by Carol Berg
“Ah yes, into the realm of angels.” According to some, good King Eodward was actually Caedmon’s son, instead of his great-great-great grandson. Supposedly the boy prince had lived with the angels for a hundred and forty-seven years before claiming his throne and becoming the greatest king in the history of the Middle Kingdoms. “Earth’s Mother, Gilles, did you really think I’d gone mad like old Cartamandua?”
“Certainly not.” His cheeks could have roasted a goose. “I was just worried and asked Uncle Guilian if they’d heard any news of you.”
“I’ve got all my wits for the moment,” I said. “Truly I’m doing some of the best work I’ve ever done. Though it’s odd—”
“Oh!” His head popped up. “Speaking of your best work. Perhaps it was not quite your best. Master Pluvius is having the curators’ portraits completed for you. They want them hung for, well, I can’t quite remember what occasion. It’s too bad you can’t do it yourself.”
“But the portraits were completed months ago. You know I can’t leave a portrait unfinished.”
Pluvius had never explained the delay in unveiling the results of my first senior commission, but neither had he mentioned any need for modification. And for one pureblood artist to alter the work of another risked compromising the image’s truth. The disharmony was instantly detectable to anyone who took the trouble to look.
“You must come to the ceremony, then, and see. Wash off the stink, but come.”
All of this was profoundly disturbing. Curators telling people I was ill and unstable, and then sending me packing—burying me in a contract that would keep me away from everyone I knew. Claiming that grief for my family was affecting my work, and then altering my best efforts. Master Pluvius had praised his own portrait and told me he’d never been so proud to show one of his portraitist’s works to their subjects.
My recent experience with the child and the soldier glared at me like noonday sun in summer. What if my magic had included something odd, something secret? I’d never paid much attention to the backgrounds of the portraits. I had chosen the setting for some relevance to the person. The Archives for Pluvius, vineyards for Albin, and so forth. After that, as long as they were well crafted and harmonious with the subject’s appearance, I paid little attention. The truth of the person was my focus. Had this prompted Pluvius’s vague warning on my first morning at the necropolis?
“How many were deemed incomplete?” I said. “And whose?”
“Two or three, so I heard, but I’ve no clue as to which.” He shrugged an apology and picked up his pen. “I’d best get back to work.”
“Could you find out? And also when the unveiling is to be. I’ll be working late tonight, but perhaps tomorrow evening you could meet me at the Star. We could have supper as we used to. But, Gilles”—unnamable urgency swelled in my chest, compressing my lungs and squeezing my heart—“don’t tell anyone I’ve been here. I’d like to surprise the curators with how quickly I’ve . . . recovered.”
Gilles grinned. “An exceptional plan! Tomorrow night, eighth hour. I have to work late every night since you’ve gone. Now you’re better, you’ll be back here and get me caught up.”
I doubted that. More so by the moment.
* * *
“Leave off this one,” said Bastien, barging into the studio as I dipped my pen to begin the fourth portrait of the afternoon. “We’ve other matters to look into.”
It had been foolish to promise five more portraits after traipsing over half the city. I’d not returned until two hours past midday. Now the daylight was long gone. Though Constance had installed torches in the preparation room, firelight never yielded as good a result. Before magic, before grace, my own eyes must comprehend the lines, planes, and textures of the physical being before me. No enchantment could compensate for poor observation.
“I’ll begin with him tomorrow,” I said, already calculating all Juli and I must do to prepare for our change of residence. “My business took longer than I expected this morning.”
He waved off my explanation, poked his head outside the door, and bellowed for Garen to retrieve my current subject. “. . . and tell Constance to keep him good and cold. He’s a ripe belly wound.”
My unused parchment went back on the stack.
“The blowflies will have already settled in his gut when he died,” said Bastien at a more conversational volume, as if I’d asked him to expound on his morbid pronouncement. “They’re tucked in there, warm and working despite the outside cold. He’s going to cave in any time now.”
Shuddering, I averted my eyes as Garen and Pleury carried the corpse away. Something to anticipate overnight. My head, back, and right leg yet throbbed with pain from the portraits I’d done this afternoon, as if axe and spear had violated my own flesh. Had Pluvius or any of the other portraitists heard of such a thing? Better I had asked Gilles about that than the “flickering” idiocy. Though either topic could feed rumors of madness. And if I’d been stupid enough to mention a Danae encounter . . . Did madmen believe they were sane even when raving?
Trying to shake off the worry, I wiped my pens and installed each in the leather pen case my mother’s brother had given me at my sealing feast. Erich had created exquisite catalogues of bird drawings for an eccentric ducessa in Morian. Now that would be a pleasant study. Outdoors in fine weather. Inside when the snow flew, coloring the illustrations. Clean. Innocent. Highly unlikely to involve dangerous talents, phantom pain, Cicerons, corpses, or murderers.
Having dispatched Garen on some other mission, Bastien planted himself in the doorway.
I needed to be home. The conversation with Gilles unnerved me more by the hour. Purebloods who went mad vanished. Their families locked them away and laid heavy bindings on them, so their skewed magic couldn’t harm anyone. And if one had no family, who took on that responsibility? It was difficult to believe a simple error of personal discipline and an investigator’s frustration could carry such dread implications. Were the rumors the work of Pons alone? If not, then who else and why? I needed time to think. Time to prepare.
The coroner’s boot tapped a quiet rhythm on the cracked floor.
“What matters have we to look into?” I said, crushing my own impatience as I placed the last pen in the case. I had best learn to accommodate Bastien. I doubted I’d be leaving his service any time soon.
“You hold to the Elder Gods it seems, and in a prayerful manner, not just mouthing. Am I right in that?”
I wrenched the buckle on the writing case and snatched my cloak from where it lay across the dry laver. Would the damnable ordinary never stop prying? “I believed I made clear—”
“Now don’t get all prune-faced again. In the ordinary way, I’d not care if you sacrificed beetles to a lizard god or held that men turn into tree stumps and women to barley when we die. But we’ve a matter needs investigating in a goddess’s temple, and I need to know if you’re on good terms with divine Arrosa.”
This was about the dead girl child. Despite all, curiosity pricked. “My father’s kin were ever devoted to the Lord of Fire; my mother’s to the Lord of Vines.”
Neither family had been strict in observance, taking more stock in our gods’ celebrations of magic and life than in sacrifice or arcane practices or overreliance on mythic signs and omens. Since the ravaging at Pontia, I’d lived as if no gods existed . . . save when I touched magic and knew better. Perhaps our easy relations with the divine had been presumptuous.
I tugged my mask from my belt and fingered the cool silk. “I’ve naught but passing familiarity with the Goddess of Love and her practices.”
Bastien grimaced and scratched his jaw, where bristles left from his shaving had already sprouted into a hearty thatch. “No point in my going up there to ask questions. Commoner folk aren’t invited into the presence of Arrosa’s priestesses. The Writ forbids even those of us with the force of law in hand, unless we’ve sure evidence of their involvement in a crime. Most inconvenient.”
Caedmon’s Writ of Balance had codified a truce between the priests and priestesses of the Elder Gods, the Karish hierarchs, purebloods, and the Crown law, preventing any one of them from interfering with the inner workings of the other. Only the king could overrule the Writ in any matter. Inconvenient, indeed.
“But surely there are more than priestesses to summon to an inquest.” Even as I tossed out this sop, I knew it was foolish. “Though I suppose without knowing the child’s mother or how such a child had come to be at the temple, you’d have to fetch in half the city. And you’re not looking for just one villain. One pair of hands strangled the girl, but I’d vow there were more who put her in the way of it. Some who just turned a blind eye.” Her mother, the priestesses?
“Aye. She’s three days dead and none’s raised a hue and cry. And ’tis a fool’s exercise to summon any to witness to murder when we’ve naught but a gutter child and a sketch too outlandish to believe. Aaghh!” He growled and spat. “’Tisn’t even the crowd of testy witnesses would be the worst problem, but the danger to my living past the morrow if it becomes known I’m investigating a royal murder. Powerful people take offense at the suggesting of crimes that could remove their heads.”
Now I was paying attention, it took no skill of logic to catch his aim. “You want me to act as your runner—to visit the temple and ask questions without raising a possible murderer’s suspicions.” A task that had naught to do with portraits or my bent, and thus skirted the terms of the contract. And yet the prospect of learning more . . . of exposing that murderer . . .
His eyes sparked and his thicket brows lifted. That he found it unnecessary to speak, much less persuade or command me, was wholly annoying. But of course, my magical investigation in the hirudo had already taken me well outside my duties.
“Purebloods do not bathe in public. . . .”
My feeble play bounced off him like a soap bubble. He said nothing.
“. . . though if a pureblood is an adherent of Arrosa, I suppose they make some arrangement for private baths. But how ever would I introduce the topic of the girl?”
“Surely you’ve some kin whose contract might involve Ardra’s royal household.” So casual he was, leaning against the doorpost as if discussing the price of fish. “You could say a kinsman had done a portrait of the girl, heard she was living at the temple, and sent you a trinket he’d promised her, or something like.”
“But I’m a wretched liar . . . and to a priestess . . . gods!”
“A ruse. For justice’s sake. No one will ask which relative it might be.”
“Hardly difficult when I’ve exactly one living kins—”
My blurted confession popped Bastien’s head up. But to stop was to give the fact weight. Personal information provided handles for manipulation, the very reason pureblood discipline demanded strict privacy. So I babbled on.
“But my sister visited Palinur a year ago to study the buttressed vault in the Karish cathedral. It’s believable she might have sketched the child on the same visit.”
“A pureblood with no family,” said Bastien, thoughtfully. “I’d wondered.”
Naturally, he would have noted my slip. The man was like a hook trap.
“My family is not your—”
“Not my business. I know. But it explains a few things.” He straightened, enlivened like a hound catching a scent. “So, you’ll do this? ’Twould be a coup to bring down a child strangler.”
“And profitable, if the child has royal blood,” I snapped.
Bastien’s broad, ruddy features hardened. Then he shook his head slowly, flaring his nostrils and pressing his wide lips together for a few moments, as if holding his words until they had mellowed.
“Easy for you to judge me from your lofty perch, pureblood,” he said, soft and intense. “And easy for a rich man to scorn my pay. But think on this: There’s a number of these dead soldiers would bring more certain coin than this strangled girl, and with far less risk. I do decent work here and see no shame to get paid for it. If catching this devil brings a benison that jingles, all to the good. But such a devil deserves to get caught.”
No matter that my perch was no longer lofty nor my treasury replete, his point was undeniable. Even after so short a time, it was clear that those in Necropolis Caton did decent work. Likely far more valuable than bird catalogues. My future lay with Bastien for now. In the girl child’s case, even if our reasons differed, our goal was the same.
I dipped my head and spread my hands to acknowledge his point. “Do I have your permission to use magic in this business?”
He nodded. “Aye. To pursue this felon, whatever you need.”
I held out my pen case. “Then, if you would keep this in your chamber . . .” I’d hate to lose it, and there was no use to carrying it back and forth every day. And, too, it bore my family crest. The fewer who noted that the better.
Bastien’s slow, smug grin blossomed in a way I was coming to detest.
“Knew it,” he said, as he took the pen case. “Saw it in you from the first. We suit.”
“We are not partners.” I slipped on my mask and strode down the stair and into the night.
CHAPTER 12
“How may I introduce you to the high priestess, domé?” asked the young woman standing in the doorway of the perfumed salon. Her gown of summer blue and white drifted in the rising heat of the braziers set about the floor.
Though I’d just sat on the silk-cushioned banquette, my head was already swimming with the excessive heat, the hot wine offered on my arrival, and the certainty that I had no idea what I was doing. Should I question this woman? Would she know the children here or would she tattle to her superiors that the pureblood visitor was strangely inquisitive?
Surely my brow flushed as deep a scarlet as her own smooth complexion. “Are you a priestess of the goddess?” I said, falling back on the customs of rank. “I cannot reveal myself or my business to one of lesser status.”
Lowering her eyes, the young woman pointed a long finger at a white ribbon around her slender neck. “I am but an initiate of the temple, but I am privileged to serve Sinduria Irinyi as her handmaiden. Please forgive me, domé, but even one of the gods’ chosen must have urgent business to intrude upon the Sinduria’s evening prayers.”
“You may tell her—” On my walk from the necropolis I’d decided that using Juli as a ruse to obtain an interview was purest idiocy. If someone in this place had truly conspired in murder, it would be dangerous to involve my sister in any way. Yet now I was here, the story I had concocted instead—wishing to do a set of portraits of temple residents—seemed as insubstantial as smoke. Surely something closer to truth would be easier to manage. “Tell her I seek guidance on a private matter of the heart and conscience.”
The girl bowed and retreated, and I settled back against silk cushions. The perfumed smoke tempted me to close my watering eyes, to relax, to surrender. Deep in the sprawling temple precincts, someone picked at a lute in an ancient mode. The music floated on the overheated air, insinuating itself into my flesh, hinting at sacred mysteries and fragrant nights under the goddess’s moon.
I wished I could shed my pelisse and perhaps the brocade doublet as well. If this priestess took too long, I’d end up a soggy dumpling floating in a puddle. A stinking puddle. The stench of the necropolis rose from my garments in rancid waves.
Blinking away my weariness, I forced attention to my surroundings. I was here to uncover evidence of corruption and murder.
Arrosa’s Temple had been in decline for decades. Women’s mysteries centered ever on Samele, the Goddess Mother. And my grandsire had postulated that although men’s thoughts would ever turn to physical love, King Eodward’s skill at war and just governance had directed men’s devotions to Kemen Sky Lord or the Karish god, Iero.
Certainly the temple’s artworks were uninspired. Low, heavy ceilings were hung with ornate lamps that smoked worse than torches. Every hall and vault was painted with flat, smoke-dulled rende
rings of humans and beasts engaged in elaborate feasting or processions through indistinguishable fields and vineyards.
This room was no different. Every table and shelf was burdened with heavy ornaments—alabaster eggs, lifeless bronze birds, thick-walled cups. The painted panels were separated by pilasters in the mode of barley sheaves, and the doorway framed by a painted brick arch, as if one might walk right through into another part of the scene.
But a stone frieze, far more distinctive than the murals, drew me across the chamber. Just above my eye level, it bisected the walls into upper panels and lower. Against an intricate background of forest and ponds, worked in such low relief they seemed but an imagining, the sculptor had imposed well-defined, lifelike human forms. In the smoky lamplight, the figures took on a lovely semblance of truth. The subject matter, though . . . The naked revelers lounging in these ethereal glades were twined in ways that did naught to cool my overheated blood. Overseeing these activities hovered divine Arrosa herself, the crescent moon above her head. If I closed my eyes, the impression of that moon shimmered silver in the darkness . . . magic.
“The frieze is evocative, is it not? Created by one of your own kind.”
I pivoted sharply. A tall, handsome woman, robed in silks the hues of lavender, violet, and plum, had stepped through an open panel in the wall. Blue paint made her gray eyes deep and huge; her full lips were stained crimson. Though her skin appeared smooth as a child’s, she was not young; the cloud of wheat-colored hair that framed her refined features was mottled with gray. A wide collar of intricate beadwork, gold and lapis and amethyst, marked her as a Sinduria, a high priestess of the Elder Gods.
