Dust and Light

by Carol Berg

  “Aye, master.”

  “Well, now, Domé Remeni, we need to get you dressed proper for your judgment. ’Tisn’t respectful to greet curators without a stitch, now is it?”

  One elder man, one younger. Their talk peppered the silence like the pecking of birds. Yet the nagging discipline of six-and-twenty years insisted I heed. No matter how devoutly I wished to drown grief and guilt in the dark, I could not allow it to mask a danger that had swelled to monstrous proportion. For of course, Juli had not been the last of the Remeni-Masson bloodlines and the magic they were meant to bring the world. I was.

  “Why am I unclothed?” My voice rasped like grit underfoot. My throat felt clogged with ash. “And why does it require a knife to dress me again?”

  “Mere precautions, domé,” said the elder, the one called Nelek. “We were told to take precautions, as you were . . . excitable . . . and might misunderstand our duties.”

  The danger had a name, of course. “I am not mad.”

  “Virit and I are not here to judge. We just see to your dressing.”

  Nelek, standing over me now, smelled of garlic and had a habit of sucking his teeth. “We’re going to slip a nice shirt over your head, first off. Need to raise it up.”

  He tapped on the back of my head. I obeyed, though my eyelids refused to open. I didn’t want to see the box of iron where they’d stuck me.

  A cascade of soft linen fell over my hair and settled on my shoulders.

  “Now your hands into the sleeves, if you please. Virit, help with the left and keep hold as I taught you.”

  They guided my hands through long sleeves—not tight sleeves, thank the gods, as the backs of my hands were scorched and every touch arrowed straight to my gut. Once through, each man gripped a wrist. The younger man’s hands were cold . . . and trembling.

  “I’m too tired to fight you,” I said, tugging gently.

  They didn’t let go.

  “I’m magically depleted, else I might have saved my sister’s life.” Grief squeezed my lungs like a fist of iron.

  “Well and good,” said the elder, “but we must do this anyways. Now, Virit . . . and quick.” With firm grips they twisted my arms and pressed my hands together, back to stinging back. A deft hand interlaced my fingers. Then they folded my hands around my locked fingers until the heels of my palms touched.

  Before I could understand the purpose of this beyond tormenting my raw wounds, they began wrapping cord briskly about my bundled hands.

  “What the devil are you doing?” I tried to wriggle away from them, but sitting in the corner with the two bodies pressed close, I had no space and no leverage.

  “Just precaution, domé.” Nelek’s iron digits ensured my fingers were tucked away tight, as the younger, Virit, wrapped the cord. “Can’t have you working magic, now can we?”

  Silkbinding. That’s what they did for undisciplined children . . . for recondeurs . . . for madmen. The fingers were the conduit of magic.

  “Now for your britches. Want no dangling bits to scandalize the curators. Let’s have you up. . . .”

  They pulled up baggy slops and shod me with soft velvet slippers. The shirt gaped at the neck and wrists. Shirt, slops, slippers—the garb of a pureblood prisoner. Fine linen and wool as our heritage demanded, but neither button, clasp, chain, nor bit of leather that might carry a spell. Loose fitting; no layers, no pockets. They didn’t want me hiding things. Shapeless and unadorned, unfit for the gods’ chosen to wear outdoors or among ordinaries. They weren’t planning to let me go.

  “One more little item, laddie, and then we’ll be done,” said the old man, a gray sinewy fellow. More and more he sounded like an elder addressing a balky infant. “But first, perhaps, as you’ve been well behaved. Fetch him a drink, Virit.”

  Virit was a blotch-faced, twitchier replica of his master. Either one could likely break my neck at will.

  With my hands bound, young Virit had to pour the water down my throat, dribbling more on my shirt than in my mouth. I did not refuse it, though. I had to be able to speak. Calmly. Rationally. With impeccable manners.

  I inclined my back. “Thank you both for your assistance.”

  “Let’s have you kneel, lad, as we finish up here.”

  I did as he said. Perhaps they were going to comb my hair. Wet from Arrosa’s pool, tangled by wind and sweat and ash—I aborted the thought, lest calm escape me.

  The old man stepped behind me and slipped something over my head. Hard leather drooped over my face, blocking one eye. I shook my head to get it off. Tried to push it up with my bound hands. But quick movements settled it lower, covering the left half of my face. A mask. Protrusions of stiff leather cupped my chin, crossed my brow, extended down my nose like a soldier’s helm. “What in the name of—?”

  The old man yanked a leather strap through my mouth and around my head, latching it to the back side of the mask. I tried to protest, with no effect but to set myself gagging. The devilish strap had a stiff flap, shaped to still my tongue.

  “Now, now, don’t panic. Just swallow easy.” Young Virit pressed down on my shoulders while the elder stroked my throat. “You’ll get accustomed. Would have been easier had we done all this while you were nogged. Your body would have worked it out on its own, and you’d have been right with it already.”

  Bright shards of fear pierced discipline’s dull armor. Right with it? Accustomed? Surely they weren’t going to keep me in this dreadful device. Surely they would let me speak.

  A growl of fury rose from my depths.

  The gray man met my one-eyed glare. His watery eyes were brown and yellow, and he tilted his head, smiling sadly. “Can’t hide it no more, can you? Can’t keep up the show of manners.” He bent over me solicitously, dropping his voice. “I’ve been taking care of your kind since I was Virit’s age. I’ve seen every kind of ruse to hide the breakage inside. But eventually the truth comes out.”

  My kind? I shook my head. I knew what he was intimating. “Not mad,” I said, but the words came out like the panicked grunt of a beast.

  “We’d best go ahead with the rest, Virit. He’s mightily upset with us. Loosening up, you see.”

  The rest was shackles. Magrog’s hells. What did they think I was going to do? I could not run. My life was over if I ran.

  Virit grabbed the torch. The iron-fingered Nelek grabbed my arm and guided my awkward progress out of the cell and through a series of musty corridors lined with empty rooms. Only when we arrived at the twisted iron stair did it strike my tangled wits that I had traversed these same passages on my visit to Gilles. They’d stowed me in the bowels of the Registry Tower. No one ever came down here.

  My breath pumped hard and fast. I could not swallow. The vile bit in my mouth had me drooling and gagging. If I retched, I would drown.

  “Calm yourself. ’Tis just precaution. The judgment will tell all.”

  But if I was not allowed to speak, any judgment was a farce. Like my contract negotiation.

  Nelek shoved me up the narrow, twisting column of iron—a laborious ascent, hobbled as I was. The chains clanked on the iron steps. “All the way up, plebeiu.”

  Plebeiu. Nelek believed I was already fallen to the lowest of pureblood ranks.

  Discipline, Lucian. The Registry had been the foundation of pureblood life for centuries. My sire, my grandsire, all my kin had taught me that our way was worthy and honorable. Purebloods didn’t vanish into cellars. Purebloods didn’t get declared mad because their family died or their house burned. This was wartime, for the gods’ sake. The Harrowers despised purebloods as much as they despised the Sinduri or the Karish monks and hierarchs, as much as they despised nobles and magistrates.

  Like a kick to the head, the implication struck me. Was that it? Were the Harrowers finishing what they had begun at Pontia? The man who had pulled me back from the fire and accused me of setting it myself—the first man, before the pureblood—had worn an orange scarf, the Harrowers’ token. Here in the heart of P
alinur . . . a Harrower raid? Someone should know that!

  I halted and pressed the old man to the rail. “Harrowers! Harrowers set the fire!” But it came out gibberish. The younger man hauled me off him and pushed me up the next step.

  At the top of the steps, Nelek unlocked a heavy door.

  “Move along, boy.” All pretense of respect fell away as the elder shoved me staggering through the door and the guardroom, and around a corner to the servants’ stair. Surprisingly, he directed me down. All the way back to the ground level. By the time we reached the bottom, I was near exhaustion.

  Sunbeams—afternoon sunbeams—stretched long across the patterned floor of the Tower rotunda, dizzying me with brightness and a confusion of lost time. I’d come from the temple before midnight.

  “Now we go up.” Up the grand stair I had tried to breach all those hours ago.

  The guards who had blocked my passage stood aside, unable to hide their appalled curiosity. I dared not look up to see how many gawkers stared from the gallery. My skin was ablaze.

  Every step was more awkward than the last. My legs ached from the unaccustomed weight of the shackles. Worse, with one eye blocked by the mask, I could not judge depth or distance. Stumbling like a drunkard through the Tower rotunda in shirt, slops, chains, and a madman’s mask, I might as well have been naked. Not a pureblood in Navronne would fail to hear of it. The ascent seemed endless; the shame, boundless.

  * * *

  The Curators’ Chamber was the topmost in the tower. Only twice before had I been admitted there. All pureblood children were brought before the curators at the age of seven to be acknowledged as pureblood sorcerers of proven bloodlines, ready to begin their formal schooling in magic. And all pureblood young people were brought there to declare their bent—most at sixteen, I at one-and-twenty, after my grandsire had stripped me of one bent and left me the other.

  Elegant and austere, the chamber overlooked the city from a height that had seemed close on divine Idrium itself. After such a climb in shackles and the mask I’d already come to regard as Magrog’s foulest torment, it was all I could do to breathe and keep upright before the six who held my future—my life—in their hands.

  The six curators, unmasked in their private domain, were seated at their horseshoe table, conversing quietly among themselves. It jangled my nerves that they took no notice, yet I was grateful to have a chance to gather my wits.

  First Curator Gramphier, a spare, flat-faced, inexpressive man, held the center chair. Cold-eyed Gramphier could have sat under the table and any stranger would have picked him as the master of this room. When I had expressed surprise that my grandsire had considered him as a brother, Capatronn had told me, “Gramphier is a man of great intellect and the deepest passions. His actions reflect what his features do not.” My hope might rest in that, because the others . . .

  First Registrar Damon sat at Gramphier’s right hand, second only to Gramphier in rank. Short, tidy, black haired, with a long nose and complexion the hue of olives, Damon could have stepped straight off any centuries-old pot or fresco from the Aurellian Empire. My uncle Eurus, who had shared Damon’s bent for languages, named him ruthless in the practice of personal discipline—his own and everyone else’s—and said his favor was hard won. Rumor named Damon forever loyal to those who earned it, yet no gossip addressed what earning it entailed. I did not anticipate his favor.

  As Second Registrar, Pons sat at Damon’s right hand. Her broad shoulders and heavy presence cast a blight on the room. If hate could burn flesh, the flames would burst the Tower roof above us and be seen as far as Syanar. These rumors of madness were surely her doing.

  Dapper Curator Scrutari-Consil, wearing his sunburst pendant of the Karish god, sat next to Pons, already sneering. A petulant man with a large family, Scrutari gave Gilles and me endless trouble every time he brought one of his annoying brood in for anniversary portraits.

  Gilles’s uncle Albin, the Overseer of Contracts, sat on Gramphier’s left, his squat, thick body that of a blacksmith and his garb that of a prince. The Albins owned such an expanse of vineyards, pastures, woodland ranges, and manors as to comprise their own kingdom. I had been surprised to find an Albin in so humble a contract as a Registry portraitist. But then, Gilles expressed surprise that a Remeni was contracted to work alongside him. Reportedly Albin, not Damon, was favored to succeed Gramphier when the First Curator’s term was done. Adamantly devoted to tradition, Albin would offer no leniency.

  White-bearded Pluvius, the lowest ranked of the curators, sat at the far left, elbows propped on the polished table, mouth resting on his folded hands, staring at the floor. Disheveled and loose, his robes looked as if they belonged to an even larger brother. His demeanor left a void in my belly. He, of all the six, failed to look up when my shepherd shoved me into the center of the horseshoe and snapped, “Manners, plebeiu.”

  I hated that any of them heard the command, as if I were too stupid or rebellious or crazed to recall proper protocol. Indeed my spirit churned in a most rebellious fashion. But I touched my bound hands to my forehead and bowed to each curator as deeply and gracefully as my restraints allowed.

  Only then did I notice three others standing off to my blind side—two men, an elder and a younger, their features so mirrored as to name them father and son, dressed in such elegance of gold jewelry and scarlet brocade as to make me feel a floor mop. A third man stood behind them, indistinguishable in the shadowed corner.

  “Thank you, Nelek,” said Gramphier. Young Virit had remained outside the chamber. “You are efficient as always. Perhaps you would escort these witnesses back to the rotunda.”

  Wait! I wanted to scream it. Was I not even to hear them? This was a Registry hearing, not some Evanori warlord’s mockery of judgment. The Registry was founded on respect and reason. Even at Pons’s inquiry in Montesard, I had been allowed to speak. And I needed to warn them about the Harrowers.

  The well-dressed pair paused and bowed to each of the curators. Were these my neighbors, the purebloods who’d summoned the Registry?

  Their delay slowed the third man, tall and spider limbed, dressed in a sober, common black wool cloak that scarce reached his knees. Pale, long-fingered hands and wrists dangled from sleeves cut too short. My frantic breath caught and chills shivered my spine. This was the acid-tongued rescuer who had yanked me from the fire. No orange scarf today. But the daylight revealed his face, exceptionally long, with huge protruding bones in cheeks and brow, and eyes so deep one could not spy the color.

  His un-Aurellian features and his common, ill-fitting attire named him an ordinary, yet the curators remained unmasked in his presence. Who was he? Surely they didn’t know of his Harrower sympathies.

  As he turned to go, he smiled at me, a grimace shocking in its malice. No curator could see it.

  I pointed my bound hands at him and bobbed my head, trying to signal he should stay. Gramphier averted his eyes, as if shamed at my antics. Pompous little Scrutari blew a disgusted exhale. Pons and Albin leaned forward and whispered to each other. Damon, the curator I knew least, stared with such cold, unblinking interest, I stepped backward.

  The heavy door closed solidly behind the strangers. I breathed deep and forced calm.

  Gramphier struck the table with a gavel that seemed to add cannonball weights to my chains. “Lucian de Remeni-Masson, it is with utmost sorrow that I gather this council and certain witnesses to examine your behavior. Your grandsire and I lived in mutual respect from our youth until his dreadful end, and to see the future of his bloodline in such peril adds a solemnity to this proceeding that words cannot convey. Despite the insistence of some amongst us, we are not here to address your notable failure in discipline of five years past, but only your erratic behavior since the tragedy of three months ago. Moved to indulge your natural grief and inexperience, we chose—wrongly, I fear—to let those incidents pass without mention, ignoring history that warns of aberrant tendencies in certain of our kind. When it was decided
that your skills and temperament no longer fit the requirements of the Registry Archives, we debated amongst ourselves: Would you fare better under some kind of benign confinement or in an undemanding contract away from the exigencies of the Registry? To our everlasting guilt, it appears we made the wrong decision.”

  The First Curator’s chilly words froze my bones, as if the gods themselves spoke my doom.

  What incidents? What erratic behavior? My protests died unspoken. Animal grunting would get me nowhere.

  “The terrible events of yestereve have forced us to confront our failure. We’ve a witness to the time you left your current master’s place of business. Not long after nightfall, you were seen walking the perimeter of Vintner Tessati’s town house—your residence. Both purebloods and ordinaries saw you raising magefire in the center courtyard. It was assumed you were honoring divine Deunor, as was your family’s practice. But then you vanished, only to reappear when the blaze was on the verge of consuming the residence. Not a single spark traveled beyond the perimeters of Tessati’s property—a sure sign of deliberation. Did you truly not recall that you had kindled those first sparks and set a boundary for their reach? Or was your frenzy at your return a murderous pretense?”

  I shook my head, attempting to make some noise that expressed dismay and negation, not brutish fury. It was all lies! I’d been at Arrosa’s Temple just after nightfall. But then, no one knew that, not even Bastien. Would the coroner admit he’d sent a pureblood to spy on Arrosa’s high priestess? And if they’d not let me speak . . .

  No one heeded my display, save Damon. His gaze had not wavered since my arrival.

  “In the end, I fear, it does not matter which,” said Gramphier. “Either answer signifies a deviant mind. We have confirmed that your young sister, a gods-gifted sorceress not yet come into her full power, was found dead in the ruins of the house. Five ordinaries in your service likewise. We cannot let this pass.”

  The words, spoken aloud, arrested breath and heart and pulsing blood. Juli dead. Like the dull-eyed shells piled one upon the other at Necropolis Caton. A frenzy of denial stormed behind the mask. My teeth near severed the sodden, choking leather, wanting more than anything in the world to scream it so all could hear.