Ash and Silver

by Carol Berg

  Signé watched, stone cold, as the headman directed some of his people down the stair, some back toward the Bronze Tower. Four or five approached the lady about staying. Four she dismissed straightaway. One she spoke with longer, but eventually he rejoined the others, too. Through a melee of farewells and embraces, but no tears, Bek and Juli ushered the first group down the stair to where the portal waited.

  Signé set herself between me and the stair. “You’re putting them in the care of the long-lived.”

  “Yes. But my friend’s gards are not silver. And she’s sworn—”

  “Does she know these people come from a land where her kind wear silver gards? Do you know that her kind fear that the silver madness breaks the world? Kyr says those with blue gards have their own form of madness, for they consider anyone—human, beast, or long-lived—who has been near the silver as aberrant.”

  Exactly what I was afraid of. “Siever warned me to be careful. And though Morgan has been naught but generous with me, I’ve heeded him. She and I have a bond like you and Kyr, forged years ago when I lived that other life, though unlike you, I can’t feel— I can’t remember what we shared or what I felt then that might be different now. But yes, she knows. I have to trust her. There’s no other way to get these people somewhere they can survive before winter makes life on the road deadly. They cannot live in a swamp. Cicerons don’t farm. They don’t fish. They survive in cities where there are many people who have things they want and need.”

  “You’re saying they’re thieves,” she accused, angrier than ever.

  Goddess Mother, she really had no idea. But then, she had grown up in a ruin.

  “They learned to live as they could manage.” Which was strange coming from me who used Ciceron and thief interchangeably. “They dance and mime and do tricks for entertainment. They play games of chance. They perform services that people can’t get elsewhere, services most people deem unsavory.”

  “And yet you’re rescuing them.”

  “There are many reasons.”

  “I see. As your sister says, it’s what you are.”

  “Don’t presume too much from her chatter, my lady. I’m many things now that I was not before. Now, forgive me; I must go.” The atrium had emptied. “I hope to be back within the hour. And when I come I need to ask you about the cache you and Siever spoke of. And I desperately need to speak with Safia about how we might free your people.”

  “The cache is two centuries lost. And Safia is mad.”

  “She guided me here believing I could help.”

  Signé acknowledged the point reluctantly. “I see her only when she brings provisions. That’s usually when she plans to release Benedik for an hour or she brings me a message from him—to taunt me that he was out and I didn’t know. But I’ll try to find her.”

  “Is there a hilltop that looks out over the sea and five spits of land? White rocks like bones along fingers, grass, a few pines. She’s been there every time I’ve spoken with her.”

  Her face opened up a little. “The place of the beacon, the boundary of our little fragment. We can walk forever along those spits, but never touch the sea. She and Benedik would often meet there.”

  She proffered her hand—not cold as I expected, but warm and grimy, hardened with work and smelling like herbs and clean earth. “For my people and the Wanderers, Lucian de Remeni, I thank you.”

  • • •

  The echo of Signé’s low voice followed me down the stair. It had made the syllables of that name sound very different from when others spoke it, as if it referred to yet a different version of me. What must it have been like to live all your days confined to a dead city—a necropolis of a sort? To see friends and a brother go mad or die or starve until desperate enough to become trees?

  There was no time to go back and ask her all the things I’d like to know. Surely an hour had elapsed already. I’d not thought it would be so difficult to get the Cicerons to decide.

  When I encountered the mass of people stopped in the cellar passage, they parted the way and let me through. Though they were subdued . . . anxious . . . a hundred seemed a great deal more when crowded into the narrow halls. Could I possibly hold so many through the void? Likely I should have tried it with a few before this. But I worried about Kyr sensing the magic—and the crossing took a great deal out of me. I hadn’t slept since the fitful night under old Dorye. Even with Fix’s rubies in reserve, I dared not overreach. What would happen if my magic failed halfway across the Severing void?

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said, shaking off the nebulous terror these people already feared. “I need my hands to work the magic of the portal. So I’m going to have my sister hold on to me from behind. And someone must hold on to her, and another and another, as if we were dancing a galliard with the longest chain ever attempted. The chain must not break. Children must be held close between adults who hold each to the next adult, as well as to the child. I’ll try to enfold each of you with magic, but I’m only a sorcerer, not the Goddess Mother who can embrace all her children at once. When you step through the door, you’ll feel as if you’re falling, but you’re not. Hold on to each other with all your mind and strength. Think of each other, what he likes, how she looks in her new earrings, who makes the best bread, who’s lucky at dice. This is your clan . . . your family . . . and for this moment, my family as well . . . and if we hold thought of each other, as well as the body in front of us, we’ll stay together.”

  I peered over the crowd in search of the slight-bodied surgeon. He was off to one side, not wholly one of them. “Surgeon Bek, would you proceed down the line to make sure of our seamless joining? And, if you would . . . it would be helpful to have someone I know even a little at the end of the line. And no, that will not be you, Doma Remeni.”

  Juli shut her mouth quickly, as laughter rippled through those close enough to hear. The Cicerons started shifting themselves into line, hushing children, calling friends to join them. A few retreated into the passages. I’d best count on the second group being larger.

  “I can do that,” said Bek, easing through the anxious mob. “There’s little use for barber surgeons in Xancheira. Most of the men are too young to need shaving. The dead are not available to be studied. And the living are too preoccupied with dying. Doma Remeni’s conversation”—he bowed in Juli’s direction—“has been the Sky Lord’s own benefice. If ever you need someone to stand beside you in the gracious young lady’s service, I am your man.”

  I should have taken my sister aside and offered a warning, but I was quickly absorbed in reinforcing my instructions. When we were as ready as we could possibly be, I moved to the portal, snugged my sister’s arms around my waist, and sent a rope of magic down the column behind me, through nervous mothers and men who had never been afraid until facing magic and the void, all the way to the deep-eyed ruffian who enjoyed studying corpses and had once found sensual ecstasy in pain.

  A stone harbor . . . mist, rain at the edge of the bay . . . the demesne of a lonely man who lives parallel lives . . . the scent of salt wind, bluster and tide rush muted by stone walls . . . brothers waiting . . . my family, both there and here behind me . . .

  I let the power build well beyond what I’d done with Siever. Only when my skin felt thin as woven spidersilk, my every nerve aflame with lightning did I press the latch and push open the door. “Hold on!”

  Oh, blessed Deunor . . . Luka!

  I clung to that distant cry, even as I held our destination steady in my center and sent every scrap of my will up and down that line of magic: hands tighter . . . who is behind you? . . . don’t be afraid . . . trust me . . . who do you love? . . . who annoys you? . . . who sings best of home? of love? of sorrow?

  CHAPTER 33

  “Oh, ancieno, you did it! Every person’s crossed—a hundred and three of us. Bek, too.”

  Hearing trumped speech. Seei
ng, too. I flailed in the dark, glimpsing only streaks of light, but it was only the boathouse doors were closed. Torchlight seeped in through the seams. And the rhythmic thumps were not my heart splitting into fifty pieces, but an unsecured boat knocking gently on the pilings. Otherwise, it was deadly quiet.

  I sat straight up. “Goddess Mother, where are they?”

  “I just told them we needed to hush if we’re not supposed to be here. See?”

  A pearly light splayed from the warm, breathing solidity at my side, and I saw them lined up around the stone walls and stacked boats of Fix’s boathouse. A hundred shabby bundles of human life, sitting, standing, tall, short, male, female, child, elder. Some were dripping. A few were sitting on the boats. But all two hundred dark eyes stared straight at me, and every one of those eyes dropped as soon as I met it.

  “All right, then,” I said, as the rest of my body came into focus. My feet dangled over the water, a dinghy banging gently against my boots. “Looks like I’m the last one to arrive.”

  I couldn’t stop grinning. I’d aimed the crossing magic exactly here.

  Hercule squeezed past the others, stopping not far away when he couldn’t go farther without climbing in a boat. He bowed awkwardly and did not look up. Nor did he speak.

  “Headman, is everyone all right?”

  “Yes, domé. May I speak?”

  Ah, yes. The rules. The law. Somehow in Xancheira things had been different, but now we were back in the world they knew. In Palinur he could have been whipped for speaking to me. For looking at me.

  “For now, I am not Domé Remeni,” I said. “I’m a soldier called Greenshank. You may speak to me any time you have something to say.”

  “What should we do?”

  “Stay quiet, as my sister warned. Sit, if you wish. Rest. There might be water casks or packets of dry stores in these boats. You could send the children out to find them and share around—a game, but quietly, please, while I find out if we’re ready for the next part of your journey. And tell them . . . everyone did well.”

  He wagged his head like a great dog. “We did nothing, domé. You carried us in your hand through the end of all things.”

  He whispered to those nearest him, and the word rippled through the others. A girl ventured into the boats first and squealed when she found a bag of currants. She clapped a hand over her mouth as a hundred people shushed her.

  I scrambled to my feet, wobbling slightly. Juli grabbed one arm; Surgeon Bek the other.

  “Might have overdone the magic a bit,” I said. “There were just so many of them.”

  “Luka, do you have any idea—?” A whisper did not dim my sister’s intensity in the slightest. “No, you couldn’t, could you? Oh, Luka, if Capatronn could have felt what you just did. When you’d come home from Palinur, he’d often come and sit with me in the dark while you practiced your drawing in the studio. I would ask when I could make magic so beautiful as yours, for I was sure I would build a temple someday or a city to match the halls of divine Idrium. But he told me that I wouldn’t match you ever. That none of us would. He and I would weep together, not so much for sorrow—though always a bit—but for the sheer beauty of it. And that was in no measure close to what you did this crossing.”

  “Some of it’s sheer chance,” I said. “And I’ve worked hard at magic these two years. But I think when we bring Signé and her people back here, we’ll see such magic as we can only imagine. Siever’s first raw attempt reminded me why we name the gift divine. But first . . . we go.”

  The boats should be waiting somewhere outside the boathouse. We hadn’t wanted the rowers to see a hundred people appear out of nowhere. But I dared not open the doors, lest observers in the fortress notice. Which meant I needed to swim under the boathouse walls to meet Conall.

  Leaving boots and jaque with Juli, I slipped into the water. A dive between the pilings, and I soon poked my head above the slopping wavelets. My spirits plummeted. The fog was thick as a tyro’s head at dawn. I had to use the bulk of the massed enchantments shielding the fortress, the landward beacons, and the motion of the water to orient myself. It was nothing I’d not done a hundred times, but sweet Goddess, what were we to do about the crossing?

  A few long strokes and I hauled myself onto the dock in the vicinity of Fix’s cottage.

  “Early.” A good thing the hand gripped my wrist, else the invisible Conall’s soft greeting might have toppled me right back into the water. “But we’re ready.”

  “But this demon fog—”

  “. . . thins out amazingly just this side of the Spinner.”

  It took me several headshakings to comprehend. “Fix’s distraction.”

  It was astounding. Magical fogs were as common as paralytic leashes in sorcerous combat. Their problem, of course, was that the wielder could see no better than anyone else. And they were always easily distinguishable. Magical fogs were dry, still, uniform in density, more like carded wool than natural fog. But this was wet and heavy, smelling of wet wood and saltmarsh. Drifting pockets and veils taunted the eye. The fog would ensure the Cicerons couldn’t describe the fortress to anyone, and the enchantment was so delicately applied that the magic was indistinguishable from the common wards, locks, and training spells of the fortress. Masterful.

  “We’ll bring the boats to the water door one at a time,” said Conall. “Are your people ready?”

  “They’ve done well. But I doubt any can swim or have ever seen a boat. I told them the rowers won’t speak to them.”

  “We’ll have a care. Our oarsmen think they’re a wandering band of Cicerons enlisted to serve our training needs and that we’ll give them each a copper for their trouble. The tides are good. Weather’s good. Should be three hours in with the hefty load, three back as usual. The second return will be the rough. You’ll be here waiting with our second load, yes?”

  “Close enough.” He bared his teeth and vanished into the fog. I’d never thought of Conall’s exceptional knightly skills as including conspiracy.

  Back into the water and back to the boathouse. Restless murmurs were quickly hushed when I climbed out. Hercule was waiting with Juli and Bek.

  “Pass this word to everyone,” I said. “Crossing to the mainland should take three hours. I won’t be with you, as I’ll be fetching the rest of your people. Better for all if you puke outside the boat. Everyone does at first. The rowers believe you’ve been hired to give them a rough night. And please, please, Hercule, once you’re landed, your people must not speak of Signé or her people or the ruined city or this place or me to anyone. I wish I knew how to erase these things from your minds, just to avoid laying this charge on you, but even a single mention—”

  “Wanderers know how to keep secrets, Soldier Greenshank.” Hercule pulled off one of his earrings and held it in his upraised palm. With a whisper of magic no stronger than a shift of the air from an opening door, the earring sparked and jingled. He passed his other hand over and the earring was vanished in a cloud of gray smoke. “’Tisn’t quite what you do, but such tricks would see us dead in Navronne. Those of us here have managed not to be dead.”

  “Thank you for your trust,” I said, near speechless. He was right about the danger of what he’d shown me. Though perhaps not in the future . . .

  “Our Naema told us the coroner’s pureblood was the one we’d been waiting for since we took up wandering,” said the old man. “Whatever you asked of us, she said we were to do our best. And so we will.”

  Naema—not just grandmother, but a title bestowed upon the Goddess Mother or the human women who wore her mantle here on earth.

  “She’s the one who died opening the way to Sanctuary,” I said, awed that I had met such a woman, wishing I could remember her. The title was never bestowed lightly, and even purebloods respected it. “I am so sorry.”

  “She wasn’t. She’d waited her whole life for it.
And from what the city folk told us, it should have been just what we sought. Maybe someday we’ll make a fine song about the whole thing, and folk will puzzle over it.” He raised his hand to belay any warning. “But no time soon.”

  “One more thing,” I said. “Your guide on the mainland is my good friend and not at all like those of her kind in Signé’s city. . . .”

  He passed that startling news along to his people, too.

  At Conall’s signal, we doused Juli’s magelight and drew open the water door just enough to accommodate one boat at a time. Bek and I handed the Cicerons into the boat; I nodded to Dunlin and Heron, but did not break the rule of silence Conall had laid on them. Conall’s own boat was the last. I motioned Juli to take a seat just behind the knight.

  She didn’t move. “Bek and I thought we’d go back with you. Show the others that all’s well.”

  “No,” I said. “I’ll take the surgeon. But not you.” Too many things could go wrong. “Please, serena, I cannot— Would you consider sitting with Lord Siever? The man who looks after him is occupied in all this.”

  She tilted her head and squinted at me as if I were a half-wit. “They’re frightened,” she said. “Hercule won’t be there. No one there really knows you. They might imagine that you don’t mind losing a few of them as long as your kinswoman is safe.”

  I wanted to tell her that the thought of losing her was unbearable, and not simply for what she might share of our past. The tale of our grandsire had meant more to me in what it spoke about her than for grand sentiments from a dead man I would never remember. But she was right.

  “Besides, I think Siever would rather me help you, ancieno. Because the sooner this is done, the sooner you can turn your mind to his friends. And I choose to go.” Her mouth was set in a way that even a man without memory could interpret.