by Carol Berg
He blew a long displeasure.
“Maintain exemplary discipline and detachment, Lucian, and strict control of your . . . talents. Rumor could cost you everything.” His thick-gloved hands squeezed my shoulders. Then he strode toward the gate.
Before I could possibly respond without screaming, he paused and glanced over his shoulder. “Oh yes, did you leave anything behind in the Tower? Access will be difficult with this new contract and all. I’ll be happy to have your things sent round.”
Confused at the abrupt shift, it took me a moment to think what he meant. Pens, I supposed, brushes, my favored inks that I’d bought for myself.
“No. Nothing.” I’d taken everything home.
“All right, then. Be sure we’ll find our way through.” With a nod, he was gone.
Knowing Bastien’s boot was tapping, I’d no leisure to consider this frustrating encounter. It was good to hear I had a sympathetic advocate in the Tower. But as I hurried away, Pluvius’s kind reassurances and abortive warnings lodged in my gut like bad meat.
* * *
Constance, adorned in her white robes again, stood beside a bier near the prometheum steps like a divine guardian. A straw-haired girl in a dirty red cloak fidgeted alongside her.
Bastien jerked his head when I joined him, and he pointed to a nearby column, one of a row of them, each topped by a flaming bowl. “Keep close enough to hear, but avoid making a distraction of yourself, if you can tolerate such a state.”
I moved into the ring of shadow beneath the fire bowl. Why did I need to be here? These people’s business was none of mine. Pluvius’s visit was a reminder. Purebloods purposely lived apart from the world. Our lives were not our own.
“First we see if our lady of the night recognizes our corpus.” Bastien stepped into the light and twitched a finger at Constance.
A shrouded body lay on the bier. When Constance uncovered the face, the straw-haired girl spat in it. Constance grabbed the girl’s hand before she could snatch the copper coins from the dead man’s eyes.
The straw-haired girl wrenched her arm away. “A foul day when I told that one where I bedded,” she said, sneering at de Seti. “He’d come willy-nilly and run off my other customers. He were a brute, no matter his fine clothes. Favored rough play, though it made him wheeze and sweat like a pig. Praise the Mother he’s dead.”
“And so you helped yourself to his purse,” said Bastien, perched on the corner of the bier, arms folded as if he weren’t sharing the seat with a dead man. “Can’t blame you for that.”
“The scabby prick plunger were alive when he left me three nights ago,” the girl snapped. “So you can just stuff that idea. Did I take his purse, I’d not be wallowing in that shitehole where they found me, now, would I? I’d be moved north to the river country, where I’ve kin.”
The girl’s coarse manner jolted me. But somehow worse, she was no older than Juli . . . and a harlot. The very idea of a woman who sold her body to strangers was grotesque and appalling, but I’d never imagined one might be so young. Or so damaged; one of her eyes was puffed and livid, her wrists raw, and her lips scabbed. Rough play . . .
“Step aside with Garen there,” said Bastien. “Soon as all my witnesses have gathered, we’ll go inside, and you’ll tell us all about the beast.”
Garen, the lanky, dark-eyed senior runner, ushered the girl out of the way, as Bastien turned to a burly, bearded man newly arrived in the circle of firelight. “I’m Bastien, the coroner. And who might you be?”
“Ferrand, stonemason,” growled the hulking fellow. His arms were the size of the stone pillar and the chest beneath his tool satchel was as wide as the prometheum steps. “Had to leave the mill early to get here, so there’d best be some use in it.”
“You found the dead man in Doane’s Alley yesternight.”
“Aye.”
“And is this the man?”
Constance uncovered de Seti’s face again, this time far enough to show the black stitches that supposedly held his soul inside his pale flesh.
My throat clogged. The worries of the everyday world had kept me from dwelling overmuch on the next, but no matter the truth of gods or heaven, I believed human folk had souls to hold or lose. Even brutes.
“Aye. The very one.”
“How did you happen to be there?”
“’Tis my usual way ’tween mill and wife.”
Bastien yawned and twiddled the corner of the sheeting, as if he were conversing with a taverner about naught more important than a day’s brew of ale. “I understand he was tucked in a coal scrape off the alley. Whatever drew you to peek in there of a cold night?”
“A pickthief were trying to cut my tool bag off me. Happens near every night. Just as I laid into him, a second fellow bolted out the scrape. Figured that one were the thief’s partner, likely his boy, as he was a squinchy thing. When I walloped the snatch and sent him running after the boy, I poked my head in the coal scrape to see if there were a third. Found this fellow.”
Thieves, harlots, coal scrapes . . . Surely a “squinchy thing” hadn’t murdered such a big man as de Seti.
Bastien’s unblinking gaze remained fixed on the mason. “Would you recognize the pickthief or the runner?”
“I would. Wife says I’ve eyes like a rat in the dark.”
“And did your wife enjoy the contents of this fellow’s purse?”
The accusation startled me entire. Had Bastien lost his mind? The mason was clearly an upright man.
Constance hissed as Ferrand yanked a small sledge from his belt and slammed it onto the bier, jarring both corpus and coroner. “I make these tables, you know. Could break this’n if I chose. Man accuses me of stealing from the dead best be ready to lie atop one of ’em.”
To his credit, Bastien did not flinch. “Good enough,” he said without the least stammer. “Now stand aside for a moment, Goodman Ferrand. I do believe the constable brings the grieving family and the rest of our witnesses.”
Indeed an ear-cracking wail echoed from every wall and pillar. I twisted around to see. What now? More walloping?
“Valdo! Oh, Valdo!”
A group of men variously dressed shuffled into the firelight, followed by a blowsy woman in black draperies. An old-style pyramid wimple covered her hair and neck. “Where is he? Sky Lord’s grace, not here!”
Constance performed her role yet again, flipping the sheet down and back. The woman shrieked and collapsed across the draped body. One might easier believe the violence of her grief if half a day had not passed since she identified him from the portrait.
“Mistress de Seti and all the rest of you, I am Bastien de Caton, Coroner of the Twelve Districts of Palinur, bound by the king’s law to investigate suspicious death.”
The widow popped her head up and the rest of her body followed. “I understood a trull murdered him and stole his purse. Is that her?” She extended an accusing finger to the straw-haired girl on the steps. “Harlot! Murderer! How dare you stand in his presence? Why is she not hanged already? Where is my silver? Twenty lunae in that purse!”
“Where is your son, mistress?” Even as he spoke, Bastien spun in place and lunged toward me. I jerked backward, whacking my elbow yet again, this time on the sheltering column. But the coroner missed . . . or rather . . .
Bastien dragged a squirming body from the other side of the column.
“Young Willem,” he said, “why do you lag behind in the shadows? Come, boy, step up and bid farewell to your da.”
Bastien shoved the stumbling boy, also draped in black, to the bier and threw back the sheet entirely, so that all could view the dreadful sight—two great seams of black stitches holding the pale flesh together in a V shape from shoulders to groin.
Such a vile cruelty. The boy, slight and wan already, doubled over and retched miserably on his father’s bier. I came near doing the same. My appreciation of Bastien’s tactics—which had grown without my realizing—plummeted.
“That’s the r
unner!” bellowed Stonemason Ferrand. “Saw him dodging out the coal scrape yesternight!”
“Who is this madman?” demanded the widow. “My son—”
“You’re sure, Ferrand?” Bastien had a firm grip on Willem’s collar, even as the boy puked.
“Aye. I’ve eyes like—”
“Like rats in the dark. Yes. Well, boy? Were you in Doane’s Alley yesternight?”
A weak head shake. Bastien yanked him up, almost lifting him off the ground. As the Widow de Seti shrieked protests, he posed the question again. The boy just sputtered and moaned as the coroner rummaged inside the lad’s cloak.
“Hmmph.” With the satisfied grunt, Bastien held something up to the light—a dagger with a ruby in the hilt. “Well, well, what have we here—already a young master of the house? Could this be your da’s dagger that went missing? I’ve a sorcerer nearby, you know. He could magic it and tell me where you got it. Step out, pureblood!”
Sighing, I adjusted my mask and stepped out. The boy wailed and flapped his arms as if he might escape through the air.
“Inside with all of you!”
Surely Bastien could not believe the drivel he spoke. Ordinaries had all sorts of idiotic ideas about what sorcerers could do. Though there had been a time . . . My second bent might have told him a great deal about the dagger, but that part of me was five years dead.
As the odd collection of people moved toward the steps, Bastien jerked his head at me, smirking. I followed the babbling party into the prometheum. Not reluctantly.
* * *
The inquest, held in a solemn inner chamber, was quite brief. Bastien sat at the head of a long table of scraped pine. A bronze pendant fashioned in the shape of a hammer hung from his neck—the symbol of his office, I supposed—and a wooden gavel lay in front of him. Everyone else sat on stools around the table. I remained standing near the door.
Bastien went through all the same questions, but in a clear sequence. De Seti’s colleagues told of a bitter man whose strength was failing him and who tried to regain it by picking fights with everyone—his wife and sons, his neighbors, his fellow draymen, and his whore.
Bek, the surgeon, his quiet voice steady despite his palsied hands, witnessed that he found no evidence of stabbing, bruising, poison, or any other murderous ending that might evidence itself beneath a man’s skin.
“Now you, boy, best tell the truth, else . . .” Bastien’s wagging finger led Willem’s eyes to me.
His eyes the size of inkwells, the quivering Willem told of his mother sending him to search Doane’s Alley when his da failed to come home, as she’d long discovered the location of his harlot. When he returned with the news that his father lay dead in the dark little crawl off the harlot’s alley, she sent him back to fetch the purse, the weapons, and his father’s cloak and boots.
“I were scairt to touch him, but Ma swore I must before some beggar crawled into the hole and found him. But I couldn’t get the cloak, as he were so heavy and hard froze, and before I could get his boots, some ’un yelled at me.”
“And then you ran off, Willem.” Bastien shook his head like the arbiter of doom. “Left your da lie there. Disobeyed the king’s law that says the dead must be collected. What kind of son are you?”
“Ma said, ‘Leave the whoring jackleg where you found him.’” The sniveling boy wiped his nose on his sleeve and cast an ugly glance at the straw-haired girl. “Said a slut’s cesspool was a proper end.”
When all was spoken, Bastien banged his gavel on the table. “It is my judgment that Valdo de Seti of the Wainwrights’ District died of an attack of spleen, brought on by his rough whoring. All other matters, such as thieving from the dead and abandoning a corpse, will be reported to the district magistrate. By the authority of the king of Navronne—whoever he might be at present—I judge the Widow de Seti must turn over the purse of twenty lunae and the two weapons as fee for this investigation, which could have been avoided had Willem or his mam reported the death like honorable folk and Willem not sneaked away like a common cutpurse. Constable will retrieve the goods and bring them here to finish this matter. So say I, Coroner of the Twelve Districts of Palinur.”
His gavel fell again. And so it was done.
It seemed a reasonable judgment. The witnesses scattered, the widow whining that there had only been two lunae in the purse, not twenty, so why didn’t someone search the whore. Were I the straw-haired girl, I’d take care to know where my food came from and not to walk in my own dark alley. The evil aspects of the Widow de Seti and her sallow boy would have soured milk while still inside the cow.
As I followed Bastien down the passage to his office, my snarling stomach and soggy knees reminded me how long it had been since I’d eaten anything. Two portraits should not have drained me so, but the second . . . The magic had been extraordinarily intense.
Bastien dropped onto the stool at his writing desk. He did not invite me to sit. I didn’t care. Purebloods did not sit down with ordinaries.
Watching the coroner ferret out the truth of the matter had been more interesting than I’d imagined, but I couldn’t allow him to assign me another task for today, not even to complete the girl child’s portrait. Though the unfinished portrait remained a raw wound, my urgency had drained away with my magic.
“Master Bastien,” I said. “What time should I arrive tomorrow?”
“Dawn,” he said. “We’ll have a full day. But don’t think you’re leaving until you explain.”
Maintaining calm was exceedingly difficult at so late an hour. “Explain what?”
“What were you playing at earlier, flickering as you did when drawing the girl?” said Bastien, biting each word as if it were a walnut. His hand waved as if to encompass the necropolis. “A place like this . . . It’s taken five years to convince folk we’ve a mind for truth and reason, not ghosts and ghouls, and in one hour you set us back again. Everyone who saw you will be babbling Caton is demon-haunted.”
“Flickering?” Bastien sounded like Constance—using a nonsense word that was close to, but not quite, one that had meaning. Yet, unlike hers, I couldn’t interpret this one.
“When you were drawing the girl, you—your whole self—faded, blurred, and then sharpened up again, over and over, as if you were only partly here, partly elsewhere. Half the people in the yard were on their knees, so many palms spread against evil, Magrog’s demons couldn’t have slid between! Garibald swore it was just snow squalls hiding you. But it was magic, wasn’t it? And you’re not allowed to use magic I didn’t tell you. That’s a violation of the contract.”
“That’s impossible.”
I had observed countless pureblood artists, many whose bent was far stronger than mine. None flickered or faded as they worked. Master Pluvius would hardly have ignored such a manifestation. Gilles and I had worked in the same studio for five years.
“I am incapable of working other magic while using my bent. Whatever you saw was exactly as you say—snow or smoking firepots or the foul vapors from your charnel house. It certainly wasn’t me.” Annoyance, fed by exhaustion and this petty foolery, sharpened my tone more than I liked.
The bells rang out from the city of the living. Bastien glared at me for the full span of their clanging. Nine peals. So late! Juli must be terrified at my absence.
“You swore to obey.” He snarled like a wild dog. As if I were one, too.
“So you interrupted my magic and whisked the child away because you thought I was what—trying to get my contract voided by scaring your customers away? That’s ridiculous and insulting. I keep my word.”
All the awfulness of the day and the previous one boiled out of me—the shame, the awkwardness, the horrors and grief of the past brought so close to mind.
“Indeed, your interruption ensured I could not give you my best work. Perhaps you are trying to void my contract or work out better terms with the Registry by drumming up false accusations. Perhaps you wish me punished because I was born an Aurellian
sorcerer and not a low—”
I snapped my mouth shut. Fool, idiot, undisciplined wretch, to let him glimpse such emotional weakness.
“But it wasn’t just the magic.” Bastien yanked a scrap of parchment from his iron chest and thumped it on the writing table. “You’re either inept or scheming. How do you decide what to put in the picture besides the face?”
“What?” My head spun. “I don’t decide. The magic . . . my bent . . . enables me to make a bond of the senses with my subject . . . to shape a true image of the person. If you’re talking about background details, that’s just incidental. An artist’s instinct, some call it. I draw whatever the image suggests, whatever feels right. I don’t think about those things at all.”
He turned the page toward me and moved the lamp closer. But divining Bastien’s purpose was the issue here, not some imperfection in my art. I gave the portrait a token glance.
But then I blinked and examined it more carefully, squinting in the shifting light. The likeness was good. The round cheeks. The small nose. But the hair . . . How had I got the hair so wrong? It wasn’t chopped off ragged, but elaborately curled, pale and shining, caught up in ribbons. Her eyes were light and merry, the color of a winter sky. And her gown and cloak . . . not rough sacking, but the soft folds of satin, edged with beads and elaborate embroidery. And on her bodice . . . Idrium’s Gates! Worked in pearls and shining thread in the center of her stiff bodice was a trilliot—the three-petaled lily of Navronne.
My head spun in confusion; words died unspoken. I glanced up at a grim Bastien.
“If you’re setting me up to play the fool, Servant Remeni, I swear on Kemen Sky Lord’s balls, you’ll live to regret it. If not, then you’d best tell me why your drawing shows no dead ragamuffin, but a child wearing the mark of the royal family.”
CHAPTER 6
Near an hour I spent convincing Bastien that I had no idea why I’d portrayed the child in such fashion. To explain the mechanisms of my bent as he demanded was impossible. I was baffled. And disturbed. A touch of the page assured me that the image inside and that on the page matched exactly. Of all things, my art was true. Never had any of my portraits shown such a difference in personal details as this one. And such significant ones! Certainly for the coroner to prance around the city, bellowing about strangled royal children, could not be wise. At the least he’d look the fool. At the worst . . .
