by Carol Berg
Thrown completely out of mind, hand throbbing, stomach curdled at imagining a burn that could have caused so terrible a ruin as Dante’s hand, I could not comprehend in the least what he was talking about. We had been entirely wrong about the mages.
Dante seemed to need no response from me. He circled the room, the fever of discovery propelling steps and speech.
“I’d never have thought you subtle enough to extract such secrets, but then I’ve no understanding of talk, as you’ve seen. Only the magic. An arrow that could penetrate iron, placed in the hands of an expert marksman. Caelomancy prepared in advance to douse a sudden conflagration.”
Halfway through his second circuit of the room, he snatched up the flask, linens, and bandages and returned them to his worktable.
“So now, student, bend your mind to the villains’ purpose. It’s not just to lay suspicion on the lady queen—though her absence from the Swan fits that purpose like the popinjay fits his hose. That requires no such elaborate plotting. Nor can I think they were just looking to raise the reputation of sorcery, though Gaetana looked sour enough to gnaw her own arm when she heard the king speak of the ‘Pantokrator’s blessed gift of rain.’ If His Majesty refuses to admit what saved him, then next time they might decide to actually kill the royal fool!”
My reviving faculties began to knit these rambling threads together. “You’re saying they planned—they weren’t trying to kill Philippe at all!”
And then, of course, the revelation—the elusive mystery of Calvino de Santo’s testimony—dropped into my own lap like an enchanted stone. Gruchin, the first mule, had been an expert marksman. He had aspired to be a sorcerer, but Gaetana had dismissed him from her service, accusing him of using transference. Yet she had not reported this offense. The threat of exposure and certain execution would ensure his silence about anything he’d seen or done . . . until the fool got drunk enough to babble about it to his captain. Only then did his accuracy with a bow begin to fail. And when de Santo dismissed him for his shaky hands, he had vanished with no one to notice save a wife and child. Gaetana . . . someone . . . had bled Gruchin for two years.
What if Gruchin’s marksmanship had not truly failed, but had been only temporarily blocked? What if the mages had promised him redemption and healing if he placed the arrow exactly where they told him?
“Gruchin’s arrow was supposed to miss,” I said. “Supposed to penetrate the saddle and kill the horse and come ever so close to killing the king, making everyone believe that someone wanted the king dead—most likely his queen. Supposed to leave everyone afraid and suspicious. And then Orviene and Gaetana caused the fire on the Swan, but you believed—you knew—they intended all the while to bring on the rain to save Philippe.”
Dante scooped up a flat box and several other items from the worktable and headed back toward me. “Gaetana is a calculating witch. She would hardly have come sailing with us without a way to undo whatever mischief they intended. Orviene is thick enough to go sailing in his own piss. It just took me damnably long to figure out the banners were the danger. I wasn’t close enough to them until we stood talking to you, and I smelled the wax. If I’d discovered the truth sooner, I’d have found some less drastic way to warn you.”
“You saved my life,” I said, stupidly. And my eyes, a gift of no less value. Yet with eight dead souls screaming in my head, how could I thank him?
He tossed an open book aside and set the flat box, a ball of string, and a knife beside me on the couch. He didn’t meet my gaze. “It has occurred to me I might need you to get me out of here someday. To vouch for my good purposes and all that.”
“Too bad we couldn’t have warned a few others, even if they were less useful to you.”
Dante’s face, body, and spirit froze. “Speak this accusation completely, Portier.” His voice reverted to the soft, cool precision so much more menacing than heated fury. “And while you’re about it, lay out the terms of our agreement. If you wish me to salvage every sorry dullwit who strays into the path of wicked sorcery, then state that right now. Or if you wish me to curry these mages’ favor and allow myself to be drawn into their trusted circle, state that. But understand that I am not so talented as to do both.”
“People were burning . . . dying. You did nothing.”
“Great works of magic that thwart murderous nature—works that might shield a man from fire or pain or drowning—cannot be devised in a heartbeat like a mother’s trick to divert a naughty child. And I claim no subtlety to tease men out of danger or in half a moment create an impregnable excuse to heave sixteen oarsmen overboard. You told me at the beginning that this was a dangerous undertaking. I thought you understood what that meant.”
This naive misunderstanding was certainly the truth. I had aspired to service, to useful purpose, hoped to prove that an accident of birth need not condemn a man to a hollow life. Never had I imagined Philippe’s charge would cause me to see a man’s eyes seared to blindness or to hear a human mind disintegrate as fire consumed its living body. Perhaps I had allowed Dante’s undeniable talents to impress me overmuch with confidence in his skills, and his enthusiasm for the hunt to induce me to forget that he despised his fellow men. Yet never could I have believed that the right course of my service must be to approve the choice Dante had made. What of simple mercy?
Furious with Dante, with myself, with circumstance that forced such choices, I could see naught but to go on. Allowing such crimes as had been done to Ophelie and Gruchin to continue was unthinkable, as well.
“Fair enough,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Clearly I held unreasonable expectations. Have the mages made overtures? Welcomed you into their secrets?”
“It has begun,” he said, all his eager ferocity locked away. “Gaetana informed me that certain members of the queen’s household were invited to the launch of the Destinne in company with the king. I assumed the arrangement was your work and agreed to come.” As I had demanded of him.
He strode to the window and threw open the casements. “They have also asked if I would teach them how I worked the little frippery at the lady’s party. I refused. They’ll ask again.”
“And is it both of them? You said Orviene is thick. I see him as trivial.”
“She leads. He follows. Whether he knows where he goes or how, I cannot say.”
The silence stretched. Questions, strategies, misunderstandings swirled in my head, and I could not leave without addressing them.
The box he’d set beside me contained thirty or forty small cloth bags filled with fragrant herbs. “What are these?”
“I need them tied shut. It’s a thing I can’t do.” Brittle words; frigid. His maimed hand twitched, but he didn’t turn around.
I took up the task, more to give myself time to think than to assist him. I had to gather the mouth of each bag and grip it with my left hand, using my injured right to do the tying—an awkward process that I could not accomplish without flexing my painful fingers. With every twinge, I cursed him.
Yet, as the hour ticked away, whatever potion he had used to bathe my wounds seemed to ease them. And I had released my festering anger, no matter how unsatisfactory the resolution. As a result, I was able to think more clearly than at any time since the fire.
“This doesn’t make sense,” I said after a while. “Why would Orviene and Gaetana work this weather marvel to rescue the king, a wonder that could revive people’s appreciation of sorcery, and then risk its association with the worst blights of magical history—mules and transference?”
Dante snorted. “Gods, student, you are blind. Do you truly believe that collection of refuse they spread out on the deck drew the rain from the sky? The pattern was flimsy and absurd. No, the real caelomancy had already been worked and linked to a receptacle—some object they brought aboard. Not something picked up by chance to balance the magical elements. This enchantment was so huge and so complex, it required the strength of both mages to quicken it. I’ve never . . .” He tugged at h
is collar, a fretful move I’d come to think signaled uncertainty. “I am not skilled enough to dissect such spells as yet.” His clipped words dripped scorn—for himself, not me.
I recalled Dante’s still, focused posture in the stern of the Swan, as the fire raged. I had desired him to work some miracle to save the dying, because I had already tried and failed. Helpless, frightened, I had wanted him to pounce on the two mages and withhold a coming doom. He had not, because he believed their spellwork benign—as it had proved. He had been feeling, sensing, examining, using whatever was this talent that enabled him to see the very structure of spellwork, doing what I had engaged him to do.
“But no matter my incompetence.” He turned slowly and settled himself on the window frame, staring at something far beyond his chamber, arms folded. “I’ll swear on anything you care for that their gold flask drew forth the rain. The surge of power”—he closed his eyes as if to envision it again—“was as like the Camarilla’s usual magic as a hurricane is to a baby’s breath, as arsenic to mother’s milk.”
“Power fueled by Ophelie’s blood infused into the spellworker’s veins.”
“Whoever has done this—their contempt is monumental.” Dante ran his fingers through his untamed hair. “I believe the mule—the girl—was meant to be discovered. Not as she was—before the event and able to speak. But after, so she could be linked to the murderous ‘magic’ of the banners, which those few who understand the properties of the mineral phosphorus will understand to be no magic at all; a wax seal prevents its untimely combustion. Everyone would believe she ensorcelled the banners, and without her fingers, it could not be proved otherwise. Some well-laid trail would link the banners to the queen, whereupon we would be forbidden to search further. Another mystery unsatisfactorily ‘solved.’ And the lady of sorrows blamed.”
He aimed his storm-hued gaze at me. “Now you tell me, great sympathizer with sorry humankind: Why did the girl believe she had to die before this happened? Whatever her captors would do with her blood had already been settled. She could not stop it. She spoke of betraying a ‘good man,’ not a ‘good queen.’ What would an aristo student of magic call sin or betrayal?”
I had assumed Ophelie’s “betrayal” meant royal assassination—murder. But if they’d never planned to murder Philippe, then what?
“I’ve not a guess,” I said after a fruitless few minutes. “The conspirators are taunting Philippe, forcing him to look the other way because elsewise he must blame his wife. A queen who champions sorcery accused of treason by a king already considered an enemy of the Camarilla—it would destroy the Concord; throw the kingdom into chaos. But they’re taunting us, as well. They might not know who we are, but they suspect that someone is examining what they’ve done . . .”
“Perhaps.”
“. . . which means they’re up to something that a persistent investigator will see if they don’t distract him. Something that requires the kind of power they cannot draw from their innate talents. Ophelie was bled for near a year; Gruchin for almost two. Who knows how many other mules they’ve used. What else have they done?”
As if taking the cue from my conviction, Dante strode into his bedchamber and returned with two wads of fabric. Shoving the box of half-tied herb bags onto the floor, he sat beside me and unwrapped the smaller one—a kerchief containing the twisted shard of metal from the crypt—Ophelie’s manacle.
“This piece teases,” he said. “I’ve no doubt it bound the girl. The blood”—he showed me the dark residue in the jagged tear that had freed Ophelie—“matched the keirna of the samples I took from her body. But she didn’t break it. I found no commonalities between her blood, or anything you’ve told me of her, and the magic that tore the metal. Nor did I discover any commonalities with the magic worked on the Swan. True, that was a very different spell, and a joint working, but I would judge . . .”
“. . . that the magic that freed her was worked by someone else entirely.” So easy to complete his logic—forcing an astonishing conclusion. “We’ve yet another sorcerer involved.”
Dante rewrapped the shard and gave it to me. “The magic was not only tremendously explosive, but entirely undisciplined. Not even a spell as we think of it. It felt as random as a lightning strike, its pattern utterly simple, but as raw and dangerous as the torn edge of the metal.”
As I fingered the wrapped manacle and marveled at the story it told, he unwrapped the larger bundle. The spyglass lay innocent in the folds of a cambric shirt. A bit of metal dropped to the floor and rolled to my feet. I picked up the silver coin.
“That’s an oddment,” said Dante. “Its keirna is very different from that of other coins, but then coins pass through so many hands for so many different purposes, they have quite a complex pattern to begin with. The oddities might come from its being a double strike or from being in a mule’s pocket at the moment of his death. But whatever its history, it is now magically inert. It carries no spells. Stranger yet, none I’ve tried seem to affect it in any way.”
The silver disk induced no odd sensations as I had experienced the first times I’d held it. “And the glass?”
He lifted the spyglass and shoved its wrappings aside. “I’ve taken it apart. Studied it a bit with no ill effects. I’ve no doubt you’ll inform me if I take on an even more fiendish bent.”
“I’ll certainly speak out if I sniff brimstone in here again,” I said, but no wry spark illumined his shuttered face.
“Is your royal cousin a devout man?”
I rolled the double-faced coin between my fingers as I considered the odd question. “I’d say not, though that’s pure supposition. What other Savins I know keep private altars, but they live . . . heedless.”
I glanced up to see if he understood. He inclined his head.
“You said the king saw dead men he knew, wandering in desolation, when he looked through the glass,” he said. “What did you see? If I’m to explain this particular mystery, I need evidence.”
His request made sense. But no sooner had I sketched out my vision than he began to pick at its threads, gathering intensity like a lowering storm. What kind of gate? Iron. Was it embedded in a wall? No, it stood alone. But the way—no, I didn’t see an actual path—led through it. I just knew. Was your father’s attire familiar? Yes. His favorite hunting coat. Was the landscape known to you? A dry hillside could be a thousand different places in Sabria, but the gate . . . Did your father ever attempt sorcery? Not that I ever saw or heard. He was weak in all ways. Was there physical violence between your father and you when you were a boy? No. As a man? Once. Only once. Do you pray for your father?
“That’s quite enough,” I said, jumping to my feet, trembling as the old scar on my left arm throbbed in time with my burns. I could not afford headaches or memories of daydreams that bled truth, or any of the turbulence these topics forever roused. “What does this have to do with the spyglass?”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t look up. Didn’t speak at all for a while, as he carefully unscrewed the outer brass ring from the wide end of the spyglass and lifted out a second, this one with the glass lens fitted in it. With a small prying implement he removed five tiny brass fasteners from the rim, then pointed to a pattern scratched on the lens ring. “I think this might be the mark of the lens maker,” he said. “Can you see it?”
Still flustered, I motioned him to turn the ring into the sunlight. A squint revealed the scribed image of an eye with three rays spreading out from it. “I’ll find out whose mark it is,” I said. “But what does my private business have to do with this? What have you learned about the glass? ”
“Nothing certain, though I doubt it provides a window into some divine hunting ground. The spellwork pattern is erratic, like a quilt jointly made by a royal seamstress and a blacksmith. Some aspects are quite subtle, using properties of light and aether I’ve never conceived of; some are little more than acolyte’s fumbling. The power that infused the spell is weak. And, as I told you at the beginnin
g, the instrument’s physical construction is uneven, as well. Like this . . .” He removed the brass rim and exposed the hidden edge of the lens. Bubblelike voids and tiny cracks marred the wavy edge of the glass. “Filled with flaws. Again, I believe, we have a different practitioner. Less skilled even than Orviene. Far less raw talent than the one who burst the manacle.”
“If it doesn’t penetrate the Veil, then what, in Heaven’s name, does it do?”
He didn’t seem to hear my question. “This guard captain, de Santo, he is not of the blood?”
I thought back to the way de Santo had spoken of Gruchin’s blood ties, and my glimpses of his grimy hands . . . bare of family marks . . . covering his head. “I don’t believe so.”
“And you don’t think he could be working for Orviene or Gaetana?”
“Definitely not. He believes the king has betrayed him—that Philippe sacrificed him and his family in order to shield the queen and the mages who work for her.”
“I want to see the captain. Tonight.”
I bristled at his demand. “Why? Was my interview flawed? My report incomplete? De Santo saw nothing of Gruchin’s attack.”
Dante, closed and cold, carefully reassembled the spyglass. Only when he had tightened the outer ring did he answer. “He may have seen more than he thinks.”
Further questioning did naught but close him tighter. Eventually I yielded. “Tonight, then. Meet me at the temple minor at ninth hour. Meanwhile, I need you to make a fuss about your books. It’s time to go to Serav—”
A rapping at the door sent both of us to our feet. Dante hurriedly rewrapped the spyglass and tossed it onto his jumbled worktable. “Enter.”
