Breath and Bone

by Carol Berg

  “Ouch!”

  “Must you forever complain?”

  Her blotting was indeed more satisfactory than rubbing away the grit of sweat and tears…and blood, I noticed when she paused to rinse the cloth. My collision with the brick wall had split my head in more than my perception. But the sharp sting served as pleasing evidence that my senses now functioned in a somewhat normal fashion.

  The physician had changed from her riding leathers into a skirt and shapeless tunic of dull green. A slim leather belt settled about her hips, more for the purpose of attaching a knife sheath and two leather pockets than any decorative enhancement of her spare figure.

  “I was hoping to visit Brother Victor,” I said. “He is a friend…mentor…”

  “…and the prince told you, ‘Not yet.’ It might soothe your conscience to see the monk, but it would do him no good at all. His health improves. His injuries have challenged me, but will yield in the end.”

  She dropped a jingling something into one of her pockets and tightened the drawstring with a snap. Her insistent grip on my hand hauled me to my feet with astonishing ease. As I concentrated on remaining upright, she surveyed me head to toe and sighed heavily.

  “Come along. Our doughty prince insists that you remain out of sight while he plays Evanori chieftain in his hall. He fears your presence would be a distraction. Nothing sets Evanori warlords slavering more than a tall, scrawny pureblood.”

  Untwisting my trews, I padded after her through another garden room and into the chilly corridor. My head throbbed, but only with bruising, not madness. “I’m no more pureblood than he is—or you are.”

  Saverian raised one instructive finger. “Ah, but Caedmon’s holy blood flows in Osriel’s veins, which means they will forgive him anything, and despite being a woman who prefers books to battleaxes, I can at least claim half an Evanori birthright. Were I in your place, I would certainly not attempt to explain to a hundred warlords come to the last night of a warmoot that, despite my Registry listing, I was not an Aurellian pureblood because my mother was an angel…or a water sprite…or whatever it is you claim. Of course, I say you can be damned and do as you wish, save that our lord has commanded me to see you obey him. And I will see to it. You must have peeved him something dreadful to put him in such a vile temper.”

  Her heavy black braid had been knotted at the back of her long neck and fixed in place with an ivory skewer. Easy to imagine that skewer stretching all the way down her spine. Half Evanori, half Aurellian—that likely explained her odd nature. Evanori hated Aurellians—and thus purebloods—with a passion wrought of gold, starvation, and survival.

  After Ardra and Morian had fallen to the Aurellian Empire, and Caedmon had sent his infant son to the Danae for protection, the king and the remnants of his legions had retreated into the wilds of Evanore. Raiding, running, hiding in caves and corries, freezing and starving alongside his men, Caedmon taught the warlords to fight as one and helped them build impregnable strongholds to hold off the invaders and their cruel emperor, who lusted for Evanore’s gold. When Caedmon fell at last, having earned their eternal loyalty, the Evanori held out a century more. Had they yielded their region’s treasure, Aurellia would likely yet stand, and Navronne would yet be subject to an empire that built its strength on magic, slavery, and brutality.

  Though feeling mostly myself again in body, my spirit remained tight wound. If Osriel meant what he said about my choosing my own course, I’d no mind to put off our coming journey into the Danae realm, no matter the state of my recovery. Thus, to learn what secrets Elene could teach, I had to see her that night. Which meant I had to find a way into the fortress. As a prison guard Saverian did not elicit the same unnerving fears as Voushanti, but she had shown power enough to make me wary, nonetheless.

  “You seem excessively compliant for one who speaks of our master so slightingly,” I said as she marched into the familiar passage. The hammered gold wolf with garnet eyes glared from the far end, guarding my bedchamber door. “Is it to benefit the lighthouse you do all this?”

  She snorted. “I am Renna’s physician and house mage, not a member of Osriel’s band of merry monks.”

  “Your privileged position must shield you from his wrath. You don’t seem to fear him as the rest of us do.”

  She waved me through the blue and yellow door hanging. “If you assume my familiarity with the prince buys me leniency from his strictures, I’d recommend you actually use these senses I’m protecting for you. Bear in mind, I’ve known him from infancy and have learned in what matters I dare cross him and in what matters I dare not.”

  I made as if to enter the bedchamber, but instead blocked the doorway. “Prince Osriel wishes me out of sight—fair enough. But might there be some hidden vantage from which I could observe tonight’s events? I’ve no experience of Evanori customs, so I’m greatly curious. And, by every god in heaven, if I am left alone to parse my birth, my body, or my future for one more moment, not even your magics will keep me sane.” This last came out sounding a bit more desperate than I liked.

  She tipped her head to one side and pursed her thin lips into an unflattering knot. Her brow ridges were angled slightly downward from midfore-head, giving her a forever-quizzical expression. After a breathless moment, she shrugged. “Why not? Let it never be said I granted Osriel of Evanore exactly what he desired on any occasion whatsoever.”

  I didn’t think I’d ever met a person so unattached to human feelings. All the world seemed subject to her disdain. Recalcitrant logs or foolish sorcerers could cause her transitory annoyance, but I couldn’t imagine what it might take to truly frighten her, or to please her, for that matter. At least she had no red sparks centering her pupils.

  Saverian sat in my room for several hours that afternoon, writing in her journal, reading from several books, annoyed when I tried to talk or ask questions.

  “Sleep, if you can’t think of anything better to do,” she said, after one ill-timed query. “I’m not here to entertain you. You’ve taken enough of my time over the past few weeks.”

  But my skin itched and my insides felt like a nest of ants. I could no more sleep than I could read her books. “What do you do with your time when not nursing twist-minds or demon princes? I’ve never seen anyone save monks or schoolmasters sit so long with a book.”

  “Books don’t prattle. Books don’t make demands. Yet they give you everything they possess. It’s a very satisfying partnership.”

  I considered that for a while, as I watched her read. Annoyance vanished as the words absorbed her attention, replaced by a fluid mix of interest, curiosity, and serious consideration. Her brow would furrow; then she would write something in her journal. Once the thought was recorded, the furrow smoothed, and she went back to reading. Books supplied companionship, perhaps, but I doubted any words on a page could do what her hands had done for me as I lay in the doulon madness. “Satisfying doesn’t sound like much to aim for.”

  “Enough!” With a spit of exasperation, she scooped all her belongings into an untidy armload and headed for the door. “I’ll fetch you in time for the warmoot.”

  I spent the next few hours berating myself as an idiot. I hadn’t meant to voice my musings aloud. At least she had given me something to look at beyond four walls and a bed.

  One of her books had fallen to the floor beneath the table. I thumbed through it, picking out one or two letters that I knew, then watching them melt and flow into the ones next to them. Gods, useless. I threw the book across the room and went to sleep.

  True to her word, Saverian returned just after a bristle-bearded serving man had lit the lamps. As I snatched a long black cloak from the clothes chest, I felt warmly satisfied that, for the first time in forever, I was both reasonably clearheaded and taking some action on my own behalf.

  “You need to eat more than one bite of meat and a dried plum,” said the physician after inspecting the food tray that had arrived an hour earlier. She stuffed a slice of oily cheese in
to my hand. “Eat this as we walk, and I won’t find a reason to abort this venture.”

  I could make no plans until we reached the fortress, but if I were to shake free of Saverian and find Elene, I would likely need magic more than nourishment. I obediently took a bite of cheese, then held out my fingers. “Can you unlock these, good physician? I feel a cripple without my bent even to know north from south.”

  Her dark heavy cloak made her look taller and more than ever like a stick. She shrugged. “You assign me more skill than my due. It’s not your fingers, but only this house I’ve sealed against your magic—and that only possible because it is a peculiar house with a number of in-built protections already. I assumed you would be more in control of yourself by the time we took you out walking. Please tell me that’s true.”

  “I promise I’m in possession of all the reason I was born with.” I grinned and took another bite of cheese to please her. “Honestly, I do appreciate your care.”

  She blew a derisive breath and hefted a stout leather bag over one shoulder, the bag of the sort that Voushanti used to carry Prince Osriel’s medicines. The outer doors waited in a pleasant vaulted alcove I’d not glimpsed in all my wanderings. The four broad panels of the twin doors had been painted to depict the seasons, the rich hues and intricate drawing giving the depth of truth to the design. Though stunningly beautiful, the paintings left a hollow in my breast. Each panel showed a pair of dancers, their pale flesh twined with designs of azure and lapis. We pulled open the doors and stepped into the winter night.

  The cold snatched my breath away. Fine, sharp grains of snow stung the skin, the particles more a part of the air itself than anything that would pile or drift on the barren ground. Across the windswept slope, bonfires and torches lit the fortress gates and walls, orange flames writhing alongside a hundred or more whipping banners that flew from the battlements.

  As we trudged down the path, thick darkness crowded the light-pooled fortress and the soft-lit windows of the house we had just abandoned, as if the mountains had drawn closer under cover of the starless, moonless night. I drew my cloak tight, grateful for Saverian’s enchantment that tamed my senses. It must be that Evanore’s violent history remained raw enough to taint the night with the anguish of its dying warriors and the wails of its starving children, for the wind bore grief and despair and anger on its back as surely as it carried shouts of greeting or the smells of horses and smoke. A harsh, dry land was Evanore. I would no more touch my fingers to this earth than spit on a grave.

  From the battlements sounded the low, heavy tones of a sonnivar, the hooked horn that stretched taller than me when stood on end and that rang so deep and so true its call could be heard for vast distances through the mountains and vales, guiding Evanore’s warriors home. Evanori claimed the timbre of each warlord’s sonnivar unique, so that a fog-blind warrior could identify which fortress he approached from the sonnivar greeting alone.

  A party of horsemen rode over the steep crest of the valley road and cantered up the gentler slope to the gates. Gruff voices carried across the dark hillside, shouting challenges and orders until the portcullis clanked and rumbled open and the party rode through.

  “Pull up your hood,” said Saverian softly, as if fearing that we, too, might be heard from afar. “And carry this.” She shoved her leather bag into my hands. I hefted the heavy little bag onto my back, as our path joined the trampled roadway to the gates.

  “The password, Saverian,” said a slab-sided warrior standing to one side of the sizable detachment manning the gate tower and portcullis. “Even for you this night. And identify your friend.”

  “Pustules,” said the physician. She stepped up close to him, as the sonnivar boomed again from above our heads. “Is your wife pleased with your renewed affections, Dreogan? Perhaps I need to reexamine your little—”

  “Pass!” bellowed the guard. A snickering youth waited behind an iron wicket set into the tower wall. At the guard’s signal, the youth unlocked the little gate, let us through, and locked it again behind us.

  “You’re on report, Dreogan!” Saverian called over her shoulder. “This is no night to be slack.”

  “Deunor’s fire,” I said, “has every man in the universe got crossways with you?”

  “You’ve not seen me crossways, sirrah. Dreogan would kiss my feet did I but ask. More fool he.”

  More fool the man who imagined my companion a feeling woman.

  The burly warrior’s curses followed us as we hurried through a passage so low I had to duck and so narrow we could not walk abreast. The close quarters set my teeth on edge. Once through, we passed without challenge across the barren outer bailey and through the inner gates into the bustling main courtyard. Thick smoke rose from torches and warming fires, as squires and men-at-arms groomed horses, honed weapons, greeted friends, and shared out provisions. A burst of cheers and oaths pinpointed a dice game on our left, and whoops rose from the milling crowd when servants rolled three carts loaded with ale casks into the yard. We kept to the quiet perimeter, dodging several sighing fellows who’d come to the shadowed wall to piss or satisfy a lonely soldier’s fleshly urges.

  Naught fazed Saverian. She headed briskly for the northwest corner of the yard, where a tight stair spiraled up one of the fortress’s barrel-like towers. The thick tower walls damped the noise of the courtyard until we emerged on a parapet walk. On one side we overlooked the noisy throng of waiting warriors, on the other a close, dark well yard. Two heavily armed guards, their heads wreathed in steaming breath, halted Saverian at a thick door of banded oak that led into the blocklike heart of the fortress. She complained of a sore elbow from riding and named me her servant, brought along to carry her medicine bag.

  “I’m sure I needn’t remind you to stay quiet and out of sight,” said the woman under her breath once the guards passed us through the low doorway. “A warmoot is a sacred meeting between the warlords, their heirs, and their sovereign. It is closed to other Evanori no matter how favored, even wives or husbands, and most certainly closed to outsiders.”

  “But a half-Evanori physician is admitted?”

  “Only if I remain out of sight and hearing. It is an ongoing argument between His Grace and me. He wishes no public reminders of his difficult health, yet he knows saccheria can flare without warning, so he tolerates my presence. Few know the truth of his condition: you, your fellow madmen in this monkish conspiracy, and those few who have served in Renna Syne—the ‘window palace’ where you’re housed—since he was small. Even his royal brothers have it wrong. The cretins think he shapeshifts to disguise a crippled back.”

  “Does he?”

  Her glance could have withered heaven’s lilies.

  Of a sudden the fine, graceful house set apart from the fortress made sense. Osriel had grown up here. Eodward had housed his pureblood mistress in Evanore, away from the Registry’s interference, and he had named their child the province’s duc, so that Lirene would own the bound loyalty of the Evanori, if not their love. The house protections used to damp my magic would be those of any pureblood home where the children had not yet learned to control their sorcerers’ bent.

  More anxious than ever to make sense of Osriel, I leaned in close and touched the physician’s hand, hoping to soften her in the way I’d had most success throughout the years. “I’ll confess, mistress, Prince Osriel leaves me not knowing which ear to listen with. If you could but tell—”

  “I am not your mistress, Cartamandua,” she said, with long-suffering patience. “I am a servant, as are you, and Renna’s servants do not gossip about Prince Osriel. Best learn that.” She removed my hand from her arm with a grip worthy of her warlord ancestors. Foolish to imagine my…natural skills…could lure her into anything she had no mind to.

  Beyond a short vestibule, we came onto a gallery that overlooked a smoky feasting hall. Below us an elderly woman decried the depredations of a Harrower raid. Prince Osriel and a hundred or more warriors sat listening.


  Saverian frowned speculatively when a grin broke over my face. The hall’s arrangement reminded me of nothing so much as the refectory at Gillarine, with the monks seated according to seniority at long tables along the side walls, the abbot and prior at their head, listening to the day’s reading of the holy writs.

  Of course, rather than a splendid window overlooking the cloisters and the abbey church, a solid wall of war banners rose behind Osriel’s great wood chair. And rather than the tall glass windows of the refectory, only arrow slits penetrated the thick side and entry walls. Every other quat of wall space from floor to wood-beamed roof was given to a vast collection of war trophies: shields, weapons, bits of armor, several long oars and a carved wooden figurehead with snaky hair and peeling paint—evidence of Hansker longboats. A few dried, hairy lumps looked disconcertingly like long-dead squirrels…or scalps.

  “No question where Evanori hearts find pleasure,” I murmured.

  Saverian folded her arms and gazed down on the panoply. “Indeed, the most welcomed entertainment at this gathering would be a Harrower raiding party storming the doors. What a collection of idiots. And the women are as bad as the men.”

  At least we agreed on one matter.

  Despite the smoky heat, both men and women wore heavy fur cloaks over thick leathers, mail, and weapons. The only concession to ornament were the fine-wrought clasps, earrings, chains, rings, and bracelets—all gold—that adorned every head, neck, and limb. A gold band set with garnets circled Osriel’s brow atop a soft hood that obscured his face.

  Evidently Osriel had allowed Stearc to venture from Gillarine for this gathering. Elene sat just behind him on a bench against the wall, along with the other warlords-in-waiting, some young and blooming as she was, some older and as battle-worn as their sires and dams.

  I examined our immediate surroundings for some way to slip the bonds of Saverian’s custody. The featureless gallery where we stood stretched the entire length of the hall. I could imagine bowmen poised at the iron rail. Or musicians with harps and vielles—if Evanori subscribed to any display of the gentler arts. About halfway along the outer wall, I noted a narrow gap.