Breath and Bone

by Carol Berg

  Our destination lay at the very summit of the stair, where the tower roof of layered wood, earth, and lead pressed so low I could not stand straight, where the steps were so impossibly shallow, only the toe of my boots could fit, where the only light was an arrow loop. No matter Saverian’s potion, I pressed my bound hands to my mouth to keep from heaving as I waited for my escorts to unfasten the latches of a solid iron door. Surely I would die in such a prison.

  The door swung open with a metallic screech. Blessed cold air bathed my feverish face, and the last rays of sunset, arrowing beneath a thick pall of clouds, near blinded me. All gods be praised, the chamber was open to the sky.

  “In with you.” Falderrene motioned me forward.

  I ducked my head lower and stepped in, astonished to discover I could stand straight without touching the ragged timbers of the ceiling as it swooped upward to its conical peak. Not one, but five tall windows opened onto the settling night. Though defensive iron grillwork yet guarded the window openings, only rusted hinges remained of their wooden shutters. A laugh bubbled up inside me, withheld only by my silk mask. Did they think to torment me with exposure to the elements?

  Falderrene unhooked a jangling ring from his belt and dangled it in the air. “Shall we toss a coin for who plays nursemaid tonight, friend?”

  The pale-haired Jakome snatched the keys and twisted his whey-colored face into a bitter snarl. “I’ve a personal interest tonight. The holy one forbids me interfere, but I’d stay close. He is an animal.”

  Falderrene grinned unpleasantly and swept an oily lock behind his malformed ear. “As you wish. Might as well remove his shackles. Not even his gatzé master can retrieve him here. He’ll not escape lest he can fly. I’ll wait on the stair lest he give you any trouble.”

  As the pale-haired Jakome bent to unlock my ankles, a survey of the chamber’s furnishings revealed comforts not usual for a common prisoner. A small cabinet held a painted washing bowl, night jar, and neatly stacked towels. The bed, piled with thick quilts, was a rarity—built long enough to accommodate a person of my size. And though the crumbling hole in the center of the stone floor had not held a watchfire for many years, a lamp with a glass wind shield sat on a small round table beside a bowl of apples.

  The chains clanked and rattled as my bony jailer stood up again. I shook out my legs, relishing the lightness.

  “A meal will be brought shortly,” said Jakome. “The same as we all eat. Though the chamber’s open to the weather, you’ve been left blankets enough. This is no pureblood palace, but Sila Diaglou has no wish to starve or freeze you.”

  His wish, though…His face told me that his wish was different and had a great deal to do with sharp knives and stakes through the gut. Would that I could shove the man and all his fellows down the stairs and burn this maniac-infested den until the lead roofs fell in on them all.

  The ragged guardsman had carried in my case and set it beside a plain wood chest. Jakome yanked open the case and threw my silks, velvets, damasks, and linens onto the stone floor, searching them briskly. Looking me straight in the eye, he hawked and spat on my spare mask, wadded it up, and threw it atop the pile of clothes. “We’ll see you get proper clothes. When all are brought low, such pureblood fripperies will have no use.”

  No use mentioning that I’d done my best to forgo pureblood frippery for most of my life.

  He turned the emptied case upside down and shook it. Naught fell out. “That’s it, then,” he said as he stood up again. Tossing the case onto the pile, he waved the guardsman toward the stair. “Get on. Tell Falderrene I’ll set the locks and meet him below.”

  Once we were alone, Jakome’s colorless lips curled into a toothy grin. He pulled out his knife and twirled it in his fingers. “I’ve heard you have need of a knife. Heard it from my brethren.”

  “Saints and angels!” Surprise and relief turned my spine to jelly. “Do you ever need a recommendation for an acting troupe, say the word! Can you get me out of these?” I held out my bound hands.

  “Aye, I can and will. But you must kneel first, pureblood.” His bony chin indicated the floor.

  “Why so?” I was already spying out places to hide the weapon.

  “Because I’m still thinking whether or not to give you what was promised. Matters have changed.” Venom laced his tongue. “Do your knees bend? I’ve ne’er seen a pureblood kneel.”

  I knelt, my spirits plummeting. I knew this kind of man. Give him the deference he wanted and he might relent. He couldn’t have much time until he was missed. “Come,” I said, wheedling, “you were trusted…well paid…”

  “Shhh.” He pressed the knife point to my lips, unmasked rage and bloodthirst reddening his white skin. I held my tongue and gave up hope of the knife. Keeping blood and breath would be enough. “The thing is, I was paid to give you a knife if I could manage it without being caught. But if I’ve decided I can’t manage it, who’s going to hear your complaint?”

  He spun the weapon in the air and snatched the hilt, then waved the weapon slowly side to side as one might try to mesmerize a dog. “You’re being given what you don’t deserve, as pureblood pups are always given what they don’t deserve. It would please me to carve your throat out.”

  I maintained discipline, keeping my shoulders relaxed, my mouth shut, and my gaze somewhere neutral, even when tiny flames rippled along the edges of his blade. The fellow must have a trace of sorcerer’s blood, at the least.

  After a few uncomfortable moments, he exhaled in disgust and let the flames die, then began to cut away the silken cords that bound my hands. “Fortunately, you’ve worse to come than I could do to you.”

  “Ouch! Careful!” I snatched my hands away and shook off the remnants of the bindings. His last cut had slashed through cords and glove alike, leaving an ugly red smear on his dagger and a fiery laceration at the base of my thumb. “Are you wholly an idiot as well as a scoundrel?”

  “Not I, pureblood. Not I.” Sneering, Jakome left the chamber, slammed the iron door shut behind him, and shot the noisy bolt.

  Breathing raggedly, I sagged back onto my heels, bent my head to my knees, and tried to slow my hammering heart. When my refocused senses told me that no one remained outside the door or on the stair, I pulled off mask, cloak, and gloves and got to work. Without a weapon I would have to find another way out of this prison. And if Jakome was going to report Max’s bribe to Sila Diaglou, I’d best get out of here fast.

  First, test the door. I structured a voiding spell. Releasing magic into the spell, I traced an arc at the bottom of the iron door. The iron remained cold and inert. Neither did the locks respond to my best probing with so much as a spark. Disappointing, but no surprise. I had assumed Sila would have my prison warded to preclude all common spellwork. Jakome had worked his little fire magic with the door open.

  I retrieved my leather case and ripped out the false bottom Saverian had cleverly disguised so that I needed no magic to open it. I pulled out her three vials of medicines—blue for me, amber for the prince, clear for the tincture of yellow broom—a useful common remedy that could ream a man’s guts. I had intended to carry these in my pocket once I had been searched, but after Jakome’s words about new clothes, decided I’d best find a place in my cell to stash them. With the open windows, perhaps I wouldn’t need my own remedy.

  The clothes chest had no pockets or drawers, but a wooden tray, half its length, had been crafted to sit in the top of it to hold buckles or belts or other oddments. Several objects sat in the tray already: a dice box, a canvas bag of knucklebones, a long narrow board pocked with egg-shaped hollows for playing armaments, and a set of ivory and jet pebblelike game pieces. I emptied the canvas bag, dropped the vials into it, then replaced the bones. I had always been luckier at knucklebones than dice.

  Games. From the look of it, they intended to keep me here a while. Which made no sense at all. If Sila and Gildas didn’t want my bent to lead them into Aeginea…or anywhere else…then what, in Iero’s
heaven, did they want with me?

  Now to test the greater magic. Common wards laid to prevent spellworking could not disrupt the bent—the inborn talents of a pureblood. Most talents prescribed by a pureblood bent had naught to offer in the way of escape routes or weaponry and posed little risk to a jailer.

  I loosened my belt and fumbled beneath layers of pourpoint, shirt, and tunic to find the upper hem of my chausses. Two scraps of stained fabric lay hidden next to my skin—one, the bloodstained canvas from Stearc’s jupon, the other a square of linen Saverian had dipped in the vial of Osriel’s blood.

  Best not think too much of what I had to do. I laid the scraps on the floor, pressed my hands atop them, and closing my eyes, poured out magic enough to search Fortress Torvo. Indeed, naught prevented me…though I came to wish it had.

  I cursed. Swore. Eventually I crawled away, buried my face in the bedclothes, and screamed out a monumental rage. Had any other edifice this side of hell seen so much of torment? The Harrowers’ self-righteous slaughter was only the most recent depredation. For decades this ruin had been a secret prison, used by nobles who took pleasure in meting out punishments in cruel excess of those mandated by Eodward’s ideals of justice. Men, women, children, noble or common…none were exempt. Before that, the fortress was used similarly by the Aurellians, a race whose delight in torture reached levels of depravity that counterbalanced every glory of their arts and every marvel of their building. And in ancient Ardra, before the rise of the enlightened Caedmon, Ardran nobles had lived in constant war with one another, as well as with the Moriangi Gravs to the north—and they had locked their rivals and their families here to starve. Every wail and scream and bloodletting had left its mark upon this stone. Despair had become its mortar.

  But my uncomfortable exercise had repaid me. Osriel and Stearc were held straight down below me, six levels, at the least. Both men lived—that the magic had worked told me that much—but I could discern naught of their condition. I fixed their guide threads in my mind, the route of steps and passages through layer upon layer of blood-woven history, a trail that would lead me to them as soon as I could manage it. Some of the blood and pain I felt was surely theirs.

  But what of Jullian? I had no blood to trace him. Of all the prisoners who had trod these vile halls, far too many had been boys. Three days…most of this one gone already.

  The sun had gone, leaving the night beyond the windows black as pitch. The wind whistled through the window grates, as I yanked and twisted each one. Many of the bars were loose in the weathered stone facings; some were rusted through, some missing altogether. A little brutish work would allow me to crawl out. But one glance down into the blackness showed the pin-pricks of light that would be torches at the gates. As far as I had learned, Danae did not fly, and surely even Kol could not survive so great a leap. Damn the cowardly Jakome to the nethermost regions of hell!

  Of a sudden I heard murmurings outside my door, and the bolts and latches scraped. By the time the door swung open, I was seated in one of my two chairs, feet propped on the table, and my gloves covering the blue telltales on my hands. I snatched up an apple and started munching. The taste of the fruit and the scents of porridge and wine waked an appetite I’d thought ruined by my searching.

  “Good evening, Magnus Valentia.” A small woman hurried past me and set a loaded tray on my table, as an invisible companion closed and locked the door behind her. “A simple meal, but nourishing. And hot, if we partake right away.”

  The soft-voiced visitor, barefoot and clothed in a plain white shift, was Sila Diaglou’s young devotee, the copper-skinned young woman with the earth-brown eyes. Thick hair the color of walnuts hung over her shoulder in a single plait, as if she were on her way to bed. Any man would find her alluring did she not have a habit of smearing her victims’ blood on her full lips.

  “I do not sit down with murderers.”

  She wrinkled her brow as if pondering the course of the universe. “But you’ve broken bread with other warriors, have you not—your comrades-in-arms in Prince Perryn’s service? War is dreadful, but when the world’s need demands it, all must serve. Some by killing. Some by dying.”

  “My comrades took no pleasure in their deeds. They did not slaughter innocents or lick their blood.” Yet Boreas had notched his spear whenever he skewered a beardless Moriangi, saying he’d “keep the river dogs from growing up another warrior from a whelp.” And Boreas was not near the worst of those I’d called comrade.

  “Some kinds of killing cannot be justified by war,” I said. “Unclean killing. Children.”

  “If the war itself be noble, then I can’t see how one death be different from another. Please, let us not argue this evening. You should eat.” She had set out two deep bowls of porridge, a small plate of butter and bread, two spoons, and a steaming pitcher, and now poured wine into two waiting cups, sloshing a bit onto the table. The stout fragrance of wine and cloves filled the room, swirled by the chill breeze, setting up a raging thirst in me. Of a sudden I was sweating.

  The girl perched on the second chair, tucked her bare feet under her robe, and dipped her spoon. “Will you not tell me more of yourself, Magnus?” she said between bites. “Then I’ll do the same. My mistress would not have us enemies.” Her great eyes gleamed in the lamplight, no hint of guile. Indeed they were empty of anything save eager curiosity and a certain sincere…appreciation.

  I looked away. I did need to eat. Even more, I longed for the wine. It was a mercy that only this girl had been sent here. I was much too tired to spar with Gildas or Sila herself. Yet I would need to have a care. This girl was little more than a child herself—sixteen, seventeen—but a child who collaborated in murder. I dared not forget that.

  I swirled the wine in the wooden cup, inhaling. Bless all gods, no lurking scent of nivat or anything else untoward wafted from it. Cloves certainly…a touch of cinnamon. Sweet Erdru, the aroma itself could get me drunk. All the better to sleep and forget what my bent had shown me.

  I touched my tongue to one drop left hanging on the rim. Warmth spread from toes to eyebrows in less time than a flicker’s peck. No nivat. No lurking trace of herbs or potions. But the wine itself was disappointing, heavy on the tongue and tasting as if it had been kept in a cask of iron instead of oak. No use risking a muddled head for spoilt wine.

  Unable to stomach sitting with the girl, I left the wine cup on the table and perched on a window ledge with bowl and spoon. Perhaps I could induce her to tell me where Jullian was kept or discover a way to get out of this room. The cursed Jakome’s treachery had been a sore blow.

  “You speak first,” I said. “You likely know a few things about me already. What is your name?”

  “Malena.”

  An Aurellian word. “Goddess’s treasure.”

  A pleasured flush deepened her already richly colored skin. “That’s right. I was a third daughter of a third daughter, so my parents gave me to the temple in Avenus when I turned five. They’d no coin for the fee, so I was put to work in the temple baths—scrubbing tiles, fetching water or towels or candles, waiting in corners till I was needed.” She popped a bite of buttered bread in her mouth.

  “Arrosa’s temple, then.” Only the goddess of love required baths in her temple.

  “Mmm.” She nodded and swallowed her bread. “I was lucky to serve and not take vows, though I didn’t know it then. I didn’t understand what I saw—the wickedness what took place in the baths.”

  She licked the butter off her small, delicate fingers.

  “Copulation…mating…is no corruption,” I said. “Arrosa blesses earthly love, makes it divine, if pleasure is shared freely.” The qualifier was not widely preached, of course, but its truth had become apparent to me early on, and no woman I’d had since had ever disagreed.

  “Well, of course we’re meant to join and make more of us, and if we can take comfort in it, all the better.” A sprightly smile illuminated her round cheeks and pointed chin, then faded as she kni
t her brow. “But in the temple, pleasure was not offered freely. Novices younger than me were used by whatever great lords and warriors took a fancy. I heard them screaming from the bath, saw them thrashing in the water when the lords forced them down on their…laps. And I had to bring towels to wipe the girls’ blood, and oils to anoint their skin, so they could be sent into the bedchambers to glorify Arrosa through the night.”

  I well knew such crimes happened. I had warned Jullian of them, sworn to protect him. I wished she would speak of something else. All manner of unseemly urges seemed waked in me this night.

  “One night when I was ten, a lord tired of the priestess who serviced him in the bath. He bellowed that he preferred a younger body. He saw me hiding in the corner and demanded me. And he got me. For a sevenday. Even though I could offer him no temple blessing. Even though I could not read to him from the temple writs or recite the lays of love.”

  Her simple statement of evil gave weight to her story that indignant diatribes could not. I believed her.

  “Afterward, I ran away. If I had taken vows, like Sila, they would have come after me, and I would have had to cut myself as she did to undo the swearing. But I was just a bath girl…”

  “…Yet your parents refused to take you back—their gift to the goddess.” No need to ask what had happened to her after. I had been fifteen when I ran away, and the ways to feed oneself so young were very few. “I’m sorry for what happened to you, but it does not…cannot…justify—”

  “But I am not sorry! Don’t you see?” She twiddled with the lamp, retracting the wick so its fire dimmed, confining the pool of light to the table and her red-gold complexion. “Had I stayed a bath girl at the temple I’d not have met Sila. I’d not have learned of the Gehoum, and how we must make ourselves humble before them. I’d not understand the need for cleansing and repentance or to tear down the false structures of learning and privilege that make one man’s will more powerful than the purity of a girl.”