by Carol Berg
All I could do was swear up, down, and sidewise that it was neither purposefully misleading nor inept. In truth the drawing was as fine as any I had ever done, no matter that it was scribed in plummet on a scrap of parchment so blotched and worn it would have been burnt in any reputable artist’s studio.
“The face is true,” I said. “Look at it. Look at the child. You’ll find no better likeness anywhere. As for the rest . . . perhaps these strange surroundings warped my seeing. Or the noise. I’ll start again tomorrow. I’ll bring fresh parchment and work in ink.” But I knew it was true. It was my gift, the magic I brought to my art.
Bastien tossed the drawing into his iron-bound chest and slammed the lid so hard the stack of wax tablets in the book press toppled, clattering, onto the floor. “Be here at six bells of the morning, or I’ll report a violation to your Registry. The woman said your people had proper punishments for cheats and violators.”
I squeezed out the only words possible without risking another outburst. “I’ll be here.”
My hurried steps echoed in the prometheum halls, and I burst gratefully through the heavy door into the open air. Once outside the necropolis gate, perhaps I could breathe again. I needed to get home, ease Juli’s fears, eat—gods, my belly was about to devour itself—and then try to make sense of the strange portrait. The Registry punishments for contract cheats were severe, for our contracts were the sacred word of all purebloods. Violators could be whipped or bound to silence for months or years, or dressed in garishly colored garb and publicly displayed for days on end beside a notation of their crimes.
The fire bowls had been doused, allowing the night’s cold to settle into the walled yard. Wind darted hungrily through the gatehouse, setting the torches that flanked the gate to dancing. The yard was deserted, save for Constance. She scrubbed at an empty bier in the erratic light, humming a bouncing, untuneful melody in time with her strokes. Her hands must be freezing.
She glanced up as I passed. Grinned, but did not speak. As I hiked across the snow-dusted paving, I tucked my hands into the thick fur of my pelisse.
Garibald stepped out of a dark hole in the gatehouse wall, a lantern raised high. The wavering light revealed a narrow stair behind him, likely ascending to a watch chamber above the tunnel.
“Guess he wants out.” This observation was addressed to the brick wall at my left, though I was the only living person anywhere within hearing.
He unlocked the iron gate, dragged it open, and poked his head out, scanning the sky for a moment as if to assess the weather. As the gate swung shut behind me, another few words tumbled out of him. “Battle was three days north. He’ll be busy the morrow. Low, nasty work. Ugly. Better he not come back.”
Garibald’s annoyance sparked a bitter amusement, certainly not at the thought of wounded soldiers dying in sight of home, but only at his odd interpretation of the law that forbade him speak to me. Would that I dared tell him how deeply I loathed the thought of returning here.
The gate latch clicked behind me, and Garibald’s heavy steps retreated. My own feet lingered. All the turmoil of the last hours fled before the daunting prospect of my journey home.
Rarely had I ventured into such inky blackness as lay upon the land outside the walls. A few lights gleamed from the temple heights inside the city, the wind-driven snow leaving them little but blurs. A smudged fire glow wavered in the gusts scouring the field of hummocks, while odd blue flares in the distant trees teased at my eyes.
My mind produced imaginings of fae lights or the wandering Danae of my grandmother’s tales. Some of her stories named the Danae tricksters. Some said they danced and mated in the moonlight to keep the earth fertile. All said their naked flesh was limned in shadings of blue. I’d loved drawing Danae as a boy, before my grandsire had declared such myths the province of the ignorant and forbade my grandmother to taint my mind with them. History, he said, must keep its steely eye on firm evidence, logic, and provable truth. The ashes at Pontia had swept away my own faith in mystical benevolence. And if Danae had ever danced to keep the earth healthy, they did so no more.
A rhythmic crunch of metal and ice gave substance to the blockish shadow moving between me and the shifty fire glow of a lantern. A gravedigger I’d seen wheeling a cart through the gates was plying his shovel. Which meant that the hummocks we’d trampled that morning . . .
No wonder the taint of death teased my senses.
Leander had said it took an hour extra to bypass the slot gate and hirudo—surely longer for one who didn’t know the route. I’d collapse before arriving home. So I trod carefully between the hummocks—graves—and wished for a lamp.
Quivering shoulders and trembling hands told me how magically depleted I was. I’d not power enough to keep a magelight glowing, unless I could attach the spell to a solid object of reasonable size. The pocket tucked in the waist of my braies held naught but a kerchief. Cloth was too flimsy to hold a steady beam. I’d sent my father’s ring home with Leander and wore no other jewels. My eating knife was already wrapped in wards against poisons. And I was certainly in no mind to reverse my steps and beg a torch from the necropolis. My own night sight must serve.
Midway across the burial ground, I regretted that idiocy. Though I believed I was headed for the slot gate in the wall, I couldn’t be sure. The snow had petered out. The blustery blackness swallowed the overspill from Caton’s torches and reduced the gravedigger’s lantern to a pinprick. I trudged on until I tripped on something hard.
Kneeling up on the frozen mound, I searched the turf nervously. A frozen bone would not be so awful. Truly. Though indeed this was old ground . . . a windy height drowned in an ocean of blood. Raiding parties seeking good vantage. Clashing swords, whining arrows, grunting fighters, and the wild yelling of a charge; roaring magefire and screams of terror, layer upon layer of wounding and death . . .
I snatched my hands away. I had released no magic; my bent for history was long excised, naught but a charred stub between my eyes. The eerie night had but fired my imagination.
Patting lightly, I resumed the search. No fleshless bone, but a cold curve of iron had tripped me up—a closed half-circle, its diameter wider than my spread fingers. A part of my day’s learning: Such cheap artifacts, graven with the deceased one’s name, were used to mark poor men’s graves. The iron rod would be hammered into a family blazon for those who had such, or the fish-shaped eye of the Mother for a follower of the Elder Gods, or a sunburst symbol for one of the Karish believers. But this, an arché, an empty half circle lacking so much as a name, served for one whose identity and allegiance were unknown, like the girl child whose image burned behind my breastbone.
“Hope you don’t mind my borrowing this,” I said softly to the mystery who slept here. “I’ll bring it back tomorrow.”
Using the arché, I gouged a great circle in the mound and left my eating knife in the center of it. The spells on my knife should lead me back to this grave. Now for the light.
To shape the mental pattern of my desire took less time than sketching a tree. Drawing magic to fill it, however, was wretchedly difficult. I was grasping at the dregs of my energies, a sensation much like yanking on the inside of my empty belly.
But eventually, I poured the waiting spell into the chilled iron of the arché and triggered it with my will.
A narrow white beam parted the night, as if a voiding spell had removed a shard of the darkness. Satisfaction warmed my spirit, well beyond the needs of the moment. Touching my forehead to the earth, I vowed a libation to the gods who had graced me with their gift, and renewed my coming-of-age pledge to return them service a thousandfold.
I set out again, amused to imagine what someone at the necropolis might think of the mysterious flaring light in the middle of the burial ground. Only then did I recall my obligation to forgo magic, save at Bastien’s command. If the contract lacked a personal-defense clause, this would be certain violation. But then, Bastien would likely disapprove of my breaking a
leg on the descent into the hirudo.
Moving more confidently, I soon reached the wall and the slot gate. The steep descent was slower, as the muddy ruts and rocks were glazed with ice. But cautious steps took me to the pigsty with head and limbs intact.
Coal smoke thick as fog in fen country hung in the ravine. The night itself . . . the frigid air . . . all was heavy, damp, and silent, as if I were the only soul left living in the world.
I rounded the piggery with quiet steps. Perhaps I could slip through unnoticed. Or perhaps the Guard Royale had chosen this day to scour the hirudo as they did from time to time, chasing the cursed Cicerons into the wilderness.
A few quercae forward into the ramshackle warren, and the faint drone of a hurdy-gurdy and the muted rapping of a tabor testified that not all its residents slept. I imagined I heard a trill of piping as well . . . and laughter. . . .
As a fiery lance out of the blackness, grief pierced my breast. Remeni-Masson family gatherings had ever been noisy, joyful celebrations. Games and music and a generous table. Contests of strength, speed, and magic, a rare balance to the strict discipline of our daily life. I had sorely regretted the extra work that kept me away from the last one. Until the Registry messenger had come from Pontia . . .
Keep focused, fool. I muted my light to a deep red and reduced its span to the small circle of a lantern’s gleam, just enough to keep me on the muddy path and away from obstacles. The hirudo night opened before me and closed down behind.
The music and merriment swelled as I passed a tarry alleyway, damped quickly as I moved on.
Soft, running steps to my left slowed my feet. I turned slowly as I walked, but glimpsed no movement.
Onward, a little faster. A swish of heavy fabric accompanied a waft of steam bearing the stink of boiling cabbage.
Just as the darker spaces between shacks and sheds grew wider and the path angled upward toward the Elder Wall and the city, my light failed. It didn’t fade or dim, but just . . . stopped. I halted, puzzled. A bound spell shouldn’t need constant infusion of magic to hold.
“Ye’ve paid no toll, masked one.” The calm, low-pitched challenge came from behind—or perhaps my left.
I held still, squinting into the pitchy night. “You acknowledge my mask. You know better than to hinder me.”
“But ’tis the third time this day ye’ve caused a trespass.” He moved as a ghost might, one darker shadow against the rest, ending squarely on the path ahead of me. “Your minions twice and now yourself.”
“Yet you waited to interfere until there was one alone,” I said, chilling my tone as best I could. “Perhaps you imagine the penalties for interfering with a single pureblood are something less than delaying five or four. That’s not at all the case. Step aside.”
“’Tis years since city guards have visited Hirudo Palinur for aught but frighting us. Dangers abound, even for such as you. But I can see to your safe passage.”
“I can protect myself.” My declaration sounded far braver than my jellied sinews told. I didn’t know any magic that could actually hurt a determined fighter. And depleted as I was, I couldn’t even confuse them with an illusion.
“Perhaps so. Perhaps no. But then, you are a wealthy man like all your kind. Is not ease of passage worth sharing a small portion of your treasure with those who’ve so little?”
If I’d had the wherewithal, I’d likely have paid, risking worse extortion the next time I passed. “I carry naught a thief would prize. Certainly nothing worth the trouble he’d reap did he steal it.”
“See, now? There you’re wrong.”
Shadowy movements on every side of me were no fey imaginings. Magrog’s balls! I invoked the arché’s spell binding yet again. Why did it refuse to take fire?
“All we wish is a little magic, Domé Remeni, one glimpse of Idrium’s glory on our dank verge of Magrog’s realm. Naught to violate the law. Naught to hinder one of the gods’ chosen on his important business.”
Magic? Cicerons were masters at deceit and sleight of hand. Some ordinaries claimed Cicerons could work true magic. History declared that impossible, but tonight I was no better. I couldn’t even spark my own light, which meant the only two defensive magics I knew—void holes beneath their feet and spits of true flame—were wholly out of reach. What did he truly want?
I could tell them that constables were on the way to join me to examine the place the dead girl child had been found. But what if they didn’t believe me? Because what could a constable learn in the deeps of night? This was hugely, stupidly aggravating. Only one thing left . . .
“You lurk in the dark, refusing me a glimpse of your face.” I stepped forward, listening carefully, estimating his position. “How am I to interpret such shyness? I’ve just spent the day with the dead, and would rather not see more of them, and I am so damnably hungry, I could eat this muck in your street. So, if you wish to take the mortal risk of turning out my pockets or snatching my boots, let’s get on with it.”
He laughed then. A hearty chuckle, so rich with life and menace that I felt heat beneath my breastbone. Had I pen and parchment, I could sketch him from the sound alone. Instead, I flung the heavy arché directly at that laugh.
His breathless grunt brought a smile to my face as I darted past him, speeding up the hill with a burst of strength drawn from my very marrow.
No one followed. Yet as I gripped the broken pillars at the top of the ascent, relieved and gulping air into my starved breast, robust laughter drifted out of the hirudo, and an unmistakable white fire blazed in the depths of the ravine—my own magic shining undimmed. How was that possible?
* * *
The bells pealed eleventh hour by the time I trudged across our inner courtyard, exhausted and wholly confused from the events of day and night, groaning at the thought of retracing my steps not six hours hence. I would have welcomed one of the invisible arrows of my haunted imaginings.
“Luka!” Light streamed around Juli’s stark outline in the open doorway. “Where in Magrog’s own hells have you been? There were fires in the Oil Merchants’ District, but of course, you never deigned to tell me where you were going, and Soflet, the god-cursed wretch, barricaded all the doors when I threatened to go to the Registry to find out. He wouldn’t even let me send a message. ‘Unseemly,’ he said, which is the most despicable word in any language. If you don’t dismiss the vile scarecrow at once, I’ll put a knife in his neck while he sleeps. And now Maia’s feast is ruined, and I forgot to decant the wine—”
A pause for breath revealed a sob. But when I reached for her, she recoiled. “Aagh! Get away from me! What is that stink?”
“Just let me in, Juli. Move aside.”
My head weighed like a cannonball. My feet were frozen. And to think what I must smell like.
“I’m truly sorry I’m late . . . and about the stink . . . about everything. Please, I need wine, then food. Doesn’t matter what. And, yes”—in our overheated reception room, everything from my frost-rimed hair to my mud-crusted boots began to drip, and the stench of Necropolis Caton rose from me like the fumes of the netherworld—“a bath first of all. If you could call Giaco and tell Maia. Please . . .”
To keep my eyes open through the wine and the bath was near impossible. At first more nauseated than hungry, and then light-headed with the stout vintage, I could imagine nothing finer than my wide bed and its thick quilts. As ever in cases of magical depletion, I had the shivers.
But I owed Juli an explanation. It had been prideful and selfish of me to leave her in ignorance.
Wrapped in a robe of padded wool and my thickest quilt, I found her in the oriel—once our mother’s favorite room and now Juli’s refuge. It hung out over our gardens, and its myriad window panes were the best glass in the house—astonishingly clear. Not that there had been so much to see in any garden these past few years. Unfortunately it was also the draftiest room in the house, having so many windows, no fire, and naught but air underneath the floor. A spread of overcoo
ked fowl, a congealed pie of minced rabbit, some straggling green things, and bread—already stale—adorned a low table alongside cheese, olives, and pickled fish.
I poured half my cup of wine into the bronze libation bowl in the middle of the table. Juli did the same. We maintained the custom, though neither of us felt friendly enough with the gods to muster proper prayers.
“Thank you for this,” I said, settling on the thick rug beside the table and wrapping the quilt tight enough to suppress my shivers, if not cure them. “It was impossible to eat at my new master’s business. Only one of many things I didn’t know . . .”
As I savaged the cold, leathery feast, I told her everything. Almost everything. Far more than I would have done if I’d not been half sotted with wine. I told her of my dismissal and my shame and Pluvius’s odd visit. I told her of Bastien and Constance, de Seti and the hirudo. Good sense pricked my stupor and prevented me speaking of the strangled child or what act the barber-surgeon actually performed to determine that de Seti had not died of wounding. Everything else escaped me in a septic flood.
“That woman’s voice was truly so dreadful? . . . And why did the surgeon’s hands shake? Was he afraid of the dead man’s spirit? . . . This Garen sounds deliciously handsome. Do you think he has an eye for Constance? . . . You said there were other girls there. What tasks did they do?”
I relished her questions. She’d not shown so much interest in anything since she’d walked up the hill at Pontia and seen our home a burnt-out ruin. Like me, she’d held some hope that the reports of horror were wrong, that someone had surely escaped. The sight had left no fantasies of hope or dream in either of us.
“I’m guessing the surgeon is a drunkard or a twistmind craving his nivat. Or perhaps he’s ill. He didn’t seem fearful. As for Constance . . .” I had to smile. “She is a strange one. Works very hard and is quite observant. And, well, I suppose a girl would consider Garen a goodly fellow, but he never looks at Constance in the way you mean. He’s clever. Diligent. Bastien relies on him.”
