Dust and Light

by Carol Berg

  “Earning my thanks yet again, master.”

  I deliberately did not ask him how they had forced me to it. Let him think me a fool. But someone had destroyed my memory of those events, and all of them had let me believe I was going mad. None of the curators had freed me from the cellar. Only Bastien.

  Pluvius chuckled. “I didn’t think you would make a show of their unveiling so soon. I’d hoped I’d get a chance to warn you! But for now . . . if we’re to get you two away safely, it must be tonight, before Bayard the Smith starves out the city or burns it. Where is the chest?”

  Behind the orange smoke the sky was gray. I had to choose now—for Juli as well as for myself. I rested my forehead on her hair. She was quivering. Cold? Afraid? Angry? Or just bursting with curiosity? What had I done, dragging her into this madness? The most powerful sorcerers in the world believed I could destroy their way of life. Every pureblood in Navronne would soon be convinced I was a murderer. The largest, wealthiest pureblood family in Navronne bore a mortal grudge and would expend their every resource to hunt me down, and the would-be king of Navronne would cheer them on.

  Pons was right. I had to run . . . fast and far, without experience, without worldly skills, and without the help of magic. How could I protect a young girl—I, who had survived this long only because of the kindness, sacrifice, or callous self-interest of others? My grandsire, Fallon de Tremayne, Demetreo, Bastien, Garen, Constance . . . and, yes, Pons and Pluvius . . . so many. Pons had kept Juli safe, but she could be preparing to sacrifice my sister for her ends, as she had sacrificed Gilles and herself.

  Weariness weighed heavy as I glanced at the graying sky, on the brink of a terrible dawn . . .

  . . . and there I found my answer. So obvious, and it must surely rip my heart asunder.

  “I’ll give you the chest, master,” I said, “and then my sister and I would be grateful to accept your offer.”

  Pluvius spread his arms and beamed brighter than his magelight. “Holy Deunor be praised! We shall see the right of all this together and make a fine future. Where is the damnable chest?”

  “I’ll guide you.”

  I spun Juli around to face me. “Will you accept what I choose, serena? I’ve mucked up things terribly and the last thing I want is to take you into unknown dangers. But I’m not skilled enough to protect you, so your part will be very hard. Uncertain. More so than ever before. But you are strong and intelligent and you’ve proven yourself resourceful, everything good and worthy of our bloodlines.”

  With a grave curiosity, Juli touched the naked half of my face. “When you forced my oath before, I hated you. But you were exactly right. Our magic and our bloodlines must be preserved before all. Though clearly there are matters here I don’t understand . . . yet . . . I trust you to keep doing that, ancieno. You are wiser than you know.”

  I crushed her to my breast, grateful for her trust, glad of her discretion, and fearing she might see too much if she looked at me too long.

  “Leave your men here to wait for us, master,” I said over my sister’s head. “Those guarding the chest will not welcome any stranger, especially pureblood, on a morning like this. I can vouch for one—you—but they’ll never accept so many.”

  “Where are we going?” said Pluvius, frowning.

  “Down there.” I pointed into the inky darkness beyond the arch.

  “The hirudo?”

  “Can you think of any safer place to hide secrets from the Registry?” I wrapped Juli’s steady hand around my arm and led her through the broken arch.

  CHAPTER 38

  First light had not come to the hirudo as yet. Halfway down the path I asked Pluvius to mask his magelight, and I cast one of my own. Using my cloak, I exposed the light in the pattern Bastien and Garen had used to secure safe passage: three times quickly and then once more. Sky Lord grant the signal had not changed.

  “You’ve become friendly with thieving vagabonds?” said Pluvius.

  “My sojourn at the necropolis provided me a number of new experiences. Business with Cicerons is only one.”

  “Clever. Never in my wildest imaginings would I have guessed the chest was here.”

  At the bottom of the hill where the path turned into the hirudo, I halted and allowed the light to reveal my face.

  Pluvius’s fingers twitched. His foot tapped. “What are you waiting for?” he blurted. “We need to be on our way. Damon and his hounds are on your scent.”

  “Manners can ease life amongst ordinaries as well as purebloods,” I said.

  “Manners are wasted on brutes. You are pureblood. Exert your will.”

  Soft footsteps crunched on the path.

  “Sengé.” I touched my forehead as Demetreo stepped from the deeper shadows.

  The headman’s razor eyes could have sliced stone. “What brings the coroner’s pureblood so early of a dangerous morn? And with strangers of your kind? More even than these two, I think.”

  “I request safe passage for three only. My sister and I are in sore need of sanctuary. This Registry curator has offered us a refuge in the long tradition of our kind, which you and I discussed not so long ago.” I willed him to hear the words left unspoken. “Before I go with him, I must retrieve an item from beyond the piggery.”

  After a moment’s study, Demetreo’s gaze slid to the ground. “Go on.”

  “While I attend to the curator’s needs, I wish my sister to visit your honored grandmother. Is the hour propitious?”

  “Luka?” Juli’s puzzled frown heated my cheek.

  Demetreo bowed. “Your trust honors us, pureblood. The hour is yet propitious. Any later and my grandmother would be sleeping.”

  “Juliana, serena,” I said, holding her chin steady, “Sengé Demetreo has proved himself an honorable man and his followers likewise. While I attend to the curator, I wish you to go with Demetreo and offer our family’s blessings to his grandmother. Heed his instructions exactly, lest you lose your way in the dark. I’ll join you when my business is done, and with the help of our friends, we shall set about rebuilding our family name.”

  “But—”

  I pressed a finger to her lips. Her dark eyes were troubled but not frightened. “Discipline, serena pauli. A terrible dawn is upon us. We must be gone from the city before the day storm breaks.”

  She dipped her head. “As you say, ancieno. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  With the dignity of a woman twice her years, she opened her hand to the headman in invitation. Demetreo nodded and bade her follow him into the dark warren. He did not touch her.

  For a moment I couldn’t breathe. But I did not, would not, relent.

  I believed that Juli would be able to find sanctuary with the Cicerons. The Danae had not charged her to wait and learn, as they had me. Whatever dangers she might encounter, were it to be death itself, I could not imagine them worse than those she would face at my side. The Cicerons were survivors, and Juli would see their worth quicker than I had. I had to trust Demetreo’s honor to see to her safety, because unless something had changed with the portal, I’d not be able to follow her. Not yet.

  I still had work to do. The Danae—both silver and blue—had warned that my magic twisted the fabric of the world. Perhaps proving my quality meant exploring the mechanisms of my power and how to control it, assuming I could hole up somewhere the Registry couldn’t find me. But first I had to get free of Pluvius.

  “What was all that?” snapped Pluvius under his breath, as we threaded the night-choked lanes of the hirudo. “You revealed my rank to a lord of thieves, an ordinary. You entrusted your sister to him. Are you wholly naive? We must see to your education.”

  “The headman saved my life once, just as you did, master. I can tell you of it as we travel. But first the troublesome chest, yes?” Pluvius’s condescension struck sparks inside me. But I would not let him see.

  An eerie quiet lay over the hirudo. No dice players. No racing urchins. No bony dogs. One man lounged beside a small fire, an
unsheathed blade across his lap. A second sat on a stool, sharpening a knife as long as my forearm. The hard-faced woman, Jadia, twirled her sling. Were the rest of them gathered in the commons house, waiting, or had Oldmeg been sure enough to begin their journey and her own beforetime?

  I didn’t hurry as I led Pluvius toward the piggery, though my own nerves thrummed. A fight was my last resort. No matter our difference in age, I’d no confidence I could best him. I’d spent far too much of my life buried in books and ink. Whatever was coming down on this place would be my chance to run.

  “Well, where is the chest?” he said, his own patience fraying.

  “Beneath the ramparts of the Elder Wall. I buried it in a great hurry once I found it.” I held back the wet willow branches, allowing him to go ahead.

  Blaring trumpets from the far end of the hirudo jolted me alert. I scrambled up the slope to get a better view beyond the willows. “Master, come look!”

  Fire cascaded down the path from the city to the accompaniment of shouts and steel and drumbeats, bringing the hirudo’s doom with the rising light.

  Pluvius joined me on the slope. “Hold, Lucian!” he said, reaching for my shoulder.

  I backed away. “I’ve got to go!” I said. “Juli’s back there.”

  “Arriet!”

  My dash for the willows was halted abruptly, as if my feet were shackled to the earth.

  “You cannot go back,” he said. “What if Damon’s with them? He’ll protect your sister, but you he wants in silkbindings and a tongue block.” His clenched palm relaxed.

  I shuffled my feet, my own will ruling them again.

  A woman’s war cry shrilled in the distance. “Perhaps you could distract them long enough for me to get her. Please, master, she’s not safe . . . soldiers . . . brutes . . .”

  “Discipline forbids us interfere with the ordinaries’ war,” he snapped, all benevolence vanished. “Get the chest and lead us out of this rats’ nest. I’ll send my men to fetch the girl.”

  I had chosen rightly not to trust Juli’s life to Pluvius.

  “The path climbs up to Plateau Caton from the far side of the pigsty,” I said, feigning acquiescence. “None would dare stop a Registry curator from entering the city through the east gates. But it will take an hour at the least, and we’ll have to leave the chest. It’s buried deep, and we’ll be overrun before I can dig it out.” My beam of magelight illumined the steep incline to the necropolis. Perhaps I could push him off the rocky steeps.

  “Magrog’s plagues on these wretches and their wars! Damon must not have that chest—or you. We have to get back to my men.”

  But the line of torches crept inexorably downward. Blue and yellow flame burst high above the fray—one of the huts. Another. And another, choking the ravine with smoke and thundering flame. The commons house was stone, its roof slate, its magics powerful enough to have kept it safe for centuries. Had I not been sure of that and Oldmeg’s resolve, I’d have risked Pluvius’s wrath and run back.

  Footsteps, accompanied by muffled curses, pounded the path beyond the willows. I released the magelight and dragged Pluvius down behind the brake.

  “Where’d the vermin go?” The frustrated whisper was not ten paces away. “More’n a hundred of them nest down here. And I saw lights.”

  “Maybe some’s hiding in that pig wallow.” A second man snorted in grotesque humor.

  “The fight’s done,” snapped a third voice. “Gerro’s troop will purge what’s left. You two get up there where the path narrows and finish any strays. Once the Guard mage damps the fire and cools the steps, we’ve real work to do. The Smith and his Moriangi scum will not get over our stretch of the wall.”

  The determined guardsmen gave me an idea.

  “Master,” I whispered, as soon as the two had scrambled away, “if I go back and tell the soldiers I’m a Guard mage come to cool the wall stairs, I can fetch Juli. We’ll meet you here, take down these two ordinaries, and be off.”

  Unwilling to lose the chance, I pushed harder. “Master, we are the last of our bloodlines. Without my sister safe, I cannot accept your kind offer. Surely you can see that.” Exert your will, he’d said.

  “Have you skills to cool stone?”

  Pluvius’s fury scalded the air around us, so his lack of argument astonished me. Why did he yield so easily? And yet all these months, it had been the same. He had repeatedly offered me help and waited for me to accept it. I had thought it a sign of indecision or weakness. Yet he could lock my feet to the ground if he chose. And Damon could throw ropes of lights and confine a man with circles of sparks, yet required I run to his refuge of my own will. . . .

  Will was an essential component of every magical working, but usually it was the will of the practitioner, not the subject. But when Pons stole my magic to kill Gilles, it was only after offering me her hand and after I, like a naive child, had taken it without reservation. In prison it was only when I was near undone with madness and despair that I had smelled ink and paint on my hands. Had I consented to change the portraits, thinking it a lesser evil than my crazed fantasy of stealing souls, and thereby given them the very means to corrupt my memory of the event?

  More than the dawn chill sent shudders up my spine. What use did these people have for me that required me to yield my consent?

  “I’ve never actually managed spellwork so grand as to control heat and cold,” I said, “but I’m sure I could bluff.”

  “Magrog save us! I’ll have to go, then.” He could no longer mask his anger. “My authority will quiet any question from the purebloods attached to the Guard. I can demand custody of your sister and send for my men. Meanwhile you find that damnable chest and wait here with it until we’re back to fetch you.”

  “Bless you, master. I’ll be forever grateful.” And I would run as far away from him as fast as I could go. I would not yield.

  Elated, I held the branches aside to let him through. . . .

  Just as rope snagged my ankles and yanked them out from under me. I grabbed for the willows. Prickly branches tore at my hair and scraped my face.

  A kick unlocked my knees, sending them hard to the ground. Iron fingers manacled my left hand, and a long arm wrapped around my neck. The bare flesh was twined with blue light that shimmered like strands of sapphires.

  “Shhh,” he hissed unnecessarily, as his tightening hold strangled all possibility of speech. Whispers drifted behind us, quieting as something heavy was dragged into the brush.

  My feet dug into the rocks and mud, and my free hand clawed at his strangling arm.

  He held firm. Planting a sharp knee in my back, he bent me backward like a bow, and with honeyed breath whispered in my ear, “Did we not warn thee of trespass? About the danger of delving so deep? This very dawning hath a boundary been violated and Aeginea opened to human feet. ’Tis thy doing. Where did they go?”

  “Aagh—” My choking spurred him to relent slightly in his grip. “I didn’t—I mean, the portal was already there. I just showed them how to pass through. They would have died in this fire—women, children, people desperate for your sanctuary.”

  “Sanctuary!” His grip slacked enough to speak the depth of his astonishment. “What dost thou know of sanctuary?”

  “Why should I answer a brute?”

  He twisted my left arm harder. “Thou’rt the violator. We warned thee.”

  I tried to will away the pain. “Warnings are useless without knowledge. You and your companion told me nothing but how ignorant I am. Though her manners were not so crude as yours, the sentinel who offered sanctuary told me the same.” Yet perhaps I could use her tactic. “A bargain: Answer a question of mine and I’ll answer yours.”

  “A sentinel offered . . . What sentinel?”

  “She told me no other name. Her marks—gards, she called them—might have been drawn with starlight. An eagle—”

  “Starlight? True silver, then, not pale, not tinged with blue?”

  “Entirely silver. She c
alled you her . . . uh . . . kin whose gards shine the color of day sky.” Her excitable kin.

  He dropped his lock hold on me as abruptly as he’d taken it. I scrambled out of his reach and planted my back against a leafless oak. I wanted answers, yet for a moment I could only stare and whisper the greeting the silver one had taught me: “Envisia seru, Dané.” How could the wonder not move me? How could the sight not delight an artist’s eye?

  I had seen his like sculpted in marble and painted on urns and the walls of ruined temples, the finest work of the ancients. Nowhere had art come near the truth. He was tall and comely, his chestnut hair braided with vines. His flesh housed such taut muscle and sinew as I would draw in a portrait of Kemen Sky Lord or his sons. And scribed on every quat of his long limbs, torso, face, even his privy parts were drawings of light—birds, fish, plants, and creatures I had no names for. But the growing daylight revealed his lean face riven with shock.

  I snapped a dead branch from the oak and felt slightly better armed. My throbbing neck and back could attest that his sinews were not just handsome, but extraordinarily strong. Pluvius was nowhere in sight.

  The Dané drew his gaze from some far-off distance back to my face. “Silver gards . . . entirely silver? And it was night?”

  “No mistaking.” I reached for calm and determination. “Once in day, once at night, both times entirely silver. That was your answer. Now one for me. The old man—did you harm him?”

  He waved off my concern, even as the creases in his brow deepened. “The long-lived do not wreak mindless hurts as humans do. The elder will wake elsewhere. Truly, his airs bespoke him no friend of thine.”

  “No. But neither are you that I can tell. I’d not have him dead.” Though to have Pluvius elsewhere was the finest gift of fortune’s goddess. “Now your turn for a question.”

  He shook his head as if to clear it. “Where did you meet her, this sentinel marked with silver?”

  “On several occasions when I invoked my magic—that which you say twists the fabric of the world, which I swear I did not know and did not intend—I was transported to another place, one unfamiliar to me. A rocky hillside, green and barren with five—”