by Carol Berg
The stars wheeled and a delicate shift in the marshland told me the tide was on the ebb. I was on the verge of telling Bastien the answer when his head popped up, his ruddy cheeks gone ashen.
“Demons of night, Lucian! Of a sudden, I feel as if I’ve a signboard on my back that says Kill me. How is it you’re yet living?”
“That’s a very good question,” I said, rolling the strip of linen carefully about the spindle. “One reason could be that you kept this buried and told no one I’ve come back from the dead. Damon has no idea that I’m aware of my dual bents, much less these implications. He’s been very careful not to mention it and to ensure I can’t discover it. As far as he knows, I’ve no personal connection with anyone in the world outside Evanide. Your old friend Pluvius turned up here babbling of my dual bents and how Curator Pons sent him to save me from Damon’s clutches. Pluvius now lies in a dungeon with the mind of an infant.”
“Pons sent Pluvius here!” said Bastien, as if he’d not had shocks enough. “Do you realize who she is? The plaguey Registry inquisitor that you believed responsible for everything that went wrong. And then damned if you didn’t turn around and send your sister to her, when you got out of prison, so young Juli couldn’t be named renegade. Pons seemed honorable in her stubborn way, and she was the only person you could think of to protect the girl. That was the hardest thing I ever saw a man do.”
My turn to puzzle. “But on that last day, I sent her to Sanctuary with the Cicerons. . . .”
A thousand things could have happened in between those two events to set my sister free of the Registry: rescue, a bargain, an exchange of some kind. But if Pluvius had spoken true, this Curator Pons had already split with Damon. A relief to know that Damon likely didn’t realize the girl lived. A young woman now . . .
“Juli. That’s what I called her?”
“Are you sure you want me to tell you?”
However foolish, I needed to know this as much as anything in the world. “It’s worth a headache.”
“Aye, you did. And she called you—”
“Luka.”
“That’s right.”
I ran my fingers through my damp hair. “There’s a host of things I need to know. Pluvius made no mention of the spindle, but wanted me to help him find a buried chest that holds my grandsire’s Xancheiran artifacts. He claimed Pons knew about the chest, but Damon didn’t.”
Bastien grunted. “I’d say that was likely. When Damon came to Caton, trying to chase you off to his ‘house of healing,’ he said naught of Xancheira or artifacts or historical investigations. He wouldn’t have worried about asking, as he knew his people were going to scrape it all from your mind anyway, right? And since the chest wasn’t buried, but still sat where your grandsire hid it five years previous, I’d say no one knew—”
“Wait”—I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right—“you know where the chest is?”
“Aye.” Bastien grinned. “Shall I tell you that?”
“No! Not that. Not now.” I lived with people expert in memory manipulation. “Is it somewhere we can get to it?”
“Not easy. Not me alone, for certain. Likely we could do it together as we did before, if you’ve acquired better skills to go with all the rest of”—he waved his hand at me—“this.”
“Oh, I’ve skills. But it’s likely best I not know the chest’s location until I learn what Damon plans to do about the secret. For whatever it’s worth to you, Damon showed me I was right about those portraits of the curators; they even revealed who ordered my family’s murder. Damon wanted the seeing . . . the knowing . . . to make me angry, and I let him do it and swore my allegiance to his cause. He says he wants to purge the Registry of corruption, but I’m sure there’s more. Now more than ever.”
So what was Damon’s vision of Registry purity? Was it only eliminating his corrupt rivals, while keeping this secret buried and our privileges intact? Or would he risk overturning the world to cleanse our most fundamental sin—a cynical corruption of the divine gift that had led to centuries of murder? I needed to understand him better.
I restored the canvas sleeve and protective spells and entrusted the spindle to Bastien.
Spits of rain made the blustering wind sharp. “We’ve much to talk about,” I said, “but weather’s shaping, and I need to sleep. You, too. Tomorrow will be a rough night.”
Bastien walked with me to the boat. The ebb was already stretching the slack out of the line.
“Will you need me to row? I did a stint on a coast runner one time down near Cymra.”
“Might, if one of the tyros gets knackered. But mostly I’ll need you to stay between Morgan and the Cicerons. These people will have heard terrible stories of Danae, and we can’t have them spreading word of Evanide or Danae or Xancheira or any link between them, just in case they’re picked up before they find a haven. Morgan won’t think that strange.”
“Makes sense.”
“And I’m going to tell them”—Goddess Mother, it felt vile to speak it aloud—“they mustn’t mention anything about the Xancheirans or the prisoners in the trees in Morgan’s hearing. I think they’ll be cautious.”
With a slow exhale, he nodded, then offered his hand.
“’Tis fine to partner with you again, pureblood,” he said. “As I’m short of work right now—not that the Crown has paid any of its servants for a year or more—this is a sight better than soldiering for any of the princes. A man of the law enjoys an interesting case once in a while. And you do bring me the damnedest.”
Which reminded me of something else. “You know the matter of the girl child you mentioned? Damon’s military aide is a man named Fallon—”
“Fallon de Tremayne works for the Registry?”
“For Damon. Claims he supports some of Damon’s work, maybe cleansing the Registry or maybe just Damon’s other purpose”—he needed to know all, even if it was but supposition—“which I’m guessing is ensuring our new king is beholden to him.”
“Great gods, Remeni! Are you involved in aught that won’t get my neck stretched the length of my legs? You really mean that . . . treason . . . and murder . . . or a war such as this world has only begun to see, because there’s no way that crown’s hanging out there ready for a scrawny little sorcerer to snatch without drawing in every sorcerer in the Registry . . . or an order of magical warriors . . . and perhaps a young general, once Perryn’s man, experienced in ordinary warfare . . . Ah, shite, shite, shite!”
“I’m not certain of it yet. But I’ve seen evidence.”
We’d no time to analyze the ways Damon could install a challenger on Eodward’s throne with use of the Order’s magic or control one of the princes after their war was settled. The weather was closing in. But I needed to know one more thing.
“Fallon says he owes us a debt that will trump any other cause. Should I believe him? I don’t know that we could convince him to betray Damon, but to have him willing to listen . . .”
“Aye. Believe him. The last thing in the world he’d want is Perryn on Eodward’s throne.” For a moment, a grin flashed through Bastien’s dismay. “Told you we did good work together.”
“It would seem so.” I grinned back at him. “And I’m hoping we can do more after we get these people away. So put your mind to this. Who would a power-mad lunatic think to put on Eodward’s throne instead of one of the three devil princes? It’s likely to be someone Fallon believes in. Someone Fallon might convince Navron nobles to support. Would people listen to him? That seems the only way it would work.”
“Aye, Fallon was well respected until his father’s disgrace. A battle-tested field general. Nobs would give him a listen.” He wagged his shaggy head. “Sky Lord’s everlasting mercies.”
Indeed. We’d need the cooperation of all gods to find a way out of this.
“Tomorrow,” I said.
The rain
drove harder. Bastien waded into the rushing water beside me, and together we gave the squinch a shove.
As I hopped in and grabbed the oars, he called after. “Enjoy your little row. I’ll have a lovely night in my dry cave, eating the lady’s smoked fish and figuring out where I’m going to hide while your friends, kin, and commanders tear this kingdom to shreds.”
CHAPTER 30
My little row was not dry. Howling wind and sheeting rain churned the bay to frenzy, hiding or displacing beacons and driving me back toward the mainland. Sea and sky were a dizzying maelstrom of black water. When the flat-bottomed squinch tipped, it was the gods’ own luck that the waves tumbled me onto a gravel shore. I’d scarce lifted my chin, desperate to crawl farther inland before the demon sea snatched me back, when the storm deposited old Dorye right atop my head.
Scalp bleeding into my eyes, I battled the sucking black water and wrestled the unwieldy squinch onto shore. Miraculously, one oar remained jammed in the grip of its lock, and blessed Fix’s spare was yet lashed tight along the bottom boards. Less fortunate, the boat’s water cask was lost. No magic could make salt water drinkable.
I sheltered beneath the upturned squinch, giving thanks for the divine gift as I set a pile of drift aflame with magic and huddled drenched and shivering in its tiny circle of warmth. Please gods we’d not see a repeat of such weather on the coming night. To take Conall’s tyros out in such a storm would be murder.
Wind and cold made the night hellish. Sleep would have had a hard time coming anyway, what with carrying a secret that upended all that purebloods like me had ever believed. What in the name of all gods was I to do with the responsibility of such knowledge? Cleansing the Registry of corruption was one thing. Shattering the hard-won, complex balance of Crown, Temple, and magical discipline was entirely another.
Yet, the Xancheirans had accommodated the truth and thrived until the day the purebloods of the south had come to destroy them. Where was justice in all this? Certainly not in secret executions or purges or ripping away half a person’s gift to serve a lie. Certainly not in a sorcerers’ war where consequences could be unimaginable. Xancheira was proof of that.
• • •
The absence of drumming rain woke me from fitful sleep. Excited waves yet sloshed. The ashes of my little fire popped and smoked, the magic spent. All else was quiet. Wretchedly thirsty, the cut on my head bleeding, and the stitches on my back sore and fevered, I crept out to find the sky filled with fading stars. And I was still on the mainland. Time to row . . .
Three hours later, I staggered out of Evanide’s boathouse, gulping stale water from a flask I’d grabbed from another boat. The boatmaster hurried down the quay to meet me. “No need to ask where you’ve been. Is Old—?”
“Old Dorye’s fine,” I rasped, draining the musty flask. “One oar lost. Water cask lost. A leak in the sternsheets. There’s likely a dent in the keel where the devil boat attacked me.” I blotted the stinging crack in my right temple that had started bleeding again. “I’ve things to tell you, Fix.”
“There’s others got first claim on you. Place is in an uproar. Marshal’s been asking for you since dawn. Not even the Knight Defender could tell him where you’d gone. Most suppose you fell off the seaward wall, except they found your armor rusting in your cell.”
No permission to leave the fortress. Absent overnight. I hadn’t given that little problem any thought at all.
As we hurried toward the stair, I croaked quietly, “What of the hungry lord?”
Fix handed me a clean, filled water flask from somewhere about his person. “Still hidden,” he mumbled. “Still alive. Eats like a tyro. He’s a fiend for maps. The man’s got tales . . . and ambitions. He’s trying to convince me to set up some kind of expedition into the north. Some range of hills near Montesard. Says there might be a way to undo the Severing.”
“What?” Stunned, I halted at the quayside steps. Siever had mentioned something about his lord and lady perhaps walking free. It had been right after he showed me his revived magic. “Hills near Montesard? That’s where my grandsire—”
Deep inside, where the puzzle of Xancheira and the Danae churned like a milkmaid’s cream, pieces began to clump together:
The northern city of Montesard, where Lucian de Remeni had lived with his testy grandsire, studied history, and met a Dané in disguise.
Siever’s mention of a cache that Signé had called myth.
Cicerons who had promised to bring back the magic to undo the Severing—perhaps not referring to magic in their fingers.
My grandsire, the historian, who had brought back a chest of Xancheiran treasures from the north.
And now Siever wanted to go north to find an answer to the Severing.
“Move, fool!” Fix yanked the empty water flasks from my grasp. “This isn’t the time. Get yourself to the Marshal with a plausible tale unless you yearn to spend a month in irons.”
An avalanche was about to fall on my head from the Order, but it couldn’t damp my excitement. “I don’t think your guest will have to travel so far as Montesard,” I said, backing up the stair. “As for tonight, we’re planning an escape drill. Conall’s loaning his tyros to row. Signs of another storm like last night’s, though, and we’ll have to wait one more day.”
Fix jerked his head. I turned and ran.
• • •
“You’ve had the entire fortress in chaos, Greenshank. Training halted. Your brothers endangered, searching for you to seaward.”
The Marshal circled his inner chamber for the third time as I knelt with my fist on my breast and eyes lowered, watching the nasty puddle I was leaving on his floor swell. Bleeding, filthy, and sodden, I’d seen no point in any attempt to portray myself other than I was. I just wanted to get this over with so I could speak with Siever and figure out how to retrieve my grandsire’s Xancheiran chest. But the uproar over my absence was worse than I’d imagined and Order discipline could be brutal.
“I’ve reaped full sanction from the gods for prideful idiocy, Knight Marshal, and come near losing my paltry skills for the Order. No punishment you name will outweigh my fault.”
“Be sure you’ll spend an unhappy hour with the Disciplinarian. And in public, not private. Your brothers, those ranked above you and more especially those ranked below, will expect it when they hear that the morning’s disruption was for naught but pride.”
The Marshal’s fingers had been twining his silver pendant, an unaccustomed disquiet. Yet the tenor of his words flowed as mild as ever, and worse, it was not anger, but disappointment shaped them. Shame choked me like a poison fog, even as reason named it ridiculous. I’d choose no differently even now. A good man’s life had been in danger. And more lives awaited saving this night.
So I tried to reflect that shame onto the Marshal, who had fallen so short of my estimation, but I could not summon the accusations to support it. A lie, here. A concealment, there. The bulk of my suspicions were founded in his cooperation with the despicable Damon—the yielding of his authority to an outsider lacking moral boundaries. But even Inek’s accusation by way of his bracelet remained shrouded in doubt.
The Marshal’s bare feet halted an arm’s length in front of me.
“This story rings false, Greenshank. I prize initiative in a senior paratus, but purposely challenging such a storm to prepare for an exercise is a sign of poor judgment wholly unlike you.”
I’d never known him so agitated.
“Stand up.” The order crackled like flame.
The Marshal and I were so similar in height and build, my lowered gaze rested on the white drape of his robe across his chest. His restlessness had left his silver pendant nestled in the fold, for that instant its back side fully exposed. Embedded in the silver was a coin-like gold disk with a woman’s face. Recognition flashed with the brilliance of cereus iniga—
“Face me and spe
ak truth, paratus!” His wrath demanded my attention. “Tell me why a man of strength, intelligence, and promise, one who has been singled out to help shape a better world, risks his life for nothing.”
Stripes from the Disciplinarian, even in a public venue that would triple the humiliation, would be easy compared to standing before this man’s righteous indignation and inventing more lies.
“Speak, Greenshank! Explain yourself.”
Risky, the idea that came to me—warping my story so as to pry at the slight gap I’d noted between Damon and the Marshal. Were they partners or were they not?
“You’re correct, Knight Marshal. It was no exercise. I didn’t plan it. I simply . . . ran. I’ve given Curator Damon my oath of submission. How could I do elsewise after all that he—and you—have revealed to me? Centuries of corruption contaminating the divine gift. These unworthy princes ravaging the kingdom they want to rule. We must see these things remedied, yet your own warning gnaws at my commitment. How can one so compromised as the curator be the person to lead such an effort?”
“Curator Damon is a visionary,” he said, anger reined in, the response unmarred by his body’s disturbance. “Visionaries are rarely perfect. They’re so intently focused on their cause, they oft disregard honor and common decency. We who cheer the vision must be mindful.”
“But since that morning in the Seeing Chamber with Damon, my own decency and honor fail,” I said. “Such rage consumes me, Knight Marshal. In our exercises at Val Cleve, we were ordered to halt at the death stroke. . . .”
Memory of those fourteen days came flooding back in sensations more vivid than in their immediate aftermath. Endless violence, blood, pain, exhaustion, and a continuous raging heat in my blood—fed by certainty that it was Damon’s war we rehearsed.
“. . . but my discipline broke. Several times, others had to stop me from dealing a killing blow.”
