Ombria In Shadow

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “Odd,” Marin Sozon remarked to Ducon, distracting him a moment while the regent was introducing her chosen ministers and councillors to the court. Half were pallid, elderly nobles who could barely stand straight and seemed miserable; the rest looked as if they had borrowed shoes for the occasion and had wandered in from the docks. “Where Hamil died.”

  Ducon, thinking of the secret door behind the mirror, was startled. Then he remembered where he had dragged the body. He looked at Sozon silently; the bloodshot blue eyes were bland now, hiding thoughts. “Perhaps,” Ducon answered softly, “he thought he might find you there.”

  “Someone found us there,” Lord Sozon breathed, shrugging lightly. “Evidently.” He shifted a step away from Ducon as Domina Pearl sent an opaque glance in their direction. He added, after a moment or two, “I thought, at the time, that he was wrong.”

  “About?”

  He gave Ducon a brief, equivocal smile. “About you.”

  “He was,” Ducon said tightly. Sozon did not answer. Ducon turned to watch Kyel, seated beside the regent. There were dark half-moons under the child’s eyes, but he looked more weary than frightened as the officials bowed to him. His eyes widened at the size of the knife one of them wore. The man drew it out, said something about gutting sharks. The regent spoke sharply; her councillor sheathed the massive blade and Ducon breathed again. When he returned his attention to Sozon, all he saw was the embroidered manticore guarding the back of his jacket. Its wild, hungry face bore an odd resemblance to the armed councillor bowing unconvincingly to the prince.

  The aging conspirators said nothing more to Ducon about Gamelyn’s death. Domina Pearl said nothing at all. But he heard their unspoken words everywhere, even in his dreams. The tension, unbearable as a storm that refused to break, drove him finally into the noisy, unpredictable streets. Paper under his arm, a box full of charcoal and pastels in a pocket, he listed like a broken boat into the murky backwaters of Ombria. Scattering sketches and stubs of charcoal in his wake, he drifted through changing light and shadow, in one tavern door and out another, drawing whatever caught his eye, until the streets darkened and he found himself standing in gutters, drawing by lamplight the fire-limned faces passing restlessly through the night.

  He walked carelessly, without direction, his body carrying him into puddles now and then, in which the sickle moon floated and splintered under his foot. He was wondering how many moons there were to shatter when someone came up behind him. A hand caught the neck of his shirt, twisted it roughly. He felt the prick of a blade at his back.

  “What gold have you got, my fine beauty, in your pocket?”

  “My gold turns to coal,” he answered. “See for your-self.”

  The hand loosed his shirt, snatched the box out of his pocket. After a moment, the thief cursed; the box hit the cobbles, raining watercolors and charcoal. Ducon used his elbow and the metal-rimmed heel of his boot. He heard the knife drop; the man limped moaning into the dark of an alley. Ducon, still clutching drawings under one arm, set them down carefully and picked colors out of the debris in the street. One unbroken piece of charcoal he discovered in a shadow. It was glowing slightly, awash with faint, elusive color. The better to find you with, he thought, dropping it back into the wooden box. The world spun when he straightened. He caught the corner of a wall for balance, wondering if he were about to spend the night in the gutter along with all the moons. But the dizziness passed; he began to walk again.

  Some time later, he found himself sitting at a battered table, gazing at the face that had come out of his charcoal. It seemed vaguely familiar. He rubbed a shadow under the eye, blurred a line beside the mouth, then contemplated it again, chin resting on his blackened palm. He raised his head after a time, studied the morose, untidy faces around him. None of them had inspired this drawing; they were all strangers. He looked at his paper again, absently rubbing his brow, leaving dark streaks across it. He had seen those fearless, curious eyes before, the long, taut mouth, the pale hair and brows that spare lines of charcoal barely suggested.

  He started; his elbow slid off the table, nearly taking the wine with it. He had drawn himself. He took a closer look, frowning to focus. Not exactly himself. There were faint lines beneath the eyes, beside the mouth, that suggested himself in the future, after a couple of decades of Domina Pearl’s rule. But this face was not grim, simply thoughtful; the man might have been gazing back at his younger self. Who was sitting, charcoal in hand, looking at him. Ducon felt a sudden vertigo. He closed his eyes, left a shaky smudge of black between his brows. Someone pulled out a chair beside him noisily. A whirl of color, scents of sweat and lavender and beer settled beside him, pulled the drawing from under his hand.

  “Are you ill, my lord Ducon?” a woman asked. He blinked at her. She had a young, pock-pitted face and a sweet smile; he wanted instantly to draw her. “If you’re going to show us what you had for dinner, don’t lay it out on your picture.”

  “How do you know my name?” he asked.

  “Everyone knows you.”

  “What does that look like to you?”

  “Looks like you’ve drawn yourself.” She picked absently at a tooth, studying the face, then protested, “No, you’ve made yourself too old. Who is this, then? Your father?”

  He felt the world lurch; sweat stung his eyes. He put his hand over his mouth, though the recognition left him hollow, empty, as if even his name had vanished. The woman’s fingers closed gently around his wrist. She spoke again. He was on his feet, gathering things. She gave him back the sketch, and rose, clinging to his arm, still talking. But when he reached the door she was no longer with him. Time and memory had blurred; he was leaving a different tavern entirely.

  He woke in an unfamiliar room later that night, or maybe the next; he was unsure. A silver branch of candles softly lit the face of the young woman who watched him. She wore a loose confection of raspberry silk and lace, soiled where the hem dragged. Her bare feet, propped on the bed near his face, were dirty.

  She smiled. Her triangular cat’s face with its golden eyes was lean and hollow, the milky skin marred by a jagged scar across one cheek. He recognized the smile, if not the face or the place. He caught a glimpse of darkness through the threadbare velvet curtains behind her.

  He asked huskily, “How—”

  “You wandered in here and fell into bed, my lord Ducon. Fortunately, I found enough in your pockets to satisfy the gentleman already in it.”

  “You know my name,” he said tentatively.

  She gestured at a chair in answer, where the pile of drawings lay on top of his clothes. “You’re easy to recognize. And no, you’ve never met me.”

  “I thought not. I would have drawn you if I had.”

  Her smile changed for an instant, became genuine. He started to sit up. The fruit bowl colors of raspberry silk and cherry velvet swirled together; the bed tried to float. He dropped back, his eyes tightly closed. He felt her fingers against his cheek.

  “You’re cold,” she said, startled. “Cold as death. Are you ill?”

  “I can’t be,” he murmured reasonably, “if I am dead.” But she had lost her smile; her eyes grew apprehensive. “I’ll send for a physician, my lord.”

  “I don’t need one. Most likely, I’m just drunk.”

  “Then let me get you some broth to warm you.”

  “No,” he said, his throat closing at the thought. He reached out blindly, caught a frill of lace and then her arm. “Just lie beside me. Please. Did I have enough in my pockets for that?”

  She hesitated, still wary; then he felt her arm lose its tension. “Not with that charcoal all over you,” she grumbled. In another shard of time he felt her washing his face and hands, the warm, scented water almost as soothing as her touch.

  The Black Pearl’s gaze cut into his dreams and he woke abruptly, before sunrise. The woman snored softly beside him, buried in faded strawberry satin. He stroked a single, visible curl but she did not stir. He drew himself
up carefully; the room stayed still. Kyel crossed his mind then. The child had no idea where he had gone or why. He would blame Domina Pearl, since she caused people to disappear; she would be forced to silence him…

  He dressed as quickly as he could, losing his balance now and then. If he hurried, he could enter the palace, leave a drawing for Kyel before he woke. Something he would recognize: a flounder, perhaps, crown askew, dancing on the waves as a pale-haired man drew it. He wandered for some time through the corridors of the silent house before he found a door to the street. By the time he reached it, the sun was pushing through a cloud bank at the end of the world, and the silvery air was damp with brine. A ship gliding away from the dock toward the open sea seemed to sail on light. He reached for charcoal.

  It dropped from his shaking hand; he bent to pick it up and fell briefly into a dark, whirling vortex. He had to lean against a wall while he drew. The ship’s masts tilted at peculiar angles on his paper. He finished it, stood a moment rubbing his eyes with smudged fingers, trying to remember where he needed to go so urgently and why. Sun broke through cloud; he wandered away finally, following the light.

  Later, he woke with his face against a charcoal face. Tavern noises droned and buzzed around him. He raised his face from the paper, found a cup of wine, apparently untouched, near his paint box. Glancing dazedly around him, he saw the startling face he had drawn a day or two or five before attached to a body and gazing back at him.

  He rose quickly. Then he sat down again to wait for the sudden darkness to recede. When he could see again, the tall, pale-haired figure had turned away and was heading out the door. Ducon gathered his drawings hastily, swept charcoal and brushes back into his pockets, and took his first swallow of wine to clear his head.

  It was as though he had drunk fire. He could not breathe; he could not make a sound. He sagged against the wall, blinking away tears of pain. When it ebbed, he moved again, impatient with his strange malady, intent on his quarry: the man who wore his older face.

  Outside the light burned him; he could scarcely see. The man lingered at the next shop window to study a pair of fencing foils. He turned abruptly, but not before Ducon glimpsed his face, with its level brows and grave, sea-mist eyes. Ducon felt his heart pound. They were of a height, as matched as the foils in the window. He tried to speak; the wine had burned his voice away. The man moved quickly through the crowds. Ducon, his pace slower and helped along by walls and idle wagon wheels, kept the light, trimmed head in sight. Sometimes it was the only thing in the world that he could see.

  He had no idea where he was going. Streets he had known all his life looked suddenly unfamiliar; he could no longer understand language. When the pain ran through him again, finding its way into every vein and the marrow of his bones, he finally saw the cool, silvery eyes turned back to look at him. He closed his own eyes, and fell through a sunken window into nowhere.

  TWELVE

  Mirror, Mirror

  After the charcoal had begun its deadly journey without her, Mag spent her spare time searching for Ducon Greve in every tavern she could find between the docks and the palace. When that failed to unearth him, she threw caution to the winds. She abandoned her shopping basket, which Faey had ordered her to fill with eels for supper, in the middle of a busy street and went underground at the sunflowers. Encumbered by an ancient green silk gown that shed thread and seed pearls at whim, she decided upon a quest for clothes. As she moved swiftly and noiselessly through the vast palace cellar, odd noises weltered toward her. Voices and echoes of water rippled through the air as if, in some magic chamber, whales and dolphins cavorted among young maidens in great tanks of water. When she reached it, all the fish turned into laundry, stirred and beaten in steaming cauldrons by glum, limp-haired women as wet as mackerels. She snatched something dark out of a dry pile and retired behind the wine racks to change. The dress was plain as shadow and made for a beer keg. But it covered her from neck to wrists and ankles; at a cursory glance, it would go unremarked.

  She found the narrow stairway down which the laundry travelled, and flitted up. It led to a huge room full of cloth. Hillocks of laundry were being sorted into other hillocks. Sheets and hose and hemlines were being mended, caps and collars ruffled and starched. Flatirons heated like tiny furnaces sizzled as beads of perspiration rolled off the reddened faces of the ironers. Clean clothes were sorted, folded, hung, and delivered to prim maids who appeared like clockwork figures, precise and relentless, at the door. It was a busy place. Mag slipped behind a massive cupboard where linens, folded and stacked, waited for bed and bath.

  Gossip turned for the moment on sheets. They could be read, apparently, like tea leaves; their stains predicted fortunes. Mag caught vague and mysterious allusions to those who slept on satin.

  “She must have lost it, with all that blood. They’ll never be washed clean.”

  “Then she won’t need to worry about who it looks like.”

  There was a click of shears, a hiss from an iron on damp cloth.

  “Blood on satin is easier than red wine. What’s worst of all, I think, is mustard. Lord Picot must have been rolling in it last night.”

  “Chocolate,” someone muttered. “That’s far worse.”

  “Charcoal,” someone else suggested. “When Ducon Greve falls in bed drunk after a night out drawing, he gets it everywhere.”

  There was a laugh. “You can tell whose bed he’s been in.”

  “I wouldn’t mind the charcoal.”

  “Who would? He’s welcome to leave his fingerprints all over me. And I’d wash his sheets for him.”

  “I wonder who—”

  “I wonder—”

  “Watch the sheets. He wasn’t under his own last night. Neither was she.”

  The voice dropped low on the last word. There was a brief, tense silence. Then someone ventured, just as softly, “It’s hard to tell with her. She doesn’t leave signs behind her.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t sleep.”

  It was Domina Pearl they spoke of in their hushed voices, Mag realized suddenly.

  “I think she sleeps elsewhere. Somewhere secret. That’s why her sheets are never rumpled, and there’s never a hair or a crumb among them. Not even the outline of her body. She won’t even leave that behind.”

  “But who washes her secret sheets?”

  Who, indeed? Mag wondered. And where might her secret place be? But no one guessed; they were back to stains again, the most stubborn—“use salt”—the most peculiar—“crushed garlic everywhere”—the most disturbing—“she wrote his name in blood right there where he had slept.” But nothing more about Ducon Greve or the Black Pearl. Mag caught herself yawning. She could not leave until they did. She leaned her face against the back of the cupboard and wondered if they ever slept. Then brisk footsteps came across the room toward her. The cupboard doors banged shut, jarring her.

  “There. That’s tomorrow’s sheets in order. And just in time for supper. Go and call them up from the washing.”

  Cramped and drowsy, Mag was forced to wait until the damp and grumbling women from the waterworld below changed into dry uniforms. They drifted out, leaving a taper burning for the evening’s work.

  Mag lost no time. If Ducon Greve had not been found dying in his bed, then perhaps he was somewhere in the secret chambers within the walls. If he were ill and visible, gossip would have veered away from sheets to him. She hadn’t found him on the streets; he must be in the palace somewhere. Covered with charcoal, stricken with some odd raging in his body, in a place where no one heard him call. Fluttering batlike in the voluminous dress, she ran down dim, silent servants’ hallways until she found the huge urn behind which she had lost him before.

  This time, she discovered the small white rosette carved into the molding that could be felt if she slid her hand between the wall and the urn. She pressed it. The narrow door opened soundlessly. She picked a candle out of the sconce above it and entered the secret palace.

  Anothe
r silent maze of passages it seemed, unguarded and empty. She walked slowly, wary of creaking floorboards. Doors opened to small, plain rooms. Servants’ quarters, she guessed, and long disused. Dust and cobwebs furnished them, and the odd forgotten adornment: a silk pincushion, a watercolor of a child, a swan whittled out of soap, seamed and yellow as ancient ivory. But none of them held an artist facing death by charcoal.

  She wondered if secret stairways led upward to larger, rich rooms strewn with memories of fine lords and ladies instead of servants. Perhaps Ducon had become confused by the poison. Lost within the labyrinth of those forgotten halls, he might have dragged himself upward, trying to find his chambers.

  She looked for stairs. The toad opened its dark eyes within her heart, watched her search. Despite her habitual calm, her hands grew oddly cold; her thoughts kept darting and fluttering like blown leaves. Ducon’s face, vivid with candle fire, haunted her. He might be anywhere or nowhere, having no place left in the world to go. Like her, he belonged everywhere and nowhere; he had uncertain origins and no true name. Like her, he wandered fearlessly and had a penchant for secrets. They might have been kin, though he lived in the palace above the world, and she beneath it. She had never felt so like anyone human before. And now, despite all her intentions, he was dying somewhere, most likely helpless, alone, and completely bewildered. When she finally found stairs hidden behind a warped, flecked mirror in the back of a room, she lost all caution. She ran up, shielding her shivering flame with one hand, into the dark at the top of the stairs.

  Words leaped out at her, gold, silver, red. She turned; the shifting candle illuminated manuscripts, massive bindings, all speaking to her in familiar and unfamiliar languages. Other candles emerged under her flame; she lit them all, and saw what she was standing in.

  The brewer had one like it: a room completely full of books. Tomes, he called them, and showed her pictures of witches, alembics, elaborate diagrams that revealed, symbol by symbol, the path to the perfect element. Like his, this one smelled old. Unlike his, this one was guarded.