp and smooth that at first he felt no pain.

  Lazzaro grabbed the arm of his assailant, punching him in the gut and throwing him off. He drew his own blades, a matching sword and main gauche that had been gifts from Benito on his birthday three years ago. The man—Marco—drew his own sword and attacked.

  The duel was short and brutal; Lazzaro had fought more difficult opponents in worse circumstances, and while he was handicapped by being a little drunk, he still possessed more skill than his opponent. It took only for Marco to carelessly lower his guard for Lazzaro to knock his blade away, then lunge forward and shove his own main gauche into Marco's gut.

  He watched dispassionately as Marco slumped to the ground, leaving Lazzaro covered in his blood, the rest of it spilling out over the cobblestones. Only then did it strike Lazzaro that it had been Celeste who had called out and saved his life. He looked up, away from Marco, and stared down the street to where Celeste stood silently watching. They stared at one another for a moment, then Lazzaro looked back at Marco, slowly and painfully dying on the filthy street known as Peddler's Row. Kneeling, Lazzaro slit Marco's throat. After a moment, hearing feet approach, he said, "You called him Marco."

  "Marco de la Vega," Celeste replied quietly, slowly dragging his eyes from Marco to Lazzaro. "He controls the dream smoke trade."

  Lazzaro sighed. "So I just murdered a drug lord. Wonderful." He cleaned his blades and sheathed them, then stood up. He started to turn away, but the clinking of metal against stone stopped him. He frowned at the bright gold sovereign laying on the cobblestones, just barely out of reach of the spreading pool of drying blood. Looking back at Celeste, he said, "I am relatively certain that refunds are one of the few things a jewel does not give."

  "I should not have spoken as I did," Celeste said. "While I believe most men would help me only for a free tumble, I also know most men would not have left me three sovereigns for a mere conversation. Take back your sovereign, your grace."

  The knot Lazzaro hadn't realized was in his chest eased. "I am sorry for my own words."

  Celeste shrugged, sinuous and elegant even on a filthy street and standing over a dead body. "I am a whore and I don't give refunds." His gaze dropped again to Marco. "I did not think the night would end in such a terrible fashion. My experience with men does not extend to disposing of their bodies."

  Lazzaro stifled a sigh. "Regretfully, that is experience I do possess. Too much of it, really."

  Quirking a brow at him, Celeste replied, "Dare I ask?"

  "Benito says I have a peculiar talent for drawing in life-threatening situations. He says that is what I get for having a taste for mystery solving. Such a talent requires a certain set of unique skills."

  "Like disposing of bodies," Celeste drawled. "For what it is worth, after the initial panic, no one will miss him."

  Lazzaro frowned, because the words did not match with the sadness that flitted briefly across Celeste's face. It should not have made him angry, seeing Celeste mourn over a drug lord, but it did. Anger, he thought in disgust. He was not angry—he was jealous. The man was dead, which made his behavior all the more contemptible. Shaking himself, he said quietly, "It seems you will."

  Celeste glanced at him in momentary surprise, then shrugged and looked away. "We were children together on the streets. Later, I became a jewel and he became a better thief. We have not seen each other in years, but that old connection has been useful this past month. I have been using him, to put it plainly. Sometimes I am too good at what I do." He looked up, and for the barest moment, all of his years were in his eyes. "Whatever our present, it is hard to forget that once we were hungry children together, sleeping in whatever bit of alleyway or roof we could acquire for the night, sharing stolen bread, certain that no matter what the world did to us we would be friends forever."

  "I see," Lazzaro said, not really seeing at all. He had grown up in a monastery, the only child in a place full of men who had no real concept of what to do with a child. He had not met anyone his own age until he was thirteen, and then he had met the crown prince, his half-brother. He had absolutely no concept of what life must have been for Celeste.

  Shaking off thoughts of things he could do nothing about, Lazzaro pulled out the heavy gold chain around his neck, removed it, and then pulled off one of the four rings he had put there while he attended the Festival of Secrets. Handing it to Celeste, he said, "Show this to Beni; tell him to send me two men."

  Celes
te took the ring, Lazzaro's signet, and slid it over his own gloved finger. Then he glanced up at Lazzaro, the very image of innocence. "How will I know this 'Beni'?"

  Lazzaro rolled his eyes, then leaned in close, murmuring, "I am certain you will manage, jewel. Now go."

  "As you command, handsome stranger," Celeste murmured.

  "Don't think you can simply vanish after either," Lazzaro added, snatching him back as it occurred to him that Celeste would do precisely that. He held fast to Celeste's wrist with one hand, using the other to grasp his chin. "You owe me an explanation."

  "I will give it," Celeste said, and tugged free of his hold. He darted quickly away, before Lazzaro could say anything further.

  Lazzaro watched him until he was out of sight, then sighed. How had his evening gone so awry? He had meant to spend it working, until Benito had dragged him out. Once at the festival, he had meant to spend the night drinking and bedding something pretty—then he had seen Celeste across the way and forgotten everything. Now he had a dead drug lord and no clue as to why the bastard had wanted him dead. Well, Celeste and probably the balcony had much to do with it. Surely drug lord should have been smart enough to exact revenge through other means.

  Lazzaro moved and was suddenly reminded of the cut to his arm that he had been ignoring until that point. The cut was minor, though, and the blood was already drying; it could wait until he was back at the palace to tend. Kneeling again, he rifled through Marco's clothes, looking for any clue as to why a hardened drug lord would act like a jealous, besotted young idiot.

  Unfortunately, his search turned up very little. Lazzaro scooped all the bits and bobs into his own purse to examine more closely later, and by the time he had finished, the royal guards had arrived to help him.

  *~*~*

  Celeste toyed with the heavy signet that Lazzaro had given him, and which until then had remained on his finger to minimize the risk of losing it. He had almost put it in Lazzaro's jewel case, upon his arrival in Lazzaro's private chambers, but at the last had kept it. Why, he did not know or particularly care to contemplate at present. But he rather thought he would keep it until Lazzaro mentioned it.

  It was a handsome ring—white gold, with Lazzaro's name inscribed on the inside in the old language. The signet itself must be Lazzaro's personal crest, because the Nascimbeni crest was of a griffon clutching a sword and crown. The King himself had commissioned the crest when he had made Lazzaro the first Duke of Nascimbeni. However, the crest on the signet was of a building of some sort … a castle? No, Celeste abruptly realized in a flash, rolling his eyes at how long it had taken him to mark the obvious. A monastery, of course; what else would someone like Lazzaro choose for his personal insignia?

  Sighing, still idly turning the ring around and around on his too-small finger, Celeste shifted on the window seat and stared down at the lush, moonlit gardens below, the dark, glistening sea beyond. More than once as a boy, he had wanted to hop a shop and sail far away, see what the rest of the world looked like, how they lived.

  But professional whores did not board boats save to whore themselves to sailors, or take up the same profession on a different shore. Customers had offered him many things in the past—a house of his own, in a respectable quarter, trips on private ships to extravagant locations, other luxuries and opportunities. He would be lying if he said he was not tempted. But it was not true independence, being someone's private toy—merely an illusion of it. The life of a private jewel was, in some respects, more dangerous than being a public jewel. He would never put control of his fate into the hands of another, least of all a man who kept him around solely for the pleasure of having him available to fuck at a moment's notice. There was no stability in that.

  Lazzaro flitted through his mind, and Celeste rather hated himself for letting his thoughts wander down that path—that very tempting, but so very treacherous, very impossible path. He had not expected Lazzaro to ask him to dance. No one did that. They danced with their spouses, their intended, their family. They met him in a secluded garden or bedroom, used him, then went back to the people with whom they wanted to be seen. A rose and a request to dance … if he were anything but a jewel, it would count as flirting. Even if it was, to what would it come? The Duke of Nascimbeni, as powerful as he was, could not publically take a jewel as his lover—and Lazzaro did not seem the type of man inclined to hide his lover.

  Celeste tried to think about something else—like the fact that Marco was dead. Marco, who he had thought he could handle. But he had gotten arrogant, overconfident, and missed all the little signs that should have warned him of Marco's dangerous possessiveness. All jewels learned to watch for certain signs; there was nothing worse than a client who thought the entire transaction had any sort of reality to it.

  Now Marco was dead, and it was his fault, and he could not even be that sorry. He was sorry for the boy Marco had been, but nothing more. He really wished he could erase the entire night, from fleeing the pleasure district in hopes of a peaceful night to being unreasonably annoyed when he saw Lazzaro flirting with the serving girl…to that moment when Lazzaro had flirted with him and asked him to dance. Never mind that kiss; that damned kiss. Celeste had never let a kiss be anything but a business transaction. He always controlled intimacy of any sort, because surrendering that control was dangerous and stupid. Try as he might, though, he could not remember anything except how Lazzaro had smelled—orange and sandalwood and musk, how he'd felt—warm and solid and firm. And his mouth, gods in heaven and hell, what he would give to forget Lazzaro's mouth.

  Celeste rubbed at his temples, willing the images and memories away. He was the Crown Jewel, too experienced in such matters to do something as stupid and pathetic as become even the tiniest bit infatuated with the Duke of Nascimbeni. The idea was laughable; he was too jaded to become infatuated with anyone. He definitely had too keen a sense of self-preservation to do anything that foolish. That amateur.

  Celeste scowled down at the sea. He needed to return home—the longer he stayed away from the House of Peace, the greater his problems would become. Yet still he did not move from the window seat in Lazzaro's private chambers, because he had said he would give Lazzaro an explanation. He owed Lazzaro an explanation—he just wished Lazzaro would deign to appear.

  Despite himself, Celeste started to doze off, curled up with a throw stolen from the back of a couch to ward off the chill of the window itself. He jerked awake at the sound of a door opening, nearly toppling from his perch. The smell of food struck him hard, making his stomach growl abruptly. He looked up, across the room, and absolutely hated the way his whole body tensed up at the sight of Lazzaro.

  He looked tired, ragged—and completely surprised to see Celeste. "What are you doing here?"

  Refusing to let that sting, Celeste tossed his hair, then lowered his feet to the floor and gracefully stood, tugging his robes back into place in the same movement. "I was told not to vanish. Here I am, your grace, unvanished."

  "In my bedroom," Lazzaro said dryly, but humor warmed his eyes, beating back some of the exhaustion. "Do I want to know how you got into the secret palace?"

  "Probably not," Celeste murmured, trying not to stare at the tray of food Lazzaro balanced in one hand. Instead, he noted that Lazzaro's arm had been bandaged; he was relieved it did not seem to be a serious wound, despite the amount of blood that had poured out. "Is all well, your grace?"

  Lazzaro yawned. "Only time will tell, but I think so. His body was given over to the proper authorities. He attacked me, I defended myself. When asked why he attacked, I said it was over a disagreement at a party. I saw it as petty, he viewed the matter quite more severely."

  Celeste grimaced. During the Festival of Secrets—any festival for that matter—such squabbles were far too commonplace. Marco would not be the only one to die for such a trivial reason before the festival ended.

  "I will go to court next week, but…" Lazzaro trailed off. He did not need to finish the statement, really.
If he received any form of punishment at all, it would be a slap on the wrist. Lazzaro was not the sort of man to abuse his position, but he was a Duke, the King's bastard son, and brother and best friend to the crown prince. No one would punish him for such a crime, even if he deserved it—even if he demanded it. "Would you like some food?" Lazzaro asked. "There is plenty here, although only one goblet. If I had known you were here, I would have brought up more."

  "You told me not to run off," Celeste pointed out. "Where else was I supposed to go?"

  Lazzaro laughed. "True enough. So would you like some food?"

  Celeste opened his mouth to refuse, simply because it was policy to refuse anything offered freely, but instead the words, "Yes, please," spilled out.

  "And here I thought I would have to bully you into eating something," Lazzaro said, mouth curving in a half-smile.

  Saying nothing, Celeste moved to the little table on the far side of the room. Lazzaro motioned to the one chair beside it. "Sit." He strode to the wall where a trunk sat and dragged it over to the table, then sat down. He poured wine from the pitcher to the goblet and popped a dark green olive in his mouth. "So tell me why all this happened."

  Celeste ate a bite of bread and cheese, before finally replying, "Marco and I had an arrangement. The man who owns the House of Peace is severely addicted to dream smoke, and it is putting the House in danger, never mind my fellow jewels. I made a deal with Marco: he made certain his people stopped selling Pio dream weed and I made it worth his while." He just wished he had realized that Marco was one of the obsessive types. He should have marked it and he hadn't, and confound it if he knew how he had missed it. Not that it mattered anymore, but he was never that careless.

  On the other hand, he was never careless enough just to let a man push him up against a balcony railing and kiss him senseless, either. The worst part of it all was that Lazzaro really had kissed him senseless. It was not a sensation Celeste wanted to experience again. A man jewel who lost control of his senses wound up dead or back on the streets.