by Carol Berg
Warnings skittered through my skin like spider feet. Not since my days at the university had I ventured so far from the familiar. Was it that disastrous experience had my gut clenching in such dangerous fashion or was it that the air reeked so foully of endings?
We tramped through the snow-pale emptiness as the temple bells from the city heights called eighth hour. In the distance, a party of villeins dug in the frosty ground and loaded handcarts, their shovels crunching in the quiet. Shivering in my fur-lined cloak, I couldn’t imagine what might be worth harvesting so deep in such a winter.
A tarnished brass plate was embedded in the brick above the gateway arch. Etched into it were the words NECROPOLIS CATON. My new master had not taken his name from some scrabbling village or crossroads, but from a burial ground. What kind of man named himself after a graveyard?
Leander rang the gate bell.
Back straight, I composed every expressive aspect of my body with pride. Capatronn, Patronn, may my service and my life bring honor to our family name. Great Deunor, Lord of Fire and Magic, let my gift not falter.
The iron gates swung inward. A pale, willowy young woman in unsullied white robes stood in the arch of light beyond the gatehouse tunnel, arms spread, head bowed, as graceful and still as sculpted marble.
“Welc— Oh!” Her eyes flicked wide as we emerged from the brief blackness. Swallowing her surprise, she averted her gaze and stepped aside.
“Where will we find Bastien de Caton?” said Leander. “We have the honor of initiating the fulfillment of his contract with the Pureblood Registry on behalf of the noble family Remeni-Masson.”
The girl dipped her knee and near twisted her head off trying to catch a glimpse of us while keeping her eyes down. “’Crost the yard, sirs . . . lardships. Straight past troughs and slabs and up to the deadhouse.” Her voice grated like steel on slate. “You’ll likely find him inta sargery off right, or round left and out ta the Hollow Ground or the Render. We’re plowin’ bones today.”
Surely such abrasive, awkward diction could not have its origin in one of such ethereal form. And plowing bones . . .
Mired in disgust and disbelief, I’d not gleaned the least idea of where we were to go next. I’d never visited a public necropolis. Fortunately Leander kept a clearer head. He led us briskly across a broad, flagged courtyard toward an imposing stone block of a structure. The deadhouse, the girl had called it—a prometheum more like, a hall where the dead could be tended with proper ceremonies. But what was the Hollow Ground, the Render, or a sargery?
On the other hand, city of the dead was a more accurate term than I’d ever imagined. Men, women, and children of every sort milled about the courtyard—singly or in groups—babbling, wailing, whispering, clinging to one another in gaudy displays of emotion. Indeed, the noise astonished me. Donkeys brayed. Hammers pounded wood here, hollow metal there. Water dripped and sloshed and trickled through stone sluiceways running under our path and around every side, while somewhere inside or beyond the formidable edifice ahead of us a choir chanted Karish plainsong as serene as divine Idrium itself.
The cart road split to either side of us, while we continued across the flagstone court toward the prometheum. Discipline required my eyes be fixed straight ahead, but peripheral sight hinted at merchant stalls nestled to the walls, where hawkers bellowed the virtues of oils and unguents or touted the skills of Ledru the Coffin Maker or Eason the Stonewright. To either side of us, servitors in russet tunics bent over stone tubs or clustered round a few of the stone tables lined in ranks, dealing with their . . . occupants. Younger boys or girls perched on ladders, tending great bonfires that roared and snapped in stone cauldrons, creating pockets of heat despite the ice wind blowing through the close.
“Hold back, slugwit!” yelled a gaunt, grizzled bald man in a stained apron as we neared the wide steps of the prometheum. He waved at someone behind us, where iron cart wheels rattled on the rough paving.
“Sane man don’t drag a deadcart ’crost a processering. Not with magical folk. Cripes!” The willowy girl’s grating mumble preceded her own appearance pelting down a side path and up a ramp to reach the prometheum portico before us. She caught her breath just in time to pose beside the door and wave us under the carved lintel. Her draperies fluttered as might those of fair Erit, goddess of clouds.
The incongruities of the girl’s speech, manner, and appearance—and this noisy maelstrom in a place of the dead—struck me so hard just then that I came near exploding in laughter. By the Mother, Juli was right. I had acted the lightning-struck ox since walking out of the Registry the previous morning. The humiliation of my dismissal was wretched, and being pawned off on a necropolis was not at all the future I’d planned. Indeed, my duties here must surely be vile and demeaning. But I was not afraid. These living seemed no different from crude and noisy ordinaries anywhere. And the dead held no terrors for one of the blood. I believed in neither ghosts nor phantasms, neither demon gatzi nor glowing blue Danae who wandered the wilds and stole ill-behaved pureblood children from their beds.
In much better humor, I marched on as our “processering” swept through the prometheum door.
The thick stone surround silenced the courtyard babble. Trickling water echoed in a profound quiet, and faint strains of the Karish plainchant hung in the rounded vault along with the pungent scent of ysomar, the favored ointment for the dead.
In the way of all edifices built to strike awe in the human heart, the prometheum rotunda was grand. Blazing torches revealed vaulted ceilings, monumental statuary, and larger-than-life murals of gods and angels and human figures of all sorts. Yet the paints that had once shimmered with color were now sorely faded. And the statues were of a crude and common sort, not at all the lifelike renderings pureblood sculptors had produced in the last decades of Eodward’s reign.
A strident whoop and a burst of laughter quickly hushed shattered the shabby solemnity. Two young men, the elder dark-haired and lean, the younger short, soft, and fair, ducked their heads. Though their heads were bowed, hard breathing and smothered spasms bespoke an aborted wrestling match in the shadowed niche just inside the great doors. Until they glanced up at me and their jaws dropped.
Leander peered past the two. “Bastien de Caton?”
Customary respect should have had Coroner Bastien awaiting our arrival under the portico. To greet us inside trod the bounds of propriety—a kind of boasting, demonstrating his mastery of a pureblood. But not even to be waiting here . . . The man must be as brazen as a Ciceron pickthief or as ignorant as a brick to put himself so in jeopardy of legal censure.
The elder of the two—a tall, clear-skinned man with a dark, bold gaze—pointed to a corridor that plunged through the smoke-dulled mural before us.
Beyond the mural, we passed a number of private preparation rooms awaiting the noble dead. My attention remained fixed ahead, where the white-clad cloud goddess had somehow got ahead of us. Again posed in a graceful stillness, she held open a door to a vaulted colonnade.
Leander’s sharp inquiry resulted in a whispered, “Through here and rightward, lordship. Bastien’s ta the Render just now, huntin’ dead murders.”
Yet indeed we had no need to search out this mysterious Render nor discover what huntin’ dead murders might signify. Winter daylight streamed through the arches to either side of the colonnade, illuminating a thickset man in a heavy wool shirt, leather tunic, and thigh-length boots. He stood square in our path, fists on hips and scowling at us from amid a tangle of sand-colored hair. Fog or steam or smoke, bearing a stench so foul as to leave me unwilling to take another breath, wreathed him as if he were some gatzi lord from Magrog’s netherworld.
“You’re late.” His voice rumbled the stones.
CHAPTER 3
“I told that Registry woman I required promptness.”
My new master rudely stood his ground. No shred of respect before five sorcerers. Indeed, his acid tone likely removed yet another layer of paint from the fune
real scenes peeling from the colonnade ceiling.
Leander detached a scroll from his belt and boldly stepped forward into the malodorous fog. “Bastien de Caton, I have the hon—” His announcement dissolved into a choking gag.
The man snatched the scroll from Leander’s hand. “I’d best not find some magical skullduggery has changed the words since the terms were agreed. Heard that’s been done time to time. But I’m the king’s man round Caton, well versed in the law, not an ignorant villein ready to grovel, as you likely think.”
“I—assure—you—” Leander’s retching coughs near made me gag as well.
“So which one of you is bound to me?” Bastien scanned the contract scroll, glancing up just in time to get his answer. Scarlet-cheeked Leander, incapable of speech, waved a finger at me.
Taking shallow breaths, I stepped out from my escorts.
We were of a height, my new master and I, though his shoulders, arms, chest, and thighs were likely twice my bulk, and appeared . . . solid. Quite solid.
My spirit’s momentary elevation was well damped.
“Hmmph.” He grunted and dropped his gaze to the contract again. “Take off the mask.”
By this time, a blur of faces gawked from the side gates through the nasty fog. I’d no time to feel my way with this fellow. Rules were rules. Best stand my ground from the beginning.
“No,” I said. “I cannot. With all respect, Master Bastien.” I inclined my head in his direction and touched my fingertips to my forehead.
His head jerked up and he met my gaze. Gold-brown eyes, keen as a lance point, pierced my own. Any idea that this man was foolish, ignorant, or in any way malleable fled.
His curt nod was very like that of a smith judging the quality of raw iron as he decides how to heat and pound it. And then a grin—not at all a friendly grin, to my mind—spread from one side of his broad, hairy face to the other. He tapped the contract scroll across his wide palm. More than ever, I wished I’d had the opportunity to glimpse its terms.
“So that’s to be the way of it,” he said. “Dismiss your party, Servant Remeni-Masson. Take a deep breath and taste your future. Then we’ll see how you can profit me.”
Matters were not so simple as Bastien’s wish. Dame Fortuna was kind, and Leander was able to throttle the urge to vomit. He politely informed the coroner that there was yet one small matter to deal with before his party could leave. To be precise, the fee.
Bastien snorted. “So the Registry must touch my coin first—take its portion before the sorcerer pockets it and accuses us ordinaries of cheating. Very wise. Keeps things in order. We needs must traipse inside to fetch it, though. Not going to risk dropping a purse into a dead-pit, am I? None of you lot would care to fish it out of a five-year bone stew.”
Brisk as a storm wind, the coroner strode past us into the prometheum, trailing the foul smoke behind him.
Though Leander’s exposed features remained properly uncommunicative, the brow behind his red silk mask rose in wary alarm. My own skill at dual expression was well practiced, yet I did not respond. I didn’t trust myself to confine my opinions behind the mask. Mostly I was anxious to judge the weight of the purse. I’d no hope of a luxurious stipend, but my family’s future depended on a decent one. At my nod, we reversed course and followed.
Bastien’s destination was a low-ceilinged corner chamber, crowded with a writing desk, stools, a scuffed worktable holding a counting board and a wax tablet, and a honeycomb map case filled with rolled parchments. A press gaped open, its shelves neatly ordered with inkhorns, a stack of smaller wax tablets, another of parchment pages, and a few oddments impossible to make out in the dull light.
Leander halted in the doorway. Bastien snapped a loop of keys from his belt and crouched in front of a black iron chest. A snick of the lock, a reach inside, and the coroner sprang to his feet. A gray lump shot across the room toward us.
He barked a laugh when the startled Leander juggled the chinking bag as if it were a burning coal. “Best not spill good coin. We’ll have rats coming out the cracks and corners.” He widened his eyes and lowered his voice, as if spooking children. “Mayhap dead folk’ll come after it, too, hoping to snatch a copper for the Ferryman’s fee.”
Leander tied the bag to his belt.
My master slammed the iron lid and locked his chest. “’Tis exactly the price agreed,” he added as if he’d never been aught but sober. “I’ll not take offense if you count it.”
“That will not be necessary, good Bastien,” said Leander, admirably recovered. “My superiors have deemed you worthy of a pureblood contract. To doubt your honor would cast doubts on their wisdom. With all respect.”
The guardsman swiveled and bowed to me, touching his fingertips to his brow. “Domé Remeni-Masson, it has been my honor to initiate your contract with Bastien de Caton, Coroner of the Twelve Districts of Palinur. May your service do honor to your gods and enrich the lives of your master, your family, and the kingdom of Navronne. With your permission, domé, I shall deposit your share of the year’s fee and your copy of the contract into the safekeeping of your steward.”
He glanced up to see my reaction to this last arrangement. The delay in turning over the stipend was irregular, but I’d no family members present to take charge of it, and I’d not like carrying a purse of gold—a well-stuffed purse, to my relieved sight—around here all day. And to transport a year’s stipend through the hirudo this evening, when I would be alone and bearing no weapon more serious than my eating knife and some minor defensive spells, would be idiocy.
“Agreed,” I said. “And this as well.” The same cautions bade me take off my father’s ruby ring and pass it to Leander. I hoped the coroner would view it as pureblood custom and not an insult to his honor.
“Servitor Leander, you have executed your duties with exemplary efficiency, deportment, and wisdom. You are dismissed. Go in peace and safety.” Most especially safety.
A pall of melancholy settled over me as I watched the four purebloods march away. The initiation of a contract should be an occasion of pride and satisfaction. My parents should be with me . . . and my grandsire. Yet how could I wish them to be in this ignoble place, breathing the fumes of decay as this coarse ordinary glared at my back, waiting for me to submit?
But I had no choices. The contract was for only one year. I could do anything for a year.
I spun in place and touched my fingertips to my forehead. “Master, you may show me my duties. . . .”
“Ready to work, eh, Servant Remeni?” Bastien tossed the contract scroll onto the worktable and propped his backside beside it. Wide, hairy hands gripped the table edge as his gaze scraped me raw from my mask to my finest leather boots. “You’re set to abide by this contract? Obliged to? Every detail?”
“Yes.” I would not bow or scrape or address him beyond his rank. Though I would wait for a later time to point out that servant was not a permissible form of address.
“You’ll do what I ask of you the best you can, without arguing or mincing or weaseling around some point of law to avoid it? Just as if I were the king himself?”
“Yes. As long as the task does not violate the terms of the contract.” Registry contracts were very specific about criminal endeavors, excessive risk, or tasks that skirted the bounds of righteous behavior. My stomach shifted uneasily. I wished I’d had the nerve to eat before leaving home.
Bastien settled his back to the wall, gleaming eyes fixed to mine—both of mine. Most ordinaries attended only the naked half of one’s face, as if the eye peering through the mask was false or fey. His own features worked oddly, the exact expression unreadable, obscured by his excess hair. “And you’re forbid to put a hex on me or use your magic in any way, save what I tell you?”
My gut tied itself in a knot. What was he planning that he had to make these things explicit?
“My magic belongs to you alone for the duration of the contract, and I am strictly bound not to spend it without your permissi
on—whether to my own advantage or that of any other person. The contract contains a clause that exempts reasonable spending of magic in defense of myself or my family.” Or it certainly should. That I’d not yet seen the document did naught for my unease. “You’ve been made aware that a pureblood’s reserves of power are not limitless, but must be continually renewed by rest, sleep, food. . . .”
“Oh, aye. I’ve a notion how it works.”
I nodded again. “And, naturally, no . . . hexing . . . of my master is permitted.”
Bastien burst into exuberant laughter, slapping his knees and shaking his head side to side. “Mother Samele’s tits! When I put in that bid five years ago, I’d have laid gold bricks to coffin nails I’d never see a pureblood sorcerer standing here in his silks and satins, ready to do my will—no matter he’s got a broom handle up his ass. Garibald and Constance say you must be the most incompetent spelltwister was ever delivered of woman. But you’re not, are you? You’ve a mot of skill in those hands. I can see that.”
“I’m very— Yes. I certainly—” I stopped. Stupid to get flustered. Of course people would assume me of little worth. Sent to this awful place to fill a five-year-old bid. Goddess Mother!
I sucked in my pride and nodded. “The gods have indeed graced me with a strong bent for portraiture.”
“Soon as you started talking of me owning your magic, you tucked those hands behind you. As if to keep them safe. As if to keep their best work for yourself.” A frown wiped away his glee. “But you can’t do that, neither, can you? No matter that these Registry folk sent you here, where you’d rather not be.”
I tried to ignore the speculation in his tone. “You will always receive my best work.”
“Good to get that straight.” He folded his meaty arms across his chest. “Now take off that mask and say it again. I like to see who’s I’m having a converse with.”
