by Carol Berg
“That must be gratifying,” I said at last, clasping my hands at my back. At the least, I would give him no leverage.
He leaned forward, his dark eyes blazing of a sudden. “If you had ever shown just one minim of appreciation…of…of…loyalty…”
“Appreciation? Loyalty? For what?” I gaped at him. What skewed perception had him using such words with me in such aggrieved fashion? “Lord of Sea and Sky, I was your child! I never asked to be some weapon of war between you and the cursed gatzé who fathered you.”
I would not accept assignment of blame for our difficult past. After twelve years of drowning all serious thoughts in mead and dancing and the requirements of survival, I’d had far too much time to think these past weeks.
“I know not why I am as I am, or why you have loathed me since my earliest memory, but you tried to beat it out of me because you hated him. You made me, Patronn. You birthed me with your cock, and you formed me with your strap and your hatred. Now, unfortunately for both of us, you must deal with me. So do as you have ever done…as you damnably well please.”
So much for keeping my temper.
Livid and shaking, he shot from the chair, pointing one finger as if to loose lightning at me. “How dare you speak to me in such fashion? You are no child of mine.”
His declaration—the foulest, the most dreadful condemnation that could be spoken from a pureblood father to his offspring—fell between us with the impact of an iron gauntlet thudding to the floor. Something—those irretrievable words or the sight of his trembling hand—infused me with inordinate calm. I pulled up to my full height and enjoyed looking down at him. “Then let me go.”
“Oh, no,” he said, moving to the door, his rage held dangerously tight. “I have responsibilities to this family—something your unnatural soul will never understand. This contract will remove your face from my sight, your foul speech from my hearing, and the burden of your existence from my shoulders. Every pureblood will see the sweetness of this resolution and marvel at the ways of fate. Command your valet to dress you appropriately, Valen. Tonight our family will celebrate a sealing feast, and by tomorrow the unseemly past will at last be put to rest.”
He slammed the door before I could answer. I lifted the chair where he’d sat and threw it at the door. Dust and cushions and splinters of wood and stone rained down on the woven rug, but the chair came to rest on its side. Intact.
I bellowed and laughed at the same time, as this rebellion came to the same pitiful ending as every other. Was my life to be the very archetype of futility? Nothing changed. Nothing settled. Nothing accomplished. Every day I’d lived under his roof I had prayed to hear that I was not Claudio de Cartamandua’s child. Now, even if I could believe it true, I knew it made no real difference.
I clamped my hands at the back of my neck and squeezed my head between my forearms, trying to crush the useless rage and nonsensical terror that had set me on this course of madness so many years ago. For it was not just the enmity between me and my father and my grandfather—the anger, spite, and bitterness that had forever plagued this house—that had me ready to slam my head into the stone. The flaw was in me. Somewhere I was broken, not just in my ability to decipher words on paper, but in my ability to live in this world.
One of my childhood tutors, the first and last who had ever bothered to listen to my rants, had argued that the duties and restrictions of pureblood life were no more demanding than those of any privileged family. One had to pay for the position one inhabited in this world, he’d told me, and I should be grateful for what I was given. In a frenzy I had shoved him into a brick wall and ransacked his study, pawning two of his precious books for the money to get myself royally drunk. I was eleven. In the years since, logic nagged that his arguments had merit. But my body and spirit yet refused to accept them.
Somewhere in my gut grew this septic knot, this disease that made me lash out in madness at the merest hint of constricting walls, that imbued me with unnamable fears and cravings that tormented my body, savaged my senses, and sent me crawling to the doulon. I had thought I would grow past it, that my disease was an artifact of an unfortunate childhood and that making my own choices would reduce its power. The days at Gillarine had fooled me into thinking I might win. Though I’d known full well that I—an unscholarly man of scattered beliefs and feeble principle—did not belong in Ophir’s brotherhood, I had managed to accommodate the abbey’s discipline without going mad from it. But now my problem was worse than ever. This sense of entrapment, loss, waste, and emptiness threatened to undo me. I had never felt so hollow, so helpless, or so afraid.
The door to the bedchamber opened softly behind me. A few tiptoed steps. A breath of air as the door to the courtyard opened and closed. Cowardly Lukas. He likely thought I would kill him. He didn’t realize that I was no good at that either.
I slept most of the afternoon. Rain hammered on the slate roof and dripped and pooled in the courtyard, making freezing soup of the snow. As the charcoal-colored daylight gave way to darkness, Lukas braved the bedchamber to light the lamps. I felt him creep to my bedside.
“No need to wake me,” I said. “And I’ll not break your arm. You’re not worth the punishment I’d reap.”
He jumped back as I swung my feet to the floor and ground the heels of my hands into my eyes. When I at last looked up, he was pouring steaming water from a pitcher into the earthenware basin. Behind him, hanging from hooks on the wall, were such an array of brocades, velvets, and furs as could finance a small army for a year—my assigned costume for the evening.
The signing of a contract outranked any celebration of god or saint in a pureblood household. With the exception of my grandfather, who had not been allowed at table since I was thirteen, everyone would be at the sealing feast: my mother, Thalassa, Max, if he remained in Palinur, Bia or Nilla, whichever of the twins Max had said was still living in this house. It would be unthinkable for them to miss such an occasion, no matter their duties or preferences.
I considered refusing to change out of the rumpled gray pourpoint I’d slept in, but only briefly. Might as well maintain a little dignity. If I behaved, perhaps they would not bind my hands. That one circumstance might yield a sliver of an opening for the flimsy scheme I’d come up with as I had moped and drowsed and toyed with a spider I’d found crawling across my nose.
Might…perhaps…a sliver… The best plan I could come up with was idiocy. But I could not sit placidly and allow them to enslave me. As for the consequence of failure, I could see nothing worse than what I faced already. I’d escaped this house before and had been sure I’d find a way to do so again, given time. But I’d not expected a contract offer so soon.
Two hours later, I was washed, shaved, trimmed, and buttoned and laced into my finery. I wore no jewels; my father would not trust me so far as that. His tailor must have hired half a village to come up with such elaborate garments reasonably fitted to my measure in so short a time. Even so, Lukas had to stitch up my undersleeves of red and gold striped silk to show through the slashed sleeves of the green velvet pourpoint, and take hurried tucks in the rear of my black silk breeches. The tailor must have assumed anyone with so long a leg must also be broad abeam. At least no mask was required. Sealing feasts were not public spectacles; the only ordinaries present would be household servants.
If I was successful in my attempt, perhaps I could draw out the gold thread that picked the borders and seams of my green velvet and sell it for enough to eat. I laughed aloud at the image of my unsewn finery flapping loose as I raced through Palinur’s sordid alleyways.
My despairing humor elicited a shocked expression from Lukas, who had spoken not a word since my waking. He pinned the yellow cloak at my shoulder. A ratcheting of the door lock and a blast of winter air brought Silos and Caphur…and their ball of gray silk cord.
“By the Creator, Domé Silos, am I not to eat or drink at my own sealing feast?” I said, facing the open door squarely as they moved one to e
ither side of me. I clamped my hands tight under my arms, fingering a small porcelain cup I’d kept from breakfast.
“Fold your hands, fingers in, recondeur,” ordered Caphur.
“Domé Cartamandua would not have you run tonight, plebeiu,” said Silos quietly. “The stakes are greater now, as you well know, and your history speaks against you.”
Stupid to run, after all. Thalassa’s man had done his work well. The outer walls of my apartments had proved impervious to spells. Guards would surely be standing in the arched passage—the only exit from the courtyard—and every step of the way into the main house would be watched. Only the overgrown wall of the courtyard was left as an escape route. And the voiding spell I had prepared to tunnel through it could not be quickened until I touched the wall—a very long way across the yard.
But when had futility ever slowed me? This house felt like a tomb, the masks and cloaks my grave wraps, this contract the seal that would close the stone behind me. Despite my rage-fed swearing and mindless vows, I did not want to die. So I ran.
The moment I broke the plane of the door, I released the spider I had so carefully nurtured in the little cup, pouring magic into the illusion that would make him seem the size of a cotter’s hut. Caphur screamed, which pleased me. Then I screamed and pitched forward into the muddy garden, my back burning as if set afire like that of the Harrower youth in the Temple District.
Icy slush seeped around the edges of the yellow cloak and slowly penetrated my layers of silk and velvet. Beneath my face and chest, my voiding spell left a rapidly filling mudhole where daylilies had once grown. I could not move.
“I’m sorry, plebeiu. We can’t have that. Not tonight.” Silos’s voice remained quiet and unruffled as his firm, yet not ungentle, hands dragged me up and brushed the dead leaves and crusts of ice from my clothes. The remnants of my spider rained down over the courtyard like flakes of black snow. I had never even touched the wall.
“Magrog’s fiends, that’s wicked,” I croaked. My throat felt scorched. “Where did you learn to do that?”
Silos clapped me on the shoulder, grasped me securely by the arm, and guided me back to my apartments, where a smirking Lukas wiped my face and sponged my velvets. A red-faced Caphur hobbled my ankles with shackles and a very short chain and proceeded to incapacitate my hands. At least the yellow cloak was sodden, filthy, and totally unsuitable. To wear a cloak between the east wing and the main house was a bit excessive anyway. I wasn’t even late for the festivities.
Chapter 25
Candlelight splashed over the grand oval table from two long candlebeams of polished ebony, suspended from the coffered ceiling by silver-braided ropes. Reflections of the hundred tiny flames gleamed in silver spoons and sparked and shimmered in gold-rimmed platters, green enameled bowls, and etched glass goblets. The members of my family gleamed and sparkled, too, as they gathered about the knee-high stone table that stood at the heart of any pureblood household—whether or not that household had a heart.
Silos had bade me pause just outside the dining room as he locked an inner door behind us, thus cutting off one possible escape route should some miracle free me from my shackles. So I waited in a small arch, hidden by the shadows that pooled in the corners of the dining room, masking the sideboards and servers’ tables. I fervently wished I could remain there unnoticed and unremembered.
My father, resplendent in a stiff pourpoint of red brocade, a heavy pectoral chain banded with rubies and emeralds, and a red mantle worked in gold-embroidered gryphons and lined with white fur, stood at one end of the oval table. He watched with folded arms as Max settled my mother onto her pile of cushions.
My mother’s sculpted cheeks looked peaked. The heavy kohl diviner’s lines about her eyes appeared more ghastly than I remembered, as her thick black hair was now streaked with white. But her well-filled white bodice glittered with diamonds; her black mantle was lined with the long silvery fur of the Denab fox; and her diamond-ringed fingers still leaked power enough to make the light around her shiver. My mother was a formidable enchantress. And a drunkard. When the doors to the main courtyard opened just behind her, the scent of wine wafted across the vast room to my niche, though the shimmering carafes on the table had not yet been broached.
Thalassa, her green cloak glittering with raindrops and her hood draped gracefully about her neck and shoulders, swept through the gilded doors and hurried toward the outsized hearth. The marble mantel was supported by twin carved gryphons, each taller than two men of my height. There she embraced a thick-waisted young woman in dark blue silk, my younger sister Phoebia.
Bia had grown slightly taller than Lassa, though her body had failed to develop the curves of our robustly female mother and elder sister. Black braids, plaited with pearls and silver cord, wound thick and shining about her head, and her skin had developed a deep coppery hue, which I thought quite pretty, and an immense grace, considering the dreadful bout of girlish pustules that had afflicted her as a child. She had always resented her twin sister’s more fortunate complexion. Mine, too, though my pale coloring, so different from other purebloods’, had earned me a full measure of her ridicule. Bia looked tight and anxious tonight, her gaze darting about the room until it settled on me.
“Here he is!” Phoebia’s exclamation echoed sharply through the room, causing Thalassa to jerk her head around and hushing the quiet talk among the three at the head of the table. “Samele’s night, he is so tall!”
Silos motioned me farther into the room. I moved slowly, so that the humiliating clatter of the chains against the floor tiles might sound less like a millworks. We halted at the edge of the thick rugs and the jumble of embroidered seat cushions that bordered the table.
Five pairs of eyes stared at me, seven if you counted the “second eyes” drawn about those of my diviner mother and sister.
“Manners,” whispered Silos.
Though tempted to throttle him, I settled for a glare. Who likes to be reminded of irksome duties they are resigned to fulfill?
Taking a knee was, of course, impossible with my ankles hobbled. “Patronn,” I said, touching my bound hands to my forehead. “Greetings of evening and feasting.” Neither his rigid posture nor unblinking glare relaxed in the slightest. But then again, protocol mandated only some acknowledgment on the part of the superior, not anything of graciousness or welcome. I rose when I spied his fist clench.
A second bow, this to my mother. “Matronn, the years have not dimmed your presence.”
A spasm in her shoulders might have been a response. Her painted eyes never left her cup.
And one for Lassa: “Sinduria serena, your goddess must be grateful indeed for your courageous defense of her temple yesterday.”
I almost added my own thanks. Whether or not she had intended it so, her appearance on the steps of Samele’s temple had diverted much ugly attention from me. But then again, I would not have been exposed but for her self-righteous meddling. So, no exceptional greeting for Thalassa. She, at least, opened her palms in my direction, before turning away to speak to my mother.
Though Max was elder, Thalassa’s rank trumped his place in the order of greeting. My brother looked dashing in knee-high boots of pale calfskin, studded and buckled with gold, and a handsome topaz-and-copper-colored doublet that set off his dusky skin. The plain gold band about his forehead caught the light, yet his eyes sparked far brighter. His business in Palinur must be going well. He grinned at me as I bowed.
“Ancieno, to see you twice in two days after so long away staggers the mind…”…and I would quite like to know what causes your smug cheer.
And finally Bia: “Serena pauli, you have grown fairly. I promise not to set your braids afire tonight.”
Her lip curled and nostrils flared. I half expected flame and smoke.
I could well imagine my parents’ harsh reaction to the least hint that Bia might follow my lead. Any sympathy she may have had for my cause had likely withered under their heavy hands. But as
I lowered my wrapped hands from my forehead, I extended them toward her and shrugged in what semblance of humor I could manage on a night when my soul languished in a pit from which it might never emerge.
“Vyrsté.”
Bia whispered the nasty word across the table, but my father heard it. Faster than an angel flies to heaven, he stepped around the table to her side and whipped a palm across her cheek. The slap echoed sharply in the silence. “Never in my house.”
To impugn a sibling’s blood purity was to impugn the family’s blood purity—an unconscionable slander. My sister glared at me unchastened, the mark of Patronn’s hand deepening the rich color of her cheek. What would she say if she’d heard my father’s outburst of the afternoon?
I bowed to Bia again, pressing my hands to my breast in sincere apology. How awful that my presence made her willing to suffer Patronn’s wrath. Awful to see that nothing had changed in this house. Awful that her rebellion had not taken her away from it even for a few years. She likely assumed I was mocking her. In truth, my stomach gnawed itself as it ever had when my father struck any of us.
“You may take your accustomed place, Valen,” said my father, affable again as he sat on the piled cushions beside my mother. “Despite your lack of apology, I’ll not insist you sit at a separate table tonight. As the terms of this contract offer specify a lifetime extent, and I am unlikely to summon you back for any reason, this evening will be the last time your presence or absence at this table need be remarked. The rest of you, be seated so we may begin our celebration.”
A hollow welcome, to be sure. The uneasiness that had festered through the afternoon at the abrupt and unlikely offer for my contract flared anew, an unformed anxiety lodged near my breastbone. A lifetime contract—not unheard of. But such an agreement would most often occur after several shorter successful ventures or with exceptional recommendation. What made unskilled magic in an undisciplined package worth gold enough to please my father? I could think of no reassuring aspect of a blind offer for my entire life.
