by Carol Berg
Thank the Creator, a few excited pigs did not rattle Dante’s stolid cart-horse. A thudding impact on the mage’s shoulder had him growling and yanking his staff from its straps.
“Master, no!” I snapped. “No magic! Just get out of here.” A hostile magistrate could cause us days of trouble. We could afford no more delays.
Dante did not call up lightning, but only whacked a sow or two on the nose with the staff, then squeezed out of the press into a side lane. Swept past the same turning, I guided my nervous mare through the melee. By the time I left the squealing mass of pork behind, the mage had emerged half a kilometre down the road. Before I could catch up to him, he had vanished through a rickety gate that sported a peeling signboard labeled THE ARBOR.
Swearing at pigs and troublemakers and recalcitrant mages, I followed him into a close, stinking innyard. My jaw dropped.
Dante had already dismounted. He stood between a ramshackle hostelry and its dung-fouled stable, yelling at Adept Jacard. “. . . incompetent lout. I told you to bring the kit I’d left on the bench. Before we arrive at Vernase, I’ll expect to have at least the bergamot, juniper, cedar, vetiver, and hyssop oils in hand. The artemesia, as well.”
Jacard, filmed with sweat and road dust, frowned as if Dante had handed him a snake. “But, Master, you stressed promptness above all. Surely we can acquire these on our way to Vernase.”
“Vetiver is near unobtainable outside a seaport. You can sell your body to a whoremaster or your soul to the devil to get it for all I care, but get it.”
I dropped to the filthy ground beside them. “What, in the Souleater’s demesne, is Jacard doing here?” Invited, apparently. Intended to accompany us, though to take the ambitious, curious adept along as we searched Michel de Vernase’s home was idiocy.
“I’ll not be questioned by a mewling secretary,” snapped Dante, “no matter who his relatives are. Nor will I hear excuses from a lead-wit who cannot seem to follow the simplest instruction.”
Surely a mage in full regalia had never graced this yard. He had lowered his voice at the least, frustrating the curiosity of two gawking drovers, a blowsy tap girl peering through a skewed doorway, and the pair of piggy eyes squinting over her shoulder from the dark interior of the inn.
Dante spun to glare at the drovers, who quickly busied themselves with loading a pair of mangy hounds into a cage on their wagon. The piggy eyes blinked, and a fat, pale hand drew the tap girl deeper into the inn.
“Hold, girl!” Dante’s shout near startled her out of her overfull bodice. “I’ll have a stoup. Out here.”
“A w-what?” She gawped at the wooden steps at her feet, then back at Dante. “I can’t give—”
“A cup of your best ale or cider,” I called to her, as Dante’s color deepened. “An ordinary tasset. I’ll have one, as well.” No tap girl south of Merona would recognize the peculiar terminology of Coverge’s mining settlements.
“Nasty inside there,” Dante mumbled as he secured his staff in its leather straps. His eyes did not leave the doorway. “More’s gone in than out that door.”
Jacard shrugged and rolled his eyes at me. I grimaced in return, less concerned with disreputable hostelries than with this convoluted mess. The mage knew how fiercely I would object to Jacard’s company. Though pleasant enough, Jacard was yet a stranger who had once worked for Gaetana. The adept’s presence must quench all honest talk between us. Dante would undoubtedly laugh at the idea of honest talk. Gods, how could I have been so stupid?
The tap girl brought out two dripping tassets, the cleanliness of both girl and cups justifying the mage’s reluctance to enter the inn. Running his thumb along the cup’s rim, Dante mumbled an incantation. The dirty vessel began to glow. The drovers’ hounds howled. The gaping girl bobbed a knee and scrambled backward.
“Mine’s safe to drink now,” Dante said when the dogs quieted. He downed it in one long pull and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his blue gown. “Shall we go?”
More’s gone in than gone out . . . My attention snapped to the piggy eyes still watching us, relishing decently dressed travelers, silver collars, and imaginings of a mage’s reputed wealth. Cursing under my breath, I emptied my tasset into the muck and tossed the cup to the girl.
JACARD WAS NOT A TERRIBLE companion when it came to tending horses, fetching supplies, or the other tedious necessities of travel, and he maintained an admirable good humor in the face of Dante’s unmitigated contempt. But his presence had me entirely on edge for two very long days.
He chattered like Ilario, boasting a great deal of his studies with this or that master at Seravain. He had naught but scorn for Orviene. “His spells are flimsier than paper, Portier, and wholly unreliable. How he earned his collar is a mystery for the ages!”
“Gaetana was better?” I said.
As ever when her name was mentioned, Jacard shuddered. “Praise the saints, she hated adepts and gave us naught but bits and pieces to work on: deriving a formula for warming feet or making a ball roll uphill—which is impossible, I can tell you—or producing a potion to liquefy a particular bit of charmed paper she owned. Such trivialities chafed a bit after training with Elgin and Corrusco! Worse, she’d never tell us the use of our tasks, nor demonstrate any but the most mundane magic. Then she would scream that we never met her requirements, though she’d not show us why, either. She pawned me off on Conte Bianci two months after I arrived in Merona, and I was glad of it.” He dropped his voice. “Dante’s even less agreeable or talkative, but his magic . . . Sante Moritzio! . . . at least there’s meat to it. I’m sure to learn something if I stay close. Mage Elgin says I’ve exceptional skills at disentangulation. . . .”
Though interested to hear of Gaetana’s work that explained disintegrated manuscripts and revealed her interest in upended physics, I wished Jacard gone. His unending curiosity led inevitably to my own history, to my peculiar quest to serve the king, and to my relations with my royal cousin, with Dante, and even Maura. It required my best wits to keep ahead of him and guide the subject elsewhere. By afternoon of the second day, I was babbling the tales of my youthful dreaming, anything to avoid more tales of his education or the risky topics of transference and forbidden books. I went on longer than I intended about the dreams, as Jacard was so clearly bored by it. Perhaps boredom would still his tongue.
Dante rode behind us, unspeaking. At every stop, he pulled out Gaetana’s book and wandered off by himself. To interrupt him was to call down Heaven’s wrath. And he knew very well that I would not wish Jacard to take note of a Mondragoni text.
When we passed through the market town of Florien, and the mage dispatched Jacard to find the supplies he required, Dante insisted I go, as well. I could not defy him without breaking role. Clearly the mage did not wish to be alone with me. Our arrival at Vernase, the village nearest Michel’s home at Montclaire, came as a divine mercy.
AFTER THE ONE NIGHT SPENT with Dante on hard ground, and a second sharing a dampish pallet with Jacard at a hostelry little better than the Arbor, the little crossroads tavern in Vernase seemed a paradise. The Cask was clean, genteel, and in possession of an efficient stove and a most excellent bathing tub. Jacard and I shared one of the tavern’s two rooms, kept for wine merchants, royal messengers, and other respectable sorts who came to do business with the Conte Ruggiere or his lady. Dante contrived to arrive later and took the other room.
That evening I sat alone in the taproom. The mage took supper in his room, and Jacard spent the evening in the outhouse, complaining of a turbulent belly. As a hearty portion of Mistress Constanza’s well-roasted lamb soothed what aches the bath had left, I engaged the taverner in talk of the countryside and my purported mission to offer my services to the conte as a private secretary. “My former employer recommended the Conte Ruggiere as a noble lord who treats his employees fairly.”
“Oh, aye, he does that,” said the hearty Constanza, a woman of robust appetites, good cheer, and oft misappropriated verbiage. “Them as wor
k for the lord are loyal to the bonesprits. A nobler collaboration’ll not be found than the family at Montclaire—lord, lady, and their youngers that’s mostly grown now—always generous and lively about the house and countryside, but close and companionable with one another, you know, as you’d want your own family to be. At least that’s what we here in Vernase have circumspected these years since the king, divine grace to his name, give him the manor, though Lord Michel weren’t even a noble born.”
“Good folk, then. I’m glad to hear it,” I said, tweaking a finger to bring the woman’s broad face closer. “Some few in Merona name the lord more bull than lamb, if you know what I mean.”
She gave my rumor due consideration, drawing her mouth and her opinions up tight. “The conte’s firm, no doubt, and determined, but any man can drink a dozen tassets in a night while he holds his quarterlies, yet keep a fair good humor with the common dunderheads that happen by to puke their grievlings in his lap, has a good heart beneath, to my mind. But then again, I’ve got to pass the direful news that the king’s own soldiery has set up a line, tight as a tinker’s purse, about the manse. The soldiers say the conte is suspicioned of treason, which is wholesomely outlandish to anyone knows a gnat’s brow about him.”
“Treason!” Appropriately shocked, I begged the good Constanza to forget all I’d said, and asked her about other families and businesses round the area that might have need of a secretary.
She knew no locals with such needs. “But you might try the mage what’s rented my other room. He’s a dour sort. Slammed Remy into a straw bale for naught but trying to unload his horse. The lad near broke his wing bone from it. Course, I’ve a vile temper for sorcerers as I was conflicted with a rheumy eye for a year by a rogue mage. But what high and mighty parsonage like a mage wouldn’t need a man of business, eh?”
This news struck me with a chilly bite. It was one thing to erupt when startled out of spellworking in dangerous circumstances, as the mage had done in his chambers. But to let fly at a stable lad seemed out of character as well as foolish. Dante played the simmering volcano for our public purposes, but why put on a show for no witness but a boy and a horse? Unless it was no show.
THE CINCH STRAP OF THE Guard Royale encircled Montclaire at a discreet but firm distance. Each soldier stood within hailing distance of the next, so none could pass between without proper identification. My official orders from the king gave Dante and me passage, and, at Dante’s glaring insistence, Jacard as well.
I had dispatched a young officer up to the manse that morning to inform Lady Madeleine that a master mage of Queen Eugenie’s household and a special envoy of King Philippe would be pleased to wait upon her and her children. We had not waited for an answer, but followed the messenger up the long swell in the green landscape to a hilltop prospect rivaling any in Louvel or Aubine.
Montclaire. The crystalline morning etched the horizons with the snowcapped peaks of Journia far to the northeast and the sultry green crags of Nivanne to the southwest. And beyond the dry, wildflower-mottled ridges to the south shimmered the sea, scarce but a silvered imagining. In between, the sun-splashed fields and vineyards of Aubine spread over gentle hills, encircled with vines and notched with red-roofed villages. Everywhere bloomed the flowers of early summer—anemones, crown daisies, marigolds, and scarlet pimpernel—amid healthy groves of olive, almond, and lemon trees. If Louvel was Sabria’s pumping heart, Tallemant her industrious arm, and thin-aired, pristine Journia her ethereal soul, then Aubine was surely her fertile womb. Philippe had granted Michel de Vernase a prize, indeed.
A broad lane took us through the outer wall into the sunny precincts of the manor. Cascades of purple and pink bougainvillea draped the rambling stone-walled house and gardens. On a flagged terrace, beneath the spreading branches of a walnut tree, the young soldier held a polite distance as a small woman read my note and Philippe’s order.
In the yard, a balding man supervised a boy walking our messenger’s horse. As we three rode in, the man, his plain black breeches and hose, collarless white shirt, and dark jerkin naming him a servant, drew his spiky gray brows into a knot and stepped forward, as if to bar us from closer approach.
“We’re the visitors announced by yon messenger,” I said. “All is in order.”
“I doubt that, sonjeur,” he said, politely holding my horse as I dismounted. “Will you be long?”
“Most of the day, I should think,” I said, glancing at Dante, who was no help at all. His brooding gaze roamed the windows that overlooked the terrace and the yard, and his fingers were already loosing the straps that held his staff and the bag of oils and herbs Jacard had filled in the Florien market.
“I’ll see the beasts tended,” said the stableman, assisting Dante and Jacard to dismount. “You can wait—”
“We’ll wait right here,” I said, clasping my hands at my back as if I’d all the time in the world.
As he led the horses away, the man raised a decisive finger and another boy came running from the tile-roofed stable to take charge of the three animals. Once his instructions were conveyed, the man lounged against a flower-decked wall, observing us.
“Why don’t we just set to?” whispered Jacard, standing at my shoulder. “It’s not as if the contessa can refuse us. And she’s naught but a slip of a thing.” Indeed the messenger towered over the slender woman whose long dark hair fell over one shoulder.
“Manners,” I said. It seemed reasonable that diplomacy would gain us more answers than a frontal assault, though truly I had no basis for such a notion. “Lady Madeleine comes from an old and influential family. Her husband is the king’s dearest friend—as yet—and her children the king’s goodchildren. Even if my suspicions are proved true, we’ve no reason to believe the conte’s family involved in any misdeed.” Happily, Sabrian law did not hold blood kin forfeit for a relative’s treachery. Society and custom were other matters entirely.
The lady folded the papers and spoke to the soldier, who bowed, pivoted crisply, and joined us. “The contessa agrees to speak with one person. Her children, the young lord Ambrose and Damoselle Anne, are not to be approached outside her hearing.”
“But she has no say in the matter,” said Jacard, altogether too excited about this interview to my mind.
I ignored the adept. “Thank you, Greville. Please to remain at the lower gate lest we need messages taken.”
The young officer snapped a bow and departed. I turned to Dante, measuring my words. “We seek evidence of illicit sorcery, specifically transference, evidence of dealings with assassins or other suspicious persons, links with the fire on the Swan, and whatever insights the family can provide as to Michel de Vernase’s ambitions and state of mind. Shall I speak to the contessa or shall you?”
It was risky—giving the mage an opportunity to shut me out of the most significant interview of this investigation thus far, but if he was bound to thwart me, best to know straightaway.
Dante had tossed his black bag to Jacard. His hands had vanished into his flowing sleeves, and he had raised the hood of his gown, so that the merest arc of his chin was the only flesh showing above his silver collar.
“I must meet the woman briefly, no matter her wishes,” he said. “But then I will examine house and grounds. The adept will follow me, keeping at least ten paces behind and following my instructions exactly. You may have the pleasure of questioning the treacher’s kin.”
I breathed a little easier. That Dante planned to keep Jacard at arm’s length was reassuring. Had he only brought the adept along to distance himself from me?
“As you wish,” I said. “I’ll join you when I can.”
I straightened my doublet and set out for the terrace, where the Contessa Ruggiere waited beneath the walnut tree.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
9 CINQ 16 DAYS UNTIL THE ANNIVERSARY
“Divine grace shine upon thee and thy ancestors, my lady,” I said, bowing deeply and exposing my hand. “I am Portier de Duplais. My sin
cerest apologies for this intrusion.”
“You may choke on your apologies, sonjeur.” The contessa exposed her left hand in passing as she returned the king’s warrant to me. Voice and glare mimed flint and steel as Dante joined us under the walnut tree, Jacard ten steps away. “Only a cretin would believe you and your brethren have come merely to locate Conte Ruggiere. Not after a year. Not with an entire gardia camped round our home, choosing who will or will not enter our gates.”
I had not expected the contessa to be welcoming, but neither did I expect her to so clearly reflect the ferocity of her bandit ancestry. Cazar nobles held to clannish customs, so I had read, and kept their women . . . tame.
“As my message stated, we have come at the king’s behest to gather information. Master Dante, a mage of Queen Eugenie’s household, and his assistant, Adept Jacard”—I extended a hand toward each—“must necessarily examine your house and grounds. They will not interview your children, but will leave that to me . . . in your presence, as you have requested. If you would like to inform your children of these arrangements . . .”
“Our servants will see to that.”
“Lady—”
“Let me make this clear to you, sir. My husband has ever been Philippe de Savin-Journia’s friend, devoted subject, and loyal servant. I will not help you or your king brand him a traitor, even if it might soothe Philippe’s guilt at imprisoning poor, confused Eugenie. And if you make the least attempt to taint my children with this folly, or use this mage to seduce any of us into some confessional, your blood will feed our grapes for next year’s harvest.”
It had not escaped my notice that the sylphlike contessa wore a slim leather belt around her layered draperies of crinkled white gauze, nor that a sheathed zahkri hung from that belt. The angled Fassid knife was as suitable for gutting an enemy as for gouging a furrow in stony ground or harvesting a cluster of grapes. Nor had I failed to note that the contrast of the white garments with the lady’s dusky skin, dark eyes, and dark hair—not black but deepest brown, burnished with copper—was as breathtak ing as the view from her hilltop home. Wars had been fought over less treasure than Madeleine de Cazar y Vernase-Ruggiere.
