by Carol Berg
Damon rose and drifted away. “I’d guess there was a mask, as well.”
“Aye. This.” Fix fetched something off a hook by the door. “Thought of using it on this’n, but I wanted him talking.”
“Pluvius devised it to ensure a prisoner’s silence. Lucian was forced to wear it for months, and of all his imprisonment, it came nearest driving him mad.”
The mask was shaped of stiff leather, tangled with buckles and straps. The horrid-looking thing would encase half a man’s head. Worse, one extra-wide strap could pass through the wearer’s mouth like a horse’s bit, depressing the tongue—muting him. For months on end . . . My bones shrank in revulsion.
“The bonds were for you, devil!” snarled Pluvius, spitting at Damon. “You’re the one’s going to send Lucian to his death!”
“What a ridiculous old man you are, Pluvius, a failure who lusts to own true power. You clawed and scrabbled and wheedled your way into position to influence Lucian, believing he could restore the fortune that was excised with your second bent. But honestly . . . a tool for common extortion? The gods would never permit such a waste. How often do they send us a man with a true passion for justice and the strength and talent to pursue it? Lucian de Remeni’s proper destiny is to shape Navronne’s future.”
Appalled at their sordid bickering, I wanted to yell that I’d be a slave to neither of them. But Fix’s damnable spellwork left me as helpless and mute as shackles and mask would have.
“Lucian will see through you,” growled Pluvius. “Your insufferable arrogance will destroy this kingdom, purebloods and ordinaries alike. You haven’t even told him why he is so impor—?”
“That’s enough!” Enchantment erupted from Damon’s hand in a bolt of yellow fire and a blizzard of residue that felt like dry leaves.
Even Fix leapt backward. “What have you done, curator?” he bellowed. “You’ve no right!”
Pluvius slumped against the wall, his staring eyes entirely white, as if replaced by orbs of alabaster. A thumb-sized pile of ash dusted his bundled hands. Damon pocketed a wooden token.
“He is still Evanide’s prisoner, boatmaster,” said Damon. “Haul him to the fortress dungeon, and I shall commend you to the Marshal for your efficiency in apprehending him.”
Damon picked up the leather mask. He studied it as he ambled toward the door. “As for this”—he sucked his teeth in disgust—“show it to Greenshank next time he comes down to the docks. Let him see what his friend and former master was preparing for him—a lifetime mute and chained, his only free breath or glimpse of sky earned by doing Pluvius’s nasty little tasks each day: a portrait of a young soldier to prove his betrayal; or of a young girl to reveal her maidenhead broken; a sketch of a treasury official to discover if his light fingers lifted the kingdom’s gold. Whatever unhappy truth Pluvius imagined might fill his purse or enhance his stature.”
Damon tossed the mask aside and pulled open the door. When the torch he’d left outside lit the entirety of the cottage room, his hawk-like gaze passed right over me. “Good Fix, Paratus Greenshank will surely join the rest of us in honoring Commander Inek for shielding him, and you for bringing the cur to justice. Perhaps even I shall earn his thanks for a mission of justice, cleansing the world of one perverse sorcerer. Though I doubt it. Greenshank knows I am neither his father nor his friend, only his master in the most noble work of our time.”
CHAPTER 23
As the door slammed shut behind Damon, Fix knelt before Pluvius. Peering into the old man’s ghastly eyes, he tapped the sagging cheeks and murmured words that charged the damp air with power. His own form had already reverted to his younger self . . . his true self, I thought . . . the Knight Defender.
“Get the iron off him,” he snapped. “Key’s in his bag. And cut the bindings.”
By the time I realized I was free of his devilish prisoning, Fix had stripped off his jaque and shirt, baring powerful arms banded with silver, one fitted bracelet after another from wrists to shoulders.
I dropped the shackles outside the door. Once my dagger slashed ropes and silkbindings, Fix produced such an assault of magic as I’d never witnessed. Though his fingers never touched his myriad bracelets, he threw spell after spell at such speed that by the time I recognized one, he’d cast three more.
Half an hour in, Pluvius sat up, his eyes a solid milky blue. He shook his head. Stared at his hands. Then drummed his feet, frowned, laughed, spat, tilted his head, and wept. But these were no more reminiscent of a man’s spirit than the cool, smooth surface of a mirror glass mimed human flesh. I captured his waving arms to stop his battering Fix, and eventually wrapped my arms around him so he couldn’t distract the man wielding such magic.
When at last Fix sat back on his heels, Pluvius stilled. I released him, and the old curator curled up on the floor, instantly asleep. He’d spoken not a sensible word.
Fix stumbled to his feet and dragged himself to his small window. With arms that seemed weighted with iron instead of silver, he threw open a shutter to the cold night air, then leaned his head wearily on the thick oak. As the night wind riffled his dark hair and picked at his mask, his eyes closed. “Stupid, arrogant fool. Shouldn’t have let their argument go so far. Should have seen that damnable token he stuffed in Pluvius’s hand bindings.”
It took me a moment to realize he railed at himself. Still, I kept silent.
“I could not reveal myself to Damon. I never imagined a failed paratus could inflict something I couldn’t block or repair. The Archivist must see to Pluvius.”
Unless the Archivist was involved as well. Fix didn’t sound hopeful.
“I should get to the seaward wall,” I said, returning the shackles’ key to the damp leather bag. “Damon might go looking for me. He’ll want to gloat and tell me more of Registry corruption. But if I could meet with you again, sir knight . . .”
“Damon’s with the Marshal. When he leaves, I’ll inform you. For now, you will stand here and tell me what in the seven halls of Magrog’s unholy realm I just witnessed. Hold back nothing. And believe this, if you cross me, deceive me, or take me lightly in any fashion, you will not see another morning—at least not with a mind.” He neither raised his voice, nor opened his eyes. “In this hour, everything you are or hope to become rests in my hand.”
For a man who lived behind a veil, his words were unremittingly clear and his threat utterly, terrifyingly convincing. I told him everything—from the day I set out to fetch a supply of cereus iniga and met a Dané, to my frustrating visit to the archives that morning. He interrupted only to clarify some murky twist. Through every moment of that telling, I prayed . . . willed . . . that he would believe me. And with every passing moment, I observed a keen, unyielding honesty that glinted as cleanly as the edges of his silver bracelets. I came to trust him as I trusted neither the Marshal nor the Archivist.
“. . . and so without knowing where else to look for another portal, I came down here to discover whether Fix—you—might have a portolan that could show me where to start a search for the ruins of the city or the five-fingered land itself, if they’re not the same.”
By this time Pluvius was gone, carried off in a canvas bundle by two fortress servitors who appeared and vanished as abruptly and soundlessly as Morgan. They’d seen only Fix the boatmaster, not the Knight Defender, and hadn’t seemed to notice me at all.
We sat on the floor, each with a mug of ale in hand. A heavy shirt, cloak, and blanket now covered Fix’s metal-banded arms and still he shivered. The extent and complexity of the spellwork contained in so many bands of silver was almost unimaginable; his expenditure of magic had been on a huge scale. Yet he refused to take my cloak or let me close the shutters.
“Deunor’s holy, damnable, confusticated fire! Dual bents. Danae. And your relict destroyed.” Fix drained his mug and refilled it from the flagon at his side. “And, oh yes, portals to another world that
exists side by side with this we know. People who could be alive after two centuries. I can’t decide which is worse. To believe you, or to think a man mad enough to create such a story could advance so far toward knighthood as you have—and without my realizing it.”
“Two years I’ve lived in this unreal state every trainee endures,” I said. “Never did I expect it to be the most normal part of my existence. But I am not mad, Fix, and no traitor to the Order. And I must see to both tasks—find out what Damon’s up to and unravel this mystery of the Danae and Xancheira. If there’s a possibility that Xancheirans have survived what was done to them, is their rescue not worthy of the Order’s mission? We were founded to pay the debt of what our kind did to them.”
“Deciding what work serves the Order’s mission is the Marshal’s responsibility. But”—he raised a hand to still my protest—“I concede your doubts. I’ve trusted the Marshal’s practical strategies these two years since he took office—the gift of a pragmatic, worldly younger man after a decade of a philosopher Marshal. Why should he not consider Damon’s objectives to cleanse the Registry and strengthen the position of sorcerers in regard to our new king, at least to the extent of allowing the curator access to Evanide and hearing him out? Yet hearing your story . . . I wouldn’t reveal your secrets to the Marshal at this point, either. It distresses me to hear of his yielding authority to a man without conscience. And allowing Damon to solicit the submission of a paratus . . . to see such treacherous patterns coalescing around you and hear that they forward a plan so directly contravening our usual way . . . It makes me think I’ve been asleep. Never has the Order been mobilized as one entity. Never have we become a partisan in another’s war. And yet, if the cause was right, and there was no other way to accomplish it . . .”
He blew a long exhale. “My responsibility is the integrity of this fortress and its inhabitants. Both are clearly compromised with Damon making free not just of our halls but of our brothers. And this matter of Inek . . . I detected the enchantment that harmed him, but I was not called on and cannot trespass the Archivist’s demesne unless he asks. But the Archivist certainly should have brought a destroyed relict and the circumstances of Inek’s injury to my attention and to the Marshal’s, and I will find out why he didn’t.”
Fix did not pause and contemplate, but drew his thoughts together as he spoke.
“If I thought this Pluvius had perpetrated the attack on Inek, I would enlist my own successor tonight and drown myself in the bay as a fool and a failure. But I believe my initial judgment was correct. Whatever Pluvius told Inek likely reinforced what Inek was determined to do anyway—retrieve your relict and learn from it. And then he saw that spell waiting . . .”
Fix glanced up sharply. “Have you considered that he triggered it on purpose? Took the brunt of the spell’s working. Such impactful memory work loses most of its virulence with a single use.”
“I did. But why would he? He could have told me.”
“If it makes you feel better, I’d say it was about saving his own life as well. Once he saw your relict destroyed, he knew that someone was determined to change the course of your life. To isolate you. To make you into something . . . other . . . and without interference. Which meant his own life wasn’t worth a feather. They’d come after him next. This way, you’d know.”
“Now he’s in a prison of pain and madness . . . dying . . .”
“If anyone can rescue him, it’s the Archivist. The Archivist is eminently trustworthy in his own demesne. If he believes your relict was destroyed and the trap set two years ago, I believe those things, too. His office is certainly compromised by the incident. Yet, though it sounds implausible, I don’t doubt his intent to care for Inek with his best skills—which are more astonishing than you could possibly suspect.”
Fix rubbed his eyes tiredly and scratched his head. “He wouldn’t work so hard for just anyone, though. Mayhap that influenced Inek, too. Not that the Archivist bears malice toward the rest of us. He’s just been the Archivist for too long. Tangled up every moment in other people’s past and present, but never any time for his own. Picking and choosing through the detritus of personal histories, knowing that one minute slip could damage a soul forever. It’s left him able to focus with incredible depth on any one task, but with a difficulty making connections on a large scale—like being able to look at a city on a map and knowing the names of all its streets and inhabitants, and the description and history of every house, but not comprehending the position of that city in the world or where the roads that lead out of it might lead. Not a job I’d want.”
“Yours seems enormous. And incredibly complicated . . .”
His fingers idly rubbed his arms through his clothes, eliciting a wince now and then. There were only narrow strips of flesh between the bracelets.
“. . . and uncomfortable. Do you ever take the bracelets off?”
“Mmm. Not a good idea. Threadings are permanent. Besides, I never know when I’ll need them.” With a rueful laugh, he clamped his hands beneath his upper arms. “They pose no difficulty on par with my brother Archivist’s discomforts. Though, in truth, those you saw are not all I wear. I’ve others that might rank near his.”
“Sky Lord’s mercy.” Every trainee heard rumors of threading—affixing a sliver of metal or chip of a gemstone to the body with threads of magic to hold a particular spell. But that was for one or two minute pieces, not a barrelful of hammered silver.
Fix rested his head on the cottage wall at his back. “You should go, Greenshank. The fortress will be waking soon. Come back on your next night watch and I’ll dig out the north coast portolans. And you’ve permission to use old Dorye whenever you need. But if you think to bring an ordinary back to Evanide—or one of these Danae—give me a warning, if you please.”
“Thank you, Knight Defender.”
“And if I hear those words from your mouth again . . .” His finger wagged in warning.
Smiling, I sank to one knee and bowed my head, fist on my breast in all sincerity. “Boatmaster.”
He snorted and scrambled off the floor as I rose. After dousing the remaining lamp, he walked into the night alongside me. We strolled up the quay, all quiet but the slop of waves and the muffled knocking of a boat loose at its mooring. The ponderous bulk of the fortress rising above us was just visible, but naught else, not even the man beside me, whichever form he wore.
When I started up the quayside stair, his words followed me. “I judge Pluvius did plan to enslave you. Damon wasn’t lying about that.”
The disembodied voice only reinforced a bone-deep horror at the thought.
I looked back, seeing nothing but night. “All right. But I’m also sure that Damon’s plan is more than reforming the Registry. I’ve no idea what else, or how he thinks I can help him. And however outlandish it seems, Xancheira is a part of it, no matter Damon’s never mentioned either Danae or Sanctuary.”
“Don’t assume anything. We know this: Damon plans a sea change. Your gift scares other purebloods into cooperating with him. Once accomplished, he will likely dispose of his sullied instrument—you—and install this Pons woman as head of his new Registry, while he attempts to maneuver her from behind. Being diabolically ruthless, she may or may not have her own plan. Diabolically ruthless. Perhaps that’s a description I should aim for in my own work.”
Fix’s laughter was healthy, untainted with menace or irony. But unlike Cormorant, whose fair humor spread so easily to warm one’s blood, Fix swallowed his almost as soon as it burst forth. “I’m sorry I can’t help more just now.”
“Dalle cineré, Fix.”
“Dalle cineré, Greenshank. I’ll be watching your back, but I’d say you’d best do that, too.”
“I will. And I’ll be back to see the maps as soon as I can.”
• • •
I didn’t get back to the docks to examine Fix’s maps right aw
ay, nor to the infirmary to check on Inek. I had no opportunity to address any of the plaguing mysteries. On the morning after my adventure with Fix, the Marshal ordered all knights-in-residence, parati, and squires to the mainland for general exercises.
As the fortress erupted into frantic preparation, a tyro brought me a wax tablet:
Greenshank. Hone your skills and await your master’s orders.
The quaking fool couldn’t tell me who sent it. But I knew. I couldn’t fret; there was not a moment to consider Damon or anything but the present.
After a day’s storm-wracked row up the coast to Val Cleve, we spent fourteen days of hard riding, hard marches, and hard fighting. We dueled and fought in the melee. We practiced attack formations in open country and skirmished with small determined cadres in dense forest. A series of increasingly difficult archery challenges for my little cadre while under attack put me in mind of Damon and his odd emphasis on my skill with the bow. But I’d no time or strength to question. Every tyro, squire, paratus, and knight was pushed to his limits.
This wasn’t the first such general exercise since I’d been at Evanide, but it was by far the most brutal. By the seventh day, pain, blood, and exhaustion were the entirety of our existence. March. Fight. Ride. Fight. Crawl. Fight. Eating and sleeping were unimaginable, and yet magic failed without food or rest. One of Inek’s former squires drowned when his boat capsized. Two men died of wounds in the melee. A knight was terribly burned when a panicked paratus’s defensive spellwork rebounded. Not even pureblood healing could remedy the virulent sepsis and sheer bodily damage from severe burns. The man would surely die in agony, and the paratus be dismissed. It was a dreadful loss.
My small cadre was fortunate. Dunlin broke his left arm, but fought on with determination and assurance. Heron escaped the melee uninjured, but ended with a harsh cough. He’d inhaled sea water while rescuing the drowned squire’s two comrades. I’d been so intent on taking out a tricky target deep in a gloomy woodland with an arrow I could scarce aim, an attacker slashed my lower back. I never even saw who did it. I owed Dunlin’s superior swordwork that the wound was not a fingertip deeper. The exhilaration of hitting the near-impossible target almost made up for the humiliation, and the pain merely blurred into the horrific landscape.
