Authors: Carol Berg
More bitterness had spilled out than I intended. He would likely disapprove. But to speak my truth at last to a
pureblood
was irresistible. I certainly would not weep or grovel, not to one of those who had put me here. Perhaps only two or three of the curators had conspired in my downfall, but I trusted none of them.
Damon made no answer in either words or expression. Instead he took down the leather mask, attempting to flex it—an impossibility. He riffled the stack of parchment and unstoppered the ink horn and sniffed at it. Again, no comment. Then he rejoined me in the center of the chamber, standing uncomfortably close—close enough I could smell wine and garlic on his breath and the perfume covering his body’s odors.
Perhaps he hoped to intimidate me. Perhaps it was merely to allow a weak-sighted man to gauge the nuances of my expression. I did not retreat.
“My colleagues are divided on many matters, including your future. Several believe you more trouble than your life is worth. At least one of our six, maybe more, believes you would make a fine pet in a very dark cage.”
The phrases were tossed out like scraps, without feeling. Foolish that they could churn my bowels and chill my skin so; he spoke naught beyond what my night terrors conjured.
“One of us is convinced that your back will be a stepping-stone to a position of authority—the preeminent position of authority among our kind.”
Would that be Albin, aiming to replace Damon as Gramphier’s successor? Why would my life or death aid such an ambition?
Damon continued. “Several would prefer that you walk free and justified, yet are willing to see you dead for their own causes. All see you as dangerous; two believe you are the most fearsome danger to our way of life that has ever existed.”
My asking would certainly not affect his choice to tell me which curator believed what. Yet his pokes struck steel inside me. How dare he dismiss my life, my bloodlines, or my young sister, whose fate none of my Registry visitors had deigned to mention, in so flippant a manner?
“Explain this to me,
domé
,” I said. “Tell me why I am a danger to anyone or of any use in a cage. Tell me why I deserve death.”
Not for murdering a pureblood. If my sister had done as I commanded her, then Damon surely knew that charge was false. Yet to admit that
I
knew Juli lived was to imply collusion, putting her and Bastien at risk. I bit my tongue before I could lose control of it and waited for an answer.
Not a blink or a word acknowledged my outburst. “Your life hangs by a thread
, plebeiu
. Each day a thinner thread. Even in this chamber.”
He twirled a finger and lowered his voice, but not so low a spy would fail to hear every word. “I am included among these partisans I’ve outlined, certainly.”
An exquisite enchantment settled over and around me like tendrils of steam from Arrosa’s baths. As mists and fogs distort sight, so did these fogs distort my hearing, so that I could scarce distinguish which words my ears heard and which were laid upon me so delicately that they must be absorbed through my skin.
“But I have not declared my opinions to the others. I know you only by hearsay, thus decided to come see for myself.”
A cold dismissal, but at the very same time I heard him say,
“But some among my colleagues have dispatched me with a proposal that might preserve both your life and bloodlines. You would be required to leave Palinur for at least a year to reside in a house of healing and reflection. It is a strict house, known but to a few. You would voluntarily submit to the rules and practices of the masters there, as you do for this ordinary.”
No matter this strange dual message, no matter my resolution, I could not stay silent. “Coroner Bastien has enforced his agreement with exactitude, and I have obeyed every restriction the curators imposed. Save for particular instances of my master’s business, I exist entirely in this room, shackled. I have written no letters, begged no relief, served this humiliating
contract in every nuance, and worked no magic without my master’s permission. What further submission could you possibly require? Must I walk into my own cage?”
My speech took on a different quality, as if it, too, occurred on some other plane of hearing, some phrases audible to anyone, some floating in the air where only Damon could grasp them.
My spirit heard him continue.
“It is not the Tower cellar we offer. It is not a cage. For your safety, none but those who send you will know where you are. The Registry will name you
recondeur
, but because of the nature of your submission, your good name and family honor will be restored on your return.”
Run away and reap no consequence? What fool would believe that?
“Your behavior will determine which faction earns my support,” he said . . . or so my ears heard. “It has been decided that you must willingly forgo all use of your bent.”
“
Forgo?
Stop? Break my vows . . . my contract? Never to use—?”
Shock and disbelief left me stuttering. To be forbidden magic as a punishment was terrible enough, but to stop of my own will?
A savage fury rose from my belly and infused my veins and sinews, setting my hands trembling, threatening to shatter every remnant of self-control. Perhaps that’s what he wanted: an excuse to haul me away. I could not give him the pleasure, so I did not call him the spawn of Magrog or a rock-headed fool; I did not even yell, but snapped my words quietly like dry sticks. “You would have me dead by my own hand,
domé
. I will
not
do that. My gift is from the hand of the gods. I cannot—will not—abandon it.”
A flick of Damon’s hand, heavy with gold and gemstones, dismissed my outrage. “This necropolis is not secure enough to contain a sorcerer of aberrant mind—one capable of kin murder. Your choices are severely limited. If Coroner Bastien’s contract is revoked, your future will certainly be meted out on much crueler terms.”
And in that other place, he added,
“Consider the opportunity. When the time is right—and only at that time—two men will present the stipulations of the house of healing and ask if you will accept and abide by them. Refuse and you give up the chance for all time.”
Without ceremony or additional word, he departed, leaving me speechless with fury and frustration. If he wished me dead, then how better to entice me into incaution than suggesting conspiracies at every hand? If he were the one who wished me in a cage, he had served up the very
plan to accomplish it. He must think me an idiot even to propose such a scheme. Yet his warning was chillingly real. If one of the most powerful men in the Registry reported that Bastien’s restrictions were inadequate, the contract would be voided and I would be returned to the cellar. Why would he bother to give me a choice if the end was the same? And if not the same, as he claimed, then what in Deunor’s mighty name was it?
Great gods, if I only knew more about the man, about the Registry’s secrets and lies, and about what, in the name of all gods, this
proposal
meant and who it was had proposed it. Was giving up my bent a condition of this house of healing, too, or just the goad to make me choose it? Did Pons know? Did Gramphier, a man of passions that only my grandsire had seen? Or did blathering, ineffectual Pluvius?
Heavy footsteps raced up the stair, warning of a more immediate problem. I chose to make my stand beside the window, unlatching the shutters and pulling them open. I could always jump out head first if need be.
T
he coroner’s rant began before he was fully in the room. “An invitation to stand in a room with Prince Perryn himself and you
swore
not to go? You vowed it on your family, you damnable cretin, and I know what that means. I should have expected it after last night’s farce. Solving the lily child’s murder is
my
part of our bargain, so who cares if you fumble away a chance to make right your blundering?” His meaty finger shook, accusing. “You’ve a glib tongue on you when you want. You could have found a way. But perhaps you’ve decided to throw in your lot with Demetreo and his band of murdering knife throwers now you’re so friendly.”
“Are we alone?” I couldn’t have him gabbling about our agreement with the Cicerons in front of a spy.
But he paced in tight circles, ignoring me entire. “Did Demetreo provide you a fresh corpse, so you could draw his picture with my ink and dance off with the Danae, leaving the rest of us to bleed for you like Garen did? Was that what the white hand was all about? Or were all your tales meant to confuse an ordinary too stupid to understand magical marvels?”
“We shouldn’t—I can’t talk about—”
He threw his hands up. “Well, of course, you can’t talk about what you did for them, nor what secrets you learned, because all I’m here for is to pay for you to do favors for damnable Cicerons!”
“Bastien, listen to—”
“I should chase down that Registry prick and tell him to take you. Let them bury you alive or chop off your hands or whatever they want.”
“By the name of every god in this universe, Bastien, will you just shut off this self-pitying nonsense and
listen
?”
My bull’s bellowing stopped him in mid rant.
“First and most important, can we speak
freely
?” I swirled my eyes around the room.
A brief puzzled squint and understanding dissolved his angry frown. Then he bolted from the chamber as if I’d stabbed him in the backside with one of my pens.
The hard slam of a door and the rattling of keys jostled the ink horn standing in its holder on the shelf. An examination of the ugly and ornate brackets that held the shelf would surely reveal the elusive spyhole.
Bastien returned, the patches of skin revealed by his bristling facial hair only a modest crimson. “Don’t think you’ve—”
“Clearly you didn’t listen to me in front of our visitor.” I spoke quietly, but with all the forceful clarity I knew how. “You taught me well to think around a problem and be careful with my words. If you had
listened
, you would have heard me foreswear only one particular meeting. We will accept Prince Perryn’s kind invitation, just not at the time of his choosing. I’ve not a notion in the world why Perryn would want to meet with me, unless he thinks a Remeni would be a prestigious escort to the Tower ceremony. We mustn’t let him find out that it’s not true anymore, so we’ll have to be careful on our approach . . .”
Bastien opened his mouth, but I didn’t let him start, hoping to get through everything I had to tell him before his tongue blistered me again.
“. . . and we will only venture the visit when we know the right questions to ask. I’m so very sorry Garen was hurt so badly. I pray he’ll be well and wish with everything in me that I knew some magic to ease him. But, Bastien, our venture was not so much a failure as I first thought. Though I can’t speak of last night”—I held up a hand to keep him silent—“Just listen! What I did for Demetreo—a portrait, yes, and for now I’m sworn on my honor and the prospect of a stapled tongue to keep it secret—made me believe in what I do with my dual bent. More deeply, more certainly than before.
I think the curators are afraid of me.”
It sounded prideful, but I didn’t feel so. Damon’s outlandish proposal had confirmed my suspicion: My bent was what bothered them.
“You don’t know—”
“Please
listen
to me.” Now I’d cracked this skin of detachment that I’d grown over six-and-twenty years, I could not seal it up again. “I’ve
pronounced the words my whole life: Magic is a gift of the gods or nature or whatever greater power can bestow or withhold such benefices in a man’s blood. I have accepted that with my entire being, shaped my life around it. If my parents or some aunt or uncle had argued convincingly that my magic was not divine, but merely elicited impressions from my own senses, I would have believed that, too, and still considered it a gift worth the discipline demanded to use it well.
“But now this gift has transported me to a place I’ve never been. Has made me feel sensations that belong to other bodies. Has shown me truths I could not possibly know. And, yes, I learned something new from Demetreo that I cannot reveal without betraying my oath to him.”
I had recorded an event that had not yet occurred and believed in my every bone and sinew that it would come to pass.
“The responsibility of this power fills me with such awe I can scarce breathe, and such dread I don’t know where to turn. They’re going to kill me, Bastien. Or they’re going to lock me in a cage. Or they’re going to force me to run. That’s what our pureblood visitor came to tell me.”
“So you’re actually going to speak about this prickly fellow came today and his square-headed henchman who sat on me like Magrog’s own fiend?” Though not yet ready to relinquish his fury, Bastien could produce little more than a harrumph and a sour breath. “He was no simple messenger boy.”
“No. No messenger boy,” I said. “Our discipline forbids me speak of him or our conversation.”
Stupid even to consider such rules when I had been skirting the law with Bastien since my release—speaking to him of curators’ portraits and family matters, urging Juli to a great lie. But transgression did not unravel the value or meaning of law. Registry discipline had been a foundation of my family, prescribing how we honored and worked with each other, as much a part of me as how I ate, how I walked, the very languages I spoke. I believed Bastien and I had been born to different purposes in this life and that my place required certain things of me, no matter that they felt awkward or difficult or unkind. Yet, my master . . . my partner . . . needed to know what danger he faced.
“But I’ll speak of them anyway.”
Damon was different from the others. For good or ill, he had listened to me; Bastien had likely noticed that, too. And he had done his strange
magic to communicate out of public hearing, which confirmed that the dissent among the curators made him wary. I just didn’t know whether that made matters better or worse for us.
“His name is Damon. He is a curator. I don’t know him well, but he is immensely powerful and we disregard him at our peril. I think he prefers the running to the axe or the cage. But I can’t run. I won’t. Juli remains in their hands, and she would suffer for my rebellion. And if the slightest whiff of collaboration clings to you, then you and Constance, Garibald, Garen—all of you here—will die, no matter what the outcome for me. It’s not right that it should be so, but it is.”
He could not be more astonished at my words than I was.
“You have to be wary, Bastien. To prepare.”
Bastien had settled on my stool. “Go on,” he said quietly. “None can hear us.”
Shaking off anger and horror, I bent my mind to the present and matters I could control. To learn who my enemies were I needed Bastien, and I already owed him my help.
“I’ve got to find out what’s going on before one faction or the other wins out,” I said. “But we have a problem here at Caton. My ruse at the temple didn’t work as well as we planned because Irinyi was
expecting
something to happen last night. She said she had been warned about a Registry spy. She had a duc from the Ardran court there with a cadre of at least twenty armed men. They were not there to bathe. Someone has been carrying tales.”
“A spy here?” he murmured. Voice and body spoke denial.
But my spirit was sorely frayed and I couldn’t allow it. “Think! The curators told me that someone reported the hour I left the necropolis on the night my house burned. That departure time became evidence to condemn me. At first I assumed some Ciceron had sold them the information, but how would the true villain know I wouldn’t interrupt his setting the fire? What if the spy told someone that I would be on an errand from you once I left here? It gave the murderer ample opportunity to make it seem as if I had come home and set the fire myself.”
“It must be someone else.” A weaker protest. “Only a few knew what you were about.”
“I told you about the shadows and dreams I had in the cellar, how they were always trying to get me to draw. What if those were no dreams? What if someone from here had reported that my presence flickered when
I worked, that you felt it necessary to move me inside the prometheum to avoid alarming your patrons? And then I stupidly mentioned the very same thing to Gilles. Would they have believed such a thing possible if I’d only posed the question, or was it the two events together that convinced them? Because the night after I so stupidly asked the question, someone made me responsible for a crime so terrible that I could never again walk free.”
Someone who wanted me in a cage, perhaps, or someone who considered me
the most fearsome danger to our way of life that had ever existed
. Or someone who wanted me to run away to . . . what? A madhouse?
Bastien’s hand plowed the forest of hair and beard slowly. “Five years at the least I’ve known most of them—the runners, the scrubwomen, the diggers,” he said, softly, “and Garibald and Constance for more than a dozen. I’d trust my life to any one of them.” He glanced up to the shelf and its suspicious brackets. “But you’ve made a case worthy of my inquest chamber.”
I did not tell him about Constance’s gossip with Demetreo in exchange for
necessaries
in my first days here. She had freely admitted her offense and promised to keep my business private. Even then, I had believed her. Knowing her better, knowing how she valued her position and flourished in it, I was even more convinced. I had sworn silence on the matter, and until I had more evidence against her I’d keep my word. Bastien would look at his people fairly.
“Damon himself warned me that someone might be listening.”
“I’ve locked the closet where I sit to watch you. Not even Constance has a key to it. I’ll get back the key to this chamber, too. Constance and Garibald keep it, but they pass it around when there’s need. I’ll find the spy.”
“Then I’ll leave the matter to you,” I said, relieved that he believed me. “Because I’ve got to tell you about the temple. . . .”
Bastien was up and pacing by the end of the tale. I could almost feel the heat of his racing mind. “A
duc
from the Ardran court, ready to pounce. He was wearing Ardran colors, then—those of Perryn’s household, not his own?”
“Yes, but he’s not our murderer.”
“Why not? Bayard or Osriel might suborn just such a man. How many lords come running at a temple priestess’s beck? Perhaps one who frequented that temple. One who owed her favors. So who was he?”
“Never heard a name,” I said, trying to recall everything about the man I’d seen with Irinyi. “Never saw his boots. But the nobleman with
the priestess was no bigger than me. Yes, he was hairy—black-haired with a beard. But I can’t see even a child calling him big.”
“You’re sure she said he was big?”
I closed my eyes for a moment, recalling the interview in the tepidarium with the forlorn little sweeping girl. “She said, ‘He were dark and hairy, as Fleure always told me . . . and his boots were shined like a black mirror glass. I called him—’” My palm slapped my aching forehead. “Aagh, that must be where the image of the bear came from. Gab named the murderer the Bear Lord with Shiny Boots. I assumed that meant frightening and hairy and . . . big. The knife teeth could signify he murdered her.”
“So, we’ve a starting place. A duc of the Ardran household. There’s only five. Noplessi is old as the sea and bent like a spoon; he’s been there since before Eodward. The others—Marcout, Tremayne, Vuscherin, and Comlier—I know the names but not the men. But he’d be dark, hairy, bearish. . . . Maybe
big
. Maybe not so much. If you’re going to be a witness, you must be precise. But we can find him. My runners know how to talk to servants, tinkers, grooms—them that will know.”
“One of your runners
did
talk to servants. Is he—?” Bone-deep weariness shoved aside every other thought save the consequences of the night’s failure. “Great gods, Bastien, why did you send someone so important to you on a temple burglary with an inept sorcerer?”
He folded his arms and propped himself on the bier. “’Tis not my way to tell Garen what he can and cannot do. I’m neither his da nor his wife nor his jailer. You needed someone. I chose our best for the job and asked if he was willing. He wanted to go. As for what you did . . . he told me. How you got him out through the drain tunnel, down that damnable wall. How you killed a man to save him. ’Twas your first, wasn’t it? And I’d guess it’s hit you wicked hard.”
Too tired to shut out the memory of rubbery flesh and spilling blood any longer, I couldn’t stop my hands from knotting or my thumbs from trying to wipe them clean. Bile stung my throat, and I had to swallow multiple times before I could speak without disgracing myself further. When I had more time to dwell on it,
wicked hard
might be too mild a description. “More than I expected.”
“Good. It shouldn’t be easy.” He paused, continuing only when I’d gulped in enough air to suppress the urge to spew. “But mostly we don’t have time to go through all the rights and wrongs of a deed. We have to trust our
nature. If our nature makes us lash out too easy, we have to tame it. But if our nature prevents us saving a good man’s life, then we’d best examine what we believe. I doubt you have a murderer’s nature, Servant Remeni.”
“Never thought I did.” But then I’d never thought lies could be such a part of me, either . . . or madness or such deep-rooted panic at losing everything of importance to me.
“Once I spent my spleen, I would have told you how it was with Garen and me. Some don’t hold with our way, but it’s our business, not theirs. Figured you, of all men, would understand that. But I lost one like him years ago, and seeing this’n bloodied threw me off the cliff a bit.”