Dust and Light

by Carol Berg

  “Demetreo, is it not?” I extended my right hand for the arché. The left, the wrist with the silver band, I raised just enough that those I sensed closing up behind me could see the light flare in silver spikes.

  The Ciceron’s dark face blazed with more than my enchanted light. No sign of deference graced his posture. His gaze slid to the iron grave marker, then flicked back to me.

  “So ye grant us the taste of glory we begged, Domé Remeni. I am most impressed. And more so that no soldiers or Registry inquisitors have invaded our homely swamp to beat proper manners into us. Though I must say”—he grimaced and rubbed a spot near his breastbone—“I’m like to wear the mark of this sturdy item until Voudras Day.”

  So he was also my challenger of the previous day. My pleasure at his bruising was choked by dread that he would not yield. My hand remained outstretched.

  He proffered the grave marker, hesitating half a quat before it touched my fingers. “Rumor says Caton’s new pureblood turns his magic to the murdered child was found here. Ill fortune to have such a discovery in one’s own district. The estimable coroner is dogged in his mission and, for certain, no friend of the hirudo. But perhaps you, one of the gods’ chosen, could say him again: She was not one of our own.” Sly humor and brassy posturing vanished like ice in fire. “Child strangling is more trouble than any here would invite. I see to that.”

  No one with eyes or ears could doubt the headman’s sincerity . . . or his ability to enforce such a rule. And it was no mystery that he would be concerned. A constable or city guard captain given a hint of a noble child—much less a royal child—found dead in the hirudo would not bother listening to explanations. Blood and fire would bloom in the night, and every one of these people would be reduced to severed necks, charred bones, and ash.

  But then why had he turned her body over to the necropolis in the first place? Unless he hadn’t known . . . With complinations to the coroner, Constance had said of the headman’s sending the child’s body to Caton—compliments, perhaps. He’d been seeking to curry favor with Bastien, and only then heard gossip about me and the portrait.

  A fair humor rippled through my skin. Demetreo had likely cursed Serena Fortuna’s whim to the depths of his being when he learned what the portrait showed. Perhaps an opportunity lay here to learn something. The child deserved the truth. And the wound of her unfinished portrait yet stung.

  “I could report such a statement to the coroner, as you ask,” I said. “Yet its verity would surely be strengthened by a demonstration of goodwill. For example, if you relinquish this grave marker I so carelessly dropped . . .”

  He laid the arché in my hand.

  “. . . and if you showed me the place where the girl child was found.”

  “Easily done.”

  Demetreo motioned to one of his watchers, an elderly woman wearing a bone necklace. She grabbed a smoky torch and led us up the lane.

  As if the settlement breathed a sigh, the other Cicerons went back to their business.

  My daily route to the slot gate and Caton’s plateau climbed up from the north side of the piggery, where the rocky slope of the ravine supported Palinur’s outer wall. Demetreo, the old woman, and I veered to the other side of the wallow, where a soggy drainage channeled all the moisture from between the two ramparts, including the city’s seeps and sewage, down through the hirudo. We slogged across the stew of snow, ice, muck, and lifeless vegetation to a low embankment thick with leaf-bare willows.

  “A boy was out skinning bark for his mam yestermorn,” said Demetreo, pushing through the willow thicket. “He found the dead child caught in the tangle.”

  Wrenching hair, collar, and sleeves free of willow snags, I emerged from the thicket to an open hillside of patchy snow and dead grass. Impossibly steep, the ground rose all the way to the base of the inner wall—the Elder Wall. Not that we could see much beyond our ring of torch- and magelight.

  The Ciceron pointed out a clump of disturbed willow withes a few steps away. “There.”

  The unrelenting slope offered no easy access for anyone thinking to hide a body. My boots insisted on sliding back down toward the line of densely packed willows. One could have more easily and safely buried the girl in the pigsty or even the muck of the channel. A week’s warm weather would have her rotted beyond identification. Why stow her behind the thicket?

  Something whitish caught my eyes near the spot Demetreo had indicated. I slipped and slid across the muddy slope and crouched to see it better. Bark shavings, half-buried in the frozen mud. The boy’s tale was true. . . .

  Fruitlessly, I scanned the ground for anything else that might have fallen from the child or her murderer. Faugh! Surely such a heinous act must leave traces.

  My fingers picked again at the strips of bark, then moved hesitantly into the crescent of trampled grass beside the willows. People, especially those in heightened states of fear, anxiety, or other passions, left traces that were not solid artifacts. The gift to discover and interpret those traces had once lived in me. It might again. If my grandsire’s excision had not worked completely. If I dared violate his stricture and the most solemn oath I had ever sworn.

  Yet what meaning had youthful swearings in the face of true wickedness? If I could use my maimed bent to expose a child murderer, would that not be a virtue to counter any violation? Why had I been given such a gift, only to have it ripped away because I’d been young and foolish, overheated by my body’s urges? Perhaps that punishment had run its course, and the strange effects of my bent in this place were the gods’ sign that I must begin again and use what I was given.

  “Is a great sorcerer like you as flummoxed as ordinary folk?”

  The Ciceron’s taunt propelled me forward onto my knees. Laying my hands on the cold ground, I offered a swift prayer that I was not wrong and a swifter apology to my grandsire. Then I plunged deep into the cold, dark space between my eyes.

  A flash of vermillion flared in the dark . . . an ember, hot and bright. Blessed Deunor, Lord of Light and Magic, let this be your sign. Empower me.

  I sparked the ember with my will, and a storm of magic raced through my neck, shoulders, and arms and into my waiting fingers. And when my hands felt swollen with it, I released the flood into the earth.

  Impressions assaulted my senses like a stampede of wild boars. Leash the threads—bind them! The memory of my grandsire’s teaching rang out above the thunder. Tame the avalanche! Parse out your magic slowly, else you’ll have no time to think, to make linkages, to see truth.

  I grasped wildly at the fleeting sensations—noises, images, ideas, scents, emotions, people and beasts, sun and wind—and tried to bind them into patterns that made sense. It had been so long.

  There! Hunters . . . generations had tracked the beasts that came here to the springs . . . tall grass . . . bare feet . . . spears and crude arrows. Enmity and death had permeated all endeavors here, a swirling cyclone threatening to obscure the rest.

  Grasp a thread of substance and collect the stragglers that cluster around it.

  The massive walls. Pride, pain, and elation swelled as the stones rose; devastation ruled when they broke or failed. Magics so large as to crumble cities had been expended hereabouts, only to be quenched by more blood and stone. Anger had been trapped between the elder and newer walls, furies soaked deep as the storm floods that raged through the channel.

  But I was not interested in the distant past. I would be here for days if I could not sort out the recent from the ancient, small from large. How did one find the pebble in the raging river, the grain of sand fallen into the ground wheat?

  Seek a precise emotion and then trace its source.

  The boy, of course, startled by his discovery. He knew death; all in the hirudo knew death. But this one would have surprised him, made him curious and a bit fearful. Perhaps the victim was not so different from him in age.

  Another lesson. We all believe we are immortal, no matter the death around us.

 
I almost didn’t grasp it. The scents fooled me—incense, moonflowers, oils of rose and ephrain, the latter a pungent rarity found in bathhouses. But the exotic threads entwined the curious boy and a pattern formed around willow bark and a stained white bundle tumbling downward. . . .

  Before I could form a conclusion, the tide of visions receded. What dregs of power I had brought to this enterprise had dissipated quickly and cold seeped into my bones.

  “I’m finished here,” I said, rising on unsteady legs. “I need to go.” The wavering light from my bracelet would not see me home.

  “As you wish.” The old woman’s torch lit our way through the dark thicket. Arms like lead, eyes watering from the icy air, I could scarce push through the thicket. As willow branches scraped my face and frozen hands, I clung to the last image: the spinning bundle of white . . . falling. What did it mean?

  We reached the channel and the path through the settlement. I trudged through the mud behind Demetreo’s determined back. Almost crashed into him when he halted at the spot where I’d met him. Then, like a latch snapping into place, two clear questions emerged from the turmoil in my skull.

  “I detected naught to contradict your story,” I said. “Clearly the child’s death was not accomplished here. I shall report your insistence to Coroner Bastien. But I need to know what happened to her wrapping.”

  “Her wrapping?” Demetreo hesitated just long enough to tell me I’d made him curious.

  “At some time before her body was deposited beside the willows, the child was draped in a white cloth, yet she was not wrapped when she was delivered to the necropolis. Coroner Bastien will need the cloth. There may have been other garments underneath, different from the ones she was wearing.”

  The Ciceron jerked his chin to the old woman. She hobbled away.

  Unlikely that the lily dress was here. Demetreo would never have delivered the girl to Bastien if he’d seen it. And the girl had been strangled, yet the white cloth in my vision had been stained with blood.

  A spindly man returned instead of the crone and whispered in the headman’s ear.

  “There was no winding cloth,” said Demetreo, firmly. “No garments but those you saw.”

  I believed him. What I had seen was truth, but not necessarily the truth of the moment the child came to rest beside the willows. Rolling down the steep slope had abraded her skin and torn her poor garments. Perhaps the winding cloth had been ripped off her partway down, the scraps blown away in the wind or buried in snow or mud. Or perhaps it was removed before she was dressed in rags, so none could identify its origin. For I saw no conclusion but that she had been delivered to the willows from above.

  All of which led to my second question. One I could not ask of this man, for the asking itself was a certain risk. But I would discover its answer: What house scented with moonflowers lay just inside the Elder Wall of Palinur, so high above the hirudo piggery?

  CHAPTER 9

  Shivering until my bones near rattled, I dragged myself uphill, wondering if every day was to be so draining as these first two. Yet I could not but feel a joyous awe that soothed long grievance. My second bent was not entirely dead. No matter the complications if the Registry found out, the fullness of the gods’ gift lived in me. Using both had never felt wrong or aberrant. And my grandsire had encouraged that belief—until my fall from his grace.

  The mystery of the child murderer must await the morning. The Temple heights lay just above the hirudo. Nobles, members of the Sinduri Council, Karish hierarchs, and other people of wealth and influence made their homes in the district. But even if I could find the exact street on a starless, moonless night with snow threatening, what excuse would allow me to barge in and ask who lived there? The villain would likely have me dead before I could muster an accusation. Observing Bastien had given me a useful lesson in subtlety when pursuing a murderer. It would certainly help if I could handle a sword.

  Palinur’s streets were deserted. Cold seemed to have driven every honest man and beast under cover, and I kept my eyes open for the dishonest. Taking lodgings nearer the necropolis could be helpful for many reasons.

  Every day we remained in our town house ate into our pitiful treasury. Tonight, without fail, I must give Soflet and the others notice. And though the thought of asking galled beyond words, perhaps our faithful steward would know where I might find cheaper lodgings. No pureblood acquaintance would.

  Despite my weariness, I took a short detour through the Clothmakers’ District. Nowhere close to riots or burnings, it might be a respectable place to seek a house we could afford. Juli’s safety was paramount.

  My magelight revealed a dreadfully grim prospect. Dark, cramped tenements overhung the dye shops and merchant stalls, almost touching above the rivers of slop that served for lanes. Stretched ropes crisscrossed the narrow space between, hung with lengths of new-dyed cloth or displays of some weaver’s art.

  I could not imagine life in such a place. Even at summer’s height no sun would reach the ground. No leaf or blade of green would sprout, nor could a breath of fresher air ever sweep the acrid reek of dye pots and wool finishers from between the close-packed buildings. I’d never considered how our house in the Vintners’ District was so well positioned to catch Ardra’s golden sun and fairest breezes . . . did those ever come again.

  Even as I mourned summer, the scent of honey clover wafted round me on a tendril of warmth. My skin prickled oddly of something that was not frost, more the sensation of balmy nights than any familiar magic. Glancing round, I glimpsed a slight movement a few quercae behind me. Probably someone late home to supper, as I was.

  I quickened my pace. Encounters with smirking Cicerons and corpses frozen in ditches and coal scrapes had done no good for my already fractured nerves. It was likely a fox or a cat I’d seen. Who could traverse these tarry districts without cursing when his boots filled with icy muck or slipped on frozen ruts?

  The lane opened onto a small cobbled square, where all the district’s streets and alleys came together. Here one would find a font fed by one of Palinur’s twelve wells and graced by some sculpted figure from Aurellian myth. One would also find a pillory and flogging post. Ever-practical King Caedmon had believed justice should be administered within sight of a man’s home. He’d said it required fewer strokes to properly chastise a villain when his neighbors’ wives and children could witness it.

  I hesitated. If some rogue was indeed following me, I might lose him easier in the darker edges of the square. But instead I struck out across the cobbles as fast as I could manage, straight through the center, using my last whimpers of magelight to avoid crashing into the posts and pillory. When I reached the far side, my light was dead.

  From the shelter of a drying frame I peered back across the square, squinting. Wind gusts sucked fat snowflakes from the heavy sky and set them dancing, thicker by the moment. And yet . . . My stomach lurched.

  Two tall slender shapes stood beside the font—I’d swear the same two I’d glimpsed that morning, naked, one male, one female, their exquisite markings gleaming bright against the pitchy night.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. Surely this was but imagining wrought by exhaustion and nerves and a craving for beauty that seemed lost from the world. When I looked again, the two were vanishing into a dark alley.

  I charged after them.

  Three strides into the alley and a rope across my shins sent me face-first onto hard-frozen muck. Air escaped my chest in a great burning whoosh. As I fought to reclaim it, someone sat on my hind end. Firm hands—warm—dragged my wrists behind and pressed them to my back at the waist.

  My feet scrabbled for purchase. The pressure was not so great. If I could just get my knees under me, maybe I could lunge forward . . . throw him off.

  Only I couldn’t.

  Angry and humiliated, I growled. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  I didn’t believe in Danae any more than I believed in angels or water sprites. This was someone’s trick, an
elaborate illusion.

  “Thou’rt dull as mudstone, human.” His words slid into my hearing like warmed oil. “Spirit bound by walls of iron. Ears plugged with tree sap. Blind, too, art thou, save with thy hands and feathers, so I am told. So we must descend to brutish grappling to force thy attention.”

  The scent of rosemary filled my nostrils as he leaned closer, hot breath on my neck and ear.

  “Heed my word, Remeni-son. Delve not so deep. Some boundaries are not meant for human trespass. Is the world not broken enough that thou must seek out dangers beyond thy understanding?”

  “I’ve no idea what you mean.” Feathers . . . my quills? “Do you speak of my drawings?”

  He sighed, breathing the scent of honey on my cheek, then shifted his weight. “How can we warn one who refuses to see? Thou shouldst destroy him and be done.” He was not speaking to me this time.

  “Prideful are those humans who touch the heart of the Everlasting.” A woman’s voice, scarce more than a whisper. Why did it set my every nerve aflame? “But they learn. Adapt. This one will. Thus, I choose not. Not this day.”

  “Tell me,” I said, trying to lift and turn my head to see. “What are you talking about?”

  The one on my back shoved my head to the cold ground. Blue markings gleamed from his long fingers like twined strands of sapphires embedded in his skin, yet I could sense no magic.

  “We say this only,” said the male. “Heed thy workings; learn of the true world. Trespass the boundary again, and thy wit is forfeit. We have forged a weapon apurpose to chastise thee.”

  A different finger touched my cheek, gently this time. The markings were coiled patterns of azure and indigo, and the scent—her scent, for I knew this was the female—was meadowsweet and sun-warmed grass.