The Spirit Lens

by Carol Berg

  “Lianelle pretends Papa is hiding from those who hurt her friend,” she went on. “But you think—Sonjeur, my father could not do that to anyone. Ever.”

  “He spoke with you about transference at some time. Mentioned it.”

  The sun dropped below the red tile roof, shadowing the girl’s pale face. “He spoke of it when we studied Sabrian history. He refuses to hide the world’s horrors from us.”

  Her words fell cold and dry, as if she had focused her good intellect on being a better liar. I cursed the obscuring shadow. “But he did hide horrors. Why would he have the leeching implements here? Why would he not show them to you, if they were merely for education?”

  “I don’t know.” She folded her arms and turned halfway round away from me. Fear had tied the girl in knots. Not fear of me, I deemed; Anne de Vernase feared the truth.

  “Damoselle, King Philippe cannot ignore the evidence we’ve gathered, and for right or wrong, innocent or guilty, he will judge your father’s fate. And yours. You must speak those things you know—for your own future, for the future of your family. I am skilled only in guessing, but you, an intelligent young scholar, must know there are spells to detect lies. Believe me, you are not good enough to evade them. Tell me what your father said about his journey on the morning he left Montclaire.”

  As from a septic wound touched by a blade, the words burst forth. “He said that some men present a face of such reason and nobility to the world that the world cannot conceive the cruelty and corruption behind it. He said it was his duty to take down such a person, no matter—no matter how highly placed or how close to our family. No matter consequences. And he said someone at Seravain had given him the means to do so.”

  Father Creator . . . the last link in the chain. “Who, damoselle? Who was your father planning to take down?”

  “He said it was better for us not to know such terrible secrets,” she said, all fever drained away, along with hope and self-deception. “Because we would have to live on if his plan went awry.”

  Better, indeed! His children had to face Philippe’s wrath.

  “And it all went awry, didn’t it?” she said. “My mother believes he’s dead. My sister now believes it, too. Our servants, his soldiers . . . even his friend in Merona has stopped writing. So he must be dead.”

  “What friend?”

  She waved her hand in dismissal. “Some woman at court.”

  Woman? The world paused. “Who, damoselle?”

  Anne’s chin lifted sharply, her guard up again. “I don’t recall her name.”

  I kept my voice even, trying to repair my slip. “So all these months, you’ve held faith that your father will come home, innocent of any wrongdoing.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, naturally, you’ve kept all the incoming letters addressed to him.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I’ll see them. Now, if you please.”

  “But you’ve no right to see his letters!”

  “Ah, damoselle, I do. Your king has given it.”

  No matter the girl’s soft-spoken ways; had she a dagger, it would have flown at that moment. As we returned to her father’s upended library, her eyes glinted with angry tears.

  Michel de Vernase’s unread letters lay in the bottom drawer of the smallest desk in the room. Ten months of letters—letters from diplomats in Aroth, in Syan, one bearing the seal of the Military Governor of Kadr. The conte’s correspondence was wide and varied: personal notes about family and friends, minor business of meetings and visits, essays from scholars on a wide variety of topics, none of which interested me at the moment, but might on another day.

  When I encountered the letters of importance, I knew. Four of them in a now-familiar hand. Three softened by a year’s aging, one crisp as new lettuce. My fingers trembled. My soul rebelled. The day’s triumphs fell to ash. But the agente confide inside me nodded. She told you herself. Gave you the clue. “He is an honorable man. Compassionate. Your evidence cannot be credible. I owe him—”

  “You may return to your mother now, damoselle.” I charged down the stair. What did Maura owe Michel de Vernase?

  One more question for the housekeeper. Melusina busied herself about the terrace, setting a table for three. “A small inquiry before I go, mistress, a matter of curiosity. Damoselle Maura ney Billard, a good friend of the conte, visited Montclaire in the years before he vanished. She is of small stature, like the contessa and her daughter, but somewhat more . . . womanly . . . with smooth, earth-hued skin. Do you remember her?” This was merely a guess, but I scarce noted anymore whether what fell from my lips was truth or lie.

  “Oh, aye, certain I do,” said the serving woman, each word a coin upon my eyelids. “Such a sweet, refined sort of person. Never comfortable in the country, but ’twas only twice or three times she came, all in that last year. She told me once that the conte had saved her life when she was a girl no older than Ani.”

  A year ago Anne would have been fifteen or sixteen. The next question popped into my head as if the sky had cracked and revelations come tumbling down like hailstones.

  “Melusina, do you think . . . Is it possible Maura ney Billard was the girl who accompanied the woman mage ten years ago?”

  The serving woman’s thick hands fell still in the midst of spoons and saltcellars. “I’d never thought of it, but, indeed, such shining hair and skin she had, the color of dark honey. Certain and that would explain why she was familiar with the house and family, though she hadn’t been back here since she was so very ill that same year. . . .”

  And though my mouth tasted of ashes, it was not so very difficult to draw out Melusina’s story of how the conte had brought the “pretty, spindly adept” to Montclaire for one night, when she was too ill to remain at Collegia Seravain, some year or so after her initial visit. Michel had whisked her away to relatives the next day, before Melusina could fatten her up with Montclaire’s bounty or provide her gammy’s remedies for the girl’s dulled hair or dry skin or weakness so profound the child could scarce lift her arm.

  “Thank you, Melusina.” I could scarce speak for heartsickness. “I believe we are done here. I hope your mistress recovers swiftly. Terrible events, such matters as the king has set me to uncover, touch us all with pain and sorrow.”

  All of us. Father Creator, forgive us all.

  The woman raised her spread hands in helpless resignation. “I’ll not say I’m sorry to see you go, but the pain and trouble was here long before you. ’Tis the world’s way, not yours. I regret my rudeness this morning.”

  Numb and weary, I walked away clutching Maura’s letters, clinging to a scrap of hope that they might exonerate, not condemn. I stopped under the walnut tree and opened them one by one. They had been encoded with an elementary cipher, not magic, easy to read, even without transcription.

  Dear friend: The lady remains resolved to maintain her prerogatives, giving you room to work. Suspicions rise, certainly, but the king will not overrule her. As you predicted. The clues are there to be had should someone clever pick them up. As ever, your debtor.

  Dear friend: The money and clothes will be waiting. Gaetana has the lady entirely befuddled, believing she will see the resolution of her desires. The lady is wholly lost in sadness and has no idea of her danger. I hear awful rumors about poor de Santo, but I understand the necessity. Until I know where else to direct my reports, I’ll continue to send them to your home.

  Dear friend: Have not heard confirmation of your arrival with the child. QE is restless, and love tempts her to yield, but G soothes her with promises of ghosts. The calls of the dead continue to drown out the pleas of the living. She is not stupid. She knows well she is being set up as scapegoat but is herself too honest to suspect duplicity from those closest to her. I must confess to some guilt at my own small acts. But my faith in you does not and will not waver.

  AND THE MORE RECENT ONE:

  Dear friend: My last letter was returned, thus I can only send this
to your home. I pray you remain well. The crates arrived at the temple. Food supplies more difficult but arranged. What a surprise it will be when you emerge from hiding. The banners are readied, and the queen persuaded to remain behind. I’ve wind of a new investigation. I’ll tell more as I learn of it.

  “LADY,” I WHISPERED, “WHAT WERE you thinking to commit such words to paper? Spying on your queen for him? Aiding his plots? Even if he rescued you from bleeding, could you not see he was playing you?”

  I found Bernard in the stableyard, told him we would be leaving within the hour, and asked if he had seen the mage.

  “He’s up to some of his devilry behind the well house,” rumbled the steward. “When Saint Ianne returns, he’ll banish these demon mages for good. Mayhap he’ll banish you, too, for bringing such a one to this blessed house.”

  I offered no apology to Bernard’s righteous fury, but walked the direction his trembling finger pointed, past a well house and into a juniper thicket. If the greatest of the Reborn ever returned to Sabria, I would gladly hand over all matters of justice to him.

  The prickly juniper trees stretched across a dry slope before the land dropped away steeply toward the backside of the village. Jacard straddled a narrow footpath, maintaining the required ten paces from Dante. For the first time, the adept’s face held a trace of fear alongside awe. I halted at his side, no longer surprised to view wonders.

  The heel of Dante’s ancille rested in a blackened groove in the dry earth. From its white shaft extended a flat film of silver light taller than a man and stretched two metres to either side. The mage shifted the staff along the charred groove, and the film of light shifted with it. When a shift positioned the translucent film across the footpath, a haloed purple shadow hinted at the shape of a person.

  “Ah, the lackwit secretary. You’ve joined us just in time to discover that someone has crossed my little barrier here,” said Dante without even a glance over his shoulder. “Were you capable of the simplest disentanglement, Portier—which skill seems to be lacking in all those who study at Seravain—you might discover which of Montclaire’s denizens passed here and when.”

  No magical disentangling was required. “Damnable, stupid boy,” I said, cursing idiot children, incautious, duplicitous women, and my own blindness. “He crossed approximately four hours ago, just before the contessa returned to the house.”

  Bad enough we’d found implements of transference in the house, but the fool lad had heeded his mother’s direction and left her. No judge in the world would believe she had not sent him running to his father. And his elder sister, who had remonstrated with him at the top of the hill, knew very well what he planned. The fainting spells. Just enough answers. Stupid of me not to see it coming.

  “I can’t be sure,” said Dante. “I didn’t have an opportunity to take an . . . impression of the boy.”

  “Can you find him?”

  “Unfortunately my lack of contact with the lad means I can’t trace him, especially with his four-hour head start on home ground.”

  “Then our work here is done,” I said. “I’ll leave word with the guard commander to mount a search for the boy and tighten his watch on the rest of them. We must bring our findings to the king with all haste. Michel de Vernase expressed his intent to take down a ‘highly placed’ man he deemed corrupt, a man close to his family, a man who presents a face of reason and nobility to the world. His daughter, Anne, can testify to it.”

  “Remarkable.” Gowned and hooded, Dante remained unreadable, the chill timbre of his voice unchanged. “And the magic?”

  “He met Gaetana ten years ago, and was fully aware of her interest in transference. Along with the implements you found and my experience at Eltevire, I say we’ve enough.”

  “As you will, then. I’ve no sorrow at putting this idiocy to rest.”

  Dante hissed, and the silver film vanished. The spent magic showered me as Heaven’s light.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  11 CINQ 14 DAYS UNTIL THE ANNIVERSARY

  I leaned back in the chair, forcing the raw knot that was my gut to relax. “I had to show you first,” I said. “There is no hiding them.” Maura laid the letters on her writing table and folded her hands. Her ringed fingers did not quiver. No tears rolled down the silken cheeks that my own fingers ached to touch. No frantic explanations burst forth, no fractured emotions, no demeaning denials or demands for loyalty. Each instance of her serenity served as an incitement to cherish and admire her. And no matter the preachment of reason, my heart yet did so.

  She drew her folded hands to her chin. “When the king sent my poor lady to the Spindle, I knew everything had gone wrong. I hoped, naturally. I’ve lived a year on faith alone—perhaps misplaced, as you assume—though I will not believe that until Michel himself tells me. But I am prepared to answer everything raised by these letters.”

  Three-quarters of an hour had elapsed since my arrival at Castelle Escalon—much of that waiting until a break in the flow of Maura’s supplicants allowed me into her presence to lay out the questions she must prepare to face. Surely by now the king would know I was returned. Our remaining time could be measured in minutes, not hours.

  “You should not have risked coming here. Saint’s mercy, Portier, you look so tired, so . . . harrowed. Bless you for your care.”

  “What blessing do I deserve? All the way from Vernase, I tried to imagine some way to spirit you to safety, some way to discover the entirety of truth. I’ve no confidence the king will even listen to your explanations. But I swear to you, I will do everything—”

  “No oaths, Portier. Once you hear what little I have to offer in the way of explanation, at best you’ll think me the world’s most pitiful gull. But you must understand: In one moment, I was facing Gaetana’s lancet four times in a day, certain I would die soulless before I turned sixteen. In the next moment, this great, strong, handsome man told me not to be afraid anymore, and he carried me off to his home and then to a friend’s haven by the sea, where I learned to eat and drink and smile again. Were he to walk in here at this moment and say, Little girl, kiss your headsman for me, I would do it gladly. Ten years ago, Michel de Vernase bought my soul and gave it back to me. He just—he never told me what he paid for it.”

  Easy to understand the price: Michel had kept silent about an incident of transference—a mortal crime in Sabria. My fear was what the world might now pay for his silence. Saints sustain me, I held no blame to Maura. Despair was a disease that blighted reason. Yet I remained an agente confide, and thus had to ask, “When did you last receive orders from the conte?”

  “Not since the fire on the Swan. This fourth letter answered his last. When I received no response, I—” She had begun to doubt, no matter what she said now. I had visited her office in those days, when we both heard the cries of the dead so distinctly in the night. “I waited, hoping for understanding, but none came. So I sent no more reports.”

  She rose, came round the table, and kissed me on the forehead, suffusing me in her sweetness. Clasping my cold hand in her warm one, she drew me up and into a corner of her chamber. A key on her belt ring opened a narrow door to a servant’s passage. “None must see the kindest man in all the world leaving Damoselle Maura’s den. Go, dear Portier, and do your duty by our king.”

  Leaving was not so simple. I kissed her quiet hands and stroked her shining hair, cherishing the weight of her head on my shoulder. “This is not over until I say. Remember that, dearest lady, whatever comes.”

  I MEANDERED THROUGH THE DARKENING maze, reviewing the long afternoon spent with Philippe, trying to capture what details I might have left out of my report, or where I could have said this or that to be more persuasive, or how, in the Creator’s wide universe, I was to move forward. Night was creeping into the world again, and body and mind craved sleep. But it seemed like such a waste of precious hours.

  Maura’s flimsy explanations had indeed failed to satisfy an angry king. Her implicit trust in Michel’
s unexplained plan to expose the assassins, including, at the least Mage Gaetana, appeared ingenuous. Her unquestioning compliance with orders she swore were scripted in Michel’s hand, and dispatched in letters sealed with his signet—and conveniently burnt once she’d read them—displayed an unbelievable naivete. Philippe had declared her life forfeit.

  Oh, he had listened to my arguments, agreed that we had evidence yet to hear, and expressed sympathy with her experience of despair and my own, offered to explain Maura’s unshakable devotion. He did not deny that Maura’s faith in Michel de Vernase mirrored his own. But he refused to reconsider his judgment, save in the timing of its inevitable conclusion.

  “She has betrayed her queen, and by her own admission, her actions aided those who tortured a child in the royal crypt and set murderous fire to the Swan. Her faith cannot matter. If Michel issued the orders she so blindly obeyed, he will die with her.”

  The mustachioed Captain de Segur had marched Maura through the crowds of shocked courtiers, her capable hands bound at her back. From the window gallery, I had watched the shallop bear her across the golden thread of the Ley and through the iron water gates to join her queen in the Spindle. The desolate image was scored into my heart.

  No wild-eyed feat of arms or magic was going to free her. My only weapon was reason. And so I paced the garden maze, yanking my hair and clawing my arms to drive exhaustion away. Think, Portier. The Spindle gates are warded by old magic not even its keepers can counter. . . .

  As I rounded a thick wall of gorse and flowering broom, a raven fluttered the branches. Moments later, when hands gripped my shoulders and shoved me into the vine-covered bricks, I recognized the intruder as no bird, but a very tall, very strong, and very angry Ilario, draped in a black cloak.