Authors: Carol Berg
“My particular devotions are none of your concern.”
I climbed out of the pool, sorry if my looming nakedness terrorized the girl further—I doubted there was much help for that—but I wanted to get these two out of the chamber and have some time alone. I had more work to do before leaving the temple.
“If I frightened you, servant”—interesting that she was no priestess—“then that is unfortunate, but I begin to think the goddess has already answered me through her divine cousin, the Lord of Fire. Only a fool would accept her most bountiful gift before going penitent to Lord Deunor’s Temple. So take your charge away and leave me to my closing devotions.”
Disappointment soured Varouna’s round face. “But surely you need service . . . to dress if naught else. This maiden’s hands are soft, her manners exquisite, her blood rare and entirely worthy to grace the presence of the gods’ chosen. She is well trained.”
Her fingers riffled the girl’s silken hair and traced the soft line of her neck and shoulder. No alleyway procurer in Montesard had spoken in tones so ripe with allurement—and avarice.
I memorized the gatzé woman’s face. “In the humility of the gods’ chastisement, I shall tend to my own dressing. But later. I must experience the scouring of the caldarium first.”
The woman’s simpering hardened like plaster. “Then do please recall that the Sinduria has a document for you to sign before you depart the temple. Her handmaiden will await where she left you.”
Varouna’s plump fingers snaked into the girl’s hair and dragged her toward the lattice wall.
I released a beam of ruby magelight to strike the wall in front of Varouna. When she yelped and spun round, I splayed my fingers, smearing the light beam as if taking a brush to a line of wet ink until rosy light wreathed the wondering child.
Varouna jerked her hand away from the girl so fast, I thought she might fall backward.
“Be sure, servant, that the goddess intends no rebuke of this maid,” I said, laying my fist to my breast and ordering my features in pious ardor as if I’d naught to do with the display. “’Tis a part of the great revelation of this rite. From this day, I shall become divine Arrosa’s devoted worshipper, striving to be worthy of such tender service on a future visit. I anticipate such devotions with the greatest delight.”
As she bowed, wordless, and they vanished behind the lattice, I bared my teeth like a wolf. I would enjoy seeing Bastien turn this vile woman over to a magistrate.
Now quickly, before Irinyi’s handmaid came looking for me.
I turned slowly, examining the pool chamber, trying to put myself in the mind of the villain. Gab’s testimony had changed everything. Fleure’s death was not the result of some lustful temple encounter devolved into guilt or frenzy. Child and man knew each other. He’d brought her here. Threatened to rip out her hair . . . why? He’d bent her over the pool as he blacked her hair, silencing her with his great paw, disguising her as the lowest of servants while she yet lived. Deliberate. Purposeful.
Had her death been an accident of the silencing? I didn’t believe that. Didn’t want it. I wanted him to hang.
So, where had she died? Would he have killed her here apurpose? Not likely. Someone could have intruded while he manhandled her. Witnesses like Leo or Eliana. More likely, once her hair was darkened to his liking, he would have walked her to the drain and killed her there.
I gambled my short time on it.
The caldarium chamber was a few steps lower, steamy and hot. Dipping a finger told me that entering the murky water would be no trifling devotion. The chamber appeared barren, save for the small pool and the archway to the stair.
The downward steps were much older than the ascending stair. No
surprise. The baths and their system of flues and furnaces were likely built by my Aurellian ancestors when they laid the pipes and drains for the city wells. I padded quietly down the tight twists into the cellar—into Magrog’s fiery hells, so it felt. If I needed any reminder that I was naked, the least brush of the stone walls served. The hot floor, skimmed with drips and seeps, kept my bare feet moving down a gentle slope. The drainage channel would be down.
Hoarding power, I chose to forgo magelight. The torch mounted at the bottom of the stair would serve me partway down. Beyond that, I’d go by feel until I found the grate at the end of the channel.
Sturdy, well finished, graceful, and efficient, as with every Aurellian structure, the drainage channel could have been the passage to another bath, save for the slimed floor and musty stench. No perfumes here. No sensual music. As the torchlight faded behind me, so did the killing heat.
Something brushed my bare foot. Recoiling, I pressed to the wall. There was movement everywhere, a faint clicking . . . and harsh scritches and shrieks from ahead of me; more from behind. My sweat chilled all at once. Rats
.
If a man could walk without touching ground, then I would have done. Ridiculous that the threat of vermin could so trump the fear of discovery as to speed me even faster.
Soon the heat of the caldarium was but a savored memory. A breath of icy air promised an ending to the dreadful passage.
When naught but shivering, I risked a single beam of magelight. The iron grate stood ten paces ahead, its rusted latch broken and dangling free.
Once beside the grate, I held my blazing fingers behind me, setting off a vile, shrieking stampede. I didn’t look. Didn’t want to see. Kneeling in the ankle-deep sludge, I let the light die and prayed both rats and priestesses to stay away. Then I set foolish fears aside and closed my eyes.
Lord of Fire and Magic, grant me your grace. Goddess of Love, help me erase this defilement of your house.
No smoldering embers but white-hot coals waited between my eyes. No need to let the power build. The merest touch of will sent magic rushing to my hands, scouring vein and sinew, until I near cried out with the glory of it.
One touch of my hands on the slimed floor and I was already sorting the threads. Generations of warriors posted on Palinur’s ramparts. Hot, dusty summers and chiseled stone. Clever, dark-haired builders and sweating slaves as the bathhouse rose. Odors of perfumes, oils, excrement, and sacrifice, the songs of ecstatic devotions and the grunts of mindless rutting.
Seek the precise emotion . . .
A child who knew she was going to die. Resigned to it. Brutalized, the bruises on her neck aching, warning her. Find the scent of ephrain . . . the heat and smells of the pools . . . the horror of this ending place. The shriek of rats. And her murderer, dragging her barefoot through this slime. She knew him. He wasn’t the Prince of Ardra, not if he was dark and hairy; Perryn was wholly Ardran like his royal father, tall and fair.
“Fleure,” I whispered. The lily had led me here. She took her blood from Caedmon and Eodward—two of the mightiest kings the world had ever known.
And there she was, facing her fear and certainty, not a being of breathless terror, but of timeless courage.
Blood under her nails.
So brave, clawing, scratching, even here in the dark when she knew it was hopeless. Biting the fingers that dragged her. And even as the beast roared and shoved her down, she spat in his face. She, the descendant of kings.
But he was so big. Her hands dropped. Limp . . .
My arms began to quiver.
Tell me, child. Tell me something. Who was he? Turn around, devil, and show me your face!
But the image was awash in blood, its threads erased before I could follow them to any discovery. A stabbing pain between my eyes warned that my well of power was running dry.
I sat back on my heels, shivering, heaving, trying to sort through the impressions of the seeing for some gleam of enlightenment before I opened my eyes to failure. Nothing . . . nothing . . .
A sting on one of my feet brought me back to full awareness. I’d thought the winter beyond the grate had frozen my limbs. Another fiery peck on my ankle and more brushing movements. Shrieking. Chittering.
“Aagh!” I jumped up and reached for magelight, but the knife in my skull twisted, leaving me dizzy and nauseated. Flailing, retching, blind, I retreated. The rats seemed emboldened by their success. I stumbled up the passage, kicking at them, slipping on the disgusting sludge. Though the broiling stink of the filth on and around me had me near delirious with sickness, I welcomed the hypocaust fire for the grace of its light.
Up the stair. Around the never-ending spiral, panting in the heat. At last the scented steam warned I neared the caldarium landing.
Somewhere voices murmured. But where? No murderer must discover I’d been poking around a place I’d no reason to be. Purebloods could die, too.
I crept to the arch and peered through. Steam curled and billowed over the hot pool.
“Seeker? Are you here?” Irinyi’s handmaiden called hesitantly from the tepidarium.
“He’s not up here in the latrine.” A male voice—Leo—called out from the stair above my head. “Eliana says he’s not on the roof, either. He must have gone.” The youth, descending, was almost on me.
No time to think or doubt. No power for magic, even if I knew anything that might help hide me. I darted from the stair and slipped soundlessly into the scalding pool.
Gods in all heavens!
Perhaps my sins would be boiled away, for it seemed certain my flesh would be.
I held still underwater as long as I could, the span of twenty heartbeats, perhaps, or the striking of the bells at midnight. Then I launched myself into the air with the booming groan of a sonnivar—the mountain horn. “Mighty goddess!”
A
stonishing how much easier lies
become, once you’ve told a few with some success. As Leo dressed me, I let slip the awe-filled revelation that Arrosa had bound me at the bottom of her hot pool far longer than nature would permit. And when he remarked on the bleeding pricks about my ankles, I let flow some nonsense about the goddess reminding me of an illicit romance that required me to escape bootless from a lover’s bed through her rose garden.
“Clearly she wished to chastise me for all my transgressions and itched my ankle until I clawed my own skin. I am a new man!”
Though words of apology and appreciation were rare in a pureblood conversation with an ordinary, once returned to her chamber I smothered Sinduria Irinyi with so many, her cool serenity withered. Smile fixed like an aingerou carved into a parapet to frighten children from its edge, she dipped the pen and shoved it into my hand. “Just sign the document,
domé
, and tell me the name of the tavern where the child bides, and the last vestige of your sin shall rest in the goddess’s hand. Divine Arrosa has clearly favored you for bringing your trouble here.”
I feigned hesitation. “Others have signed such documents? My family . . . Perhaps you have other arrangements for those whose families cannot allow scandal.” Had Gab’s Bear Lord signed
his
name? Bastien would like that.
“The goddess requires all to commit their intentions by name,
domé.
Pureblood, noble, the king himself, should he petition her.”
“All right, then.” I scribbled an unreadable signature on the document that described my forfeiture of all interest in the five-year-old child of my youthful lust and again on a paper that ordered a tavern keeper named Drysi—the name of my father’s favorite bitch—under pain of law to turn over the girl to a representative of Arrosa’s Temple. “On my woolly head, Sinduria, I cannot recall the name of the tavern. I scribed it in my journal and will send it, and a generous fee, as soon as I return home.”
I cut off her annoyed response with my palms in the air. “Nay, no need to send your man. I’ve visits to make on my way home—to my Lord Deunor’s Temple foremost. By morning you’ll have her and I shall face the new day cleansed and living in the favor of the gods.”
“Very well. We shall await your messenger.” Lips thinned to the point of vanishing, she rolled and tied the documents into a scroll scarce larger than a reed. With a sharp pivot, she shoved them into a scroll case that spanned half the wall behind her. The force of her insertion could have bored a hole in the dark wood case.
Despite my frustration, I left the temple eager. Perhaps Irinyi and the others here had not laid hands on Fleure’s throat; perhaps fear of the lord who had last visited the child had prevented their reporting her missing. But they had placed her naked in the hands of a beast—and they were willing to do the same with a child of mine. I could not wait to pass what I’d learned to Bastien.
T
he stars glinted like frost
shards as I trudged through the deserted streets. No matter the lack of lamps or fires so late; the starshine itself created hard-edged shadows and allowed me to see my way. No phantom Danae, no voices, no creeping footsteps shadowed me.
A strange elation gave a spring to my step despite the long and exhausting day. Such pleasurable satisfaction seemed wholly odd after investigating so vile a crime. I had violated a goddess’s tainted temple; practiced lies and deceit that would have shocked me a mere four days past; used my forbidden bent a second time without a smat of hesitation; and put my personal, and thus my family’s, reputation at risk to come up with—I had to be honest—very little solid information. Yet it might give Bastien a place to start his investigation.
As I began the last climb to the Vintners’ District, the bitter cold at last seemed to penetrate my bones, and the concerns of true life pushed away
the phantom hopes of justice and redress for a murdered child. Tonight, without fail, I had to tell our servants we could no longer pay them, and send a notice to Tessati that we no longer required his house. Egan would be waiting in our courtyard; I had to tell him we would take the rooms. How long would it require to pack up the little we could take with us, clean and furnish the new rooms, and see to our servants’ new positions and the move itself?
As I turned into our lane, a red-orange aurora sheened the sky above the trees, dimming the stars. Unintelligible shouts pierced the quiet. My feet understood before my churning mind did and began to run. And then the window of my soul was torn open and darkness flooded in.