by Carol Berg
Bastien touched his pendant. “I am the Coroner of the Twelve Districts of Palinur, conducting an inquest sanctioned by the Prince of Navronne. It is my lawful summons has brought you here to lay before your prince and these varied witnesses the parchment you carry. . . .” He repeated his warning against perjury and held out his hand for the document—the one I had tried and failed to steal, the one Garen had bled for.
Eyes narrowed to slits, Irinyi stepped backward, clutching the scroll to her breast. “You’ve no right to temple privacies.”
“Lord prince, perhaps you could remind her?” said Bastien.
Perryn wagged a finger for Bastien to do the explaining. The finger flew back to his teeth. He would have no fingernails left by the end of this.
Bastien continued. “My authority is direct from Caedmon’s Writ, Sinduria. Matters of murder transcend petty privacies, whether those of a temple or the royal household.”
“Murder?” Was a trace of fear mingled with her shock?
“Aye. Murder. Even purebloods must open their secrets to a murder inquiry that falls within my jurisdiction. Surrender the document, Sinduria, else I shall step out and ask one of our prince’s lancers to bring fetters suitable for a noble lady.”
Her glare flayed Bastien and Perryn equally as she flung the scroll at Bastien and turned to go.
“Alas, priestess,” said Bastien. “You are not dismissed.” We could not have her running tales to the Duc de Tremayne.
“Surely the accursed Writ does not permit this cur to dictate my comings and goings.” Irinyi spun in place, her hand flying to her waist.
“’Ware, Coroner,” I snapped. “Dagger!”
Irinyi’s hand jerked away from the hidden sheath, and the blaze of her fury focused on me. “Who is this pureb—?”
As if Magrog’s own dagger had pierced her soul, she froze. “You,” she whispered. “Sneaking, lying, weaseling . . . murderer.”
“Your testimony is not yet complete, Sinduria.” Bastien’s insistence could not quite drown her accusation, certainly not its bitter echoes in my own soul. “Tell us of this document.”
“I’ll tell you nothing.”
Bastien remained cool. “Then perhaps another witness can explain what this page will tell us. Domé, would you continue your tale?”
“My master may, of course, command me to undertake any task he sees necessary to forward his business,” I said. “I began by locating the place the child’s corpus was found at the base of the eastern rampart of the Elder Wall. Magic revealed the girl child did not die there. . . .”
With Bastien’s help, I had carefully rehearsed my tale of unraveling Fleure’s murder, eliminating all mention of the Cicerons who found her. Nor did I announce my conviction that the high priestess was complicit in debauching children. Though my suspicions of Irinyi had long become certainties, I had no proof. Bastien insisted that it was better to bring a solid case against one, and then see how the pieces fell together. It was a rule difficult to swallow.
“I agreed to sign a document to relinquish all connection with this false child, to forgo contact, interest, comfort, discipline, education, leaving all parental duties to the temple. The high priestess has brought a document like to the one she had me sign. But this particular document will be the one used to consign Ysabel de Tremayne, known as Fleure, to the Temple of Arrosa. Of course the signature itself cannot reveal the murderer, unless the one who delivered the child and the one who slew her are the same. I needed to investigate how children were used in the temple. And so I spoke with the high priestess of my particular circumstances, and she offered me the solace of the goddess’s devotions. . . .”
I spoke in a measured pace, making sure I did not take the listeners too far into the Pools of the Gods’ Chosen until Orrin announced our next expected arrival.
“Varouna!” Irinyi’s wrath came near shoving the soft young woman in pink ruffles back out the door she’d just entered. “You will not—”
“Silence, priestess,” said Perryn, straightening on his stool. “Let this shocking testimony continue.”
Bastien’s gaze met mine and unspoken words flew between us. Perryn had at last decided his roles in this scripting. Noble adjudicator. Horrified prince. Would indignant father follow?
“Step forward, Mistress Varouna,” said Bastien, and, as with the rest of us, he called her to witness under pain of the law. “You serve at the temple of divine Arrosa, do you not?”
“Yes.” If it had been possible, the woman would have split her fearful gaze equally between Bastien, the prince, and Irinyi, who’d taken possession of the empty stool.
“What services do you perform there?”
“I . . . I care for the temple’s younger charges . . . initiates . . . bath girls . . . serving girls, sweepers. I see to their prayers and that they eat properly and wash themselves. I teach them manners.”
Even as she spewed these commonalities, I wanted to scream at the vile woman. Do you black their hair? Do you remove their undergarments when you bring them to tend naked men?
“Of course,” said Bastien, with the sinuous glide of an adder, “it makes sense that young children living in such a holy place would need someone devoted to their tending. We wish to know if you recognize this child”—Bastien passed her the lily portrait—“or this one.” He passed her the second portrait, Fleure in the bloodstained white shift.
“Mistress?” she said, pleading.
“Why look at me, Varouna?” Spite tainted Irinyi’s offering. “Arrosa’s child servants are entirely your responsibility. You’re the only one who even knows them all.” Irinyi, too, had chosen who would take the blame.
“Yes, I know them . . . her. It is only one. Her name was . . . is . . . Fleure. A hateful child.” She nodded to herself. “She thinks because she’s highborn that she’s better than the others, entitled to privileges. Yet all our aspirants, initiates, and serving girls are equal in the sight of the goddess. One day when Fleure was cruel to a sweeper, I punished her. I cut the hair she was so proud of. Put blacking on it to quench her pride. Dressed her like them.” She indicated the second portrait. “This one’s wrong. Sweepers don’t wear pretty shifts. Never . . . and why would there be blood?”
“You put her in gray tunic and leggings,” I said, unable to keep silent longer. “Coarse cloth.”
“Yes, gray. All our sweeping girls wear gray. And simple fabric for dirty servants.” Only then did Varouna look up to see who had spoken. When she recognized me, all color left her cheeks. She knew I had seen what she did. She had offered me a half-naked child in a fine embroidered shift to do with as I pleased in the name of her divine mistress.
Bastien took back the reins. “Mistress Varouna, can you tell us when you last saw Fleure?”
Again the pleading gaze at the hard-faced Irinyi, at the Prince of Navronne. And again the cold indifference. She’d begun to shake.
But when no one offered any relief, she stiffened. “Fleure hated the punishment and somehow sneaked out a message to her family. To a brother, I think. He came and fetched her away, and I didn’t tell the high priestess, as I thought she might punish me for losing one of the goddess’s pledge children. That’s it, her brother fetched her and I’ve not seen her since.”
“He did not.” Deadly quiet, Fallon denounced her lie. “No brother fetched her from the temple. I know this girl’s brothers and both have been in the fields of Ardra and Morian, fighting for their prince for more than half a year. She was a spritely child. Be sure of it—either brother would have slain the one who treated her meanly.”
Varouna’s mouth opened, but no words came out. How grievous that Ysabel had such a champion only in death.
Bastien seized the moment. “Would you change anything of your testimony, mistress? Perhaps you now recall the name of the one who came and fetched the girl called Fleure.”
Speechless, she shook her head. The pink ruffles quivered like aspen leaves.
“Then I think
it is time we heard what happened that night the girl disappeared, for the gods have opened the past to the magic of our witness. Domé?”
I told them how I had felt the hand of the goddess in the tepidarium pool and she had sent me the image of a man holding Ysabel over the water and blacking what was left of her hair, as most of her pale locks were left in her bedchamber. I did not mention that this image was not sent through magic, but through the eyes of a grief-stricken sweeping girl. Who is to say how the gods do their work?
And then I told them about the drainage channel. “I invoked my magic again. In my visions the gods . . . the earth . . . divine magic . . . showed me that this dark place was indeed the place where Ysabel died. Below the hellish heat of the hypocaust, down in the dark and the slime and the cold, with the only music the cry of rats, she battled a nobleman with thick, dark hair and well-shined boots. A man she looked on with eyes the color of a winter sky and called the devil lord. Because she knew him. Because she knew that if he came for her, it would mark her end. She fought him with the stalwart courage of her incomparable lineage. But she died there. And the devil lord unlocked the drainage grate and tossed her out into the winter night.”
As I told the story, Fallon de Tremayne’s anger had grown so large that it felt like night and storm had taken up residence in the Repository, no matter what the day or season beyond the doors. Only at the end, when I spoke of thick dark hair and well-shined boots did he stagger backward as if someone had kicked him in the gut.
Bastien noticed, too. He handed Irinyi’s scroll to the prince. “The high priestess can tell you the name on this scroll. But it is my thought that you must read it for yourself. You should recognize the hand. You may be able to fit details into this terrible story that we’ve not had time to review. Reasons, for example. We can surmise, but you, lord, know the man as we do not.”
Then the Coroner of the Twelve Districts stepped back—well out of reach—and waited.
Perryn ripped open the scroll, glanced at it, and then dropped it to the floor. “By Kemen Sky Lord’s holy balls . . .”
The ducessa clucked in disappointment when she was unable to read the name over his shoulder. But Fallon de Tremayne dared pick up the discarded evidence and read it for himself.
The document flew again, and the young man walked away, his hands clasped atop his head and his elbows squeezed tight as if crushing his skull was the only way to erase what he had just seen. Moments later, from the depths of the Repository, came a bellow speaking grief and disappointment and helpless rage. I recognized them.
Fallon’s cry had not yet faded when the bronze doors swung open yet again, and Hugh de Orrin announced, “His Grace, the Duc de Tremayne.”
CHAPTER 30
Tremayne strode through the door, a striking, dark-haired, thick-bearded man. His tabard was the purple and gold of the Ardran household, his mantle lined with fox fur, his position immediately affirmed by the onrushing power of his presence. His calf-high boots gleamed.
“My good lord”—he swept a bow—“your knights are near devouring the tables in your great hall. I’ve done my best to stave off their hunger with your ale, but truly we ought to get back before that pays us ill—or drains every one of your casks. Fortunate that I knew where you might be at this hour, though I wasn’t at all sure this came from you.”
He twirled the summons that Bastien and I had labored over. We’d tried to make it just intriguing enough to draw him, just official enough to make him chary about not coming, just conspiratorial enough to ensure he wouldn’t mention it to anyone beforetime, even Perryn.
“What an odd venue for an illustrious gathering. Greetings, Sinduria, Ducessa, mistress—”
Perryn leapt to his feet, hands raised in a flourish of jewels and lace. “By the gods, Laurent, what have you done?”
Tremayne’s glance glided over me to settle on Bastien, who bided his time, his hands at rest behind his back.
“Nothing but serve you, I hope, my lord. May I ask what transpires here? Your summons speaks of secrets unveiled. It said you had a question that only I could answer.”
“I have the question, Father.” No pureblood sculptor could have chiseled a more perfect image of a god’s fury than what Bastien had wrought in Fallon de Tremayne. If Kemen Sky Lord felt such wrath at human failings, then ravaging winter, plague, and war were only the beginning of our punishment. “Where is Ysabel?”
Tremayne’s curiosity vanished. Arrogance remained, however, and contempt.
His glance whipped around the circle of light defined by the diminishing torch flames. To the ducessa gaping alternately at the damning document and his own face. To Irinyi launching daggers from her eyes. To quivering Varouna, back to the wall, creeping quat by quat toward the bronze doors. To an inexpressive pureblood, who wished he dared create a void hole as deep as his loathing under Tremayne’s feet. To Bastien, calmly waiting, and his prince, not so calm. Tremayne judged his audience and chose his defense.
“She is dead, my lord prince, as was necessary. As are five others whose lives should never have been. I will not apologize for it. This is wartime. Deaths are necessary for the future of Navronne. You and I preach it every day on every battlefield. Do we preach a lie?”
“You admit it,” said Fallon. “You strangled a child who brought nothing but love and brilliance to a house bereft of both. You thought your young strumpet would fill the emptiness left by my mother’s death. And so she did, not with her own vicious vulgarity, but with her child. And you took that brilliance and snuffed it out in a sewer? How can you live with such sin?”
“Duty sustains me through every battle,” said the duc, unapologetic, “whether with Bayard the Smith and his hired mercenaries, or Sila Diaglou and her lunatics, or corrupt nobles who would use bastard children to tear Eodward’s kingdom apart. Who would you have sit Eodward’s throne? Did you think the brat might carry you there?”
Fallon crossed the gap between them and touched a knife point to his father’s neck before any one of us could react. “How dare you profane her—and slander me for defending her?”
Tremayne displayed no fear. But he, as all of us, held quite still. Had one of Perryn’s lancers glimpsed the unsheathed weapon, Fallon would already be skewered.
It was Bastien who stepped up and with a dagger pulled from his boot lifted the son’s steadfast blade. “Let us hear our prince’s judgment, young lord. We are not here to witness a new crime, but to uphold the Crown’s law—the Crown you have shed blood to defend.”
Did I wish Fallon to plunge the dagger through its mark or withdraw? Surely, it would take all his strength to step back. But so he did. And then pivoted smartly to face Perryn, sheathed his dagger, and dropped to one knee.
“Forgive me, Your Grace,” he said, bowing his head. “To hear that one’s honored parent has slaughtered one’s young sister sets mind and heart at odds. His slur upon my honor must await another occasion’s resolution. I serve you only, as you well know. But laying my service, past and future, at your feet, I beg your justice for this child, an innocent who did not deserve such an end.”
Tremayne blew a note of indulgent scorn. “In the hour our prince is proclaimed, you’ll see the wisdom of my course. Until then, mewl about bastards as you will.”
Perryn had sagged onto his stool. His mistress had crept to his side, rubbing herself on his arm like a cat seeking warmth and attention. But he wrapped his arms about himself, not her. “Of all the wretched, nasty messes. What am I to do with you all?”
Pitiful. Not even Tremayne’s admission of his victims’ identities seemed to strike Perryn ill. Was he too much the fool to understand the crimes committed in his name or was he complicit and too much the coward to admit it? Did any of those who yearned for a resumption of Eodward’s kingly path, who fought for Perryn and died with savage, mutilating wounds, have a notion what rubbish hid beneath Perryn’s comely figure?
Bastien, knife returned to his boot, stepped forward. Never wou
ld I doubt his courage. “May I speak, Your Grace?”
“Have you not spoken enough, you and Remeni here?”
Curb your tongue, prince! To hear my name spoken in front of Tremayne and Irinyi chilled my marrow. I imagined minds reaching for half-remembered rumor regarding that name. My testimony, exposing the inner workings of my gift, had been all I could contribute to this trial. We needed to finish it before Registry lies made that testimony worthless.
“I would go, lord,” said the priestess. “I have answered what was asked of me, and it is time for prayers. The goddess beckons.” Varouna seemed already to have vanished during the father-and-son confrontation.
“Yes, yes, be gone from here. No accusation has been made against you. A good thing I’ve not been asked to challenge the Elder Gods!”
I’d never seen a woman move so fast as Irinyi. We needed a quick resolution. She had Temple guards with swords and knives at her disposal, and the fury in her departing glance at Bastien and me vowed her intent to use them. She knew our names.
“There are yet formalities to observe, lord,” said Bastien, a similar urgency tugging at his calm.
“Speak, then, before I order every one of you hanged. This grim tale is not at all what I wished to be hearing on this day of all days.”
On this day . . . He referred to the scroll, I supposed. He believed he would be king by the morrow. Perhaps he would, gods save us all.
A sneering Tremayne jerked his head at Bastien. “Who is this windbag who presumes to lecture the Prince of Navronne on formalities while stinking of a midden?”
“He is Palinur’s coroner,” said Perryn, “and evidently more reputable than he looks or smells. The Registry thinks highly of him. And he’s presented a formidable case against you and certain of your acquaintances.” He glared at the bronze doors closing behind Irinyi. “All of it is vouched for by pureblood testimony and now your own confession!”
Perryn was far too easy with Tremayne, talking as if judgment was a matter of discussion. That did nothing for my rising anxieties.
