Dust and Light

by Carol Berg

  In my current state, even such a loveless act would have been quite easy. Save for discipline. Save for the pervasive odor of debauchery. A child of eight or ten would find no joy in serving men. Had they plied her with tinctured wine?

  Arrosa’s rites made good sense. To wash away pent anger and frustration, to empty out one’s surfeit of grief or the stench of failure and replace it with bodily abandon must surely rank with the holiest of experiences. But I could not. Certainly not here. But she had to think I could.

  “The goddess already moves in me, I think.” My eyes explored Eliana’s womanly body with deliberate thoroughness. “Proceed.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Stretching out my arms, I stood cold and unembarrassed as the woman Eliana removed my shirt and underdrawers. She closed the chest and led me around the vine-covered lattice.

  A mantle of mist drifted over a rectangular bathing pool designed for one or two, not a public throng. The tepidarium chamber was grand, though, ringed with a variety of ugly statues, both male and female. Across from the lattice wall, an open arch and a few steps down led into a smaller chamber filled with billowing steam—the caldarium, the hot pool.

  Eliana poured water into a bowl and mingled in droplets from several flasks along with rose petals from a basket. Dipping a linen square into the bowl, she invited me to recline on a cushioned bench beside the pool. I stretched out on my left side, and she began to wash my back. Goddess Mother . . .

  Questions, Lucian. The lily child. “Have you grown up here?” I said, propping my head on one fist.

  “Nay. My mam was a tap girl at a sop-house outside Avenus. Serving the Goddess of Love kept us from starving after my da was killed soldiering.” Her firm circular scrubbing moved lower and her voice was low and throaty and inviting. “Mam taught me all her prayers and rites.”

  She dipped the cloth again and worked down my right leg from buttock to foot. My fist clenched stone hard as I fought to keep my mind on business. I must remain this unpleasant pureblood who had come here to discard his inconvenient bastard.

  “Then how did you come here?”

  Her strong, sure hands rolled me to the other side. Then she began again. “Mam believed the goddess would grant me a better life than hers. She held off till I was fourteen. I hated waiting.”

  “Only fourteen,” I said, as she stretched my arm toward her and began washing at my shoulder. “So young?”

  “We’ve several much younger here in the household. The goddess takes us when she will.”

  Would they truly send a child to a grown man? I needed answers before I fell into my old sin. Despite my disgust, her closeness, her touch, the damp heat of her as she bent over me, was entirely distracting.

  “Do all of them come from taverns and sop-houses?”

  She sat back on her heels and met my glare, puzzled. “Certainly not. Yet what does it matter, domé? Divine Arrosa purifies us. Sanctifies our work. Makes holy our giving.”

  My left hand clenched, recalling the cold, dead flesh my fingers had traced. The bruises. The stillness. Eye sockets that housed no spark. The shift stained with blood. Blood entirely unholy.

  I yanked my arm from her grasp, shoved her away, and shot to my feet. I towered over her. “I am one of the gods’ chosen,” I bellowed, echoing every arrogant pureblood rant I’d ever heard. “How dare this temple provide me a tavern whore’s daughter old enough to birth brats of her own? You are all the same! You’ll lure me to take my pleasure with you, then try to steal my magic. Send me an innocent. And young; the younger the better. I prefer smoother, cleaner hands.”

  Eliana rose, all dignity, eyes lowered. “Domé, we have strict rules. Our youngest cannot participate—”

  “The goddess brought me here to seek solace after a broken love. You’ve all convinced me of the necessity, assured me of your service. I must be free of this!” I clamped my hands to my skull. “Do as you are bound by your goddess. Bring me the solace I require.”

  Eliana retreated without turning her back on me or meeting my gaze. Indeed, my blood was pounding, my discipline near fractured by wine and lust and horror. Until these three days past, I had never truly comprehended the depravity of the world. I felt tainted. Filthy.

  I snatched up one of the damp linen squares and scoured my face.

  The distant music had stopped. Faint drips and seeps punctuated a heavy stillness. Had my ruse worked? With every moment that passed, new doubts crept in. The woman had appeared so quickly, but now . . . What if they had summoned the Registry?

  No. The Registry would never heed a complaint from an ordinary, not even Irinyi, unless it was a matter of her own contracted pureblood. Did she even have one?

  More likely they were fetching a child . . . preparing her. Holy gods. And here I was, naked as a plucked goose.

  Hoping the goddess would forgive yet another violation, I slipped into her pool only half cleansed. The pleasantly warm water closed over my head, tickling and teasing my skin as if filled with constantly bursting bubbles.

  I stayed under as long as breath allowed, scrubbing at my hair and every bit of flesh I could reach. If refreshment was a sign of Arrosa’s favor, then I had done her no wrong.

  Shaking my head like a wet hound, I surfaced for breath and inhaled for a second plunge. A quiet sneeze arrested my movement.

  Without rippling the water, I turned, peering into the shifting lamplight. No one was there, unless . . .

  I rubbed droplets from my eyes. Behind one of the statues a shapeless lump of gray moved ever so slightly, resolving itself into a slight girl in a gray tunic and bare feet.

  My outrage near burst its bounds. Horrid and depraved to send a child to a naked man for his pleasure. But how much more cruel to send her alone.

  “Come out,” I said softly, propping my arms on the edge of the pool, determined not to frighten her. “Come into the light. I promise I won’t hurt you. Whatever you think. Whatever anyone’s told you.”

  She edged out from behind the statue but kept her back pressed to the wall. Her hair was dark and short, her pale face all eyes. She clutched a bundle of some kind—linen, perhaps, very like the cushions on the bench.

  “Come, sit on the bench. I’ll stay in the pool if that pleases you better.”

  Still not a word, and still she moved sidewise. Deliberately. Toward the caldarium arch.

  I lunged from the pool just as she broke into a run. Long strides took me across the chamber, through the caldarium arch, and down the steps. I caught her just as she reached a stair beyond a second archway. Clamping a hand over her mouth, I hauled her back to the tepidarium. No one beyond this chamber must hear us. Fortunately the tepidarium itself had no hiding places and no detectable magics.

  When I sat her on the bench—harder than I intended—and transferred my hands to her upper arms, she bit off a whimper and averted her eyes. Her flat chest heaved like a bellows beneath her ungraceful garment. She could not have reached her womanhood as yet.

  Suppressing fury, I squatted in front of her and kept my voice low. “I’m not going to hurt you. Honestly. I just want to talk a little. Stay still and I’ll let go.”

  “Didn’t mean no harm. No offense. Didn’t know there was a Seeker.” Her murmur was soft, as if meant for herself alone. Her eyes were squeezed shut. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. Didn’t mean no harm . . .”

  “We’ll just talk. I won’t hurt you. . . .”

  Both of us continued our litanies, as if creating some new musical counterpoint spoken in whispers. When at last I felt her muscles stop straining, I loosed my grip, finally removing my hands and opening my palms as if to show her she was free. But I didn’t remove them so far as to prevent my grabbing her again did she take advantage.

  She was no sacred bath attendant sent to pleasure a man, but a servant. Her gray tunic and leggings were the coarsest kersey, her face smudged. The small hands that clutched her bundle of dirty linen were cracked and reddened, though she could be little older than the de
ad girl child. Ten at most. Her dark hair was cut short and ragged. . . .

  “They made her look like you,” I said softly. “Like a scrub girl. Dressed her in rags. Blacked her hair; chopped it off.”

  Her eyes popped open so wide I thought they might swallow me. “Please, lord, please. Just wanted to see a bit of magic. Please don’t—”

  I grasped her arms again, careful not to pinch, and I shook her gently. “Hush. Look at my face. I’ll not tell. I’d never hurt you. I’ve a little sister not much older. I’ll take my hands away and not touch you again, if you just stay still and answer me. Tell me your name, and I’ll work a bit of magic for you.”

  “Name’s Gab,” she said, flinching so violently, my chest near cracked.

  “Good. That’s good. Forgive me for hauling you over here so roughly, Gab, but I can’t let anyone hear us. I need to know about the little girl. You know exactly who I mean, don’t you?”

  She shook her head briskly.

  “The truth, Gab, and I swear I’ll tell no one you were here watching. We must be quick.”

  Whoever was coming to supervise my devotions, it was not this child. Guilt nagged at me for detaining her, but I was sure she knew the dead girl. This might be my only opportunity to learn more.

  “Now, again. What was the girl child’s name, the one who was so hurt, the one they dressed up to look like you?”

  “Priestesses called her Fleure, but she said that weren’t her true name.”

  Flower . . . Gods, the lily.

  “Do you know the man who hurt Fleure? I want to make sure he can never do that again. Not ever. May Deunor, Lord of Fire and Magic, be my witness, all I want of you is a few answers.”

  “Don’t know his name. She were so scairt of him, she daren’t speak it, nor even her own. She called him the devil lord, and said if he ever come to fetch her, she was done for.”

  A lord. That was something. “All right, Gab. That’s good. When he’d come to visit her, did you ever see his face?”

  She shook her head and clutched her bundle tighter. “He didn’t never visit her, not since he brung her. She said he’d come to the temple sometimes, but always chose men to bath him, so I wasn’t allowed near. But on that night I was scrubbing the front steps, and he marched right past me and I knew who it was right off. He were dark and hairy, as she always told me, and he yelled at Hostler to cool his horse and rub it down good, or he’d whip him. And his boots were shined like a black mirror glass. I called him the Bear Lord with Shiny Boots.”

  Damn, damn, damn! If only I knew something of court nobles. Perhaps Bastien did.

  Gab was shivering. “I tried to get to her to warn her, but it took me so long, she was already fetched. Her pretty dress was left lie, and her fine shift and her gold hair.” She swallowed a sob. “She said he’d ever swore to rip out her hair. She were so pretty. So kind. Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know.” The answer lay in words like soul-dead savagery and demonic cruelty—dry concepts that had taken on their terrible life for me only after my family’s slaughter.

  “Just one more question,” I said, glancing at the lattice wall and the caldarium archway. I wanted much, much more, but could not allow Gab to get caught. “Who among the priestesses and others in the temple helped him? Did you see?”

  Her smudged brow crinkled. “Didn’t see nobody. By the time I got down here and saw what he was about with her—” She heaved a great, wet sob.

  “Here? He brought Fleure here to the pureblood baths and was . . . lying . . . with her? Hurting her?”

  “Had her head dangling over the pool. Not swyving, but blacking her poor cut-off hair, so’s it was ugly like mine—as you said. He’d his other great hand on her neck, choking so she couldn’t cry. Weren’t no one else with ’em.” Gab’s lips thinned into a line much too hard for a child. “But ’twas sure Motre Varouna would have took him to her. She tends all the young ones, pretties them, and chooses which go to Seekers what ask for their sort. And she’s the one knows about hair blacking or soaking the color right out, as a Seeker might want it. She—”

  Gab inhaled sharply and twisted her neck toward the lattice wall. She stayed sitting, but quivered like a trapped rabbit. “Please, please let me go, lord,” she whispered. “I’m whipped if I’m caught here with a Seeker, less’n they’ve asked for one like me special.”

  Multiple footsteps approached from behind the vines. But I had to know. “Is there a drain here? That’s where he took her, isn’t it? The drain?”

  “Down the stair.” Her throat was so constricted the words scarce made it through, but she stayed put and pointed to the caldarium.

  “Good. Now run,” I said, waving her away, “but peek back this way when you’re well hid.” As she scurried off, I snatched one of the jeweled lamps and quickly bound it to the inflation spell I’d worked in the hirudo. With a word and an infusion of magic, fountains of brilliant light—ruby, emerald, and sapphire—filled the chamber between the pool and the lattice wall, as if the goddess herself had arrived from Idrium.

  Under cover of the light beams and gasps from the direction of the lattice wall, I slipped into the pool again. And I opened my palms in thanks toward the caldarium arch, where two great dark eyes reflected my paltry bit of magic.

  * * *

  I knew Motre Varouna instantly. Not from her soft young body or the dimples that framed her all-encompassing smile. Indeed I had expected anyone called motre or “second mother” to be a crone or at least of the maturity of the high priestess, not a woman younger than I.

  No, it was the woman’s fingers gave her away. Her knuckles were white as ivory, as the tips gouged the slim shoulder of a girl in her early teens. When the woman said, “Domé,” and bowed so gracefully, those fingers slid subtly up the child’s neck and into her shining, unbound hair. A telltale yank and the girl winced and slipped gracefully to her knees, her sleeveless silk shift floating about pale, trembling limbs. The child wore nothing else.

  The woman’s plump fingers, rigid as a stone spider, settled atop the girl’s bowed head in a mockery of affection. It made me want to vomit.

  “I am Varouna, servant of Arrosa, mistress of the temple’s younger charges,” said the woman in a voice like cream. “I have prepared one of Arrosa’s newest servants to assist you in your distress, Seeker. She yearns for the goddess’s mysteries and will do anything required to aid your devotions. She trembles, as do I, at this glory we viewed as we arrived! Was it an offering of magic to the goddess or her bounteous response to your devotion?”

  “My particular devotions are none of your concern.”

  I climbed out of the pool, sorry if my looming nakedness terrorized the girl further—I doubted there was much help for that—but I wanted to get these two out of the chamber and have some time alone. I had more work to do before leaving the temple.

  “If I frightened you, servant”—interesting that she was no priestess—“then that is unfortunate, but I begin to think the goddess has already answered me through her divine cousin, the Lord of Fire. Only a fool would accept her most bountiful gift before going penitent to Lord Deunor’s Temple. So take your charge away and leave me to my closing devotions.”

  Disappointment soured Varouna’s round face. “But surely you need service . . . to dress if naught else. This maiden’s hands are soft, her manners exquisite, her blood rare and entirely worthy to grace the presence of the gods’ chosen. She is well trained.”

  Her fingers riffled the girl’s silken hair and traced the soft line of her neck and shoulder. No alleyway procurer in Montesard had spoken in tones so ripe with allurement—and avarice.

  I memorized the gatzé woman’s face. “In the humility of the gods’ chastisement, I shall tend to my own dressing. But later. I must experience the scouring of the caldarium first.”

  The woman’s simpering hardened like plaster. “Then do please recall that the Sinduria has a document for you to sign before you depart the temple. Her ha
ndmaiden will await where she left you.”

  Varouna’s plump fingers snaked into the girl’s hair and dragged her toward the lattice wall.

  I released a beam of ruby magelight to strike the wall in front of Varouna. When she yelped and spun round, I splayed my fingers, smearing the light beam as if taking a brush to a line of wet ink until rosy light wreathed the wondering child.

  Varouna jerked her hand away from the girl so fast, I thought she might fall backward.

  “Be sure, servant, that the goddess intends no rebuke of this maid,” I said, laying my fist to my breast and ordering my features in pious ardor as if I’d naught to do with the display. “’Tis a part of the great revelation of this rite. From this day, I shall become divine Arrosa’s devoted worshipper, striving to be worthy of such tender service on a future visit. I anticipate such devotions with the greatest delight.”

  As she bowed, wordless, and they vanished behind the lattice, I bared my teeth like a wolf. I would enjoy seeing Bastien turn this vile woman over to a magistrate.

  Now quickly, before Irinyi’s handmaid came looking for me.

  I turned slowly, examining the pool chamber, trying to put myself in the mind of the villain. Gab’s testimony had changed everything. Fleure’s death was not the result of some lustful temple encounter devolved into guilt or frenzy. Child and man knew each other. He’d brought her here. Threatened to rip out her hair . . . why? He’d bent her over the pool as he blacked her hair, silencing her with his great paw, disguising her as the lowest of servants while she yet lived. Deliberate. Purposeful.

  Had her death been an accident of the silencing? I didn’t believe that. Didn’t want it. I wanted him to hang.

  So, where had she died? Would he have killed her here apurpose? Not likely. Someone could have intruded while he manhandled her. Witnesses like Leo or Eliana. More likely, once her hair was darkened to his liking, he would have walked her to the drain and killed her there.

  I gambled my short time on it.