Breath and Bone

by Carol Berg

  “I’m not an idiot,” said Saverian, her dignity regained though her skin retained a rosy hue. “I’ll wait here until Magnus is delivered and transferred. Once you know his location, Mardane, you can return here for me. I would welcome your escort on my brief visit to the Mother’s temple.”

  “Leaving the scene will jeopardize the prince’s rescue,” snapped Voushanti. “You have blood-bound me to this man, but I cannot read his thoughts. With no means of contact between us, I must be available at whatever time he chooses.”

  “No means of contact?” Saverian raised her eyebrows, quite smug. “You gentlemen really should have said something earlier. I can, of course, work a small enchantment…”

  Stupid not to think of it. My sister Thalassa had once worked a word trigger with her favorite insults, so that anywhere within ten quellae, I could hear her address me as fiend heart or iron skull did she but feed magic to the words.

  Voushanti and I left the beech grove tight bound with the names of dead man and bluejay and a few specific signals for special circumstances. If he didn’t hear from me in three days, he would force his way inside Fortress Torvo. As we picked our way through the crowded lane to our meeting with Max, my hearing picked Saverian’s laughter out of the noise. I smiled as I remembered the warmth of her breath and the feel of her firm flesh and slender bones crushed against my skin. What an extraordinary woman.

  Chapter 21

  “See the iron grate over the drainage canal? That’s where you’ll come out. You can still quicken a spell, yes?” Max spoke using only the half of his mouth beneath his mask. As protocol required refraining from conversation in the presence of ordinaries, every pureblood youth developed the skill early on.

  “Yes.” I mimicked his trick. Though I stood slightly behind him, I was enough taller that I could easily be observed by either the spear-wielding Harrowers guarding Sila Diaglou’s gates, the bowmen on the barbican above the gate tunnel, or the five of Bayard’s warriors who surrounded us protectively, while their captain identified our party to the gate commander.

  The knee-high grate to which Max referred blocked the only breach in the thick, ugly walls of Fortress Torvo. The canal had once drained water and sewage from the fortress, but that function had likely been relocated as the city grew up around the place. Weeds, dirty snow, and broken paving choked the old ditch, which disappeared into the squalid houses and snow-clogged ruins that crowded this miserable square. Riie Doloure. Last time I had been here, Harrowers had been throwing severed heads from the battlements down to their rioting fellows and fire had raged in the tenements. On that vile morning, men and women had been screaming from behind those walls, one of them Abbot Luviar, as his executioner exposed his bowels and set them afire.

  Another wave of the sweats dampened my skin, my hands trembled in their bonds of silk and steel, and my own bowels threatened to betray me. What kind of idiot would broach Sila Diaglou’s fortress in shackles? And Gildas would be here. Gildas, who knew all my weaknesses.

  The plan we had made over the past day had gone smoothly thus far. Max, Voushanti, and I had made a show of my resistance in front of Prince Bayard, enough to make Bayard think me cowardly and not worth keeping for himself. Sila Diaglou had accepted Bayard’s request for a meeting. Now it was up to Max to convince her of our story, and it was up to Max’s spy within Sila’s entourage to provide me a blade. With a weapon and a smattering of luck, I could get out of a warded cell. Outside of a cell, I could use magic to free the others. Somehow. That was the plan. As with most plans, it seemed far less plausible in daylight.

  “Forward,” ordered Bayard’s captain upon his return from the gate. “Lower arms.”

  He pivoted smartly. We marched briskly past the gate guards, under the raised portcullis, and into the gate tunnel. I resisted the urge to look back at the burned-out tenements where Voushanti and Saverian were to have set up their watchpost by now. Rather I gave thanks that my hands were silkbound and that Max’s hand gripped my arm to prevent my stumbling in the dark. I did not want to touch earth and sense the horrors that had gone on here.

  The dark-stained gallows, the judges’ platform, and the prisoners’ cage stood vacant in the outer bailey, like the bones of some vicious monster left to rot in the weak sunlight. As we were hurried across the yard and through the inner gate, I noted the rubble-filled drainage channel. Another grate barred its passage through the inner wall. If I could find no promising venue to key my Danae shifting, I might be forced to use Max’s route to the outside. Naught of this executioner’s yard recalled enough of Renna’s baileys that I could take us from one to the other by Danae magic.

  Sweat dribbled down my back. I could not retreat now. They were here—Stearc and Osriel at least. One touch of the blood samples that Saverian had brought had told me that much. But I could get no better sense of their exact location until I was inside.

  We proceeded up a narrow ramp, overlooked by the inner wall walk, two flanking towers, and the arrow loops of the blocklike keep. What remained of Fortress Torvo’s conical roofs stated that this small fortress had been here long before the Aurellian invasion, long before Palinur had grown into a great city.

  A barren courtyard awaited us, and more Harrower troops—some in the shabby cottes and braies of townsmen or the shapeless tunics of villeins, some in sturdier padded leather jaques with metal plates sewn on arms and breast. But all of them wore orange rags tied about their necks or arms or trailing from their hats. At the head of a wooden stair, two Harrowers opened the iron-bound doors of the keep.

  Max released my arm and smoothed the wrinkles his fingers had made in my velvet sleeve. His dark eyes glittered. “Well done, little brother. I doubted you’d balls enough to make it so far without bolting. Are you ready?”

  Who could be ready for the things Sila did? I ducked my head, rather than embarrassing myself by choking within his hearing. The priestess wanted me alive. She had some use for me. I had to believe that.

  Max grinned and flicked a finger at one of his men, who quickly knelt in front of me with a weighty set of shackles. I lashed out at the soldier’s head with my bound hands and twisted away as if to bolt. But as Max and I had planned, a few wrenched muscles, bruising holds, and snarled curses later, I was well subdued and stumbling up the steps in chains.

  Max gripped my arm with one hand. “After you.” Then he added so that none but I could hear, “May Serena Fortuna smile on our first fraternal venture. My spy will use the password brethren.”

  Inhaling a last breath of the open air, I stepped inside.

  No dais or grand chair marked Sila Diaglou’s barren hall. No tapestries covered the smoke-blackened walls. The old fortress was well suited to a temporary military headquarters—the best-fortified position in the city outside the royal compound itself, plenty of space for bedding down men and animals. Splintered remnants marked where wooden walls had once divided the long chamber into three. Where the roof had leaked at one end of the hall, the rotting roof beams sagged ominously. Harrower fighters drifted in and out of the hall, warming themselves at the cookfires scattered across the cracked stone floor. I doubted the drafty ruin ever got warm.

  Leaving our escort at the door, Max led me confidently through the busy chamber, past five or six warriors arguing across a broad table propped up at one corner with stones. A troop of perhaps twenty—a mix of poorly turned out swordsmen, ragged townsmen, and several sturdy women—stood attentively as an officer gave them orders to raze a mill outside the city’s southern gates. Women and boys served out the steaming contents of copper cauldrons to the milling fighters.

  At the far end of the hall, a group of ten or fifteen split and moved aside at our approach. Sila Diaglou stood in the center. Warrior’s garb of steel-reinforced leather rested as comfortably on her tall, slender frame as on any man’s, while her flaxen hair, cut short since I had seen her preside over Luviar’s execution, now curled about her pale, imperious face like the fair locks of painted cherubs
. Here in the ruddy light of cookfires and torches, the murderous witch appeared little older than Elene.

  A tall, elderly woman in shapeless brown leaned on Sila’s right arm. Though the wisps of white hair escaped from her wimple seemed oddly out of place in such a company, the old woman’s narrow eyes gleamed as sharp as an Aurellian poniard. Beside her stood a beardless man with a needle-sharp chin, a small, copper-skinned young woman with great brown eyes, and a soft-looking man with oiled black curls and an ear that was split, gnarled, and bulging like a chestnut canker—Sila’s accomplices in slaughter.

  But it was the youngish man on Sila Diaglou’s left who spurred my deepest revulsion. Though he had traded the black gown and cowl of Saint Ophir for gray tunic and black braies and hose, his hairless skull, the solid line of black eyebrows, raised in surprise, and the deep-set eyes and well-drawn mouth, so quick to take on a grin, marked him as Gildas—child stealer, liar, and traitor to all he professed.

  “Holy one,” said Max to the priestess, touching his fingers to his forehead in respect, “I bring greetings from His Highness Prince Bayard and a gift to serve as proof of his sincerity and good favor. Have I your leave to tell the tale?”

  “Speak, pureblood.” Sky-blue eyes stared coldly from beneath Sila Diaglou’s intelligent brow. Her face, square cut like a faceted gem, was flawed only by the diagonal seams on her cheeks, carved by her own hand on the day she had publicly abjured Arrosa and the rest of the elder gods. As a girl she had pledged service to the goddess of love, so I’d heard, but only a year out of her novitiate, she had claimed Arrosa’s temple corrupted, its priestesses little more than whores for wealthy donors, its rites a mockery rather than a celebration of fertility and renewal. How her indignation had translated to leveling civilization I had yet to comprehend.

  Max inclined his head. “Early this morning, I was summoned to my father’s house on urgent family business. Unlikely as it seemed, my brother had arrived, ostensibly to seek my young sister’s contract for a mapping project desired by his master, Prince Osriel. Further questioning revealed that he had, in fact, approached us without the knowledge or permission of his fearsome lord and sought our aid to escape his burdensome contract on the grounds that his master had threatened his immortal soul. Of course, revoking a contract is impossible without the Registry’s consent, which will never be granted in Valen’s case. But I, ever mindful of the gifts that fate lays before us, agreed to allow my foolish brother to plead his case before Prince Bayard.”

  The priestess scrutinized Max as if she were a gem cutter examining the facets laid bare by her work. Her attention did not waver, even as Gildas murmured into her ear.

  “Speaking frankly, holy one, this put my lord in a difficult position.” Max, the consummate performer, stood with his hands clasped behind his back, well away from weapons, his feet widespread, back straight, and voice casual and confident—postures taught us early to put ordinaries at ease. “Until the day he assumes his rightful crown, Prince Bayard must obey the law of the land, which demands he return a recondeur to his contracted master within a day. But my master, also ever mindful of the gifts that fate lays before us, understands that you do not recognize the authority of the Registry, and that this brother of mine is the very pureblood whose submission you desire. In short, lady, Magnus Valentia de Cartamandua-Celestine is yours to do with as you please.”

  Max sounded altogether too pleased with himself for my comfort, though I had devised this story and put it in his mouth. He stood to gain in everyone’s favor. We had ensured that he remained entirely within pureblood discipline. The only untruths he told were those he had agreed upon with Bayard for the purposes of his bargain with Osriel.

  “And what change does Prince Bayard seek in the terms of our agreement?” asked the priestess.

  “My master concedes that you have been most generous in our negotiation, holy one, and asks only your continued assurance that once you and he have subdued the Bastard of Evanore, you will take a knee at my lord’s coronation on the first day of the new year, then sit at his right hand as his most valued friend and ally.”

  An old comrade of mine, a veteran of the Hansker wars, had once pointed out that only the most assured of commanders would approach a subordinate or prisoner of greater height while in the presence of other subordinates. I had observed the rule proven time and again, and this occasion was no different. Despite my topping her by a dozen quattae, Sila gave her elderly companion’s arm to the doe-eyed woman and came forward to take a closer look. She appeared supremely confident, as only those who hold the leash of heaven can.

  She touched the ivory-and-gold wolf brooch on my breast, then lifted the front laps of my cloak and tossed them over my shoulders. Folding her arms, she walked around me, her face unexpressive as she examined the fine embroidery and ivory buttons on my doublet, my gold-link belt, and the pearl trilliots sewn on my green satin sleeves. She even crouched down to examine my shackles and ran her fingers over my fine leather boots.

  At such close proximity, I expected to see lines and weathering in her cheeks, signs of her age that I knew to be past forty. Yet save for the dual scars, her skin shone as flawless as that of a healthy child. Cold, though. Great gods, the air around her felt colder than the winter sky, so cold I could neither smell nor taste her scent. I could sense nothing of her at all. Perhaps I’d worn clothes for too long.

  She straightened up again. “No weapons save these,” she said, touching my silkbound hands. “I had understood his poor skills warranted no such restriction.”

  I had persuaded Max to allow me to keep my gloves on beneath the cord bindings, as the weather was so bitter. Though my sweating palms had dampened both gloves and silk, my gards remained hidden. The longer I could conceal them, the better. I had few enough surprises to spring on Gildas.

  “The binding is merely a formality, holy one,” said Max. “My brother is adept at lock breaking and crude illusions, but little else of sorcery. But what gentleman would lay an unsheathed knife in an ally’s hand, though the blade be dull as lead? The shackles…alas, I must warn you that it is only with great…firmness…that my lord and I have persuaded him of his limited choices. He will likely walk gingerly for a few days. He has a nasty habit of bolting his responsibilities.”

  “Indeed, he shall serve for much more than lock breaking.” The priestess’s blue gaze met mine…turning my bones to ice. With a firm finger, she traced the line of my mask down my brow and nose, coming to rest on my lips, her touch so charged with heat and light, it sent waves of urgency straight to my groin.

  “I accept the gift,” she said, breaking away briskly. “Tell your prince that I find it most pleasing. If all falls out on the solstice as he has promised, he need have no fear of my defection.” Which sounded no firm assurance to me, though, in truth, my head had emptied of all save an ill-defined dread that fell far outside the bounds of my expectations.

  “Then I shall take my leave of you, holy one. May your life and health prosper.” Max signaled one of his men to hand over my case and left the key to my shackles with one of Sila’s guards. Then he stood at my shoulder, straightened his back, and touched fingers to brow. As he spun around to go, his cloak flared. Under its cover, where Sila Diaglou could not see it, his hand squeezed my arm.

  Still dazed, I met his gaze and caught a quick wink. Then he was gone. I had not wits enough to decide if his gesture was reassurance or apology or merely Max’s usual self-indulgent humor, combining the concern of a proper brother with a taunt. All I wanted to do was run.

  “Falderrene, Jakome, take him to the chamber we have prepared for this day.” As she issued this unsettling command, the Harrower priestess had already turned her back to me.

  She spread her arms as if to embrace the rest of the company. “My beloved companions, have I not assured you that our dedication and righteous service will force the world into its proper order? Destiny has laid a treasure in our hands—one I have long sought. The future proceed
s as I have spoken!”

  Addressing such a multitude did not coarsen the priestess’s voice. Though speaking in such a cavernous space, her tone maintained a certain intimacy, as if she spoke to each of us alone. Every conversation ceased. Every face turned toward the woman, as if she were the divine prophet Karus, come back to life clothed in the sun.

  “The last walls shall crumble!” Triumph…exultation…joy…her song without music rang from the rotting rafters. “The mighty shall be brought low, no being that breathes the air of this world set above another. No cache or hoard shall remain unopened; no treasure be locked away whether in vault, veins, or marrow. Burn, harrow, and level this blighted land! Let all who stand in our way feel our knives, our spears, our claws that in the future we shape, all may be one in awe and service before the mighty Gehoum!”

  Cheers shook Torvo’s foundation. Ferocious. Wild. Terrifying. As if there were seven hundred partisans in the hall and not seventy. The only one who did not cheer was the old woman in brown.

  As the cheering throng swarmed Sila Diaglou, Falderrene, the murderous minor noble with the malformed ear, and a bony pale-haired young man she had named Jakome led me briskly toward the corner where the rectangular hall butted into one of Torvo’s massive towers. A third man followed with my case. To my surprise, once we passed through a low arch into the tower, they shoved me onto the upward stair.

  My escorts did not speak, save for whispered watchwords for the guard at each landing. Shaken by the intimate intensity of Sila’s touch, appalled at the power of her conviction, and alarmed at the mysterious connection of such ferocity with me, I felt what small confidence I had brought with me seep away. As well I did not know what to think, for getting my shackled feet up the tight, narrow stair without hands to grip or balance proved a challenge. I listened for any hint of my friends or the prince along the way, but the fortress walls were so thick that a hundred muted conversations sounded no different from scuttling rats.