by Carol Berg
We were alone. I slipped off the bit of silk and tucked it into my belt.
“I am a competent portraitist, Master Bastien. Some judge me better than that.” My voice remained cool and empty; gods reward my parents for insisting on constant practice of personal discipline! “My family’s honor and my own ensure that my contracted master will ever see the best work I can produce.”
“All right, then. Good.” He tilted his head, squinting fiercely. “Why wouldn’t you before? The mask, I mean. Thought we might have to bust fists about that.”
Every day of my life had prepared me to submit to a contracted master, and ninety-nine out of every hundred masters were ordinaries. Even so, pureblood protocols were not common knowledge among them. One could not bristle at every order just because this man was so very common. And fierce. And hard. Gods save me from ever needing to bust fists with him.
“We were not alone before. We are permitted to remove our masks when in the presence of our contracted masters or mistresses, but not when in the presence of . . . others.”
“Other of us ungifted folk, you mean.”
I inclined my head. A gesture left the answer less stark. I’d no wish to demean him or his associates.
“Hmmph. And if I was to say you need it off when performing your duties?”
It would likely be a mistake to remind him that my wearing the mask would proclaim to all that he now had a pureblood bound to his service. He was in no way stupid.
“If such an exemption is written into the contract, then of course removing the mask would be permissible. If not, you may apply to the Registry for such a release.”
“I’ll think on it.” He sprang to his feet. “Come. Let’s see what you can do.”
Bastien rummaged in his book press, then proffered a few worn scraps of parchment and a stick of plummet. “These’ll do for now. We needs must find Garibald. Doubt you can do aught with the folks I was examining when you arrived.”
Parsing this last comment did naught for my belly. Dead-pits, he’d said. Five-year stew. Purebloods were laid in family tombs, but ordinaries buried in old cities like Palinur were oft dug up and their burial ground reused. The remains were boiled to clean the bones. . . .
Banishing that vile imagining, I slipped on my mask, clutched the supplies, and trailed after Bastien. The wild hair left his age uncertain, but he moved like a taut spring and his eye displayed the clarity and ambition of younger men. My inner eye—my bent that could create his true image—would judge him perhaps five years my senior—at most five-and-thirty.
We paused on the prometheum steps, while Bastien shaded his eyes and searched the anthill of a courtyard. “Garibald! Over here!”
The bald, grizzled man who had been directing traffic when I arrived waved a hand. He and a tall scrawny girl in leather breeches—none other than the donkey-voiced cloud goddess, shed of her draperies—were shifting a limp form from a cart onto one of the myriad stone tables. Two dozen tables, at the least, were set out in the courtyard, most of them occupied.
“So many dead on one morning . . .” The words slipped from my lips unbidden. The noble dead brought from fine houses would be carried straight to the quiet preparation rooms inside the prometheum. These would be poor folk delivered by their families to be washed, anointed, and buried according to their preferred customs, or those delivered by the dead-haulers that roamed the city streets and refuse heaps, hoping to earn a citré for each load of corpses.
“In truth, ’tis a quiet day, considering yesterday’s troubles,” said Bastien. “Once this lean winter takes full hold and the wains start rolling in from Prince Perryn’s great battle, we’ll have ’em piled in every corner.”
The bald man and the girl spread a stained sheet over the dead man. As the two headed across the courtyard toward Bastien and me, a snap of the bald man’s fingers set a boy to lighting lamps at the man’s head and feet, while a jerk of his head fended off a fawning, ruddy-cheeked woman clothed in blue pantaloons who was offering him a tray of bottles and jars.
“Garibald’s the sexton,” said Bastien, even as I opened my mouth to voice the question. “He sorts out who gets taken inside, who stays out in the yard, who gets washed, who gets burnt, who gets coins on the eyes, who gets dug up and his bones boiled. That sort of thing.”
“But I thought you—”
“Nay. I’m the king’s law here. I’m needed only if there’s a question about the death. Man comes in with a knife hole in his back. Woman comes in with her neck broke. Or maybe someone’s dug up that oughtn’t be in that burial ground when the sexton’s plowing bones. Garibald and Constance see to the common work. I see to the interesting bits.”
Garibald and the girl arrived at the steps. The sexton cast a disapproving glare my way. “Bought yerself a pot o’ trouble, Coroner.”
The girl crowed in bald delight. “You got ’im!” she said in her ear-itching squawk. “Thought sure they’d twink you out of the deal. Near swallowed my eyes when the gate oped to bloods in all their fineries.” Her faded blue eyes raked me scalp to boot. “This’n’s a prime looker, though his lovely duds’ll look a sight first time he takes on splatter or spew. Mayhap his magic can clean him! And mayhap—”
She inhaled sharply and bent over until her nose was scarce a handspan from my chest. She examined the front of my doublet, her bony cheeks taking fire. “Can you set him to magic us fine garbs, too, Coroner? Pearls, that’s what I’d want. Pearls like what’s on his buttons. And ribbons. I do so yarn for red ribbons. And yourself’d look lordly in purple brocady next time you sit a ’quest.”
Perhaps she thought the mask left me deaf and blind.
Bastien snorted. “I doubt such gifting would be among his magical skills. Remeni, this would be Master Garibald, Sexton de Caton, and his daughter and chief assistant, Mistress Constance. You will heed their commands as you do my own, save when it comes to pearls or brocades or other such frivolous babbling.”
The girl didn’t seem to mind his ferocious glare. The sexton harrumphed in disgust.
“As you say,” I replied, and left it at that. Protocol forbade me offer the two ordinaries honorifics of any kind—even were I so inclined—and discouraged any speech or notice beyond my master’s business, even for a girl. Well, Constance was a woman grown, truly, despite her broomstick figure and lack of manners. Close on, it came clear the bloom in her pale cheeks was more windburn than tender years. Her bony hands, stained and peeling in the cold, looked older than her father’s knobby face.
Anyway, better fewer words than many, lest these hear some trace of my growing distaste for this place. I didn’t like thinking what she meant by splatter or spew.
“Have we mysteries this morning?” asked Bastien. “I want to test him right off.”
“Constable dumped a fellow last night.” Garibald pointed to a corner, well away from the hovering crowds and laborers. “Hard froze. I’ve set him to thaw.”
“Let’s take a look.”
The taciturn sexton waved a dismissive hand my way. “I’m back to work. Magical foolery won’t get these folk out my yard.” He stomped away.
Constance elbowed Bastien as we hiked across the bustling yard. “Ye’re the right king of our dead-city now, sweeting,” she murmured with a giggle. “Da’ll be wanting to get ’isself a sorcerer.”
“This fellow’d best be useful,” grumbled Bastien. “If not, I’ve set my plans back ten years.”
Sweeting? Family confidences? Ordinaries coupled in haphazard ways, as I had learned so hard. Yet, even observing these two so short a time, a match seemed unlikely.
Constance pulled open the door of a weather-worn shed in the corner of the yard beyond the merchant stalls. Smoke and warmth from a small brazier escaped quickly along with a distinct sewer odor as Bastien and the woman carried the body into the daylight.
He’d been a bulky fellow, and no beggar. The cloak that covered the most of him was scuffed and muddy, but of good, thick wool lined with dar
k fur.
“No blood.” Constance hunched over the dead man, examining the back of his head, cloak, and legs, and pawing at his collar. “No rips in ’is clothes. No bumps or blusies.”
With naught but a nod between them, Bastien and Constance rolled the man onto his back. They unfastened the cloak and tugged the shirt and scarf away from his neck.
Still no blood or obvious wounding. But someone had tied a linen bandage over his eyes. Most Navrons believed the soul resided in the eyes. The priests of the Elder Gods said the soul could escape this world only through earth or fire, impossible if it was lost to the air before the body was buried or burnt.
I wasn’t so sure about souls or their exact location. My own essence seemed scattered in bits and pieces, sometimes floating free, most times bound to other people. For certain a piece of it had died in the fire at Pontia. And another had been stolen by a passionate voice, green eyes, and cool fingers. Some days I couldn’t seem to locate much of it at all . . . save when I used magic.
Though most purebloods claimed magic had its source just behind the eyes, my own bent seemed to originate just below my breastbone, flowing upward like hot wine through my chest, around back and shoulders, and down my arms. Magic was surely a part of the soul as well.
“What’s his story?” Bastien squatted across from Constance, watching her bony hands skim expertly through the folds of the dead man’s cloak, shirt, doublet, and braies. They came up empty.
“Constable said he were found in a nasty little hidey off Doane’s Alley in the Stonemasons’ District.” She yanked off the man’s gloves. He wore no rings or bracelets, and his shirt cuffs were worn and filthy. “Wouldn’t ha’ been found yet if a stonecutter hadn’t spied someone live in there with this’n, a body what run off soon as he heard the cutter yell. None knew the dead ’un in the streets roundabout. But ’tis not so likely he just froze dead with such a delectable cloak on him.”
“He’s lost his weapons,” I offered. The empty scabbard and sheath at his belt were old-style and plain, but well oiled. “Dropped or stolen?”
“Aye. His purse, too,” said Bastien, fingering a silver cord dangling empty from the man’s waist. Cut, certainly. “But he still has cloak and boots. No family blazon, lest he’d one on his purse, sword, or dagger.”
The coroner took up the man’s hands, examining back and palm, and each thick finger and its fingernail. He yanked open the man’s mouth, pulled out his tongue, and sniffed at it. “No signs of poison, though none could say how long he’s been dead in this cold. There’s recent scrapes on his knuckles, so he’d been in a bit of a fight, but for certain he was no stonemason. Never saw one didn’t have calluses or scars on his hands. And he’s too well dressed. Hey, Constance! Cloak’s too big for you. It’d take a full-size man to fill it up.”
Constance jerked her hand away where she’d been fondling the thick fur. “None gets the cloak till we find who he is. You know Da’s rules. Have you told your sorcerer the rules?”
“Ah, pureblood’s got finer than this.” Bastien paused his examination long enough to glance up at me, jerking his head at the materials in my hands. “So draw him, servant. I paid five years’ living for you. Folk pay well to know how their kinsmen die, who did the deed, and where they’re laid. Folk pay to know their enemies are dead, or their neighbor’s farm has no man to work it anymore. Nobles pay decent. Merchants pay better. And if they learn the news before rot sets in, they pay more. King pays me, too. A fee to find out who’s been murdered, and extra if I point his magistrates at the villain what did it. I’ve tried sketchers before, but I learned right off that none are good enough that a man could recognize his own mother. But pureblood drawings are said to be the same as truth. Show me truth.”
So much about this—their crude handling of the dead man, Bastien’s venality—appalled me. Yet the questions, the mystery, were fascinating. I picked up a broken roof tile and sat cross-legged where I wouldn’t shadow the dead man’s face. Spreading one of Bastien’s scraps of parchment on the slate, I laid down a few lines with the gray plummet—appropriate for the gray-blue skin. The fellow was a decade older than Bastien, perhaps five-and-forty. And he was not half so fit. His chin was soft, his nose pitted—swollen and red I’d guess, before death and frost had sapped his color. A sinner’s nose, folk called it.
Constance pulled the bandage from the dead man’s eyes. Small eyes, close set and slightly askew. I sketched quickly, smudging the plummet to mime the dark patches beneath his eyes, and again to shape the heavy brow. A scribble mimed the old scar on one temple. The image took shape, adequate for common sketching, but for the rest . . .
My hand paused. In the usual way, I would speak with my subject, triggering my inner sight through his voice or some meeting of the eye. Or it might be the way the person laughed or carried herself that sparked my magic. But this man had no voice, no spark, and I had no lifetime’s trove of memory to plumb, as when I sketched my dead grandsire. That left only touch.
Goddess Mother, he was cold. My left fore- and middle fingers traced the slack line of his jaw, the thick shelf of his brow, the cheekbone buried deep under frost-hard flesh, the cool, spongy lips. Disgusting.
Swallowing hard, I shoved aside thought and opened that place behind my breastbone where neither reason nor logic, happiness nor horror held sway. Enchantment surged from that dark reservoir in all its glory, infusing the lines, shapes, and textures my left hand explored and creating an image inside me. The erupting fire flowed through bone and sinew into my right hand, building in power until the stick of plummet trembled.
When my chest felt like to burst, I released the pent magic and began to refine my crude sketch. Sound and sensation fell away. There was naught but the image shimmering inside and the enchantment flowing through my hand. . . .
After a time I sat back and assessed the work. Plummet was much too limited. Its marks were faint and its line unvarying. Ink was far more versatile, flowing from brushes or pens of every possible dimension. Yet indeed the man looking back from the page was the man before me. A touch released a bit of magic to plump his lips and reveal the tip of that horrid tongue between them. Another gave a fullness to his cheeks and sagging jowls. Yet another brightened the death-dulled eyes, narrowed the lids, and installed a few fine creases at their corners. He had a habit of squinting. A bit more flare to the sinner’s nose. Dissipated.
As I used my bent to ensure the drawing matched the true image in my mind, Bastien knelt watching, hands stilled, attention unwavering. When the work was as complete as I could make it without ink or brush, I passed him the page.
He studied it intently.
Sat back on his heels.
Said nothing. His eyes remained fixed on the scrap a very long time.
“Plummet is convenient, but much too limiting,” I said, unable to wait longer. “I can render it more accurately with pen and ink. A thin wash of color works even better. It is a likeness. But I can’t make it speak, if that’s what you want.”
His moment’s glance near stripped me bare. But he turned away to Constance. “Fetch a runner, girl. I want him to show this to whatever whores ply that alley of a midnight or have a crib nearby, even if they work different streets. Find especially any known for hard play. And send Pleury to fetch the barber. The fellow’s mostly thawed. We need to take a look inside before he warms up too much more.”
Whores? The barber . . . the sargery . . . Great Deunor, a barber-surgeon was going to cut into the dead man’s body? My mouth worked in speechless protest.
“Should I bind his eyes back now?” Constance waggled the bandage.
“I’d say yes,” said Bastien softly, shaking his head and staring at the portrait, “but I doubt there’s need. I think his soul has already been snatched out of him.”
CHAPTER 4
His name was Valdo de Seti. We knew it before the midday bells rang. Bastien’s runners identified him using the portrait I’d made—and whatever had sparked Bastien�
��s whim to seek out low women.
De Seti was the chief steward of the draymen’s guild and, indeed, his favored harlot had a den off Doane’s Alley. He himself lived in the Wainwrights’ District with a wife and one of three sons—a boy of eleven years. The two elder were off fighting for Prince Perryn.
Chortling in glee as his runners delivered their reports, Bastien issued a summons to both wife and whore, as well as the son, the constable, the stonemason who had discovered the body, four other neighbors, and Valdo’s two fellow stewards in the guild. They were to attend him in his judgment chamber no later than fourth hour past midday. The ’quest Constance had mentioned was an inquest—the coroner’s official inquiry into the circumstances of a suspicious death.
As we awaited the witnesses, Constance stripped and washed de Seti in one of the troughs in the courtyard. Then two of Garibald’s workmen laid him in a chamber just inside the prometheum doors. It was a barren little cell, its four walls thick with layers of limewash. Easy to see why. The bier, the floor, the small wheeled table, and the pile of wadded linens in the corner were splattered with a disgusting panoply of morbid stains. This was where they cut them.
I pressed my back to the wall beside the door, as far as I could get from the bier.
“You’re a putrid shade of green, servant,” said Bastien. “You do know purebloods shit and die and stink like the rest of us?”
“You can’t just slice into a man’s body,” I said. “The Elder Gods forbid it. How do you know—?”
If the soul could escape through uncovered eyes, how could it not find its way out through an incision? My fist pressed on the tail of my breastbone, where my magic lurked. To be lost in this world, unable to participate in either this life or whatever awaits us beyond, must surely be a horror worse than Magrog’s netherworld of fire and ice.
Bastien stepped aside as a scolding Constance and two boys hauled in jars of water and a stack of battered tin basins, setting them beside the table.
