by Carol Berg
The weapons fell silent. Hoofbeats retreated toward the crossing. But Duplais did not move until a nighthawk, which did not sound exactly like a proper Aubine nighthawk, trilled plaintively.
“I believe we can go back now.” Duplais stepped away and straightened his doublet.
The Fassid and two others lay dead. My eyes dwelt on the bloodslathered bodies only long enough to see that neither the leader with the shaped mask nor the man with the earrings was among them. I hoped they were collapsed around the next bend.
A broad-chested, mustachioed man, his sweating skin the rich golden tan of long-brewed tea, moved from one body to the next, kicking them to elicit signs of life. He carried himself soldierly, and his leather armor was spangled with steel plates, which spoke of true battle experience, so my father had taught me. But his hair fell all the way to his jaw—most unsoldierly. I knew why when his head whipped around at our approach. Slow and purposeful, he drew his black locks behind his ears—horribly mutilated ears.
I quickly dropped my gaze, my skin flooded with shame. Only a determination to decency forced words out of me. “Captain de Santo, it appears you and your”—I glanced about in vain for the rider in black—“friend saved our lives. Thank you.”
“I was asked,” he said, jerking his head at Duplais, “else I might have thought different.”
My father had done this. To hide his own duplicity, Papa had made a distraction of de Santo, once captain of the king’s guard, by accusing him of jeopardizing the king’s life. He had badgered and bullied and rushed the captain to judgment, cropping his ears with an ax, thus condemning him to everlasting humiliation and disgrace far worse than the pain of the mutilation. It had cost a good soldier his honor, his livelihood, and his family.
De Santo had testified at Papa’s trial, as I had. I hoped bearing witness against his tormentor had restored his honor in his own mind, even if no one in the world would ever see past the testimony of his cropped ears.
“The others got away?” Duplais was examining the bodies, yanking off the masks, searching for anything to identify them.
“The shadow man took after them,” said de Santo. “The henchman’s skewered already. I doubt he’ll tell us aught when he stumbles. I stayed back, lest they’ve friends about.”
Indeed, moments later, the black horse dragged a fourth body—that of the man with the earrings—into the trampled glen.
“No luck with the leader?” said Duplais.
The “shadow man,” dressed and cloaked in the color of midnight, shook his head. A black silk scarf wound around his face and neck hid all features save his eyes, and a flat, wide-brimmed hat shielded those from view. As soon as de Santo untied the rope, the rider moved off into the trees, denying me any chance of identifying him in the future, except that he was more graceful in the saddle than any horseman I’d ever observed. More even than Ambrose, whom my father had forever sworn to house in the stable.
Duplais yanked the mask off the newly arrived body.
“Welther!” The name popped out of my mouth the moment the scarred cheek and bristling jaw came into view.
“Who?” Duplais’ question rang sharp as a bell strike.
“Welther de Ruz. One of my father’s aides, years ago.” The burly soldier’s stares and insinuating smiles had blighted a year of my girlhood, until Papa noticed my increasing reluctance to leave my bedchamber. “My father dismissed him for impropriety. Not . . . kindly.”
“So these might be your father’s rivals, and yet . . . tell me, damoselle, did you recognize the leader?”
Glad he didn’t force me to dredge up more, I answered readily. “The Norgandi? No.”
“What if the accent was false?”
False? I tried to think back to the Norgandi’s diction. The dialect had been pervasive and perfectly accurate. And without seeing the man’s face—Heaven’s lights, the mask! At the trial Duplais had described a mask worn by the villain he called the Aspirant, the man he judged to be the ringleader of the conspiracy—my father. Duplais’ unwavering gaze scrutinized me as he might a treasure map.
“That man was not my father. I would know.”
But would I? Frightened, confused, and grieving as I was? After five years’ absence? With his being cloaked and masked, voice disguised by the thick patois? As I reviewed the scraps and snippets of his Norgandi phrases, I could detect a false perfection. No one, especially a man of common background as the masked man’s words bespoke, enunciated his own language without some local or regional variation. So he had learned the Norgandi language later and was better educated than he seemed. But Papa? I called it up again and listened.
“He was not my father. His voice’s timbre was all wrong. But neither was he a native speaker.”
“Good enough.” Duplais seemed surprised at my offering so much. “What was he after? If he’d a mind to abduct you, he would have clobbered me, dragged you off, and searched your baggage later. If he had wanted blood to leech, they would have taken both of us and to perdition with baggage. He was hunting something.”
The three of them waited. De Santo glaring. Duplais calculating. The black-cloaked man in the shadows listening.
“I’ve no idea.” I knelt on the soft earth and began to collect my belongings, brushing off the dirt and flattening what had been trampled before placing each item back into the satchel. The Norgandi had gotten off with my journal, Montclaire’s planting book, and my magnifying lens, but he had dropped the scissors and the other books. “Perhaps they were like you, sonjeur, digging where there is nothing.”
My lies glared like a temple dancer’s spangles. Duplais expelled a disbelieving epithet, and stomped into the wood to consult his shy friend.
Self-discipline rid me of the shakes and set my mind to work again. The marauders had been after a book. Lianelle’s own journal, perhaps? Or had she never returned the doubly encrypted Gautieri book? Considering their interest in the scissors and magnifier, I surmised they were also interested in anything Lianelle had made using the books. For certain they hunted the same thing as Duplais: spiniks . . . secrets.
CHAPTER 5
4 OCET, AFTERNOON
As Duplais, my chaperone Margriet—an old friend of Captain de Santo—and I crested yet another scrubby hillock, journey’s end spread out before us. Beyond yellow-gold grass dotted with rust-colored poppies lay the broad bronze loops of the river Ley and the royal city of Merona, glowing this afternoon in a golden haze. Sketchy shapes of sails and barges clustered at the crescent harbor, whence Sabrian ships sailed into the unknown reaches of the world. Atop a modest bluff overlooking city and river sprawled shapely walls and towers of pale yellow stone—Castelle Escalon, where the kings of Sabria had held court for more than four hundred years.
I dreaded the place. Tens of thousands of people lived inside Merona’s walls.
My parents had assured me that my aversion to crowds was merely excessive shyness certain to be outgrown, like my belly-churning reaction to magic and my spring sneezing fits. So far I’d seen no relief from any of them. The few towns and villages on this journey had already left my ears itching and buzzing, as if a swarm of insects had been trapped inside my skull.
In contrast, Duplais’ spine visibly uncoiled as our path hairpinned down the hill toward the Caurean highroad. For three days the tight-wound librarian had pursued a convoluted route of game tracks, bridle paths, and roads little more than faint wagon ruts. We had spent our nights at deserted loggers’ cabins and a meager hostelry that had likely not hosted a customer since the Blood Wars. Captain de Santo and the black-cloaked man had never left us, lurking among the trees or behind hillocks. Indeed, we had traveled from Montclaire to the royal city without being abducted, slain, or even noticed—whichever the danger Duplais feared most.
None of this odd behavior ruffled Margriet. Truly, I doubted an outbreak of man-eating wasps could have made the formidable woman blanch. She ate her own provisions, slept like a fallen tree trunk, and jogged alo
ng on her mule, exhibiting not the least trace of curiosity.
As we rounded a curve on the lower slope, the view expanded to include the dark thumb of rock protruding from the river’s deepest channel. Ah, saints have mercy, little brother. Bleak, harsh, isolated, the Spindle Prison had been Ambrose’s entire world since he was fifteen. The sight choked my heart beyond bearing and roused a guilty urgency that distant imagining could not.
“Sonjeur, will I be permitted to visit my brother?” I said, nudging my mount up beside his. My ingrained hostility to Duplais suddenly seemed childish. “He is a hostage, not a convict. Yet he’s been allowed no visitors. I’ve petitioned, written letters . . .” Everything I could think of. Few had even bothered to reject my petitions.
“I’ve no influence with the Spindle warder, damoselle. You’ll need to take it up with him if your duties permit. Move along faster, if you please. Prod that balky ass, Mistress Margriet.” He spurred his mount well ahead of me.
If eyes could truly launch daggers, mine would have pierced his straight, slim back.
The highroad stretched like a braid of dust toward Merona. “The city gates are closed at sunset,” said Duplais, as our course merged with the city-bound traffic, “and the only hostelries outside the gates are wholly unfit—especially for women. Worse than we’ve seen.”
I doubted they were so dreadful. Duplais clearly detested traveling. His mouth had hardened at the rough accommodations, and he did naught but pick at the food we carried with us: dried meat, sweating cheese, and fruit sorely bruised by heat and saddle packs. At each juncture, he had offered terse apologies, as if I were a discommoded queen.
Unwilling to ease his discomfort, I had chosen not to mention that my father had often taken Lianelle, Ambrose, and me into the wild to sleep on the ground, snare our supper, and live “rough” when we were children. We had called ourselves the Gardia Ruggiere, and considered ourselves well prepared to take on King Philippe’s worst enemies. Who would have imagined a day would come when our goodfather would regard us as those very villains?
An hour of Duplais’ prodding, and we arrived at the clogged approaches to the city gates. Market carts laden with potatoes and beets, and wagons hauling wine casks, coal, tin pots, or anonymous crates of merchants’ wares were strung out fifty deep at a customs station bristling with soldiers. We three were halted in a queue of horse and foot traffic almost as long.
“Soul charm, damoselle? ’Tis Camarilla approved.” A pock-faced woman draped in dusty scarves dangled a glittering bracelet of glass and silver beads where the sunlight could catch it. “Protect thy sight and soul from haunts and daemons, spectres and ghoulies. Twenty kivrae only . . .” Her left hand rested on her right shoulder, exhibiting a blood family mark. Its smudged lines testified it to have been drawn with ink, however, and not the indelible birth-marking of the Camarilla.
I refused, and the woman moved on, deftly avoiding the scrutiny of a collared mage in the striped robe of a Camarilla inspector.
A sultry breeze off the river swirled the dust rolled up from cart wheels, boots, and hooves. As the orange-hazed sun slipped toward the horizon, the crowd of travelers grew fractious. Our line lurched toward the massive gate tunnel from time to time in the mode of a caterpillar. The thrumming in my ears worsened with every centimetre, making my cheekbones throb and my teeth ache.
“Will they truly shut the gates with all these people outside?” I asked, to take my mind off the unpleasant sensations. “We’re not at war.”
“It’s disturbances inside cause the gate closings.” Duplais did not shift his roving gaze from the crowd, examining the multihued sea of faces as if a magistrate might arrive to explain further. “Officious fools believe they can lock out the wind.”
Before I could ask what he meant, Duplais rose in the stirrups and waved to a sober, soft-cheeked gentleman who had just emerged from behind the customs station. “Henri! Over here.”
The man squeezed his way through and handed over a rolled page, tied with a ribbon. “You’re a fortunate man, Portier,” he said, blotting his forehead and bearded chin with a linen kerchief. “Chevalier de Sylvae provided this just before he left for the country. You’re right that the imbecile can expedite tricky matters, though I’ll throw myself in the river if I must listen to one more crocodile story.”
“Many thanks. I had to leave in such a rush, I’d no time to arrange for a gate pass.”
“She’s still not bound for the Spindle?” The man lowered his voice, eyeing me without staring.
My cheeks scorched. This Henri, his close-barbered beard and mustache encircling an ill-defined mouth, had been one of Duplais’ witnesses at Papa’s trial.
“She’s the king’s gooddaughter,” said Duplais, “and deemed little threat should she be in custody of a forceful ally. The dowry His Majesty settled on her in infancy will attract notice from a number of useful quarters.”
I wanted to vomit. For these long three days in the saddle, I had relived the bizarre attack in the wood, wrestled with the heartache of leaving Montclaire, the impossibility of Lianelle’s death, and Duplais’ implication of murder. I’d given my own future no thought at all. Now here it was, laid out before me like the view from the hilltop.
My father had been a king’s First Counselor, ensuring that I would take substantial property, connection, and influence into a union. Since my first inkling of what marriage meant, my father had assured me that any husband would be my own choice, a choice of the heart, as my parents’ had been. Yet observing my mother’s heartache every time Papa rode out, often absent for months at a time, I had decided that love and intimacy created a bondage every bit as confining as arranged marriage. Friends, family, study, and travel were everything I wanted. But in this, as in all, Papa’s crimes had changed everything.
“Best not let word get out who she is,” said this Henri. “A mob demolished a cult shrine last night, screaming they were sheltering the Traitor. Night begets rumors of hauntings like a corpse begets maggots. And pick your route up the hill carefully.”
We never heard his reasons. The crowd shifted, quickly engulfing Duplais’ friend, as a rider in dusty scarlet livery charged through the press. “Make way! Step aside! Royal dispatches for Castelle Escalon!”
Duplais pushed his mount into the wake of the royal messenger, shouting at Margriet and me to keep close. The deft maneuver slid us to the head of the queue, where he presented his scroll. To the disgruntled murmurings of other travelers, the gate guards passed us through after only a glimpse.
“Why would anyone believe a shrine would shelter my father?” I said as we rode through the gate tunnel.
“It was a cult shrine—the Cult of the Reborn,” said Duplais. “Since your father’s conviction, Merona has suffered a plague of. . . unnatural . . . happenings. These hauntings or incidents spawn rumors that the Great Traitor seeks to raise an army of revenants to overthrow the king. The frightened and ignorant lash out at any group who speaks of souls returning from the dead.”
The Cult was a small, devout branch of Temple worshipers. They believed that our saints were actually heroic souls who had turned their backs on Heaven, reborn repeatedly to succor humankind in times of our direst need. Yet I’d never heard that Cult beliefs encompassed necromancy, an aberrant—and wholly unsubstantiated—practice anathema to the Temple and renounced by the Camarilla. And an army of revenants? What nonsense! People must be truly frightened.
We emerged from the gate tunnel onto the ring road between the thick outer bastion and a less imposing inner wall, draped with straggling vines grown right out of the mortar. What struck me first was the quiet. Not only was the ring road almost deserted, as if the passage of the gate tunnel had transported us much farther than thirty metres from the noisy throng outside, but the quality of the sounds themselves seemed muted. A gaggle of street urchins pelted past us, making no more noise than if they tiptoed. Our own mounts’ hooves made more of a dull thwup than the ringing clop one would exp
ect.
The dimness was less surprising. Sunlight might yet stream across river and vineyards, but the orb itself hung low enough that shadows collected in the gorge between the walls. Even so I would swear that someone had draped a gray veil between the city and the silvered sky.
The wind tore green leaves and full-hued blossoms from the rattling vines, whipping them into odd whirlpools that rose high like dust devils in fallow fields. Odder yet, the wind was not the usual sultry breeze off the Ley, stinking of river wrack, but dry and cold enough to sting my cheeks and mock my light clothing. Had I not noted Margriet’s shivering as Duplais counted out her pay, I might have assumed I’d caught a chill along the way.
“We must move quickly,” said Duplais, heading up the road as Margriet and her mule vanished down the steep way toward Riverside. The odd light grayed his complexion, as he scanned the road, the walls, and the towers.
The rapidly deteriorating light had evidently sent many people home to supper early. Streets and markets were deserted, booths and stalls locked up. A number of streets were blocked off by barrels of sand or piled stones. At every barricade stood a quartiere—an iron pole with three crosspieces, hung with animal bones, bells, or strips of tin and copper, and topped with a snarl of laurel—a magical artifact supposed to ward off malevolent spirits. One spied quartieres in the countryside from time to time, but never in cosmopolitan Merona.
Indeed almost every house we passed sported runes painted on its lintel or inverted lamps hung in the windows or some other charm or witch sign near its threshold. The king’s city bled superstition and fear—enough to shiver my skeptic’s blood and loosen my tongue.
“What is everyone so afraid of?” I said as we took yet another detour into a street entirely deserted. My skin prickled in the gloom.
