Ash and Silver

by Carol Berg

  “So will you do it?”

  “But you said not to speak of those things to anyone.”

  I had to focus on the present situation, ignoring his doubts and resentment and what might have caused them. “Imagine that I— Please, explain your meaning as you would to a stranger.”

  He inhaled sharply. “Gods’ bones, you truly don’t remember. Not me nor the lily-child nor the Registry portraits nor how you ended up in the fix you did.”

  “No, I don’t. I’ve no time to explain. But as we said, it’s just this one matter that’s of immediate concern. Her kin are on their way.”

  His eyes flicked from me to Morgan. “Are you a prisoner? Have her people done this to you?”

  The snappish questions heartened me. “She’s trying to help. Perhaps . . . Morgan, can you tell him the questions they’ll ask?”

  “I can guess them,” she said, her voice tight. “In the days when Lucian lived in this city, he worked some very powerful magic that caused a disturbance in the world. Dost thou know what I speak of . . . what kinds of things he did and why?”

  “Aye,” he said, folding his arms across his broad chest. “A bit. But I’ll not say it just yet. Pose me more questions, and then I’ll decide.” He jerked his head at me. “If he’s fuddled, maybe he doesn’t know what he’s getting into by speaking of it.”

  Fuddled was not half. Was anything stranger than having two people discuss such intimate matters as my magic and the woman I’d lain with, while I had less knowledge of those matters than either of them?

  Morgan laughed a little. “I do think we’ve found thee no enemy, but a worthy ally, Lucian. Good Bastien, my kinsman will ask when it was that Lucian saw a sentinel of the long-lived—one of those humans call Danae—with silver markings on her skin. He will ask what were their dealings. He will ask what she said of a place called Sanctuary.”

  “I can speak to those things, though there’s little enough to tell. What else?”

  “He will want Lucian to take us there—where the sentinel is.”

  “Humph.” He glanced at me. “Don’t know if that’s possible.”

  “Only if you can tell me how,” I said. And if he could rebuild all the memory that went with my bent.

  The yip of a white-tailed eagle ripped the night. Another cry echoed the first, so close I knew we’d see them did we step outside the gatehouse.

  With a look of concern that set my chest burning, Morgan brushed her hand across my brow. “I’ll go out to meet them,” she said. “Come when I call. I beg thee both, mind thy best manners. My kinsman has no patience with those unlike himself.”

  I smiled in what I hoped was a reassuring fashion, while focusing on matters that would not threaten to explode my head: Inek back at Evanide, pleased that I would be able to bring back some answers; my hope that this business would be dealt with in plenty of time for Morgan to get me back to Lillebras to do my spying. Wondering whether she would disrobe to face her kin. No matter that I could not recall our time together or feel the intimacy she hinted at, she must surely be the most beautiful woman any man ever looked on and I had been at least two years celibate. . . .

  “Manners?” The coroner took Morgan’s place at my side, staring at her back as she ran through the gate. “Who’s coming? Are you sure we should be doing this?”

  “Partner Bastien, I don’t think we have a choice.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “Sky Lord . . . Goddess Mother . . . Blessed Lord of Vines, preserve me. I didn’t dare imagine they would be—”

  “Just be respectful,” I said. “Their grievances—whatever they are—are with me, not you.”

  Only the need to keep my witness steady held my own voice calm as we walked out of the gatehouse into legend. Five Danae awaited us. Their gleaming gards made the darkness around us tremulous, altered, as if the ugly dregs of winter and war were brushed away and replaced with starshine, summer, and scents of pond lilies and seagrass. Alas, save for Morgan’s faint smile, they lacked a shred of welcome amongst them.

  Morgan stood apart from the others, arrayed only in her gards, hands clasped at her back and head held high. Bastien nearly choked when he recognized her. “Gods’ bones, I’ve no manners taught for this,” he whispered. “Do we kneel? Can we look?”

  “We don’t kneel,” I said. “You are an official of the Crown. I am . . . what I am . . . and a pureblood. Looking seems to be expected.”

  There was no question as to which of the five was Tuari Archon, the one whose commands ruled Morgan as the Marshal’s ruled me. Big, well-muscled, hair twined with leaves and bound into a tail that fell over his shoulder and reached his waist. Though his face and body seemed ageless, his presence rivaled that of the oldest trees or the sea beyond Evanide. Every lineament expressed pride and disdain for us grimy humans.

  A female stood at his side, a wisp beside his imposing height and sculpted sinews. She did not cling, though. Her own lean body spoke of impressive strength. A delicate swan drawn in sapphire graced her small face, and her hair curled about her head like a cap. Spidersilk draped one shoulder, was caught at her waist with a thread, and drifted around her legs in the breeze.

  Naari, Morgan’s partner in watching, stood at Tuari’s left, a hoop of braided rope over one shoulder. Another sturdy male, lacking any markings on his face, stood on the woman’s right. His grim demeanor and the sizeable club in his hand suggested a role as bodyguard, and his arms and shoulders testified of his fitness for the role. Breaking, Morgan had mentioned. I had foolishly imagined the weight of supernatural argument, not wood.

  “Come, Lucian, show thyself to Tuari Archon and Nysse, his consort. Honored sagai”—Morgan bowed to Tuari, arms crossed over her breast, and then to the woman—“elegai, this is Lucian de Remeni-Masson, a sorcerer of exceptional gifts and a man of honor who reverences beauty and truth.”

  I halted well out of arm’s reach and touched my fingertips to forehead in the way of purebloods greeting contract masters or purebloods of similar rank.

  “Envisia seru, Tuari Archon.” The greeting seemed presumptuous. “And you, as well, Nysse of the long-lived. Forgive any rudeness. I am unschooled in proper greetings for your kind.” Danae likely held additional grudges for those addressing them incorrectly. Purebloods did.

  The woman dipped her head in acknowledgement. Cool. Not at all friendly.

  “Why is a second human brought to intrude upon our senses, sengai?” said Tuari. His voice carried the throaty power of a seaward gale. “Is the masked one not the person who spoke the mystery to Naari? The same who dared touch thee in mating frenzy?”

  Resentment . . . and danger . . . shaped his every word.

  Morgan deferred to me. “Please explain, Lucian. Thou has naught to fear from my father, who is the just and honorable lord of our kind.”

  Father. The revelation so neatly dropped in my lap left me near speechless, and instilled such a fervent desire to turn tail and run, I almost missed Naari and the bodyguard’s quiet movement toward our flanks. Almost.

  “Hold!” I spread my arms, pointed at the two, and stepped back.

  Bastien’s hand flew to his sword. I gestured him to hold it there, as I closed the gap between us so we could press our backs together if matters came to a fight. The two Danae halted, glancing back at their master.

  “Purebloods, who carry the gods’ magic, do not answer summonses, save from their own masters,” I snapped. “Yet with the greatest respect, I have chosen to attend you, Tuari Archon. I demand respect in turn and will not be outflanked by servants with ropes and clubs as if I were a frolicsome hind. Though my memory of my dealings with the long-lived is damaged, as your daughter has explained, I have brought a witness willing to repeat what I told him of the matters that interest you. Your daughter has assured me that my efforts to answer your concerns will reap honorable treatment in return.”

 
; “My daughter presumes much to make such assurances.” Tuari snarled. “Tell me why I must respect a trespasser, a destroyer who uses his very nature to endanger our lands and our work.”

  “I cannot conceive of any circumstance where I would willingly endanger your kind. Our lore and teaching speak of Danae as guardians of earth and sea, beings who bring fruitfulness and health to the land. My own magic surely derives from the same immortal power that gives you that responsibility, whether one names it a god, as humans do, or something else.”

  “The Everlasting and its Law,” said Morgan. “That is the name we give to the true lands and the great ordering that both encompasses and lies beyond them.”

  “Then I swear that I reverence the Everlasting and heed its Law with the same serious mind as you do.” I did not mention lore that named Danae treacherous enemies of humankind.

  “Humans have no knowledge of reverence,” said Tuari, with chilly conviction. “They destroy all they touch. The true lands are blighted and the human realms suffer. Thou art the principal violator, more than any of thy kin.”

  His accusation near robbed me of speech. What in the gods’ heaven did they imagine I had done?

  The woman, Nysse, touched the archon’s arm. “Yet he speaks mannerly, my love. Let us hear his witness before we judge his fault.”

  Tuari grunted sourly, but covered his consort’s graceful hand with his own. “Let him answer.”

  I did not mistake their concession for indulgence. “Will you speak for me?” I said to Bastien. “It seems a bit more serious than I first thought.”

  He didn’t answer me directly, but squared himself and inclined his back respectfully to Tuari. “I speak for Lucian de Remeni-Masson,” he stated with the gravity of a hearing before a king. “My name is Bastien de Caton, Coroner of the Twelve Districts of Palinur, and I am accustomed to hearing witnesses in cases of untimely death. I do swear on the Law of Navronne and your Law of the Everlasting that what I speak is true.”

  “Proceed,” said Tuari, grudgingly.

  “I understand that you seek to know of Remeni’s magic, of his encounters with the sentinel—the Danae woman whose skin was marked in silver—and of his mention of the word sanctuary in regard to these matters.”

  He waited until Tuari nodded. Hearing witnesses—I didn’t know coroners did that. But watching him induce Tuari—a force of nature—to bend his neck, I dared imagine this Bastien might be very good at his job.

  “Remeni was contracted to me for just over half a year for the purpose of drawing portraits of the dead. Several times over the course of those months, as he told me, he encountered beings he came to believe were Danae. On the first occasion, two of them, marked in blue, as you are, showed themselves to him in the streets of Palinur. Attacked him, as it were. They knew his name and warned him that his magic trespassed the boundaries of the world. They said he needed to learn about the true lands, and threatened him with punishment. He had no notion what they meant. I am an experienced judge of liars and thieves, and I believed him.”

  Half a year . . . portraits of the dead. I almost missed his continuation for astonishment. If only I could consider my missing past without axes cleaving my skull.

  Bastien folded his hands at his back, as if he testified to impossible events before mythical beings every day of his life.

  “For much of the time he was under contract to me, his own people wrongfully kept him prisoner in their stronghold. But it was while he was a prisoner, desperate to learn why he was being held, that he invoked his inborn magic and first saw the Danae woman marked in silver. Though it seemed he truly existed in another place altogether, he believed the experience to be a dream or that his mind was clouded from being kept in the dark so long. The woman marked in silver reacted with pleasure at his coming and spoke of a beacon that had drawn him there. As if he were expected. She said that his makings twisted the boundaries of the world, the same charge as the two in Palinur’s streets. But the silver one expressed no venom, only that her people were divided as to what to do about him: lead astray or grant sanctuary.”

  Tuari’s eyes had widened just enough to tell me he had heard something of interest at last.

  “This vision was interrupted, as it happened, by Remeni being set free. Again, he swore he’d no idea what she meant. Again, I believed him. Once back here, he tried to force such a vision to manifest, bringing every scrap of his native bents to bear. On several occasions—not every attempt—he glimpsed this other place. He described it as five promontories ribbed with white rocks, so that it appeared as a white hand protruding into the sea.

  “But it was no dream. I watched him. Each time, he vanished from the room where he worked. He tried again and vanished for near a quarter of an hour. And on that occasion, he met the silver-marked sentinel a second time.”

  How had my magic taken such a turn? Nothing I knew of Aurellian magic, whether inborn bent or other practice, could transport a person to another place.

  “And what did the sentinel tell him?” Tuari could not mask his eagerness. If he hadn’t asked, I would have blurted the question myself.

  “She called those like you her kin marked in blue and said her people were waiting for one like Remeni—with his particular talent for magic and the strength to use it.”

  “She desired him to use this perverse power?” Tuari’s face purpled. “To what end?”

  “She gave no hint of her purposes, saying only that Lucian must prove his quality before she would tell him more. To our frustration, she failed to tell him how to accomplish this proof, but seemed to think he would understand and wish to do so. She spoke no more of sanctuary. After that day, turmoil in the city caught us up and Remeni vanished. These words are true upon my swearing.”

  I teetered on the brink of a chasm. His native bents. I had not mistaken; the coroner believed I had more than one. Art. History. And transported to another place. Who would ever have heard of such a thing? Trying to resolve these new pieces set my stomach into rebellion. I had to listen, absorb the words, but dared not think about them. Knowing bits of the missing past only worsened the pain of reaching for more.

  “Where is she?” Tuari demanded. “Why would she give such direction, yet fail to say how to fulfill it or where to find her?”

  “She explained herself no more than you do,” said Bastien. “You all seem to expect that he knows. He did not. And, apparently, he still does not.”

  “Then show us,” said Nysse. “Prove thyself, Remeni-son. Show us this magic that caused the sentinel to greet thee.”

  “You’re sure it’s my bents that made it happen?” I said to Bastien, forcing detachment. “Not some other kind of spellworking?”

  “Certain.” He dropped his voice. “One or the other of them. You were drawing portraits when I saw you vanish. You were examining the history of the Registry Tower when you encountered the sentinel the first time.”

  Which was not going to help this argument at all. I took a breath to settle my gut.

  “I would gladly do as you say,” I said to the archon and his consort. “But it’s impossible. The same affliction that prevents me remembering these encounters has hidden my inborn magic. Hearing Coroner Bastien’s testimony is like hearing a fireside tale of another man’s life, and I can no more work that particular magic than I could a stranger’s.”

  “A convenient flaw.” Tuari blew a note of anger and disdain. “But I’ve heard enough. Thou shalt have no chance to trespass again or use thy skills in service of any marked in silver.”

  Something flew through the air and dropped around me, ensnaring my ankles.

  A flash from my side was Bastien’s sword slashing Naari’s rope that threatened to yank me off my feet. Another loop flew and another, but I burnt them through before they could ensnare Bastien or me.

  “No more, Archon!” I bellowed. I raised a shield of fire betwee
n the two of us and the Danae. “Hear me. I swear I bear you no ill will. If you’ll but tell me what you think I’ve done . . .”

  But he ignored me, and though the two younger Danae paused, they did not retreat.

  “Thus is a human’s true nature revealed!” Tuari’s fury rumbled beneath my feet and set the very air quivering. “What now, daughter, who promised the violator meant no harm and would answer peacefully? Never should I have sent a softhearted youngling to mingle with humankind. Thou art tainted by his touch and nimble tongue. How am I to punish thy foolishness? Perhaps the span of a gyre in beast form?”

  “Sagai!” Morgan’s horror—and Naari’s and Nysse’s—told me more about the punishment than the words.

  “I do not lie, Tuari Archon,” I said. “My memory is broken, and without it, I’ve no way to access my deepest magic. Morgan can testify that I did not know her when she found me in the estuary. But I swear on anything you choose that I will give you answers as soon as I have them for myself. If that means drawing a portrait or whatever I did to make this transport happen, I’ll do so.”

  “And lead me to this aberrant sentinel?”

  “If it is possible, certainly.”

  “Then on my daughter’s future, thou art sworn,” he snapped, glaring at Morgan and then me. “And wilt thou swear the same, daughter? What if I say that if he fails in this oath, thou shalt live as a beast until the end of thy days?”

  “No, wait . . .”

  “Yes.” Morgan garbed herself in pride and fury. “Lucian swears he will answer to you when his memory and magic are restored. I believe him. I know him. I pledge my life on his word.”

  “A human’s word?” The Dané shook with rage.

  “Yes.”

  My horror cried out, “Morgan, you mustn’t!” Who knew how Tuari would interpret help or answers, truth or possibility?

  Tuari shook off the shocked Nysse’s touch as if she were a gnat. “So be it sworn.” With a jerk of his head, the four of them vanished into the night.