Breath and Bone

by Carol Berg

  As much to quiet the argument as anything else, I stuck my bundled hands in front of the old woman’s nose. “Look as you please, gammy. The god-cursed Danae did this thing to me. For all I know, they were trying to drive me as mad as my father.”

  With a sigh of exasperation, Sila yanked my sleeve upward as far as it would go, exposing my right wrist and half my forearm. The gards had paled to silver, faintly tinted with blue. The old woman bent her head over my arm. Her breath seared my skin, as if hellfire burned within her withered body.

  She slumped back into her chair. “The gards are true,” she said, her venom muted.

  “As long as you confess their validity, then tell me what skills they give him, Grandam.”

  The old woman averted her face. Had I not been cranked tight as a crossbow, I might not have noted the alteration in her expression—a closing, as if she had determined not to share what she had seen. “After taking the two remasti so short a time ago? Nothing of import. He experiences the world as unending noise and confusion. If you want to keep him living, lock him away where he can touch the wind and breathe. I am surprised he is not slamming his head against these walls. I am not surprised you find him pliable to breeding lust. He has completed only two changes. The third awaits.”

  The third remasti—the maturing of fleshly desire—was that what was happening to me? How did she know?

  Frigid as the coming night, Sila glanced from her grandmother to me. “And one more question…Gildas says that Danae males need pain to quicken their seed. You never told me that.”

  The old woman snorted, an amusement that sounded like cracking wood. “I’m sure he must be correct,” she said. “Gildas knows everything. My small experience is of human males, and that is quite revolting enough. Do not fear, granddaughter, this one shall become everything you wish.”

  “Who are you?” I whispered.

  The old woman merely bobbed her head while staring until I felt naked.

  Sila grabbed two of the folding stools and beckoned me to the brazier, leaving the old woman hunched in her dim corner like a mother spider. Relief warmed me more than the flames.

  “Do not expect me to apologize for my grandmother’s plain speech. Grandam has a gift for seeing through all the world’s masks, and she has taught me to do the same. We speak as we find. But my experience out in the field, seeing the cleansing as we accomplish it, has caused my vision to expand beyond hers. Once the harrowing is done, something will grow; it can be weeds or it can be wheat. I have great hopes for you.”

  She beamed, and I began to understand why men and women destroyed themselves for her. Her beliefs permeated her being—flesh and spirit indistinct one from the other and exposed for all to view. She stood as an exemplar of truth, naught hidden, naught sly or deceitful. She wore no mantle of ambition or greed. No petty grievance sullied her mission. No wonder the battered poor overlooked her ruthless strikes against their own interests. They believed her.

  I could not succumb to fascination. For every answer I gleaned, two more questions arose. “To learn more of this vile”—I gestured toward my body—“state I have been left in would be a boon. Noisy is a mild description of what they’ve done to me. How does your grandmother know these things?”

  “She has lived a long time. And now, dear Magnus”—she leaned forward, hands folded—“I must know about Prince Osriel.”

  For near an hour, she questioned me, precisely and specifically, about Osriel’s magic, his fortresses, his legions, and his gold. The intriguing map loomed over us, yet I could spare no thoughts for it. The interrogation justified the prince’s close grip on his secrets, for I had scant need to lie or hide anything. I spoke of his cruel and varying humors, of his disdain for friends and confidants, and his callous use of Jullian as hostage. Without mentioning gold mines or walking dead men, I spoke of my certainty that Osriel dabbled in vile and wicked sorcery, developed through long study. I described in gruesome detail the scene in Gillarine’s kitchen when he took the dead messenger’s eyes, while disclaiming any knowledge of what he did with them. When she asked me what I could tell of his military aide, Mardane Voushanti, rumored to be under diabolical influence, I said only that the man was a formidable warrior and shared his master’s scorn for unskillful pureblood vagabonds. And I could certainly tell her nothing of Osriel’s bargain with the Danae.

  When she questioned me of Evanori military strength, I gave her modest estimates of the warmoot and vouched the warlords’ loyalty was for Caedmon’s kin and no love for Osriel himself. And when she probed to discover his plans, I said only that I had been discovered and tossed out before I could hear the prince’s charge to his warriors. The Bastard believed his brothers weak and untrustworthy, I said, and Sila herself to be his only worthy rival. All his machinations were to defeat her—but I swore I could not tell her what those strategies were. “He never trusted me.”

  While displaying reluctance to aid her cause, I let her tease out this information. And I focused my answers through the prism of Osriel’s betrayal, allowing my rage to surface and taint every detail of my experiences with the worst possible interpretation. And as I spoke, I gave full rein to my body’s certainty that the arrow slits in her walls were closing and I would soon be dead of suffocation. Sweat beaded on my forehead, and I twitched and fidgeted. Her grandam should be well pleased that I was half a lunatic.

  “What of this Stearc of Erasku?” she said, after I repeated my claim that Osriel favored no Evanori lord above another. “Your friend from the cabal? And his secretary and his charming squire? How does Osriel view their activities?”

  I croaked a laugh. “Friend? The thane damned me as a coward from our first meeting. And I don’t believe he changes his mind. The only time I saw Stearc at Renna was on the night of the warmoot, amid the other lords. I glimpsed Gram—the secretary—only briefly on that visit, but was not allowed to speak with him. I doubt the prince takes notice of secretaries. As for the girl, she near fainted from fright when I once mentioned Osriel’s name. I gathered she believed he would flay them for their activities.”

  “Why did you help the cabal? Gildas could not explain why you would endanger yourself for those who want to preserve their superiority over common men.”

  “I was looking for advantage,” I said. “If they had found out I could not read, they would have thrown me out of Gillarine. I had no intention of starving.” As I said this, it came to me that this crass rendering was naught but truth. Yet even if I had dared explain to Sila Diaglou how my motives had changed, she would not have understood. Faith was not a word she had use for.

  “So what of the monk you saved from my hangman—the chancellor Victor—what happened to him?”

  “Osriel never permitted me to see him. He claimed that his house mage had put Brother Victor into a healing sleep to recover from his wounds. I didn’t particularly care. Save for Jullian, the Tormentor can take the whole lot of the cursed cabal—including your pet monk, Gildas. They thought to use me, just like every other person in my life has sought to use me, and when they had squeezed the use from me, they threw me to the dogs. The boy was the only one of the lot who tried to teach me how to read their fine books.”

  “Loyalty is a great virtue and should be rewarded.” She stood and motioned me toward the door. I prayed I had not given her anything of value, nor condemned myself with some contradiction of Stearc’s testimony.

  “Jakome!” The guard came running. “Return Magnus to his chamber and unbind his hands. Then inform Gildas that, at his convenience, he may release the boy to our guest’s protection.”

  She held my wrists and smiled, sending spiders’ feet creeping up my back. “Sleep well, and do not think to deny Malena again. She is strong and faithful, and it is my will that she catch your seed.”

  Chapter 24

  Leaving Sila’s chamber felt like crawling out of a grave. Jakome led me to the tower stair, only to have Sila call him back to her door for one more message—a summons f
or Gildas to join her for the evening meal.

  As I awaited my jailer’s return, the downward stair gaped dark in front of me. I wished an apology to those who languished below. One more day, Lord Prince, I said. One more day, Stearc. Let me get Jullian and then I’ll find a way down to you. More than any bloodline, book, or tool, this world needed something of innocence preserved.

  “Come, Grandam. I will take you back to your room.” As Jakome sauntered back toward me, Sila led her grandmother down the gallery. The old woman moved in a halting, rolling gait, leaning heavily on Sila’s arm and a walking stick. Surely some cruelty had blighted her life to nurture such malevolence.

  Of a sudden, the world held its breath…as bits and pieces of our strange interview peppered my thoughts like wind-driven sand. “What’s wrong with the old woman?” I whispered, not expecting an answer.

  “Move along or I’ll see you walk the same as she,” said Jakome, snarling and shoving me roughly toward the stair. “Even crippled, you can still service a quenyt.”

  I balked, staring at the two receding backs. “Sila’s grandam…her legs are crippled…or is it her knees?”

  “What of it?” he said. “Now get on with you.”

  The old one, they called her, the venomous old woman who knew the lore of Danae. A woman bitter at humankind and the Danae and Caedmon’s line alike, whose shapeless garments hid hands and feet, arms and crippled knees…and what else?

  “What do you name the old woman?” I said, as I stumbled numbly up the stairs and through the door of my tower chamber.

  “She gives no one her name,” said my jailer, unbinding my hands. “She says we’re to call her the Scourge.”

  Surely breaking a girl’s knees at fourteen would sow hatred enough for a lifetime of bitter harvesting—especially in a girl whose half-Danae father had broken the Canon and whose human mother had murdered her kin. Especially in a child who had been taunted and shunned and used to trick her own mother to her death. Ronila.

  The one person who had ever been kind to her—a human man vowed to chastity—had tormented himself with guilt after lying with her. And even Picus had turned away from her, choosing to hold to his monk’s vows and stay with his young prince while Ronila fled to the human world, bringing with her knowledge of the Scourge—the Danae vulnerability to tormented death.

  Wind howled through the window bars. I had neither eaten nor drunk since the previous night, and the hunger and chill crept into my bones. I wasn’t sure whether I needed to crawl under the quilts or take off my clothes.

  Jakome slammed the door and shot the bolts. I sank to my bed and imagined what might have gone through Ronila’s mind when Eodward and Picus had returned to Navronne. An old woman by then, she would have seen Picus still in his prime, reflecting his prince’s glory. Five short years after their return, Picus had vanished—after Ronila had shown him evidence that the offspring of Danae–human mating had no souls, a grandchild, perhaps, nurtured and tutored in the ways of hate, a granddaughter who saw no crime in slaughter, who believed that art and beauty, learning and faith were corruption and that the earth must be wiped clean of gods and Danae, monks and kings—everything Picus valued. Even in his despair, he could not have imagined what she would grow up to be.

  Now I knew what had nagged at my head when Picus recounted Ronila’s accusations. The halfbreed girl’s condemnation had reflected the words of the Harrower blood rite—sanguiera, orongia, vazte. Bleed, suffer, die. Ronila, the Scourge. Sila Diaglou, a mixed-blood Dané.

  No wonder Sila used a wordless map. She could read words no better than I could. No gards marked her hands—not even the pale silver of gards too long hidden. So she had not passed even the first remasti. My experience was so different—being half-Aurellian sorcerer already—I had no idea what power Sila might have. Was it her Danae blood that enabled her to mesmerize a crowd, to make women weep when they saw her scarred cheeks, to make men believe that they should tear down their cities and burn their fields? She had said her grandmother had taught her to control her heart and her body, so she must be unmatched in discipline…but then, the world knew that already. And she would not be easy to kill. Gods, the others…the cabal…Osriel…needed to know this great secret.

  I crouched beside the door and ran my fingers over the lock. The warded iron was no more yielding of its secrets than earlier. Nonetheless, I pulled one of the pebblelike armaments game pieces from the clothes chest, examined it carefully, and used its likeness along with my experience and estimates of this type of lock to lay the rough groundwork for a spell.

  Once I had done what I could—without a better idea of the lock or magic to feed the spell, that was not so much—I shed my outer layers of pourpoint and boots, hiked up my shirtsleeves and unlaced the neck, and sat against the wall under the middle window. As sheltered from the wind as I could manage, I hoped the bit of exposure might strengthen my gards without giving me frostbite. I practiced closure and control, listening only for footsteps on the stair. Ready.

  Next time the door latches rattled, I was able to visualize the snap of the bronze levers and the draw of the lock pins. By the time the door opened to Gildas, I had refined my internal image of the lock.

  “Whoa, a dismal, blustery afternoon,” he said, standing in the doorway and holding a small lamp. “Is the coming storm too stout even for a halfbreed Dané?”

  “Where is Jullian?” I said, without moving. “The priestess gave her permission for him to stay here.”

  “Jakome brings him. I wanted to make a few things clear before his arrival.”

  Gildas wrenched a balky handle on the outside of the door and shut the door firmly behind him. The pins and levers moved—slight differences this time with the latch already set. I refined the lock’s image yet again.

  Suppressing a smile, I opened my palms in invitation. My gards wreathed my fingers in sapphire light.

  He used his small lamp to light the larger one on my table. Then he squatted beside me and reached for my right arm, hesitating only at the last moment. “May I?”

  In the interest of our partnership, I suppressed my revulsion and allowed him to take my arm. He peered at my wrist and turned it over. “It seems you have powerful kin, Valen, and we don’t quite believe your claim that these marks happened by chance.”

  I followed his gaze. The grass outlined so delicately on my forearm and fingers might have been sea grass as I assumed. But among the fronds that curved along the inside of my wrist, where I had not seen it before, stretched a long, lean cat with a snarling face. I thumped the back of my head against the wall. Ronila would surely know Stian’s mark.

  His long brow drawn tight in consideration, Gildas released my arm and returned to the vicinity of the door. “Something is not right about your presence here, friend. I am told that you may have acquired certain…capabilities…along with these Danae markings, skills that might contribute to an escape. We can’t have that.”

  “Did you forget your leash?” I said bitterly. “You own me now.”

  “I’ve not forgotten.” Leaning in deceptive ease against the door, he tossed a fist-sized pouch across the room. It landed heavily in my lap. The smell near set me howling. “Because you lied to me, I think we must restructure our agreement slightly. I want you to work your nasty little enchantment this afternoon.”

  A stray wind gust snapped my hair, stinging against my cheek. “But it’s not time yet. If I do it between times…”

  “…your need will grow stronger and demand to be serviced more often. Alas, that’s true.” He cocked his head. “But it only accelerates a condition that exists in you already. Do it now, or Jakome will introduce our young friend to the doulon.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “Iero’s holy name, Gildas. You would not…”

  But whyever would I imagine that he would balk at this depravity? No one would ever fault Gildas de Pontia for failure of insight. His very posture, so like a strutting rooster, told me he knew that of all the to
rments he might promise, this one I could not abide.

  Rage and hatred only fueled the need lurking in my veins. I struggled to form a plan. To attack him. To delay. To run. But each solution would forfeit lives more important than mine. One more doulon would not kill me, only embed the craving deeper. What did he plan that called for so strong a control of me?

  “You lied to me, as well. You’ve Ronila to take you into Aeginea. Why do you need me?”

  “So the clever sorcerer has guessed the crone’s name,” he said. For one moment I glimpsed the true man—greedy, prideful, jealous—the man who had grown up shamed by his poor and ignorant family. Then he slipped on his smiling mask again. “Let’s say I enjoy watching you grovel. Do it now, Valen. And don’t think to throttle me or toss the bag through the windows. Without my password, Jakome will not open this door. When he informs Sila, you will bleed out your remaining life in ways most unpleasant. And then he’ll see that Jullian loses his soul to this perversion.” He shrugged and screwed up his mouth in distaste. “You must understand, I intend to live in this world on my own terms or none, and you are necessary to my plan. Do as I say, and Sila will not know the ugly truth about the abomination she has chosen to…plow her fields. We shall merely proceed with our bargain as before.”

  I knew well the determination to find something better than the life one was born to. Not even Voushanti would be so dangerous a foe as Gildas. I wanted to tear out the blackguard’s heart.

  Hands shaking, I set out the needle, mirror, and thread and spilled out a pile of hard black seeds beside them. I was a doulon slave already. Gildas and Jakome had but fed tinder to the coals that Saverian had warned would ever burn in me. To do it once more…truly it could not make ridding myself of the doulon’s yoke worse than what I’d gone through after twelve years’ enslavement. I just needed to retain as much sense as possible. Control it. And before they could force me to do this a third time, Jullian and I would be away from here.