Authors: Carol Berg
“Time I got back to my bed, then. Coroner, see he doesn’t rip out those stitches until I say. You can pay my landlord my fee; less chance of it going astray in these days of decadence. And I’d appreciate all of you refraining from bloody adventures in the middle of the night.
Sengé . . .
”
Throwing on his cloak and hefting his case, the surgeon inclined his back to Demetreo, who had appeared again, lounging against the outside wall. The red door opened by no apparent means, and the surgeon trudged into the night.
“Your care of my servants leaves me in your debt,
Sengé
Demetreo.” Smoldering anger had enveloped all Bastien’s sentiment. “But I would know how you come to have them in your custody—in such a state. We had an agreement.”
The headman’s chin jerked again. The turnips went into the simmering pot, the lyre into its skin case. The dicing men quenched the lamps. In moments only we three were left in the house, along with Oldmeg of the bone necklace, who was yet sponging blood from a sleeping Garen.
“
Custody
is hardly the case, Coroner,” said Demetreo, emptying the cider pitcher into a cup and passing it to Bastien. “More like they imposed their inconvenient selves on my hospitality, and be sure ’twas in worse condition than you find them. Your pureblood will confirm this.”
The headman perched on the rim of the fire pit. Bastien took one of the stools abandoned by the dice players and with a sharp gesture directed me to the other. A formal parley, then. Protocol forbade me from sitting as an equal with two ordinaries, but that wasn’t why I remained standing. My curiosity was like to outstrip my patience for this dance between them.
“My apologies, then,” said Bastien, unapologetically. “I shall, of course, offer a proper gratuity.”
“We have reaped no ill from the dead child found here in the heart of winter. For that alone, I would offer you this consideration.” Demetreo gestured toward Garen. “But if this night’s work comes down hard on us, as your pureblood warns, our tally will be unbalanced yet again.”
Bastien whirled on me. “You babbled our business to a Ciceron? Gossip outweighs gold in his trafficking!”
Demetreo seemed unmoved by Bastien’s insult, but then, no masked pureblood kept his thoughts closer than did the headman.
“We’d no escape from the temple save the drainage channel,” I said, “and Garen needed more help than I could give. When Demetreo and his people found us and demanded the reason for our trespass, I explained that we’d sought evidence of the girl child’s murderer. The temple sits above the place where she was found. He is not stupid.”
Demetreo dipped his head in mocking acknowledgment. The veins in Bastien’s forehead pulsed. Perhaps I’d stated my case more forcefully than necessary, for my rendering wasn’t yet complete.
“Though we got away, the danger is real. I lost the scroll with my handwriting—perhaps on the steps, perhaps in the temple—”
“And to remedy your bungling, you’ve put us in the debt of Cicerons.” My master the bulldog, yes. “Are you determined to get us all dead?”
Patience held by a thread. “I’ll tell you the particulars later. Removing ourselves and allowing
Sengé
Demetreo to see to his defenses should suffice for their safety, especially as his people seem to have resources I’d have sworn were impossible.”
Demetreo’s amusement stilled. Bastien noticed, his wiry brows rising. Curious.
I pressed on. “But before we leave or natter on about my incompetence, I must know about the hand.”
The inscrutable Demetreo blinked. “The hand?”
Bastien echoed the headman’s confusion.
I pointed to the fresco, almost invisible so high above the shuttered lamps.
“A white hand,” whispered Bastien. “The same as in—” He caught himself.
“What do you wish to know?” Demetreo had shuttered his face again.
“What does it mean? Is it the emblem of your clan? A warding symbol?” The questions rolled out of me.
“What would you pay to know of it?”
One might assume Demetreo bargained his own knowledge. But Oldmeg had lifted her head as I questioned. The slightest jut of Demetreo’s most commanding chin had set her back to her work. He knew something. Perhaps she knew more. But speculation profited me nothing when he held her reins, as Bastien held mine, when it came to that. Though the headman had directed his inquiry to me, I forced myself to defer.
“Master?”
“Such a trivial request to ease my servant’s curiosity,” said Bastien. He maintained the marketplace posture of a man who could walk away from trivial matters, though we all three knew full well that he and I had already betrayed the importance of my question. “I owe you Bek’s fee to apply to his rent. Perhaps a small increase . . . say, double?”
Good. He did not scrimp.
Demetreo held up his hand as if to slow whatever river of coppers Bastien might produce. “Perhaps something less expensive.” A cat’s purr could be no more satisfied. “Keep the surgeon’s fee and the generous excess. Instead we ask that you avert your eyes for one hour. A simple bargain.”
“Avert my eyes from what? A murder? Thieving?”
“It is a matter of our safety and no violation of the law. You have my word—which has proved itself worthy of late, yes? Just leave the hirudo, taking your eyes from us for an hour. My men will carry Garen to your house—or wherever you want him. You can see to his recovery.”
Bastien fingered his purse. “And in exchange, Bek’s tally is forgiven for the month, and we learn what the pureblood would know.”
“Exactly that,” said Demetreo, rising, sober and sinuous as a snake.
“Done.” The glint in the coroner’s eye and the twitch of his profligate mustache as he pounced proclaimed him pleased. He didn’t recognize Demetreo’s trap, and I wasn’t about to warn him. Not if the bargain would illuminate the white hand.
“Come along, pureblood. We’ve work . . .”
“Ah no,” said Demetreo, apologetic as he sprung his trap. “I said nothing about releasing your pureblood just yet. We wish to consult with him on these private matters. Never fear, we’ll send him back with his question answered and our debts squared, none the worse for our exchange.”
“Private—!” One might have thought a rock blocked Bastien’s throat. But shock quickly yielded to annoyance—whether more with me or the headman the only question. He had been fairly outmaneuvered and knew it. Had he been willing to risk Registry outrage by hiring out an hour of my service to other unscrupulous Navrons, he could likely have charged five hundred times Bek’s rent for a year. I was well content. An hour was nothing.
Grumbling, Bastien shifted his scowl from me to Demetreo to Garen, who lay shivering despite the fire and blankets. He hated leaving, but, of all people, he knew how quickly evidence could vanish. By morning, the Ciceron could change his mind. Or the Registry could snatch me away. Or any one of us could be dead; Oldmeg looked as if she had cheated the Ferryman for decades. Bastien wanted to know about the white hand, too.
“My servant must be at the necropolis gate before the second-hour bells ring.” He eyed my feet. “And if you’ve a rag to wrap his expensive pureblood toes before you send him up, I’ll ignore the next dead Ciceron backslider shows up with his tongue stapled.”
“Truly, Coroner Bastien, you ought to dress your servants for the weather.” Demetreo’s restraint in the glow of his triumph was admirable. His mouth twitched and his dark brows lifted, all false innocence.
Before Bastien could snap a retort, the red door swung open, producing a gust of winter and a Ciceron newcomer large enough to dwarf the coroner and Demetreo put together. Half the man’s teeth were missing and his hair was parted into myriad braids threaded with gleaming wire. At Demetreo’s direction he lifted Garen as if the young man were a sleeping pup.
Bastien threw his own cloak over Garen and motioned the giant out the door. After a last warning glare at me, he followed, spluttering in discontent.
As the old woman bundled bloody towels and rags from the piled
cushions, Demetreo leaned his back on the red door. “What spurs this interest in the mark of the hand, pureblood?”
“My grandsire was a great influence on my youth,” I said, picking carefully through the truth. “He used his magic to study ancient times, to understand our world by learning of our ancestors, their cities, and their wars. This white hand against a field of black appeared in a magical vision, worn by some who looked like Ciceron warriors, but he never learned what it meant. Seeing it here intrigues me.”
The pulsing red-gold of the dying fire gave life to Demetreo’s aspect. “Insufficient,” he said after a few moments’ contemplation. “What urgency is connected to a dead man’s studies, especially for a knife-wit city coroner and a bloody, frozen sorcerer?”
“My reasons do not figure in this bargain,” I said. “I’ve seen the mark before and wish to know more of it. Sooner, rather than later, if I’m to provide some service for you in this hour.”
“Very well. Here is a bit of history,” he said, his gaze like black needles. “Purebloods have an especial spite for Cicerons. Registry investigators pursue reports of our petty crimes through town and village. Registry witnesses testify in proceedings far beyond the concerns of their contracts. We but cross a sorcerer’s path and we’re accused of insolence or violation. Your curators would as soon sweep us from the lands of Navronne with jitter dogs and offal. Or, better, hang us all. Do you deny it?”
“Why would I? Respectable ordinaries would profess no different sentiment.” No need to list the multitudinous reasons. “The only mystery is why you’ve not been chased out of Palinur long since.” Indeed I’d never heard of Cicerons forming such permanent settlements as this one, even to having sentries and a commons house like a normal village.
“And yet unlike those
respectable ordinaries
, those chosen of the gods have little to fear from light fingers or vengeful knives,” said the headman, digging. “Sorcerers who refuse to play our games of chance cannot suffer from our . . . skill . . . at winning them. What have we done to earn such spite?”
“If you wish to address matters of crime and justice, better you should consult Coroner Bastien,” I said. “I’ve little experience to offer.”
“Yet in no lawbreaking amongst ordinaries do purebloods take such an interest as in ours. Did you
never
wonder about it?”
“No.” It was true that purebloods testified inordinately often against Cicerons; my uncle Patrus had been contracted to a merchants’ fair and
spent more than half his time witnessing to Ciceron thuggery, calling down raids on their caravans, expelling them. . . .
“Do you yet believe the god has provided us this sorcerer,
Naema
?” said Demetreo, shifting his attention behind me. “A stubborn prevaricator exiled by his own, one who gets his master’s lover bloodied and cannot see beyond the prattle of fools?”
“How can you doubt, boy, when the sorcerer speaks to your questions before you ask them? Bring him.” A woman’s powerful voice came from the back of the house.
Naema!
I whipped my head around. Oldmeg sat in a tall-backed wooden chair. A thick mantle woven of every color of nature overlaid her ruffled black skirt and bloodstained tunic.
I was no linguist, but all knew the title
Naema
—“grandmother” in the oldest language of Ardra and Morian, long before those became provinces of Navronne. It was a name associated with the Goddess Mother, Samele, or human women who wore her mantle, those who saw things others could not, those who read the signs of earth and air, those who spoke of past and future with wisdom beyond human knowing. No clan or family dared bestow it lightly. Even purebloods heeded those who wore it.
I bowed to her in deepest respect.
“What am I to make of you, sorcerer?” she said. “You ignore your kind’s particular antipathy for Cicerons even as you read the tale of the reasons here in this holy place.”
Was it only the dying fire sent a shiver up my back? The Registry was ferocious about those who made false claims to power for magic, naming them charlatans, deceivers, pretenders to the gods’ gifts. And the terms of the Writ of Balance meant that neither Crown nor Temple could interfere with the Registry’s retribution. And what did she mean,
this holy place
?
“’Tis only to set terms for our consultation that we speak of your kind’s especial loathing,” she went on. “Mayhap then you’ll understand how much our need outstrips our shyness. In the usual course, we invite no dealings with Registry folk.”
“I am hardly a Registry man anymore,” I said. “But then”—Oldmeg had leaned forward on the arms of her chair, her whole body listening, observing me, her posture telling its own tales—“you know that.” They had watched me since the beginning.
Oldmeg’s head bobbed slightly in the way of the very old. “Indeed,
your separation from your kind emboldens us,” she said. “And my grandson deems you trustworthy.” The old woman’s faded lips squeezed away the beginnings of a smile. “But we cannot allow you to speak of what you see or hear in this chamber, whether to your own kind or any other; thus, we require your blood-bound oath of silence.”
She produced a small dagger with a twisted hilt, and with a motion so expert as to be near invisible, nicked her paper-skinned palm. She extended the dagger hilt and her bleeding hand in my direction.
My stomach lurched with the remembrance of knife striking rubbery flesh and warm blood drenching my hand. The temple guardsman’s blood had soaked my shirt. I stank of it.
“We do not draw our own blood,” I said, staring at the scarlet beads welling from her palm. “It is touched by the gods, carries their magic.”
Demetreo blocked the red door, his body a nocked arrow ready to fly. To refuse this oath would likely loose that arrow, for a word to the Registry about traces of magic in a Ciceron lair—even Lucian de Remeni’s word—would be enough to bring down a bloodbath.
Yet to keep silent—to pledge my honor to it—would violate the discipline that was the foundation of my people’s compact with the gods. I had devoted my life to Registry discipline. I had sacrificed my sister and my freedom to it. Yet my suspicions of those who proclaimed that discipline now festered like plague sores. What if our centuries of trust had been misplaced?