by Carol Berg
As he bounced to his feet, Orviene palmed a few slips of silver and colored beads from the floor and slid them into his doublet. Yes, test them. Feel them. I’ll wager you’ve never felt the like. The residue of Dante’s enchantment sparkled and shimmered through my skin and spirit as no fragments of glass or metal could ever do. Well done, I thought. Very well done. Orviene could not but be impressed with his new colleague’s talents.
The dapper mage waved dismissively. “No enchantment remains. You are all quite safe.”
A twitch of Lady Antonia’s fingers brought liveried servants with brushes and dustpans to collect the not-at-all illusory debris. The crowd sighed as one and the anxious murmurs grew into a strident babbling.
I gave Ilario a hand up and a raised brow of inquiry. He shook his head ever so slightly. He had not prompted the event. No sooner was he on his feet than he was besieged by ladies and gentlemen alike. “Dante,” he said, “his name is Dante. A master mage. I brought him here to amuse Eugenie, but I never imagined . . . I am wholly flummoxed.”
Dante and his display were the primary topics of conversation for the next hour. Ilario repeated his story of finding Dante by way of his search for a new crocodile-slaying spell at least a hundred times, elaborating as he went along. I retired to the wine steward.
I’d scarce downed a sip when Maura joined me, dragging Mage Orviene alongside her. “Portier, meet Her Majesty’s Second Counselor, Orviene de Cie. Orviene, this is Portier de Savin-Duplais, Lord Ilario’s new secretary.”
“Divine grace, Mage,” I said, trying not to stare.
“And with you, sonjeur, an acolyte yourself, I hear.” The mage’s pale eyes moved from my exposed hand to my face in polite interest. “Fresh from Seravain.”
“My studies ended many years ago, sir. I’ve served as the collegia librarian for almost a decade.” The courret tucked into my waist pocket remained chilly. Surely it should react in the presence of evil, as it would for poisons or unsheathed weapons.
With another not quite a smile that near melted my bones, Maura excused herself.
Orviene smiled broadly. “A scholarly gentleman with an appreciation of the mystical arts will always be welcome in the household. Common breeding will ever display itself, eh?” Though he leaned close, as if to share a confidence, any guest within ten metres could have heard. “If your duties allow, you must stop by my chambers and I’ll introduce you to my assistants. Though I’d gladly show you our current work, I doubt you’d quite grasp the intricacies.”
The mage did not so much as take a breath, much less register my embarrassment. “I’d be interested to hear news of Seravain. . . .”
For half an hour, he plied me with questions about the collegia, allowing no more than a bell’s strike for me to answer. Each query would launch a humorous anecdote or a reminiscence of his own student days. Eventually he ceased bothering to ask anything, but provided avuncular advice as to court dress—modesty served best for those of us in service, even when family connection supported more opulent attire—court ladies—Sabria’s most luminous treasures—perfumes—best kept muted so as not to compete with the ladies—and wine—I should seek out Giorgio, the third wine steward, for the best recommendations if I planned to entertain.
By the time the mage apologized that he really must move on and attend to a few more acquaintances, my head swam with trivia. Either Orviene was the most skilled deceiver in Sabria or he was a genial, self-important, silver-tongued gadfly, who truly believed that his most critical decisions each day were which coat and scent to wear as he monitored the queen’s wards and charms. I was entirely confused.
“Many thanks for the introduction, damoselle,” I said when, to my delight, I encountered Maura at the refreshment table. “Not so fearsome after all.”
She smiled sagely. “I told you—”
“Excuse me, damoselle.” Ilario, appearing from nowhere, snatched my arm, and dragged me away. “Come, come, Portier. No time for self-indulgence. Important business awaits.”
Quivering like a captive bird, he urged me insistently toward the doorway, snatching the cup from my hand and shoving it at the first person we passed, a startled Mage Orviene. “Ah, sir mage! I do hope you and your colleagues will grace us with your participation in my Grand Exposition. My private secretary here will be handling the arrangements. But excuse us; we’ve urgent business waiting.”
“Tell me, Chevalier, have you seen Adept Fedrigo today?” Orviene called after us. “Three days he’s missed an important tutorial. I know you often preempt his time for small projects. . . .”
“Not for aeons,” said Ilario, whisking me into the passage and around the corner before Orviene’s question had faded.
“It’s the Destinne,” he burst out the moment his ornately carved door slammed behind us. His earrings and jeweled bracelets jangled as he hurried across the thick carpet to shut the paned garden doors. “She is scheduled to sail on the morning tide, day after tomorrow. Her captain just informed Antonia. His first officer, the other fellow who was there, is some grandnephew’s cousin’s eldest boy or something like.”
“The exploration voyage?” I struggled to switch my thinking away from spinning gauds and unexpected mages.
“Don’t you see? You told me to listen for sudden changes. The sailing date’s been moved up by more than a month.” Ilario threw his hands in the air as if expecting me to congratulate him.
“I’m sure there’s good reason for the change. The tides . . .”
“But, Portier, it had been scheduled for the twenty-fifth day of Cinq.”
My heart stuttered. “Prince Desmond’s deathday. The anniversary.” Our deadline.
Ilario lapped the room with his long strides, his brow drawn up in a knot. “Philippe chose that date apurpose, as he’s dedicated the voyage to Desmond, you see, to honor the child and see him through Ixtador. Now something’s changed and the Destinne sails early.”
“The king will insist on being at the docks to send her off,” I said. “Out in the open where there will be a thousand places to lurk and a thousand times a thousand places for spell-traps to be hidden. A perfect place for a public murder.”
“So I was right that this was important?”
“Saints and angels, yes. You must play that game of stratagems with Philippe tonight. Put him on his guard. And whatever you need do to arrange it, Dante and I must be near the king that day.”
Scarce more than a day. Too little time to send sorcerers to detect spell-traps. Too few courrets remaining in the world for them to use. This was too soon. We didn’t know enough.
CHAPTER NINE
13 QAT 48 DAYS UNTIL THE ANNIVERSARY
On my way to apprise Dante of the new threat, I devised an excuse to stop in at the palace steward’s office. The steward’s third secretary, Henri de Sain, had been a friendly sort and had invited me to return if I needed anything. I needed information.
I found the harassed secretary jotting notes in his ledger book about a large, ill-smelling crate at his feet. “It’s the dung,” he said, when I slapped a kerchief to my nose. “Rare mushrooms growing in a crate full of dung. As if we didn’t have enough trouble with this business of the Destinne . . .”
In fact, the steward’s office was in an uproar, taxed with hasty arrangements for honor guards, musicians, a viewing stand, a celebratory feast with an invocation from the High Tetrarch, a smooth-tongued diplomat to coax the prefects of the Camarilla to attend in a show of unity, and little more than a day to do it all. But nothing in the reports of the changed sailing enlightened me.
“By the way,” said Henri, as I rose to leave, “you may not need my tailor’s service after all. Not an hour ago, we received a box from a tailor in Margeroux and sent it on to your apartment.”
From Margeroux . . . The arrow and spyglass! I hadn’t thought I could feel more urgency. Without so much as a thank-you, I bolted.
“HOW CAN A CAPTAIN CHANGE the sailing day on his own?” With his skil
led left hand, Dante unraveled the last knot binding the canvas-wrapped box from Margeroux. He’d set himself and the bundle on the floor at the center of his circumoccule immediately on my arrival.
“The captain holds full authority on his ship,” I said. “Not even the king can gainsay him. The steward’s secretary says the crew was near mutiny at sailing on a prince’s deathday.”
My cousin had sapped his own authority in the first year of his reign, issuing a declaration that disenfranchised the Camarilla in maritime matters. Until Philippe’s pronouncement, the Camarilla had required every vessel to carry a mage, who could overrule a captain’s decision at a whim. To mollify the prefects, enraged at their loss of influence, Philippe had decreed that neither temple nor civil officials could overrule a ship captain, either.
I helped myself to wine from the pitcher on a low bench. Dante’s apartments had been transformed in the past two days. The heavy draperies and excess furnishings had been removed. Two chairs, one long couch, and one small table remained in front of the tall east windows, while his required cupboards and worktables had been installed about the rest of the room. A variety of implements had been tossed on the worktables alongside a clutter of boxes and bins.
“Your king’s a fool if he goes to the docks,” said the mage. “Let the ship sail and make his prayers at home if he must.”
Dante had heeded my news of the Destinne’s new launch with only half his attention, clearly more interested in the artifacts of the first assassination attempt than in anything we might do to prevent a second. He had responded to my congratulations on his “salon debut” with a shrug. “I assumed you’d control Lord Fool’s reaction.”
Even my report of Ophelie’s death and her prisoning in the crypt had elicited few questions. My eager offering of her broken manacle had prompted a promise to “look into it” when he’d more time. Indeed, I had not pushed. Our first priority must be to protect Philippe.
“Kings are not so easily dissuaded,” I said. “Especially warrior kings turned natural philosophers, who have staked their kingdom’s prosperity on voyages such as this. Surely, if we can locate the threat, you can do something to protect him.”
He didn’t bother to answer, but yanked the thin rope loose from the dusty canvas. I needed to engage him. “I’ve a courret.”
That caused him to look up even as the wrapping fell away to expose a flat leather case near as long as my arm. “Indeed? And how would a librarian come by such a rarity? Not a mage living knows how to make a wardstone.”
I squirmed under his stare, green as jade and hot as a smith’s furnace. “It’s borrowed.”
“Demonfire, you’ve stolen it!” Pure astonishment erased the wariness and suspicion he wore like a temple dancer’s mask. “You—that I thought might be the first honest man I’ve ever met.”
“I did not steal it,” I said, exasperated that we’d wandered so easily from the needs of the hour, confounded again that I could be so easily read. “I found it in a crate of texts we brought from a ruin in Xarles two years ago. The courret was likely the only decent thing to come out of that house. The Mondragoni were—”
No. Better not to speak of them, though they had been on my mind since the inception of this enterprise.
But Dante’s hand had fallen still. “What were they?”
Ixtador’s Gates, the man’s ears must be keener than a hawk’s to hear what lingered unspoken on a man’s tongue. “Necromancers,” I said. “Leeches. Demonists. Torturers. A blood family that was everything foul and unholy. Some say their overreaching fired the Blood Wars. The few of them not wiped out in the wars were beheaded after, and none have ever disputed the rightness of it.”
“Ah.” He twisted the brass key I’d given him to unlock the leather case. The latch clicked. “I’d give a deal to see those texts—if I’m to make a show of deadraising. Orviene and Gaetana may not have the talent they think, but they’ll not be easily deceived.”
I pulled out my journal, my hand itching for my pen. I’d only plummet to hand, but I could ink the reminder later: Bring Dante the Mondragoni texts.
Puzzled, I stared at the open page and the words already taking shape. I had no intention of fetching the Mondragoni books.
I glanced up. Dante’s eyes had fixed on the case, but his hand had stilled.
“Stop this immediately, Master.” I slammed my journal onto the worktable before fury—or fear—crumpled it.
Dante hungered for knowledge as the poor hunger for evidence of the god. And because providing access to the filthiest underside of our art was the last thing I would do for anyone, friend or foe, I knew for certain this time that the compulsion I felt was entirely unnatural. No one should be able to influence a man so . . . directly.
“I don’t know what spell you’ve worked on me, Master Dante, but you will stop it now. Tell me what you want. Tell me why. And when I make my own choice, yes or no, argue with me if you will, but with honest words, not sorcery. If you persist in this, our partnership is ended.”
“I’ve told you what I want and why. So will you bring me these Mondragoni texts or will we argue it?” Stubborn. Prideful. Contemptuous. The manners of a badger, as Ilario had said.
Streaming sunlight transformed the circumoccule’s glassy surface into a ring of amber encircling the mage. With a pair of locking forceps, he lifted the bloodstained arrow from its nest of Lady Susanna’s worn silks and laid it on the floor beside his staff. The spyglass remained snugged in its wrappings. He closed the case and set it outside the circle.
I gripped my convictions tightly. “Fortunately, in this matter, I’ve no choice. The Mondragoni scripts are locked in the Seravain vault. And do not will me to break the locks. The texts are encrypted and entirely unreadable. I kept them . . .” I could not say why I’d kept them, save that destroying works of such antiquity did not come easy to me. Kajetan, my mentor, the chancellor of the collegia, and a prefect of the Camarilla, had supported my judgment.
I wasn’t sure Dante heard me. Hunched over where he could see it closely, he nudged the arrow with the forceps once, then again and again, examining its length with each rotation.
The hour ticked away in silence. I waited as long as I could bear before curiosity trumped anger. “Dante, tell me what you’re—”
“Deeping fires!” Dante slammed his implement to the floor. “When did you transform into a babbling idiot like the peacock? Have you no discipline? No patience? No wonder you’re incapable of spellwork.”
I did not rise to the insult. “What do you see, Master?”
“What does your borrowed courret tell you?”
I’d not even thought of it. Which meant . . . The silver pebble I pulled from my waist pocket was as cold as the first day of Estar on Journia’s highest peak. A poisoned arrow less than two metres distant should have it scorching. “It’s telling me nothing.”
“Step inside the circumoccule.” He pulled a flask from his pocket and dribbled its contents in a small oval close around the arrow. “And bring a willow wand with you, one with a forked end. There’s a basket of them over there.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the worktables.
By the time I found the basket and rummaged through the fifty or so slender branches to find what he wanted, the painted oval had dried to brown.
“Well come along. If you want to know.”
I stepped across the amber ring of the circumoccule and promptly dropped the courret. The wardstone clattered to the floor and rolled toward Dante. It had near burnt a hole in my palm. “Gates of Heaven!”
“One needs a secure enclosure to work on dangerous matters,” he said, nudging the silver pebble in my direction. “This circumoccule suffices. The painted boundary merely isolates the object of our study from other objects, enchanted or otherwise. As we’ve no idea of its dangers, you’d best use the branch to touch the arrow. Willow, simple and known, will disturb its keirna far less than a finger attached to a human person, especially one who discipline
s his spirit no better than a bumpkin child.”
Leaving the courret where it lay, I knelt facing Dante, the arrow and its enclosing strip of paint between us, the forked end of the willow wand wedged snugly about the arrow shaft. The mage touched the joined arrow and wand with his staff and closed his eyes, visibly retreating into that state of profound stillness I had witnessed in his bedchamber two days before. I didn’t need him to tell me to close my eyes as well.
“Quiet your spirit,” he said after a moment. “Naught can reflect on a turbulent sea. Calm it.”
I tried. Fear—or excitement—at the revelations to come hollowed my belly. The day’s urgencies could not be dismissed by merely willing it so. I shifted position. Stretched my neck and shoulders. Breathed deep. Yet I saw naught but blackness.
Determined not to miss what he would teach me, I accepted Dante’s command as literal instruction. I imagined my internal landscape as the roiling ocean beyond the shores of Tallemant, and my will as the finger of the Creator at the dawn of the world. I calmed each wave, smoothed each ripple, stilled its unsettled surface until my mind’s slate gleamed black as obsidian.
Against the shining blackness, a font of deep, healthy green surged upward . . . quickly overlaid with wedges of brilliant yellow and blue, angled sharp as the arrow point itself, and a series of brown marks like the crosshatching motifs on old pottery, save for an unpleasing irregularity. From the base of the rune, as I thought of the display, pooled an inky black splotch that stretched into a long, straight line twined with bruised purple. A faint waved line appeared below it.
“The keirna—this pattern you see writ in shapes and colors—tells us that this is an implement of death, precisely made from living wood, steel, and poison.” Dante spoke softly, as if sharper words might jar our tenuous connection. “Splintered now—see the irregularity of the hatching—but made to fly . . . straight . . . to penetrate . . . ”
A very long while passed and I thought perhaps to see no more. But then, outside my head, the mage expelled a great sigh of effort, while inside, a sparkling net of white scored the darkness and enclosed the colored marks, binding, containing, masking its entirety.
