Breath and Bone

by Carol Berg

  Chapter 25

  Malena arrived with the early nightfall. I waited behind the door. In the instant the door opened, breaking the barrier ward that bound the room, I touched the lock and quickened the spell I had built throughout the day. Anticipation held my bones rigid…with so much depending on a blindworked spell in an unfamiliar lock…and every alternative sure to draw blood.

  As the girl crossed the room with a supper tray, I buried my face in my hands, listening for the latch. The guard on the stair pulled the door shut. The pins and levers moved…and stopped short, as if a small clot of dirt, oil, and bronze shavings, about the size of an armaments game piece, had slipped into the works and prevented them seating properly. I smiled into my fists.

  Again Malena wore naught but flimsy shift and braided hair. Again she set out warmed wine. I had eaten nothing since the previous night, and even the prospect of maggoty bread would have set me ravening had I not spent the last half hour practicing what Kol named closure, attempting to subdue every sense to my will. Three times in the past hour echoes of the doulon had threatened to unhinge me, wreaking havoc in my head and shooting spasms of pain and desire through breath and bone. But I had cut them off like rotted limbs. No matter desire, no matter temptation, no matter perversion, neither Gildas nor Sila Diaglou would control my deeds this night.

  “Where is the boy?” said my chosen mate, forgoing all pretense of holy ardor. “I was told he would be here. We’re to send him out to Jakome when the time comes, unless you wish him to watch.”

  “Gildas took him,” I said. “They fed me extra vigger’s salt this afternoon and I got a bit…tightwound…waiting for you.” I shrugged and pointed out the broken lamp, the rumpled bed and scattered cups.

  She pouted a bit, as if she had been looking forward to the extra company, then watched in puzzlement as I tied my spare hose over my feet like soft slippers, hiding my gards. The hose would be easier than boots to remove if I had to bare my gards in a hurry. “Cold feet,” I said.

  She retrieved the wooden cups from under the clothes chest where I’d thrown them. “Do you wish to sup first or shall we do our mistress’s bidding so I can be away from here the sooner?”

  “Our mistress has explained her remarkable…glorious…vision,” I said. “And I understand a great deal more about what we must sacrifice than I did this morning. But I’ve not eaten all day, and I’d not wish to fail in strength or endurance tonight.” I smiled and tugged at the lace that bound up her braid.

  I did not want to tip my hand by rushing. The call of fifth watch had not long passed and Stearc’s punishment would not begin until sixth.

  Malena did not seem mollified. She dragged a quilt from the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. Blessings to Serena Fortuna, Jullian’s hide-away was not exposed.

  I took possession of the remaining chair, poured the wine, and offered her a cup. As she drained her cup, I swirled my own and sniffed it. Though I doubted Malena was a doulon slave, and I didn’t think Gildas would risk a second doulon for me in the same day, not after the pile of seeds he’d had me use, I dared not taste it. I did devour the porridge and bread, and when Malena said she had already eaten, I ate hers as well, praying with every bite that nourishment might put some bone in my knees and wit in my skull.

  I was not halfway through the second bowl when my body spasmed with a burst of heat that shot me to the verge of ecstasy only to send me earth-ward again, as if I plummeted from Stian’s rock Stathero. Breathing hard, trying not to lose what I had already eaten, I pushed the porridge away and told myself this was but an echo of the doulon as I had experienced before when I had used too much nivat. Keep moving. Hold fast. Men will not die today because of your weakness.

  “What’s wrong?” said Malena, from her perch on my clothes chest.

  “Naught,” I said. “I just—Birthing a new race is a great responsibility.”

  I beckoned the girl to my lap. She had refilled her cup, and a droplet of red hung at the corner of her mouth. It sickened me.

  “A cup of wine can smooth over many a grievance,” I said, and traced my fingers about her face. Her body softened in my arms. When I touched her lips, she nipped my finger and smirked. A few kisses and I set her cup aside, gathered her in my arms, and carried her to the bed. She did not protest at its sagging middle nor did she argue when I took both her wrists in my left hand and drew them up over her head, kissing her neck.

  “Shhh,” I said, as I pulled out one of the lengths of rope from the side of the bed and tied her wrists. “There are many variants of pleasuring, Malena.”

  Her eyes grew very wide. She licked her lips and attempted a smile. Only when I snatched my mask out from the same hiding place and stuffed it in her mouth did she understand. She growled and struggled, drumming her feet on the palliasse, squirming and writhing to get out from under me or at least get a knee where she could do some damage. But I had very long legs and arms and the memory of Gerard to force her still.

  Once the rope was snug around her ankles, I tucked quilts around her. “We’re going to have a very quiet evening tonight, chosen one,” I said, using spare laces to snug the mask in her mouth. “I do not sit down with murderers. I do not lie with them. Holy Mother Samele grant that you never carry a child—mine or any other man’s.”

  Malena’s glare could have poisoned the world ocean itself.

  I detached a little bag from my waist, made sure the three lonely seeds remained intact, and tucked the bag between her breasts. “I am returning the holy one’s gift. Gildas gave them to me and told me that Sila wished me to be a slave as well as a whore. Tell her I prefer not.” I trusted her to report my words exactly. I hoped Gildas would be in Sila’s presence as she did so.

  And then I peered around the end of the bed, met Jullian’s very large eyes peeking out from his burrow, and grinned. “Time to go.”

  Regrettably we dared not take my pureblood cloak with its thick fur lining, so I pinned a plain gray blanket around Jullian’s shoulders. The boy gaped at the writhing Malena as I handed him our remaining lengths of rope and grabbed the bag of knucklebones from the clothes chest. I dropped the dice and the armaments game pieces into the bag, as well, tied it at my waist, and pulled on my gloves to hide the last of my gards. Jullian, looking puzzled, pointed at my discarded boots. I shook my head, pressed a finger to my lips, and doused the lamp. At the last moment, I snatched one of the oaken legs of the chair the boy had broken over my head.

  I held the door handle for a moment, listening. Only one person stood beyond the door. I hoped it was Jakome. A shudder of warmth raced up my spine, threatening my concentration, but I held tight to my focus. Making sure Jullian stood behind me, I pulled open the door.

  “Malena?” growled the man on the dark landing.

  Grinning in unseemly pleasure, I triggered the second piece of the lock spell. The lock burst in a shower of yellow sparks, illuminating Jakome’s shocked face. Backhand, I slammed my arm into the join of his neck and shoulder. He slumped to his knees, retching, and I whacked the chair leg behind his ear to put him out of his misery for the moment.

  Before very long, Jakome was bound as tight as I could draw rope, rolled up in a quilt, and deposited alongside Malena. I tied his orange scarf about my head and his dagger sheath about my thigh. His greasy brown cloak hung from my shoulders. As we pulled the iron door shut behind us, I triggered the last piece of the lock spell, unraveling the obstruction and fusing the broken pins in place. Someone would have to ram the door from its hinges to release the two.

  Jullian started down the steps, but I snagged the neck of his shirt and forced him to sit on the step beside me. “What?” he spluttered.

  “We need to listen for a bit to learn the exact time.” Given the early nightfall, and the span I’d used to eat and secure the two upstairs, the hour should be very close to sixth watch—poor Stearc’s wretched hour. The fortress was filled with muted sounds—barked commands…roaring fires…the boots and grunts o
f departing patrols…grim laughter. I listened carefully for sounds from Sila’s bedchamber. If the map was left unguarded…

  The mystery of Sila’s map grew on me like a boil. What use did Sila find in it? She already had my book and Gildas to take her to Danae sianous. Osriel must come first; to go after the map before securing the prince would be sheer lunacy. I wanted it, though. If I got the chance, I’d take it.

  Of a sudden, fire ravished my limbs yet again, then abandoned me chilled and dizzy. The dark stair gaped and deepened in front of me like the maw of hell…

  “Brother! Wake up!” Hands tapped my cheek and shook my shoulders in company with this anxious whisper.

  I blinked. My heart sank. Jullian’s scrawny limbs were knotted about my arms and shoulders, preventing me from sliding farther down the stair. My head was jammed uncomfortably against the curved wall and seemed to be several steps lower than my feet. “Ow!” I sat up, untwisting my neck and getting my legs below me.

  “You fell…just rolled forward off the step.”

  “Dizzy,” I said. “Part of that ugly business earlier. I’ll try not to let it happen again. But if I should, just slap me. Kick me. Call me a gatzi spawn and get me moving.”

  There was no going back. I shook off the worry, took myself back into quiet, and focused on the plan. “I wasn’t out for long, was I? They didn’t call the watch?”

  “Nay. Not yet.”

  “Sixth watch. All hail the mighty Gehoum!” When it came at last, the call rippled through the fortress, passed from one voice to another, advancing and receding around each level according to the caller’s distance from our stair.

  “I’m going to treat you like a prisoner,” I said, prodding both of us to our feet. “When we reach the prison level, call for your mam to let me know.”

  When the watch cry circled the level just below us and came round again to the stair, I bellowed my own, “Sixth watch. All hail the mighty Gehoum!” I grabbed the neck of Jullian’s borrowed shirt and whispered in his ear, “Fight me.” Then I dragged him down the stair as fast as I could, right past the guardsmen changing their posts. “Filthy little beggar,” I grumbled. “Ye’ll sleep in yer cell again tonight, and every night, if I have my way of it. Don’t think to get out of it by whimpering to no one.”

  I was afraid at first Jullian hadn’t understood my instruction, but then he set to pummeling my ribs with such ferocity, I had to wrestle him under my arm, and still he would squirm loose. One of the guards we passed on the downward stair laughed and called after us, “Got a feisty one there!”

  No one bothered us as we descended into the depths of the fortress, and Jullian had no need to call for his long-dead mother. The stair ended in a circular pit. Torches burned in sconces on the wall, but their light did not illuminate much past three dark openings in the wall. Mighty gods…

  Two of the openings were blocked by collapsed walls or ceilings. The third opened into a passage, and from it issued a low keening I could scarce define as human, as if all the pain and despair this place had known had been drawn together into one terrible voice. Stearc’s voice.

  I set Jullian on his feet, but I did not release my hold on him. To Gram, I mouthed, and urged him forward, my hand on his shoulder, ready to sweep him out of the way if we encountered trouble.

  The passage appeared to be deserted as the boy had said. And as his sketch had shown, his own cell was first inside the doorway. Its position near the exit and its door of open bars had left him better air, if the thick, unwholesome vapors of this place could be named air. Torchlight revealed straw and blankets and a rusty lamp mounted on the wall unlit. Perhaps it had been a guardroom at one time.

  But the cells farther down the passage—all but two empty, according to Jullian—had no such amenities. I held my arm over my mouth and nose and worked as hard as I knew how to keep focused. My king lay dying in this fetid darkness.

  We arrived at a thick iron door similar to the one on my tower room, only with a slot at the bottom for passing food and slops, and an eye-level grate for observing the inmate. A lung-stripping cough and fevered mumbling from inside the cell were sufficient to set me working on the lock.

  Crude, warded by only the simplest magic, it succumbed more easily than the one on my tower door. I dragged the heavy door open, hoping the scrape of hinges would not bring guards running. The stench of sickness and rot escaped the cell in a flood, clogging my throat with bile. Torchlight from the passage revealed a dark form curled on the floor of dirt, rubble, and a scattering of moldy straw.

  “Close the door all but a crack,” I whispered to the boy. “Keep watch.”

  I ducked through the low door, stepped over a tin cup and an untouched bowl of something manifestly inedible, and dropped to my knees beside the prisoner. He clutched a threadbare blanket around his racked shoulders. The cramped cell felt cold as a tomb.

  A cough broke into words. “Milkmaids merry ’neath a cherry blossom tree. Spring comes anon and they’re beckonin’ me.” The chatter of teeth punctuated this rasping singsong.

  “Quietly now,” I said, and touched his shoulder. He jerked as if I’d stabbed him. The heat of his fever near blistered my hand, even through blanket and glove. “Can you sit up?”

  From the far end of the passage, Stearc’s formless wail sharpened into a bellow of agony. A shudder rippled Osriel’s slender body. “Master’s crying in the hall. Kenty’s never got the ball. All fall. All fall. All fall…”

  “He’s been that way since they brought him,” offered Jullian in a whisper. “Out of his head.”

  Great gods have mercy. Trying not to twist or strain his joints—Saverian had warned me to be careful—I rolled him onto his back. Osriel was almost unrecognizable in the poor light…more than being grimy and unshaven. His eyes were sunken, his neck swollen, his skin cracked and peeling. I fumbled at my waist for Saverian’s amber vial and broke the wax seal.

  Though the prince’s eyes were closed, his unmusical croaking continued. “Grapes die in the fields. Warriors die on their shields. Angels dance in the trees. Gatzi dance—”

  “Gram, listen to me.” I lifted him up and cradled his lolling head, shook his chin, tugged at his hair. “I’ve brought you medicine from an old friend of yours. She says you must drink it all, even if it tastes like the dead man’s boots.”

  His fevered mumbling ceased abruptly, and his eyes flicked open as if I’d dropped ice in his trews. He squinted in the feeble light, his gaze running from my fingers to my head. “Valen!”

  I almost dropped him from the surprise.

  His mind, it appeared, was not so sorely affected by his illness as his body. His hoarse expulsion of my name sent him into a fit of coughing, and his body tried to roll to the side and curl into a knot, as if to escape the force of the spasms. Every movement wrenched an agonized grunt from him. I would have sworn he was laughing, too, or sobbing. Or more likely both at once, as Stearc was screaming again.

  Trying to cushion his pain, I held Osriel tight until his paroxysm ceased and his shallow, gasping breaths had slowed. “Let’s get the good physician’s potion down you.” I emptied the vial down his throat, stuffed it back in my pocket, and used my teeth to yank the glove from my free hand. Whispering the words Saverian had said would speed the healing effects of the medicament, I touched his forehead and released magic in a tickling flood. Unfortunately we’d have to move him before the remedy could do its work.

  “The boy,” he croaked. “He’s in this pit, too. And Stearc…”

  “Jullian’s here with us. We’re going to take you out of here first. I’ll come back for Stearc.” Even if the thane had no torturers working on him at the present, I could not carry two injured men at once.

  “He can’t last much longer. You won’t leave him here…no matter what…” This was as close to a command as a man in Osriel’s state could give.

  “I’ll do everything I can.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut and his mouth tight as I helped hi
m to sitting. Shoulders, elbows…his every joint felt hot and swollen. “He has held all these wretched days…giving them some story. They haven’t touched me.”

  Once he was sitting up on his own, I scraped together what straw and rubble lay within reach.

  “Sorry, I need your blanket.” I snatched it away, near ripping the worn fabric in half, and tucked it around the pile. With a poorly structured inflation spell, the mound somewhat resembled a body.

  As I picked up the glove I’d pulled off to work the magic, Osriel grabbed my wrist and held my glowing hand where he could see. His face tilted up toward mine, unreadable in the blue glow. “Two wonders in a single day,” he whispered. “A Harrower gives me a blanket out of mercy, and you appear at my side like Iero’s angel. Did I die when I was not paying attention, or have you come to see to that?”

  I bent down and spoke in his ear. “My grievances will be reckoned later, lord.”

  Jullian dragged the door open as I lifted Osriel to his feet and pulled his arm over my shoulder. After only a few agonizing steps, it became clear that this was much too slow. His joints could not bear weight.

  “Wait,” he said, “I can—”

  But with one hand holding Osriel’s arm, I bent down, caught him behind the knee, and drew his weight across my shoulders. He didn’t scream, but the heat of his fever burnt through my clothes. “Is this our reckoning?” he gasped.

  “No.”

  Jullian sped down the passage toward the stair. I hurried after him as quickly as I could, ducking to avoid the stone spans that supported the fortress floors above us. I tried not to jolt, as I could feel Osriel’s muffled groans rumbling down my spine.

  Stearc’s cries had reverted from the rhythmic, escalating madness of a man under the lash to a constant drone. Even if his body survived until I could get back to him, what of his mind?